Elliott, Kate - Crown of Stars 3 (69 page)

He went back and felled the tree he had come for, then set to the tedious work of trimming branches off the trunk of the great fir. He paused only to take bread and cheese and ale in the midafternoon, and several times to sharpen his ax, but even so, as dusk neared, he had only cleared half of it. His back ached, and his tunic was clammy with sweat. He slung the sheathed sword over his back and headed downslope on an animal track.

Firs and spruce gave way to oak, to beech and ash, then to orchard. He paused at the vineyard to pluck a few ripe grapes and, savoring these, went on. Shadows drew long over the dilapidated stone tower, the old sheds, and the newly-finished hall, so raw that it still seemed to gleam. Heribert worked at the sawhorse, stripped to the waist with his robes tucked into his belt. He had the slight elegance of a cleric, wiry now with muscle, and the callused hands of a carpenter. He was planing smooth a plank.

"Peace, Brother," said Sanglant, laughing as he came up. "You'll shame me if you don't stop working and join me at the pond." Heribert grinned without looking up from his work. "Some day," Sanglant observed, "I expect an avalanche to wipe out this entire unnatural valley, but, by God, while the rest of us flee to safety, you'll stand your ground and be swallowed up under it because you damned well are determined to get a last corner curved just so."

Heribert chuckled, but he continued to work. His ever-present helper, a robust creature who seemed as much wood as air, blew wood shavings off the plank as quickly as they flew up from the plane. Sanglant sat on a neat stack of unfinished planks that he and Heribert had sawed out of logs over the last week, and several servants settled around him like so many contained whirlpools of air. He had become accustomed to their presence. While Heribert finished the plank to his liking and touched up the corners, the prince watched two of the magi, one old woman and one young one, who sat outside the stone tower on a crude bench arguing in a language he didn't know. They were too far away to hear him and Heribert, and as usual did not appear to notice them.

"I dearly would like to see our Sister Zoe naked even just one time, for I think she must be a rare sight to behold under that robe."

Heribert snorted as he measured the corners with a square, then grunted, satisfied with the proportions.

"But I fear me," continued Sanglant, "that she despises the male kind."

"Or the male member." Heribert shrugged the sleeves of his cleric's robe back on and retied the rope belt at his waist. The servant made the odd noise that signified "farewell," and slipped away into the uncut logs piled nearby. "She was married very young to a man who used her cruelly, so I've heard. She killed him with a spell when she was sixteen, after three years of abuse in his bed."

Sanglant shook his head. "If only she'd done it sooner! How came she here?"

"She fled to her aunt, who was a nun at St. Valeria. By one means and the other they ended up here."

"Ah," said Sanglant. "But which is the aunt?"

"Dead, now, so they say." Heribert had started to put away his tools. Now he paused. "Do you think Sister Zoe is the one trying to kill you?"

"Who can know? Sister Zoe and Brother Severus prefer not to speak to me at all. They despise me, I think. To Sister Meriam, I am an object of complete indifference. To our fine and mighty Sister Anne, I do believe I am only another tool, one she hasn't yet discovered a use for." He gestured toward the older woman who sat next to the voluptuous Zoe. "Only Sister Venia treats me kindly."

Heribert colored. "The more subtle they are the more fair they appear. Do not trust her."

"So you have said before, and since she is your aunt, I suppose I must trust your judgment since you surely know her far better than I do. A fair face can conceal a foul heart." He grinned, thinking of Hugh. Although it was certainly no Godly sentiment, he liked to remember how he'd last seen Hugh, bleeding and beaten on the ground, at the mercy of the dogs. But thinking of the dogs made him think of his father, and he sighed. Two of the servants brushed against him, their light touch like balm on his scratched-up skin.

"You'd think Sister Anne would put a stop to the attempts to kill you," Heribert was saying as he tied up his tools in a cleverly-sewn pouch of his own devising.

"Maybe it's a test. Or perhaps she doesn't know."

Heribert laughed sharply. "I don't believe there is anything she doesn't know. But surely Liath might have some insight into her mother's mind that we lack. You should confide in her."

He considered, but finally shook his head. "Nay. It would worry her needlessly, and she would insist we leave—and that, I fear, would cause more problems than it would solve in every way. She needs to be here, at least until the child is born and she has recovered her strength." Then he smiled wryly. "And in any case, Heribert, I haven't found that she can keep secrets very well, although she thinks she does. If she gets angry, she'll blurt it all out and accuse everyone just because she is so indignant on my behalf. I like knowing that they don't know that I know."

"Unless they do know that you know, and, knowing that, know that you believe that they don't know that you know, so that this is only a more convoluted game than even you perceive, my friend."

"Ah, but you forget that I was raised on the king's progress. Certainly I have seen almost every knot that can be tied when it comes to intrigue."

Heribert hesitated, looking troubled. "You must be careful, my lord prince," he said, using the title as he always did when he meant to tease, or to be serious. "A nest of mathematici is a nest of dangerous creatures, indeed."

"Why do you stay, Heribert?" asked Sanglant suddenly.

Heribert's smile was mocking. "I fear leaving more than I fear staying. I'm not a brave man, as you are, my lord prince. I'm not a warrior in my heart, as many churchmen are. I'm afraid of what they'll do to me if I try to go. In any case, there
is
no way out except through the stone circle, none that I've ever found. I don't know the secrets of the stone." He put his leather tool pouch away in the shed he and Sanglant had built beside their working ground, where Heribert now slept. "Truth be told, I'm content here. I was never given a chance to build before."

"Well, my dear friend," replied Sanglant, standing, "it's a handsome edifice you've built. But right now I want to be clean. Shall we go?"

The servants swirled around him as he rose, tickling his chin and tweaking his ears. He had enough natural quickness that he could pinch them in turn, a form of teasing they delighted in because he could do no harm to their aetherical bodies. Laughing, he chased them until they scattered, their delicate laughter chiming on the breeze. Heribert only shook his head and, together, the two men went to the pond to wash themselves free of the sweat and dust of an honest day's work.

Sister Venia, formerly known as Biscop Antonia of Mainni, watched her illegitimate son and his companion vanish into the dusk. Perhaps it was inevitable that the two men, thrown together under such circumstances, would become friends. Whatever his virtues, Prince Sanglant was uncouth, uneducated, and only half human, scarcely a fit companion for a young man who had been molded carefully from childhood on to become the ornament of wisdom and the shining vessel of God's grace. Still, the prince could hardly fail to be uplifted by the company of such an astonishingly fine young cleric.

"I don't like the way he looks at me," said Sister Zoe abruptly. "He has a lewd eye."

"Brother Heribert?" cried Antonia, astounded by the accusation.

'

"Heribert? Nay, I speak of Prince Sanglant."

"Ah, yes. He is much attached to the flesh, I believe."

Zoe shuddered.

"None of us can escape the flesh." Brother Severus emerged from .the tower, lantern in hand. "Not while we still walk on this earth, at any rate. He's a bad influence on the girl. As long as he is around, there is no hope she can learn with a focused mind. Pregnant!" He said the word with distaste. "She is not what we were led to expect."

Zoe shuddered again. "It's disgusting. I can hardly stand to look at her, with that swelling belly. It's a deformity of the clean flesh she might have, had she kept herself a pure vessel."

"Who among us has been given leave to cast the first stone?" asked Antonia mildly. "Not one of the women in this valley is unstained, even Anne, who gave birth to the girl, after all. For the men, of course, I cannot speak." But she often wondered about Severus, the old prune. He had the kind of self-important arrogance that in her experience might cover a multitude of sins, now since conveniently forgotten.

He only raised an eyebrow. "That is of no matter. We expected a pure vessel, but now we receive one that is broken. It is not just this carnal marriage that has made her so, but her entire association with that creature. The prince is a danger to everything we've worked for. See how the servants cluster around him when they ought to be engaged in tasks for us."

"Better under our eye than where he can work mischief hidden from us," retorted Antonia.

"An argument Sister Anne has used. It may even be true. But it seems to me that we could simply rid ourselves of him once and for all time, and that would be the end of it."

"He is not so easily killed," said Sister Anne, emerging from the tower with Sister Meriam walking slowly behind her, "although I am in agreement that his influence on Liathano works counter to our purposes."

Meriam had become increasingly frail over the past several months, and her voice was scarcely more than a whisper, thin and dry, but her mind had not lost any of its penetrating strength. "We were all young once, and the young are most susceptible to temptation. I sometimes think that only our absent Brother Lupus may have remained faithful to his vows."

"A commoner!" Severus looked toward the hall, now lit by wands of light that glowed as softly as will-o'-the-wisps. "Hardly the creature such as we ought to measure ourselves against, Sister Meriam."

"We had a saying in my country, Brother: that a rich man might as easily become a slave as a poor man might, if God so wills it. Fortune is fickle, and a poor man might become rich, or a slave become a general, by God's design."

"The sayings of infidels can be of little interest to us," retorted Severus coolly.

"Let us go in to supper," said Zoe, standing hastily. "Then perhaps we may eat our fill before the dog returns. I hate having to watch him eat."

"You must strive for detachment," said Sister Anne in a calm voice. "What disturbs you is not his presence but some lingering touch of the Enemy within your own soul."

Zoe flushed. Since the arrival of Sanglant, Zoe had begun habitually, and no doubt unconsciously, to smooth her robes down against her body whenever she spoke of the prince. She did so now, brushing white, soft hands never marred by manual labor along the azure linen of her robe. In a way, it was a relief to Antonia; Heribert might have noticed Zoe's lush charms, but it was now manifestly obvious that
she
had never noticed him. His purity was safe from her, at least. He noticed Liath, of course. Antonia had observed human nature for many years, and she had known at once that Liath had the unconscious warmth of beauty that attracts males as moths to the flame that will kill them. But Liath was pregnant, and her husband hovered at her side in all his bestial glory. Heribert would not interfere there. Males were easily led precisely because of their inclination to submit to any one of them who seemed stronger; that was why God had chosen women to administer Their church, because women were more rational.

"He has brought discord in his wake," said Severus, "but that, I suppose, is the legacy of his mother's blood."

Poor Sister Zoe was a passionate being, despite her wish to live the contemplative life. Still flushed and flustered, she set off for the hall. Antonia could smell roasted lamb and freshly baked bread. Anne glanced toward the open door to the tower, made some internal decision, and followed Zoe. Severus waited only long enough to accompany Sister Meriam at her slow pace. For once, Antonia missed Brother Marcus, who for all his haughtiness had more conversation than the rest combined and was not afraid to speculate on the goings-on in the world outside, but he had left weeks ago to travel to Darre.

A light still burned within the lower chamber of the old stone tower. Antonia glanced inside to see Liath seated on a bench at the new table recently built by prince and cleric. That they should set themselves to carpentry was appalling, of course, but on the other hand, the old table had been atrocious, gapped, listing, rotted at one corner. The new tables they had built for tower and hall were a great improvement.

Liath was reading, her finger tracing words across the vellum page, her lips forming the words as she read but rarely uttering an actual sound. She was the quietest reader Antonia had ever seen, uncannily silent: "Ah," Liath said suddenly, to herself. "If all things fall toward the center at an equal pressure, and if therefore the universe as a whole would be always pressing against the Earth on all sides and of a uniform nature, then the Earth would need no physical support to rest at the center of the universe."