by Kate Elliott
The soldiers in attendance all laughed heartily, not kindly.
“You’re going to execute them?” Theophanu demanded, startled. “I will certainly pay the ransom price to free each man among them.”
“And enter them into your army? I think not, Princess Theophanu. Everyone knows the Arethousan emperor desires eunuchs, so I have been sending him many more with my respects, and today he’ll receive another twenty or more for his pleasure.”
“This is barbaric!” muttered Theophanu.
“I advise that we retire, Your Highness,” murmured Rosvita in return. “I fear we’ll get no satisfaction here.”
“Then how can we reach Adelheid, or even let her know we are here?” whispered Theophanu. “Lord John has thrown up more obstacles than I thought possible.”
As the prisoners were led away, there came a sudden commotion from the road that led to the north gate, which John’s encampment faced. A young woman had entered the camp, but she staggered, shrieking, with her hair unbound and all in a tangle. When she saw the lord under the canopy, she wailed more loudly still and scratched at her cheeks until blood ran. An infant slept in a sling at her hip, and the blood dripping from her face stained its tiny legs like a sudden blooming of the cowpox.
“Bring that woman to me,” cried John. Hustled forward with more haste then courtesy, still, she did not flinch when she was flung down to kneel before Ironhead. “What is the matter with you, woman? All this crying and wailing makes my ears ring.”
“What kind of mighty warrior makes war on women who have no weapons? Some among our sex do truly take up arms, and to them I commend your violent ways, but the rest of us have heeded the words of Our Lady and we use only the tools given us by the Queen of Heaven. But now I see you have decided to make war upon those of us who have sworn to do our Lady’s work on this earth.”
He looked affronted. “I do not make war on any woman except those who have taken up arms like a man, like the Sazdakhs of old.”
“Is it not a war you make upon us when you deprive us of what is ours by right? You took my cattle a month or more ago, and never once have I complained of that. But now you seek to take from me that which can never be regained once it is lost.” She gestured toward the prisoners. Ironhead shrugged, as if to say he did not understand her. “You will castrate them, as is your habit, my lord, but by what right do you take from them that member which does not belong to them?”
“Well, then, to whom does it belong, if not to them?” he demanded as the soldiers around chuckled. More had gathered; a siege was boring business, and any distraction was welcome.
“Why, to their wives, of course!” she retorted indignantly. “What else keeps us warm at night? What gives us the children we so dearly desire?” She set a work-roughened hand on the sleeping infant. Drying blood stained her coarse fingernails. “Take what else you will from me, my lord, but not that which is most important to me!”
At this, the soldiers all began to laugh uproariously and even John guffawed. “I can’t defend myself against such an argument,” he cried. “Very well, then. You may have your husband back unharmed. But tell me, woman, I must have some means to discipline those who take up arms against me. If your husband fights me again, what may I remove?”
The young woman hesitated only a moment. “He has feet, hands, a nose, eyes. Take what you will of the things that belong to him, but I pray you, leave to me that which is mine.”
This speech sent the soldiers into another great round of laughter. Theophanu, too, smiled slightly as the woman’s husband was unchained from the rest of the wretches fated to go under the knife. “I hope her husband is worthy of such a clever wife,” she said as woman, man, and baby were escorted away.
But Rosvita bent lower, to speak more softly. “I am thinking,” she said slowly, “that if one woman can come out of the city, then another can get in.”
* * *
“I am against it,” said Brother Fortunatus. “What if you are caught?”
“I am a cleric,” insisted Rosvita. “Lord John is unlikely to harm me. It he takes me prisoner, I will appeal to the skopos in Darre.”
“Then let me go with you.”
Rosvita indicated the pallet on which poor young Constantine lay moaning, clutching his belly. He had foolishly drunk from standing water and now had a flux. “You must safeguard the books, Brother,” she said to Fortunatus, “and care for young Constantine. Even if he were well, he’s still too young and inexperienced, and I couldn’t trust him to watch over things as you can.”
The arduous trip over the mountains had stripped Fortunatus of both bulk and humor. He frowned now. “Sister Amabilia could have talked you out of this.”
“Nay, Brother. She would have insisted on coming with me.”
That forced a laugh from him, but their leave-taking was somber.
The sun had not yet risen; mist muted the edges of camp and made the tents into hulking beasts hidden by cloud. From among her women Theophanu had chosen Leoba, who was tall, strong, and a trifle reckless, to accompany Rosvita. Too many sent together would attract notice; one deacon alone might attract mischief. With her face and figure concealed in a cleric’s robe and hood, Leoba waited for her at the edge of camp together with the two guards who would escort them through the lines. The dawn mist robed them in secrecy as they passed through undergrowth, crossed a narrow stream, and then left the guards behind at the farthest sentry post on the lip of the flat plain. The hill on which the gates and towers of Vennaci stood shone in mist and the first glimmer of the sun. They walked across empty fields to one of the old paths on which laborers had once made their way back to the safety of the city walls at night.
The trail lay dusty and level as they walked along, following the path of an irrigation ditch half overgrown with weeds. Everywhere she saw the legacy of conflict: ripe barley unharvested, fallow fields that should have been sown with winter wheat instead grown waist-high with weeds, a distant herd of cattle trampling through a stand of oats. Adelheid’s people could not come out; Ironhead either had sufficient supplies, or he chose to leave the fields to rot as a message to the people trapped within the walls.
The young noblewoman said nothing as they walked, kept her hood down over her face to disguise her Wendish features. The loose robe disguised her body but could not hide her height. Even here, alone, she kept silence: practiced it, Rosvita supposed, for the time when Rosvita’s skill at dissembling would see them through the lines or find them exposed and taken prisoner.
John Ironhead might be merciful and take a ransom for them, or he might be stubborn. Rosvita knew better than to dwell on such thoughts. Yet she was glad enough of Leoba’s silence and the careful way she concealed herself from view. As they walked, Rosvita rehearsed her speech, trying quietly on her tongue the slurs and lisps with which these northern Aostans disfigured the clean sounds of Dariyan.
Ironhead’s main encampment lay to the west. Here along the northern wall where only a postern gate opened along the river, his guards had set up watch posts. They had been here long enough that some had built shacks, and there was a brisk business with prostitutes who now left those same shacks in twos and threes to slip back into town, hands clutched over coins or gripping scarves wrapped around bread and cheese. A few vendors had come from town, too, cloaked by night, and now here at dawn they packed up their wares, gorgeous silks, linens, silver spoons, such luxuries that, in the face of dwindling food supplies, might not seem so important when children cried with hunger.
“Here, Sisters! Where have you come from?” The guard who stopped them had greasy hair, and a thread of meat had caught in his yellowed teeth.
“Which kind of sisters?” cried another guard, snorting with laughter as he grabbed roughly at their hoods. He yanked back Rosvita’s hood and they all exclaimed over her northern paleness; then, with a stick, he prodded back the hood that concealed Leoba.
Rosvita’s heart curdled with fear. It was not Leoba at all. Yet su
rely she should have known what would happen when the princess acquiesced so graciously as Rosvita insisted that it would be too dangerous for Theophanu herself to attempt to slip through the lines. If Ironhead’s men caught them, he would have a noble prisoner to ransom and a sharp blade to hold over her father’s head. Obviously her words had fallen on deaf ears. Theophanu neither flinched nor showed any expression as the guards poked at her with their sticks. Clearly they had not been in Ironhead’s camp yesterday: they did not recognize her.
The thought hit her at random, like the voice of the Enemy whispering of betrayal: no person seeing Sanglant for the first time could mistake him for anything but a king’s son. But without her retinue, it was impossible to know how exalted Theophanu’s status was.
“Mayhap we should turn these over to Lord John,” said the greasy guard.
“We are good deacons of the church, as you can see,” said Rosvita coldly, slurring and lisping her words as much as she could manage. The anger she did not need to feign, and if she spilled it out on them, then perhaps she would manage not to betray her anger at her lady for putting herself in such jeopardy. “We have come all this long walk from the archbiscop’s palace at Raveni because we heard that many women have fallen into disrepute due to this siege, which disturbs God’s peace. We mean to lead them back onto the path of righteousness.”
“Is there much bread on the path of righteousness?” demanded the greasy guard, and this jest earned him a round of laughter from his companions.
“There is no bread sweeter than God’s forgiveness,” retorted Rosvita sternly. “Will you pray with us, Brothers?”
Bu they didn’t want to pray; they were satiated, and bored, and saw no threat in two deacons crazy enough to want to enter a besieged city. But they were alert enough to argue.
“We’ve orders not to let anyone go in. You’ll bring them news.”
“Oh, hell, Aldericus, the whores take news in every day. You can’t tell me that you don’t squeal out bits of gossip before, during, and after. Half those whores are spies for the queen.”
“Lady’s tits, for all we know, one of them whores is the queen! That’s a hot line of women, they say, going back to old Queen Cleitia when she ruled Darre. They say she took no less than six husbands and made every new presbyter prove himself to her on her couch and the ones she liked best were forced to satisfy her again and again and again until she tired of them or a handsome new face come along. It’s no wonder she warred with the skopos, who in those days was of a similar mind. That’s all women think about!”
They all snickered and guffawed, but some watched her and Theophanu closely. Rosvita could not hide her scorn, but Theophanu had the Arethousan gift of showing no emotion; her expression remained guileless and haughty.
“There is much sickness in the town.” Rosvita had brought silver with her, but she wondered now if a bribe would seem too suspicious. “Both my young Sister and I are healers, and God have spoken to us and told us to come minister as we can among the sick and the sinful. And we shall wait here, praying, in this camp and tell each of our sisters in sin that they must turn aside from the path of folly and uncleanliness, for every day and every week as long as you are here, my brothers, until we are allowed to go inside to help those who are in need.”
As a threat, it worked well enough. None of the guards wanted holy sisters praying publicly and attracting attention to the illicit activity taking place under the shadow of the siege.
“Go on! Follow the whores! You’ll get less pleasure from them than we did, I’d wager!”
With laughter and mocking calls at their backs, they crossed the no-man’s-land, the empty stretch of ground that marked out a bow’s shot from the walls, and came to the postern gate.
The city guards were thinner, and less cheerful, and didn’t want to let them in in case they were spies sent by Ironhead. Rosvita had to bribe one with silver to get through the gate, but after he’d palmed the slender bars, he took her despite that to the guardhouse. The stone barracks built up against the wall stank of filth and excrement, and most of the soldiers lounging on the cots or on the floor were sick with colds or open, raw sores. But they did not look dispirited. The stone walls wept moisture; it stank of mold and unwashed sweat. Rosvita sneezed, and their escort murmured reflexively: “Health to you, Sister. May the Enemy’s creatures all flee your body and leave you whole.”
The captain had his own windowless room at the base of the guardhouse. There was no door, only a ragged cloth hung across the threshold. A rash covered one side of the captain’s face, and his nose wept mucus. The soldier set the silver bribe down on the table before him while he sipped at a cup of wine and eyed them with the resignation of a man who has heard it all.
“I tolerate the whores and the peddlers because every scrap of bread they bring in gives us a brief reprieve on our stores of grain. And because they bring us news. But I have no patience for spies, even ones robed as clerics.”
“And I have no patience with fools,” said Theophanu, coming to life at last. She had remained silent for a long time. “I am Theophanu, daughter of King Henry of Wendar.” As if she knew he might doubt her claim, she pulled her robe away from her neck to reveal her gold torque.
That was all it took.
The captain jumped to his feet. “Your Highness! I’d heard that a force had come from the north, but I thought it was just a rumor. People will say anything to get a scrap of bread, and Ironhead’s men aren’t idiots. They know to feed us lies. If this is true—”
“If it is true,” Theophanu pointed out coolly, “then you had better escort us to Queen Adelheid at once.”
Their escort led them through winding streets to the heart of Vennaci: a huge open square fronted on four sides by the cathedral, the town hall, the marketplace, and the palacio. There they were handed over to the care of a steward. The servants who haunted the palacio corridors, like the soldiers, looked thin, but nowhere in the streets or among the soldiery or the citizens of Vennaci did Rosvita see panic or the flush of desperation which precedes defeat. There was enough water, and obviously someone was doing a good job of administering the food supply.
But the grain stores couldn’t hold out forever.
A steward dressed in a rich indigo tunic led them to the courtyard that lay at the center of the stately palacio, the heart of hearts, the pulse of the city. Flowering vines made the arcades a riot of purple flowers. Bees hummed. Noblewomen sat on ornate benches, petting monkeys and little dogs who wore gold chains as leashes. Servants swept clean brick pathways shaded by plum trees. A gardener watered a bed in lavender, lilacs, and brilliant peonies with a ceramic pitcher so finely made that a noble lady would not have felt disgraced to use it for refreshment in her chamber. A hedge of bay lay soberly along the south prospect. There the courtyard, enclosed on three sides by the palacio, gave way to a vista of the plain below. Ironhead’s army lay encamped on that plain, tents and banners seen from here in distant, muted colors like a fresco laid on against the sky.
There was no throne, no central seat, only benches laid out at tasteful intervals among the planting beds: rosemary, rue, sage, and roses. But among the many souls populating the garden, Rosvita recognized the queen at once, although she had never seen her before. She sat on a bench like any other of the noblewomen, and was dressed no more richly than they without the crown of regnancy or the gold torque of royal kinship common in the north. Draped at her feet lay, not a little pug dog or a chittering monkey, but a spotted leopard, lithe and handsome, with lazy eyes and a tense curve to its shoulders. It purred, more of a rumble, as she rubbed it with one slippered foot as casually as if she did not realize it could take off that delicate foot at the ankle with a single bite.
She was interviewing three of the whores, who knelt somewhat nervously an arm’s length away from the big cat, and in her quick movements and flashing, sudden changes of expression, Rosvita read the habit of command. The steward bent to whisper in her ear, and she dis
missed the prostitutes by giving them each a coin, then rose and strode over to her visitors. The spotted leopard uncoiled gracefully to pad after her. The timbre of the pleasant courtyard atmosphere changed utterly with her movement: Everyone watched to see what she would do.
She halted before them, looked Theophanu up and down, and said boldly, in terrible Wendish: “You my cousin? I learn this tongue for to speak with the king.”
“Cousin, I greet you,” replied Theophanu in the Aostan way. Then she switched to Wendish and let Rosvita translate. “I greet you, Cousin, and bring you greetings from my father, Henry, king of Wendar and Varre.” The princess towered over Queen Adelheid; she stood a good head taller, and her handsome features had that strongboned cast that lasts through old age. Adelheid was formed of different matter: She had the kind of lush, youthful prettiness that fades with age into the respectable authority of a stout matron.
“Come,” said Adelheid in Aostan, acknowledging Rosvita with a nod, “we will take wine and food, but alas we can waste no time with pleasantries, as would be proper. You must tell me how many troops you have brought, and if you are willing to use them to drive away Ironhead.” She continued talking so rapidly that Rosvita was forced several times to ask her to repeat herself as they left the courtyard, passed down a shadowed colonnade, and were shown onto an airy balcony shaded by a massive grape arbor where servants laid out a table with various delicacies: a platter of fruit, gold dishes filled with plum cakes and poppyseed bread, and a decanter of wine whose rich bouquet flavored every bite they took.
“You have seen,” Adelheid began when the worst pangs of hunger were assuaged, “how dogs fight over a bone. The good people of Aosta are my children, and they are obedient, but the lords are scavengers. I can trust none of them. If one throws out Ironhead’s army, it will only be to take his place. They say Ironhead had his wife poisoned before he marched here because she refused to take the veil and enter a convent to leave him free to marry me.”