The Gathering Storm (115 page)

In truth, Adelheid wasn’t looking at the city at all. She looked west toward the hills that bordered the sea. They all looked west when they had the courage to look. It was now
possible to see the smoking mountain at all hours of the day and night, belching ash and sparks.

Antonia said nothing. She had a comfortable seat on an Arethousan-style couch, she was fed, and a servant stood beside her waving a fan so she didn’t get too hot. She knew when to be patient. She hadn’t caught her fish yet.

“If you get my daughters, and me, and the emperor through it safely, then I will give you anything.”

Ah. The line twitched.

“Anything?”

“Yes.”

Hooked. Now she needed only to reel her in. “Very well. You are at risk in the city. You and your daughters and household must move to a villa outside the city, but keep troops under the command of Duke Burchard garrisoned in strength in the city to protect your position here.”

“No. I would be a fool, and a coward, to abandon Darre and leave a Wendish foreigner, however loyal, in charge.”

Stubborn creature! Antonia suppressed a grimace of irritation. She knew better than to let anger show. People didn’t like to be reminded that they knew less than she did.

The empress went on speaking, oblivious to Antonia’s silence. “Henry has been absent for over a year now, fighting in Dalmiaka. If I leave Darre as well, then the people will say we abandoned them. I will not go.”

“It won’t be safe.”

“It will be less safe if I flee. The people of Darre want an Aostan regnant, not a Wendish regent. They will not tolerate Duke Burchard.”

“Leave an Aostan lady in control of the palace.”

“If I do so, the people will rise up and crown her queen. How does it benefit me to save the cow but lose the farm?”

Adelheid had a tendency to be pigheaded. In Antonia’s experience too much soft youthful prettiness gave girls an inflated notion of their importance. In addition, she listened too much to the common folk and spouted their rustic wisdom as if she were born to it; as if the rabble had the wisdom to rule themselves!

“If you will not go, Your Majesty, then at least send your daughters to a place of safety.”

A rumble whispered under their feet, shivering the ground. The balcony swayed, and the servingwoman who was fanning Antonia shrieked and then laughed as the rumbling subsided as quickly as it had come. A vase brimming with lavender teetered but did not fall.

“Just a small one, Your Majesty. Your Grace.” The servant curtsied nervously.

“The fan,” said Antonia. With a last anxious chuckle, the woman resumed stirring the air. “Your Majesty, I pray you—”

Adelheid had a pretty face, but when she clenched her jaw, she betrayed her obstinacy. “I cannot leave Darre. Look how they swarm out onto the street. They are frightened, Sister. They fear. If I abandon them, they will seek a different strong hand to rule them. To give them hope and strength. Henry charged me to stay. This is the empire we have won together, the heart of our regnancy. I cannot leave.”

“Your daughters would be safer in the countryside,” continued Antonia, sensing that the tremor had offered her an opening. “Take a dozen girls from the city to act as servants and companions and you will please the common folk, who will see you acting on behalf of their daughters as well as your own. Send them out of the city. They will be safe even as you suffer the same dangers as your subjects.”

There was no wind to cool them, but Adelheid endured the heat without wilting. These sweltering late summer days did not make her face mottle with unsightly red blotches, as it did Antonia’s; her complexion remained smooth and lovely. Her hair stayed neatly coifed under a linen scarf, held in place by a slender gold circlet that she wore at all times except for formal audiences, when she placed the heavy imperial crown on her own head. Sweat stippled her brow but otherwise she gave no sign in her silk robes of being hot, not as Antonia was.

“I don’t know …” she mused, still staring down at the city.

Voices called out in the hallway. The door into the chamber slammed open and a girl ran in, sobbing.

“Mama! Mama! Make the shaking stop, Mama! I’m scared!”

Adelheid turned as little Mathilda flung herself against
her mother’s skirts and clung there, arms wrapped around her hips, shoulders heaving and shaking with far more violence than the tremor that had precipitated the girl’s outburst.

The nursemaid hurried in, accompanied by two guardsmen. She was an older woman, breathless from the run. Her bones popped and creaked as she knelt before the empress. “I pray pardon, Your Majesty. I let the princess run away from me.”

“What of Berengaria?” Adelheid asked sharply, one hand stroking her crying daughter’s head. “Where is she?”

“She slept through the tremor, Your Majesty. Such things do not trouble her. She is still an infant.”

“Very well.” She wiped Mathilda’s tears away with her thumb and tipped her head up so that the girl looked up at her. “Should you like to go to the countryside, Tildie? Would you like to be a shepherd?”

Mathilda sniffed hard. At four, she had a face both more handsome and less pretty than Adelheid’s, and was already tall and strong for her age, brown-haired, snub-nosed, with an endearing dimple in her left cheek.

“I should like that, Mama!” she cried, her tears forgotten. “I would much rather run outside. I hate Darre! I hate it!”

She was a passionate child. Antonia smiled as Adelheid melted before her daughter’s fierce will, so like her own. Yet Mathilda possessed her father’s famous ability to rage outwardly whereas Adelheid held her feelings on a tighter rein, pulled tight, concealed behind a prettiness that disarmed her antagonists. Henry was stronger, but Adelheid more dangerous.

“You hate the hot summer air and the walls,” said Adelheid sternly, “not the city.”

“Yes, Mama,” said the girl meekly. “I love Darre. Just it’s so hot and stinky. I wish I could climb trees like we do in Tivura.”

“So be it.” Adelheid nodded at Antonia to show that she had accepted Antonia’s advice. “You and Berengaria will go to Tivura for the rest of the summer, until Octumbre at least.”

She clapped her hands, then stilled. “But what about you, Mama? Won’t you come with us?” Her lip trembled. Tears brimmed.

“I must stay in Darre until Octumbre. You know our duty is to rule. It will be your duty one day.”

“Yes, Mama.” She struggled and got the tears under control. At four, she already comprehended her destiny. “When will Papa come home?”

Adelheid glanced again over the city. “We must pray that the Lord and Lady grant him success very soon, and that he return swiftly. Go on, then. Go make ready. You will leave tomorrow.”

“Yes, Your Majesty’” said the nursemaid. She grunted and rose with some effort, wincing at the pain in her limbs. “Come, Your Highness. You must pick out which of your animals you wish to take with you.”

Adelheid kissed her daughter’s forehead and watched as she skipped out of the room, now holding onto her nursemaid’s hand and babbling happily about lambs and foals and how she absolutely must take all five of her whippet puppies.

“I am not sure you understand Aosta, Sister Antonia,” said Adelheid quietly once the doors had shut. She came back into the room and sat on a couch, took a cup of wine from a servant, and sipped. “This is not Wendar, where nobles rule and the common folk till the ground and pay their tithes to whichever lady commands them. The ‘rabble,’ as you call them, speak loudly in Darre, and if we ignore them, then they will rise against us. That is why I cannot leave, or leave Duke Burchard as regent, no matter how affectionately I admire him. The people have suffered much—the earthquake, two bad harvests, the shivering sickness. Many have fled to the countryside, but others from the country walk in rags to the city walls hoping to be given flour from my granary. I must feed them, or they will riot. They love me because I never deserted them, because I came back to save them from Ironhead. I will not desert them now.”

She tucked her feet up onto the couch, curled up like the leopard it was rumored she had once kept as a pet—lost when she had fled John Ironhead’s siege of Vennaci. She was small but lithe and alert; no fool, indeed.

Antonia did not trust her.

“I respect Lord Hugh, Sister Antonia. He supports Henry and myself because he is Henry’s loyal subject, and because
we allow him influence beyond that granted to most men who are dedicated to the church. I am not naive, although you may think me so because I have a pretty face. Lord Hugh recommended you to me. That is why I have admitted you to my councils.”

No other reason.
Adelheid did not say the words; she didn’t need to.

“Lord Hugh is an ambitious man.”

“He is a bastard and a churchman. He cannot rise higher than presbyter. He can never hope to become skopos. He can never cast off his robes and become a lord and sire children to inherit after him. His sisters inherited Olsatia and Austra. He is trapped as he is now.”

“Do you not trust him, Your Majesty?”

“I know what he is, Sister Antonia. I think you do as well. I trust him as I did my beloved cat. Cats are not dogs. They serve you if they wish. Their claws are sharp.”

“They are among God’s most beautiful creatures.”

“Are they?” Adelheid’s smile was as sharp as the rake of a leopard’s claws. “I have never thought any man as desirable as my dear Henry.”

Maybe it was even true. Hugh had never had the power to give Adelheid an imperial crown.

Antonia swallowed a sigh of irritation and speared a slice of melon with her eating knife. “Let us be honest, then, Your Majesty. What do you want of me?”

“You are educated in the arts of the mathematici. Your knowledge can be of value to me and to the kingdom. I hope you will agree to go with my daughters to Tivura and educate them. Mathilda is destined for the throne. Berengaria, however, must go to the church. It would be better for Mathilda if the two sisters never quarrel over what is already ordained. The elder must go before the younger. That is the way of the world. Teach Berengaria what she needs to know so that she can support her sister when they have come of age and into the inheritance that Henry and I mean to leave them.”

The servants had retreated to the door, standing silently, heads bowed, as they awaited Adelheid’s commands. Only the woman fanning did not cease, as Antonia could not endure the heat if the air remained still. The tick of the fan’s rising
and falling was the sole sound in the chamber. From outside there came a shout. Much farther away, the noise of people who had rushed out onto the streets in the aftermath of the tremor faded as folk retreated indoors. The sun’s hammer struck more mightily than their fear. They had grown used to the tremors, to the daily sight of the smoking mountain and its sparks and clouds of spitting, hot ash blown in by the west wind. The market would open as afternoon melted into dusk. In summer, the city was more lively in the evening than during the heat of the day.

In this way, the barrens were a practical people.

Horses whinnied in the courtyard below. Adelheid drained her cup, beckoned, and a servant hurried over to refill it. Antonia popped the melon into her mouth and savored its sweet moisture.

The infant Berengaria could walk and speak a few words. She seemed biddable and clever, although she was not yet two years of age. Adelheid’s plan had merit, although the empress might not comprehend the full magnitude of Antonia’s ambitions. Berengaria could serve her in many ways, as could Mathilda.

Yet they were so young, and she was old. She would be dead before Mathilda ruled.

Unless, of course, both Adelheid and Henry died untimely deaths.

“I will go to Tivura if you command, Your Majesty,” she said, bowing her head obediently.

“I trust my daughters with you, Sister, because you need them. Care for them as if they were your own, bring them safely through the days to come, and I will see that you receive that which you desire most.”

“What do you suppose I desire most?”

Adelheid made a sweeping gesture toward the unseen portion of the hill where the other palace lay. “I will make you skopos. Is that enough?”

“I have underestimated you, Your Majesty,” said Antonia with a curt laugh, because Adelheid had surprised her, and she did not like to be surprised.

There was silence, and for a moment Antonia thought she had offended the empress, but Adelheid made a little noise in
reply, half laugh, half thoughtful sigh, as she rose and went back out onto the balcony. It was the vantage point she liked best. “I am a small flower, Sister Antonia, but a hardy one. Drought and sun and wind and snow will not kill me.”

“All things die, Your Majesty.”

“As God will it, so shall it come to pass. But are we not creatures of free will? I acquiesced to my first marriage. I thought I had no choice in the matter, I thought those who chose for me must know best, until I discovered that my noble husband was no better than a rutting stag, bellowing and roaring. I swore never to acquiesce again.” Her white scarf fluttered as a wind rose off the river, bringing with it the stench of the city’s sewage, but Adelheid did not flinch, although Antonia felt compelled to cover her own nose with a corner of her sleeve. “Nor will I. Now that I have tasted the sweetness of freedom, I cannot return to the bitter plate.”

“God demand obedience.”

“God demand that we do what is right.”

“The Enemy tempts with sweet things.”

“Yet so do God, for what is right must seem sweet to us. So the blessed Daisan preached.”

Voices rang in the hall beyond the closed doors. The servants leaped aside as the doors were flung open and a captain wearing the tabard of the palace guards strode in, dropping to his knees before the empress. Like all her captains, he was a solid, competent man, neatly dressed and devotedly loyal to his young queen.

“Your Majesty! A messenger from the north. From Zuola.”

“Zuola!” The county of Zuola lay north and east of Darre, near the border with Dalmiaka, on the plain below the easternmost extent of the Alfar Mountains. “Is it news of the emperor?”