by Kate Elliott
A little river glimmered in front of them, but it was the turning wheel that made his head spin so badly that he staggered sideways until he stumbled up against a fence, which he hadn’t noticed. Two white clouds moved in the field: a pair of sheep running away from something.
“Why are they building that wall, Uncle?”
“I don’t know, Brat. Best you keep quiet and let me do the talking.”
Rain spattered, flecking the dirt road. The wind tossed the boughs in a stand of apple and walnut trees lining the path. A pair of ripening apples fell and bounced on the ground. A branch heavy with walnut fruit whirled past on a gust, sank as the wind dropped off abruptly, and landed on the earth with a thump and crackle.
“Hey! Hey, there, traveler!”
A pair of men dressed in the coarse tunics of workmen strode out from the settlement, which consisted of a pair of houses and the laboring contraption that was the wheel and the grinding house. A half-built stone wall rose between the mill and the path like a fortification. Treu loped forward to place himself between Uncle and the men, barking.
“Quiet!” scolded Uncle. Treu whined and flattened his ears.
“Big storm coming in!” cried one of the men, having to shout to be heard as the wind roared behind them. “Hurry!”
They ran, but not quickly enough. Rain lashed their backs. They were pummeled by loose branches and debris as the wind gusted so strong that it pushed Brat right over, and she stumbled and fell while Uncle struggled to keep the handcart from tipping over.
He grabbed Brat’s wrist to drag her up. A stick came down on his arm.
“Leave off her, beast!” cried one of the workmen, brandishing the stick as if it were a sword. The other man hauled Brat up and they ran for the door of the miller’s house, where a stout woman stood crying out and beckoning although her words could not be heard above the howl of the storm. Thunder rolled, but it was the shriek of the gale and the drumming of rain that deafened them. He staggered to the shelter of the half-built wall just as Brat tore away from the man holding her and dashed back to him.
“Come on!” she screamed. “You can’t stay out here!”
Maybe the mortar hadn’t set yet. Maybe it was the wind, because a cruel gust actually tore thatch off the roof of the miller’s house and sent one line of fence clattering into sticks.
The wall tumbled down on them. Heavy stones hit his legs and head but, because the Brat had been crouching under the highest part, the stones buried her entirely. Only one strand of her pale brown hair could be seen, and a pair of fingers, twitching once, then still.
Bruised and dizzy, afire as his hands burned and his head was struck again and again by flying debris, he shoved stones off his legs and heaved the stones that had covered her to one side as the gale tried to flatten him. Beyond, he heard faint cries like the whimpering of birds. He glanced that way only once. Treu had been blown over against the mill itself; the gale pressed the poor dog against the wall of the outer housing, and if he barked, the scream of the wind drowned him.
Uncle dropped down beside him, hair whipping wildly against his face, half blinding him, but he, too, tossed stones aside until Brat was revealed, crushed, lying as still as a dead thing. The second workman fought over to them, holding tight a blanket that seemed ready to take wing. A branch hit him square on and he went down to one knee and crawled forward. They managed to roll her body onto the blanket, but even so she seemed likely to be blown away on that gale as they carried her at a run back to the houses, going to the shed, which hadn’t lost half its roof.
The door banged shut. Inside the storehouse they huddled as the wind tore at the roof and whistled through cracks in the logs. More than once the whole structure shuddered as if it was being shaken in the claws of a monster.
“Ai, God!” moaned Uncle, bending over his niece’s body. The gloom hid much, for the shed hadn’t any windows, but it was obvious that the collapsing wall hadn’t just broken all the bones in her body but crushed them. Horribly, she was still breathing. Blood bubbled on her lips, and one eye was open while the other was purpled and swelling shut so fast they could see the skin rise and blood rush up under it.
He wept over her, although he burned. His tears burned, as bright as petals of flame where they struck Brat’s mangled body. The dark shed flickered with sparks of light flashing in and out of existence. Angels had come to visit them, bringing holy fire.
“I pray you,” he murmured, beseeching them, “heal her.”
But the angels tormented him, pricking and stinging his skin, and the wind piped a tune around the frail shed that forced him to dance although there wasn’t much room among the barrels and sacks and the shelves piled with rope and tools shaped by the millwright’s lathe.
“He’s a madman!” cried the workman who still wielded the stick. “He threw that wall down on her!” He poked him back, and back, slapping at his thighs and body until he was driven up against the door.
“Leave him be!” cried Uncle, still weeping. “He’s a hermit, come out of the forest. Just a beggar. The wall fell because of the storm, or because of your poor workmanship! Leave be!”
“We didn’t! I won’t!” cried the workman. “I’m not feared of madmen. I fought in the army of the old count, God save him. We saw plenty of worse things than filthy beggars, didn’t we, Heric?”
The stick pressed him against the door while, beyond the planks of wood, the wind battered and beat, the strength of it thrumming against his shoulders. He twitched and jerked, needing to dance, anything to shake the sparks free that snapped open and closed all around him.
A shadow rose beyond the dying girl, a face that exploded into bits only it was still there, staring at him with a twist of its lips and a jaded gaze. “I recognize him.” The workman shook his head. “Nay. Can’t be.”
“Let me go!” he begged. “Can’t you see the angels? It’s all fire! Ai! Ai! It burns!”
“What, that filthy creature?” asked the other man.
“Leave him be,” said Uncle, but weeping had crushed his voice to a monotone and he did not look up from his niece to see what they were doing.
“Uncle?” whispered the girl, the sound of her voice almost lost beneath the noise of the wind.
“It looks like that stable boy, the one the old count took for his son and who was fooling him all along, the cheat.”
“Nay! Do you think so, Heric? I’ve heard all kind of stories—that Lord Geoffrey’s daughter ain’t the rightful count and that there wouldn’t be such bad times if that son had stayed on. Wouldn’t Lord Geoffrey be happy to show the doubters that the cheater was nothing more than a madman? There might be a great deal of silver in it for us, if we took him along to Lavas Holding.”
“Silver! Don’t you remember how he tossed us out after all that time we’d served the old count, bless his soul? Why shouldn’t Lord Geoffrey cheat us as well even if we did do him a good turn?”
The wind was dying. Far beyond, he heard the bleating of sheep and Treu barking and barking and barking, but the snow of angels had turned to flowers winking and dazzling in front of his eyes until the whole world turned the white-hot blue fire of a blacksmith’s flame, searing his body.
“As if we can live with what work we can find now, eh, Heric? Building walls for a bowl of porridge. That’s no way to live!”
“Least we eat almost every day.”
“You lost your spirit in the war.”
“I lost my spirit when Lord Geoffrey threw us out to make room for his wife’s uncle’s war band! Didn’t even give us a loaf of bread for our pains and our wounds.”
“Why not try? It’s a gamble. It might not be the same man. Lord Geoffrey might want nothing to do with him. But we might win something.”
“Why not?” said Heric as light showered down around him, obscuring his face. The wind moaned in through the cracks in the shed and up among the rafters. “Why not, indeed? The stable boy never did me any favors, did he? Even tried to take my gir
l, before she left me for a man who could give her a meal every day. Here’s some rope.”
4
“AFTER hearing this news of Princess Theophanu’s troubles, and after reflecting upon his triumphs in the south, the king decided to settle his affairs in Aosta and return north to Wendar.”
When Heriburg’s quill ceased its scratching, the young woman looked up. “What next, Sister Rosvita?”
Rosvita sighed and looked over her company. They had become accustomed to long stretches of silence, and in truth this prison was a remarkably silent place, with the sound of the wind and the occasional skree of a hawk almost the only noises they heard. Now and again a guard might laugh; at intervals they heard wheels crunching on dust; the monks never spoke nor ever sang even to worship. She had come to believe that the brothers who lived here had all had their tongues cut out.
Prison was a species of muteness, too, but she had rallied her troops and kept them busy marking the hours of each day with worship, discussing the finer points of theology and the seven arts and sciences and memorizing the histories that they knew and the three books they possessed, her History, the Vita of St. Radegundis, and the convent’s chronicles. Fortunatus proved especially clever at devising puzzles and mental games to keep their minds agile.
Now Fortunatus, Ruoda, Heriburg, Gerwita, Jehan, and Jerome all looked at her expectantly. The Eagle was out fetching water—of all of them, Hanna had the least ability to remain peaceably within such monotonous confines, although when Rosvita taught the others to understand and speak Arethousan, which she did every day for several hours, Hanna had shown an unexpected facility for that language.
Sister Hilaria was sitting with Petra out in the courtyard while Teuda continued her fruitless attempts to garden. Sister Diocletia and Aurea were in the next chamber massaging Mother Obligatia’s withered limbs, a duty done in privacy. She heard one murmur to the other, and a stifled grunt from Obligatia, followed by a chuckle and an exchange of words too faint to make out.
“In truth,” said Rosvita finally, “that is as far as I have got. I confess that when I composed the History in my mind, while in the skopos’ dungeon, I stopped there. I could not bring myself to speak of that night when I saw Presbyter Hugh murder Helmut Villam. I had not the courage to record the queen’s treachery. As for the rest, I must rely on your testimony to construct a history of the months I was imprisoned in the skopos’ dungeon. What remains to be written beyond that has passed unknown to us, or has not yet come to pass. Now we write the events as we live them.”
Seventy-three days they had remained confined at the monastery, each day a hatch mark scratched onto a loose brick pried out of the courtyard wall, but since the monks remained silent, it was impossible to find out exactly what date it was, although they might all guess that it was summer. It was so blazing hot that each trip down into the rock to fetch water from the hidden spring was a relief and, even, a luxury. At first only Hilaria, Diocletia, Aurea, and Hanna had the strength to complete the climb, but eventually every one of them except Petra and Mother Obligatia could negotiate those stairs.
Fortunatus bent over the table to examine Heriburg’s calligraphy. “A sure hand, Sister, and much improved.” He glanced at Rosvita as if to say “yet never as elegant as Sister Amabilia’s.”
She smiled sadly at him. How many of these truehearted clerics would survive their adventure? Amabilia certainly was not the first casualty of these days, nor would she be the last if all that they had heard predicted actually came true. It had proved far easier to write of the great deeds that formed history than to live through them.
“We must pray we survive to see the outcome of these events,” she said at last.
Sister Diocletia came into the chamber, rubbing her hands. She had connived olive oil out of the guards and it was this she used to manipulate and strengthen the old abbess’ limbs.
“She’ll sleep for a bit,” she said, “but she’s well today, as strong as she has been in months. However much it has chafed at the rest of us, this long rest has saved her.”
“Bless you, Sister,” said Rosvita, knowing that the young ones needed to hear such words, to believe that the confinement wasn’t wasted; that they hadn’t doomed themselves. They hadn’t fallen into Anne’s grip yet. There was still hope.
From far away, as if the sound drifted in on a cloud, they heard muffled shouts. Soon after, footsteps clattered outside. The door creaked open on dry hinges, and Hanna burst in, her face red and her hands empty, without the buckets of water they depended on.
“Sergeant Bysantius has returned!” she exclaimed. “He’s taking us to his commander. We leave tomorrow!”
The broad valley had so much green that it made Hanna’s eyes hurt, and she could actually see flowing water, a dozen or more streams splashing down from surrounding hills. After ten days spent crossing dry countryside, Hanna inhaled the scent of life and thought that maybe they had come to paradise.
The others crowded up behind her to exclaim over the vista and its bounty of trees: figs, olives, oranges, mulberries, and palms. But Sergeant Bysantius wasn’t a man who enjoyed views: He barked an order to his detachment of soldiers, and the wagons commenced down the cart track toward the land below. He was still the only one riding a horse; the wagons were pulled by oxen, slow but steady, and they had a trio of recalcitrant goats whose milk kept Mother Obligatia strong.
As she trudged along beside the foremost wagon, exchanging a friendly comment or two with the Carter, Hanna shaded her eyes to examine the valley. Its far reaches faded into a heat haze, although certainly the weather was not as hot as it had been through much of their time confined to the tiny cliff monastery. In the center of a valley a small hill rose, crowned with ancient walls and a small domed church in the Arethousan style, almost a square. Beyond and around the hill a formidable ring wall appeared in sections, half gnawed away by time or by folk needing dressed stone for building. Tents sprouted like mushrooms on the plain around the old acropolis and mixed in among what appeared to be the ancient ruins of a town now overgrown with a village whose houses were built of stone and capped by clay-red the roofs.
“Tell me what you see, I pray you,” said Mother Obligatia, who lay in the back of the wagon on her stretcher, wedged between dusty sacks of grain.
“It’s a rich land, with more water than we’ve seen in the last three months altogether, I think.” She described the vegetation, and the layout of the buildings, and last of all described the tents. “It’s an army, but I can’t make out the banners yet.”
Mother Obligatia thanked her. “If they had meant to kill us, they have had plenty of opportunity. I suppose we are meant to reside as hostages. Yet among whom?”
“I wish I knew,” replied Hanna, “but I fear we shall discover our fate soon enough.” She clasped the old woman’s hand briefly, then let go in order to negotiate a badly corrugated stretch of road over which the wagons jounced and lurched; she lost her footing more than once, turning her ankle hard and gritting her teeth against the pain.
By the time the path bottomed out onto level ground, she was limping and could no longer see anything except the high citadel walls in the distance, which did indeed resemble a crown set down among the trees. Yet down here in the valley the wind had a cool kiss, and there was shade, and ripe figs and impossibly succulent oranges to be plucked from trees growing right beside the rutted road. They crossed two streams, and the sergeant was gracious enough to allow them to pour water onto their hot faces and dusty hands, even over their hair and necks, before he ordered them onward.
They crossed a noble old bridge with seven spans, water sparkling and shimmering below, and passed under the archway of the ring wall. A lion, like that sacred to St. Mark, capped the lintel, although it had no face.
Once inside this wall they walked on a paved road with wheel ruts worn into the stone at just the wrong width for their wagons. Fields surrounded them, most overgrown and all marked out by low stone walls. There
were more orchards and one stand of wheat nearing harvest. She heard ahead of them the shouts and halloos of a host of men, and the braying, barking, caterwauling, and neighing of a mob of animals. Where the road turned a corner around an unexpected outcrop of rock, they came into sight of an old palace of stone, still mostly standing, where three grand tents sprawled with banners waving and folk here and there on errands or just loitering. Men forged forward to gawk at them as their party lumbered in.
“Isn’t that the two-headed eagle of Ungria?” Hanna asked, but before she got her bearings or an answer two handsomely robed men with beardless cheeks and shrewd expressions rushed out from the central tent to meet them.
They spoke to Sergeant Bysantius in Arethousan, while Rosvita crept forward to stand beside Mother Obligatia and whisper a translation, although Hanna found that she could pick up much of what they said herself.
“They know we are coming and ask if we are the prisoners whom the king and his wife have asked for. The lady is pleased. We are to be escorted in at once, even without pausing to be washed.”
Soldiers trotted forward to hoist the stretcher out of the wagon. Sergeant Bysantius herded the gaggle of clerics forward. Heriburg clutched the leather sack containing the books, but Jerome left their chest behind. It contained nothing so valuable that it couldn’t be abandoned. Except for the books, they possessed nothing of value except the clothes on their backs—and. their own persons.
Who would ransom them? Who would care? Aurea crept up beside Hanna as they were pressed into the anteroom of the central tent, and clutched her hand. Her palms were sweaty, her face was pale, but she kept her chin up.
“Take heart,” said Rosvita softly to the girls. She exchanged a look with Fortunatus. He nodded, solemn. Even Petra had, for a mercy, gone silent, eyes half shut as though she were sleepwalking.
The anteroom was crowded with courtiers dressed in the Arethousan style but also in the stoles and cloaks of Ungrians. There were a lot of Ungrians. It seemed a face or three looked vaguely familiar to Hanna, but she wasn’t sure how that could be. She caught sight of a man short but powerfully broad with the wide features and deep eyes common to the Quman, enough like Bulkezu that she actually had a jolt of recognition, a thrill of terror, that shook her down to her feet, until she realized a moment later that the ground was shaking, not her.