by Kate Elliott
She muffled her giggles in the coarse fabric of his robe; he buried his face in her hair. In moments she was crying softly and he was, too. She closed her arms about his torso and hugged him tightly. Kinless, she had no one left her but Ivar and Hanna.
“Ai, Liath,” he whispered. “What will we do? Whatever will we do?”
5
NIGHT came as it always did, whether this day’s night or the next one he did not know. He no longer had any conception of time, only of the stone beneath him, the rain—or lack of it—on the roof, the dogs growling around him, the slaves scurrying about their tasks, bent and frightened, and the Eika on their way in and out of the cathedral, always moving. Sometimes they left him alone through days and nights he could no longer keep track of, for there was still a world outside although he had long since forgotten what it looked like. Most of the dogs went with them, then, although some few always stayed beside him. He was never truly alone. Perhaps it was better that he was never truly alone. Without the dogs, he would have forgotten that he existed.
Sometimes when they left him, he could only stare at nothing, or else at the stippling in the marble stone with its veins running away into nothing, or else at the scars on his arms and legs which were in all stages of healing, some still oozing blood, some pink, some scabbed, some the white of a cleanly healed wound.
Sometimes he was seized with such a restless surge of energy that he paced in the semicircle that was the limit of his chains, or lunged, or ran in place, or sparred with imaginary sword or spear against an imaginary opponent, the old drill he had learned so well that his body knew it by heart though he could not now put words to its movements. Only the chains hindered him. Always the chains hindered him, the iron collar, the heavy manacles chafing his wrists and his ankles.
“Why aren’t you dead yet?” Bloodheart would ask with irritation when he returned, or in the mornings when light flooded in through open doors and the painted windows shone with stories from the Holy Verses: the blessed Daisan and the seven miracles; the Witnessing of St. Thecla; the Vision of the Abyss of St. Matthias; the Revelation of St. Johanna: “Outside are dogs and murderers, fornicators and sorcerers, and all who love deceit; only those whose robes are clean will have the right to enter the gates of the blessed city.”
Dog he was now. Murderer he had once been named by the mother of a young nobleman who had rebelled against the king’s authority and paid for that rebellion with his life and the lives of his followers; no doubt the families of the barbarians who had invaded Wendar’s borders and been killed by his Dragons in fair combat felt the same, but they never came to court to face him or his king. Fornicator—well, he could not regret a single one of the women he had slept with, and he had never heard that they regretted the act either.
He would have used sorcery to escape this torment had he known how. But that gift, said to be the life’s blood of his mother’s kin, he knew nothing of. She had abandoned him, and he had taken up instead the birthright of his father’s people. Trained to fight and to die bravely, he knew nothing else. He had nothing else.
The brass badge pressed painfully against the joint where arm met shoulder as he shifted, trying to find a comfortable position so that the chains did not rub him raw.
The Eagle’s badge. Her image came to his mind’s eye as sharply as if he had seen her yesterday. Her name he remembered, when he had forgotten so much else: Liath.
“My heart rests not within me but with another, and she is far away from here.” Was it true? Or had he only spoken those words as defiance, as a shield against Bloodheart’s enchantment? What if it were true? What if it could be true?
There was a world beyond this prison, if he could only imagine it. But when he imagined life, he imagined war, battle, his brave Dragons dying around him. That imagining always led him here, chained to the altar stone in this cathedral. What was the name of the city?
She would know.
Gent. It was in Gent he waited, imprisoned, scraping sometimes at his chains, sawing at them with the knife when the Eika were absent, but he could not get free.
Yet as the holy man is freed from the world by contemplating God, surely he could free at least his mind from this prison by contemplating the world outside. He was not a holy man, to meditate on Our Lord and Lady, although surely he ought to. He was too restless for that holy peace, and uneducated in the disciplines of the mind.
The world outside waned from autumn to winter. It was cold. The dying sun would be reborn, as they sang in the Old Faith, and then spring would return. And he would still be chained.
She had led others to freedom. If he only imagined himself walking beside her through a field of oats, then Bloodheart could touch him no longer.
6
YOUNG Tallia, her wheat-colored hair and wheat-colored gown rendering her almost colorless, knelt on the hard stone floor before Mother Scholastica’s chair. The girl carefully avoided the carpet laid on the floor, as if she dared not succumb to the luxury of padding beneath her much-abused knees.
“I beg you!” she cried. “I want nothing more than to dedicate my life to the church in memory of the woman I was named after, Biscop Tallia of Pairri, she who was daughter of the great Emperor Taillefer. If you would let me pledge myself as a novice here at Quedlinhame, I would serve faithfully. I would humble myself as befits a good nun. I would serve the poor with my own hands and wash the feet of lepers.”
The king, pacing, turned at this. “I have had several marriage offers for you, none of which I am tempted to act on at this time—”
“I beg you, Uncle!” Tallia had the dubious ability to make tears spring out at any utterance. But Rosvita did not think this entirely contrived: The girl had a kind of tortured piety about her, no doubt from living with her mother Sabella and her poor idiot of a father, Duke Berengar. “Let me be wed to Our Lord, not to the flesh.”
Henry lifted his eyes to heaven as if imploring God to grant him patience. Rosvita had heard this argument played out a dozen times in the last six months—indeed, Tallia seemed to have memorized the speech—and the cleric knew Henry wearied of it and of the girl’s dramatic piety.
“I am not opposed to your vocation,” said the king, turning back finally and speaking with some semblance of patience, “but you are an heiress, Tallia, and therefore not so easily removed from the world.”
The girl cast one beseeching glance toward Queen Mathilda, who reclined on a couch, then clasped her hands at her breast, shut her eyes, and began to pray.
“However,” said Mother Scholastica before the girl could get well-launched into a psalm, “we have agreed, King Henry and I, that for the time being you will reside with the novices here at Quedlinhame. But only until a decision has been made over what will become of you.”
By this means, of course, Henry and Scholastica placed Tallia as a virtual hostage in the middle of Henry’s strongest duchy. But Tallia wept tears of gratitude and was finally—thank the Lady—led away by the schoolmistress.
Queen Mathilda said, into the silence, “She seems fierce in her vocation.”
“Indeed,” said Henry in the tone of a man who has been pressed too far. “Her privations are legendary.”
Mother Scholastica raised one eyebrow. She studied the owl feather—her quill pen—that lay by her right hand; touching its feathers briefly, stroking them with the tip of a finger, she looked at her mother. “Excessive piety can itself be a form of pride,” she said drily.
“So did I observe in you,” said the old queen with the barest of smiles, “when you were young.”
“So did I come to observe in myself,” said Mother Scholastica without smiling. Here, in her private study with only family and clerics in attendance, she had let slip her white scarf to reveal hair, rather lighter than Henry’s, liberally sprinkled with gray. Only three years younger than Henry, she looked perhaps ten years younger. This contradiction was much debated in the matristic writings. Women, blessed with the ability to bleed and to
give birth, suffered from that birthing if they took advantage of the blessing, while those who pledged themselves and their fertility to the church, living their lives as holy virgins, often lived much longer lives. Mathilda, who had given birth to ten children and been widowed at the age of thirty-eight, looked as ancient and frail as Mother Otta, the abbess of Korvei Convent, but Mother Otta was ninety and the queen only fifty-six.
Now, later that same day, these thoughts came back to Rosvita as she knelt with the congregation in the Quedlinhame town church. Thunder rumbled in the distance as Mother Scholastica intoned the final words of her homily.
“The Lady does not give out her blessing freely. This is God’s way of teaching a lesson to humankind. Although the gift of bearing children is certainly a blessing, the means by which we mortals can in some measure know immortality, all earthly beings are tainted with the infinitesimal grains of the primordial darkness that mixed by chance with the pure elements of light, wind, fire, and water. That intermingling brought about the creation of the world. And those of us who live in the world are thereby stained with darkness. Only through the blessed Daisan’s teaching, only through the blinding glory of the Chamber of Light, can we cleanse ourselves and attain a place at Our Lord’s and Lady’s side. So ends the teaching.”
The brethren—monks and nuns from Quedlinhame—sang the Te Deam, the hymn to God’s glory. Their voices blended with the fine precision of a choir used to singing in concord. With this music as accompaniment, King Henry entered the church in formal procession.
Rosvita stifled a yawn. It was so very muggy for this late in the year, and she was not as young as she once had been. It was no longer easy to stand—or kneel—through an entire service. For how many years had she traveled with the king’s progress? How often had she seen the banners representing the six duchies carried in and displayed, symbol of the king’s earthly power? How many times had she watched the ceremonial anointing, robing, and crowning of the king on feast days? Yet even now as King Henry ascended the steps that led to the altar stone and Hearth, the familiar quaver of awe caught in her throat.
Bareheaded but clad in a robe woven of cloth-of-gold, his shoes detailed in gold braid, King Henry knelt before his sister, Mother Scholastica, offering himself before the Lady’s Hearth. Every soul knelt with the king. The abbess combed his newly cut hair with an ivory comb encrusted with gold and tiny gems. She anointed him with oil, on the right ear, from the forehead to the left ear, and on the crown of his head.
“May Our Lord and Lady crown you with the crown of glory, may They anoint you with the oil of Their favor,” she said.
Assisted by certain local nobles singled out for this honor, she placed the robe of state over his shoulders; trimmed with ermine, woven of the finest white wool, the cloak bore the emblems of each duchy embroidered across its expanse: a dragon for Saony, an eagle for Fesse, a lion for Avaria, a stallion for Wayland, a hawk for Varingia—and a guivre for Arconia.
“The borders of this cloak trailing on the ground,” the abbess continued, “shall remind you that you are to be zealous in the faith and to keep peace.”
Rosvita shuddered, thinking of the guivre—the terrible basilisk-like creature—whose presence had almost won the Battle of Kassel for Sabella.
But Sabella had not won. A monk and a boy had killed the guivre, surely a sign of God’s displeasure at Sabella’s attempt to usurp her half brother’s power. Henry’s luck—the luck of the rightful king—had held true.
Now Mother Scholastica handed Henry the royal scepter, a tall staff carved out of ebony wood and studded with jewels, its head carved into the shape of a dragon’s head with ruby eyes gleaming.
“Receive this staff of virtue. May you rule wisely and well.”
On this staff the king leaned as Mother Scholastica crowned him in the sight of all the folk who were present.
“Crown him, God, with justice, glory, honor, and strong deeds.”
A great sigh swept through the crowd, mingled awe and pleasure at the rare sight of their king crowned and robed in the sight of God and his countryfolk.
From the gathered host a single voice cried out: “May the King live forever!” Other voices from the crowd answered the first with the same words until the acclamation was a roar of approval.
From her station on the steps below the Hearth, Rosvita surveyed the assembled courtfolk, brethren, and local nobles come from their estates to watch the ceremony and to feast after with the king and his retinue. She sought in their faces some clue to their state of mind. Few of the nobles here would harbor any sympathy for the recently imprisoned Sabella. But in other duchies the king’s position was not so strong. That was why he had to travel constantly across his kingdom: so that his people could see him; so that his nobles would be reminded in ceremonies like this one that he was king and therefore had authority to rule; and so that Henry, appearing before them, could demand troops and supplies for his wars—in this case, for an assault on Gent.
The boom of thunder rolled, shaking glass windows and causing one child in the back of the nave to start crying.
What did the thunder portend? Those called fulgutari claimed they could divine the future by observing the sound and appearance of storms and the direction of thunder and lightning. This display now, with great booms of thunder rattling the church and lightning scoring bright flashes against the lowering sky of late afternoon, seemed to underscore Henry’s power, as if God in Their Unity reminded the assembled people that he had received God’s grace.
But perhaps it portended other things. Divination by thunder was condemned by the church as were all forms of divination, for women and men must trust to God and not seek knowledge of what is to come. It was sacriligious even to think of heathen practices.
Rain lashed the windows. The side doors were opened to allow the poor to process through in an orderly line. None complained that, waiting outside, they had gotten soaked through. They waited gratefully for this chance to be blessed and touched by King Henry himself, for was it not true that the anointed king’s touch might bring healing?
Rosvita yawned again. She ought to be watching the holy blessings, but she had seen this same scene, albeit rarely with the dramatic background of thunder and lightning, so many times before on the endless itinerant progress of the king. Could the heathens foretell the future from the sounds and directions of thunder? Surely not. Only angels and the daimones of the upper air could see into the future, and back into the past, for they did not live in Time in the same way humans did. But, alas, she could never help thinking of such things, sacrilegious though they might be. She would be damned by her curiosity; Mother Otta of Korvei Convent had told her that so many times, although not without a smile.
Thunder rumbled off into the northwest, and the rain slackened as the last of the poor and sick shuffled past King Henry for the ritual blessing. The nobles shifted restlessly—as restless as the weather or as their fears that Henry would demand large levies from them in the coming season of war.
At last the final hymn was sung. A happy babble of voices filled the church as the king led the procession out of the church. In the royal hall, the Feast of All Saints would be celebrated. Rosvita followed the king together with the rest of his retinue, nobles and townsfolk crowded behind, all eager to partake in some way of the meal, even if it was simply bread handed out from the doors. Her stomach, like a distant failing echo of the thunder, rumbled softly, and she chuckled.
In the morning, still driven by nagging thoughts of thunder and portents, she availed herself of Quedlinhame’s excellent library. She ought to be working on her History of the Wendish People, but she knew from long experience that until this nibbling curiosity was satisfied, she would be able to think of nothing else.
Rosvita turned first to Isidora of Seviya’s great encyclopedia, the Etymologies, which contained descriptions of various forms of sorcery and magic. But Isidora’s book had only a passing reference to the fulgutari.
; Dissatisfied, Rosvita replaced the volume in its cabinet and latched the door. The library had long since outgrown its original chamber and now several smaller rooms contained the overflow books. She stood in one of these chambers now; the Etymologies had been consigned here not because the work was unimportant—far from it—but because, Rosvita thought uncharitably, Quedlinhame’s librarian was incompetent and disorganized. There was no logical order to the placement of the books, and in order to find which cabinet any book might reside in, one had to consult the catalog—which sat on a lectern in the central library hall. Rosvita sighed. In wrath, remember mercy. No doubt her own faults were greater than those of the librarian.
As she crossed back through the warren of dark rooms, she saw a cloaked figure standing in the pale light afforded by a slit of a window high in one stone wall: one of the King’s Eagles.
She paused in shadow and stared—not at the young woman, for this Eagle was instantly recognizable for her height and coloring, but at what she was doing. Clerics took little notice of Eagles, who were recruited from the children of stewards, freeholders, artisans, or merchants. Clerics wrote the letters and capitularies and cartularies which were handed over, sealed, to the king’s messengers. Eagles carried those messages; they did not read them.
A very few, like the infamous Wolfhere, had been educated—as had, evidently, this strange young person as well.
The young Eagle stood and, in light surely too dim for any human eyes to see finely written calligraphy, read a book. Her finger traced the lines of text and her lips moved, her profile framed by dust motes floating downward on the thin gleam of light. So intent was she on her reading that she remained oblivious to Rosvita’s presence.
In the silence of Korvei Convent, where nuns communicated by hand signs, Rosvita had learned the trick of reading lips. She had even used this skill to learn things forbidden to novices. Now, curiosity piqued, she tried to puzzle out syllables and sound from the movements of the young woman’s lips—
