Paralyzed with terror, Philip looked up at his mother. His eyes met hers just as the other man, the bearded one, struck her down. She fell to the floor beside Philip with blood streaming from a head wound. The bearded man changed his grip on his sword, reversing it so that it pointed downward and holding it in both hands; then he raised it high, almost like a man about to stab himself, and brought it down hard. There was a sickening crack of breaking bone as the point entered Mam’s chest. The blade went in deep; so deep (Philip noted, even then when he was consumed by blind hysterical fear) that it must have come through her back and stuck in the ground, fixing her to the floor like a nail.

Philip looked wildly for his father again. He saw him slump forward over the ugly man’s sword and spew out a huge gout of blood. His assailant stepped back and jerked at the sword, trying to disengage it. Da stumbled another step and stayed with him. The ugly man gave a cry of rage and twisted his sword in Da’s belly. This time it came out, Da fell to the floor and his hands went to his open abdomen, as if to cover the gaping wound. Philip had always imagined people’s insides to be more or less solid, and he was mystified and nauseated by the ugly tubes and organs that were falling out of his father. The attacker lifted his sword high, point downward, over Da’s body, as the bearded man had over Mam, and delivered the final blow in the same way.

The two Englishmen looked at one another, and quite unexpectedly Philip read relief on their faces. Together, they turned and looked at him and Francis. One nodded and the other shrugged, and Philip realized they were going to kill him and his brother by cutting them open with those sharp swords, and when he realized how much it was going to hurt, the terror boiled up inside him until he felt as if his head would burst.

The man with blood in his beard stooped swiftly and picked Francis up by one ankle. He held him upside-down in the air while the little boy screamed for his mother, not understanding that she was dead. The ugly man pulled his sword out of Da’s body and brought his arm back ready to stab Francis through the heart.

The blow was never struck. A commanding voice rang out, and the two men froze. The screaming stopped, and Philip realized it was he who had been doing it. He looked at the door and saw Abbot Peter, standing there in his homespun robe, with the wrath of God in his eyes, holding a wooden cross in his hand like a sword.

When Philip relived that day in his nightmares, and woke up sweating and screaming in the dark, he would always be able to calm himself, and eventually relax into sleep again, by bringing to mind that final tableau, and the way the screaming and the wounds had been swept aside by the unarmed man with the cross.

Abbot Peter spoke again. Philip did not understand the language he used-it was English, of course-but the meaning was clear, for the two men looked ashamed, and the bearded one put Francis down quite gently. Still talking, the monk strode confidently into the room. The men-at-arms backed off a step, almost as if they were afraid of him-they with their swords and armor, and him with a wool robe and a cross! He turned his back on them, a gesture of contempt, and crouched to speak to Philip. His voice was matter-of-fact. “What’s your name?”

“Philip.”

“Ah, yes, I remember. And your brother’s?”

“Francis.”

“That’s right.” The abbot looked at the bleeding bodies on the earth floor. “That’s your Mam, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” said Philip, and he felt panic come over him as he pointed to the mutilated body of his father and said: “And that’s my Da!”

“I know,” the monk said soothingly. “You mustn’t scream anymore, you must answer my questions. Do you understand that they’re dead?”

“I don’t know,” Philip said miserably. He knew what it meant when animals died, but how could that happen to Mam and Da?

Abbot Peter said: “It’s like going to sleep.”

“But their eyes are open!” Philip yelled.

“Hush. We’d better close them, then.”

“Yes,” Philip said. He felt as if that would resolve something.

Abbot Peter stood up, took Philip and Francis by the hand, and led them across the floor to their father’s body. He knelt down and took Philip’s right hand in his. “I’ll show you how,” he said. He moved Philip’s hand over his father’s face, but suddenly Philip was afraid to touch his father, because the body looked so strange, pale and slack and hideously wounded, and he snatched his hand away. Then he looked anxiously at Abbot Peter-a man no one disobeyed-but the abbot was not angry with him. “Come,” he said gently, and took Philip’s hand again. This time Philip did not resist. Holding Philip’s forefinger between his own thumb and finger, the monk made the boy touch his father’s eyelid and bring it down until it covered the dreadfully staring eyeball. Then the abbot released Philip’s hand and said: “Close his other eye.” Unaided now, Philip reached out, touched his father’s eyelid, and closed it. Then he felt better.

Abbot Peter said: “Shall we close your Mam’s eyes, too?”

“Yes.”

They knelt beside her body. The abbot wiped blood off her face with his sleeve. Philip said: “What about Francis?”

“Perhaps he should help, too,” said the abbot.

“Do what I did, Francis,” Philip said to his brother. “Close Mam’s eyes, like I closed Da’s, so she can sleep.”

“Are they asleep?” said Francis.

“No, but it’s like sleeping,” Philip said authoritatively, “so she should have her eyes shut.”

“All right, then,” said Francis, and without hesitation he reached out a chubby hand and carefully closed his mother’s eyes.

Then the abbot picked them both up, one in each arm, and without another glance at the men-at-arms he carried them out of the house and all the way up the steep hillside path to the sanctuary of the monastery.

He fed them in the monastery kitchen; then, so that they should not be left idle with their thoughts, he told them to help the cook prepare the monks’ supper. On the following day he took them to see their parents’ bodies, washed and dressed and with the wounds cleaned and repaired and partly concealed, lying in coffins side by side in the nave of the church. There too were several of their relatives, for not all the villagers had made it to the monastery in time to escape the invading army. Abbot Peter took them to the funeral, and made sure they watched the two coffins being lowered into the single grave. When Philip cried, Francis cried too. Someone hushed them, but Abbot Peter said: “Let them weep.” Only after that, when they had taken to their hearts the knowledge that their parents had really gone and were never coming back, did he at last talk about the future.

Among their relatives there was not a single family left entire: in every case, either the father or the mother had been killed. There were no relations to look after the boys. That left two options. They could be given, or even sold, to a farmer who would use them as slave labor until they grew old enough and big enough to run away. Or they could be given to God.

It was not unknown for small boys to enter a monastery. The usual age was about eleven, and the lower limit around five, for the monks were not set up to cope with babies. Sometimes the boys were orphans, sometimes they had lost just one parent, and sometimes their parents had too many sons. Normally the family would give the monastery a substantial gift along with the child-a farm, a church or even a whole village. In cases of direst poverty the gift might be waived. However, Philip’s father had left a modest hill farm, so the boys were not a charity case. Abbot Peter proposed that the monastery should take over the boys and the farm; the surviving relatives agreed; and the deal was sanctioned by the Prince of Gwynedd, Gruffyd ap Cynan, who was temporarily humbled but not permanently deposed by the invading army of King Henry, which had killed Philip’s father.