In the Ruins (30 page)

She lifted the latch and opened the door for him to slide through, careful as he balanced the pole on his shoulders so that the buckets would not clang against the walls.

In this fine chamber a middle-aged man with attractive features strummed a lute and sang a cheerful song about the fox that devoured the chickens despite the farmer’s efforts to hold it at bay. Tapestries covered the walls, and a dozen or more lamps, fearsome guivres with flame spouting from their eye sockets, gave light to the pleasant company collected around Lady Sabella. Her hair was half gone to gray, but she seemed otherwise vigorous and alert as she reclined on a couch and chatted with a circle of companions: several noblewomen, two men in cleric’s robes, and a blond man who sat with his back to Ivar. Two stewards
waited beside the hearth next to a table laden with platters of meat and bowls of sweets and fruits, lightly picked over but otherwise ignored. They watched for any sign or gesture from their mistress. One marked the entry of the two servants and nodded at them briskly, a signal to get on with their work.

A third cleric sat at a writing desk, intent on his calligraphy, head bowed and pen scratching easily on parchment. Ivar skipped over him and fixed his gaze on the back of the blond man seated beside Sabella. There was something wrong about his shoulders. They were too broad, and his hands, when he gestured, were as wide as paddles, the hands of a man comfortable wielding a great sword with little thought for its weight and the thickness of the pommel.

Definitely not Baldwin.

“Hsst!” Johanna nudged Ivar toward the brazier placed beside the writing desk.

Obviously Sabella kept Baldwin sequestered. Perhaps after they had replenished the coals in this chamber, they would move on to the noble duchess’ most intimate inner chambers.

He set down the buckets and looked up into the confounded gaze of the cleric who had, until an instant before, been so busy writing that his face had been concealed.

Writing!

His fingers were stained with smudges of ink. The parchment was virgin; no one had written on it before. Ivar had just enough experience of the cloister to know that the knife had seen little use in scraping away mistakes, although half the page was covered with flowing, handsome letters.

The cleric’s pale skin flushed pink, and a single tear trembled at the lower rim of his right eye. Snapping his mouth shut, he fixed his gaze back on his quill, checked the tip, dipped it in ink, and set back to work. The letters poured out of his hand fluidly, fluently. He wasn’t even copying from an exemplar, but writing from memory.

Even the masters at Quedlinhame, who had spoiled him because of his handsome face and pliant manners, had
agreed that Baldwin was too stupid to learn to read and write beyond the simplest colloquies meant to teach ten year olds.

Johanna appeared at Ivar’s elbow, nudging his foot. He winced, and aided her as she stoked up this brazier and moved on to the rest placed around the chamber to warm Lady Sabella and her entourage where they lounged at their ease.

“As dreary as this winter has been, at least the Eika have not raided,” the blond warrior was saying.

“Nay, Amalfred, all last year they confined their raids to Salia,” remarked one of the women. “Easy pickings there.”

“If Salia falls, then why not strike at us?” he retorted.

“We shall see. The merchants say it’s too early to sail yet, that the tides and winds aren’t favorable. They say some kind of enchantment has troubled the seas. We’ll be safe if the winds keep the Eika from our shores.”

“Perhaps.” Lady Sabella’s gaze flicked incuriously over the two servants as they went about their task in silence. She glanced toward the cleric, who was bent again over his writing.

Ivar could not interpret the way her lips flattened into a thin line that might betoken suppressed passion, or disgust. The two emotions were, perhaps, related, he supposed as he kept his face canted away from her. He had himself swung wildly between those feelings, back in the days when restraint had been the least of his concerns, when he and Baldwin had run away with Prince Ekkehard and his companions. Right now, however, he was as flushed and out of breath as if he’d been running. Who could have thought he had missed Baldwin so very dearly?

“Perhaps?” asked the warrior. He was a man boasting perhaps thirty years. He spoke with the accent of the west and was most likely a border lord. “Pray enlighten us with your wisdom, Your Highness.”

“Perhaps,” she repeated, her gaze sliding smoothly away from Baldwin, as if he were of no account. “The Eika are not all that threaten us, although it is true they raided all along the Salian shore last summer and autumn. According to reports.”

“My lands are overrun with Salians,” said one of the women.

“With our stores low, their presence threatens us,” answered Sabella. “We must act in concert to drive them back to their homes.”

“What of those who accept the truth?” asked the lord. “The heresy of the Translatus is still accepted by the apostate clergy in Salia. If the refugees who have accepted the truth return home, they will be executed.”

“Then their blood will be on the hands of their masters. God will judge. But the winter has been cold. Our stores are low. Strange portents trouble us. Nothing has been the same since that terrible storm that struck last autumn. I have refugees of my own from within my duchy to feed. I cannot feed Salians as well. Let the Eika conquer them—and feed them! To the fishes, if necessary.”

“Ha! They say there are people in the sea who eat human flesh.”

“They say some in the west who are starving eat human flesh, Lord Amalfred,” observed Sabella.

“Brixians, perhaps. They’re the only Salians who would degrade themselves in such a way.”

“My lord,” said one of the clerics sternly, “if such folk are starving, then God enjoins us to give them aid and compassion.”

“Well,” continued Amalfred boldly, “if Lady Sabella grants me those stores, then I can feed my restless soldiers who mutter about rebellion.”

“I pray you, Your Highness,” said Baldwin without looking up from his writing desk. How pleasing his voice was, compared to the coarser voices of Sabella’s companions. “Those rations of grain are meant to go to the poor in Autun, Your Highness. There are so many who haven’t enough to eat.”

“The poor of Autun cannot aid me,” said Sabella, “but Lord Amalfred’s hungry soldiers can fight to protect the Varren borderlands.”

“And gain a little territory in Salia for themselves,” added one of her companions.

Sabella laughed, but she looked again, frowning, at the
pair of servants. “Haven’t you done? What slow pair of fools has been foisted on me now? What are your names?”

“I pray you, Your Highness,” said Baldwin sweetly without looking up from his writing desk. “I have forgotten again whether it is the monastery of Firsebarg or that of Felden which desires a new abbot to rule over them, now that their lord father has been absent so long.”

“Firsebarg, Baldwin! Why won’t you attend the first time I tell you things. My sister Rotrudis’ useless whelp, Reginar, has gone missing since last year. Must I remember everything for you?”

Johanna tugged on Ivar’s sleeve, and he hastily followed her out of the chamber by a side door. They came into a narrow courtyard abutting the wall.

“Wait here a moment, I pray you,” Johanna said, indicating he should set down the buckets. “I must use the necessary. Then we’ll get on with our work.”

She had lit a taper from one of the braziers and by its light slipped into one of the closed stalls built out from the wall.

Up here on the height it was cold and the wind bit hard. He blew on his hands and stared about him, but there wasn’t much to see. A pair of torches lit a distant gate. He could not see the town below but felt the expanse of air. All other souls slept. Only Lady Sabella had riches enough to burn oil at night.

He stared at the door, and at last it creaked open and creaked shut. A light appeared, and a pale head loomed before him. Without speaking, he grabbed the cap that covered Ivar’s head and ripped it off, then held the lamp close to see the color of his hair. With a muttered oath more like a moan than words, he grabbed Ivar’s left hand first, released it, and grasped the right one. There winked the lapis lazuli ring, gleaming in lamplight.

He shut his beautiful eyes and his legs gave out as he sank onto the stone in an attitude of prayer. His hands shook, and Ivar pulled the lamp from his grasp before he dropped it.

“Ai, God. How can it be? You were dead. I saw you myself. I touched you. I pressed that ring onto your cold hand. You were dead.”

“It was a ruse, Baldwin. I am sorry you had to suffer, not knowing the truth.” He set down the lamp and, hesitantly, placed a hand on Baldwin’s shoulder. “I was never dead, only drugged. I escaped from Queen’s Grave to take a message to Princess Theophanu.”

Baldwin surged up and embraced Ivar tightly, bursting into tears.

Ivar was at first too choked up to speak, but he understood how little time they had. “Surely your absence will be noted.”

“Yes, yes,” murmured Baldwin into his shoulder. “I came out to use the necessarium, but she’ll wonder and suspect. She keeps me prisoner. You can’t imagine how awful she is, always watching me.”

“You saved our lives.”

“I know.” He said the words not with anger or accusation, but simply because they were the truth.

He released Ivar, then grasped his hands in his own and stared keenly at him. There was a look in Baldwin’s handsome face that had never been there before, but Ivar could not identify what it was. The light from the lamp, shining up from below, highlighted the perfect curve of his cheekbones and lent sparks to his lovely eyes. The midnight blue of his robes blended into the night, making him appear almost as an apparition, not a real human being at all. He had lost none of his unfortunate beauty.

“Why are you here, Ivar? I knew you wouldn’t abandon me.”

“Will you escape with me, tonight?”

“Yes.”

“I need one thing.”

“What?”

“Parchment, ink and quill, Lady Sabella’s ducal seal, and a person who can write in the manner of her schola. We’ll need a letter to the guard at Queen’s Grave, an order to release Biscop Constance and her retinue.”

“I can get those things by midnight,” said Baldwin.

“Even the seal?”

“Even the seal. I can write whatever you want.”

“I saw that—I saw—Baldwin, how did you learn to write
so well? Can you read now, too?” He grimaced, hearing how he sounded, but Baldwin neither smiled nor frowned.

“She doesn’t like it when I pray and act the cleric,” he said softly. “It reminds her of her daughter, so it gives her a disgust of me. That’s why I prayed so much, and practiced my letters so hard. Once I learned, I found I was good at it. Everyone says I have a beautiful hand for letters. They all praise me. I know every word in every capitulary and cartulary that comes out of her schola. I have the seal of Arconia, Ivar. I am the seal. That’s what she calls me. See?”

From the folds of his robe he pulled a small object tied to his belt. Ivar fondled it, feeling the ridges and depressions of a tiny carving impressed into stone. He hadn’t enough light to read its features, but it felt like the sigil of a prince by which that prince set her approval and authority onto every letter and document that left her schola.

“I’ll come as soon as all have gone to their beds. She won’t want me tonight because she’s in her blood. Meet me at the river gate. We’ll need horses.”

“That’s taken care of, Baldwin. But if you can slip away so easily, why haven’t you done so before?”

“Why would I? What have I to live for, if I am alone? Here, I had some hope of finding a way to free the others. I saw them.” His voice trembled at the edge of tears. “I saw them in Queen’s Grave, but we were never allowed to speak. I must go.”

He released Ivar’s hand, gave him a last, searching look, took the lamp, and hurried back inside. The door shut.

Ivar simply stood there, dumbfounded. His thoughts were all tumbled. He gasped in a breath that was also a cry.

“Hoo!” Johanna came up beside him so quietly that Ivar hissed in surprise. “That one! Some say he’s a saint.”

“A saint?” He was flushed, and trembling, and, truth to tell, a little irritated. Since when did Baldwin tell
him
what to do with so much cool assurance?

“He’s so even tempered, despite the way she treats him.”

“Does she abuse him?”

“She’s got a bad temper. She despises those she has no respect for, and treats them worse. She hates herself for loving his beauty so much. Duke Conrad’s the better
prince. All know that. But Lord Baldwin slips food to the starving and a kind word to the weary, behind her back. No natural person can be so beautiful. That’s why he must be favored by God. Now, come. We’ve one more chamber, and then I’m to take you back to the barracks.”

He pulled his cap back over his hair and followed her. His thoughts rolled all over each other in a confusing jumble that he just could not sort out. Nor had he managed it when at last Johanna delivered him to Captain Ulric and he gave his report to the captain and his companions.

“Very well,” said Ulric, who like most experienced military men knew how to act quickly. “Erkanwulf, you’ll ride south with the cleric after he has delivered the seal and the order.”

“Won’t he ride to Queen’s Grave with me?” asked Ivar.

“She’ll be after him. He’ll have to lead her on a chase while we rescue Biscop Constance. If they escape, they’ll meet up with us later. If that meets with your approval, my lord.”

When they had escaped the Quman, the others had looked to Ivar to lead them, but here it was different: he could only follow as the captain told him what they were going to do and only afterward asked permission as a courtesy, given the difference in their ranks.

Yet there was hope. He agreed to everything Captain Ulric said. Quietly and in shadows, the war band left their barracks by ones and twos. Slowly, the stables were emptied out. Ivar walked with Erkanwulf through deserted streets with a taper to light their way, leading four horses whose hooves clopped hollowly on the pavement of stone.