The Gathering Storm (38 page)

She wondered if she had dreamed that flash of blue in Henry’s eyes. Perhaps Hathui had betrayed the king and tried to drag Hanna into the conspiracy. Perhaps her own loyalty to Liath had disoriented her, complicated by the familiar tangle of envy, love, fidelity, and a tiny spark of resentment. Yet Liath had left her and the Eagles behind. Why should she cling to a friendship that had likely meant far more to Hanna than it ever had to Liath?

She could not shake constancy. She understood better now the fears and weaknesses that had driven Liath. Whatever had happened in the past, she could not abandon the memory of the fellowship and harmony they had shared.

She had a sudden, odd feeling that someone was looking at her. Turning her head, she caught sight of a cleric sitting among a dozen others at a table to one side of the king’s throne. These members of the king’s schola were at work writing down the names and pledges of each of the artisans,
making a careful record of the great undertaking they had now all embarked on which would culminate in the first Emperor since the days of Taillefer, one hundred years before.

One man had paused in his writing to look at her: Brother Fortunatus, who had given the sermon at St. Asella’s. He did not look away immediately when their gazes met. He studied her, frowning slightly, serious; he had a gaunt-looking face, as if he had once been a lot heavier and healthier and happier with the extra weight. No doubt he wondered why she walked among Hugh’s entourage. No doubt he wondered if she had betrayed him.

A courtier approached the king to introduce three aged clerics, residents of the famous institution of the learned St. Melania of Kellai. They had studied the Holy Verses and with careful prognostications had several well-omened dates to suggest for the coronation itself. The king and queen listened as the scholars argued over the relative benefits of a coronation held on the feast day of St. Peter the Discipla, which was also Candlemass, or that of St. Eulalia, two days later, whose attendance at the birth of the blessed Daisan would bring her saintly approval to the birth of a new empire.

Beside Hanna, two of Hugh’s clerics were chatting softly in counterpoint to the discussion going on publicly before the king.

“Nay, but the arguments for holding the coronation on the twenty-second day of Novarian are very strong, if we speak only of the stars.”

“They’ll say no such thing publicly! People still fear mathematici.”

“That won’t last. The Holy Mother herself did the calculations. It was she who said that when Jedu moves from the Lion into the Dragon, it would be well for the king to crown himself from the lesser beast into the greater.”

“But I’ve heard others argue that we had better look to a conjunction with the Crown of Stars, for that signifies the empire, and thus would command better success. Erekes will reach conjunction with the Crown on the eleventh of Askulavre.”

“Erekes is fleeting. Would that not cause the reign of the new emperor to be fleeting?”

“Life is fleeting, Brother. Yet doesn’t Somorhas come into conjunction with the Crown soon after? And linger there for many days, into Fevrua?”

“Because she goes into retrograde. That can scarcely bode well. Yet on the first of Sormas, she touches the Child’s Torc, signifying heaven’s blessing on the rule of Earth’s regnants.”

They would argue endlessly. Hugh’s private schola, his coterie of clerics and church-folk, was riddled with women and men professing to understand the teachings of the mathematici, magic outlawed by a church council a hundred years ago but come back into favor with the blessing of the new skopos, herself an adept of the sorcerous arts.

Brother Fortunatus was not the only one watching her: so did Duchess Liutgard, with narrowed eyes, as if wondering why an Eagle had sought refuge under Hugh’s wing—or why Hugh had confined an Eagle within the cage of his faithful retinue.

She dropped her gaze to stare at her feet and the honest pair of boots covering them. She had followed the trail set before her by the will of others for too long. Maybe it was time to branch off on a path of her own making.

THE door into the chamber where he was confined for the night, separate from the others, stood so low that Ivar had to crawl to get inside. With a blanket wrapped around him, he huddled on the stone platform that served as a bed, unable to sleep, stricken with wretched cramps from the rich food.

Why did the righteous suffer and the wicked thrive? Ivar could not imagine Hugh spending even one single night in discomfort. No doubt he lay in a fine luxurious bed waited on by servants. Had he a woman in the bed with him? Yet the image wouldn’t rise. Hugh had never shown interest in any woman in Heart’s Rest, not until Liath. Maybe Hugh lusted just as most men did but knew how to control himself.

Anger writhed in his gut at the thought of Hugh until finally he staggered over to the bucket placed in the corner and vomited the remains of his dinner. When he sagged back onto the hard bed, he felt a little better. He must not let despair and hatred control him. He could not let the memory of Liath torment him. He had to figure out how to get his companions out of this prison, and he could not do so if he let jealousy and fear and hate consume him. He had always acted so impulsively before. Unbidden, the memory of his elder half sister, Rosvita, came to his mind. She would never have found herself in such an awkward circumstance. She would never be so stupid as to be thrown into a prison cell for some rash action or thoughtless words. How many times as a child had he heard her held up as a paragon of shrewdness and composure? He had to try to be like her. He had to set aside his passions and
think
.

How could three years have passed in the space of two nights?

In the morning, the prior came with a party of men and took away Gerulf as well as Baldwin, whose indignant complaining could be heard through the heavy door. Later, a servant brought venison, bread, and leftover pudding, but Ivar couldn’t bear to touch anything but the bread. Wine didn’t quench his thirst, but a diet of bread and wine eased the ache in his bowels.

The day passed with excruciating slowness. The afternoon service of Nones had come and gone when, at last, all seven of them were brought under guard to the abbot’s office. Ivar needed only one look at the expression on Baldwin’s and Gerulf’s faces.

“Nothing, my lord abbot,” said the prior. “We entered each of the mounds and found a passageway in to a central chamber. Villam’s men did the same thing five years ago when the lad first disappeared. The chambers lie empty. We saw no tunnels or stairs leading farther into the ground, nor did we find any trace of Lord Berthold or his companions.”

The abbot regarded Ivar as he toyed with an ornament: a deer carved from ivory, so cunningly wrought that each least detail, ears, flared eyes, nostrils, the tufts of hair on its legs,
had been suggested by the artisan’s skill. A servant came in with a covered bucket to add charcoal to the brazier.

“Truly, it puzzles me that Lord Ivar and his companions should make such a claim when they must have known how easily it would be disproved. They do not strike me as fools—well, perhaps with one exception. Still, this matter goes beyond my jurisdiction. Only the biscop’s court can judge cases of heresy, and whether these tales are true. A phoenix rising from the ashes, healing the lame and the ill. Three years passing in the space of two nights. A two months’ journey overland accomplished by walking into and out of a barrow, through a labyrinth of chambers buried far beneath the old grave mounds.”

“Sorcery!” exclaimed the prior. “Like those stories we’ve heard of bandits who eat the souls of their captives.”

“Hush!” scolded Ortulfus. “Speak no ill gossip lest you bring the sickness back on yourself. Lord Ivar, at Hugh of Austra’s trial you yourself admitted to consorting with a woman condemned and outlawed for the crime of sorcery. How am I to judge? I must send all of you to Autun.”

“I don’t want to go back to Autun!” cried Baldwin. “And you didn’t tell them about the lions!”

“Ai, God,” said Gerulf impatiently, forgetting his station as a humble Lion, “his ravings won’t help our case any.”

“Nay, hold,” said the prior suddenly. “What lions?”

“The lions on that rock outcropping,” said Baldwin irritably. “The one by that tiny old shelter.”

Father Ortulfus set down the deer. His expression grew pensive, even troubled. The sacrist whispered furtively to the chief scribe, and the cellarer rubbed his hands together nervously while the prior plucked at his keys.

They knew something. Here lay the opportunity.

“I saw the lions, too,” Ivar said at once. “They came at night while I was on watch with Sigfrid. They drove off a pack of wolves and kept watch over us where we sheltered under an overhang near by the hovel.”

The abbot wavered.

They had struck on the one thing that might convince him. “You never said you saw the lions!” exclaimed Baldwin indignantly. “You let everyone think I was a maniac!”

That quickly, Father Ortulfus’ support slipped away. Picking up the deer, he surveyed his prisoners with a sigh of derision. “Convenient that you recall just now to mention that you saw lions, Lord Ivar.”

“But I did see them,” Ivar insisted, hearing his voice grow shrill. It was so hard to stay calm when disaster stared them in the face. God have mercy! Mother Scholastica had cut out Sigfrid’s
tongue
for speaking heresy. What would Biscop Constance do to them?

“Why did you not mention it to your companions?” Ortulfus went on. “To see a lion in this part of the world would be an unexpected event, would it not? Did you see a lion, Lord Ermanrich? Lady Hathumod? Gerulf? Dedi?”

One by one, reluctantly, they shook their heads.

“Why did you say nothing?” repeated Ortulfus.

“I—I—it seemed like a dream to me. In the morning, I didn’t see any tracks, so I thought perhaps I had dreamed about lions only because of what Baldwin had said.”

“And you, Brother Sigfrid?” Father Ortulfus’ tone was the more damning for being so composed.

“There were lions, my lord abbot, but unless you see them with your own eyes, you cannot understand that they exist.”

“So be it. Suspected on the grounds of heresy and sorcery. Biscop Constance must judge this matter, for I cannot. Prior Ratbold, make ready a party to escort them to Autun for trial.”

“I went St. Asella’s once,” Hanna admitted as she ate supper that evening with the other Wendish servants in Hugh’s retinue. “Do you go often?”

“Indeed, we do,” said Margret the seamstress. Normally she had a piece of embroidery or mending on her lap. It was strange to see her clever hands engaged in any other activity, even so commonplace a one as spooning leek and turnip stew into her mouth. “My lord Hugh is most generous, as you
know, and gives us one morning a week to attend Vespers at St. Asella’s.”

“You’re not frightened at going down into the lower city so late? The Aostans don’t love the Wendish.”

“They do not love us,” said Vindicadus the scribe, “but they’ll be ruled by us no matter what they wish.” He glanced at Margret.

The seamstress brushed a tendril of graying hair out of her eyes. “We walk down in daylight. That is safe enough. By the time evening song is over, we are all together. We walk back to the palace as a troop. None bother us, even if a few throw curses our way.”

“I wonder if I might come with you. It gladdened my heart to hear a lesson given in Wendish. My ears grow weary of hearing Aostan, if you’ll pardon me for saying so.”

“No need to ask our pardon, but you must ask the steward.” “Vindicadus” wasn’t the name given him by his mother. He came of low birth from a village in western Avaria but had learned to read and write regardless and been allowed to take the cleric’s tonsure in a frontier monastery in Austra, where his talents (and, it was rumored, his pretty face and pleasing figure) had come to the attention of Margrave Judith. He had evidently flowered young and faded quickly, for although a well enough looking man he had gone to fat, and it wasn’t clear to Hanna by what chain of events he had ended up in Darre. Hugh used him to make copies of any royal cartularies and capitularies which might be of interest to the skopos and to run errands.

The next day the steward said there was no objection to such an expedition as long as Hanna remained with Margret and Vindicadus. The holy presbyter was a generous lord and favored those of his servants who obeyed him and did right by God.

So she found herself the following evening, as the service of Vespers began, sitting toward the back of the nave in St. Asella’s, watching and waiting while Margret and Vindicadus bent their heads in prayer.

“May the Mother and Father of Life have mercy upon us—” Two male clerics led the service this day, but she saw Fortunatus and the three young women standing at the rear of the
choir. Was that Aurea, the servant woman, sitting on the third bench? Even with lamps burning along the aisle, it was hard to tell because the drape of her shawl concealed her face.

“In peace let us pray to Our Lord and Lady.”

The soothing words melded with the whispered gossip of the group of women on the back bench, more interested in chatting about their day than about saving their everlasting souls. It was hard to concentrate on prayers. There were so many distractions, thoughts flickering in and out of her mind as she struggled to quiet the tumble of ideas that fell one over the other. She became aware of a mild rumbling in her stomach, the gift of the strongly-flavored leek stew, three days old, she had eaten this afternoon. She covered her mouth to burp as the two clerics paced out the stations marking the blessed Daisan’s life and ministry as he brought the Holy Word to the faithful.

She felt queasy, actually, a little shaky, as though the stew had turned bad. She shut her eyes, but the nausea didn’t go away. The bench rocked back. The ground jerked so hard that she slammed into Margret. She fell forward, banging her knee on the bench in front of her.

A scream split the drone of the service as the ground pitched back the other way, grinding and howling. A brick fell square in the middle of the aisle. A tripod teetered, tipped, and spilled fire along the aisle. People leaped to their feet shouting and crying out in fear as Hanna stared uncomprehendingly at the spilled oil, fire running along the stone floor of the church, racing like wildfire. Bricks rained down. Dust smothered the lamps.