by Kate Elliott
Meriam handed him the baby brusquely. “Wash it,” she said, and she set to work kneading Liath’s flaccid belly until the afterbirth sluiced out with another gush of bright red blood, Humming, the old woman bound a poultice over Liath’s groin as if that might stem the bleeding.
“Mind the baby!” she said sternly, for he had been staring in horror at his unconscious wife all this while. Jolted into obedience by her curt tone, he looked down into a pair of eyes so startling a green that he thought for an instant that they weren’t eyes at all but chips of emerald. He went outside, unsteady on his feet but with a good grip on her, as tiny as she was, and washed her in a basin filled with cold spring water.
She squalled mightily.
“Good lungs,” said Heribert, who was dancing from one foot to the other, trying to get a good look. “She sounds strong.”
“She’s a blessing,” murmured Sanglant, kissing the tiny creature on its wrinkled forehead.
“What will you name her? It’s your right as her father to name her.”
He looked up then, surprised. One of her tiny, perfect hands found his little finger and clutched it. She had the stubborn grasp of a warrior born. “I just did,” he said, knowing the words as truth. “‘Blessing.’”
Liath was too weak to nurse the infant. Meriam tried nettle tea and parsley, but after a few beads of clear fluid welled up on her nipples, she went dry and no matter what Meriam tried, fennel, strips of meat mashed into a soft pulp, an infusion of vervain or of chaste tree, her breasts produced nothing more. She slept almost constantly and sometimes it was hard to rouse her even to get her to take wine and porridge. At times she burned with fever; at times she lay as cold as death except for the slight exhalation of her breath.
When she burned, she was incoherent, tossing and turning and babbling at intervals, lost to him. “The heavens run swifter than any mill wheel, as deep under the Earth as above it. But they and their creatures are eternal. The Earth is mortal. Yet, behold, she departeth very suddenly. What is this ribbon of light tunning through the heavens, disturbing them? It has only one side, and it never ends. It only returns again to its starting place.”
Sometimes, when she raved, unlit candles would come alight, or lamp wicks snap into life that hadn’t been burning before. At these times the servants fled from the hut, frightened. Only Jerna, who was braver now, would stay in the hut, always hovering hear the baby, stroking it, blowing its black cap of hair into wispy spikes and then smoothing it out again. She even curled around the baby’s cradle at night, an unearthly guardian, when Sanglant caught such sleep as he could, although his sleep was disturbed constantly either by the baby’s crying or by Liath’s sudden restless fevers.
Now and again Liath tried to show interest in the baby, but she would drift off at the exertion of letting it lie on her chest or, worse, break into a wheezing, weak cry because she couldn’t feed it. Then the crying would exhaust her and she would slip into a cold sleep, her hands like ice.
The baby squalled and squalled. Sanglant carried her in a sling against his chest, or on his hip, or settled in a rocking cradle that Heribert had devised, and everywhere he went the servants crowded round, trying to touch Blessing, so wildly curious at this apparition that they neglected their labors and Severus complained peevishly that his bread was burned, his porridge cold, and the blankets left in disarray on his pallet when they ought to have been neatly folded after he rose in the morning.
At Meriam’s suggestion, Sanglant milked the goats, and they tried everything they could, heating the milk and dropping it in her mouth bead by bead, soaking the corner of a cloth in goat’s milk and putting it between her lips, molding a nipple out of sheep’s intestine for her to suck on. But she would only take a minuscule amount before turning her head away. Squalls turned to mewls and mewls to whimpers.
“Ah, well,” said Anne four days after its birth, observing the baby with equanimity. “It will die. That only goes to show that it was never meant to be born.”
He felt the growl slip from him, enough that his Eika dog stood and barked, enough that Anne’s new attendant, the black hound, growled and lunged for him.
“Sit!” said Anne, and the hound sat. She had not yet named it, nor did she seemed inclined to do so. But she only smiled at Sanglant, and it seemed to him that she was mocking him, waiting to see him fall apart in a rage as he watched the life leach out of his precious daughter.
But fear and desperation had healed him somewhat—he hadn’t had nightmares since the day Blessing was born—and now fury banished the old instincts. He set a hand on the head of his dog to calm it and looked Anne straight in the face.
“Do you have so little feeling that you would stand by and let your own granddaughter die?”
“God’s will is unknowable.”
“Then if you have so little love in your heart, think instead of the gold torque you wear at your throat. Don’t you have a responsibility to your kin to keep your lineage alive?”
Now she was far more interested than she had ever been in the child. “What do you mean, Prince Sanglant?”
“Since the day we met, I have wondered to which royal lineage you owe your blood. If I’m right, then it makes no sense to me why you would not make every effort to keep this infant alive. Is it possible that you aren’t Emperor Taillefer’s granddaughter?”
“What makes you think that I am?” she said, but he saw that he had surprised her, and by that reaction he saw that his blow had hit true.
“Who else could you be? You aren’t of Varrish kin because they’re gone except for my aunt Sabella, her daughter Princess Tallia, and her poor, idiot husband who isn’t fit to rule. You’re not of Wendish blood because I know all my kin. All the Salian princesses whether married or unmarried or given to the church were discussed by my father’s council after Queen Sophia died, from the eldest old crone of sixty to the girl of nine, because they wondered if there was one suitable for him to marry. A woman of your age and appearance was never mentioned. In Karrone they dare not wear the gold torque. Nor do the royal houses of the eastern realms decorate themselves in that way. The Alban queens wear armbands, not torques, to show their breeding. I admit you might be Aostan, but according to every rumor the royal house of Aosta was wiped out except for Queen Adelheid.” He smiled a little, thinking that if not for Liath, he might have been bedding Queen Adelheid now. Yet if not for Liath, he would still have been chained to Bloodheart’s throne, a madman. “Who else can you be? St. Radegundis was pregnant when Taillefer died. No one knows what became of the child born to her. But you do.”
She said nothing.
Blessing stirred and whimpered, head turning to the side, rooting at his breast, but he had nothing for her. Ai, God, he was so angry at that moment, feeling the tiny body cupped between forearm and chest that he could have lashed out and strangled this regal woman who regarded him with the cool stare of an empress surveying that which ought to be beneath her notice; ought to be, but is not, because he had piqued her by guessing the truth. He had pierced her smooth shell, and now he knew Liath’s secret.
Ai, Lady! He knew Liath’s secret, and he knew triumph. What was Queen Adelheid’s lineage compared to this? Henry would have to approve of the marriage now. Indeed, Henry surely would welcome this match, his own line bred and sealed with that of the dead Taillefer, greatest emperor the Daisanite world had ever known. If Henry sought for legitimacy beyond brute force to restore the Holy Dariyan Empire, this child was the one who would give it to him.
“Help me save my daughter,” he said, and this time his voice broke. He knew Anne would interpret it as weakness and would seek the soft opening so that she could plunge the dagger in. He understood at that moment as he faced her that she was always and had always been waiting to kill him. She was just more subtle than the rest.
“No,” she said.
“Have you no heart at all?” he demanded. “Were there no bonds of affection in your youth? Ai, Lord, who raised you?”<
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“A woman named Clothilde.”
“St. Radegundis’ handmaiden.” He recognized the story, although it was not at all clear to him how St. Radegundis’ lost child had managed to create a child in its turn.
“It is true Clothilde acted as Queen Radegundis’ handmaiden, but in all ways and in all her actions she was the loyal servant of Biscop Tallia. She did what had to be done, to face the greater threat. And I will do what has to be done, just as she taught me.
“How does letting this child die aid you in your cause?”
“Because she is your child, Prince Sanglant. She is blood of your blood, and I am sworn to see that your blood never again flourishes on this Earth. They have nurtured their strength out in the aether, where they exist closer to the Chamber of Light, from whence all strength flows. They mean to return to this world and rule it with a hand of iron and with their gruesome sacrifices. They mean to obliterate the Light of the church and blanket the world in the darkness of the Enemy, for they are creatures of the Enemy.”
He shook his head irritably. “Liath once told me that the Lost Ones were born of fire and light, and that if they are tainted by darkness it is only because all things that exist in this world are tainted by darkness. How am I any worse than you?”
“You are their creature, Prince Sanglant,” she said coldly, “and Liath is mine.”
“She is your daughter! Surely she means more to you than just a tool!”
“All of us are only tools, Prince Sanglant, but some of us are agents of God and some are agents of the Enemy. Do not ever believe that a child born of your kind will be welcome on Earth as long as I and my people are here to stop you.”
He had known despair once, and bitterly. He knew it now.
Anne left, and he retreated to regroup, to suffer, to struggle as had Liath when she labored with all her strength to bring forth a blessing. Liath might yet die. Blessing might yet die.
But not if he could help it.
He leaned against the corner of the hut, exhausted, drained, catching his breath. The baby nestled against him, still and silent, so small.
Meriam emerged and saw him. “Liath is sleeping.” She shrugged. “I don’t believe she will die, Prince Sanglant, but it will be a long time before she is well. But I fear there is nothing you can do to save the child if you cannot coax it to take the goat’s milk.” Then she walked away, not with triumph but with a sigh, a practical woman who has read the signs and is sorry at the pain she sees in the world.
But he was something else. He saw Jerna slip to the door, waiting for him to enter. He saw her truly for the first time in days, it seemed; he had been so preoccupied and she was just one among the many creatures fluttering around, things he hadn’t the energy to take careful note of. She had fully taken on the likeness of a woman, a face composed in some strange way of all the faces of the women here in Verna: Zoë’s kissable mouth, Meriam’s sharp cheekbones, Anne’s regal nose, Venia’s broad and intelligent forehead, and Liath’s hair falling like water to her waist, clear enough that he could see through it to the curtain hanging down over the door that led into the interior. She had taken on the shape of a woman, the gracious curve of ample hips with a modest veil of mist concealing her womanly parts, stout arms and a handsome neck, and breasts as bountiful as any nature had endowed woman with, full and ripe, leaking a clear fluid.
It seemed for an instant obscene, against nature. But then Blessing mewled and stirred in his arms, and he didn’t hesitate.
“Jerna,” he said softly, coaxing her forward, because she was a flighty thing; they all were, those who labored as servants at Verna under the strict rule of Sister Anne, she who was willing to watch her own granddaughter starve.
But he would fight for his daughter until his last breath.
“Jerna,” he said, and she flowed toward him, not a woman but something other, something trying to become a woman. This act might mark her forever, separate her from her kin, who did not walk on Earth but rather in the air, below the Moon. This act might mark Blessing forever, for how could he tell what nourishment she might in truth be receiving from an aetherical creature who dwelt closer to God than did humankind and who was composed of a different proportion of elements? But he had to try it.
He held out Blessing, and the creature sighed in some satisfied, inarticulate way, and settled the child to its breast. Blessing rooted, found the nipple, and began to suck.
2
AFTER a wet and cold journey of over five months, Hanna finally caught up with King Henry’s progress at Lavas Holding on the Feast of St. Samais of Sartor. She had prayed that morning at sunrise to the saint who was particularly beloved by servants, for hadn’t St. Samais been the washerwoman who had laundered the blessed Daisan’s robes, all that remained of him on earth after he had been lifted bodily to the Chamber of Light at the Ekstasis? Hadn’t the water in which she washed that blessed cloth healed the sick and cured the lame? St. Samais had accepted martyrdom rather than hand over the blessed Daisan’s robes to the minions of the Empress Thaisannia, she of the mask, for the empress had comprehended that the robes had miraculous powers which she herself wished to control.
Not, Hanna reflected as she crested a rise and saw Lavas Holding below, that she sought martyrdom as had the saints of old, but she was Henry’s loyal servant and hoped she could serve him as faithfully as St. Samais had served the blessed Daisan. Manfred had died in Henry’s service, and she hoped she had courage and loyalty enough to die as honorably as Manfred had, if it came to that.
Yet a wasp sting burned in her heart, nagging, incessant, uncomfortable. She still dreamed of the Kerayit princess every night.
A Lion standing sentry hailed her. “Friend Hanna! How fares it with you? What news of Princess Sapientia?” It was her old friend, Ingo, looking fit and well-fed.
“Princess Sapientia was well enough when I saw her last. She and Prince Bayan won a victory over the Quman.”
“God be praised! And you, friend?”
She laughed. “I’m happy to see that I won’t be riding any farther today. King Henry moves swiftly. I lost three horses to lameness in the past month alone, and there was so much rain! It seemed as if I’d always stay two days behind him. What news here, friend?”
“You hadn’t heard? Queen Mathilda is dead, may she rest in peace in the Chamber of Light. The king received word in Autun. Ai, Lord! He prayed for seven days and nights clad only in a pauper’s robe.” Ingo sighed and wiped a tear away. “His grief moved every soul there to tears. I still weep, to think of it.”
“May her memory be blessed,” said Hanna, as was proper. “What then brought you here to Lavas?”
“There’s a terrible great judgment being held here.” His mood changed abruptly and he spat on the ground in disgust. “Nobles, fighting over land again. Greedy bastards always wanting more for their favorite children. You’d think they’d be content with what they’ve got, but it’s never so. When will it ever end?” He said. “Ai, well. Count Lavastine was a fair man. It’s too bad he died.”
“I don’t recall him seeming old or ill,” said Hanna, surprised at this news.
“He was not. God’s ways are a mystery, truly.” He lifted a hand to beckon her closer, and she had to lean down from her saddle to hear him. “Perhaps it was sorcery, as some are saying.”
She straightened, struck by the way he had moved her aside from his companions, had regripped his spear, as if fearing an attack. “Everyone seems to be speaking of sorcery these days. What news of Prince Sanglant?” It was an oblique way to ask about Liath.
“You were still with the king when the prince rode off, weren’t you? Well, he’s never come back nor has anyone heard one word from him. It was your comrade who bewitched him, they say.”
“Do they still say that?” she asked cautiously.
“Ah,” he said, reading something in her expression she hadn’t concealed. “You hadn’t heard the news, then. The council held at Autun excommunicated
her for trafficking in sorcery.”
The blow was a hard one and easier to absorb alone. She thanked him and went on her way, and as she rode down into the holding she noticed the tight silence of the local people and, like its counterpoint, the constant whispering of the court’s servants, who seemed to be enjoying themselves rather more than they ought given the grave nature of the charges and the death of a good man. Was it in the nature of humankind that they should take pleasure in another’s misfortune?
She handed her horse off to a groom, brushed the worst of the dirt off her clothing, and made her way to the hall, a fine timber edifice with whitewashed walls and huge roof beams painted with tar to keep the vermin out. She had never been here before, although Liath had visited here a year or more ago and told Hanna a little of what had transpired between her and Lord Alain. It seemed now that fate would conspire to keep her and Liath apart. God alone knew where Liath was now, and in what condition. And she had forgotten to ask Ingo about Hugh.
Her old comrades Folquin and Stephen were standing on guard at the door into the great hall, and they clapped her on the back and whispered greetings, then let her through although perhaps a hundred people had gathered outside, forbidden entrance. And no wonder: so many had crowded inside that it was reeking and hot despite the cool, damp spring weather. Someone had thought to strew mint in with the rushes on the floor, but the sweat of so many people overwhelmed any other odor. She had to elbow her way forward because people were so intent on the scene before them that they took no notice of her Eagle’s badge.
It was slow work. Somewhere at the front of the room, people were giving testimony about Lavastine, his first marriage, the horrible death of his only known legitimate child, and the mistress he had once slept with who had died in childbirth.
She squeezed past two stewards dressed in fine linen, like chickens tarted up as swans as her mother would have said, but fetched up behind a hugely broad nobleman who seemed immune to her nudging. He was short enough that she could see over his shoulder and glimpse the dais, where Henry sat on his throne. The king looked tired. He had lines in his face that hadn’t been there six months ago. Hathui stood behind him; she had mastered the blank face of the loyal servingwoman. His niece Tallia sat to his left, Helmut Villam to his right. On opposite sides sat Lord Alain and Lord Geoffrey, the disputants.