In the Ruins (54 page)

She quieted, but kept her arms locked around his waist. Tears streaked her dirty face as she looked first up at him and then at the others.

Aunt Bel looked at each member of her family in turn, but they only frowned or shrugged. “Very well, Alain. It may be for the best.”

“What for the best?” muttered Blanche, with a distrusting sniff.

“You will come with me as far as Lavas Holding,” he said to her, “as long as you behave and do exactly as I say. Which you will.”

The words stunned her. She stuck her thumb in her mouth and frowned around it.

“But she’s no clothing, nothing. I’ll not send a pauper—!”

“It will be well, Aunt Bel. Best we go now, and let it be swift. The chatelaine is packing up.”

They wept, as did he. Blanche did not weep, not even when her father kissed her, not even when Agnes gave her the fine blue cloak off her own back that had been part of her wedding clothes.

It was hardest for Alain to let go of Henri, and in the end it was Henri who broke their embrace and set a hand on Alain’s shoulder to look him in the eye. “Go on, then, Son. You’ll do what’s right.” He brushed a finger over the blemish. “Do not forget us.”

“You are always with me, Father.”

Alain kissed him one last time. He slung his pack over
his back and, with Blanche clutching his left hand, he followed Chatelaine Dhuoda and her skeletal retinue out of Osna village and back into the world beyond.

AT first, Anna wasn’t sure what noise had startled her out of sleep. Blessing breathed beside her, as still as a mouse and all curled up with head practically touching bent knees. There was a servingwoman called Julia, a spy of the queen’s, who slept on a pallet laid over the closed trap, but her soft snoring kept on steadily. Then the scuff sounded again, and after that a single rap of wood against stone.

Anna raised up on one elbow to see Lady Elene leaning out the window, looking ready to throw herself to her death. Anna heaved herself up and stumbled over to her, stubbing a toe on the bench, cursing.

“Look!” said Elene. As Anna moved up beside her, Elena’s hair brushed her skin, a feather’s touch, and Anna shivered and gulped down a sob for thinking so abruptly of Thiemo and Matto, whose hair might have brushed her in such a way.

“What lies off there?” Elene pointed. “See those lights?”

From this vantage, in daylight, one might gaze south over countryside falling away into rolling hills. Not a single candle burned in Novomo. The town was as dark as the Pit. Closer at hand, Anna inhaled the strong scent of piss from that spot along the curve of the tower where the soldiers commonly relieved themselves.

But distantly, like a show of lightning along an approaching storm front, she saw a shower of sparks and an arc of light so radiant that her breath caught as she stared.

“What is that, my lady?”

“There must be a crown out there, although Wolfhere
never spoke of it. Someone is weaving in that crown. Yet how could they do so, with no stars to guide them?”

“Why do you need stars, my lady?”

“It’s the secret of the mathematici, Anna. I can’t tell you. But I can say that it is weaving, of a kind. You must have stars in sight to guide your hand and eye.”

Anna liked the way Lady Elene talked easily to her. She was proud, but not foolish, and she had taken Anna’s measure and measured her loyalties and while it was true that the daughter of a duke did not confide in a common servant girl, she did not scorn her either. Indeed, the more it annoyed Blessing when Lady Elene paid attention to her particular attendant, the more Lady Elene showed her favor to Anna, which Anna supposed was ill done of her, but in truth it was nice to have a mature companion who did not sulk and shriek and throw tantrums at every least provocation. It was pleasant to speak to a person whose understanding was well formed and who had a great deal of wit, which she did not always let show to those she did not trust.

“Yet look!” She was more shadow than shape, but with a sharp breath she shifted and Anna felt the pressure of her hips against her own as Elene stretched out her hand again. “That’s someone come through the crown from elsewhere. Who could it be? Who might have survived?”

Anna shivered again, mostly from the cold. “Who else knows the secrets of the crowns, my lady?”

“Marcus and Holy Mother Anne and my grandmother are dead, as is that other woman out of the south. Sister Abelia, they called her.”

“How do you know they are dead?”

“I wish to God I had not witnessed, but I did.
They are dead
. Yet one of the others might have survived. The ones in the north I could not see after the weaving was tangled.”

“If it’s true, could you trust them, my lady?”

“Not one of them, so Wolfhere says.”

“Can you trust Wolfhere, my lady?”

“So you have asked before!” Elene laughed, although her amusement was as bitter as her tone. “He is the only one I would trust. Well, him, and my grandmother, and my
poor dead mother, may she rest in the Chamber of Light, but she can’t help me now.”

“What of your father, the duke, my lady?”

She shrugged, shoulder moving against Anna’s arm. “He gave me up, knowing I would die. He did as his mother asked, and I obeyed.”

Daring greatly, Anna placed a hand over Elene’s as comfort, and Elene did not draw her hand away. They watched until the spit and spark of light vanished, and for a long time after that they continued watching, although there was nothing to see.

“Holy Mother! I pray you. Wake up.”

Antonia had the habit of waking swiftly. “What is it, Sister Mara?”

“Come quickly, I pray you, Holy Mother. The queen has sent for you.”

She allowed her servants to dress her in a light robe and a cloak. For so late in spring it was yet cool as winter when it should have been growing steadily warmer as each day led them closer to summer. Lamps lit her way, although a predawn glamour limned the arches and corners of the palace.

A score of folk blundered about on the open porch before the queen’s chambers. They parted to let her through, and she made her way inside to find another score of them cluttering the chamber and all of them dead silent, even those who were weeping. Within, Mathilda slept. Adelheid sat on her own bed with Berengaria limp in her arms.

Only the dead know such peace.

Adelheid looked up. “So it has come, Holy Mother. She has breathed her last.” Her eyes were dry, her expression composed but fixed with an inner fury caged and contained.

“Poor child.” Antonia pressed her hand on the cold brow, and spoke a prayer. The tiny child had lost almost all flesh during its long illness. With its spirit fled, it seemed little more than a skeletal doll, its skin dull and its hair tangled with the last of the sweating fever that had consumed it. “Even now she climbs the ladder that leads to the
Chamber of Light, Your Majesty. You must rejoice for her, for her suffering has ended.”

“Mathilda is all I have.”

Antonia found this shift disconcerting, although she admired a woman who had already thought through the practicalities of her situation. “You are yet young, Your Majesty. You may make another marriage.”

“With what man? There is no one I can trust, and none whose rank is worthy of me.”

“That may be, but you will have to marry again.”

“I must. Or Mathilda must be betrothed, to make an advantageous alliance.”

“Mathilda!”

“Hush, I pray you, Holy Mother. I do not want her to wake.”

“If no suitable alliance exists for you, how should it exist for her, Your Majesty?”

She did not answer. From the other chamber they heard the ring of a soldier’s footsteps. A woman came running in.

“Captain Falco has urgent news, Your Majesty.”

“I’ll come.” Adelheid handed the dead child to the nurse, who accepted the burden gravely but without any of the tears that afflicted the rest of them. Her eyes were hollow with exhaustion, that was all.

Adelheid rose and shook out her gown. Strange to think of her dressed when she ought to have been sleeping, but she often watched over the child at night these latter days since everyone knew that the angel of God came most often in the hour before dawn to carry away the souls of the innocent.

Captain Falco waited in the outer chamber. He was alert, his broad face remarkably lively. “You will not believe it, Your Majesty! Come quickly, I pray you.”

Only one fountain in Novomo’s palace still played, with a splash of water running through its cunning mechanism. In this courtyard, where there was also a shaded arbor and a fine expanse of lavender and a once splendid garden of sage and chrysanthemums, Lady Lavinia hovered under the arcade and wrung her hands, looking flustered as she stared at a man washing face and hands in the pool.

Antonia caught up short, stricken and breathless, but Adelheid did not falter. She strode out to him as eager as a lover, and as he rose and turned, obviously surprised to see her, she slapped him right across the cheek. Half her retinue gasped. The rest choked down exclamations. She did not notice. Fury burned in her. She looked ready to spit.

“You killed Henry!”

He touched his cheek. He did not bow to her nor make any homage, yet neither did he scorn her. “We were allies once, Your Majesty.”

“No! You seduced me with your poisonous arguments. It’s your fault that Henry is dead!”

“Surely it is the fault of his son, who killed him. And, if we must, the fault of Anne, who would have killed Henry had you and I not saved him by our intervention.” He spoke in a calm voice, not shouting, yet clearly enough that everyone crowding about the courtyard heard his reasoned words and his harmonious voice. “I
beg
you, Your Majesty! I pray you! Do not forget that we wept and sorrowed over what had to be done. But we agreed it together. We saved him. It was his son who killed him.”

“If you are not gone from Novomo by nightfall, I will have you executed for treason.”

She swept her skirts away so the cloth would not brush against him, and walked off. In a flood, her retainers followed her, leaving Antonia with a stricken Lady Lavinia and a dozen serving folk who by their muttering and shifting did not know what to do or where to go.

“Is your daughter well, Lady Lavinia?” Hugh asked her kindly.

She stifled a sob, and said, only, “Yes, Lord Hugh. She survived the storm, which is more than I can say for many.”

“God has favored you, then. I am gladdened to hear it.”

She sobbed, and forced it back, and wavered, not knowing what to do. Perhaps she loved him better than she loved Adelheid. It would be easy to do so.

“Lady Lavinia,” said Antonia. “If you will. I shall set matters right. The queen is distraught, as you know, because of her grief.”

“Yes! Poor mite. Yes, indeed.”

“Then be at rest, and do what you must. Lord Hugh, come with me, if you please.”

He bowed his head most humbly and with that grace of manner that marked him, and with his boots still dusty from whatever road he had recently walked, he went with her to her chambers. There she sat him down on a bench and had the servants bring spiced wine. A cleric unpinned his brooch and set his cloak aside.

“What is this?” he asked, observing the room. “There hang the vestments belonging to the skopos.”

“I am now mother of the church, Lord Hugh. Be aware of that.”

The news startled him, but he absorbed it, sipping at the wine not greedily but thoughtfully. “Much has changed. I have heard in this hour fearful stories. The guards at Novomo’s gate told me that Darre is a wasteland.”

“So it is, as terrible as the pit. Stinking with sulfur and completely uninhabitable. Now. Listen. You have done me a favor in the past, and I shall return it, although I am not sure you are what I had at first hoped.”

He smiled, but she could not tell what he was thinking. He was beautiful, indeed, and weary, and she did not yet know where he had come from and what story he would tell her, but it did not hurt her eyes to watch him as she related all that had happened in the last six months and the plight confronting this remnant of Aosta’s royal court. He never once flinched or exclaimed or cried out in horror. Little surprised him, and that only when she revealed what prisoners they had in hand.

“Truly?” he asked her, and repeated himself. “The daughter of Sanglant and Liath? Truly?” He flushed.

“Be careful, Lord Hugh, else you reveal yourself too boldly.”

“What do you mean?”

“Do not think I do not know.”

That caught him, because exhaustion made him vulnerable.

“I have an idea,” she added, “but it will take time, and plotting, and patience.”

He lifted a hand most elegantly to show that he heard her, and that he was willing to let her proceed.

“What prospects have you, Lord Hugh? Why are you come here, to Aosta, when you were sent north by Anne into the land of your ancestors to work your part in the weaving?”

He smiled, but did not answer.

“Where have you come from?”

“From Wendar. I survived Anne’s sorcery, as you have surely already understood. I set another in my place and in this manner I am living and he is dead.”

“In this manner,” she noted dryly, “did Sister Meriam sacrifice herself in favor of keeping her granddaughter alive.”

“I am not Sister Meriam.”

“Indeed, you are not, Lord Hugh.”

“What do you want of me?”

“Queen Adelheid needs a husband. Why should it not be you?”

He rocked back, almost oversetting the bench, then steadied it. “I am a presbyter, as you see me, Holy Mother. It would be impossible. I cannot marry.”

“If I gave you dispensation to leave the church, you could marry. There was often talk among the servants and the populace about what a handsome couple you and Adelheid made. Henry being older, and you so young and beautiful and beloved by the Aostans of Darre.”

“I am faithful to God, Your Holiness. I do not seek marriage.”

“You lust. Can you say otherwise?”

His lips thinned. His hands curled into fists. His eyes were a cold blue, as brittle as ice. “I am faithful, Your Holiness.”