World Without End Page 0,85

hand. She had never touched him for so long. His hand was large, the fingers rough with work, the palm soft. It sent thrills through her, despite all that had happened.

She took him across the green and inside the cathedral. "They're pulling people out of the river and bringing them here," she explained.

There were already twenty or thirty bodies on the stone floor of the nave, with more arriving continually. A handful of nuns attended to the injured, dwarfed by the mighty pillars around them. The blind monk who normally led the choir seemed to be in charge. "Put the dead on the north side," he called out as Gwenda and Wulfric entered the nave. "Wounded to the south."

Suddenly Wulfric let out a cry of shock and dismay. Gwenda followed his gaze, and saw David, his brother, lying among the wounded. They both knelt beside him on the floor. David was a couple of years older than Wulfric, and the same large build. He was breathing, and his eyes were open, but he seemed not to see them. Wulfric spoke to him. "Dave!" he said in a low, urgent voice. "Dave, it's me, Wulfric."

Gwenda felt something sticky, and realized David was lying in a pool of blood.

Wulfric said: "Dave - where are Ma and Pa?"

There was no response.

Gwenda looked around and saw Wulfric's mother. She was on the far side of the nave, in the north aisle, where Blind Carlus was telling people to put the dead. "Wulfric," Gwenda said quietly.

"What?"

"Your ma."

He stood up and looked. "Oh, no," he said.

They crossed the wide church. Wulfric's mother was lying next to Sir Stephen, the lord of Wigleigh - his equal, now. She was a petite woman - it was amazing that she had given birth to two such big sons. In life she had been wiry and full of energy, but now she looked like a fragile doll, white and thin. Wulfric put his hand on her chest, feeling for a heartbeat. When he pressed down, a trickle of water came from her mouth.

"She drowned," he whispered.

Gwenda put her arm around his wide shoulders, trying to console him with her touch. She could not tell whether he noticed.

A man-at-arms wearing Earl Roland's red-and-black livery came up carrying the lifeless body of a big man. Wulfric gasped again: it was his father.

Gwenda said: "Lay him here, next to his wife."

Wulfric was stunned. He said nothing, seeming unable to take it in. Gwenda herself was bewildered. What could she say to the man she loved in these circumstances? Every phrase that came to mind seemed stupid. She was desperate to give him some kind of comfort, but she did not know how.

As Wulfric stared at the bodies of his mother and father, Gwenda looked across the church at his brother. David seemed very still. She walked quickly to his side. His eyes were staring up blindly, and he was no longer breathing. She felt his chest: no heartbeat.

How could Wulfric bear it?

She wiped tears from her own eyes and returned to him. There was no point in hiding the truth. "David is dead, too," she said.

Wulfric looked blank, as if he did not understand. The dreadful thought occurred to Gwenda that the shock might have caused him to lose his mind.

But he spoke at last. "All of them," he said in a whisper. "All three. All dead." He looked at Gwenda, and she saw tears come to his eyes.

She put her arms around him, and felt his big body shake with helpless sobs. She squeezed him tightly. "Poor Wulfric," she said. "Poor, beloved Wulfric."

"Thank God I've still got Annet," he said.

An hour later, the bodies of the dead and wounded covered most of the floor of the nave. Blind Carlus, the sub-prior, stood in the middle of it all with thin-faced Simeon, the treasurer, beside him to be his eyes. Carlus was in charge because Prior Anthony was missing. "Brother Theodoric, is that you?" he said, apparently recognizing the tread of the fair-skinned, blue-eyed monk who had just walked in. "Find the gravedigger. Tell him to get six strong men to help him. We're going to need at least a hundred new graves, and in this season we don't want to delay burial."

"Right away, brother," said Theodoric.

Caris was impressed by how effectively Carlus could organize things despite his blindness.

Caris had left Merthin efficiently managing the rescue of bodies from the water. She had made sure the nuns