'The parvis of this church is very badly maintained. 'Are you hurt, my lord?' she asked, all daughterly concern. All the same, there was something about her that made him wish he were thirty instead of seventy and that they were not in the doorway of a church. Whoever had charge of this one would need a firm hand, he guessed. He had always liked his women small and pale, with yielding features. Not really pretty, he thought-too dark, her chin and nose too definite.

In the grey light, the blue of her eyes startled him almost as much as the fall. At the entrance, he tripped on an uneven stone, fell forward and was caught by a young woman on her way in. Norbert walked slowly in the rear, cursing his aging knees. The church was beginning to fill with pilgrims as they left. All of them were stiff from the vigil, and Norbert of Bussieres, the eldest of the four, had to be helped to his feet by the others. All of them had daggers hidden and even in this holy place, not one of them could have surrendered his weapon and felt secure.ĭawn was drifting down from the high clerestory windows to the nave far below before they finally rose. They all wore pilgrim-grey mantles, but underneath, at least one of them still wore the mail shirt he had lived in for forty years. The lamplight reflected off three bald heads and glistened on that of Gaucher of Macon, whose hair had gone from blond to white at the siege of Antioch, it was said, but was still thick and full, with a streak of gold down the left side. Throughout the bone-chilling night, the four men knelt motionless before the altar of Mary Magdalene. John of Salisbury Historia Pontificalis Book I, Prologue In this which I intend to tell, with the aid of God, I will write nothing except that which I have seen and heard and know to be the truth, or that which was written by men of good character and supported by authority. In hiis autem que dicturus sum nichil auctore Deo scribam, nisi quod visu et auditu verum esse cognovero, vel quod probabilium virorum scriptis fuerit et auctoritate subnixum.

Vézelay, the shrine of Saint Marie Madeleine, MaThe Feast of Saint Gregory the Great, pope.

Death Before Compline by Sharan Newman