Night Blooming

by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

  Archbishop Ebroin was glad to do anything that would bring this wretched morning to an end; he made a blessing and clamped his jaw shut to keep nausea from rising; he did not trust himself to speak.

  “Archbishop Sigiberht will agree, I’m sure,” said Archbishop Reginhalt with a sideways glance at his sleeping colleague.

  “Therefore, when the Paschal season comes, you, Bishop Iso, and you, Bishop Freculf, will come to the King’s Court, and put yourself before the Bishops and Archbishops of Franksland—” Archbishop Ebroin intoned.

  Archbishop Reginhalt interjected. “The case will be put before His Holiness, Leo III, in Roma this winter, and he will give us the benefit of his meditations on the Pale Woman’s condition, and that will direct our decisions.”

  “Amen,” said Archbishop Ebroin. “We will be able to arrive at a decision then.”

  Bishop Freculf reverenced the Archbishops. “Then this Pale Woman will be vindicated, for the Pope is a man of great sanctity and he will know her for what she is.”

  “So I hope,” said Bishop Iso stingingly, and reverenced the three men on the high bench; then he turned on his heel and left the reception hall, signaling to Sorra Celinde to follow him; she hesitated, then rushed after him, her face averted from the curious stare of Bishop Freculf.

  “Enough of this,” said Archbishop Reginhalt, and reached out to shake Archbishop Sigiberht awake; the old prelate snorted suddenly and blinked.

  “What? How?” Archbishop Sigiberht exclaimed, sawing at the air with his right arm.

  “It is time we went for Sept,” said Archbishop Ebroin. “Our morning audience is finished.”

  “Oh. Sept,” said Archbishop Sigiberht as he managed to get to his feet and accompany his two peers off the high bench and out the private door to the reception hall.

  Bishop Freculf approached Gynethe Mehaut where she knelt on the stones. “If you will allow me to assist you to rise?” He held out his hands to her.

  She could not speak; drawing her hands back automatically, she tried to thrust them into her sleeves, but they left smears of blood on the heavy linen of her gonella and she looked about, dismayed. “Sublime … I am not worthy.…”

  He took her fingers as if unafraid of the perplexing wounds in her hands. “I will summon a slave to bind your hands again. You need not fear that you will take any hurt from me.” He lifted her to her feet and stepped back from her. “I thank you for permitting me to assist you.”

  Gynethe Mehaut could think of nothing to say in response. She reverenced Bishop Freculf to cover her confusion. “Sublime honors me beyond my station.”

  “How much like a Saint you are,” said Bishop Freculf, and ducked his head before turning away and leaving Gynethe Mehaut by herself, her palms pressed together, letting the blood run down her arms and drip slowly onto the stone floor.

  TEXT OF A LETTER FROM COMES ZWENTIBOLD IN CARINTHIA TO FRATRE BERAHTRAM AT PADERBORN, CARRIED BY MISSI DOMINICI AND DELIVERED AT THE BEGINNING OF THE SEASON OF THE NATIVITY.

  To the most devoted and loyal Fratre Berahtram, the greetings of the Comes Zwentibold currently in the citadel at Reicsnau in Carinthia, in October of the Pope’s year 798.

  Good Fratre, I send this to implore you to come to Reicsnau for the purpose of tending our wounded. Your reputation as a healer has spread through Karl-lo-Magne’s lands, and it reveals that you are a most blessed monk, with skills exceeding those of even the Jewish physicians. I have sent a petition to the King, as well, asking that he authorize you a military escort to this place where you may attend the soldiers wounded in Great Karl’s cause. It is my hope that he will grant what I ask, for the sake of my men who suffer and die with only nuns to wipe their brows as fever claims them and bears them to the Gates of Heaven as martyrs.

  It is my hope that you will be able to bring other monks with you, but if this is not to be, then I must rely upon you alone to see to the men here. Surely you can save these men and restore them to strength and health. I pray you will come before the end of winter, but if you must wait until spring, I must warn you that more of my men will be dead or crippled for lack of your care.

  My own officers will escort you if the King will not send his own soldiers with you, so great is our need for you. I am told that a number of suffering men have been restored by what you did for them. If God has given you the knowledge to heal, it is fitting that you spend your time in the service of the King, who is the sword and strength of the Holy Church, and the champion of the Pope.

  It is right that I seek your help, and right that you give it, for it preserves the frontiers of all Franksland, and thereby brings greater strength and glory to the Church through the conquests of Karl-lo-Magne, who will deliver all Christendom from the toils of the pagans and the servants of the Patriarch in Constantinople, whose agents seek to enter Franksland along this border. In defending our land and our faith, we have a high cost levied upon us by our enemies. Let you not aid them by refusing to come to our succor, which is the obligation of every man in Orders and every subject of Great Karl, no matter how high or low his birth, or what his station in life. You cannot doubt that it is God’s Will that you marshal your powers and come to bring us to the victory we seek for our King and our faith.

  The certainty of your coming will lend purpose to my soldiers, and fortify them for our hard days ahead. With your prayers, we will be heartened. With your unguents, seals, tinctures, and salves, we will be proof against all damage and injury.

  Comes Zwentibold

  by the hand of Fratre Othmar

  Chapter Thirteen

  IN THE ORCHARD ON THE FAR SIDE of the fields there was a group of young men and women tossing fruit and seeds into the air; a few of them were singing, and the women embraced the trees, straddling the trunks as if they were their lovers. Leaves drifted on the ground, and the air was chill as the afternoon drew to a close; but the peasants continued their celebration, their ritual of inspiring the trees demanding that they remain in the orchard until every tree had been given their attention. The air smelled of wood-smoke, old fruit, and fungus; the wind slithered through the bare branches and across the stubbled fields.

  Rorthger was riding beside Rakoczy as they completed his tour about his fiscs. “There will be a bonfire in the village of Monasten tonight, to celebrate the last of the harvest. It is the custom: there will be new beer and new wine, so you know how it will end. It is the last feast until the Nativity, and the villagers make the most of it.” He chuckled. “They have killed two pigs and a goat for the feast. You will be expected; they all want to see you, and it would cause much offense if you were not to attend.”

  “Then I will do so, until it becomes too … confused,” said Rakoczy, nodding at the peasants in the orchard. “I’m sorry I’ve been gone so long, old friend; it was not my intent,” he went on in the Persian tongue. “You’ve had to contend with more than you should have had to.”

  “At least you were still in Franksland, and free,” said Rorthger, recalling more than one time in the past when Rakoczy’s absence had been far more ominous.

  “And you are safe, as well,” said Rakoczy, as if sensing Rorthger’s memories; he and Rorthger were past the orchard now and let their horses canter along the damp road. They kept to the verge, where there were no ruts and footing was safer for their mounts. “In another month, nothing will move on these tracks; they will be mires and bogs.”

  “Only the old Roman roads will be usable,” Rorthger agreed.

  “Which Karl-lo-Magne is prudent enough to maintain, after a fashion,” said Rakoczy. “He uses the old roads for his troops.”

  “They are safer for mounted men than any other lane or byway,” Rorthger commented. “And faster, as well. If he had military barges, such as they have in China, he might use the rivers to speed his soldiers.”

  “When the rivers freeze, some sledges will travel on them, but not very far; his couriers use ice skates and stay off the mired roads,” said Rakoczy, adding, “He w
as pleased with the skates I made him for that purpose; it was one of the reasons he let me leave Court for a time.” As he tugged his grey mare to a walk he shifted the direction of their conversation. “How many foals will we have in spring, do you think?”

  “Well, nine mares have settled, and allowing for the loss of one, eight should be born,” Rorthger said, moving ahead of Rakoczy as the verge narrowed.

  “And how many were bred to Olivia’s stallion?” Rakoczy asked. “He’s a good size, and the King will be pleased if the foals are large.”

  “Olivia believes, based on his performance at her estate, that he is prepotent,” said Rorthger, passing on what Olivia’s mariscalcus told him. “If this is so, his get should be like their sire.”

  “We can hope that this proves the case,” said Rakoczy. “It would be wise to present Karl-lo-Magne with a pair of large colt-foals; they are what he values personally the most, after women.”

  “A man of his heft, I should think so. We shall see what the six mares in foal to Livius produce. That is the stallion’s name, according to the mariscalcus, and so we call him; Olivia probably intended it as a joke. Come spring, we’ll have more mares for him to cover; I have purchased seven from estates in the region, and two more from Sant’ Cyricus. I have already offered his services to the Potenti in the region.” Rorthger pointed to a stand of berry-vines. “I will bring the goats to eat this back.”

  “Better have one of the local peasants do it—with my goats. Otherwise there may be complaint that I am taking away their summer berries at the cost of the road, or that I am showing favor to one village more than another.” He followed Rorthger into the cover of a copse of beech, oak, and larch, becoming almost invisible in the dim, mottled light; only his grey horse stood out in the gloom, unlike Rorthger and his mouse-dun, who blended with the shadows.

  “If that were the worst of it,” Rorthger said with a worried expression.

  “I haven’t been here enough, I know,” Rakoczy said quietly. “The villagers do not trust me, and anything I do is regarded as suspicious.”

  “That is only a part of it,” said Rorthger, guiding his horse through the trees with the ease of experience; Rakoczy fell back and followed him. “There are other problems, I fear.”

  “Of course there are,” said Rakoczy with a sigh. “I am foreign, and that makes everything I do highly questionable.”

  “That’s the heart of it,” Rorthger agreed. “There are secondary issues, but that’s all they are: secondary.” They crossed a small bridge and continued on toward a cluster of thatched-roof buildings.

  Rakoczy reined in for a moment. “Who is the headman here?”

  “Vulfoald. He’s a woodsman, and the village butcher,” said Rorthger. “He has two wives, although he only claims to have one, to keep the monks at Sant’ Cyricus from interfering in the village.”

  “Vulfoald,” said Rakoczy, memorizing it. “What else can you tell me about him?”

  Rorthger was ready with an answer. “He is a strong man who thinks that he is wise rather than stubborn. The villagers are half-afraid of him. Be direct with him, or he will not extend himself at all; he is a hard man, and a bully.” He started his mouse-dun moving again.

  “Many village leaders are. Their lives make them so.” Rakoczy looked around, noticing half-a-dozen men driving sheep and pigs into the pens at the edge of the village. He kneed his grey mare to begin her walking once more.

  “They have two ponies for the hard work,” said Rorthger. “One is quite old and they will need a second one eventually.”

  “Then I must see that they have one; it is my responsibility to provide them with a means of doing the work the fisc requires, as Karl-lo-Magne reminded me before he let me leave Aachen,” said Rakoczy, thinking back to that short interview conducted while the King pored over maps of Carinthia and ordered his horse for the morning hunt. “Who breeds the best ponies in the region?”

  “Hosfurt at Stavelot is reckoned to breed the best ponies, or so I have been told,” Rorthger said, turning around in his saddle to speak directly to Rakoczy.

  “Then let us make arrangements with this Hosfurt to purchase a stallion for this village; so that they may breed more for themselves and will not need to ask for another pony in ten years,” said Rakoczy, lowering his voice so he could not easily be overheard.

  “If you don’t mind, my master, I will purchase several ponies, to provide all the villages in your fiscs with at least one. Given the tenor of these people and their rivalries, it would not be sound dealing to have it appear that you favor one village over another.”

  Rakoczy nodded. “Yes. I agree. Well, I shall make more gold for you this winter, and come spring, you may buy a whole herd of ponies for the villages of my fiscs.”

  Rorthger signaled his assent to this plan. “I shall attend to it, my master.” He paused, going on carefully, “I realize we should not discuss this where your mansionarii can hear, and this may be the most advantageous time.”

  “What is it, old friend?” Rakoczy asked, hearing the unease in Rorthger’s voice. He switched to the Mongol tongue. “It won’t matter who overhears.”

  “The peasants don’t like to be reminded you’re foreign,” Rorthger said in the same language, then sighed. “Will you be bringing your mistress to your villa? You invited her a month since, and I will have to make some preparation if you are anticipating her arri—”

  “No,” said Rakoczy. “She will not come here; I have it in a note from Optime himself. Karl-lo-Magne is pleased to send her to me when I am at his Court, but he will not permit her to venture beyond it; I may turn her from her purpose of watching me for him, and I may offend her husband’s kinsmen, which would lead to trouble for the King.”

  “But the King arranged your liaison,” said Rorthger.

  “So he did, and he will support it as long as it suits his purpose. When Odile can no longer provide what he wants, he will present her with a new lover.” There was a bleak expression at the back of his dark eyes. “And she will acquiesce in his commands, for otherwise she would be entirely at the mercy of her husband’s family.”

  “It doesn’t sound very satisfying,” Rorthger remarked.

  “Oh, she is a willing-enough lover, and she doesn’t mind what I require of her—or not too much. She is loyal to the King, as she must be, for he will protect her from her husband’s kin. Accepting the lovers he approves is a small price to pay for this. And with me, serving him is not unpleasant.” He laughed once, the sound melancholy. When he spoke again, it was in Frankish. “She has so little that is her own.”

  Three ragged children emerged from the brush at the side of the track and, pointing at the newcomers, ran toward the village, yelling something in the local dialect that neither Rakoczy nor Rorthger could understand.

  Rakoczy looked toward the center of the village, and then at the fading sky overhead. “It is getting late. The monks will be singing Vespers shortly. We should return to the villa when we’re through here. What do they call this place?”

  “Cnared Oert.” He pronounced the strange syllables with care. “The monks call it Sant’ Trinitas, to keep the ban on the old regional tongue.” Rorthger dropped his voice. “There has been trouble about that.”

  “This is not the only place with such trouble.” Rakoczy drew in his grey and swung out of the saddle, then stood, holding the mare’s reins, while he waited for the peasants to respond to his presence.

  Rorthger dismounted and approached Rakoczy with a great display of respect. “Let me hold your mare, Magnatus,” he said in Frankish, and went to take the reins from Rakoczy.

  A man in a discolored, double-woolen tunica came out of a wooden shed, a long, thick staff of wood in his hand. “Who is this?” he growled, not looking directly at Rakoczy.

  Rorthger answered. “This is Magnatus Rakoczy, Comes Sant’ Germainius, friend of Karl-lo-Magne, and hobu of four fiscs, master of this place.” He spoke it loudly enough to be heard all through the
village. “Come forward to greet him.”

  The children, who had reached the center of the place ahead of them, were shouting and pointing; the youngest was pale with fear, the older two posturing their bravery. A woman in the regional costume came rushing out of one of the houses and grabbed the children, hustling them away from the open center of the village. Other men and women began to gather at the far end of the open center, their demeanors wary and their glances hostile. Rakoczy noticed that all the young women were sent into the houses as soon as they appeared in the village center, and he wondered again how Comes Udofrid had used these people when he had title to the fiscs.

  Finally a big man almost as tall as Rakoczy, with a brutish, bearded face and wearing a tunica of rough-cured leather over his banded trews, shouldered his way through the assembled people and stood facing Rakoczy, his arms folded, his bearing as pugnacious as he dared to be. “I am Vulfoald. I am headman here.”

  “This is Magnatus Rakoczy,” said Rorthger. “He is hobu of this fisc.”

  “So we have heard.” His accent was so thick it was hard to make out what he was saying, but Rakoczy listened intently. “Why is he here?”