Elliott, Kate - Crown of Stars 1 (50 page)

"Come," said the biscop in her usual kind voice. "You will serve at the feast tonight, Alain."

He shuddered. She even remembered his name.

"Prater Agius, I hope you are not too proud to serve as well."

"I will serve as I am bid."

But Alain heard the terrible pain welling up underneath the humble words.

Together they were escorted to the river and given some privacy to wash. Agius' expression had taken on such a cast of blankness that Alain feared for him. But the frater said nothing. He knelt on the bank and prayed silently while Alain washed his own face and hands, then, tentatively, peeled off his tunic and washed his chest and back. Finally, not sure when he would have such a chance again, he stripped and waded to the deepest part of the little river, up past his thighs, took a ragged breath, and went under.

He came up, spitting and coughing, into a boiling mass of hounds. They swam round him, their tails whipping against his skin. Rage nipped at him, and Sorrow swam on to the other side of the river and shook himself all over with such power that Alain, in the middle, felt the spray off his coat.

Unexpectedly, Alain felt a swell of simple joy. He laughed. Had not Rage and Sorrow chosen him as their companion? It seemed impossible for Biscop Antonia to harm him as long as the two hounds protected him.

He waded back to shore. Agius was still praying. If his eyes had lifted from his hands even once, Alain saw no sign of it.

"Wash yourself, my friend," said Alain finally. "Is it not what Our Lady would wish, that we appear before her cleansed?"

He was not sure Agius heard the words, so he shook out his clothing as best he could, let himself dry off, and dressed. The guards shifted at their positions, anxious to return their charges to the biscop's custody.

"You are right," said Agius suddenly. He took off his frater's robe. Under it, against his skin, he wore a coarse shirt woven of linen and horsehair. But Alain noticed at once that his leg, where Sorrow had bitten him, was dirty, red, and swollen. Before Alain could utter a word, Agius removed his hair shirt.

Alain could not restrain a gasp. Even the guards murmured in awe and horror.

The stiff cloth had rubbed Agius' skin raw. In places, the open skin was festering.

"Doesn't it hurt?" Alain whispered, feeling the pain like fire on his own back and chest.

Agius threw himself full length on the ground, hands clenched, awful tortured skin exposed. "It is no more than I deserve. I betrayed one for the other, only to find myself betrayed in return. Ai, Lady, I thought only to help the child, for the love I bore Frederic."

"But you saved your niece, surely?"

"Saved her from what? She still remains in Sabella's custody, since Sabella's creature now acts as biscop of Autun in Constance's place. I could not even take the child to safety, back to her mother's castle or to the king's progress. I pray that the king learns of these deeds soon, for they will make him very angry." He spoke more slowly now, almost savoring the words. "The king's anger is a terrible thing to behold." A slight moan escaped him, the sound of a creature mourning. "Ai, Lady, You will judge me harshly, as I deserve. I vowed to leave the world and enter Your service, and yet the world pursues me and grants no mercy from its burdens. Forgive me my sins. Let my belief in the true knowledge of Your Son's sacrifice grant me a measure of peace in my heart."

So on he went, back to his prayers. The guards muttered, listening and watching.

Alain did not know what to do. In an odd way, Agius reminded him of the piteous
guivre:
wounded and suffering in a cage made for it by others. Yet the
guivre
was of itself no pitiful thing; it had a fierce and hideous nobility, separate from human concerns.

After a bit, the hounds ventured closer, then nudged at Agius' prostrate body. The frater did not react to this threat. Perhaps Agius hoped, at that moment, they would tear him to pieces and have done with it. But instead, Sorrow licked at the wound on his leg and Rage licked the sores on his back.

Alain hurried forward to find Agius weeping silently. He knelt and whispered soothing words to him as he might to Aunt Bel's youngest daughter Agnes when she was caught in nighttime fears.

Finally, Agius let Alain help him into the water and wash.

But that night Agius did not eat, nor did he the next day as they marched on, leaving Autun behind. Only in the evening did Alain coax him to take a crust of old bread, scarcely fit for beggars.

Watched as they were, this piece of information was conveyed to Biscop Antonia. She took Alain aside the next morning and thanked him kindly for his care of Frater Agius.

"Although he professes a heresy," she said gently, "I hope to bring him back to his senses and into the church again."

But Alain feared, in Agius' silence and stubborn fixed stare, that the frater had taken into his head some kind of terrible idea, that he meant to do something rash or dangerous. Agius prayed incessantly, even while walking. At every halt in the march he spoke to a growing audience of the curious about the revelation of the Son, the blessed Daisan, through Whose sacrifice our sins are redeemed.

A MOUSE'S HUNGER
LET
us rest here," said Rosvita to her escort. She indicated a log that had, by the grace of Our Lady and Lord, come to rest like a bench just where the path broke out of the forest atop a ridge. From this plain but serviceable seat one could see the valley spread out below, the plaster and timber buildings of Hersford Monastery, the large estate, and the several villages strung like clusters of grapes along the Hers River.

She was not sure a magnate of Helmut Villam's stature would deign to sit on such a humble seat. But she sat down and, after a moment, handing the reins of his horse over to his son, so did he.

The thin wail of a horn carried to them on the stiff wind that blew along the ridge top. They watched as out of a copse below the king and his company emerged, bright banners signaling their passage.

A white banner marked with a red eagle in profile now flew among the other
—more familiar—pennants.

Duchess Liutgard of Fesse had arrived at Hersford Monastery yesterday. Hersford lay on the border between the duchies of Saony and Fesse; it was traditional for the reigning duke to escort the king across into her domain. Liutgard had inherited her position at a very young age
—and perhaps because of her youth she adhered strictly to the old forms.

"I fear you have missed the hunt," said Rosvita. What intrigues would be planted on today's hunt, their fruit to be harvested many months from now
—for good or forill?

Villam coughed, flushed from the exertion of toiling up the hill. A big man, he had spared his horse the last steep climb by leading it instead of riding. "The hunt is ever on, Sister Rosvita. Only the prey we hunt differs from chase to chase."

"Do you think King Henry is serious? That he intends to elevate the illegitimate child over the legitimate ones?"

Villam's smile was slight and self-mocking. "I am not an unprejudiced observer in this matter. If King Henry did indeed designate Sanglant as his heir, against all custom, then can it not be said / have a direct interest in promoting Sanglant's elevation?"

"How would that be so?" she asked, wondering if he would actually state outright what most people believed to be true: that he had stood by while his eldest daughter, Waltharia, carried on an affair of some months' duration with the charming Sanglant, an affair that had ended with her pregnancy by the prince and subsequent marriage to a sturdy young man of noble birth and pleasant manners.

But for answer, he only smiled knowingly. Behind, his son Berthold, standing close enough to listen in, gave a snort of amusement. It would be well to remember, thought Rosvita, that the lad had, as well as undoubted skill at arms, his father's ironical bent and a seemingly endless store of amiability.

"I think," said Villam suddenly, "the king must make up his mind to marry again. Queen Sophia has been at peace in the Chamber of Light for almost two years now, and the nuns have sung prayers in her memory through two Penitires. The king is strong, but it is always to the benefit of a man to be strengthened by marriage to a woman his equal in courage and wit."

She chanced to glance up at the son, who was obviously trying to suppress laughter. Since Villam was notorious even among the great princes of the realm for his weakness for comely young concubines, it was useful to know his children were aware of his fault and apt to judge him leniently despite it. She sighed. Now that King Henry had charged her with this errand, she knew she would be drawn more and more into the intrigues that journeyed along with the cavalcade of physical creatures and goods on the king's progress. The prospect gave her no pleasure. It would only take time away from her
History.

"He must choose carefully if he marries again," she said, resigning herself to the inevitable.

"When
he marries again. Henry is too shrewd to remain unmarried, and when a worthy alliance reveals itself, I am sure he will take advantage of it. Henry is a man like any other." Villam stroked his gray beard while he watched hounds and then riders vanish into a stand of wood. He wore his usual affable smile, but there was a certain reticence about his expression, a distance in his eyes as he contemplated the wood below, silent trees which concealed the hunting party within. "A man like any other. Except he has only the one bastard and wishes for no other. None can fault the king's piety."

"Indeed not," she hurriedly agreed. Certainly it was true.

"But it is not piety that stays him from
that
course."

"You are saying, Lord Helmut, that it is memory, not piety, that restrains him from taking a concubine. The events to which you refer occurred while I was still a novice at Korvei. You think he loves the woman still?"

"No
woman. I
am not sure I would call it love. Sorcery, more like. Understand this, Sister Rosvita. She

cared nothing for the rest of us." That same self-mocking smile teased his lips and vanished. "And I say that not only because I am a vain man and wished for her to acknowledge my interest in her, and was annoyed that she did not. Certainly, she was beautiful. She had also an arrogance worthy of the Emperor Tailiefer himself, were he to descend from the heavens and walk among us as she did then. But we were as nothing to her. Her indifference to the rest of us was as complete as ours is to
— He ran a hand along the smooth surface of the log, long since scoured free of its bark by wind and rain and sun. Picking up a tiny insect, he displayed it, let it crawl across the tips of his fingers, then flicked it casually away. It vanished among the weeds. "—this least of Our Lord's and Lady's creatures. Perhaps it was only a man's vanity, but I always felt she wanted something from Henry, not that she felt affection toward him. But I have never figured out what it was she wanted," "Not the child?"

"Why leave the child behind if she wanted it? The infant was not more than two months old. No." He shook his head. "Perhaps a sudden madness took her, and that was all. Perhaps, like the beasts of the field, her time came upon her, and Henry happened to be the bull at hand. Perhaps her kind do not think as we do and so we can never hope to fathom her actions and intent. Or perhaps, as some whisper, there are forces at work we are not aware of." He shrugged. "Sanglant is strong and brave, well versed in warfare, generous and loyal and prudent. But he is still a bastard, and a bastard he will always remain."

"So we are brought around again to our purpose here today. I have rested enough, Lord Helmut. Shall we go on?"

He nodded assent. His son handed him the reins to his horse and Rosvita took up her walking staff. She had been offered a donkey to ride, but she preferred to approach a hermit of such holy reputation in the most humble manner possible, as St. Thecla was said to have

approached the blessed Daisan when first she came to him begging to become his disciple.

On they went. In fact, she had put off the errand for several days, hoping Henry would change his mind and decide not to send her. But he had not changed his mind. Sympathy for Father Bardo's plight had forced her hand: As long as the king's progress remained at Hersford Monastery, the abbot had to feed them. Hersford was prosperous but not rich enough to host the king's entourage for longer than five or six days.

The broad dirt path soon became a thin weedy track that cut through undergrowth and in and out of stands of trees. Their party had to walk single file and the horses were much bothered by vegetation slapping into them. Rosvita, at the fore, apologized more than once for getting and letting a branch spring back directly into the head of Villam's son, but Berthold never complained. It was a still day, a little muggy, suggesting a hot summer to come.

The crown of the hill was not, as she had supposed, the same thick forest through which they had ascended. The path broke suddenly into sunlight and they emerged onto a level field strewn with great fallen stones and the scattered saplings and bushy undergrowth that marked this as a place once inhabited by people but now abandoned, being slowly overtaken by the forest beyond. Four mounds overgrown with lush grass and wild-flowers rose in the great clearing.

"I never knew the old Dariyans built on hills as high as this," said Villam, obviously surprised to find ruins here.