Crown of Stars

by Kate Elliott

  “‘The world divides those whom no space parted once.’” Rosvita found that Fortunatus had brought her a chair, and she sank down gratefully. She rubbed her forehead with the heel of a hand, shutting her eyes. “It has all been hidden in plain sight. We know whose child Brother Fidelis was. He was the heir of Taillefer by Queen Radegundis. We are blinded by his piety and his longevity, his good name, his reputation. That is why we never wonder at the girl he briefly wed.”

  “Why do the hounds of Lavas bow before Mother Obligatia?” asked Gerwita. “We all saw it happen.”

  Rosvita nodded. “The simplest explanation is usually the correct one.”

  The room was simply furnished with rope beds, benches, a table, and a chest. The shutters had been taken down from both windows. They had left the door open to help the breeze pass through. Besides their writing implements and the precious books, they traveled with nothing more than a few extra robes and tunics, a pair of combs, brooches and pins for cloaks, blankets, flasks, needles and thread, eating utensils, a maul and muller, a bladder filled with lanolin, a sack of candles, and one iron pot.

  They asked for nothing more than this.

  She looked at her loyal schola: Fortunatus, who had endured so much and never once complained; the three clever girls; young Jehan, made frail by their journey but hanging on. Sister Amabilia had died long ago, and Brother Constantine had not survived the king’s progress. Aurea had died together with Brother Jerome in that first raid, but there would be others, waiting in Theophanu’s schola or learning their lessons in some novices’ hall, who would join them.

  Someone must strike a lamp to flame in the darkness. Someone must care above all things that the truth be illuminated.

  “He knows,” said Rosvita.

  “Who knows?” asked Gerwita, but the others were already nodding.

  “I saw him,” said Heriburg, “as I was coming upstairs. He was in this house, but he left and walked out into the tent camp, among the refugees. Is he a holy man, Sister?”

  “He is a mystery, sent by God for us to unravel. He knows the truth. This I must do, as we are commanded by the regnant, whom we serve. Princess Theophanu desires that the rightful heir of the county of Lavas be brought forward. I will see it done. For the sake of King Henry, whom I loved, who loved his bastard son best of all his children, although it was unwise of him to do so.”

  “Love is not wise,” said Fortunatus, whose hand rested on her shoulder. “Love is most unwise of all.”

  “Yet it sustains us.”

  7

  THE night wind whispers in the trees. Folk huddle under the scant shelter of canvas stretched between limbs, staked down at corners. Some among the children sleep soundly, curled tight in blankets, but one is sobbing with eyes open.

  He knelt beside the women tending her. “Is this your child?”

  “Nay, not mine. My sister’s. She saw her mother murdered, my lord. She has these nightmares. You see.” She waved a hand in front of the child’s staring eyes, but the little girl did not react. “She is asleep. I always wake her, but when she falls back to sleep, it’s the same over again.”

  He set a hand on the child’s dirty brow. The hair was combed back and tightly braided, greasy because unwashed, but otherwise neat. The shift the child wore was smeared with dirt but several tears in the fabric had been precisely repaired with even stitches.

  He closed her eyes gently. After a moment her sobs subsided and she sighed and fell into a calm slumber.

  “Can you sleep?” he asked her aunt, who was, he saw now, a young woman made old by what she had seen. No older than his foster cousin, Agnes, yet her cheeks were hollows, and her gaze was bleak.

  “It’s hard to sleep,” she admitted.

  “You must have a name. What happened?”

  “I’m called Leisl. I’ve six nieces and nephews to tend. Both of my sisters were murdered. And my brother-in-law, hit by a falling branch. The other’s husband is gone missing, God help him. I was betrothed to Karl, who lived over by Linde—that’s a half day’s walk from our village. But I haven’t seen him since that day. We’ve good land where we are, but no man to till and tend the fields. These boys are too young. I can’t tend to house and field at the same time. I don’t know what we’ll do this winter.”

  She raised her head to stare through the dark night toward the black shadow of the church and its high tower. “They say the phoenix came, that it was a sign from God. But I don’t know, my lord. I was frightened. It got so cold, like a winter storm. Maybe it was the Enemy instead. Three demons walk here, with their masks, in the company of the winged one. The same ones that killed my family. How can I think they are beloved of God?”

  “These seeds were sown long ago,” he said, taking her hand, “but it is our fate to be left with the harvest. Let those who remain here be at peace. God’s mercy reaches into many hearts. As for you, Leisl, what needs doing?”

  She shrugged, gone beyond sorrow into bitter practicality. “I need a husband. If Karl is dead—and I suppose he must be, since he didn’t come here and I heard that Linde was burned right down, all of it—then I must find another man willing. It’s a decent household, with good land, and two walnut trees and six fruit trees. We had five sheep and four goats, but they’re lost, too. Chickens. Near the river. The house well thatched. Three other families nearby, none of them cousins to us. One family of outlanders up from south of Autun who settled there in my grandmother’s time.”

  “There might be a man among these refugees here, who lost his wife and needs to marry.”

  She flashed him a look. She had a stark gaze, stripped of illusions. “There is one man I have noticed. He came out of Kien, up in the high country. But he’s lost in his mourning, more a mute beast than a man. I don’t know if I can carry him out.”

  “Wounded beasts can be healed by treating them with patience and respect. So may humankind. You are strong.”

  “What choice have I? I am all that’s left. I would not have my family’s name die with me, and the good land we farm go to some other, for we’ve not even any cousins left to us. If I lose the land, the children will have to go out as bondsmen or servants.”

  He left her and went on, talking to those who were wakeful and smelling out those who were sick. Hamlets and villages and farms all through this region had been laid waste, they told him, crops left unsown, livestock scattered, and many, many folk were dead. It would be a hard winter ahead, but at least they now had the rest of summer to rebuild and some measure of peace to build in. At least they now had some hope to hold onto.

  Late in the night, he circled back to the main compound. The haze had thinned. The quarter moon faded in and out behind wisps of high cloud. At zenith, the Queen processed in glory with her Sword, Staff, and jeweled Cup. The Dragon had already set.

  Lions stood at guard on the porch, and their captain hailed him.

  “Lord Alain. You are out late.”

  “Many sleep restlessly tonight,” he remarked. “Now that I think on it, Captain Thiadbold, are there any men among your Lions who are ready to retire from the regnant’s service? There’s at least one young householder with a grand inheritance who is in desperate need of a partner—a husband—to help her hold her land and title.”

  “She’s too high for me,” said the captain with a startled laugh.

  Alain was startled in his turn. “I pray you, what do you mean?”

  “Sister Rosvita has let it be known. The good cleric went inside not long ago, to the mourners.”

  “Let what be known?”

  “About the rightful heir to Lavas County. Who would have guessed it! The holy abbess cannot live long, and so the granddaughter will take the coronet. It’s a miracle—don’t you think?—for the truth to be known after so long.”

  He paused, seeing that his dozen men on guard had shifted closer to listen. “Still, no triumph, coming in the wake of her grief.”

  “See there.” Sergeant Ingo pointed at the sky over
the dormitory roofs. “There’s the Phoenix, rising.”

  Where the haze cleared, the constellation Alain had always known as the Eagle unfurled its great square of wings. No one corrected the other man.

  “They’re saying it’s why you brought the hounds of Lavas, all this way,” said the captain. “None dare touch them but the rightful heir to Lavas. That’s what they’re saying.”

  “What will you do now, you Lions?” Alain asked.

  The lamps lit along the porch illuminated the captain’s crooked smile and flame-red hair. “Queen Theophanu herself called me to her chambers before we left. She has asked me to stay on as captain. It’s all I’m good for—training new Lions, that is. I’ll do it. As for these others, that’s up to them. They’ve served faithfully on a long road.”

  “There’s a young woman named Leisl in the refugee camp. She’s looking for a husband willing to farm the land she inherited, and help her raise her nephews and nieces.” He nodded at the gaggle of men. Passing up the steps and under the porch, he crossed into the church.

  In silence, the vault of air below the high ceiling of Hersford’s church breathes. A pair of monks murmurs prayers, and the lamps lit along the aisles whisper along their wicks, but otherwise the scene looks very like a painted mural.

  The bier rests solidly on earth, holding death, which weighs heavily on all mortal kind. The face is uncovered and at peace. The black hair is combed neatly away from the beardless face. He is robed in rich linen, a fitting burial shroud. A glittering crown of stars sits upon the motionless chest. His cold hands hold it, a thing forever beyond his grasp.

  Two women crowd close, one kneeling in an attitude of despair and the other standing with hands at rest on those bowed shoulders, but it is youth that has been felled and age that shows resilience. Mother Obligatia has gained remarkably in strength even in the short hours since they entered Hersford Monastery. It may be a tangled skein of sorcery is at work, or perhaps it is simply her joy at being reunited with her granddaughter that invigorates her.

  The hounds sit on either side of the old woman. It is they who see him enter. They thump their tails lightly and gaze lovingly at him but do not move. His grip tightens on the staff Kel carved for him so long ago that those days are lost to memory, just as these days will be, in time. Only the daimones of the upper air can see in all directions: north and south, above and below, past and future.

  Yet memory prods us. Much of what we are and what we choose and how we act and react come about because of what we remember. Not so long ago he himself knelt beside the bier set in Lavas church; he touched Lavastine’s cold right hand and heard the breath of stone.

  What seems dead may only be in stasis.

  He walked forward. Many had joined the vigil, out of love or respect for the man. Sister Rosvita had brought her schola. A pair of Eagles waited to one side—no, after all, it was only the Eagle called Hanna, with a redheaded companion, a man he had seen before but whose name he did not know. Father Ortulfus prayed by the Hearth together with Prior Ratbold and all the monks and lay brothers. Captain Fulk stood guard over Princess Blessing, who had, it seemed, come back after resting in the guesthouse. The child’s eyes were open, and she watched Alain pass. Captain Thiadbold, Sergeant Ingo, and a trio of other Lions moved up behind him, following him in from outside.

  Honest witnesses all.

  Mother Obligatia turned as he came up behind her. She was frail, tiny, ancient, but nevertheless a woman of immense spiritual power and inner strength. She smiled in the manner of one who has experienced every means and method of betrayal, yet can still find it in her heart to trust humankind, at least one or two of them. Her trust was hard won, but once won, given without reservation.

  “Who are you?” she asked him.

  The hounds waggled over to greet him. He noticed for the first time how Rage’s belly had begun to round. The truth, it seems, is fertile ground. He scratched her under the ear just how she liked it best. Sorrow pressed his big head against Alain’s leg.

  “Lady,” he said, acknowledging her. “Lavrentia, count of Lavas. Great granddaughter of the Emperor Taillefer.”

  “How can it be?” she asked him. “Although you are not the first to say so.” She nodded toward Sister Rosvita.

  “There are some links in the chain that I still do not quite understand,” said Sister Rosvita. Each member of her schola, clustered around her, clutched a book like a talisman, these keepers of memory. “That the counts of Lavas claim a grandson of Taillefer as their ancestor I can prove through these chronicles. It is the shadow that lies over the succession of the elder Charles that defeats me.”

  “I know only what I have seen in a vision. Yet this same vision has been woven into a tapestry that hangs in Lavas hall.”

  As Alain began speaking, Father Ortulfus broke off his prayer and, with the prior, strode to the bier in order to listen.

  “Imagine, if you will, a boy born as the only child of a powerful count. He is raised with every expectation of becoming heir. Then his mother—after eighteen years of barrenness—becomes pregnant late in life. She dies in childbed. She will never know the truth: that she gave birth not to a second son, but to twins, girl and boy. In Varre, according to the old custom, girls take precedence over boys because only through the body of the woman is it sure that the line continues.”

  Rage whined. Sorrow gave a faint growl that sounded almost like a groan.

  “So comes Sister Clothilde, companion and ally to Biscop Tallia, to Lavas Holding. They are in need of a fitting bride for the last heir of the long-dead Taillefer, to set in train a defense against the coming cataclysm they alone perceive. It must not be any girl but one of highest birth. Like this one, descended herself from Taillefer.”

  “They would be too closely related,” protested Sister Rosvita. “The church would never approve.”

  “None of this was accomplished under the auspices of the church. To the elder Charles—now desperate—they give the hounds as surety for the exchange. He gives them the infant girl. His mother is dead. The midwife’s fate I do not know. It is as if the girl never existed, was never born. He becomes count, marries, sires an heir. His younger brother gives birth to children of his own, all unknowing.”

  “You are saying,” said Mother Obligatia, “that I was that infant girl.”

  The hounds squirmed over to her and licked her hands. They could have knocked her over with a single butt of one of those huge heads, but their touch was as gentle as that of mice.

  “And that my granddaughter is therefore my heir. That Liath is heir to the county of Lavas.”

  Wind gusted through the dark opening where the rose window had once shone. Every lamp flame shuddered. A cold breeze kissed Alain’s face, whispering around him. A tickle of cool air slipped in his ears and mouth and nose. For one instant, the essence that is the aether breathed through his limbs and his chest, embracing him, and then it poured away and into a different vessel.

  Liath leaped to her feet as Sanglant’s eyes snapped open. They shone with sharp blue fire, easy to see in the gloomy light.

  She shrieked with rage. “Go! Go! Get out of his body!” Alain stepped up beside her and stilled her with a hand on her arm.

  “You are come back,” he said.

  “I found what we spoke of,” said the daimone through Sanglant’s lips, in a voice that was like and yet utterly unlike Sanglant’s familiar and well loved voice. “I brought it back.”

  “Then you have done as he would have done.”

  The head nodded, an awkward movement learned rather than natural. “I have done as he would have done.”

  “Go in peace,” said Alain.

  The flame in those dead eyes wavered. The mouth moved, and after a moment sound came out. “Can I ever find him again?”

  Alain touched his cheek to the cool wood of the staff. It was Adica he saw, walking the trail that leads to the land where the meadow flowers bloom. A place far away and long ago, lost to him. H
e looked up, into the eyes of the daimone.

  “Sometimes we are forever separated from the one we love. But, in truth, I do not know what lies beyond the veil.”

  “Then I will keep looking.”

  A breath gasped out of those lips.

  Liath groaned as the body went slack. She collapsed to the floor.

  Now and again, silence is a caught breath, all creation suspended between one heartbeat and the next. No one spoke. No one moved. The lamps burned, but they could not obliterate the shadows.

  “He is breathing,” said Countess Lavrentia, once known as Mother Obligatia.

  Sanglant opened his eyes, dark with the look of his mother’s kin. He blinked, as if trying to focus, and he did so finally as Liath staggered to her feet and stared at him incredulously.

  “Liath,” he said, and he reached for her hand.

  XIV

  THE CROWN

  1

  “I PRAY you, Sister. Wake up.”

  She sighed, wishing for this instant that she might not have to open her eyes and walk into the new day.

  Fortunatus chuckled. “You must wake. It is already accomplished three days ago. Fear not. We will stand beside you. But come quickly. Sister Hathumod is asking for you.”

  She opened her eyes to see his dear face hovering above hers. He had gained weight over the last year. He looked well. The girls—in truth they had earned the right to be called young women, but they would always be girls to her—waited impatiently, all bright smiles and shiny faces, and there was Brother Jehan and the new scribe, shy Baldwin, the frail scholar Brother Sigfrid, genial Brother Ermanrich, and more besides, clerics, presbyters, deacons, fraters, abbesses and abbots, monks and nuns, biscops, and even the humble lay brothers and sisters who worked the holy estates.

  Hers, now. All of them.

  The chamber was an opulent one, clothed in silks and tapestries. The couch on which she had taken her nap was embroidered in the Salian style with scenes cross-stitched into the fabric, in this case, episodes from the life of the Emperor Taillefer. There he rides with his black hounds upon the hunt; there he stands with staff and book, one hand raised, remarking on the stars in the heavens; there he sits with the crown of stars on his brow while he passes judgment over the famous dispute between two beekeepers; there he weds for the fourth time, and there he dies, hand clasping the wrist of his young queen, Radegundis, who is soon to be known as a saint.