Prince of Dogs

by Kate Elliott

  Even a dog could be patient.

  PART FOUR

  SEEKER

  OF

  HEARTS

  XIII

  A GLIMPSE BEYOND

  THE VEIL

  1

  BECAUSE of the rugged terrain and the lay of the mountains, no roads fit for the king’s progress led between the duchy of Avaria and that of Wayland. An Eagle had ridden straight west from the palace at Echstatt along tracks impassable for the heavy wagons that made up the train of the king’s entourage. So after several weeks at Echstatt, the court itself moved north along the Old Avarian Road toward the city and biscophric at Wertburg. Although not as well traveled a road as the Hellweg—the Clear Way—that ran through the heartland of Saony and Fesse, the road accommodated king and retinue without too much hardship for the royal party, though they moved slowly.

  Old fortresses, royal manors, and estates under the rule of convents or monasteries provided lodging and food. Common folk lined the way to watch the king and his entourage ride by. According to Ingo, the king had not ridden this way for some five years, accounting for their enthusiastic welcome. To Hanna, their welcome resembled all the others she had witnessed, just as this land looked much like any other land with hills, vast forest, and the friendly sight of fields and villages, churches and estates. But the hills were steep and high while in Heart’s Rest the wilderness gave way to heath; beech and fir dominated in open fields where she was used to a dense canopy of oak and elm and lime; and the village folk spoke in a dialect that was hard for her to understand.

  Each day on the king’s progress brought new fascinations for Hanna. Heralds rode ahead to shout the news of the king’s adventus—his arrival at the next stopping place. A levy of soldiers and servants forged ahead of the main party to clear the road of snow and debris. At the forefront of the main procession rode the king and his noble companions in full glory. After them came the swelling ranks of an army, growing with each day as nobles joined Henry or sent soldiers in their place. The horde of servants followed them, and farther back, wagons rolled, lumbering and jolting over the rutted road, skidding on ice, getting stuck in drifts. A century of Lions marched at the rear.

  But of course there were always stragglers, beggars trailing behind, women and men hoping to hire themselves out as laborers. Peddlers, prostitutes, homeless servants, persons with grievances to bring before the king, and anonymous young men hoping to find employment or loot in the aftermath of battle, all of these followed in the track of the king’s progress, some joining as others dropped out.

  “Is it always like this?” Hanna asked Hathui. Fifteen days ago they had left Echstatt. Now she and the other Eagle pulled up their horses on a rise that looked down to the north over the episcopal city of Wertburg and down to the south over the road that wound away through the stubble of fields and lines of hedges before it lost itself in forest. Riding at the front, they had a good view of the king’s train, a long and colorful procession strung across the landscape below. The line of stragglers still emerged from forest. Below them, the king ascended the hill. The hugely pregnant Sapientia rode beside him, mounted on a gentle mare, with Helmut Villam, Sister Rosvita, and Father Hugh in close attendance. At the Wertburg city gates, a large party led by the biscop and the local count had already begun its own procession out to meet the king.

  “We’ll be in Mainni by the thaw,” said Hathui. “There are several royal palaces where we will sit out the floods. It’s hard work traveling in the spring. How do you fare, Hanna?”

  Hanna considered the question seriously; she knew very well what Hathui was asking. “I fare well enough. There’s nothing wrong with Princess Sapientia that wise companions and fields of her own to plow won’t cure, as my mother used to say.”

  “Are you her champion now?”

  “It’s true she’s rash and proud and thoughtless, but from what I hear she lived for a long time in the shadow of her brother, Prince Sanglant—”

  “True enough,” observed Hathui.

  “—and if she has many companions now, I fear it’s mostly because they expect King Henry to name her as Heir—not for herself. So it’s no wonder she’s—well, as my mother would say, if you bring up a child on table scraps, then it will surely gorge to sickness when you finally sit it down to a feast.”

  “A wise woman, your mother,” said Hathui with a grim smile. “But I didn’t mean to inquire about the princess. What of Father Hugh?”

  “I am of no concern to him,” Hanna said at last, but she knew she was blushing. “He pays no attention to me.” Why, then, knowing what she did about him, did she sometimes still wish he did?

  “If I did not have Liath’s testimony, it would be hard for me to believe the things she has accused him of.”

  “Perhaps he’s changed.”

  Hathui shot her a sharp glance. “Do you think so?”

  “He’s so … kind and gentle, so soft-spoken. So clever and industrious. You’ve seen him yourself, laying hands on the sick, giving out alms to the poor. He attends Princess Sapientia faithfully and advises her with care.”

  “As well he might!”

  Hanna had to grin. “If it’s a child of his own begetting, then it’s no wonder he attends her so closely. But he doesn’t seem … the same person as he was in Heart’s Rest.”

  “He’s with his own people now.”

  “That’s true enough. We were only common folk in Heart’s Rest, far beneath his notice.”

  “Except for Liath.”

  “Except for Liath,” Hanna echoed.

  “Did you ever think she might be lying?” asked Hathui casually. Ahead, the biscop’s procession had unfurled banners and the bright standards representing the city and the local count. Behind, riders in the king’s procession began to sing.

  Clouds covered the heavens this day, and it was cold, yet surely no soul could be gloomy observing such pageantry. Hanna turned her face into the breeze and stared, the lick of the wind on her lips. Even in gloves her hands were cold, but she would have been no other place in the world than this one as the king and his party ascended the hill, reaching the crest behind them. Their song carried fitfully on the breeze.

  “She’s not lying, Hathui. I saw her carried in that day, when she miscarried. I know what he did to her. And he stole her book.”

  “Some would say the book became his when he bought off her father’s debts. She was his slave.”

  “And many’s the man or woman who uses a slave as they see fit, and no one would ever fault them for it. It still doesn’t seem right to me. She never welcomed his attentions. Is it right that she be forced to accept him just because he’s a margrave’s son and she has no kin to protect her?” Her tone came out more bitter than she intended.

  “Some would say it is,” remarked Hathui. “You and I would not. But you and I do not rule this kingdom.”

  There was more Hanna wanted to say, but she was ashamed to say it out loud: Hugh was a selfish, arrogant lord with the faultless manners of a cleric and a voice like that of an angel—but sometimes beautiful flowers are the most poisonous. “Yet we can’t help admiring them,” she murmured.

  “What?” Hathui looked at her sidewise, then mercifully turned her horse aside. “Come, here is the king.”

  They made way, letting the king’s standard bearers and then the king himself pass before them, and fell in behind, singing.

  King and court celebrated the Feast of St. Herodia at Wertburg, with the biscop of Wertburg presiding. After a week eating from the biscop’s table, they continued north for three days to Hammelberg, on the Malnin River, where they sheltered at a monastic estate. From here they cut across overland by the Helfenstene Way, a journey of four days, until they rejoined the Malnin Road at Aschfenstene. Turning northwest, they followed the river for five days until they reached the city of Mainni, where the Brixian tongue of the kingdom of Salia bordered the duchy of Arconia and lapped up against the duchy of Fesse. Once Biscop Antonia had presid
ed over Mainni. Now, upon arriving, King Henry installed Sister Odila, a relative of the local count, as biscop.

  Their arrival in the city coincided with the feast day celebrating the conversion of St. Thais. She had been a prostitute before embracing the God of Unities and walling herself up in a cell—from which she did not emerge for ten years, and then only to die. Hanna heard more than one cleric comment that Henry had offered the biscophric first to Sister Rosvita, but that the cleric had remarked that she was not yet ready to wall herself up when there were many more places she needed to visit for her History. She had suggested Sister Odila as a suitable candidate, and Henry had taken her advice in this as in so many other things. The appointment, of course, was contingent on the approval of the skopos, though as yet they had no news from Darre about the case brought against Antonia.

  “I wonder how Wolfhere fares,” Hanna asked Hathui many nights later after the feast celebrating the miracle of St. Rose a’lee; the saint, a limner in a humble village outside the city of Darre, had painted a set of murals depicting the life of the blessed Daisan that had so pleased the Lord and Lady that a holy light had shone on the images ever after.

  “Wolfhere fares well enough, I have found.” Hathui heaped the dwindling winter fodder in the biscop’s stables into a plush heap, over which she threw her cloak, bundling herself up in her blanket. With so many animals stabled below, the loft was a warm, if pungent, resting place. “I wonder how Liath fares. It’s almost the end of the year and we’ve had no word from Count Lavastine.”

  “You don’t think the count will refuse to march on Gent?”

  “I think it unlikely. The question is whether the king will be able to meet him there.” Hathui settled herself comfortably in the straw. “From Mainni, we can follow the road north to Gent—or the road south to Wayland.”

  “Why would the king want to go to Wayland?”

  “Answer that yourself, Hanna!”

  “Duke Conrad’s soldiers turned me back from the Julier Pass. Is that a grave enough offense that the king would march against the duke?”

  “Picking a fight—without the king’s permission—with the Queen and King of Karrone? Remember, the King of Karrone is Henry’s younger brother. And Duke Conrad also wears the golden torque that marks him as born of the royal line. His great-grandfather was the younger brother of the first Henry.”

  “Do you think he means to rebel, as Sabella did? Surely any claim he might have to the throne isn’t nearly as strong as hers.”

  “I don’t know what the noble folk intend. Their concerns are different from those I grew up with. I hope,” she added, “that King Henry finds a good margrave for Eastfall, a woman or man who can stop the Quman raids and protect the freeholders. A person who is not concerned with the intrigues of the court.”

  “Aren’t all the nobles concerned with the intrigues of the court?”

  Hathui only grinned. “I haven’t asked them all. Nor would they answer me if I did. Hush now, chatterer. I want to sleep.”

  In the morning a messenger arrived from Count Lavastine—a messenger who was not Liath. Sapientia reclined on a couch while her attendants fluttered around her and her new physician—on loan from Margrave Judith and newly arrived—tested her pulse by means of pressing two fingers to her skin just under her jawline. Hanna had observed that the princess liked commotion, as if the amount of talking and movement eddying around her reflected her importance. Behind the couch Hugh paced, more like a caged animal than an amiable and wise courtier. He held Liath’s book tucked under his arm. In the two and a half months since the disaster at Augensburg, Hanna had rarely seen him without the book in his hands; if not there, then he stowed it in a small locked chest which a servant carried.

  “Why did she not return?” he demanded of no one in particular. Looking up, he saw Hanna.

  Hanna froze. She could not bring herself to move, not knowing whether to bask in his notice or fear it.

  Sapientia yawned as she rubbed a hand reflexively over her huge abdomen. “Really, Father Hugh, I prefer my Hanna. Her voice is so very calming. The other one was too skittish. She serves Gent better riding with Count Lavastine than with us.”

  Hugh frowned at Hanna a moment longer. Then, with a palpable effort, he turned his attention to the princess. “Wise advice to your own counselor, Your Highness,” he said in an altered tone.

  Sapientia smiled, looking pleased. “More fruitful to wonder if we will ride south to Wayland and Duke Conrad, or north to meet Lavastine at Gent. And what is keeping my dear Theophanu? Perhaps she has turned nun at St. Valeria Convent.” Her favorites, surrounding her, giggled. Hugh did not laugh, but when the gossip turned to the latest news—which was none—about Duke Conrad, he joined in with his usual elegance of manner, gently chiding those who were mean-spirited and encouraging those who supposed King Henry would find a peaceful solution to any misunderstanding which might arise.

  “It is true,” he remarked, “that force is sometimes necessary to win what is rightfully yours, but God also gave us equal parts of eloquence and cunning which we rightly point to as the mark of the wise counselor. We are better off hoarding our substance in order to fight off the incursions of the Quman and the Eika than wasting it among ourselves.”

  With this judgment King Henry evidently agreed. The court did not move south toward Wayland. But as the early spring rains began and the rivers swelled with the thaw, his advisers deemed the journey north toward Gent as yet too difficult to attempt. While they waited for the roads to open, they visited the small royal estates that lay in a wide ring—each about three days’ ride from the last—around Mainni. The court celebrated Mariansmass and the new year at Salfurt, fasted for Holy Week at Alsheim, and moved north to celebrate the feasts of St. Eirik and St. Barbara at Ebshausen. On the road from Ebshausen to the palace at Thersa, Sapientia felt her first birth pangs.

  “But Thersa is so comfortable,” she complained, looking both disgruntled and frightened when the king declared that they would go instead to the nearby convent of St. Hippolyte for the lying-in. “I want to go to Thersa!”

  “No,” said Henry with that look that any observant soul would know at once meant he could not be swayed. “The prayers of the holy sisters will aid you.”

  “But they can pray for me wherever I am!”

  Hugh took Sapientia’s hand in his and faced the king. “Your Majesty, it is true that the palace at Thersa is a grander place by far, more fitting for a royal lying-in—”

  “No! The matter is settled!”

  Sapientia began to snivel, gripping her belly—and the king seemed ready to lose his temper. Hanna moved forward and leaned to whisper in Sapientia’s ear. “Your Highness. What matters it what bed you lie in as long as God favor you? The prayers of the holy nuns will strengthen you, and your obedience now will give you favor in your father’s eyes.”

  Sapientia’s sniveling ceased and, once a birth pang had passed, she grasped the king’s hands in her own. “Of course you are right, Father. We will go to St. Hippolyte. With a patron saint like Hippolyte, the child is sure to grow strong and large and of stout courage, suitable for a soldier.”

  Henry brightened noticeably and, for the rest of the damp ride to the convent, fussed over his daughter, who put up a brave face as her pains worsened.

  Sapientia was taken inside the walls of the convent with only two attendants and Sister Rosvita to act as witnesses, as well as the physician who, being a eunuch, was considered as good as a woman. Everyone else waited in the hall, what remained of an old palace from the time of Taillefer, now under the management of the convent sisters. Henry paced. Hugh sat in a corner and idly leafed through the book.

  “She’s small in the hips,” said Hanna nervously, remembering births attended by her mother. Not all had happy outcomes.

  “Look here.” Hathui examined the carvings that ran along the beams in the hall. Blackened with layers of soot, cracked from the weight of years of damp and dryness, they depicted
the trials of St. Hippolyte whose strength and martial courage had brought the Holy Word of God to the heathen tribes who had lived in these woodlands a hundred years before. “A good omen indeed for the child who will prove Sapientia’s fitness to rule and also ride as captain of the Dragons when he grows up.”

  Hanna surveyed the old hall. Servants swept moldering rushes out the door. Ash heaped the two hearths and had to be carried away by the bucket load before a fresh fire could be started. Even with all the people packing into the hall, the cold numbed her. At a time like this, the stables provided better shelter. She could still hear, like an echo, the soft cries of the sister cellarer of the convent bemoaning the loss of so many scant provisions—it took a vast amount of food and drink to satisfy the king and his company.

  “Why didn’t the king want Princess Sapientia brought to bed at Thersa? Everyone is saying that Thersa is a grander place by far, and the steward there more able to supply the court.”

  “Look here.” Hathui took a few steps away from the younger clerics who, clustered nearby, were muttering among themselves. She wet her fingers and reached up to brush away grime and dust from one carving. Deep in the wood a scene unfolded down the length of the old beam. A figure draped in robes advanced, spear in one hand, the other raised, palm out, to confront the tribespeople retreating before her: a stylized flame burned just beyond her hand. Behind her walked many grotesque creatures, obviously not of human kin, but it wasn’t clear whether they stalked the saint or trod in her holy footsteps, seeking her blessing.

  As the clerics moved away, Hathui dropped her voice. “It’s better not to speak out loud of these matters. Henry’s bastard son Sanglant was born at Thersa. So Wolfhere told me. The elvish woman who was the prince’s mother was so sick after the birth that some feared she would die. The court couldn’t move for two months, but when she did rise at last from her bed, she walked away never to be seen again. They say she vanished from this earth completely.”