The Gathering Storm (27 page)

She had to wait.

She wiped sweat from her forehead and ducked back into shadow, but decided that the blast of the sun in the open air was preferable to the smothering heat of the attic sleeping quarters. Adjusting her brimmed hat to ward off the worst of the direct glare, she leaned out again. A stew of smells rose from the surrounding buildings: manure, piss, slops, roasting pig, and a hint of incense almost lost beneath the perfume of
human living. From this angle and height, she looked out over rooftops toward the delicate spire marking the royal chapel and beyond that the outer walls and the gulf of air shimmering above the lower city with its massive stone edifices. The river cut a thread of molten iron through streets hazy with heat, dust, and cook fires.

Unbelievably vast, Darre seemed a warren of alleys and avenues, with so many houses that no person could possibly count them. Beyond the outermost walls lay fields and vineyards and, farther out, distant hills and a dark ribbon marking the route to the sea. Wisps of cloud pushed over those sere heights, promising relief against the heat later in the day. Was that smoke drifting up from the tallest peak? Had someone lit a fire at its height? She couldn’t tell, and it seemed a strange thing to do in any case.

Hanna had explored as many corners, sinks, and privies, as many balconies, shady arbors, and storage pits as she was allowed into in the regnant’s palace. She had even toured the prison down in the city, and the tower where other Aostan regnants had confined their enemies, although Adelheid kept no hostages now. All the tower rooms lay empty, stripped of furniture, heavy with dust.

She had asked about Margrave Villam.

Dead of a tragic fall when he was drunk.

She had asked about Duchess Liutgard of Fesse and Duke Burchard of Avaria.

Ridden south with the king.

She had asked about Sister Rosvita, the king’s counselor.

Neither dead nor gone.

How could a person be neither dead nor gone? How could the stewards of the palace and the legions of servants not hoard rumors of her fate? Rosvita had been here when King Henry arrived; now she was not. Hanna had discovered no transition between arrival and departure. She found again and again that her thoughts turned to Hathui’s accusations. Either Hathui was lying, or the Aostan stewards were.

She leaned out farther, dizzy from the height, but even from this angle she could only see one corner of the skopos’ palace. She had hoped to find answers there, but the guards would not let her inside.

With a sigh, she ducked back into the shadow, fighting to get in a lungful of the overheated air.

A footfall sounded on the ladder. She spun, drawing her knife. A broom’s handle poked through the open trap, followed by the rest of the broom, thrust up and falling sideways to clatter onto the floor. A woman emerged awkwardly, grasped the broom, and rose, then gasped, seeing Hanna.

“Oh, Lord in Heaven!” she exclaimed. “You surprised me!” She wore a serviceable tunic covered with a dusty tabard and a plain linen scarf concealing her hair. Not as young as Hanna, she wasn’t yet old. “Begging your pardon. I didn’t expect to find anyone else up here.”

“Neither did I.”

The servant gave a companionable chuckle, a little forced. “Well, now, I suppose that means that neither of us have eyes in the backs of our heads, to see around corners and through walls.”

Hanna stayed by the window but sheathed the knife as the woman walked away from her to the other end of the long attic room. There, she stooped to allow for the pitched roof and began sweeping. Dust rose in clouds around her, and she paused to tie up her tabard over her mouth and nose.

“Always the worst when it’s the first cleaning,” she said cheerfully as Hanna watched with surprise.

“It seems awfully hot to be thinking of cleaning out these sleeping rooms.” The heat all summer had been like a battering ram. She had never got used to it.

“True enough. But the weather can turn cold suddenly now that the season is turning from summer to autumn, if you call this autumn. We have to start thinking of inhabiting these rooms again. Last year you can’t believe how hot it was, hotter than this, and with unseasonable rains, too, and a terrible hailstorm.”

“I hear the king was taken sorely ill, last year.”

The servant looked up at her, expression hidden except for her eyes. Her gaze had a queer, searching intensity. But as the silence stretched out uncomfortably, she returned to sweeping.

“Last summer, yes, he was taken ill with the shivering fever. He was laid in bed for two months, and the armies
fought all summer and autumn without him. They had no victories, nor any defeats. So they say.” Again that searching glance scrutinized Hanna. “That’s if they say what’s true, but how are we simple servants to know what’s truth and what’s not?”

“Eagles know.”

“Where are all the Eagles? Gone with the king, all but that poor redheaded fellow who got so sick.”

“Rufus?”

“That’s right,” she continued amiably, her voice muffled by the cloth. “He came south last year at the command of Biscop Constance in Autun, didn’t he?”

“So he told me.” Carrying a message very like the ones sent by Theophanu, but the king had not heeded him.

“Yes, poor lad. He was so sick even the palace healers thought he would die from the shivering. That’s why he had to be left behind this past spring when the king rode south.”

“Yet all the other Eagles rode south with the king, didn’t they? Why haven’t any of them brought reports back to Darre? Why is it always the queen’s Aostan messengers we see?”

“How can I know the king’s mind? I can only thank the Lord and Lady that his army has won victories over both the infidels and the heretics.
And
over a few Aostan nobles who would prefer no regnant placed above their heads. So we’re told.”

Her account tallied with the news Rufus had given Hanna. “I’ve heard talk that the king and queen will be crowned with imperial crowns before the end of the year.”

“That talk has been going on as long as I’ve been here, these two and a half years. Maybe it will finally happen.”

With the steady
scritch
of the broom against wood like an accompaniment to her thoughts, Hanna finally realized what was strangest about this industrious woman. “You’re Wendish.”

“So I am. I’m called Aurea, from the estate of Landelbach in Fesse. You’re that new Eagle what rode in a few months back.”

“Yes. My name is Hanna Birta’s-daughter, from the North
Mark. I come from a place called Heart’s Rest.” A low rumble shook through the floor and the entire building swayed.

Hanna shrieked. “What is
that?
”

The rumbling faded, the building stilled, and Aurea kept sweeping. “Haven’t you felt one yet? An earthquake? We feel them every few months.”

“Nay, no earthquakes. Nor weather anywhere near as hot as what I’ve suffered through here.” She was still trembling.

“True enough. It’s hot here for weeks on end, too, not just for a short spell as it would be up north where I come from. It isn’t
natural
.”

Hanna exhaled, still trying to steady her nerves. “An old friend of mine would say that Aosta lies nearer to the sun. That’s why it’s hotter here.”

“Is it? That seems a strange story to me. Nearer to the sun!” Aurea hummed under her breath. “But no stranger than many a tale I’ve heard here in Darre. Sister Heriburg says that in the east there’s snakes who suckle milk right from the cow. In the south no plants can grow because the sun shines so hot, and the folk who live there have great, huge ears that they use like tents during the day to protect them from the sun. Even here, there’s stories about godly clerics who abide in the skopos’ dungeons like rats, hidden from the sight of most people, but I don’t suppose those are any more true than that tale my old grandmam told me about a dragon turned into stone in the north country. It lies there still, they say, by the sea, but nothing can bring it back to life.”

She kept her gaze on the warped floorboards where dust collected in cracks. Hanna thought she would choke in air now polluted with a swirling cloud of dust, but she dared not move. She had to think. How strange to speak of clerics hidden away in dungeons.

Maybe it was only a figure of speech, an old tale spun by the palace servants to pass the time.

But maybe it wasn’t.

“I’ve heard stories of men who can turn themselves into wolves,” she said at last, cautiously, “but never any of clerics who can turn themselves into rats. I’ve heard that story about the dragon, too, though, the one turned into stone. When there’s a great storm come in off the Northern Sea, you can
hear the dragons keening. That’s what my old grandmother always said.”

“Lots of stories of dragons,” agreed the servant woman without looking up from her sweeping, “but I’ve never heard tell of a single person who’d ever seen such a beast. Rats, now. Rats I’ve seen aplenty.”

“There must be an army of rats in a great palace like this one.”

“And the biggest ones of all down in the dungeons. I don’t doubt they’re caught down there somehow, between stone walls. There’s only the one staircase, guarded by the Holy Mother’s faithful guards, and they’re sharp-eyed, those fellows. Everyone says so. As likely to skewer a rat on the point of their knife if it comes scurrying up the stairs. A woman here I know said it happens every year, and then they roast those rats they’ve caught and throw their burned carcasses to the dogs.”

She looked up then, her gaze like a sharp rap on the head.

“It would take a lot of rats to fill a dog’s belly,” answered Hanna, floundering.

“Not if they’ve grown as big as a dog themselves, or bigger even, human-sized or some say as big as a horse. A horse!” She bent back to her task with a curt chuckle. “I’m not believing such foolish tales. No rat can grow to be the size of a horse, and where would it hide, then? But I suppose they could become mighty big, nibbling on scraps and prisoners’ fingers and toes.”

That sharp look made Hanna cautious. Was there a veiled purpose to Aurea’s talking, or was she just nattering to pass the time?

“I remember stories that my grandmother told me.” Hanna moved along the attic until she came to the open trapdoor. She squinted down the length of the ladder but saw no lurking shadow, no listening accomplice. “I do love to trade old stories, about dragons and rats and wolves. I have a few stories of my own to tell.”

“So it might well be, you being an Eagle and all,” agreed the woman, sweeping past Hanna toward the window. Tidy piles of dirt and dust marked her path like droppings. “Eagles see all kinds of things the rest of us can’t, don’t you? Travel
to strange and distant lands with urgent messages on behalf of the king. You’re welcome to join those of us servants from Wendar when we attend Vespers in St. Asella’s chapel, by the west gate of the city. There’s a cleric from Wendar called Brother Fortunatus who gives the sermon in Wendish there. Only on Hefensday, mind. That’s when we’re allowed to go.”

Since there were a dozen chapels within the regnant’s palace alone and a rumored five hundred or more within the walls of the lower city, Hanna could not guess which one the woman meant. Most of them she only recognized by the image of the saint that marked the portico. Yet she could not help herself. Clerics hidden like rats in the dungeon. Eyes that could see through walls, and traveling Eagles.

Perhaps she was making a conspiracy where none existed, but it wouldn’t hurt to follow this path a bit farther.

“I don’t know of St. Asella. If I go down to the west gate, is there some way to know which chapel is dedicated to her?”

The woman stilled her broom. Though her gaze was as innocent as a lamb’s, the soft words carried a barb. “St. Asella was walled up alive.”

IN the deepening twilight, tall trees seemed a grim backdrop to swollen grave mounds and a stone circle. As their little group neared the gap in the wall of trees that promised to be a trail, Ivar looked back over the clearing. He had never seen a stone circle in such perfect repair, each stone upright and all the lintels intact. It looked as if it had been built, or repaired, in recent months. Only the great stone at the center lay flat. His companions paused as dusk settled over them and a breeze sighed through the forest. The grave mounds seemed to exert a spell, luring them back. Ivar simply could not move, as though dead hands gripped his feet and held him tight. A twig snapped, breaking their silence.

“Do you think we’re really near Hersford Monastery?” asked Ermanrich, voice squeaking.

“As long as we’re well away from that Quman army, then I don’t care where we are.” Ivar knew he sounded braver than he felt as daylight faded. A wolf howled in the distance, answered by a second, and everyone grabbed for their weapons. “Where’s Baldwin?”

“He was right behind you,” said Ermanrich.

“He didn’t wait.” The younger Lion, Dedi, pointed toward the trees. “He went to look at the path.”

“Why didn’t you stop him?” demanded Ivar.

Ermanrich gave him a look. “When has Baldwin ever listened to any of us?”

“Nay, Ivar, don’t be angry at Dedi.” Sigfrid laid a gentle, but restraining, hand on Ivar’s arm. “Ermanrich’s only speaking the truth, which you know as well as we do.”

“Damned fool. Why couldn’t he wait?” But Baldwin never listened, he just pretended to.

“He probably ran off because he thought he saw Margrave Judith come looking for him,” joked Ermanrich nervously.

“Why should a margrave like Judith come looking for the likes of
him?
” asked Dedi with a snort of disbelief.

“Hush!” said Hathumod abruptly. “Listen!”

The sound of thrashing came from the trees. Baldwin burst out of the forest, arms flailing.

“A lion!” He hadn’t run more than ten steps into the clearing when he tripped and fell.

They hurried over to calm him down, but as they swarmed around him, he jumped to his feet with a look of terror on his beautiful face. “I found an old hovel over at a rock outcropping, not far from here, but when I stuck my head inside, I heard a cough behind me. I turned around and there was a lion up on the rocks!”