by Kate Elliott
In this group of nobles, each one attired magnificently in fine embroidered and trimmed linen tunics, in fine leather riding boots, with handsome fur-trimmed capes or richly colored wool cloaks thrown over all, the eye still leaped immediately to King Henry. Ivar had never seen him before, yet he knew instantly that the middle-aged man riding in the center was the king though he wore no crown. He needed no crown. The weight of his authority was like a mantle cast over his shoulders. He wore clothing no plainer and no richer than the others, one prince among many, but the leather belt that girdled his waist, embossed with the symbols of each of the six duchies that made up the kingdom of Wendar and Varre, and the many small and subtle gestures of the others as they deferred to him, proclaimed him prima inter pares, first among equals. From the back of a handsome bay mare, he surveyed the hooded monks and nuns, most of whom still stared fixedly at the ground, with stern approval for their humility.
Just as he passed the ranks of the novices, his eye caught Ivar’s gaze. One royal eyebrow arched, intrigued or censorious. Ivar blushed and dropped his gaze.
He saw booted feet march by, heard the renewed voices of many men lifted in song: The King’s Lions had been granted the honor of marching directly behind the king. They halted suddenly and their song cut off, to be replaced by the stillness of a fine autumn day, the creak of leather, the restlessness of horses farther down the line, the barking of a dog.
Ermanrich shifted next to Ivar and whispered to Baldwin. “If only I were closer.”
Startled, Ivar glanced up at the same time as did Sigfrid. Their view was partly blocked by the ranks of Lions, sturdy men clothed in fighting gear and gold tabards marked by a black lion, but beyond the milites—the fighting men—and the nobles, the king had ridden forward with only the Eagle in attendance to greet Mother Scholastica.
She was also mounted, as befit a woman of royal birth come to greet her brother; she rode on a mule whose coat was so polished a gray as to be almost white. In her dark blue robes, adorned only with the gold Circle of Unity hanging at her chest, with her hair drawn back under a white scarf and her face guileless and calm, she appeared every bit as regal as her elder brother. Of course it was not fitting that a woman of her ecclesiastic rank dismount to greet anyone except the skopos, but neither could the king dismount to greet her. So the king had ridden forward on his mare to meet her, and now, with the two animals side by side, the royal siblings leaned across the gap and gave each other the kiss of family, once to each cheek, as greeting.
“And if,” continued Ermanrich in that whisper, “you took Master Pursed-Lips’ willow switch—”
Baldwin started to snicker.
“—and gave a quick twitch of it to the mare’s hindquarters, what do you think would happen?”
Sigfrid snorted and clapped a hand over his mouth. Ivar was so aghast at Ermanrich’s imagining either Mother Scholastica or the king made ridiculous by a bolting horse that he started to giggle.
That same willow switch lashed hard against his rump and he yelped. Then Ermanrich gulped down a yelp as he, too, was disciplined.
“Keep silence,” hissed the schoolmaster, stationing himself behind the four boys. He did not, of course, switch either Baldwin or Sigfrid, and poor Sigfrid looked horrifically guilty, for had he not responded by laughing at Ermanrich’s jest? Ivar bit his lip as he blinked back tears; his buttocks stung. Ermanrich had his usual sly grin on his face. He had unknowable reserves and rarely showed any visible sign of feeling pain. The schoolmaster cleared his throat and Ivar hastily looked down just as the king and his sister parted, her mule being brought around by a servant so abbess and king could lead the procession up to the monastery together.
On past Ivar’s station marched the Lions, then the rest of the train, a stamp of feet and hooves and rumble of wagons. Beyond, toward town, people shouted and cried out praise to the king.
Ivar’s rump still smarted. He could practically feel the schoolmaster’s breath on his neck, but the schoolmaster had moved on. A sudden feeling like the whisper of elfshot made his neck prickle. He glanced up, or he would have missed her.
“Liath!” He almost fell forward. The three other boys jerked their heads up and stared. Baldwin whistled under his breath.
Liath! He could never mistake her for someone else: dark hair, golden-brown skin, her height and slender frame. She wore the cape and badge of a King’s Eagle. She wore the badge of a King’s Eagle! Somehow she had gotten free of Hugh.
Envy pierced him, as ugly an emotion as he had ever felt. Who had helped her? He did not want to share that victory, share her gratitude, with anyone. Had she freed herself? Surely not. Hugh would never let her go. Perhaps Hugh was dead; yet not even that thought satisfied Ivar. He, Ivar, son of Harl and Herlinda, must be the one to kill Hugh—or, preferably, to humiliate him.
As wagons rumbled by, he could only stare at her receding back, at the braid that hung in a thick line to her waist. She looked closely at the ranks of hooded monks, their heads bowed modestly so none might see their faces. She knew he was here, didn’t she? Surely she remembered he had been sent to Quedlinhame, only because he had tried to help her.
As he watched her ride away, he almost wept, yet was so filled with joy that he thought he must shine with it. Now, as she passed the last line of layservants, she stopped looking. She stared straight ahead instead, gaze fixed on some unseeable point, perhaps on the church towers whose gilded roofs glinted in the noonday sun. She was lost to him as the king’s progress rode into Quedlinhame and the train—wagons, produce, servants, spare horses, tents, furnishings, the entire ponderous cavalcade that attended the king—trundled past, kicking dust up into his teeth.
Still he stared after her, keeping his head lifted defiantly as the long train passed, the last of the courtiers and their attendant servants at the end. He searched them all, looking for Hanna. Hanna had sworn to stay by Liath. But of Hanna he saw no sign.
The willow switch surprised him. This time it landed on his shoulders and he actually grunted out loud, it hurt so badly.
“It is unseemly to stare,” said the schoolmaster coldly. “You bring notice on yourself.”
Ivar clamped his lips shut over a retort. Now he could not get angry. Now he must plan. Liath had come to Quedlinhame and though the novices rarely stirred outside their dormitory and courtyard, though they were always heavily supervised, he would find a way to let Liath know he was here. He would find a way to see her, talk to her. To touch her.
Even thinking such a thing was a sin.
But he didn’t care.
The last of the train rolled by. The monks and nuns fell into place behind the king’s progress. Bells rang in Quedlinhame. Someone at the head of their procession began to sing and the others joined in as they walked back toward town, following the king.
O God, endow the king with Thine own justice, and give Thy righteousness to the king’s heir so this one may judge Thy people rightly and deal out justice to the poor and suffering.
By this time the road was a swirling, choking mass of dust made no better by the hysterical townsfolk who swarmed in behind the line of monks and nuns. Their excitement was itself a creature, huge and perilous and joyful. Was this not the king? There would be a ceremony later, after the king had washed himself and greeted his sainted mother in quieter rooms. Queen Mathilda was not strong enough for a public greeting. Then Mass would be sung in the town’s church, and as many townsfolk as could manage would crowd into the church to see the king robed and crowned in royal splendor, his sacred presence a reminder of God’s heavenly grace and Henry’s earthly power. After the Feast of St. Valentinus tomorrow, townsfolk could bring their grievances to the king’s personal attention, for he would rest in town for Hallowing Eve and the holy days of All Souls and All Saints which followed. Only then would he and his retinue ride on to Thurin Forest, where they would hunt. Ivar envied them the freedom to hunt.
But he had his own hunting to do. Somehow, at some time in th
e excitement during the next three days, Master Pursed-Lips would stray from his attentiveness. He would forget to watch quite as closely. Somehow Ivar would find a way to contact Liath.
4
LIATH had searched the line of monks along the roadside, but their heads had remained bowed, their faces hidden. So she rode on into Quedlinhame, through the town, and up a winding road that led to the top of the hill where thick walls protected monks and nuns from the temptations of the world; so Da had said to her. Had he been a brother here once?
Beyond the monastery gate, layservants took the horses and led them away to the stables. She started after them, swinging her saddlebag off the horse and draping its weight over her shoulder—then heard her name above the clamor of horses and wagons.
“Liath!” Hathui hailed her.
Liath threaded her way through the mob, avoiding a whippet hound snapping at the end of a leash, stepping over a fresh pile of horse manure, waiting as a noble lady still mounted on a fine gray gelding crossed in front of her.
“Come. We are to attend the king.” Hathui smoothed down her tunic and straightened the brass badge that pinned her cloak. Then she frowned at Liath. “You should have left your gear with the horse. It’ll be safe in a convent, I should think!”
Liath attempted a smile. “I didn’t think. I just grabbed it.”
Hathui crooked an eyebrow. She was not a woman easily fooled nor one to succumb to nonsense. “What’s in there so precious that you’ll never let that bag leave your side?”
“Nothing!” It was said too quickly, of course. Liath shifted the saddlebag on her shoulders, shrugging the back pouch aside where it had gotten tangled with her bow quiver. “Nothing special except to me. Something Da left to me. The only thing I have left of him.”
“Yes, so you’ve said before,” replied Hathui in the tone of someone who doesn’t believe what she is hearing. “But if Wolfhere minds not, than neither shall I. He may settle this with you when he returns.”
Which, Lady grant, might be many months from now. Though she missed Hanna bitterly, Liath did not regret that she would not see Wolfhere until next year, when he and Hanna could cross back over the mountains from Darre and return to the king’s progress. She liked Wolfhere, but she could not trust him.
Monks walked through the gate. She looked for Ivar’s pale, familiar face.
“Come, come, Liath. We wait upon the king. He does not wait upon us. Why are you staring so?”
Liath shook off the older woman’s hand and followed beside her as they crossed the field. Ahead, the king and a few of his most trusted retainers gathered by the stairs that led up to the church’s portico. “I know someone who is a novice here—”
“Ivar, son of Count Harl and Lady Herlinda.”
Liath glanced sharply at her. “How did you know?”
“Hanna told me. She told me all about Ivar, her milk brother.”
It stung, the dart of jealousy, that Hanna had formed such a friendship with this tough marchlander woman. Liath liked Hathui but could never be comfortable with her. She dared not trust anyone she had met after Da’s death. Trusted no one now, except Hanna. Except possibly Ivar, if she could find him.
No one else, except Sanglant—and he was dead.
“Never meant for me even if he had lived,” she muttered.
“What?” asked Hathui. Liath shook her head, not answering. “Hanna said Ivar loved you,” Hathui added in an altered tone of voice. “Do you feel guilt for it still, that Frater Hugh condemned him to a life as a monk though it was no wish of the boy’s? Only because he interfered with what Hugh wanted?”
“Hanna told you a great deal,” said Liath, voice choked.
“We are friends. As you and I might be, but you are such a strange, distant creature, more like a fey spirit than a woman—” Hathui broke off, not because she wished to avoid offending Liath—Hathui said what she meant and intended no offense by it—but because they had reached the king. King Henry caught sight of Hathui and indicated with a gesture that she should walk behind him as they proceeded into the church. Liath stumbled over her own feet and hurried to catch up, not knowing where else to walk except behind Hathui. In the midst of so many fine nobles she could nurse her pain in private because, to the noble lords and ladies, she was merely an appendage of the king, like his crown or scepter or throne, not a real living person they had to take any notice of. She was simply an Eagle, a messenger to be dispatched at the king’s whim.
Hanna had every right to tell Hathui whatever she wished, had every right to count Hathui as a friend. Wolfhere and Hathui and poor dead Manfred—the three Eagles who had rescued her from Hugh—surely knew or guessed the truth of her relationship to Hugh, knew that he had kept her warm in his bed though he was a holy frater and dedicated to the church, that he had gotten her with child and then beaten her nearly to death for defying him, after which beating she had miscarried. In the end, worn down by exhaustion and fear, she had given him The Book of Secrets and all it represented: her submission to him.
Only the arrival of Wolfhere and his two companion Eagles had saved her. They had rescued her from Hugh; she had not truly escaped him. Liath glanced up at Hathui’s sturdy back, she who walked directly behind the king. Hathui had not once treated Liath with disrespect or scorned her, even knowing she had been a churchman’s slave and concubine. Hathui might be only a freeholder’s daughter, but the freeholders of the marchlands were notoriously proud. The king himself had seen fit to bestow on Hathui his favor. In the four months Liath had ridden with the king’s progress, she had seen how Hathui was called frequently to the king’s side, how he now and again asked her advice on some matter. This was indeed a signal honor for a woman born of common farmers.
Yes, Hanna had every right to count Hathui as a friend. But that endless niggling fear pricked at Liath: What if Hanna came to prefer Hathui? What if she loved Liath the less for liking Hathui more? It was a weak, unkind thought, both toward Hanna and toward Hathui. Liath could even now hear what Da would say were he alive to hear her confess such a thing: “A rosebush can give more than one bloom each season.”
But Da was dead. Murdered. And Hanna was all she had left. She wanted so desperately not to lose her. “No use fretting about the donkey,” Da would say, “when he’s safe inside the shed and you’ve loose chickens to save from the fox.”
At that moment Hathui glanced back at her and gave her a reassuring smile. They entered the church. It was surprisingly light inside the nave, a long lofty space with a wooden ceiling made of a checkerboard of crossbeams. A double row of arched windows set high in the wall, well above the decorative columns that lined the nave, admitted this light. The party walked forward solemnly so that Henry and his sister could kneel before the Hearth. Liath admired the parallel rows of columns, two round columns alternating with every square one to form the central nave. Eagles and dragons and lions adorned the capitals, carved cunningly into stone; these symbols of power served to remind visitors and postulants alike whose authority reigned here, second only to God in Unity. The floor was paved in pale yellow-and-dun granite. She tried, superstitiously, not to step on any of the cracks seaming the blocks into a larger whole.
The king mounted the steps at the far end of the nave and knelt before the Hearth. Liath knelt with the others, many of whom perforce had to get down on their knees on the stairs in all manner of awkward positions. Her knee captured the trailing end of Hathui’s cloak so that the poor woman could not kneel forward comfortably, but it had become so very quiet in the church that Liath dared not shift even enough to loosen the cloak from her weight.
Mother Scholastica said a prayer over the Hearth to which the assembled nobles murmured rote responses. Liath could not keep her eyes from the Hearth, where a sparkling reliquary cut entirely from rock crystal and formed into the shape of a falcon rested next to Mother Scholastica’s hand. Beside the reliquary stood a book so studded in gems and coated with gold leaf that it seemed of itself to ema
nate light.
Blessed and sanctified, King Henry rose, shook off his cloak into the hands of a waiting servant, and beckoned to Hathui and his two most trusted advisers: the crippled margrave, Helmut Villam, and the cleric, Rosvita of Korvei. Hathui beckoned to Liath, and the two Eagles hastened to follow these notables as they descended the stairs and exited the church by a smaller door that led into quarters reserved for the mother abbess and her servants.
In an insignificant room just off the abbess’ private cloister, King Henry knelt beside the low bed on which his mother lay. He kissed her hands in greeting, as any son gives his mother the honor due her. “Mother.”
She touched his eyes gently. “You have been weeping, my child. What is this grief for? Do you still mourn the boy?”
He hid his face even from her, but not for long. A mother’s demands must be acknowledged. At last he set his face against the coarse wool blanket—fit for a common nun but surely not for a queen—and wept his sorrow freely while the others turned their gazes away.
They had all knelt in emulation of the king. Liath, at the back, studied their faces. Hathui stared steadily at the rough flagstone floor of the cell, her expression one of mingled pity and respect. The old margrave, Helmut Villam, wiped a tear from his own cheek with his remaining hand. Mother Scholastica frowned at the display—not at the sight of a grown man crying, for of course the ability to express grief easily and compassionately was a kingly virtue, but at the excessive grief Henry still carried with him at the death of a son who was, after all, only a bastard. The cleric had no expression Liath could read on her intelligent face, but she glanced Liath’s way, as if she had felt her gaze upon her, and Liath looked down at once. “Don’t let them notice you,” Da had always said. “Safety lies in staying hidden.”
