The Burning Stone

by Kate Elliott

  “Well,” continued Henry, “I will have the letters read to me, and I wish to speak with this Sister Anne.” He caught sight of Sanglant, still kneeling with mute obstinacy, and frowned. “You will return to your chamber, and you may come before me again when you are ready to beg my forgiveness.”

  It was a dismissal. Liath rose. She desperately wanted to rub her aching knees, but dared not. Sanglant hesitated. Was it rebellion? Had he not heard? Henry granted with annoyance, and then the prince rose, glanced once at Liath, once toward his sisters—

  “Come,” said Villam, not without sympathy. “It is time for you to go.”

  When they returned to the chamber set aside for Sanglant’s use and the door shut behind them, she simply walked into his arms and stood there for a long while, not wanting to move. He was solid and strong, and she felt as if she could pour all her anger and fire and fear into the cool endless depths of him without ever filling him up. He seemed content simply to stand there, rocking slightly side to side: he was never completely at rest. But she was at rest here, with him—even in such disgrace. She had lived on the fringe of society for so long, she and Da, that she could scarcely feel she had lost something precious to her.

  Yet what if he decided that a queen’s bed was more satisfying than the one he shared with her?

  The Eika dog whined weakly, then collapsed back to lick a paw with its dry tongue. Sanglant released her, took water from the basin, and knelt so the poor beast could lap from his palms. Someone had put up the shutters, and the comers of the room lay dim with shadows. Light shone in lines through the shutters, striping the floor and the dog and the prince and a strange creature concocted of metal that lay slumped over the back of the only chair. Standing, he wiped his hands on his leggings and said, suddenly:

  “What’s this? It’s a coat of mail!” He ran his fingers over coarse iron links. “A quilted coat. A helm. Lord Above! A good stout spear. A sword. A sheath.” And a teardrop shield, without marking or color: suitable for a cavalryman. He hoisted it up and slipped his left arm through the straps, testing weight and balance. He unsheathed the sword.

  “Ai, Lady!” she murmured, staring at these riches. It was far more than what she had asked Thiadbold for: she had asked only for a sword and helmet.

  “But what is it?” he asked.

  She found Master Hosel’s belt among her gear and slid the sheath onto it, then with her own hands fastened the belt about Sanglant’s hips as she swallowed tears brought on by the generosity of the Lions. “It’s your morning gift.” She tied off the belt and stood back, remembering what Lavastine had said. “‘If you walk through fire, the flame shall not consume you.’”

  He gave a curt laugh. “Let them declare we are not wed, if they will, but God have witnessed our oath, and God will honor our pledge.” Taking her face between his hands, he kissed her on the forehead.

  There were two unlit candles in this chamber; both of them flared abruptly to life, and he laughed, swung her up and around, and they landed on the bed in a breathless heap. It was a measure of his disgrace that, even in the late afternoon with preparations for a feast underway and the palace swarming with servants and nobles and hangers-on, no one disturbed them.

  Afterward, he lay beside her with a leg flung over her buttocks, head turned away as he examined the sword, good, strong iron meant for war, not show. “Where did it all come from?”

  “The Lions felt they owed me a favor, but they respect you even more than they felt grateful to me. This is a tribute to you—and to your reputation.”

  He rolled up to sit, rubbing his forehead with one hand. “If I have not destroyed it entirely now.” He drew his knees up and pounded his head against them, too restless to sit still. “Why didn’t I see it before? There’s no trace of Bloodheart’s scent around you. There never has been. Yet it attacked Lavastine’s hounds. It can’t have been an adder—yet if it were only an adder, if I mistook the scent …” From the floor, the dog whimpered restlessly and tried to stand, but had not the strength. Sanglant tugged at his own hair, twining it into a single thick strand so tightly that it strained at his scalp, and then shaking it out. “No Eagle can do my message justice. No Eagle knows Bloodheart’s scent, or can listen for it in the bushes. I must go after him myself.”

  “Hush. Of course you must. But I’ll ride with you.”

  “I wouldn’t leave you here alone!” he said indignantly. Then he groaned and shut his eyes in despair. “But I have no horse except on my father’s sufferance. I wish he had invested me as margrave of Eastfall and let Sapientia march to Aosta! Then we could have been left in peace!”

  “If there can be peace in the marchlands, with bandits and Quman raiders.”

  “If there is peace in my heart, then I will be at peace no matter what troubles come my way.” He buried his face against her neck.

  The dog whined. She heard voices. Sanglant grabbed for her tunic, and the door slammed open to admit—

  “Conrad!” exclaimed Sanglant. He jumped out of bed and stood there stark naked in the middle of the floor. “Well met, cousin. I could not greet you earlier as you deserved.” She could not help but admire his insouciance—and his backside—even as she scrambled to get her clothes on under the covers.

  The man who had just entered dismissed his servants. He had a deep, resonant laugh, and a voice to go with it. “Is this the greeting I deserve? I beg your pardon, cousin.” But he did not seem inclined to leave. Liath was furiously embarrassed; after eight years alone with Da, she was not used to a constant audience—although Sanglant clearly was. “You have a bride hidden in here somewhere, I hear. I caught a glimpse of her when you rode in, and I confess myself eager to be introduced to her now.”

  Sanglant took his time getting dressed and did not move out of the other man’s way. “Let there be no confusion. She is my wife.”

  “Did I say otherwise? Surely, cousin, you do not think I intend to steal her from you as I might if she were only your concubine. Ah, but what’s this?”

  She slipped out of bed, straightened her tunic, and stood. Duke Conrad, in the flesh, was rather like Sanglant made shorter and broader. He had the same kind of leashed vigor as Henry, and the powerful hands of a man who is used to gripping spear and shield. He stepped forward, took her hand, and turned it over to show the lighter palm, then held it against his own. His skin had a different tone; where hers was more golden-brown like sun burned into skin, his had a more olive-yellow tint. “Who are your kin?”

  She extricated her hand from his grip. He was barely taller than she was, but she felt slight beside him. “My father’s cousin is the lady of Bodfeld. I don’t know my mother’s kin.”

  He misunderstood her. “A Gyptos whore, no doubt. That would explain it. How comes she to you, cousin?” He had an open face, quick to laughter.

  “God have brought her to me,” retorted Sanglant, looking annoyed.

  “They whom God have joined, let no man or woman—even the regnant—tear asunder.” Quick to anger as well, that face. He boiled with it, a flush staining his neck and the tendons standing out. “Ride out with me, Sanglant. I offer you a place in Wayland.”

  “Ride out with you?”

  Conrad spat in anger. “Henry refused my suit. He will not let me marry Theophanu.” He swore colorfully, describing what Henry could in his opinion do with his horses and his hounds and whatever sheep he might come across in the course of his travels. Liath blushed. “I see no reason to stay feasting and drinking with a man who does not trust me to marry his own daughter! What do you say?”

  “What kind of place? As a captain in your retinue?”

  Conrad grinned, but with a subtle coating to it, cunning and sweet. “Nay, cousin. You have too fierce a reputation and I am far too respectful of your rank. I have certain lands that came to me in a recent dispute that I can settle on someone willing to support me, even against the king’s displeasure.”

  “I will not make war upon my father,” said Sanglant
stubbornly.

  The door was still open. Conrad signed to his servants to shut it. “I do not speak of war, not with Henry. Even were I tempted, I don’t have enough support.”

  The “yet” might as well have been spoken out loud, it hung so heavily in the air.

  “I will not make war upon my father,” repeated Sanglant.

  “Nor do I ask you to.” Conrad grunted impatiently. “I ride out in the morning. You and your bride may ride with me, or not. As you wish.” He looked Liath over once, in the way of a powerful man who has bedded many women and intends to bed many more, and when Sanglant growled low in his throat, he laughed. “So I heard, but I didn’t believe it. Is it true that you lived for a year among dogs, my lord prince?” He raised an eyebrow, seeing Sanglant’s anger. “Yet the dogs are scarcely different than the nobles who flock ’round the throne, are they not?”

  With that, he signed to his servant to open the door, and swept out. The hard glare of the afternoon sun lanced into Liath’s eyes, and she had to shade herself with an arm until a Lion latched the door shut from outside.

  Sanglant began to pace, then unfastened one of the shutters and took it down so they could get air into the room.

  “He offered you land,” said Liath as she watched him. She dared not think of it: land, an estate, a place to live in peace.

  He turned away from the window to sort impatiently through the contents of his belt pouch, which had fallen to the floor in his haste to undress earlier. He found a comb and with it in his hand steered her to the chair, sat her down, and undid her braid. With a sigh of satisfaction, he began to comb out her hair, which fell to her waist. The strokes soothed her.

  “I don’t trust him,” he said as he worked through a knot. “But you are right. He offered me land. He will not contest my marriage to you. And unlike any other soul in this land, he will not care if my father contests it.”

  “Will we ride out with him in the morning?”

  “Do we have another choice?” But for that question, she had no answer.

  2

  “YOU’VE made a fool of yourself, Hugh.”

  Margrave Judith did not mince words when she was angry, and she was very angry now. Ivar huddled in a comer of the spacious chamber reserved for her use, clinging to an equally frightened Baldwin. She had already hit Baldwin once for not getting out of her way quickly enough; his cheek was still pink from the slap. She was so angry that Ivar could not even get any pleasure out of her castigation of Hugh, which she conducted in front of her entire household.

  Not that any of them appeared to be enjoying it either. Her servants and courtiers admired and loved Hugh, who treated high and low alike with graciousness and perfect amiability.

  Now he stood with hands clasped behind him, a bruise purpling on one cheek, and his gaze fixed not on his mother but on a gaudy spray of white-and-pink flowers outside that shielded the open window from the glare of the late afternoon sun.

  “Your conduct has embarrassed me,” she continued mercilessly, “and, God help me, may have lost you your influence with Princess Sapientia. Fool! And more fool I for thinking I could raise a son who would not fall prey to his male weakness! What hope does a man have if he betrays a consuming lust for a woman of unknown birth who brings no advantage to his kin and kind? By the amount you desire her, you give her that much power over you.”

  “But she has power,” he said in a low voice, still flushed. “More power than anyone here knows or suspects. Except Wolfhere.”

  “Power! A handsome face is not power. Even grant you that her father was a magus, as they’re all saying now, even grant that magus’ blood has lent her power, then what use is it to you since you have become her prisoner by reason of this unseemly obsession?”

  “She is mine,” he said with such zeal that cold ran down Ivar’s spine like the fingers of the Enemy, probing toward the heart for weakness.

  “She is Prince Sanglant’s, as is apparent to anyone with eyes not blinded by lust.”

  “Never his!” He reached out suddenly, broke off a spray of glorious flowers, and began shredding them into bits. Petals spun down around him.

  “Has she bewitched you? Bound some kind of spell onto you? They’re saying that her father was a fallen monastic who dabbled in the black arts as well as in some Jinna whore’s belly, and who paid for his sins by being eaten alive by the minions of the Enemy. It would make sense that she had learned a few tricks from him before he died.”

  “Yes,” he said hoarsely, “she has bewitched me.” He clenched both hands. Astonishingly, he began to weep with thwarted fury—just utterly lost control of himself.

  Liath had done this to him.

  Ivar could not help but exult at Hugh’s humiliation and rage. The Holy Mother had visited this punishment upon him for his arrogance. But when he thought of Liath, a stuttering sickness gripped his heart.

  She had not even noticed him! Not two days ago when she first arrived at the king’s progress, not yesterday when the king had passed judgment by letting her remain his servant, and not today, when she had returned in defiance of the king’s command. By what right did she ignore him, who had done everything he could to help her? Did the love they had pledged each other mean nothing to her? What on God’s earth did Prince Sanglant have that he didn’t—?

  “Hush,” said Baldwin, caressing his arm to distract him, though he hadn’t realized that he was grunting and muttering out loud. “Don’t draw attention to us, or she’ll hit me again.”

  “How can she love him?” Ivar choked out.

  “Of course a mother loves her son.”

  “I didn’t mean—”

  Margrave Judith stood up, and both boys instinctively flinched back, but she did not even glance their way. She picked up a fine silver basin filled with water and dashed it full in Hugh’s face.

  “Control yourself!” She replaced the basin with perfect composure and sat back down. “I see I am almost too late.”

  The shock of it brought him back. Trembling, he wiped his face dry with a sleeve.

  “Kneel before me.” Slowly, he did so. “Am I not first in your heart?” she asked grimly.

  “You are my mother,” he replied in a dull voice.

  “I nurtured you within my body, bore you with great effort, and raised you with care. Is this how you repay my efforts?” He began to speak, but she cut him off. “Now you will listen to me. Three years ago I had to agree to have you sent to the North Mark after the incident in Zeitsenburg. You swore to me then there would be no more such incidents, yet I now find you entangled with a girl born of a magus’ breeding. Have you gone against my wishes in this matter? Have you, Hugh?”

  Stubbornly, he did not reply.

  Her hiss, between gritted teeth, gave Ivar a shiver of fear.

  “The court is a bad influence on you! You still bear a personal grudge against the prince, do you not? That he, a bastard, was given power in the secular world and you were not, is that not so, Hugh?”

  With one hand he gripped the cloth of his tunic, folded around one knee; the other lay open, pressed against the floorboards palm down to hold himself up. His breath came ragged, and his gaze seemed fixed on something invisible to everyone else in the room. “That she should go willingly to him when she has spurned me—!”

  She extended a leg, caught him under the chin with the toe of her sandal, and tipped his head back so that he had to look at her. “You have gone mad with jealousy.” She stated it in the same way any noble lady might examine her cattle and see that some were afflicted with hoof-rot: calmly, but with a little disgust at her own bad luck. “Your mind has been afflicted by her spells.”

  She lowered her foot and stood. “Go,” she said to her courtiers. “Speak of this to the folk hereabouts, what you have heard here—that the girl has bound him with her evil spells. See how she has reduced him. We all know Father Hugh’s elegant manners. This is no natural state.” They scurried away obediently.

  “Go heat a b
ath for him so that we may wash some of the poison out,” she said, and a half dozen servants hurried into the adjoining room. Then she turned to her entourage. “Lord Atto, I haven’t forgotten the matter of the king’s stallion, Potentis. I have spoken with the king myself, and if that bay mare of yours comes into season while we are on progress with the king, you may try for a foal out of Potentis. Go speak with the king’s stablemaster, if you will, to arrange it.”

  Lord Atto was all effusive thanks as he retreated, but Judith had already beckoned forward one of her servingwomen. “Hemma, I have considered this matter of your daughter’s betrothal, and I think it a good match for her to wed Minister Oda’s son. But I have it in mind to gift her with that length of fine linen cloth we picked up in Quedlinhame. If you will see to it that it is packed and made ready, I will have it sent with the messengers who are returning east. Then your daughter will have time to sew some clothing out of it for the wedding feast.”

  With one pretext or another, she sent them away until only she, Hugh, her two eldest servingwomen, and Baldwin and Ivar remained. Her pleasant manner vanished, and she spoke in a hard voice. “Now you will tell me truly what this means.” She took Hugh’s chin in a hand and turned his head up to look at her. “I can scarcely believe the rumors I hear. Did you try to murder Princess Theophanu? After it was forbidden you at Zeitsenburg, have you soiled your hands again with bindings and workings, this pollution that you call sorcery?”

  The light from the open window dappled Hugh’s face, mottling it with shadow and light and the discoloring bruise. His expression, nakedly anguished, underwent some cataclysmic change as he stared up at his mother, who had bent the full force of her will upon him. A shudder shook through his body and he collapsed at her feet.

  “I beg you, Mother,” he whispered. “Forgive me. I have sinned.”

  She grunted, but that was all the reply she made, and she seemed to be expecting more.

  “Ai, God,” he prayed, “protect me from temptation.” His hands hid his face. “I know now what came over me. It was a trap her father laid. As soon as I saw her, I burned for her despite my prayers day upon night offered up to Our Lady and Lord, Whom I begged to protect me. But he bound me and trapped me, and even after he died, I could not escape from her.”