The Red Death

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I, Coel son of Amhar son of Arthur, am close to death. My sixty-sixth year on this earth looms, though I have no great desire to reach it. A man robbed of his strength and vigour is left only with his mental resources to fall back on. Lately these have ebbed. A strange mist encroaches on my mind, making me forgetful and indecisive.

Abbot Gildas, that good man, is most understanding of my frailty, and does all he can to ensure my comfort. The monastery he founded here on the Isle of Rhuys is the finest in Brittany, a monument to Christ built in stone and glass. I will be happy to die here.

My husk of a body, riddled with agues and rheumatic pains, confines me to my cell for much of the day, though I insist on hobbling to Vespers. With nothing to do but linger in idleness and prayers, I find my thoughts wandering back to the past.

And such a past. I have witnessed the splendour and pity of the world, the rise and fall of great empires, and in my own small way contributed to the defence and salvation of the greatest. I have spilled my life’s blood on battlefields from the heartlands of Britain to the desert sands of Africa. There is barely a patch of my wrinkled skin that does not bear the scars of war, which the abbot once compared to the wounds of Christ.

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