It seems like barely weeks ago I posted my 3K crit and here I am on my 4K already.
End Scene: It is the winter of 1178 Gilbert, a sort of right-hand man to Abbess Gothida has been alone at Cranbowen Priory for nearly a week. All the brothers were absent when he arrived, all the horses dead, and no sign of any of the monks except a dead Brother Rowan. Now at the end of the story, the Abbess arrives with her small retinue, and Gilbert's story comes to a close.
If you can be bothered (it's quite long at just under 1.5k). The only thing that I can think of as a disclaimer, is that in the historic periiods of my WIP I haven't used contractions.
I had to cut the opening to hit the 1.5k count, but it is just to do with the Abbess's retinue getting settled in the icy priory.
Go for it.
‘I shall oversee the duty of settling into the rooms. Our traveling possessions are but few,’ Ealdwine said.
‘Then I shall remove all traces of my occupancy in the warming room and return to the Reverend Mother.’
He would return to the warming room, that was true, but from there he would beat the ground between the priory to the stables, and make his escape; Dear God, please favour me with silent flight.
The hallways were still deserted but the addition of the five or six brothers attending the abbess populated the cold passageways with sounds of life. He had craved such companionship - humanity - for days, and now he had it, he wished it gone. He took the longer route from the stables, down the west cloister towards the church, then north to the library and back down the east cloister so he could check for missed evidence of Brother Rowan’s corpse. He found none, but as he approached the entrance of the reredorter, he heard a shrill cry, more like that of a scolded woman than distressed man. It was Brother Neot - outside the east range.
Gilbert ran into the reredorter and exited to the river. The abbess was already there with two surly monks who he had not yet seen, nor recognised now. Additionally, Neot - clearly alive and well - crouched as if ****ting on the frozen banks of the River Cran, itself a frosted iron mirror below which treacherous currents fought.
He saw no cause for Neot’s anguish, and assumed he had slipped and broken an ankle. He hastened with care on the hard ground, towards the abbess, and heard the tail end of her conversation with the anonymous brothers; ‘—river was not frozen thus when we arrived!’
As he prepared to advise the abbess of the speed with which the night freeze occurred in Cranbowen he stopped and asked himself what foolishness had dragged him from his resolve to flee this place. Though he cared for the sounds of distress he had heard, it was nothing he need involve himself in, so he turned to run back to the reredorter.
‘Gilbert!’ He heard the coarse, wet cry of the abbess, and before he could decide whether to return or dart into the dark entrance, he struck the wall as two heavy bodies slammed into him.
He screamed, his nose connecting with the stonework of the doorway, and his heart quickened to hammer against his chest bones. After a brief struggle, he fell, only to be hauled up abruptly under his arms, with such force that it seemed they would unseam themselves from his body.
His ears rang with a prolonged screeching, and his vision swam in and out of focus, all whilst he was turned about. As his senses returned, he realised the abbess - at first one figure, then two, and back to one again - was facing him from the river bank, Brother Neot wailing at her feet.
‘Bring him to me and remove this howling cur from my sight,’ she said, and he was dragged, feet all a-skitter by the brothers holding him. Once they reached the abbess, he was dropped like a stone. As he recovered, caught his breath and looked up, the wails of brother Neot diminished into the distance.
He was alone on the bank side with the abbess.
He looked down, averting his eyes from those icy blue ones, and as he did so, he saw the cause for Neot’s cries: upside down and half-submerged, half-frozen into the surface of the Cran was the skinned corpse of Brother Rowan, both his stump and full leg sticking rudely upwards. Less than a yard from them, the top half of the flayed brother’s face peeked above the ice, staring at him, eyes as grey as the ice of the river.
‘He sees you, Gilbert,’ the abbess said. ‘He sees you very well.’
‘Reverend Mother…’
‘What is it you have done, here? What is it you have seen?’
‘On the life of my babe, and my beloved, I have no knowledge of what happened here!’
‘An empty oath, Gilbert!’
‘On their lives, I’ll oath!’
‘Their lives are ended. Gilbert of Sarum is the last of that family.’ The abbess spat the words at him.
It was a lie. Maryam and Geoghan could not die. He struggled upright, his nose flowed freely and he did not know if it were blood or snot that was soaking his chest once more, for his tears rivalled the floods.
‘You lie!’
‘They are as dead as Cranbowen’s poor hospitalier!’ she said, wheezing and pointing to the frozen violation of Brother Rowan.
‘You LIE!’ he said through gritted teeth and saw drops of his spittle fly free and hit the abbess’s cheek and forehead.
‘No, I do not,’ she said, leaning close to him so that he could smell her raw-fish breath; so that his nose touched the stained cloth over her mouth; so that a repugnant, moist heat bloomed in his face. ‘You will not need to take my word on this; you will meet them in your damnation, murderer of holy men!’
These accusations, these revelations, they came too swiftly, crashing over him and leaving him dumb and unable to reason the extreme change in her.
‘Maryam. Geoghan. What have you done?’ he screamed.
‘I have done nothing. It is by her own hand that they are ended, Gilbert.’
‘Self-murder? She would never—'
‘Maryam suffered a taedium vitae believing you were killed. It was this that lead to her slaughtering your child together, and then her own self.’
‘LIES!’
‘Indeed, there are lies here. I have entrusted you on God’s sacred duty, given you opportunity to lead me to the truth, but you have deceived me.’
She turned and shook her hand, rolling something about within it, with such purpose that he glanced down.
When she uncurled her hand - no longer shaking, but still and firm - there, sitting on her palm was the glint of gold; the golden drop he had picked up on the king’s hillock.
‘It is true that you found what you were sent to discover. This small drop is a fraction of what you found. The monks knew and you killed them because of this knowledge!’
Gold? This was all for gold?
He had no interest in saving his name, no interest in making clear these muddy waters. All he could think of was myriad ways in which his wife and babe had met with foul play; that he were a disposable asset of the abbess, and therefore his family were somehow earmarked, too.
All for gold?
This was the real work of Satan, here. This was the abbess’ business.
He launched himself at her, his hands clawing outwards, wanting to tear her skin from her as Brother Rowan had lost his. Instead, he caught the dirty Mosul cotton coverings and in his throes, tore them down.
Wet crimson caverns - huge teardrop shaped holes - gaped where her nose should have been, and instead of lips and flesh around her mouth, gum and raw, wasted muscle, eaten slowly away by whatever ailed her, glistened.
He skittered away from her, shaking his hands, as if touching her rotten mask would be sufficient to infect and kill him.
The Grinning Abbess hissed and wheezed through the open wound of a face, and screamed in outrage. She came for him, her hand thudding into his face with uncommon strength. And while this happened, through this terror, he heard a calm part of himself call attention to the little gold drop that tumbled from her hand and rolled down the bank towards the frozen water’s edge.
She hammered down on his shoulders, sending him to his knees in a perversion of pious gratitude before her, and then she swung her arm across and sent him twisting in the air, spinning around, and falling on his chest, his head smashing through the ice. The freezing water washed away his confusion and his shocked (inertia). He pushed his hands on the river bank and brought his head out, above the water, seeing his distorted reflection in the small jagged hole his head had smashed through the ice.
Trying to turn, to find some position of advantage over the attacking abbess, he was not fleet enough, and a crack which he felt rather than heard, spread across the back of his head. Still facing the frozen river, he saw the abbess’s reflection towering behind him like the stones of the circle, but where her grotesque mouth should be was the jagged hole of the river like a distended mouth set with lethal sharp teeth.
A wolf’s mouth.
With that thought he collapsed head first into the water, the last thing he saw, a glinting gold droplet rushing away along the shallows; the last thing he felt, the abbess’s strong hand on the back of his head pushing, down, down.
And then nothing.
End Scene: It is the winter of 1178 Gilbert, a sort of right-hand man to Abbess Gothida has been alone at Cranbowen Priory for nearly a week. All the brothers were absent when he arrived, all the horses dead, and no sign of any of the monks except a dead Brother Rowan. Now at the end of the story, the Abbess arrives with her small retinue, and Gilbert's story comes to a close.
If you can be bothered (it's quite long at just under 1.5k). The only thing that I can think of as a disclaimer, is that in the historic periiods of my WIP I haven't used contractions.
I had to cut the opening to hit the 1.5k count, but it is just to do with the Abbess's retinue getting settled in the icy priory.
Go for it.
‘I shall oversee the duty of settling into the rooms. Our traveling possessions are but few,’ Ealdwine said.
‘Then I shall remove all traces of my occupancy in the warming room and return to the Reverend Mother.’
He would return to the warming room, that was true, but from there he would beat the ground between the priory to the stables, and make his escape; Dear God, please favour me with silent flight.
The hallways were still deserted but the addition of the five or six brothers attending the abbess populated the cold passageways with sounds of life. He had craved such companionship - humanity - for days, and now he had it, he wished it gone. He took the longer route from the stables, down the west cloister towards the church, then north to the library and back down the east cloister so he could check for missed evidence of Brother Rowan’s corpse. He found none, but as he approached the entrance of the reredorter, he heard a shrill cry, more like that of a scolded woman than distressed man. It was Brother Neot - outside the east range.
Gilbert ran into the reredorter and exited to the river. The abbess was already there with two surly monks who he had not yet seen, nor recognised now. Additionally, Neot - clearly alive and well - crouched as if ****ting on the frozen banks of the River Cran, itself a frosted iron mirror below which treacherous currents fought.
He saw no cause for Neot’s anguish, and assumed he had slipped and broken an ankle. He hastened with care on the hard ground, towards the abbess, and heard the tail end of her conversation with the anonymous brothers; ‘—river was not frozen thus when we arrived!’
As he prepared to advise the abbess of the speed with which the night freeze occurred in Cranbowen he stopped and asked himself what foolishness had dragged him from his resolve to flee this place. Though he cared for the sounds of distress he had heard, it was nothing he need involve himself in, so he turned to run back to the reredorter.
‘Gilbert!’ He heard the coarse, wet cry of the abbess, and before he could decide whether to return or dart into the dark entrance, he struck the wall as two heavy bodies slammed into him.
He screamed, his nose connecting with the stonework of the doorway, and his heart quickened to hammer against his chest bones. After a brief struggle, he fell, only to be hauled up abruptly under his arms, with such force that it seemed they would unseam themselves from his body.
His ears rang with a prolonged screeching, and his vision swam in and out of focus, all whilst he was turned about. As his senses returned, he realised the abbess - at first one figure, then two, and back to one again - was facing him from the river bank, Brother Neot wailing at her feet.
‘Bring him to me and remove this howling cur from my sight,’ she said, and he was dragged, feet all a-skitter by the brothers holding him. Once they reached the abbess, he was dropped like a stone. As he recovered, caught his breath and looked up, the wails of brother Neot diminished into the distance.
He was alone on the bank side with the abbess.
He looked down, averting his eyes from those icy blue ones, and as he did so, he saw the cause for Neot’s cries: upside down and half-submerged, half-frozen into the surface of the Cran was the skinned corpse of Brother Rowan, both his stump and full leg sticking rudely upwards. Less than a yard from them, the top half of the flayed brother’s face peeked above the ice, staring at him, eyes as grey as the ice of the river.
‘He sees you, Gilbert,’ the abbess said. ‘He sees you very well.’
‘Reverend Mother…’
‘What is it you have done, here? What is it you have seen?’
‘On the life of my babe, and my beloved, I have no knowledge of what happened here!’
‘An empty oath, Gilbert!’
‘On their lives, I’ll oath!’
‘Their lives are ended. Gilbert of Sarum is the last of that family.’ The abbess spat the words at him.
It was a lie. Maryam and Geoghan could not die. He struggled upright, his nose flowed freely and he did not know if it were blood or snot that was soaking his chest once more, for his tears rivalled the floods.
‘You lie!’
‘They are as dead as Cranbowen’s poor hospitalier!’ she said, wheezing and pointing to the frozen violation of Brother Rowan.
‘You LIE!’ he said through gritted teeth and saw drops of his spittle fly free and hit the abbess’s cheek and forehead.
‘No, I do not,’ she said, leaning close to him so that he could smell her raw-fish breath; so that his nose touched the stained cloth over her mouth; so that a repugnant, moist heat bloomed in his face. ‘You will not need to take my word on this; you will meet them in your damnation, murderer of holy men!’
These accusations, these revelations, they came too swiftly, crashing over him and leaving him dumb and unable to reason the extreme change in her.
‘Maryam. Geoghan. What have you done?’ he screamed.
‘I have done nothing. It is by her own hand that they are ended, Gilbert.’
‘Self-murder? She would never—'
‘Maryam suffered a taedium vitae believing you were killed. It was this that lead to her slaughtering your child together, and then her own self.’
‘LIES!’
‘Indeed, there are lies here. I have entrusted you on God’s sacred duty, given you opportunity to lead me to the truth, but you have deceived me.’
She turned and shook her hand, rolling something about within it, with such purpose that he glanced down.
When she uncurled her hand - no longer shaking, but still and firm - there, sitting on her palm was the glint of gold; the golden drop he had picked up on the king’s hillock.
‘It is true that you found what you were sent to discover. This small drop is a fraction of what you found. The monks knew and you killed them because of this knowledge!’
Gold? This was all for gold?
He had no interest in saving his name, no interest in making clear these muddy waters. All he could think of was myriad ways in which his wife and babe had met with foul play; that he were a disposable asset of the abbess, and therefore his family were somehow earmarked, too.
All for gold?
This was the real work of Satan, here. This was the abbess’ business.
He launched himself at her, his hands clawing outwards, wanting to tear her skin from her as Brother Rowan had lost his. Instead, he caught the dirty Mosul cotton coverings and in his throes, tore them down.
Wet crimson caverns - huge teardrop shaped holes - gaped where her nose should have been, and instead of lips and flesh around her mouth, gum and raw, wasted muscle, eaten slowly away by whatever ailed her, glistened.
He skittered away from her, shaking his hands, as if touching her rotten mask would be sufficient to infect and kill him.
The Grinning Abbess hissed and wheezed through the open wound of a face, and screamed in outrage. She came for him, her hand thudding into his face with uncommon strength. And while this happened, through this terror, he heard a calm part of himself call attention to the little gold drop that tumbled from her hand and rolled down the bank towards the frozen water’s edge.
She hammered down on his shoulders, sending him to his knees in a perversion of pious gratitude before her, and then she swung her arm across and sent him twisting in the air, spinning around, and falling on his chest, his head smashing through the ice. The freezing water washed away his confusion and his shocked (inertia). He pushed his hands on the river bank and brought his head out, above the water, seeing his distorted reflection in the small jagged hole his head had smashed through the ice.
Trying to turn, to find some position of advantage over the attacking abbess, he was not fleet enough, and a crack which he felt rather than heard, spread across the back of his head. Still facing the frozen river, he saw the abbess’s reflection towering behind him like the stones of the circle, but where her grotesque mouth should be was the jagged hole of the river like a distended mouth set with lethal sharp teeth.
A wolf’s mouth.
With that thought he collapsed head first into the water, the last thing he saw, a glinting gold droplet rushing away along the shallows; the last thing he felt, the abbess’s strong hand on the back of his head pushing, down, down.
And then nothing.
