Crown of Stars

by Kate Elliott

  The journey is a long one, and none can know when or where it will end.

  They helped her to rise, and arrayed her in heavy robes, which she did not like. She thought longingly of her books. Surely there would be an hour here or there to continue the Deeds of the Great Princes once all the fuss died down.

  They escorted her down a wide corridor, down steps to the lower level, and through a garden heavy with the scent of roses.

  Last summer had remained cool, and the first frosts had come early. The winter had been hard, and many had died, and spring had come late again, but the skies had begun to clear. All summer they had been fortunate in days of lingering heat that caused the flowers to bloom wildly and in fierce colors.

  She heard the swell and murmur of the crowd in the octagonal chapel, constant like the mutter of the sea along the shore, but Brother Fortunatus steered her to a suite opening off the rose garden. The shutters were closed because, here at the end, the light hurt the dying woman’s eyes.

  Mother Scholastica was leaving. She paused at the door, and stepped back to let Rosvita pass in before she went out. She inclined her head, as she must do now, although Rosvita felt no triumph in it. Indeed, none of this had been of her doing.

  “It is agreed that—with your blessing—Sister Hathumod will become biscop of Autun,” said the abbess.

  Rosvita nodded. “Are you at peace, Mother Scholastica? Your voice has been raised many times among those who argued most forcefully against the final decision made by the council.”

  The abbess looked toward the couch placed among the shadows. Her expression remained disapproving, but her words were firm. “I have spoken last rites over her. At the hour of dying, a person may see the heart of God, and speak true words. So is it written.”

  She departed, making for the chapel. Rosvita crossed the chamber and knelt beside the couch, but Constance’s eyes were closed although a faint rise and fall like the echo of the sea swell stirred her chest.

  Sister Hathumod kissed Rosvita’s ring. “Holy Mother.”

  “Has she spoken?”

  “Not since three days ago, Holy Mother, when she made conference with the last of them that held out against the truth.”

  “Does she know that the final vote came last night?”

  “I have not told her, Holy Mother.”

  Rosvita took that limp hand between hers. She felt Fortunatus behind her, a steadfast presence. There were others in the chamber, and it seemed to her that many stood who were living and many who were only there in spirit, waiting to guide Constance’s soul up through the spheres to the Chamber of Light.

  “I will tell it quickly, Constance. It has come about as you foresaw. The testimony of The Book of Secrets has opened its heart to us. The council has spoken. The world has changed. From this day forward the church will follow the path of the Redemption. So be it.”

  Constance stirred. Her mouth parted. “Who are you?” she whispered.

  Rosvita smiled wryly, glancing over her shoulder at Fortunatus and the others. In the room it was too dim to make out any but shadows, figures that might be dream or real, the past or the present or the future.

  “I have been elected as Holy Mother, according to the decision of the council and the college of presbyters. Darre lies in ruins. It is uninhabitable, as our agents have seen. Autun will become the seat of the skopos. What is left to tell you? Nothing and everything.”

  “You are the rose,” Constance murmured, in answer to her own question, and Rosvita saw that her vision had, in fact, ascended far past the bounds of mortal Earth. “Yet where have you gone?” Then her eyes opened and her face was transformed as if by light. “Ah! There is your crown!”

  The breath left her. She died.

  The journey would be a long one, climbing the ladder of the spheres.

  Rosvita prayed over the body, and then they must go. Many were waiting.

  The day was bright; the sun shone. The octagonal chapel was packed tight, and more spilled into the courtyard, folk from many lands: Wendar and Varre, the Eika north, the marchlands, Karrone, Polenie, Salavii deacons and monks, a handful of renegade Salian clerics split away from the rest of Salia’s biscops who had refused even to send an official representative to the council, a straggle of church folk out of Aosta who did not support the unknown skopos appointed by Queen Adelheid, and a party of contentious observers from Arethousa who had nonetheless striven at intervals to strike a note of conciliation. They, too, had suffered. They, too, struggled to recover from the cataclysm. Alba remained stubbornly heathen except where the Eika ruled, and it was rumored that the king would soon set sail to fight a rebellion in the Alban hinterlands.

  For now queen and king observed together with other nobles of the land, Prince Ekkehard, the dukes and margraves and nobles and biscops and monastics, any of whom could see the great benefit to Wendar and Varre in having the seat of spiritual power move into the north out of the south. The crown of stars rested in the grasp of Taillefer once again, atop his carved statue, because it had been returned to Autun and laid on his bier in memory of his empire. But after all, it was only an object of gold and jewels. The true crown of stars had no such earthly substance. It could not be grasped or held, fought over or broken, but it could be worn by the one whose heart was pure.

  He had vanished after the miracle of Sanglant. That was all anyone knew. Fortunatus touched her on the elbow. “I pray you. Wake up.”

  She startled out of her reverie. This was not what she had expected, nor was it anything she had sought. But it had come to her nevertheless. So be it.

  She fixed her courage with a deep breath, and walked forward into the assembly that was waiting for her.

  2

  HANNA had ridden to Lavas County before, although never with such an escort. All morning the road had pushed through woodland, passing here and there an abandoned or burned-out farmstead or hamlet. For the last three days they had traveled through empty countryside, seeing no one. She remembered the road, and knew they were no more than two or three days out from Lavas Holding.

  Near midday, freshly cut fields appeared suddenly along the roadside, ringed by low fences. Ahead, a wide path cut away from the road. In the distance she heard axes ringing against wood. A voice shouted just before the crash of a felled tree resounded. Then the axes started up again.

  A wain piled high with hay and a cart loaded with coiled rope were cutting off the main road onto the path. One of the men walking alongside saw their company coming up around the curve, and he broke off from the others and sauntered their way, holding his scythe as if he knew how to make it a weapon.

  Hanna pushed forward from the van and rode to meet him. He was a lanky young man with dark hair and a pleasant face.

  “Well met,” she called out. “I’m an Eagle, riding from Autun.”

  “A fine company you have to escort you,” he said. “I recall when Eagles rode alone on these roads.”

  “Not that long ago,” she retorted, “but you know it isn’t safe now. There’s some rough country back there, abandoned by honest folk since the tempest.”

  He grunted, squinting as the company neared, counting them on his fingers: a dozen horsemen and a dozen Eika ambling at that easy stride they could hold for weeks on end, it seemed. Over the course of a day they had to restrain themselves from outpacing the horses.

  “Some abandoned their lands,” he remarked, looking at the Eika with the usual suspicion. “The others starved or were murdered by savages and outlaws.”

  “They’re our allies.”

  “So they are, now. But I was at Gent.”

  She saw no way to answer this, so she changed the subject. “There wasn’t so much settlement here last time I passed this way. New fields. What’s down that path?”

  “Oh, that’s Ravnholt Manor, all right. It was cut out of the forest a generation ago, just a small holding, but we’ve got it building fast, now, quite a few out of Lavas Holding have moved along out this way with t
he blessing of the count and some have fled to us from farther east, as you saw. We’ve a stout palisade, and room to grow. We’ve got our own plough, too!” He grinned, suddenly delighted, raised a hand, and waved frantically. “Ivar! Ivar!”

  Ivar broke out of the company—he had been arguing with that impossible chatter-mouth Aestan of Alba about whether the phoenix had two wings or six—and trotted toward them. Ai, God! She bit down on a grin to see his sulky expression break into a broad smile.

  “Erkanwulf!”

  “What? Are you riding in the regnant’s service now, Lord Ivar?”

  “I’m an Eagle,” he said.

  “You can’t be. You’re noble born. My lord.” That last said with a grin.

  Ivar pulled up alongside and swung down off his horse. “Maybe so, but my brother Gero is glad to be shed of me. Good God, Erkanwulf! You’re looking well!”

  Then she must endure greetings and slaps on the back and all manner of hail, fellow and well met cheer, when truly she just wanted to get on to Lavas Holding. At length, it was settled that Ivar would stay overnight in Ravnholt Manor to catch up on the news and give out his own, and come along afterward.

  She rode on with the escort. They were truly in Lavas County now, ripe with summer, trees in full leaf and berries plump and juicy where the sun had sweetened them. Hamlets sprouted at intervals along the road, each ringed by a stockade. Goats grazed, heads deep into brambles. Shepherd children waved at her, then scampered off as the Eika contingent strode into view.

  In another day they came to cleared land surrounded by stands of woodland and coppice where flocks of sheep grazed amiably, and after that rode past newly cut fields where men and women were picking out stones so the land could be ploughed for winter wheat. Sooner than she expected, they came over the slope to see the vast spread of striped fields surrounding Lavas Holding. A new stockade had engulfed the old church, which had long stood outside the old earth wall and its four wooden towers. Folk were building a pair of houses along a dirt street struck straight out from the old gate. The company passed a pair of recently planted orchards, still saplings, and a tenting field with fulled cloth strung out taut to dry.

  The call came up from the watchtower. She unfurled their banner, and they rode through the outer gate, along the dusty avenue, under the old gate, and into a busy square. Grooms ran up to take their horses and show the soldiers to barracks.

  Hanna ran up the steps into the hall, which was empty and peaceful in the late afternoon but with the tables set in place for a feast. The clap of her feet on the plank floor seemed desperately noisy. A steward led her through a tiny courtyard alive with color and fragrant with herbs and flowers, and she almost mistakenly turned through the arch that led into the stable yard beyond but was guided to a door set into the old stone tower, relic of an earlier time. As she climbed the curving staircase that led to the upper chamber, she tried to walk softly.

  She paused in the entryway. Two windows set at angles into the walls allowed light into the whitewashed room. One was a magnificent painted glass scene depicting the martyrdom of St. Lavrentius and the other a simple opening to let in a cooling breeze. Through that window she saw the skeletal rafters of a two-storied wing being added onto the compound, but no one was working there at the moment. A pair of tapestries hung to either side of the door. One depicted the Lavas badge—two black hounds on a silver field—but the murky colors of the other mostly obscured its scene, which seemed to show a procession making its way through a dark forest.

  After the steady clop of travel and the hustle of the courtyard, the silence in the chamber weighed heavily, nothing heard or seen except the scritch of a quill on parchment and the press of styluses into wax tablets. This was the count’s chamber, with a table, cushioned chair, and a dozen cups and two flasks set along a sideboard, but it appeared more like one of the schoolrooms found in the convent. Yet most of the people hard at work here were not children but adults, both young and old. At intervals, one or another of these glanced up to note her presence before returning to their work. A young woman with the coloring and features of the Ashioi gave Hanna a tartly welcoming smile, and then winked at a good-looking young man, who blushed furiously. It was strange to see one of the enemy dressed in Wendish clothing, although admittedly she wore neither shoes nor leggings under her knee-length tunic.

  To one side stood a fine couch on which lay the ancient countess, sleeping while the others worked. Sister Hilaria sat beside her, sewing; she greeted Hanna with a welcoming smile. A pack of yearling hounds stretched out around and under the couch, three plopped on their sides, one rolled onto its back, and the fifth licking a forepaw.

  Two fair-haired girls whispered, but so loudly that Hanna could hear them.

  “I don’t think it’s fair, that she got to go out.”

  “And we had to stay in! But I guess she always gets what she wants.”

  “She is the heir. She’s never said a mean thing to me, Blanche. She’s not nearly as mean as you are.”

  “I am not!”

  “You are, too!”

  “I just tell the truth. That’s not mean!”

  “Blanche. Lavrentia. Keep to your work, I pray you,” said Liath from her writing table, so engrossed in her work that she alone did not look up or even seem to notice that someone had come into the room. From this angle, all Hanna could see was loops and circles and the scratchings that signified letters and numbers.

  A horn sounded in the distance. The young hounds leaped into motion, skittered over the floor, streamed past Hanna, and bounded away down the steps. The two girls set their tablets down with a clatter and raced after them before anyone could scold them to a stop.

  By now every soul there except the sleeping woman and the oblivious one was looking either at Hanna or toward the window. Finally, the youth got up and stuck his head out the window.

  For some reason, this movement drew Liath’s attention, and she glanced first at the window and then toward the door.

  “Hanna!” She put a hand over her mouth and glanced toward the couch, but her grandmother did not wake.

  The youth pulled back in. “Have you a message from the queen? Or my sister?” He was a young man of perhaps eighteen, restless, with a charming smile and ink-stained fingers.

  “Afraid it’s news of your betrothal, Berthold?” asked one of the other students.

  He looked toward the Ashioi woman, who was now deliberately ignoring him, and blushed again.

  “Hush,” said Liath sternly. “Do not wake my grandmother. Go on. Out with you.”

  Hanna stepped aside as they filed out of the chamber. Liath sighed, smiled happily at her, and levered herself up out of her chair. The position of the desk had concealed her rounded stomach. She walked over to her grandmother and bent awkwardly to kiss her cheek.

  “I’ll stay with her,” said the nun.

  “Thank you, Sister.” She hurried over to Hanna.

  “You’re more than I can embrace,” said Hanna with a laugh, kissing her.

  “Come,” she said to Hanna, taking her arm. “Let me use you as balance going down these steps. I’m afraid I’ll topple forward. Ai, God, it is good to see you. What news?”

  Hanna waited to answer until they came out into the garden. Bees buzzed, and a fly pestered her until she swatted it away. “The Council of Autun has voted to recognize the Redemption.”

  Liath caught in her breath, but made no comment.

  “I’ve brought back your Da’s book, courtesy of the Holy Mother, who had copies made.”

  “The Holy Mother?”

  “They elected Sister Rosvita. Autun is to be the seat of the skopos. For now. She has lifted the writ of excommunication.”

  Liath stroked her pregnant belly. “Thank God, for the child’s sake as well as my own. If there’s more, I pray you, wait until we meet together later, so it can all be said at once. Let my grandmother be awake to hear it.”

  “Is she well?”

  “Very o
ld, and very tired, but her mind remains clear. She could die tomorrow, or five years from now. I just don’t know. I pray she stays with us as long as possible.” She paused beside a rosebush to touch a blossom whose petals were saturated with crimson. “Oh, look, another bloom.”

  A commotion blew in from the stable yard, a burst of laughter and bodies flooding through the arched gate and out into the garden, foremost among them the prince.

  He marked Hanna instantly, and smiled. “What news for my daughter?” It was a shock to hear him speak. The powerful tenor remained, but that familiar hoarseness was utterly gone.

  The young hounds galloped to Liath for pats on the head but immediately returned to circle Sanglant, shoving in to get a rub and a scratch on the head.

  After a moment, Hanna remembered herself and spotted the princess lingering under the archway in a patch of shade beside Lord Berthold, who had paused there to talk to Captain Fulk. She was quite a tall girl, well filled out.

  “Yes, there is news,” said Hanna. “Queen Theophanu sends her affectionate greetings to her dead kinsman. The king is on his way to Alba. He will take Princess Blessing with him on campaign.”

  “I want Berthold to come with me,” said Blessing in that bold way she had. Some things hadn’t changed!

  Startled, the young man turned around. “To Alba? With the brat?”

  “He will be going,” said Hanna, “since a betrothal has been arranged for him with one of the surviving daughters of the Alban royal family.”

  Liath looked at Sanglant. The prince shrugged, lifting one eyebrow. Berthold looked toward the Ashioi woman, who rubbed the back of her neck and preened in the manner of a woman who enjoys teasing men. Blessing sucked in a sharp breath.