Chapter Text
1444
He waits patiently for the service to finish, quietly finding a seat in the furthest pew back. He doesn’t mind it: the Church has taken to singing their rites, and the tones blend with the incense smoke and together they rise to the rafters.
Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi.
Latin—a language that Roderich never did perfect, but one Gilbert knows well.
He’s near the altar, not out of sight but not at the forefront; in clean black-and-white robes illuminated by sparse candles, one would have to double-take to make sure Gilbert isn’t a ghost. A sign from God, maybe. An angel.
Roderich knows better.
Dona nobis pacem.
Gilbert receives Eucharist like everyone else. He didn’t the first time, but then again, the first time he hadn’t even been allowed in the great halls of the church. Piety, it turns out, doesn’t grant you entrance when you look the way he does.
A boy of the land, a boy of God, it doesn’t make a difference once he kneels at the altar and opens his mouth to receive the body of Christ. He crosses himself and looks up at the priest, who quickly looks away. Gilbert doesn’t mind.
It must be hard, pretending a child who shouldn’t exist is nothing more than a servant to something higher.
But Gilbert is surprisingly good at his role. He knows his scriptures, he attends Mass twice a day. He washes his brothers’ feet. He lights the candles and fills the incense. He knows the names of the Saints, their patronage. He confesses…usually.
Roderich says he’ll grow soon. It annoys Gilbert, mostly because Roderich isn’t that much bigger than him, not really, but he already knows so much, more than quiet monasteries and yellow parchments. Roderich knows open fields and mountain air, and when he sings it isn’t to implore for mercy.
The thought suddenly strikes Gilbert as funny, but he doesn’t know why, and he brings his cross to his lips in a chaste kiss and forgets about it for now.
There must be something about Roderich that makes the monk’s eyes light up with understanding and usher him into the boy’s quarters with no questions. There’s always something that appears to suggest he isn’t what he seems. So far, it’s worked in his favour, and so he hopes to figure out what it is soon.
Gilbert’s room - below the marshal’s quarters - is small, humble: a cot, a desk, a window looking out onto the churchyard. He’s running rosary beads between his fingers, a habit Roderich has seen often enough by now.
“Enjoy the service?”
“It was pleasant enough.” Roderich peers at the parchment on the desk. The candles cast shadows on his face, along cheekbones that seem to grow more prominent by the day. “The setting’s a little dreary, don’t you think?”
“Modest,” Gilbert replies automatically, then shakes his head and puts down his beads, heading for the desk. “Look here. I’ve been practicing.”
There are bruises on his left forearm, raps from a master’s ruler, but Gilbert stubbornly reaches for the quill with his left hand and expertly fills a line of parchment with crisp strokes of ink. Roderich looks over his shoulder. “You’ve improved.”
“Don’t sound so surprised.” Gilbert can’t help but puff out his chest a little, though, as he puts back the quill and wipes ink off his hand. “Why did you come here?”
“I came to tell you I won’t be visiting you for a while.”
Gilbert gives him a quizzical look. “You don’t have to come here anyway.” Come to think of it, he’s always been a little curious as to why the other boy chooses to travel all this way, when it’s clear he doesn’t even like—
“You misunderstand me, Gilbert,” Roderich replies in a tone that implies this had been the intention.
Gilbert narrows his eyes, scarlet slits in the soft glow of the candles.
Roderich continues. “I won’t come to see you here, because you’ll be summoned instead.”
Something inside Gilbert twists. He fiddles with the roped belt at his waist. “My place is here,” he says lamely, after a long, long minute of racing thoughts, after the slow creeping realization that even as he says the words he isn’t sure how true they are.
Roderich chuckles softly. It’s not unkind, but it makes Gilbert scowl nonetheless. One slender hand pushes hair back from his face: he’s pretty, and Gilbert’s scowl deepens. A pretty face doesn’t absolve you of sin.
Surely Roderich knows that.
“What are you?”
The question makes Gilbert start, and instinctively launch into the routine response he’s given for a year, ten years, a hundred years. “I am a brother of the Order of the House of Saint Mary—”
Something glints in his periphery and his hand shoots up to effortlessly catch the brass inkwell aimed at his face.
Roderich smiles a sinner’s smile. “You and I both know you’re far more than that.”
Gilbert says nothing, doesn’t acknowledge the other boy as he takes his leave upon telling him to expect word soon. He gingerly sets the empty inkwell with the other on the desk before kneeling at the foot of his cot.
Roderich is a puzzle, he decides; his words are nothing more than puffs of air that hide something unspoken.
But.
He steals a glance past his folded hands out his window, up again to the portrait of Saint George above it.
Something itches just under his skin even as he begins to recite his prayers for the night. And for the first time - or perhaps just the first time Gilbert is willing to admit - he wonders if his prayers are the same puzzling puffs of air. If there is any truth to his words, to Roderich’s words.
Because what good would it do to be born with a sword in your hand, but no one to offer it to?
Gilbert crosses himself and goes to sleep, and when he goes to confession the following week he says nothing of the meeting, nothing of how he sneaks to the armouries after mealtime and balances a sword in his palm. If anyone’s noticed, they don’t dare bring it up to the ghostly boy, the demon in poor man’s clothes.
Sunday, the church bells start to ring, and Gilbert follows, and sits at his place by the altar, waiting.