The Burning Stone

by Kate Elliott

  “So you are. What am I to make of your appearance? Why did you turn my Eagle back at your border, in the Alfar Mountains? Why have you troubled my brother Benedict and Queen Marozia of Karrone with your disputes? Why did you not support me against the Eika, and against Sabella’s unlawful rebellion against my authority?”

  For an instant Rosvita thought Conrad would turn around right then, mount, and ride off in a rage. Unexpectedly, Father Hugh stepped forward from his place in the front ranks, near Sapientia’s chair, and placed himself between the two men.

  “Your Majesty,” he began, “let me with these poor words humbly beg you and your noble cousin to feast together, for as the blessed Daisan once said, ‘The measure you give is the measure you will receive.’ Greet your kin with wine and food. It is better to enter into a dispute on a full stomach than an empty one, for a hungry woman will feed on angry words while she who has eaten of the feast provided by God will know how to set aside anger for conciliation.”

  He was right, of course. She took a step forward to add her voice to his.

  “What better conciliation,” said Conrad suddenly, “than a betrothal feast? Give us only your blessing, cousin, and your daughter Theophanu and I will speak our consent to be wed.”

  Henry rose slowly. Rosvita caught in her breath and waited. Rashly suggested! What did Conrad hope to gain from such bluntness?

  But Henry said nothing of marriage. He descended the steps with kingly dignity and raised an arm to clasp Conrad’s in cousinly affection. “The news came to us only two days ago, and it was received with many tears. Let us have peace between us, cousin, while we mourn the passing of Lady Eadgifu.”

  Conrad wept manfully, and with evident sincerity. “We must put our trust in God, They who rule over all things. She was the best of women.”

  Now many sighs and groans arose from the assembly, both from those who had known the Lady Eadgifu and those whose hearts were touched by the sorrow shown by duke and king. Rosvita could not help but shed a few tears, although she had met the Alban princess on only three occasions, and mostly remembered her because her fair hair and ivory-light skin had contrasted handsomely with the black hair and dusky complexion of her husband; on first arriving from Alba, Eadgifu had spoken Wendish poorly and therefore refrained from speaking much except to her Alban retinue.

  One woman among the assembly was not weeping: Theophanu. She had lowered her gaze but under those heavy, dark lids—so like Queen Sophia’s—she examined Father Hugh. Her expression had the placid innocence of a holy mosaic, pieced together out of colored stone, and not even Rosvita, who knew her as well as anyone, could tell what she was thinking. Did she want to marry Conrad? Did she still hoard her infatuation for Father Hugh? Did she know the name of the maleficus who had tried to kill her?

  Hugh had taken a book of forbidden magic from the young Eagle, Liath. Was it only coincidence that the unnamed magus had attempted to sicken Theophanu through the agency of a ligatura woven into a brooch shaped as a panther?

  “Make way! Make way!”

  Henry dropped Conrad’s arm as a small procession appeared. Everyone began to talk at once, pointing and whispering. The king stepped back up onto the first of the two steps that mounted the platform, but there he paused, waiting, and Duke Conrad turned and with a surprised expression moved aside to make room.

  “Your Majesty.” Prince Sanglant pulled up his horse at a respectful distance from the throne. He looked travel-worn and unkempt with his rich tunic damp from rain and his hair uncombed, but by some indefinable air he wore as always the mantle of authority. But the Eika dogs that trailed at his heels reminded everyone of what he had been—and what he still harbored within himself. He made a sign, and his escort of a dozen soldiers and two servingmen turned aside and dismounted.

  There was one other person with them: a dark young woman with a regal air and a look of tense hauteur, held distant from the crowd that surrounded her. It took Rosvita a moment to recognize her, although it should not have. What on God’s earth was the Eagle—as good as banished yesterday together with Wolfhere—doing with him? Or was she still an Eagle? She no longer wore badge or cloak, although she rode a very fine gray gelding.

  Prince Sanglant was not a subtle man. Liath glanced toward him, and he reached to touch her on the elbow. The glance, the movement, the touch: these spoke as eloquently as words.

  “What means this?” demanded Henry.

  But every soul there knew what it meant: Sanglant, the obedient son, had defied his father.

  Rosvita knew well the signs of Henry’s wrath; he wore them now: the tic in his upper lip, the stark lightning glare in his eyes, the threatening way he rested his royal staff on his forearm as if in preparation for a sharp blow. She stepped forward in the hope of turning his anger aside, but Hugh had already moved to place himself before the king.

  “I beg you, Your Majesty.” His expression was smooth but his hands were trembling. “She no longer wears the Eagle’s badge that marks her as in your service. Therefore, she is now by right—and your judgment—my slave.”

  “She is my wife,” said Sanglant suddenly. His hoarse tenor, accustomed to the battlefield, carried easily over the noise of the throng. Everyone burst into exclamations at once, and after a furious but short-lived uproar, the assembly like a huge beast quieted, the better to hear. Even the king’s favorite poet or a juggling troupe from Aosta did not provide as thrilling an entertainment as this.

  The prince dismounted and everyone stared as he hammered an iron stake into the ground and staked down the dogs. From their savage presence all shrank back as the prince walked forward to stand before his father. Clouds covered the sun, and rain spattered the crowd, enough to keep the dust down and to wet tongues made dry by anticipation.

  “She is my wife,” Sanglant repeated, “by mutual consent, witnessed by these soldiers and a freewoman of Ferse village, and made legal and binding by the act of consummation and by the exchange of morning gifts.”

  “‘Let the children be satisfied first,’” said Hugh in a low, furious voice. She had never before seen him lose his composure, but he was shaking visibly now, flushed and agitated. “‘It is not fair to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.’”

  “Hugh,” warned his mother from her place near the king.

  Abruptly, Liath replied in a bold and angry voice. “‘Even the dogs under the table eat the children’s scraps.’”

  Hugh looked as if he had been slapped. He bolted toward her. That fast, and more smoothly than Rosvita believed possible, Sanglant stepped between them, and Hugh actually bumped up against him. But to go around the prince would be to make a fool of himself. Even so he hesitated, as if actually contemplating fighting it out hand to hand, the gracious cleric and the half-wild prince.

  “I did not give my permission for you to marry,” said Henry.

  “I did not ask permission to marry, nor need I do so, since I am of age, and of free birth.”

  “She is not free,” retorted Hugh, recovering his composure so completely that she might have dreamed that flash of rage. “She is either in the king’s service, and thus needs his permission to marry, or she is my slave. As a slave, she has no right to marry a man of free birth—much less, my lord prince,” he added, with a humble bow, “a man of your exalted rank and birth.” He turned back to the king. “Yet I would not dare to pass judgment when we must bow before your wisdom, Your Majesty.”

  “I gave her a choice.” Henry gestured toward the young woman. “Did I not give that choice, Eagle? Have you forsaken my service and thus rebelled against my rightful authority?”

  She blanched.

  “Let me speak,” said Sanglant.

  “Sanglant,” she murmured, as softly as a person caught in the whirlpool whispers with her last breath before she goes under. “Do not—”

  “Sanglant.” The king uttered his name with that same tone of warning with which Margrave Judith had moments before spoken her own son
’s name.

  “I will speak! The blessed Daisan said that it is not the things that go into a man from outside that defile him but the things that come out of him that defile him. Look upon him, whom you all admire and love, who is charming and elegant and handsome. Yet out of this man’s heart come evil thoughts, acts of fornication forced upon a helpless woman, theft, murder, ruthless greed and malice, fraud, indecency for a man sworn to the church to cohabit with a woman, envy, slander, arrogance—and with his hands and his fine manners he has blinded you all with sorcery—”

  Theophanu started up out of her chair.

  Margrave Judith strode forward, flushed with anger. “I will not stand by quietly while my son is insulted and abused—”

  “Silence!” roared the king. “How dare you question my judgment in this way, Sanglant!”

  “Nay, Your Majesty,” said Hugh with humble amiability, grave and patient. “Let him speak. Everything Prince Sanglant says is true, for I am sure that he hates lying and loves me. Who among us is worthy? I know only too well that I am a sinner. None censures me more than I do myself, for I have often failed in my service toward my king, and toward God.”

  Did Hugh say one thing more to Sanglant? His lips moved, but Rosvita could not hear—

  Sanglant growled in rage and struck in fury: He hit the unresisting Hugh so hard backhanded that Hugh crumpled to the ground, teeth cracking, and before anyone else could move Sanglant dove for him like a dog leaping for the kill. The Eika dogs went wild, yammering and tugging on their chains as they dragged the stake out of the dirt and bolted forward.

  People screamed and stumbled back. Liath flung herself off her horse and grabbed for the chains, getting brief hold of the stake before it was yanked out of her hands. Rosvita was too shocked to move while all around her the court scattered—all but Judith, who unsheathed her knife to defend her son. All but the king himself, who bellowed Sanglant’s name and jumped forward to grab him by the back of the tunic to haul him off Hugh.

  The dogs hit Henry with the full force of their charge.

  Rosvita shrieked. She heard it as from a distance, unaware she could utter such a terrible sound. Someone tugged frantically at her robe. Sanglant beat back the dogs in a frenzy, away from his father, and behind him Liath shouted a warning to Villam—who had dashed forward to the king—while she scrabbled in the dirt for the hammer and grasped the stake, trying to drag back on the chains. Lions charged in. They clubbed down the dogs, braved their fierce jaws to grab their legs and drag them off the king, and hacked at them mercilessly until blood spattered the ground like rain.

  Pity stabbed briefly, vanished as Sanglant emerged from the maelstrom with Henry supported in his arms. Ai, God! The king was injured! She hurried to his side, vaguely aware of three attendants pressed close behind her: her clerics, who had not deserted her.

  Sanglant thrust Henry into the arms of the princesses and plunged back in the fray.

  “Down!” His voice rang out above everything else. “Hold! Withdraw!”

  The Lions obeyed. How could they not? The prince knew how to command in battle. They withdrew cautiously, and he knelt beside the dogs.

  Rosvita knelt beside the king, who had a weeping tear in his left arm, cloth mangled and stained with saliva and blood, threads shredded into skin. Claws had ripped the tunic along his back, too, but mercifully the thick royal robe had protected him from all but a shallow scratch. He shook off the shock of the impact and pushed himself upright. “Your Majesty!” she protested.

  “Nay!” He shook off all who ran to assist him, even his daughters, as he limped forward.

  “Your Majesty!” cried Villam, and a dozen others, as he approached Sanglant and the dogs, but he did not heed them.

  One of the dogs was dead. As Henry halted beside him, Sanglant took out his knife and cut the throat of the second, so badly hacked that it could not possibly survive. The third whimpered softly and rolled to bare its throat to the prince. He stared into its yellow eyes. Blood dripped from its fangs; dust and the vile greenish blood born of its own foul body smeared its iron-gray coat.

  “Kill it,” said Henry in a voice made dull by rage.

  Sanglant looked up at him, glanced at Liath, who stood holding the iron stake in a bloodied hand … then sheathed the knife.

  The shock of Sanglant’s defiance hit Henry harder than the dogs had. He staggered, caught himself on Villam, who got under his arm just in time to steady him. Rosvita’s mind seemed to be working at a pace so sluggish that not until this moment did she register Father Hugh, who had somehow gotten out of range and now, supported by his mother, spit bits of tooth onto the ground. Blood stained his lips, and his right cheek had the red bloom of a terrible bruise making ready to flower.

  “I will retire to my chamber,” said Henry, so far gone in wrath that all the heat had boiled off to make a fearsomely cold rage beneath. “There, he will be brought to meet my judgment.”

  Villam helped him away. Servingmen swarmed around them.

  Rosvita knew she ought to follow, but she could not make her legs work. She stared at the assembly as they parted to make way for the king, dissolved into their constituent groups to slip away and plot in private over the upheaval sure to follow. Images caught and burned into her mind: Duke Conrad staying Princess Theophanu with a hand lightly touching her elbow, a comment exchanged, the shake of her head in negation, his eyes narrowing as he frowned and stepped back from her to let her by when she walked after her father; Sapientia flushed red with anger and humiliation, taking the arm of her young Eagle and turning deliberately away from Hugh as if to make clear that he had fallen into disfavor; Judith with her lips pressed tight in a foreboding glower; Ivar trying to break through the crowd to get to Liath but being hopelessly caught up in the tide that washed him away from her and then held back bodily by young Baldwin.

  “Sister!” whispered Amabilia. Fortunatus had hold of her right arm, whether to support her or himself she could not tell. Constantine wept quietly. “Come, Sister, let us withdraw.”

  Everyone, eddying, swirled away to leave at last several dozen soldiers, two dead dogs and an injured one, the bride, and the prince amid a spray of blood. Left alone, abandoned even by those who had championed him before.

  This was the price of the king’s displeasure.

  V

  THE GENTLE BREATH OF GOD

  1

  IN an odd way, the disaster only made her more stubbornly resolute. She stood beside one of the dead dogs, and as its copperish blood leached away into the dirt, she felt a desperate obstinance swell in her heart as if the creature’s heart’s blood, soaking into the earth, made a transference of substance up through her feet to harden her own.

  She was not going to let the king take Sanglant away from her.

  Sanglant looked to see if anyone remained. It was worse even than she expected: everyone had abandoned them except for a dozen Lions and the soldiers who had escorted them from Ferse.

  Now the captain of these men stepped forward. “My lord prince. We will gladly help you with the dogs. Then we must take you before the king, at his order.”

  “Bury them,” said Sanglant. “I doubt if they’ll burn.” He got his arms under the injured dog, hoisted it, and lugged it to the chamber set aside for his use. Lions fanned out to give him room to walk. The courtyard had emptied except for servants, who whispered, staring, and fluttered away. Dust spun around the corners of buildings. She smelled pork roasting over fires. A sheep bleated. Distant thunder growled and faded.

  “Eagle!” whispered one of the Lions as they halted before the door while Sanglant carried the limp dog over the threshold. She recognized her old comrade, Thiadbold; his scar stood stark white against tanned skin. “I beg your pardon!”

  “Call me Liath, I beg you, friend.” She was desperate for friends. That Sanglant’s own loyal dogs had set upon the king …

  “Liath,” Thiadbold glanced toward the door, which still yawned open. From within she h
eard Sanglant grunt as he got the dog down to the floor. “We Lions have not forgotten. If there is aught we can do to aid you, we will, as long as it does not go against our oath to the king.”

  Tears stung at his unexpected kindness. “I thank you,” she said stiffly. “Please see that my horse is stabled, if you will.” Then she remembered Ferse and the morning gift. “There is one thing….” She had only finished explaining it when Sanglant called to her.

  The Lion nodded gravely. “It is little enough to do for him.”

  She went inside.

  “Have we no servants available to us?” Sanglant asked her.

  “Only the soldiers set on guard.”

  He knelt beside the dog, which lay silent at the foot of the bed as at the approach of an expected kindness—or of death. It did not move as he ran his hands along its body to probe its injuries: a smashed paw, a slashed foreleg, a deep wound to the ribs and another to the head that had shorn off one ear. Its shallow panting, the grotesque tongue lolling out, was as quiet as a baby’s breath. She had never been this close to an Eika dog before. She shuddered.

  He smiled grimly. “Best that we save this one, since it’s all that remains of my retinue.” He drew from the collar the short chain affixed to the leather pouch, now scarred where gems had been pried off. “It guarded your book most faithfully.”

  Despite his disgrace, the soldiers had not deserted Sanglant. Their captain, Fulk, brought him water in a basin together with an old cloth which he tore into strips to bind up the dog’s wounds. She tidied her clothing, unbelted sword and quiver and bow and laid them beside the bed with rest of her gear. She dared not approach the king wearing arms. When Sanglant finished with the dog, and she had taken a draught of wine for her parched throat and reminded him to straighten up his own tunic so he should not appear completely disreputable, the soldiers escorted them to the king’s audience chamber. It was not far, because the king had given Sanglant a chamber in one wing of his own residence.