The Book of Earth (5 page)

The white-robe who had come forward began the ritual of burial. He kept his head down and his voice low and reverent until the section of the rite where the priest addresses the congregation. Then he let both rise, and augmented his performance with gestures. His cowl slid back a bit as he warmed to a lecture on the wages of sin, warning of a nearby day of reckoning. Erde waited for him to mention dragons but he only decried the wickedness of the worldly in a more general sort of way, exhorting all present to stand beside him in the coming battle against the evils abroad in the land, to take responsibility and clean out the “sinkholes of depravity” in their own back gardens.

Erde was disappointed. She thought his harangue a standard one and over-rehearsed. Tor Alte’s own chaplain was also dull but at least he’d known the baroness, and would have done better by being able to say something personal. What did catch her interest was noting that the haranguer was not the same man who’d passed as Brother Guillemo a few hours earlier. Covertly, she located her own candidate in the back rank, but this time she forgot herself and stared too long. His eyes, darting about, met hers and held piercingly until she could gather her wits enough to glance away.

Her heart thudded. She felt short of breath. Throughout the rest of the long, sleet-sodden ceremony, Erde pressed as close to Rainer as he would allow, and did not look up again.

A
t the funeral feast that evening, a third false-Guillemo took the place of honor at the baron’s right.

Candles flared at the high table and the hearths burned bright. Precious oil smoked in every lamp on the three great wagon-wheel chandeliers. Three days had passed since word had come of Brother Guillemo’s offer to reroute his pilgrimage in order to bury the baroness in the full authority of the Church of Rome. The baron’s chamberlain had been frantically gathering food and arranging the precise protocols of seating and serving. Household and guests crowded the long horseshoe of stout wooden trestles, grateful for the ceremonial excuse to eat all they could get their hands on.

Tray after tray of roasted meats and sauced vegetables paraded past the high table for inspection. Meanwhile, the new false-Guillemo engaged Baron Josef in a peculiarly one-way conversation. Seated to her father’s left, Erde listened while pretending not to. This man’s voice was deep like the other two Guillemos’, but more nasal. Her girl-child’s enforced experience as a listener told her he spoke German like a native. It was his foreigner’s accent that was learned. She stored this detail away to pass on to Alla later.

Erde had no trouble searching out her real-Guillemo, but now she was painfully cautious in her surveillance. She did note that he placed himself well inside the ranks of his brothers, along the right side of the horseshoe, and that while the robed and hooded man to her father’s right spoke of the cold summer and bad harvest and made an elaborate show of taking a spartan meal of bread, cheese, and spring water, the platter in front of her chosen Guillemo bore only
a nibbled crust and some apple parings. But Erde spied him helping himself covertly from his neighbors’ bowls and flagons—and only from those portions they had already tasted. Now and then, she caught him staring in her direction.

She herself could barely eat. She considered the group gluttony of feasting to be the least appealing aspect of ceremonial occasions, and resented the probability that this noisy throng of red-faced, greasy-fingered eaters had struggled through the wet, unseasonable cold not to bid the baroness a loving farewell but to stuff themselves with a good meal.

Tonight, particularly, she felt heavy and stupid from the unaccustomed heat in the hall. The din of forced joviality beat harshly at her ears. She drank some wine to wet her nervous throat, and wished the priest would stop looking at her. She knew that, as a baron’s daughter, she would always be stared at and would always have people seeking to use her somehow, but she particularly hated feeling drawn into this man’s game. It was like being sucked into a current too strong to swim against.

For relief, she watched Rainer as he wandered the circuit of the tables, restless, a mug of ale in hand for camouflage. She found herself thinking how fine he looked, as if she had never really noticed before, how tall and bronze-blond he was in his black captain’s tunic. Fricca had once called Rainer “delicate,” and it was true that he was not brawny like most of the baron’s Guard, the beefy bearded men whom the chamber-women cooed over. His shoulders were not overbroad and he often had to be reminded to stand up straight. But Erde had watched him spar with his men in the stable yard. He was easily their equal in strength and agility, and his greater height gave him an added advantage. What Fricca thought overanxious and fragile, Erde saw as sensitive and elegant. Certainly he was the only member of the baron’s Guard who’d learned how to read. The baroness had seen to that. After all, Rainer’s father had served His Majesty the King.

How steadfast he seemed to her now as she watched him pace along the tapestried wall, how concerned and reliable. She considered taking him into her confidence and pointing out the real-Guillemo to him, but what if he didn’t believe
her? Or worse still, what if Alla was right, that both Rainer and her father had noted the deception long ago, and only she, a foolish little girl, thought it was such a big secret? She wouldn’t want to seem foolish to Rainer.

“Your table is a marvel, my lord, in times of such hardship.” The false-Guillemo drained his cup and refilled it from a clay pitcher of springwater.

“Hospitality is one of our Lord’s commandments, is it not?” returned the baron dryly, gesturing for his own cup to be filled with hearth-warmed wine.

Erde fanned herself covertly. Was her father calling the hooded band’s bluff with this merciless indoor heat? She found his forbearance with his lecturing guest to be quite remarkable, even as the man detailed far beyond courtesy the plight of the lands he had traveled most recently, how the fertile river plains were plagued with drought and the uplands so unseasonably cold and wet that the frost-killed crops rotted in the fields before ripening.

“Peasant and lord, they’re declaring it a punishment from God, my lord baron, and being God-fearing folk, they wonder what it is they’ve done to deserve such misfortune. One or two bad seasons they’re used to, as good men of the land, but my lord, this year makes it six in a row!”

The baron set down his knife, with which he had just speared a prime chunk of venison and paired it with a small potato. His eyes sparkled with drink, but his voice was neutral. “I have petitioned to the king for relief for the villages.”

“The king?” The false-Guillemo let just enough space fall between his words to invite comment. “You will surely pardon a visitor’s ignorance, lord baron, but from what we have heard in our travels, you will be lucky indeed if help comes from that quarter.”

Erde was shocked. The king had surely had his troubles of late, but in her grandmother’s court, such disrespect would not have been allowed, even from a foreigner who could be supposed not to know any better. But Baron Josef merely reclaimed his knife and ate, his glance steady on his guest.

“I mean, of course, from which of your king’s empty storehouses is such relief to come?”

The baron chewed thoughtfully. “Ah, yes, from where is relief to come? Nearer at hand, perhaps.”

“Perhaps, my lord.” Again, the pause. The false-Guillemo’s hands were folded tightly on the table in front of him. “But we must not hope for help from an earthly king when the Church is our only salvation. Six bad years. Six, you know, my lord, is the Devil’s number.”

The baron speared another morsel, nodding.

The false priest leaned closer, the folds of his cowl falling about his face so that his deep voice resonated out of pure darkness. “It is not Heaven who punishes us, my lord, nor chance who visits with these plagues. God has sent his Word to our brethren, and we have received it. The true cause is Nature, the Devil’s fancy woman, and her host of beasts and sorcerers, turning our own lands against us. A conspiracy of mages, lord baron, of mages, witches, and women, that God calls us to rise up against and vanquish in His Name! What do you say to that?”

A conspiracy of mages, indeed. Erde found herself wishing she could call up the Mage-Queen herself to spirit this horrible man away, all the way back to Rome with every one of his so-called brothers. She noted her father’s faintly arched brow and watched his interest, captured initially by the priest’s political innuendo, fade before this onslaught of religious rhetoric.

“Good brother, I await further enlightenment.”

The not-priest heard the invitation but not its skepticism. “There are dark forces abroad, my lord! Dark forces that thrive on our weaknesses. We’ve been too careless of Nature, sir. We’ve relaxed our guard, let her evade our discipline, let her emissaries invade our lives, our very homes. Our women talk of cycles of the moon instead of gifts from God. Our children run loose in the land like young animals, empowering the very forces that seek domination over us! Nature readies herself, my lord. She calls her creatures to her, and soon . . .”

Through the drone of the false-priest’s tirade, Erde became aware of a door opening, a scuffle, of shouts rising above the chatter of the diners, a man crying out Brother Guillemo’s name as he was subdued by three guardsmen who’d been handy to the entrance. The candle flames danced on the high table and she heard the soft rasp of Rainer’s sword easing from its sheath.

The false-Guillemo broke off his speech and sprang from
his seat, arms spread wide. He stood for a moment, poised, letting his cup spill and roll to the floor, its clatter punctuating the sudden silence his gesture created. “Soldiers, I beg you! Let this good man be! He does no harm to call my name!”

The other white-robes rose as one to second his protest.

The three guardsmen looked to their captain. In the breathless hush, the pinioned man worked an arm free and reached toward the false-priest with a desperate cry. “Brother, they have come! Protect us, poor sinners all! Have mercy on us!”

Ladies giggled and whispered as the false-Guillemo pushed back his chair and shouldered his way through the throng of his hooded brothers toward the door. “Who comes, friend? What has you so frightened?”

“The dragons! The dragons come!”

In Erde’s breast, hope stirred along with apprehension. Dragons? The white-robes murmured and stirred, flowing like a frothy torrent in the false-priest’s wake.

“My lord?” asked Rainer quietly from beside the baron’s chair.

“Religion’s his bailiwick.” The baron sipped his wine. “Let him handle it, if he’s so eager.”

Rainer raised his sword, letting the blade flare in the lamplight, then sheathed it. The guardsmen let the man go.

“You know this man?” the baron asked Rainer. A hovering servant filled his cup again.

“No, my lord. But I’ll ask around later.”

The newcomer was middle-aged and pasty, as if his job kept him well out of the sun. He fell to his knees on the slate floor, weeping at the false-priest’s feet as the other white-robes converged around them, hiding both from sight. The courtiers waited, tittering among themselves, eager for the excitement.

“What now?” the baron murmured, easing forward in his chair.

“Another switch?” Rainer suggested, and Erde breathed a sigh of relief that she hadn’t blurted out her Great Discovery to him. Had the entire court been aware of it? She reminded herself to listen to Alla more. Clearly, not saying anything was just part of the game.

“He’ll have to get down to business sooner or later,”
said the baron. “Now that he knows I’m not going to poison him.”

“But can you trust him to tell you what his business is, my lord?”

The baron offered his guardsman an icy profile. “I can trust myself to figure it out, Captain.”

Rainer’s head dipped. “Of course, my lord.”

“Brothers!” A new voice rose from out of the throng around the door. “Give the man room to speak!” The white-robes drew aside. Erde’s real-Guillemo now knelt beside the weeping man, his hood thrown back, revealing a bald head and large, commanding eyes. He pressed the man’s hand piously to his chest. A guffaw from one of the guardsmen’s tables against the far wall was quickly hushed.

“Yesss!” hissed the baron thickly. “Now we’ll see what he’s about.”

“It’s really him now!” Erde whispered before she could stop herself.

Rainer grinned and nodded, but Baron Josef turned and stared her into silence. The wine sparkle in his eyes was blurred and watery.

“Holy father, help us!” the weeping man pleaded.

“We are all brothers here, my friend,” Guillemo reproved gently. He rose, pulling the man up with him. His hands were small, Erde noticed. Darkly furred and delicate. “Have you your voice back now? Can you tell us what you saw?”

“Ohhh!” Ragged sleeves fell back from the palest flesh as the man waved his arms and tried to cover his head. “A great rush of wings past the wheat field, Brother, and a shadow like blackest night falling over the barnyard! And an awful stench, like a hot wind from the very bowels of hell itself. It’s the evil come hunting us, surely, just like you prophesied! See, here, its terrible mark!”