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Methos drew further back into the corner and the sheltering shadows of the shabby ale house. He was too exhausted to be rightfully miserable, too grateful for the filthy mug of half-and-half, mending his chill by the swallow. His long, shaggy mane was still sopping, still running little irritating rivulets down to the small of his shivering spine, his shuddering marrow.Were the bar not so crowded this snowy eve, the Immortal might have been tempted by the roaring fire, stinking as it was with pig fat and mutton, but he was loathe to do so. He was afraid to do so.
Methos did not fear the besotted folk, puking and laughing, singing and pawing near the gigantic stone hearth. He feared himself, feared that one of them, the mortal sods, would say something, or do something that would set him off. Or Methos' tongue would lash out and a thick-brained dolt might mistake this lean, long frame for an easy target.
Or some other thing would happen and Methos would end up with that much more blood on his hands. He drew his fine fur cape more closely round his neck and took another sip, watching them...
Wanting them.
Hungering for that moment when the light would go out of their eyes and they would escape to a peace he would never know. Methos had seen such, had made such corpses, so often, that he could call the instant of death with a precision that was uncanny. And as often as he had sent these dim ones on that last journey, still Methos could not find the way himself.
He supposed that was the reason he felt so ill of late, some melancholy of the soul which these dreary sheep incited within him. Some corner of Methos' dark heart longed for the past, when he and the other three Horsemen rained terror on the tribes far west of this miserable little village. He put it down to the porter and ale. Methos was not one to be sentimental about such things and he knew very well that, should he rise this very moment, his bronze blade singing, he could cut them all down with no regret whatsoever...
...and still, he would be hungry.
Still, he would be lost.
Methos stared at the bottom of his mug, trying to identify what particular bug had dropped in from the thatch of the ceiling and was now spinning drunken circles in the last of the ale.
To hell with it. The Horsemen hadn't ridden in a thousand years, or more. The world had turned and turned, century after century. Methos had lost the earlier count. They now measured from the Jewish martyr, instead of the Roman Emperor, and fifteen, nearly sixteen, centuries were now gone by since that event. In the old days, this would have been Sol Invictus, earlier would have been Winter Solstice, now it was--something, the celebration of the martyr's birthday. What was that? Joshuamas? No, the Greek naming. Cristos. Ah, yes, Christmas.
They still wrote about The Horsemen, but they had been distorted into mythic avenging spirits, the End of Days. This night Methos felt less like the Pale Rider and more like the Angel of the Bottomless Pit.
Well, Old Man, Methos saluted himself silently, lifting his mug with its drowned bug towards the leaking rafters. It is a happy Solstice to you. He had to think a moment and count back to the time he'd spent to the south, on the sea. That would be a decade, less three seasons, plus his sojourn on the Isle of Sicily, three years past, then the caravan westward with--. Step by step, he came to the present.
Happy Winter Solstice, in the year of their lord, fifteen hundred and ninety-two.
With any luck at all, he added to himself, You won't be making it through fifteen hundred and ninety-three.
In this instant, Methos was certain he could not stand another single day.
"You look displeased, Lord," a hearty voice sounded somewhere in the smoke above Methos' head.
"I am no one's lord," Methos answered in an awkward Romany variation of the man's own tongue. "Nor am I any of your concern," he added, fingering the hilt of his sword, buried deep beneath the thick, dark fur of his cloak.
Clearly, the idiot did not understand, for when Methos looked up from his flagon and the dead bug therein, it was to find a jolly mortal of middle age seated across the plank table, offering him a drink of wine from the finest crystal bottle. "Here," was all he said.
Methos took the bottle and eyed it tentatively, letting the flickering fire play through its sea-green glass, while the man giggled in a most unseemly fashion. "Something funny?" Methos asked, wondering why this splendid collection of velvet and silk and foxfur should be bothering about him.
"Oh," the man tucked his head down and studied his pudgy palms. "Just what you said about you're not being my concern."
Methos worked the cork out of the bottle and brought it up to his sensitive nose. "Yes?"
"You are very much my concern, Methos," the man said very softly. "You are my life's work."
Methos drew up to his full height and set the bottle down carefully, as if he were mesmerized by it. Then he reached with the strike of an adder and grabbed the man's right hand, twisting it, palm up, and cursing beneath his breath as the expected tattoo came into view.
"You know about us, then?" the man said amiably.
"I ran into one of yours in Fiorenze, fifty years--"
The man's expression prompted: "Florence," Methos amended. "Italy," he added. It never really paid to be too particular about geographical designations. They always changed so fast. He was forever making the odd anachronistic mistake. "Another--what are you?--Malach? No, no. Watchers. You are a Watcher."
"Right you are, Lord," the pudgy hand slipped back until their palms met and he shook Methos' hand. "Bennet, Sir. Pleased I am to meet you."
His palm was sweaty and Methos pulled his own hand back to wipe on his cloak. He tucked his long legs beneath him and rose, with just one wistful last glance at the wine. In a swirl of fur, without so much as a "by your leave," the Immortal was through the low door and out into the cobbled street.
"You surely do move quickly, Sir," Bennet huffed as he hurried to catch up.
Methos slowed down and then turned suddenly. "What do you want?" he sneered down at the portly Watcher.
"I followed you," Bennet bent over and struggled to catch his breath. "I know."
Methos' pale eyes rolled upward. "I could kill you," he grumbled. "Know what?" he asked as an after-thought.
"You need something," Bennet stood up straight and started taking deeper, slower breaths.
Methos' elegant hands made fists at either side of his waist as he looked poor Bennet up and down. "Well, it isn't you," he said finally.
Bennet interspersed another round of giggles with his panting. "No, no, of course not, Sir. Not me. The Abbot sent me. We have been concerned."
"Concerned?" Oh, really! This was too much! Methos said aloud, "You should be. What would you say if I cut you down where you stand?"
Bennet lifted his chin, suddenly adopting a dignity which Methos was not used to seeing in mortals. "Then I would say that once, in my brief life, I spoke with Methos himself, though I was, sadly, unable to help him."
Methos knotted his fingers in the Watcher's collar and drove him against the nearest wall. "You know what I am! You know what I do! Are you so eager to die?"
"Are you?" Bennet said softly and with even more presence than before.
Which had the effect of driving Methos backwards. "How?"
"I told you I knew," Bennet straightened his garb and dusted his shoulders. "As I was saying, I followed you today, and though I do not pretend to know the particulars of that sunken pond in the ancient caves you visited today, I do know you fought there, hour after hour. No one came to challenge you, but you fought, nonetheless, Lord."
Methos wrapped himself in his arms and stared down at the stained cobbles.
"And I know that you lost the fight, Methos," Bennet edged closer and patted the Immortal's shoulder.
Methos shook off the gesture, but he did not retreat this time. "Yes?"
"The only candidate for challenge in this region currently is an Immortal who calls himself Kitri, a norseman. We cannot allow him to take your head, Methos."
"Weee?" Methos screeched, "We cannot allow?" he danced round the Watcher howling and gesturing.
Bennet only smiled. "I imagine you were something, swooping down on a white horse, blue paint, and all. But I know you, Methos. It is my business to know you. And I know you are far too intelligent to let this chance slip you by.
"And you are far too powerful to be handed over to this thick-brained and barbarous sea-king," he added.
"You are saying I cannot defeat him, Bennet?" This conversation had already surpassed any he'd had in the preceding decade. He might as well call the insolent creature by its proper name.
"Please, there really is no point in lying to me, Lord. I know what is happening to you. I only wonder that it has not happened sooner. You are planning to lose. We do not see this often, but the signs are unmistakable. The frequency of your challenges has dwindled to none this past decade. The last head you took--before this latest--sent you 'to ground' for nearly two years. This last challenge you took in Tuscany last week sent you here to the sacred pool. You want to die. Believe me, I understand, Methos."
"You cannot possibly understand!" Methos heard himself yelling when he had fully intended to remain silent as a stone.
"I stand corrected, Methos," Bennet nodded his head and the matching velvet soft cap slapped down on his left ear. "You are unique. No one may truly understand what your life is like. I do my best." He shrugged. "Do you understand?"
"What?" Methos wondered just how much more conversation would be polite before he bashed this thick mortal into the paving stones and finished his way to the barn at the edge of this burg. His horse would surely prove to be more pleasant company than this irksome male and the ferrier was a friend who would let him stay the night, inside, in an actual dwelling, with a hearth, maybe a pillow.
"After all these ages," Bennet continued, "you have finally wearied of The Game. Your skills as a swordsman are suffering for want of use. You are tearing apart inside because the blood lust still drives you, but you find you have come to a point where one more death, one more murder is--," he paused, searching for a word that was respectful, but still compassionate. He watched each word wash up against the sharp contours of the Immortal's features. "Dysesthetic? Bothersome? Aggravation? Disquietude?"
"Agony," Methos murmured in a voice hardly louder than a breath or a sigh.
"Yes," Bennet averted his gaze. "You are right. I can never understand completely. I do know that your road leads only two directions--"
Good, Methos thought. He is finally winding down and I shall be warm and asleep soon.
"Death or Sanctuary," Bennet said. "There is no other outcome."
"Sanctuary?" Methos asked. He had never heard of such in reference to Immortals.
"You came by the Abbey on your way back from the caves," Bennet stared up the road, squinting against the snow-drifting night wind.
"Yes," Methos' eyes narrowed also, but from cynicism, not the external chill.
"There is Sanctuary," Bennet bowed, a brief and bobbing gesture. "The Abbot awaits your decision. You may come at any hour, if that is your choice. All will be explained.
"Well, that's it," Bennet smiled. "I have done it. I have delivered the message and am about to walk away unscathed." He seemed genuinely relieved. He turned back towards the tavern.
"Drew the short straw did you, Bennet?" Methos called after him.
Bennet turned around and started giggling again. "Oh, my, no. No. Heavens to Heathens, no, no, no. You cannot imagine how many favors and wheedlings, whinings and good works had to be accomplished before they acquiesced to my being apocrisiarus."
The mortal made it sound as if Methos were a papal state or holy mission. He was certainly neither, though he was surely old enough to not be flattered--overly.
Bennet watched a wicked gleam light the pale eyes, saw the straight jaw set. "Methos?"
Methos' thin lips stretched thinner still, until Bennet was certain that any wider and that grin would sport fangs.
"Lord? I am about to get away unscathed?"
The blade-sharp face softened immediately and the lank shoulders drooped back to rest.
Bennet waved farewell and continued on his way, shaking his head and thinking they would never believe him. He could hardly believe it himself.
Here, in Le Havre, in the middle of a Solstice night, he had heard Death laughing in the street.
I am Andrew.I am immortal.
Not in the ways of the Princes, the foundling bastards driven to The Challenge, killing each other off until one of them should ascend his thrown and gain The Prize.
I am immortal in the words of this journal, and all the others which shall follow, by all the other Andrews who are yet to be born.
I am Andrew.
I am The Prize.
I, and all the other Andrews that will be, toil diligently that we are never won, that no Prince of the Universe shall ever realize his sovereignty over us.
This I do for the world.
I give up my life in this endeavor.
Whatever I was before...
I am Andrew.
I am immortal.
In the fortnight since Methos' arrival at the Abbey, Andrew had resisted the urge to set it all down right away. The immediacy bred a temptingly irrational subjectivity about this Immortal. Was not Bennet the prime example of this? The portly Watcher adored this brigand and it was sometimes more than Andrew was worth just to get a coherent history out of the man.
Andrew instead had given vent to his initial meeting with Methos by way of a charism the Blessed Lord gave him at birth, long before he had become Andrew. He painted the Immortal, lovely tiny portraits in charcoal and then chalks, and this latest, a modest likeness in oil, which still smelled of turpentine. It would be useful to the later Andrews, he thought.
Though the painting was not entirely satisfying, Andrew found it easier to address than the figure which filled his mind when he thought of the vault far below the Abbey where Methos would probably spend eternity.
He'd gotten the closed mouth, devilish grin, the nearly lipless expression that seemed about to burst into loud, derisive laughter. Try as he might, Andrew could not get the eyes right, even the exact color eluded him. They were liquid and light, fed from the furnace which informed the man entire--too much light for mere pigment and oil. The pose was wrong. Far too civil and settled, when all that first interview Methos had been a blur of fox cloak and green silk and wild, wind-blown locks of blood-burnished chestnut.
Andrew breathed deeply. God forgive him, but they were beautiful, these Fatherless Sons. Methos was no exception. Lean and pale, the chiseled features of a nobleman, the slender, tapered fingers of an artist, Methos seemed the embodiment of a Prince. But Andrew would not have been aware of any of these particulars from that first meeting. He knew them all from his duties in the vaults, the daily devotional chores which defined himself, and all the other Andrews, as caretakers of the world's best interests.
He had yet to find the courage to sketch those hands at rest, not that they were completely still, even now. Andrew could not find it in him to take his sketchbooks to the vault, but he studied the Immortal's elegant features as he tended him, and they carved their imagery indelibly on the surface of his inner sight.
"Excuse me, Father," the chipper baritone sounded lightly in the air of the Abbot's bedchamber."Who?" Andrew sputtered, swimming up through the bedclothes and his sleep-drowned wits. "God's Whiskers! It cannot be much later than the hour of Pergato."
"Not quite, Good Father," the terrible man warbled on. "Perhaps if I lit the lamp and--"
"Holy Jesus and All the Apostles!" the Abbot cursed, fighting for composure even as he skittered across the room. When he bumped the dresser he remembered to drop the counterpane, all the while wondering why he couldn't quite recall having gotten out of bed. "Methos," he addressed the interloper, showing as much decorum and respect as his nightgown and frazzled wits might allow.
"Sir Bennet led me to believe you were awaiting my arrival, Father," Methos screwed up the wick and set the lamp on the simple bedside table.
Andrew was ever grateful for his prize collection of books, set in tidy, well-dusted rows, floor to ceiling, along the east wall of his smallish cell. He was never more grateful, though, than at this very moment, when the volumes took the Immortal's attention away from himself.
As he replaced the bed linen and pulled on his robe, Andrew watched Methos' incredible hands play over the leather spines of the books as if they were a lover, newly--or soon to be--won. The sensitive fingers wrapped round one of the bibles and brought it down from the highest shelf, the one Andrew had to stand on a stool to reach.
"I thought you might be interested in that one," Andrew strode around the bed and stood next to the man they had called Death. "You wrote in the margin of Revelations." Andrew held out his hands and waited for the Immortal to give him back the precious book.
Methos jerked around, plopped the book in his hands. "Which is of no interest to me at all, Abbot," he said over his shoulder as he darted away, picking up this vase and that box, putting these down, only to pick up an onyx rosary and run it in front of those star-captured eyes, eyeing each bead in the light of the lamp. Then he was off to the dresser, pulling out each drawer, rummaging through its contents, tossing them back the moment he lost interest...
"We might retire to my study," Andrew suggested, gesturing towards the door.
"What?" Methos stared up at him from his recently acquired perch on the floor where he was sorting through a chest of old records that Andrew had placed there to read later. The Immortal glanced at the Abbot and then his bright eyes darted to the darkness beyond the arched doorway. "Let's go then."
Andrew stood, stunned, at the door, as Methos dropped the sheaf of papers on the floor, rose to full height and strode out the door, almost faster than the Abbot could follow. He was again astounded at the way this Immortal moved, fluid as unguent, fast as thought.
Andrew caught up with Methos several minutes later, down in the refectory, harvesting leftovers from their ample evening meal. The Immortal swallowed a large mouthful of bread soaked in wine and offered some to Andrew.
"I am not hungry just now, Lord Methos," Andrew lifted his palms forward. "My study is down this hall--if you could just stay by me, I will take you there," he hastened to add.
So it was that the current Andrew walked steadily, and barefoot, down the corridors of Le Havre's Abbey, with Death skipping a jig, round and round, jumping up to slap the edges of the groined ambulatory ceiling as they passed.
And he did not miss one single edge.
Andrew stifled a yawn as they entered his niche in the broad hallway behind the nave of the respectable little chapel. He settled in behind the resplendent altar of a desk while the Immortal floated hither and yon, lighting lamps, starting the fire in the hearth, and generally filling the tiny office with his perpetual motion and the smell of snow-dampened fox fur.
The Abbot decided it was best not to watch Methos' dizzying and enervating stirrings. He concentrated instead upon the tenth volume of a very thick journal which one of the earlier Andrews had scribed through the past fifty years. Andrew read this as if he were reviewing a memory, Andrews' memory, the immortal memory that enabled them to provide a constant and consistent attendance on the Princes of the Universe.
"Sir Bennet seemed to think you had some knowledge which might be useful," Methos murmured, as if he were speaking to the fire. The long fingers dusted each other of the soot they'd gathered before they went walking over the divers trinkets and talismen of the Abbot's inner sanctum.
Andrew reviewed again the pages which summarized and annotated this long life.
"Well?" the irresistible tones sounded suddenly just above the Abbot's head.
Andrew held himself still and looked up. The Immortal had soundlessly jumped from the floor to the top of his desk where he now perched in a deep crouch of long legs and crossed arms.
"Do you, Abbot?"
Andrew refrained from his inclination to tell Methos to get down and stop the insufferable fidgeting. He merely gazed back down at the journal. "You may call me Andrew, Methos."
"Well, Andrew," the Immortal tried the name out. He pushed back off his heels and sat down on the desktop with his long legs tucked into his chest, his lightly bearded chin on his knees, and his arms wrapped around his shins. "You are one of them, too," he did not ask, "Andrew. A Watcher, yes?" Methos spun around twice, lowered his legs to the floor and walked across the room to study the large crucifix that hung upon the wall beside the stone fireplace.
"I must warn you," Andrew tried not to distract himself wondering how Methos had accomplished the artless spinning dismount of his desk, or how he had mounted the desk to begin with. He laid it down to war skills, though he doubted many warriors were as agile as this one. "I must warn you that I do not have the same unthinking admiration for you as Brother Bennet."
The pale fingers ran over the square bolts which fixed the sculpted Christ to the mahogany cross. "It isn't right, you know."
"Because you were there," Andrew quipped with a tad more sarcasm than he might have wished.
"Not this one," Methos shook his fire-dazzled curls, having missed the sarcasm entirely. "I've--I've seen a few," the baritone faltered and paused.
Which had the effect of sending the Abbot flipping frantically through the journal, trying to find any indication that the Immortal had himself been crucified at some time or another, but there was no hint of this. "Were you--?" the Abbot looked up, but no one was there. He left the question unasked and searched the room. There he was, curled up on the window sill, making pictures in the frost on the window's glazing.
"I was too busy watching my back in Caligula's court," Methos said, laughing as he remembered something entirely wicked by the sound he made. "Sorry, Father," he apologized.
Andrew tried to convince himself that the fire had put the sudden blush in the Immortal's pale face. "I do not judge," he said evenly. Best to set the terms now. "Bennet was right. I can tell you about Sanctuary."
The rose disappeared from Methos' cheek. "Yes, enough of this tedious fencing, Andrew. Straight to the heart. Always the best way.
"I would warn you, Andrew," he added. "I do judge."
There was a tone in the reply that set the Abbot's teeth on edge and reminded him to be more careful. This was, after all, Death Himself, the Immortal who had mowed down thousands of innocents for no other reason than that it amused him to do so, if you believed what was said about him--even what he said about himself, on occasion. Andrew wondered if he were the most foolish, or the most hopeful, creature in God's Creation, to believe it was possible for anyone to persuade the infamous Oldest Immortal to come into their keep.
"I will begin by explaining about my name," Andrew sounded to the depth of his most fatherly tone.
"Good place," a cheery answer floated, disembodied, back to the Abbot.
Now where the hell? Andrew's gaze swept the room, but there was no lanky Immortal, no red fox cape.
"Well, well, well," the voice remarked.
This time the Abbot located it, behind the just-opened cabinet door, deep into the corner of the archwindow wall.
"And what do we have here?" Methos' warm, low tones lightened to a childish glee as he appeared out of the cabinet with five skeins of wool, in every shade of the rainbow. He tossed the yarn balls in great looping arcs, an intricate dance of humor and skill, the artisan's hands making sensual passes in a syncopation of color and delight.
Not a nice man, Andrew repeated to himself. Not a man at all. A monster, a murderous barbarian, he added for good measure. All the while the yarn balls danced in the firelight and made him glad.
"Andrew is half a millennium in age now," the Abbot continued, seeing he would never have his say if he waited for Methos to be still. "Not a long time in your scheme of things, I'll grant, but long enough to have begun the Sanctuary and to have garnered all the means necessary to preserve it into the next millennium and beyond."
"Then you are not Andrew?" Methos caught the last skein behind his back, stacked them all on the floor and dove back into the cabinet.
"I most assuredly am, Lord," the Abbot answered in between crashes and bangs.
"But you are not Immortal," Methos pulled out several long and two short pieces of polished wood and then a thinner, armlength piece with an edge like a blade.
"We have wondered about that. How do you know another Immortal?" Andrew paused, his quill newly inked and hovering over a portion of paper.
"Smell," Methos murmured, but it was clear from the tone that he was joking.
"I am not Immortal in your way, no," the Abbot continued when it was all too evident he would get no better answer. "I have an immortality of letters and books."
Methos took off his cloak and rolled up his sleeves. He pulled out a small wooden box. His fingers played over the hasp and then he opened it, pulled out the bolts, wiped off their protective sheen of oil on his sleeves and set to assembling the piece.
The loom had been a treasure of the Andrew before him. The Abbot had never seen it in one piece before. He was fascinated watching the Oldest Immortal fit it together as if it were his own. "You weave?" he asked.
"Not really," Methos mumbled, totally absorbed in the task and quieter than he'd been since his arrival. "But it's a pleasant occupation and fairly portable and--" His thoughts drifted away, unexpressed.
"I imagine you have had to travel unencumbered much of your life," Andrew referred obliquely to Methos' days as a horseman.
"There is that," Methos answered. "Also, the less you have, the less you lose."
Andrew heard the ache beneath the cheery saying. How much must this one have lost? he wondered, To come so willingly to my caer and keep? "You have come here because you are curious, or so you think. But I know it is because you are desperate."
"You begin to sound like Brother Bennet, Andrew," Methos propped the simple upright loom frame against the stone wall and began to thread the warp lines. "So concerned, so caring. I would weep, if I were not so heartless."
"Oh, not at all," Andrew spoke too forcefully. "Well, Brother Bennet IS concerned about your well-being. I on the other hand--."
"My sword is lying with my cloak over there, Abbot," Methos pointed behind him, fussing all the while with the hundreds of lines he was setting in the frame. "Why don't you get it and take my head? I just polished the edges this morning and I am sure it will more than suffice, even in your hands."
"On Holy Ground?" the Abbot gasped. "Surely you can't be serious!"
The long fingers riffed through the warps as if they were playing a harp. "You believe that nonsense about Holy Ground do you?" He reached for the implement that looked like a thick wooden fork and tamped down the first weft line, a deep charcoal with flecks of black.
"And you do not?" Andrew moved his chair around so he could more easily watch the Immortal knotting in the first row of a tapestry he would never finish.
"What would make Holy Ground any different than all other ground, godforsaken or no, Abbot?"
"God does not forsake," the Abbot replied somberly. "We only forsake Him through our ignorance."
Methos' fast and strong hands had him several inches up the piece already and he was beginning to sort out the different colors to use in the tapestry, now that the border was nearly done. "Then you are indeed blessed," Methos said in the most God-forsaken tones that Andrew had ever heard before.
"Once an Immortal of Our Knowing," Andrew used the words which linked all the Andrews down the years. "Fought and killed on Holy Ground and nothing happened."
"This is supposed to surprise me, Abbot?"
"You didn't let me finish," the Abbot replied. "Nothing happened immediately, but that Immortal was worse than dead within a fortnight."
"Another Immortal met his challenge and he lost," Methos picked up the green, put it down and chose the rust instead. "There is no mystery there, Abbot."
"The Shadows came for him," Andrew said softly, not wishing to invoke these faceless, nameless beings.
This was enough to stop the weaving, at least for the moment. Methos turned around, stretched out his back in a beautiful, looping arch. "The Who?"
"We are never certain. They are almost never seen. And we know nothing directly, except for this one incident," the Abbot began. "But in this case, no, there was no other Immortal. When two weeks had passed, the Shadows came for him and he was maimed and his hands cut off and he was sent into the world defenseless to take up his place in The Game, to stand as an example of transgression and its consequences. He was nursed here, but Andrew would not allow him to remain. Andrew did not wish to incur the wrath of the Shadows."
"And how do I know it wasn't you or your ilk--this other Andrew--who did that dreadful thing to old Kevin?" Methos turned back to the tapestry, picking up the grey and the white and the black, setting them in his lap and thumping down the row with the blade-thin shedding bar and picking up the next line with the longer "sword," to finally prop the row in a natural shed, while he knotted the first portion of a grey hoof.
"Because I am Andrew," the Abbot replied.
"But you weren't there," Methos filled in the row, reshedded and started looping in the simple set of treadle ties, though there wasn't a treadle as such.
"Andrew was there. I was there," the Abbot intoned.
"You believe everything you are told, Abbot. What faith you have," Methos reached his long arms around the tapestry and adjusted the counterties, tightening the warp threads.
"I will break with the tradition to tell you only this, you godless murderer," the Abbot growled at Methos' long, indifferent back. "That loom, so preciously packed and so precise in its design and conception was made by that very Andrew who witnessed the event.
"Of course, it was Unknown to Us, until now, that you were probably the one who finally killed the unfortunate Immortal," the Abbot accused.
"And why would you say such a thing, Andrew," Methos said the name between his teeth as if it were a curse.
"It was you, not I, who said his name, Methos. And, strong as my faith is, still I cannot believe you met him and let him live. You are too practical for that, and he was such an easy prey."
"Perhaps I took pity on him," Methos suggested, his fingers plying the wool and the shed and the sword as if he had never done another thing in all his long life.
"There is no pity in you," the Abbot answered.
"Nor none in you, that I can see," Methos noted, "to have let him live when you could so easily have given him peace instead."
"I left that for such as you, Methos, or some other of your kind with no sense of morality."
"Only too happy to keep your soul pure, Dear Andrew," Methos laughed at his own joke. Andrew's slur had nowise found its mark. "But tell me more about these shadows."
The Abbot begged the brigand's indulgence while he went to brew some tea. Andrew promised to explain when he returned.
continued (click on Next, below)
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