The Burning Stone

by Kate Elliott

  She appeared unmoved by this recital. Ivar could not tell whether she believed it, but it seemed to satisfy her. “You are bored as abbot,” she said finally, “and when a man of your intelligence becomes bored, then the Enemy sends his minions to tempt him. And indeed a mere abbacy is not the position due your consequence.”

  He looked up, strangely dry-eyed after his weeping confession. “What do you mean?”

  “Be obedient to my wishes, Hugh, and you shall have more.” She took hold of his ear, twisted it so that one more tweak would cause pain, and with the other hand brushed a finger affectionately over his moist lips and with that same finger touched her own lips, as if sipping off his sweetness. “I have never failed you, Hugh. I have given you everything you have asked me for.”

  “You have,” he said softly. Hesitated, then fell silent.

  She let go, stepped back, and let him stand. “You will not fail me. Do not see her again, and we can salvage your reputation.”

  He bowed his head humbly. “I am your obedient servant, my lady mother.”

  She looked at Baldwin, and Ivar knew with a nauseating wrench in his gut that this was also a message meant for her young husband: Those who lived within the circle of her power were not allowed to be disobedient.

  Baldwin bent his head and abruptly launched into an impassioned prayer. Halfway through, he nudged Ivar with a foot, and Ivar, startled and now seeing Hugh kiss his mother on either cheek and retreat to the room where his bath awaited him, clasped his hands as well and joined the whispered prayer. “Our Mother, Who art in Heaven—”

  Seeing them so occupied, Judith left the chamber with her two servants at her heels and a slender whippet slinking behind. No doubt she had decided it was time to venture out onto the field of battle to save her son’s reputation. And what of Liath?

  Ai, Lord. Liath.

  “You’re not concentrating,” murmured Baldwin, who sounded insulted.

  “What will become of her?” Ivar muttered.

  This time, Baldwin understood him. “Do you desire her body, Ivar?” He rested a hand on Ivar’s thigh. His sweet breath, like the breath of angels, brushed softly along his neck.

  Ivar shivered convulsively. “God help me!” he prayed. It hurt too much to think of her. It was easier to drown himself in thoughts of God. He set to praying with a vengeance and, after a pause, Baldwin joined him.

  3

  THE king did not summon them to the feast celebrating the return of Theophanu and the arrival of Duke Conrad. No royal steward saw fit to bring them platters of choice tidbits from the feast table. But soldiers brought offerings: bread, baked turnips, roast pork, and greens, such fare as milites could expect and would generously share with a captain they admired and respected and a disgraced Eagle toward whom they had cause to be grateful.

  The twilight hours in summer ran long and leisurely and, as Sanglant braided her hair, Liath listened to the sweet singing of the clerics from the hall as they entertained the king with the hymn celebrating St. Casceil’s Ascension, whose feast day they observed.

  “The holy St. Casceil made a pilgrimage from her home in rain-drenched Alba to the dry desert shores of Saïs the Younger. There she dwelt in blessed solitude in the east with only a tame lion as companion, and there she knelt to pray day after day under the constant hammer blow of the desert sun while angels fanned her with their wings to cool her brow and body. Yet the heat so burned away her mortal substance, and her holy prayers so inflamed her soul with purity and truth that the wind made by the angels’ wings, which is also the gentle breath of God, lifted her into the heavens. There she found her place among the righteous.”

  Braiding the hair he had earlier combed out gave Sanglant something to do with his hands, but he shifted restlessly from one foot to the other, seeming about to start talking but grunting softly instead. She had said everything she knew to say to him. No decision had been reached: Would they ride out with Conrad, or not?

  “My lord prince.” Hathui stood at the door. Liath could smell the feast on her. The pungent scent of spices and sauces made Liath’s mouth water.

  He nodded, giving her permission to enter. “Do you bring a message from my father?”

  “I come on my own, to speak with my old comrade, Liath, if you will.”

  “That is for her to choose, not me to choose for her!” he said as he tied off the braid and stepped away from Liath.

  Liath started up when Hanna stepped into the room behind Hathui. The badge winking at the throat of her short summer cloak seemed like accusation. Hanna had given up kinfolk, home, and all that was familiar to her to follow Liath, and yet Liath had turned aside from that jointly-sworn oath to bind her life with Sanglant’s. Hanna had been crying, and Hathui looked solemn.

  “This is—this is—my comrade—” Liath stuttered, not wanting to ignore Hanna as one would a simple servant, yet not knowing if a prince and a common Eagle could have any ground on which to meet as equals. Ai, Lady! Had she never truly thought of herself as a “common Eagle” but rather as an equal to the great princes in some intangible way she had inherited from Da’s manner and education? Had she never truly treated Hanna as an equal, through those years when Hanna had generously offered friendship to a friendless, foreign-born girl?

  She was ashamed.

  “This is the Eagle who serves Sapientia,” said Sanglant into the silence made by her stumbling. “She is called Hanna. Did you not know her in Heart’s Rest?” He turned his gaze on Hanna. “You called my wife ‘friend’ there, I believe.”

  “My lord prince,” said Hanna, kneeling abruptly. Hathui, with a tight smile, remained standing, but she inclined her head respectfully. Then Hanna saw the Eika dog, and she recoiled, jumping back to stand beside the table.

  “Fear not,” said Sanglant. “It doesn’t have enough strength to harm you.”

  “Will it live?” asked Hathui softly.

  “You may tell my father that I will nurse it as I am able, since it alone of all my possessions did not come to me through his power.”

  Her eyes glinted. “Shall I tell him so in those exact words, my lord prince? I would humbly advise against it, while the king remains in such a humor toward you as he is this day.”

  “Plainly spoken, Eagle. Say what you came to say to my wife. I will not interfere.”

  Hathui nodded and began. “You ought to have ridden on with Wolfhere, Liath. How can you have traveled with the king’s progress for so many months and not seen what a pit of intrigue it is? How will you fare, here, with the king turned against you and the prince without support? What will you say when princes and nobles come to seek your favor, to gain the attention of the prince? There will always be supplicants at your door, and beggars and lepers and every kind of pauper and sick person, seeking healing, and noble ladies and lords who hope that your influence can give them audience with the king or his children—or who wish to sway the prince to their cause, whether it be just or no.”

  Like Conrad. Liath picked up the comb that lay on the table. Such a simple thing to be so finely made. With its bone surface incised with a pair of twined dragons and trimmed with ivory and pearls set into the handle at either end, it marked Sanglant as a great prince who need not untangle his hair with sticks or a plain wood comb but only with something fashioned by a master craftsman.

  Hathui went on. “Father Hugh stands accused of sorcery by Princess Theophanu, but if you are called upon to testify before the king against him, how will it fare with you when Margrave Judith’s anger is turned upon you? What if you are accused in your turn of sorcery? The king will never allow you to be recognized as Prince Sanglant’s wife. All that I have named above you will suffer without even the legal standing of wife but only that of concubine. Do you think an Eagle’s oath and freedom—beholden to no one but the king—a fair exchange for the bed of a prince?”

  “Liath,” whispered Hanna, “are you sure this is wise?”

  “Of course it isn’t wise!” she retorted. />
  Sanglant stood by the window staring outside. The wind stirred his hair, and the graying light made of his profile—the arch of the nose, the high cheekbones, the set of his beardless jaw—a proud mask. He made no move to interfere.

  “Of course it isn’t wise,” Liath repeated bitterly. “It just is. I won’t leave him. Oh, Hanna. You followed me from Heart’ Rest, and now I’ve deserted you—” She grabbed Hanna’s hand and Hanna snorted, still pale, and hugged her suddenly.

  “As if I only took an Eagle’s oaths to follow you! Maybe I wanted to see something more of the world. Maybe I wanted to escape young Johan.”

  Liath laughed unsteadily, more like a sob. Hanna’s body felt familiar, and safe, caught against her. “Maybe you did. I’m sorry.

  “I still think you’re being a fool,” whispered Hanna. “My mother would never have let any of her children marry because of … well …”

  “What?”

  Hanna spoke so softly that Liath, pressed against her, could barely hear her. “Lust alone. It might be said that you’ve gained advantage by attracting his interest, but you don’t bring anything to him, that would be useful to him—”

  Sanglant laughed without turning away from the window, an Hanna blushed furiously. “More use than anyone here can know,” he said as if addressing the bushes, “although I confess freely that I am not immune to the weaknesses of the flesh.”

  “But no one makes a marriage only for …” Hanna stuttered to a halt. “My good mother always said that God made marriage as a useful tool, not as a pleasure bed.”

  “Ought we to be good, or useful?” asked Hathui sardonically.

  “Ought we to be chattering on like the clerics?” retorted Sanglant. “We ought to be seeing that the crops are brought in and that our borders are safe from bandits and raiders, and that our retainers are fed and their children healthy. And that we pray to God to spare us from the howling dogs who nip at our heels.!”

  Hanna started back from Liath as if she had been slapped Hathui nodded curtly. “If you wish us to leave, my lord prince.”

  “Nay.” He tossed his head impatiently and finally slewed round to look at them. “I did not mean it of you, but of the ladies and lords who flock round the court. I beg you, take no offense from my coarse way of speaking.”

  “You are not coarse, my lord, but blunt.” Hathui grinned charmingly.

  “Not as eloquent as my wife,” he said, with a pride that startled Liath.

  At this moment Liath had more pressing concerns. She tugged on Hanna’s sleeve. “Come with me outside, Hanna, I beg you. I’m not accustomed to—with so many people about—”

  She was in disgrace, not in prison, and while she preferred to use the privies built up over the edge of the ramparts rather than the chamber pot, she dared not venture out alone for fear of meeting Hugh. Hanna seemed more cheerful out of the close chamber, or away from Sanglant. Servants wandering the grounds pointed and whispered.

  “Do you think I’m a fool, Hanna?” The constant scrutiny made her uneasy. Her entrance onto the stage as Sanglant’s declared wife had made her a beacon, visible to everyone.

  “Yes. Better to serve him as an Eagle than as his mistress. As an Eagle you are bound to the king by oaths. As his mistress, he can put you aside whenever he tires of you, and then where will you go?”

  “Spoken like Wolfhere!”

  “Like Wolfhere, indeed!” Hanna waited to one side while Liath used the privies, but she started up again as soon as Liath rejoined her. “Wolfhere became an Eagle during King Arnulf’s reign. Everyone knows he was one of Arnulf’s favorites. Then Henry took the throne, and dismissed Wolfhere from court—but he could not dismiss him from the Eagles! That is the measure of an Eagle’s security.”

  “Such as any of us have security,” murmured Liath, remembering bones scoured clean on a roadside. She scrambled up the rampart to view the surrounding countryside. Up here the evening wind blew fresh into her face. Below the bluff, the river wound away into darkening forest. Fields patched the nearer ground in narrow strips of lush growth: beans, vetch, and barley. Small figures walked in a village that seemed only a stone’s throw from her position, although she knew it lay much farther away. The morning thunderclouds had long since vanished into the northeast, and the sky was clear with the moon already risen halfway to the zenith. The sun had set, but its glow colored the western sky. Brilliant Somorhas rode low on the horizon; the sky was still too bright to see any but the brightest stars in summer’s sky: the Queen’s sky.

  “Would I be a queen?” she murmured, and was then so appalled at the thought of presiding over a court—a pit of intrigue, indeed!—that she shuddered.

  “Are you cold?” Hanna draped a companionable arm over her shoulders. A roar of laughter erupted from the great hall, which lay hidden behind them by chapel tower and stables.

  “It’s only because he can’t rule,” said Liath suddenly. “If he’d had any ambition to be king after his father, I couldn’t have endured that!”

  Hanna laughed sharply. “If he’d had any ambition to be king he’d never have married you! He’d have married a noblewoman whose kin will support him.”

  “I deserved that, I suppose!”

  “Maybe he’s right.” Hanna’s expression drew taut in an expression of wonder and worry. “You aren’t what you seem, Liath Maybe he’s wiser than the rest of us. They say Aoi blood tunes you to magic just as a poet tunes his lyre before he sings, knowing what sounds sweetest.”

  “Is that what they say?”

  “Some at court say that Prince Sanglant grew so strange under Eika captivity because the enchantments polluted his mind. That’s why—” She broke off, then smiled apologetically. “That’s why he acts like a dog. The dogs became part of him, or he of the dogs, like a spell bound into his body by the Eika chieftain.”

  It arrived noiselessly and settled down on a ragged outcropping of rock. At first, Hanna didn’t notice it, but Liath saw the owl immediately.

  She gently shook off Hanna’s arm and took a cautious step forward, then knelt. “Who are you?” she asked of the owl. I blinked huge golden eyes but did not move.

  “Liath,” whispered Hanna. “Why are you talking to an owl?’

  “It isn’t an ordinary owl.” She kept her gaze fixed on the bird. It had ear tufts and a coat of mottled feathers, streaked with white at the breast. It was the largest owl she had ever seen—she who had spent many a night in silent contemplation of the stars and thus with her keen night vision seen the animals that woke and fed in the night. “Who are you?”

  Its hoot echoed like a warning, “Who? Who?” and then it launched itself up from the rock and glided away.

  “Eagle! I did not expect you to be gone for so long.” Princes Sapientia appeared with a handful of servingwomen, having just come from the privies.

  “Your Highness!” Hanna’s expression betrayed her surprise no less than did her voice.

  “Has she bewitched you, too?” demanded Sapientia as Hanna knelt before her. Liath hesitated, then felt it prudent to kneel in her turn. “Made proud by my brother’s attention!”

  “I beg your pardon, Your Highness, for being so long away from you,” replied Hanna in a calm voice. “We knew each other before we became Eagles. We are almost like kin—”

  “But you are not kin.”

  “No—”

  “You are a good, honest freewoman, Hanna. What she is no one here yet knows.”. She beckoned to a pair of guards who had remained respectfully behind. “Bring her.”

  “I must return—!” Liath began.

  “You must come with me.” Sapientia’s eyes gleamed with triumph. “You will not have your way so easily with the rest of us, Eagle!”

  “Sanglant.” But the wind blew her voice out into the gulf of air beyond the ramparts, where the bluff tumbled down and down to the land below. To fight would only cause more of a scene, as well as make her life immeasurably harder, so she went, and then was sorry she had done
so when Sapientia returned directly to the hall. It was swarming with as many of the court who could crowd in, and the rest of their retainers and servants sat at trestle tables outside. With Duke Conrad and Margrave Judith and various local ladies who had ridden in to offer gifts before the king and share in his generosity in return, the king’s progress had blossomed into a field crowded with life, hundreds of folk crammed together all eager to enjoy the night no matter what form their entertainment took. And when Sapientia led her into the great hall, so stuffed with people that it seemed to bulge at the seams, she would have sworn that every gaze turned to scrutinize her. Nausea swept her, washed down by the brush of Hanna’s arm or her elbow, her last—and briefest—reassurance.

  They had all been drinking, of course; it was a feast, and wine flowed freely. But the king rose, seeing her, and she knew at once—because she had known the signs intimately in Da’s face—that he had been drinking hard to drown anger in his heart.

  But he was still the king in dignity and voice.

  “Has my son’s mistress come to pay her respects?” he asked, gesturing toward her to make sure any soul in court who had not yet noticed her would notice her now.

  “Or has she simply tired of her new conquest?” drawled Margrave Judith, “and thrown him aside as she did my son once she had polluted him with her magics?” Her glare was as frightening as that of a guivre, turning Liath to stone. Hugh did not appear to her among the sea of faces, all of them staring, but she was sure he was behind this humiliation.

  “That is not for us to judge, but rather a matter for the church.” Yes, Henry was drunk, but coldly angry beneath and able to control himself in his cups far better than Da had ever been able to. But Da had been nothing but a disgraced frater. Henry was king. “Seat her beside me,” he continued with that iron gaze, edged like a sword. “Let the royal mistress be given honor as she deserves, who graces my son’s bed.” He knew what he was doing. “But not dressed like that! Not dressed like a common Eagle! Has my son not gifted you with clothing fit for your rank?”