The Gathering Storm (48 page)

“B—because you were in the dungeon!” she cried, outraged and furious and humiliated. “How could you have helped me?”

“What did he want from you in exchange? He can’t have known that an earthquake would strike Darre. He can’t have guessed that it would provide the opportunity for my escape.”

She hid her face in her hands, ashamed. Rosvita could barely make out her muffled words. “He wanted to know what you knew, how much you knew, about the Holy Mother, Anne. The skopos. I—I told him.” She wept again, choking and coughing on the sobs. “God forgive me. I told him everything.”

Fortunatus began to chuckle, then laughed outright.

Outraged, Heriburg slapped him across the face.

“Child!” Obligatia’s voice rang like a hammer.

“Nay, nay, give me silence for a moment,” said Rosvita, rising. Fortunatus’ cheek was red, but the slap had not discomposed him; he still smiled with his usual sly irony, fond of finding a friendly joke in the weaknesses of others. “Brother Fortunatus is right. Gerwita, you did not betray me at all. I think, Daughter, that you may have saved my life.”

“How?” said several of them at once, disbelieving.

Gerwita was too startled to protest.

“Why didn’t Hugh have me killed? I saw him murder Villam.
I know he is a maleficus, that he used condemned sorcery to imprison King Henry by insinuating a captured daimone—the very one that had been trapped in the stone crown at the height of this rock—into the king’s corpus. Why didn’t he kill me? My testimony, which is worth something, I believe, could and would condemn him in front of an ecclesiastical court.”

Silence from the rest of them, waiting, tense, confused.

Only Fortunatus understood.

“Because he means to use me to protect himself against Anne. Holy Mother Anne does not know how much. I know about her past. She does not know that I know the secret of her birth, of her incestuous marriage. That her mother still lives.”

“Her incestuous marriage—?” Obligatia whispered faintly, slumping.

“I pray you, Mother. Let me explain later. I think you need not be ashamed of your son’s behavior. Yet think. Hugh knows what I know, because of what Gerwita told him. If I am alive, then he holds a weapon to use against Anne, if need be.”

“Why would he want to harm the Holy Mother?” asked Aurea.

“Because he is an ambitious man. That is his weakness, as Fortunatus has seen.”

“I do not think Presbyter Hugh so simple as to have only one reason for anything he does,” added Fortunatus. “There may be other reasons he has left you alive, Sister Rosvita.”

Hanna spoke harshly. “Perhaps only to let you know that he holds the power of life and death over you. There are a few creatures in this world who hunger for that kind of power.”

“So there are,” agreed Rosvita. “But he does not have me yet, and I do not mean for him to capture me at all.”

She turned to regard Mother Obligatia, who simply nodded, as if she expected the speech that would come next.

“You must trust me, Mother. Where is your prisoner?”

“Not far from here, safely interred. She no longer speaks to us, but I think her still sane.”

“And the creatures from whom you have received your bread—what of them?”

“They are not ours. Soon after we fled into the depths, we found one wounded, and did our best to heal it. After that, one
among their number led us to a spring deep beneath the rock beside which one could harvest this bread—although it is no true bread. On this nourishment we have subsisted.”

“Leave your prisoner behind. Free her if need be. I agree that it would sit ill with a good conscience to murder her when she is helpless. Let others judge her and bring her to trial for her sins. We do not have time. Gather up what you must. We will carry you, Mother.”

“Ah,” said Obligatia, nothing more.

“But the rock is surrounded,” protested Gerwita. “How can we escape?”

“I have had two years to meditate, to pray, and to remember all that I have seen and heard. My memory is good, and I have had many days to contemplate the spell woven by Hugh of Austra when we escaped Lord John with the queen. Now I must know, Mother have—you studied the lore of the mathematici all these years? Have you the knowledge to make the proper calculations?”

The secret, long hoarded, proved difficult for Obligatia to give up, but at last she nodded. “The abbesses of St. Ekatarina’s have studied the murals left on the walls. They have taken down the accounts of travelers. This knowledge they have passed down to each new abbess in turn—to me, last of all. Yet I and my predecessors have never discovered the incantations that open the stones.”

“I know them.” Rosvita gestured to her companions, all of them waiting, all of them hopeful, all of them trusting.

This was the burden of leadership.

“If you are willing to aid us, Mother,” she continued, “we will go now. It was a clear day when we arrived. We must pray that it has remained clear and unclouded. This night is our last chance. If we do not escape tonight, we will be trapped for good.”

AFTER darkness came light.

Antonia, once biscop of Mainni, had endured her captivity in silence, but that did not mean she had not planned out in explicit detail the punishment she, and God, would inflict on her tormentors once she was free.

She had prayed, and she had meditated.

In a way, God had rewarded her for her diligence and loyalty by allowing her this respite, as interminable though it had seemed, in which she had had the leisure to ponder the sinful nature of the world and the myriad ways in which most of its creatures, humankind first among them, had gone astray.

At least the beasts of the water, field, and sky were simple and therefore innocent. Perhaps some children were innocent, although she doubted it. The claws of the Enemy dug deep and swiftly. How many slights had she herself suffered as a child from her kinfolk, even from the smallest among them? Of course, they had each one earned their just reward in the end, but she had never forgotten the lesson she had learned.

In the end, only the innocent could be free from fear, and the evident fact that almost every person, adult or child, woman or man, suffered and feared obviously meant that they were all guilty. Had they been innocent, God would have had no reason to punish them.

These ruminations comforted her, yet even so at times she succumbed to the sin of anger at those who had thrown her in harm’s way and abused her trust. In truth, she had recognized all along that Sister Anne was not as holy as she seemed, being afflicted with the sin of overweening pride. Anne must have known into what danger she had sent Antonia. She must have known that the nuns of this isolated, impoverished, and pathetic little convent possessed unexpected powers to confront and bind sorcery; if they had not, they could not have called up a winged daimone of fire to battle and banish the galla. Antonia had not failed in her quest. She had been betrayed by the one who sent her. No doubt Anne feared her because of Antonia’s greater righteousness.

Always it proved to be so, that the wicked envied the pure.

Yet God again had rewarded her. Anne likely thought her dead and when, in the fullness of time, God freed her, she would be able to strike when and where Anne least expected her. She had enjoyed the many, many hours, or days, or weeks—impossible to keep track of the passing calendar when buried alive in this black pit—during which she had contemplated the defeat of vice by virtue and her final triumph over Anne and her minions.

She must only be patient.

She was an old woman, and getting no younger, yet she knew in her heart that God would not abandon her. God would not deny her the final victory granted to the just.

After darkness came light.

A glimmer of light flickered above her where the hole opened in the ceiling of her pit. The light announced mealtime, such as it was: a bucket of water and a tray of a bland, chewy substance that must not, she supposed, be scorned, since it had kept her alive.

As the light strengthened, shading black into a murky gray, she lifted her gaze to track its approach. She had to keep her eyes strong for that day when the sun again shone on her. She heard whispered voices, caught scraps of words. Was that a man’s baritone, sliding in and around the lighter tones of a woman? Surely not. She had hoped never to fall into madness, but perhaps God had chosen a new way to test her.

She waited for the rope to lower down with its precious burden of food and drink—it was the one moment they were vulnerable, and she enjoyed their apprehension, an almost tangible smell drifting down to her.

Something scraped on the rock above. Twin spears stabbed down through the hole, and she was actually so startled that she scrambled back to avoid their thrust.

As the spears thudded onto the floor, she realized her mistake: it was a ladder. The voices faded, retreating, taking the light with them. They had left neither water nor bread.

What did this mean?

It was not her place to question God’s will. She rose, tying the worn blanket they had given her around her midriff like a belt. She had been careful to exercise her body, walking circuits of the oval pit, keeping herself as clean as she could
through judicious use of the water for bathing and for her necessarium a much smaller hole that plunged so deep into the earth that she could not smell the stink of her own refuse.

The rungs held her weight easily, but she wasn’t sure if the ladder would slip as she climbed with no one to hold it in place. Yet how else to ascend? Carefully she climbed, and when she heaved herself over the lip, she lay there for the space of several breaths, stunned by the change in the air and the coursing exultation that freedom sent through her body.

She had no time to waste.

Why had they freed her?

She rose, edging carefully away from the pit, and found the wall by touch. A faint glow permeated the air; she followed it, cautious with each step, not sure what traps might have been laid. The passageway ran smooth and straight. Lichen grew in patches on the wall, and it was these plants that emitted the steady, if fragile, light, which was accompanied by a wheeze like the rattling breath of a sleeping giant

The passageway turned sharply to the left, debouching into a cavern the size of a humble village church. The remains of habitation littered it: four crude pallets, a table and bench, several chests and amphorae. These did not interest her. An oil lamp sat unlit on the table accompanied by a leather pouch pregnant with water, its sides glossy and damp, and a linen cloth unfolded around several loaves of the bread.

They had fled, abandoning her.

Well. She could expect no better behavior from the guilty, yet their sinfulness might not be the sole reason they had left. Something had driven them out.

Despite the eerie glow, the dimness and the constant wheezing whistle made her nervous. She shuddered; a shiver like the touch of the Enemy crept down her spine. Pebbles rattled behind her.

Creatures skulked in the rock. She had heard them while in captivity; she did not doubt the testimony of her weakened eyes now. Better to flee while she had the strength.

Tying up the food, she slung it and the pouch over a shoulder and picked up the lamp. Because her hands trembled, it took her several attempts to snap sparks from flint and catch a flame to the wick. Once the lamp burned, she hurried into
the farther passageway, shading her eyes as best she could against its brilliance.

Was that the sound of footfalls behind her? Who followed? Had the others hidden, hoping to see her go?

God had mercy upon her. Although the passageway stretched on interminably, it dared not deceive her with twists and turns. Now and again she passed an opening out of which wafted distinct smells: the sea, rotten eggs, frankincense, rising bread, and the familiar iron tang that accompanied the galla. But these small passageways were either too low to admit a human form easily or set too high in the passage wall for any mortal woman or man to consider climbing up into them. Only one path led in the right direction; that was God’s plan, after all.

Soon she found traces of those who preceded her: a worn leather strap; a stain of spilled water, not yet dry; a discarded scrap of parchment which she rolled up and tucked into her sleeve. Noises echoed around her: whispers and hisses, two snaps like rocks dropped from a height, a high-pitched giggle, the skittering of feet. Once she heard a horse’s whinny, so strange a sound that she faltered, wondering if she had begun to hallucinate: first a man’s voice, then that of a horse.

No matter.

The passage ended abruptly in a wall of rock, but to the left a narrow opening gave into a broad, circular chamber whose carpet was covered with puddles of water in the hollows and a floor of damp pebbles on the higher ground. The smell of the air changed, laden with moisture. She entered, careful where she put her feet. Near the center of the chamber a ladder thrust up and out a hole.

Whispers teased her. Standing here, even with the burning lamp to guide her, made her uncomfortable. She crossed quickly to the ladder and with some difficulty held the lamp in one hand while she steadied herself with the other, taking the rungs one at a time.

Her head had just reached the level of the base of the hole when echoes murmured and stretched around her. It took a moment for her to understand that she heard, ahead of her, voices belonging to those who had climbed this ladder before her.
Yet those voices mingled and resonated with whispers below.

Snick.

The sound startled her. She looked down.

Pale shapes scuttled into the chamber below. As ghastly white as lepers afflicted with a rash of silvery-white scales, the creatures balked as if the light hurt them. They had no eyes, only bulges on their faces like giant, moist egg sacs, but it was not only this deformity that made them grotesque and misshapen,
wrong
, the broken vessels from which the Enemy had attempted to create a mockery of angels. Their heads were too big for their bodies. Scabrous pustules grew on their twisted limbs. Some wore charms and amulets dangling at their necks; these ornaments chimed softly as they clamored each against the others in a wordless music as incomprehensible as their animal muttering.