The bells of the Benedictine abbey of St. Peter and St. Paul rang in welcome of the dawning sun as Theodor Schmidt sat at his desk in the tiny back office, finishing the final few entries of his inventory.

"There -- the numbers have been checked and rechecked," he said wearily, yawning and putting down his quill. "We need to order more of the muslin but we'll have to try to bleach it ourselves. Taking it to Argyll for processing is too expensive." He stretched and flexed his cramped, ink-stained fingers. "Was that the bell for Prime already?"

Ben leaned back from where he sat nearby and parted the heavy curtains, letting in a sliver of weak yellow-gray light. "Daybreak," he announced softly. He turned and faced the other man. "Theo, I'd like to go into the village again and-"

The creaking of the main gate and the thundering of hooves interrupted Ben's announcement, and once again he parted the curtains to peek outside. "Now who could that be?"

But Theodor was already up and out of the office, heading toward the silent main entranceway. "It could be the sheriff's man with news!" he called out. He threw open the heavy wooden doors to let the newcomer in, but stopped in shock at the image of the person before him. "Lord Cinea!"

"Master Theodor," Brian said quietly. "It's been too long. May I come in?"

Theodor gaped. Brian Cinea had always been a tall, imposing man, arrogant and haughty in a manner befitting his birthright, but the stranger at the doorway was a superficial shadow of the earl of Cardross. Brian's hair was longer, with streaks of grey, and he was much thinner, although it wasn't just his body mass that had diminished -- his magnitude, the very space he inhabited, seemed smaller as well. For the first time since Brian had left 13 months ago, Theodor was curious as to the earl's experiences during the Crusade.

It was only Ben's small cough that brought the Theodor back to his senses. "I- of course. Please, come in."

*****

Emery hurriedly started a fire in Theodor's private office while Ben brought in food and drink from the kitchen, as Brian Cinea had requested that as few as possible learn of his visit. After a quick talk with Deborah, the cook had been able to put together a quick breakfast before her helpers had even come down to start their chores. Theodor sat with a steaming mug of milky tea wrapped in his icy hands, wondering if he could ever be warm again. He watched the earl accept his own mug and take a grateful sip. Brian sat in an odd manner, favoring his right hip over his left, and surreptitiously kept touching the left shoulder, as if in pain. Theodor blinked and put aside the earl's strange mannerisms for now, and decided it was too late for niceties.

"We hadn't heard of your return," he said, after Emery and Ben had fixed their teas. "What brings you in so early, my lord?"

Emery shot him a warning glance but Theodor was too heartbroken and tired to play games of etiquette with Brian Cinea. He kept his gaze steady on the other man.

Brian disregarded any breach of politesse. My men -- what's left of them -- and I returned just yesterday," he said slowly. His voice was hoarse, as if from disuse, or age. If he noticed the surprised looks from the others in the room he gave no sign. "Throughout my journeys I have been... there has been one who has dominated my thoughts... I can't get him- " He sighed, running his long fingers through his silver-streaked hair. "May I see the one you call Le Petal de Glace?" he said. "My conscience won't allow me to rest until-"

Theodor stood up so quickly his chair fell over. "You want to see Jósteinn *now*?!" he hissed.

Emery also jumped up, to place a steady hand on his lover's arm. "Theo, don't-"

"No. Lord Cinea wished to see Petal. He'll see Petal," Theo rasped. He shot Ben a look. "Go into the village and make your inquiries but for all our sakes, be discreet," he said, then turned to Emery and caressed his cheek. "Em, find Victoire and ask him to meet me. He's probably still asleep."

Without another word, Theodor left the room. After trying to meet the others' eyes and failing, Brian followed.

*****

Theodor led Brian through the main hallway and into the warm, bustling kitchen. Brian winced as he tripped over the uneven stone flooring, but no one noticed. A small girl stood by a bin almost as large as she, measuring out flour for the day's bread baking, while an older girl supervised the roasts in huge fireplace, slowly turning shanks of sizzling mutton on metal spits. A boy ran about the room, delivering water and milk to various stations and Deborah kneaded dough and barked orders throughout.

Theodor ignored them all, offering only a cursory nod at the startled Deborah, and ushered Brian up a flight of steps next to the fireplace. "This leads to the private rooms," he said, by way of explanation.

"In all my years coming here, I've never seen this area," Brian remarked.

"You weren't meant to," came the curt reply.

Carefully they made their way up the steep stairs and through a darkened hallway, passing a long row of closed doors. "The sleeping quarters for Quoin employees," Theodor explained quietly to Brian's silent questioning. "Each room holds six people, plus the rooms for Emery and myself, Deborah, and Ben and... here we are."

Theodor opened the door at the very end of the hall. "The infirmary. Please stay quiet."

The infirmary was a large room, holding about a dozen straw-filled pallets on sturdy wooden tables. Tiny windows sat high on the walls so that very little light came through, lending to the overall feeling of closeness and hushed affliction. A few beds were occupied -- a girl lay quietly with an arm wrapped in bandages, another slept peacefully, while an older boy snored in his little corner -- but the patient that captured Brian's attention was the one at the far side of the room.

"By the Virgin..."

Jósteinn looked large on his too small pallet, moving restlessly about as if caught up in something he couldn't escape. A weary man sat close by, occasionally wiping the boy's brow with a wet cloth.

"Victoire," Theodor called out softly. "Have you slept at all? Go eat. I'll be here for a while."

The healer nodded and slipped out of his chair without a single glance in Brian's direction. Brian had a clear view of Jósteinn now, and found that there was something amiss. Something...

"God's wounds!" Brian hissed. "What happened? Who's responsible for this?"

Theodor shrugged and sat down in the chair vacated by the healer. He gently carded Jósteinn's hair with his fingers, hair that had gone completely white.

"The truth?" he answered. "I don't know. I was in Bute the night it happened, with Ben." He sighed. "But ultimately? Me. Misha. Ben for buying him. Em for training him. All of us. You." He didn't bother to hide his derisive smile as Brian Cinea gaped at him in shock.

"Wh-what?!"

"Shh. Jósteinn doesn't get enough rest as it is," Theodor whispered. "We're running out of medicine, and he's still in a lot of pain."

The men sat silently over the boy -- Theodor in the chair and Brian standing by the bed, looking as if he wanted to bolt from the room. Finally Victoire came back with a bowl filled with a watery, pasty white mixture. "Gruel," he explained. "Petal can swallow this easily. I'll feed the others when I'm done with him."

"Thank you. Let me know if-"

"I'll send for you," Victoire nodded. "Lord Cinea." It was a dismissal, curt and rude, but Brian only gave one last glance at the figure on the pallet and followed his host out of the room.

*****

The men were back in Theodor's office, sitting across each other with the great wooden desk between them. Theodor didn't bother to offer his noble guest any refreshment, and Brian didn't care or even notice. "He was fine -- we thought he was fine -- after his night with you and your men," Theodor began. "Rodney attended to his bruises and cuts, and after a few days he went back to work as if nothing had ever happened."

Brian flushed, the fresh shame of his actions turning in his belly. "But that was many months ago," he said softly. "Why is he suffering still?"

To Brian's surprise, Theodor's glare was thunderous. "Hopefully, God will have mercy on him and ease his suffering soon," he hissed angrily

"You speak as if you wish him dead," Brian said, stunned. "Surely Petal will recover!"

"Perhaps it's best that he didn't," Theodor shot back. "Perhaps this is Fortune's way of telling us that Petal is not fated to a long life-"

"In my experience, Fortune's wheel holds no currency over the will of man," Brian said calmly. "Many a dark night I despaired over my chance of living to see the sunrise, but I was determined. I-"

"By your leave, my lord," Theodor cut in, "Petal had made it his personal charge to tempt Fate. He accumulated bones and carefully honed them. We have over thirty rooms reserved for our guests. He hid one bone weapon in each." Theodor looked grim. "It seems he never wanted to be caught unawares again."

Brian took a deep breath. "What are you saying?"

"Petal found himself in a situation where he felt he needed to use his weapon," Theodor replied. "He was entertaining the son of Master Hobbs, the head of the harnessmakers' guild. I was assured that Christian would be well behaved but it was his first time here. He was rough on Petal, and-"

"Oh, no. No." Brian closed his eyes. "He killed the boy."

Theodor shook his head. "No, thank goodness. But Petal did stab him in the knee and maimed him for life. Master Hobbs was furious. Wanted to get the sheriff and have Petal arrested."

"But Petal could've been put to death," Brian said, stunned. "He's a slave. Attacking a free man- "

"Yes," Theodor said, "but I made a deal with Master Hobbs. Petal was to work off his punishment."

Something about the tone of Theodor's voice sent chills down Brian's spine. "Where? What did Petal do?"

"He worked in the Catacombs," Theodor answered slowly. "I sent him there."

Brian slowly turned his head to stare at the other man. "You did what?" his whispered.

"I had no choice," Theodor said, his voice raw with anguish. "I had no choice! Master Hobbs demanded retribution; it was either the sheriff's prison or working off the debt. So I made a deal -- Petal would work in the Catacombs for six months, and whatever gratuity he received would go the Hobbs boy."

"Six months..." Brian gasped.

Theodor's face was harsh with self-loathing. "He'd been there about four months when it happened," he said. "Ben and I had gone into Bute and Emery had fallen ill, so Misha was managing the clients alone." He shivered and pulled his jacket closer around his body. "I've only heard Deborah's account," he continued, "and she swears that no one save Misha saw Petal's client. They went to the Catacombs, and then before she knew it, she heard someone screaming, and then a few moments later heard a horse galloping out of the yard. She and a few others ran to the Catacombs to find-"

Brian turned away as Theodor broke down, sobbing quietly over his desk. Brian gave the other man his space and stared out of the filmy windows into the courtyard beyond. The stables stood off to the far right, in front of the Catacombs, and not for the first time in the past few hours did he wonder how Jósteinn would have fared had they never crossed paths.

Theodor sniffed and lifted his head, shaking it as if to clear away his grief. "Petal lay broken on the floor, bleeding from... from almost every orifice," he went on, his voice hushed and desolate. "He was covered in lash marks, and one of his piercings had been ripped out-"

Even in the middle of the painful narrative, as he sat dumbly listening to Theodor's horrific tale, Brian was intrigued at the mentioning of a piercing. The one night they spent together, Brian had taken no notice of any decorations on Petal's body. Over the course of the past year he had many times envisioned the fair slave's creamy skin... thighs spread in supplication... and now the idea of whip marks on that body was abhorrent to him. He strained to remember...

"And Requin lay in the hallway, right by the door-"

So lost in his thoughts was Brian that he hadn't realized that Theodor had continued speaking. "What?"

"I said, Requin was working in another room nearby," Theodor repeated. "He must've heard Petal's screams and rushed into the room. But whoever attacked Petal had turned on Requin. He was dead in the hallway, his neck broken, when Deborah found him." He looked up to face the earl, and found the other man eerily quiet. Brian Cinea looked shocked, true, but there was an odd expression on his face, one that Theodor had never seen. "My lord?"

Brian started at the sound of Theodor's voice. "And you're sure no one saw the man responsible for this?" he asked.

"Only Misha," Theodor reiterated. "But he left the Quoin right after -- he was gone by the time Ben and I returned. And he hasn't come back."

Brian frowned. "What do you mean, hasn't come back? Where did he go?" Then he remembered Theodor's strange instructions to Ben about making inquiries in the village. "Has he been missing since that day?"

Theodor nodded numbly. "I'm running out of courses of action," he said. "One worker is dead, another is in a twilight state of suffering, my partner is missing, and I still have the Quoin to run. We can't afford to use all of our stores of medicine on one patient, no matter how much I want to. We try to keep him as calm as possible, but..."

He leaned in and wiped a heavy hand over his brow, finally empty of his anger and sorrow. He couldn't hope for any official help from the civic government nor the Church, and under no circumstances could he expect the earl's support. He'd been running the Quoin for over ten years, through drought and flood and blizzard and fire, but Misha had been right there with him. Emery and Ben were valuable, but they were only subordinates. How could he do this alone? He sighed again, fighting the urge to sink into self-pity, when the scraping of Brian Cinea's chair across the hard dirt floor made him look up.

Brian was already on his feet, a steely determination coloring his eyes. "Ben will find your partner, and you will mourn your dead," he said. "Continue to manage the Quoin. I will take care of Petal."

"But my lord-" Theodor began, but with a swirl of a dark crimson cloak, Brian was gone.

*****

Brian Cinea stood patiently inside the abbot's office in the massive abbey of St. Peter and St. Paul. Once the banes of his childhood, the abbey's inhabitants were no longer stern taskmasters of Latin, philosophy and grammar but old and trusted friends, especially the man he now waited to see.

"Lord Cinea?"

Brian let out a breath and dropped to one knee. Bowing his head, he took the offered hand and placed a quick kiss on the ring in front of him. "Father William," he said quietly. He raised his head and gave a small grin. "It's good to see you again."

"Brian," the abbot answered, returning the smile. "We've been praying for your safe return, and for that of your men." At Brian's darkened brow, the other man frowned. "How many?"

"Only myself and about five others," Brian said, standing up. "I lost the majority in Carthage soon after we landed. Plague."

The abbot closed his eyes briefly, then straightened. "They died in service to the Lord Jesus Christ," he said. "Whether in actual battle or not, it makes no difference."

Brian only nodded. "And now I've come to you with a favor, Father," he said, plunging ahead with his plan. Abbot William, then a simple brother, had known the Earl of Cardross since birth. Brother William had personally instructed Brian in astronomy and mathematics, celebrated his marriage and then mourned his loss, but most importantly, had taught him about compassion and love. Brian realized that he'd forgotten some lessons along the way, but William would always forgive him. He just hoped Jósteinn would, as well.

He sighed and prayed for strength. "Father, there's a young man who desperately needs your help..."

*****

Brother Hugh the herbalist busily rooted through his stock. "Elecampane, this is good, and cress, where's the cress? And some fox clote, ground ivy... oh yes, and juniper and laurel and... where's that poppy wine?" He produced a small stoppered bottle from a dusty shelf and presented it to Brian with flourish. "Yes, here we are! This should work nicely by itself, but take the others as an extra precaution if you would please, my friend."

"Thank you, Brother Hugh," Brian said, feeling confident for the first time since his return. The herbalist was one of the best healers in the region, with an extensive reserve of medicine. "Petal will surely recover now. He must."

The monk gave him a shrewd look. "Petal? Strange name for a man, eh?" He laughed. "Ah, no matter. You must care for Petal greatly to ask the abbot for help."

Brian shifted uneasily. "I'm also responsible for his suffering," he admitted, silently begging the other man to not ask any more questions. "What I mean, is-"

Brother Hugh held up his hand. "I will pray for your Petal's recovery," he simply said. "Would you like something for your wound as well?"

At Brian's look of surprise, Hugh chuckled. "You leave your left arm close to your side," he pointed out, "And you keep pressing your right hand against your hip." He gave a sympathetic smile. "I've seen battle scars before, my lord, from the earlier Crusade. The heathens have fearful weapons, do they not?"

Brian huffed. "I have no intention of being coddled like some babe, good Brother," he said. "It's healing. I need only time. And since time is slipping away for Petal-"

"Yes, yes, my lord," Hugh said hastily. Even injured, Lord Cinea wielded power. That he placed the welfare of another before his own, however, was an interesting development. Hugh wondered how the earl met this man with the odd name.

*****

Victoire carefully placed the last of the herbs in his storage bin and recorded its arrival in his inventory log, as working for Theodor meant that every twig, leaf, and drop of medicine was accounted for. "And the black monks never asked one question about where all this was going?" he asked his partner, indicating to his leather-bound ledger.

Rodney shrugged. "Lord Cinea only said that this was courtesy of the abbey, and that we were not to use it sparingly, as we could get more if we needed it." He glanced over in the corner of the room where Jósteinn lay on his little pallet and Brian sat next to him on a wooden stool, carefully brushing the hair out of his eyes. "The earl's been like that for an hour now." He cocked his head. "What's he saying?"

Victoire shook his head. "Can't make head nor tails of it, but he asked if he could do the feeding tonight. He also sent for some books from his home." The healer grimaced. "Hope this doesn't mean he's moving in. He'll only get in the way."

Rodney looked back one more time to where Jósteinn lay, his newly self-appointed healer keeping watch. "It doesn't seem like he'll be moving from that spot," he observed. The men moved forward slowly, as if unwilling to break the tableau of care and tenderness before them. Rodney gave his partner a questioning glance when they reached within earshot of the earl.

Brian was leaning on the pallet, the back of his hand caressing Jósteinn's pale cheek. "Crinis flavus, os decorum cervixque candidula sermo blandus et suavis; sed quid laudem singula?" he said gently. "Totus pulcher et decorus, nec est in te macula, sed vacare castitati talis nequit formula. Crede mihi, si redirent prisca Jovis secula, Ganimedes iam non foret ipsius vernacula, sed to, raptus in supernis, grata luce pocula, gratiora quiedem nocte Jovis dares oscula." He sighed and placed his head on Jósteinn's hand.

"What was that?" Victoire whispered. Rodney didn't know.