The Very Best of Kate Elliott (29 page)

“We must get Roman,” said Jontano. “He’s down—he’s down in old Aldo’s shop.”

Mama looked at him. A brief spark of something—fear? anticipation? anger?—lit her eyes, and then it fled, leaving her looking tired and resigned. “We’ll go get him and try to get back home if we can. We might as well die there as anywhere else.”

She said nothing more as they ran down Murderer’s Row, hugging half-fallen walls, until she knelt beside Roman, who had by now lapsed into a feverish sleep.

“Poor child,” she said. “He deserved a better death than this.”

“He doesn’t have to die!” cried Jontano. Mama looked up at him, and with a horrid shock, like a claw at his throat, he knew that she had given up, that the years of fighting to survive had all become too much for her to bear.

“I’m so tired,” she said. “We’ll just rest here a few moments.” She lay down beside Roman and between one instant and the next, she was asleep.

She had given up. Jontano shivered. He wanted to cry, for her, for himself, for everything, but he had no tears.

The forest breathed, exhaling its scent around him. His hand clutched the card, the leaves unfurled to their full glory, the spring flowers passing into the blooms of summer—for it was almost summer. Tomorrow would be summer. He remembered that with mild surprise. He smelled, not rain, but the scent of the forest shedding moisture after rain, warmed by the new sun of summer. He heard the rustling of leaves, the scrambling of mice in the undergrowth, not the musket fire, louder now but strangely dull, too, as if from behind the mist, behind an impenetrable hedge.

Once there had been no war in the valley of Trient, though there had always been wolves.

Mama slept, curled around Roman. Perhaps she would sleep forever, never have to wake to the death of all that she had held dear, never have to remember everything she had lost.

Jontano circled the counter and came right up to the painting. It seemed to have grown since he last saw it. It filled the entire wall, as if it was straining, trying to fill the shop. He lifted his arm and pressed the card against it. If only he could find a way through, for himself, for Mama, for Roman and Aunt Martina and Uncle Martin. For the graves, so that the dead could lie in respectful silence, as they deserved.

If only the trees could grow again in Trient, as they once had, filling the parks and the boulevards, filling the once-handsome city with their summer fullness and the stark lines of their winter beauty.

He felt the paper-thin bark of a birch tree under his hand, peeling away where his fingers scraped at it. He felt the flowers blooming under his feet, vines twining up his legs. A glade of sweet grass filled old Aldo’s shop, and a lilac bush grew, lush and thick, to shelter Mama and Roman.

Oaks burst up in the marketplace, an ancient grove, watchful and airy. Murderer’s Row erupted into an orchard of pears and apples and cherry trees, all mingled together, and the musket fire faded as the Vestino Line, the ruins of Saint Harmonious Bridge, the far hills were swamped by ash and beech. Aspen sunk their roots into the low places of the valley, blanketed with ponds and pools of brackish water left over from the rains. In the northern hills, tulips and elms lifted toward the sky, and in the meadows where blocks of houses had once stood, around springs made by wells, great patches of flowering shrubs spread out into a sea of color. Jasmine, bougainvillaea, and twining wisteria wrapped themselves around the shell of the house where Uncle Martin sat watch and Aunt Martina cooked over an open fire, her eyes red from weeping, and filled the ruined walls with their fragrance.

There were no more than a few startled comments, which Jontano heard on the wind as if from another life, so quickly did the forest take root in lands it had once had all to its own self.

The cannon, the barricades, the buildings whole and shattered, the boulevards, all were subsumed. Trees sprang up where people stood, Marrazzano and Trassahar alike, beech and oak, birch and aspen.

Night fell and passed and with the new sun, summer came to Trient, which was no longer a city but a vast woodland, populated by trees and the many small, quiet inhabitants of the forest.

The valley lay at peace in the calm of a summer morning.

W
ITH
G
OD TO
G
UARD
H
ER

Preface

NOW IN THOSE DAYS it was not unknown for a man of high birth to put aside one wife, with whom he had become dissatisfied, and marry another. Indeed, when kings indulged in such behavior, then dukes and counts might choose to emulate them. But what seems permissible in the world, God may well judge more harshly, as I shall relate.

One

At this time a man of free birth worked fields adjoining the estate of Duke Amalo, near the River Marne. With him in his house lived his mother, Theudichild, his wife Ingund, his two young sons and a daughter, and a few servants. The daughter was called Merofled.

It so happened that the duty of paying the tax to the church fell one month to Merofled.

She was a girl of good stature, having always been granted good health, and was now old enough to marry. Her family bore a respectable name and they had nothing to be ashamed of in their ancestors. Her mother’s father was a canon at Vitry and it was said that his great-grandfather was dedicated in martyrdom in Lyons.

But she had not yet married, nor had her father betrothed her to any man. Some said her father and mother favored her excessively, making her too proud to wish to submit to another man’s lordship, others that she was too pious to wish to marry. A few had been heard to whisper that her grandmother, Theudichild, an irascible old tyrant, preferred Merofled’s sewing to that of any of her servants or even to that of her daughter-in-law’s, and would not allow the girl to leave her father’s house so that the vain old woman would not have to do without the luxury of finely sewn garments.

On this day, Merofled received the pot of candle wax from one of the servants and, with only a young serving girl as attendant, walked down the road to deliver the wax to the church. In this way, with each household paying its portion of the tax, candles always burned at the altar.

The two young women were forced to move off the road when a great entourage rode by. The serving girl bent her head and knelt at once, but Merofled neither knelt nor looked down.

First walked clerics in their vestments, and after them the kinsmen, friends, and vassals of the Duke, for Merofled realized that this must be the retinue of Duke Amalo. They came in a crowd, kicking up a wide swathe of dust.

She had never seen the Duke except at a distance and so did not recognize him at once when suddenly a rider pulled to a halt and stared straight at her. He was tall, finely dressed, and rode a horse with silver harness and a saddle trimmed with gold. The rest of the column pulled up beside and behind him.

“Who is this girl?” the Duke asked one of his attendants, a certain Count Leudast.

“I do not know,” said Leudast, and he turned to another man and ordered him to speak to Merofled.

The servant asked her name and she answered, boldly and not without pride.“I am called Merofled, daughter of Berulf and Ingund.”

Having had her words repeated to him, the Duke rode on.

Two

Duke Amalo was a man of sudden passions, the sort who most wishes to have what he does not yet possess, and being unused in any case to having anything denied him.

This is what he had seen: a handsome girl, in the bloom of youth, and wearing dress that was simple yet clean and well-made, which is one of the marks of good family. As well, she had spoken clearly and without flinching.

“Find out about this girl,” he ordered his servants.

One of his clerics inquired in the village and returned to him with these facts: That the girl was of free birth and that she came of good family on both sides, including, as I have mentioned before, the grandfather’s grandfather who had been granted the glory of martyrdom on this earth. That her father, Berulf, paid his taxes regularly to the church, attended services without fail, and was altogether a man of good character whom God had rewarded with prosperity. That Berulf and his wife gave alms to the poor and had endowed the church in the village with a silver chalice and two finely woven tapestries, one depicting Judith and Holofernes and the other showing St. Martin giving half his cloak to a poor man.

Duke Amalo mentioned nothing of these inquiries to his wife, by whom he had by this time five children, two of which had died in infancy.

Three

For some days after first seeing Merofled by the roadside Duke Amalo went about his business in the usual fashion, hawking, hunting, seeing to his estate. But more than once he led his retinue along the road that led through the village. Finally, when no more than three Sabbaths had passed, he took his clerics and the rest of his entourage and attended mass in the village church. There he tended to his prayer assiduously, kneeling in the front rank of benches with his hands covering his face as befits a pious man. However, rather than praying, he used his hands as a screen so that he might stare at the young woman Merofled without betraying his interest to all and sundry.

When mass ended, he lavished silver and gold vessels on the church and donated a great deal of money to the support of the clergy, so that all spoke well of him when he left and returned to his estates.

Four

By this time, however, Duke Amalo had been seized with a consuming desire for Merofled.

The next day, therefore, he summoned his wife to him. “It is time,” he said to her, “that you travel to your estate near Andelot so that you might put your affairs in order there.”

By this means he intended to be rid of her.

Now, as her estate in Andelot came to her as part of her inheritance from her father, and as it lay near her relations, she was not averse to going, although the journey was a long one. So, suspecting nothing, she agreed. She took their elder sons with her, leaving the youngest son behind.

Five

From the shelter of an oak grove, Merofled watched the entourage pass, Duke Amalo’s wife and all her retinue, her women and servants, her priest and deacons, horses, wagons, and a few dogs. Then she walked quickly home, to her father’s hall.

Now Merofled was not a fool, and if she was proud, it was in part because she had a sharp mind and could see what other people sometimes failed to notice.

For this reason she found one excuse and then another to stay near her father’s house, never venturing outside the fenced yard that confined the livestock.

Six

Meanwhile, Duke Amalo called his steward to him. He carefully wrote up a deed which would transfer the ownership of one of his estates, near Chalon, to Merofled, upon the consummation of their marriage, as was the custom at that time.

He then sent his servants to the house of her father, where they delivered themselves of this message:

“With these words Duke Amalo addresses you: ‘I have recently sent away the woman who was my wife, and am now inclined to take a new wife. If this is satisfactory to you, then your daughter Merofled may accompany my servants back to my hall with whatever possessions you choose to settle on her.’”

Seven

Berulf was a man of great piety and virtue, but while his good deeds were legion, he was not known for looking over the wall to covet his neighbor’s possessions. Thus he was taken aback by this salutation.

He retired at once to his bedchamber and sent for his daughter Merofled.“Is this what you wish?” he asked her, not hiding his surprise.

“Why should I wish to be married to a man who sends his wife away as soon as he sees a woman who appears more comely to him?” she replied. “I would rather be married to a man of my own rank, whom I would not fear. If Duke Amalo should beat me, we would have no recourse, for his relations are more powerful than ours.”

Her father saw the wisdom in her words and he returned straightaway to the Duke’s envoys and sent them away with his refusal.

Eight

Anyone might imagine that this answer did not please Duke Amalo.

He raged for several days, whipped his hounds, and beat several servants who were slow in obeying his commands.

Then he threw himself on his knees in front of the altar at the chapel on his estate and prayed. His father had placed in this chapel some relics of Saint Sergius, and Duke Amalo set a copy of the Psalter atop the reliquary. He spent one whole night in prayer and another two days in fasting and vigil.

After this he opened the Psalter and read from the first verse at the top of the page. It said: “They are utterly consumed because of their iniquities.”

These words dismayed him, and he wept.

After this, he did not mention the girl Merofled for ten days.

Nine

As the days passed and nothing happened, Merofled began to believe that she had misjudged Duke Amalo’s intent. With a lighter heart, she went about her duties. After some days her father approached her and said these words: