Chapter 5: The Chapel Wall

The chapel of Greywold stood by the river on the black side.

It was the only building in that half the fire had not finished.

Bess found it for me before breakfast.

"The cook says there's old writing in there," she said. "Old as the hills, he says. Nobody goes in because of the ghosts."

"Are there ghosts?"

"The cook says so. The cook also says pepper cures colds."

I put my ink case in my satchel and took her with me.

It was a squat grey chapel with a roof half fallen in and the stained glass long gone.

The floor was ash and pigeon feathers.

Bess stopped in the doorway and crossed herself.

"I'll wait out here," she said. "I'll watch for ghosts."

"You'll watch for Garrick."

"Same thing, Highness. Equally frightening."

I went in.

The wall behind the altar was the only part untouched by the fire.

It was covered from the floor to the roof beam in carved lines.

I stopped three steps from it, and the breath went out of me.

Old Aldic.

Deep and clean, cut into the stone by someone who had known exactly what they were doing, four hundred years ago.

I knew the hand.

I had seen the same hand in one cracked book in the royal archive, the one my tutor had forbidden me to open.

It was a charter.

I took out my ink and paper and began to copy, line by line, kneeling on the cold floor.

The first lines were an oath.

A warlord of the old days had bound his sworn captain in front of his army.

The captain could never turn his sword against him.

The words were beautiful in their ugly way.

Keep reading free with an account. Start The Bride and the Ashen Knight from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.