by Kate Elliott
“Look,” whispered Matthias.
A young woman emerged from the hall. In the darkness her complexion had a strange shade, as if she had rubbed her skin with soot. She wore a gray cloak trimmed with scarlet and clasped with a badge marked with the likeness of an eagle.
“A King’s Eagle!” murmured Matthias, his tone breathless with admiration. “She’s a messenger for the king himself! So would I become, given the chance.” His tone turned sour. “If I wasn’t crippled now.”
Escaping from the crush, the Eagle pushed her way past the crowd and came to rest in the open a few steps from Mistress Gisela’s niece, who had also come outside.
“Ai, Lady,” swore the Eagle. “He’s mangling Virgilia again!”
“Who is that you speak of?” asked the niece, wiping a speck of dirt from her eye and turning to regard the other woman.
“The old poet. But I oughtn’t to complain of him, I suppose. It’s a miracle and a mercy he survived Gent.”
The niece eyed the young Eagle with regret and hesitation before, at last, she spoke. “You were there at the end.”
The Eagle got a still, sudden look on her face, like the Eika statues, like the niece when she had been handed to Wichman as his prize. “So I was, alas. The prince died bravely.”
“Of course,” replied the niece. She bit at her lip, then reached out to touch the delicate embroidery that trimmed the cloak.
“It’s excellent work,” said the Eagle. “Things have changed, here at Steleshame.”
“So they have.” The niece looked first one way, then the other and, seeing only the three children within earshot, leaned forward. “Ai, Lady. If you know of a way that I can attach myself to the army and march with them, out of here—” She broke off, leaving the rest of the question unasked.
The Eagle raised an eyebrow, astonished at this request. “Count Lavastine has allowed no camp followers, no stragglers, nothing that could impede the progress of the march or that might make him vulnerable when we come to meet the Eika on the field.”
“I can shoot a bow, wash clothes, cook for twenty men, repair torn cloth—”
“What is it?”
The blunt question shocked the niece into silence. Then tears flooded her eyes and coursed down her cheeks. “My aunt has given me to Lord Wichman, to do with as he wills,” she said on a hoarse whisper. “Eagle, I beg you, free me from this if you can!”
The Eagle stood as if she had been struck dumb, but in a moment she shook herself free of her paralysis.
“I will see you free of him before we leave on the morrow.”
The niece sagged forward, resting a hand on her abdomen. “Ai, Lord, I carry his child. What will become of it?”
“Fear not,” said the Eagle sternly. She set a hand over the other woman’s, her fingers clasped over the niece’s faded skirts. “I will speak with Lord Alain. If you wish, the child will be promised to the church. I am sure Lord Wichman’s mother will give a dowry for it, knowing it is of her son’s begetting.”
“It would be a great honor,” murmured the niece, but her shoulders remained bowed although she untangled her hand from that of the Eagle. “And a better future for the child than what I can give it or can expect for myself. Ai, Lady. What’s to become of me?”
“He made no gift to you?”
“A morning gift, do you mean. If we are not to be wed, then why would he gift me with anything?”
“A noble lord or lady might well gift a concubine with some mark of their favor, isn’t that so?”
“Their attentions are not mark enough?” The niece laughed harshly, bending as at a sudden pain in her side. “Nay, friend Eagle, I was the gift—to him. A nobleman of his kind would only gift his bride in that way, celebrating the consummation of the marriage. Not even the prince made such a gift to me—” Here she faltered and could not for a moment go on.
The Eagle shut her eyes.
“But kindness and a sweet temper are their own gifts,” finished the niece softly. Then Mistress Gisela’s voice could be heard, shouting her niece’s name from the crowded hall. “I thank you,” she added, her voice heavy with tears. She hastened back into the hall.
The Eagle leaned back against the wall, eyes still shut. Dusk had fallen and, seeing her half caught in that attitude, a shape pressed against the wall that was more shadow than woman, Anna could imagine the Eagle as much a part of the wall as the wood itself. Then, suddenly, the young woman stirred, came to life, and pushed away. She squared her shoulders under the cloak, took in a breath, and pressed back into the crowd, who parted to let her through into the packed hall.
At first she thought they were alone in the pavilion, and in that instant a sudden wave compounded more of adrenaline than fear washed through her. What did he want of her? It was very late. The feast had just ended.
The hounds ranged around his chair growled and slunk back to keep their distance from her, and she saw how he raised his eyebrows, surprised at their behavior. Then his captain stepped out from the shadows to attend his lord.
“My lord count,” she said. “I have come, as your steward directed me.” Still rumpled from being woken out of sleep! She did not add that thought, knowing he would judge it as impertinence. He did not tolerate impertinence.
“Sit, Terror,” he said. The old hound, a handsome creature despite its fearsome size and disposition, sat obediently. He called the others to order as well, firmly but without cruelty or roughness. From his tone she could tell he regarded them not with the loving care one bestows on a beloved child but with the absolute unthinking consideration one has for one’s own limbs.
Two lanterns illuminated the tent, just enough for her to see a wide pallet in one corner of the tent, draped with a gauzy veil, a camp table with pitcher and basin atop it, and his mail shirt glittering faintly where it draped from a wooden post and cross post in another corner. A servant hustled in through the entryway, bearing a candle that flashed and flamed in her eyes. The count lifted a hand and at once the servant licked two fingers and pressed them to the wick, dousing the flame. The servant took up the pitcher and retreated outside.
The count looked up at her then. His expression disconcerted her. She had come to recognize that look in a man’s eyes, the one that betrayed his interest in her as a woman, but it flashed and faded as quickly as the candle had been extinguished. This was not a man who acted upon impulse, or who let his desires or obsessions get the better of him. She had never met anyone quite like him. Had Da had such qualities, perhaps they could have stayed in Qurtubah instead of being forced to flee because of his folly; perhaps his temper would not have gotten them into so much trouble in Autun that they had been driven out; perhaps he could have covered his tracks better, seen the assassin coming, and saved himself—and her—in Heart’s Rest.
At once she felt miserable for thinking such traitorous thoughts toward Da. Da was who he was. He had done the best he could. He had protected her for as long as he was able.
And if all had not happened as Lord Fate and Lady Fortune and God Themselves willed, then she would never have met Prince Sanglant—however brief that time had been.
“Eagle.” The count beckoned her to step closer. “What do you want from my son?”
Too startled to take a step forward, she gaped at him. “I want nothing from your son, my Lord.”
“But it is clear to me that he has put you under his protection.” Now the count leaned forward, gaze hard. “I do not want his situation complicated by a bastard of his making!”
A fish might have bubbled so, mouth popped open.
One of the hounds yipped. “Hush, Ardent,” he commanded. He turned his gaze back on her. “My servants report that he gave you coin earlier.”
“It isn’t for me!”
He lifted a hand, as if to say: “Then for whom?”
She flushed. “It is for Mistress Gisela’s niece.”
“She is Lord Wichman’s lover, is she not?”
“Not by her o
wn choice!”
Terror growled, and the count set a stilling hand on the hound’s white mantle. “Ah,” said the count, enlightenment dawning. “It reminded you of your own situation at the king’s court.”
Shame made her angry, and reckless. “Your son is as honest a person as I have ever met. You shouldn’t suspect him of concealing from you what you have already forbidden him. You have nothing to fear from me in that regard. I have long since pledged my heart to a man who is now dead. And I have sworn the oaths of an Eagle.”
“That will do,” he said with an edge on his voice so quiet that she almost didn’t hear it. But she understood its intent and inclined her head to show she meant to speak no further—on that subject, at least.
“We haven’t much time.” He looked toward his captain. “Alain will return soon, and we must finish before he comes back. This tunnel, into Gent—” He beckoned the captain forward. The soldier had certain small blocks of wood in his hands. He knelt before his lord and arranged them: here two towers to represent a city; a strip of leather cord stood in for the river.
“Now, Eagle, come forward and place the tunnel where it would lie in relation to the city, as far as you remember. Lord Wichman says there is a line of bluffs here—” The captain set down sticks in a ragged line to demark the bluffs. “And the river’s mouth, so, with two channels but only one of them navigable and perhaps vulnerable …”
She must have made a noise in her throat, or a soft grunt.
He looked up with an impatient grimace. “Do you have a question? Speak it!”
“I beg your pardon, my lord.” She glanced around the pavilion, but she, the count, his hounds, and his captain were the only occupants. “Oughtn’t we to wait for Lord Alain to return before we speak of such plans?”
Irritation flared in his expression, but instead of speaking, he took wood chips from the captain’s hand and placed them, “below” the bluffs and within sight of the city, in the shape of an oval rampart, like unto a fort. After all, he did not have to explain his actions to her. With a moment’s thought she knew the answer anyway. Alain shared dreams with an Eika prince. If the one could dream the other’s life, why shouldn’t the opposite be true? Lavastine could not risk betraying his thoughts to Bloodheart, even if it meant deceiving his son in such a way as this. “Eagle!” He handed her a stiff length of thread. “Can you see this in your mind and make a picture of it?”
She took the thread and squatted to consider the landscape before her. “I’ve seen maps at the kalif’s palace in Qurtubah. I know how to read them.”
“Qurtubah!” But the count’s exclamation was voiced so softly that she deemed it better not to respond. She was not sure how much Alain had told his father, and she did not want to risk betraying to the count that, in one matter at least, Alain had concealed her secrets from his father.
After a long pause, she set one end of the thread between the two block towers representing Gent and lay it down stretching westward, its other end coming to rest beyond the sticks that marked the uplands above the river plain. Then she frowned and moved the line of sticks back a bit. “The river plain is broader here. Lord Wichman must know the lay of the ground better than I, since he’s been raiding through this area for months.”
“Lord Wichman is brave but foolish. I will use him as I judge fit.” The count examined the little map, then moved the placement of the fort so that it rested on the plain but up against the uplands, near the place where the tunnel supposedly had its end. “River’s mouth,” he said, touching that place and having evidently forgotten—or dismissed—young Lord Wichman. “Gent. A fortified camp. A secret tunnel. The Eika have ships, foot soldiers, and herds. Wichman’s last scout brought in news that there are forty-seven ships beached near Gent. I know from my own experience that each ship can carry about thirty Eika. With Lord Wichman joining me I have about seven hundred soldiers, a third of whom are cavalry.”
“But that means they have twice as many soldiers as we do! Shouldn’t we wait here at Steleshame for King Henry?”
“Who knows when King Henry will arrive?” asked the captain. “Or if some other conflict distracts him? Nay, lass, we can’t wait on an army that may never come. And certainly not in a place like this holding, where there aren’t supplies enough to keep us fed and with the Eika raiding at their will, should they wish to harass us here. You can be sure they have scouts in these woods, watching us just as our scouts have gone ahead to watch them.”
“We will leave a messenger here to tell Henry where we are, if he arrives,” added the count. An odd light of excitement glinted in Lavastine’s expression, a man who has seen his heart’s desire and at last knows which path will lead him to it. “Bloodheart may have numbers,” he said, “but I have a plan.”
“Did you see how Count Lavastine praised my singing last night!” It was morning, and Master Helvidius could not contain his excitement. “The counts of Lavas are great landholders in Varre, practically dukes given the power they can wield. Of course, they have no blood connection to the royal line. Still, a lord of his consequence will wish to have a poet of my gifts in his retinue.”
Anna stood stunned. “You’d leave us?”
“Mistress Gisela doesn’t appreciate my verse. And she’s lost most of her wealth with this war. I’d be better off attaching myself to a new household.” He hesitated.
The salad leaves picked yesterday lay in a chipped soapstone bowl, itself gleaned from the ruins of the tannery after the Eika attack. Anna had traded the tansy for a cup of barley from last season’s scant harvest, and now Helen chewed happily on a little cake of spring pudding: barley mixed with chopped bistort, dandelion leaves, and nettle tops, boiled in a bag, then fried in lard on a battered tin sheet over the fire.
“Of course, you could come with me,” he finished, but reluctance dragged on his words.
“But Matthias can’t walk, not to follow a lord like that. I don’t even know where Varre is. Poor little Helen probably can’t walk so far either, and I can’t imagine they’d give such as us a place in a wagon.”
Helvidius grunted, irritated now, and bit at his nails. He always had clean hands, which Anna admired. “Eh, what matter? They’ll likely all die fighting the Eika at Gent. But perhaps I can sing to them tonight. I suppose they’ll march on in the morning.”
After all she and Matthias had done for him, how could Master Helvidius even think of leaving them? How could she forage if there was no one to watch over Helen during the day? But she did not voice these thoughts out loud. Instead, she took three of the little cakes and two handfuls of the fresh greens, wrapped them in the corner of her shawl, and walked over to the corner of Steleshame that stank of the tannery.
Crowded already, the large inner yard of Steleshame was now packed with Court Lavastine’s army. They had bivouacked anywhere they could find room, making themselves free with the well—and not even the whole of the army had encamped inside. Many remained outside to dig a ditch around the palisades as a first line of defense in case the Eika raided again.
But none of Lavastine’s soldiers paid any attention to her except to avoid bumping into her as she wove her way through their ranks or pressed past those of the Steleshame people who had come forward to offer berries or bread in exchange for news. At the tannery, she found Matthias sitting on his stool. She paused to watch him. His face was as pale as the bleached winter sky, but he worked vigorously. She waited until he had finished scraping the hair side of the skin pegged out before him, then spoke his name.
He turned, smiled, then frowned when she opened her shawl and offered him the food. “There’ll be bread tonight and a porridge. You should eat that yourself.”
“I’ve had plenty,” she said, and for once it was true. “You’re never given enough. You know it’s true, Matthias. Now don’t argue with me.”
He was tired enough and hungry enough that this time he didn’t argue, only ate. He had barely finished the scant meal when, looking over her should
er, his eyes widened and he grabbed his stick and heaved himself to his feet.
“Matthias!” she exclaimed, but he made a sign with his hand and dipped his head. She spun.
Ai, Lady! She touched her Circle, traced her finger around it, and gaped. Lord Wichman might be the son of a duchess, but he was nowhere near as fine as this noble lord and his son, who even fresh off the march looked as grand as Anna supposed the king might. The noble lord was not as tall or robust as Lord Wichman, who walked beside him, but he had the same kind of brisk and effortless pride which she had noticed in the master currier back in Gent, when Matthias first apprenticed in the tanning works: Such a man—or woman—knew their domain, and that they commanded it absolutely. No doubt the master currier was dead now; she had never seen him among the refugees at Steleshame and supposed he had stayed behind during the final attack to defend his beloved demesne.
This lord had hair as colorless as the sand, a narrow face, pale blue eyes, and a keen gaze. He paused to speak to one of the workmen, indicating some leather which lay over a beam, and asked if the tannery had any leather cured and finished enough that his soldiers might use it to repair their armor. Lord Wichman fidgeted, having no patience for this sort of practical talk, and turned to speak to the lordling who stood at Count Lavastine’s side.
“Don’t stare!” whispered Matthias, nudging her with his free hand.
Master Helvidius had said that the count traveled with his son. Yet this young man was half a head taller than the count and had black hair rather than pale. He wore a padded coat worked with silver-and-gold thread in the outline of a hound, and, indeed, two huge black fierce-looking hounds walked meekly at his heels. He and his father were also attended by the Eagle. In the daylight Anna could see that her skin had not the tone of soot at all but rather that of a certain honey-colored soft leather prized by rich merchants for gloves.
