by Kate Elliott
What need to see the carved faces of the pillars when the lamp did a perfectly good job of lighting the face of the man who knelt before the altar? He had set the ceramic lamp on the marble floor between him and the altar in such a way that the flame gave his face a saintly glow, as if God had touched him with Their holy light.
Did he know that she watched? Did he suspect that during his long hours of prayer people came sometimes to stand in the gallery to look down into the inner sanctum? Where they would see him, as fair as the dawn, as pious as a saint, and sublime in his virtue?
Beautiful Hugh.
I’m too old for this, she thought, irritated at the way her thoughts were tending. Old enough to be his grandmother if she had been married off at fifteen, as her sister and cousins had been, to seal alliances between families. But she had been allowed to enter the church after the husband chosen for her had died quite spectacularly the night before the wedding. She had misjudged the dosage. She hadn’t meant to make his death messy, just final, but after all she had only been fourteen.
Her years in the church had gone much more smoothly.
One lapse, that was all, in forty years. One lapse, and a single mistaken assessment, when she had judged that Sabella had the means and support to overthrow King Henry. Now she had lost both her son and her position in the church. She had no more margin for error. There must be no more misjudgments, no more miscalculations. Not one false step.
Below her, Hugh bowed his fair head to rest on folded hands. She knew he wasn’t praying. He was studying that mysterious book the others called “Bernard’s book,” a book of secrets. It never left Hugh’s side except to be locked into a chest sealed with several layers of protective wards. Here in the chapel, he had arranged his presbyter’s robes to cover it where it lay open in front of his knees. His robes spread out around him in such a way that their drape and fall made a pleasing picture, framing him. An artist could not have done a better job of painting a representation of a dutiful and noble presbyter, intimate counselor to the king, confidant of the Holy Mother herself.
He looked up abruptly, as if he’d heard her breathing in the gallery, but he was only gazing toward the domed span that separated him from the heavens above. His lips moved. He spoke a word, more a sigh than a name.
“Liath.”
There was something terrible in the way he said it, like a curtain drawn aside so that one glimpsed what was better left unseen. He bowed his head again, and this time she thought he really was praying, desperately, passionately.
The ardor suggested by his tightly clasped hands, the anguished cant of his shoulders, the intensity of his entire being was itself the flame drawing her. Like the galla whom she could call at need, luring them with fresh blood, she lapped up his suffering, if suffering it was. She had killed strong emotion in herself because it hindered her, but she had never lost her taste for it, even if she had to experience it secondhand.
Poor child. How terrible for him that his brilliance was flawed by this one weakness, this obsession for the one thing he could not have.
And yet, why not? Liath herself had spoken approvingly of Hugh’s passion for knowledge. There remained a link between them, one the girl herself had acknowledged reluctantly back in Verna. In a way, Hugh did possess her, because she could never forget or forgive him. Yet in her heart, Liath probably knew that Hugh was a better match for her than Prince Sanglant.
A footstep scuffed the floor. A presbyter dressed simply but richly in robe and long scarlet cloak came forward to stand in the shadow behind Hugh. He made the Circle at his breast, a sign of respect toward the holy altar and the gold cup resting there. As Hugh shifted back and turned to look at him, the man bowed deeply and with obvious reverence before speaking in the hushed tones appropriate to the dignity of their setting.
“Your Honor, the Holy Mother has awakened and is asking for you. You know how your presence does her so much good.”
“I thank you, Brother Ismundus. You are kind to disturb your own sleep this night.”
“Say not so! I should be praying for God’s mercy to heal her, as you are, but I haven’t your strength.”
Hugh winced slightly as he turned his head to gaze at the uncarved pillar, whose smooth marbled surface represented the holy purity of the blessed Daisan. No need to carve a crude rendition of an earthly face when the blessed Daisan had been lifted bodily in a cloud of God’s glory and transported directly to the Chamber of Light.
“It isn’t strength but sin.” Was he aware how exquisitely the lamp limned his profile at this angle? “I beg you, Brother Ismundus, do not grant me virtues I do not possess. I will come at once. Just let me finish my psalms.”
“Of course, Your Honor.” Ismundus bowed again before he retreated from the chapel. Of course the old man had no obligation to honor another presbyter in this way. He had served thirty years in the skopos’ palace and had risen to become steward of the holy bedchamber. In truth, in the common way of things, a young presbyter like Hugh ought to be bowing to him, not the other way around.
But these days, as she knew well enough, nothing ran anymore in the common way of things. In recent years the world had been overset by sin and disobedience. If everything she had been taught in the last year were true, it would soon be overset catastrophically by God’s hand, or Aoi sorcery.
Out of the coming chaos a strong leader could, and must, arise. Maybe she had been wrong to believe that leadership could come from Liath and Prince Sanglant. There were leaders besides Sanglant, men with greater power and more sophisticated ambition.
“I know where you are,” said Hugh suddenly into the sanctum’s holy silence. The lamp flickered as she froze, wondering by what sorcery he had managed to detect her presence up here in the dense shadows of the gallery, spying on him. “I know what you’re doing, my treasure. I can see you now, I can call the burning stone to make a window onto your journey, and I swear to you, Liath, I will follow you there.”
He bent his head and began to sing.
“Hear my cry for mercy when I call out to you,
when I lift my hands toward your holy sanctuary.
Do not number me with the wicked and the evildoers who speak sweetly to their fellows
while malice boils in their hearts.
Reward them according to their deeds.
Glorify those who trust in God.
Blessed are They, who listen to my plea for mercy.”
He waited a moment in silence after he had done. Was that flickering in the lamp’s flame the passage of angels, attracted by the sweetness of his voice? But if he were waiting for something, it did not come. He rose. Closing his book of secrets, he tied it shut with a red ribbon, tucked it under his arm, and walked away, passing under the archway and out through the doors. The lamp burned on. It was so silent she heard the hiss of the wick.
She lingered in the shadows in the gallery that ringed the inner sanctum. No need to risk being seen exiting the gallery so soon after Hugh’s departure. Anyway, she liked it here in St. Thecla’s Chapel. Emperor Taillefer had modeled the royal chapel at Autun on this very sanctuary, with its eight sides, double-vaulted walls, and domed roof. According to Heribert, St. Thecla’s Chapel was more perfectly proportioned than the copy at Autun, but certainly the royal chapel at Autun inspired awe and holy fervor because of its grandeur.
Liath was Taillefer’s great granddaughter, heir to his earthly glory and power. Just as she, once known as Biscop Antonia of Mainni but now called Sister Venia, understood the delicate balance of power at play within the skopos’ palace as a long and deadly winter turned the corner into the lean weeks of early spring. The Holy Mother Clementia lay dying. Soon, her soul would pass out of her body and ascend through the seven spheres to the Chamber of Light while, below, on Earth, some noblewoman of proper birth, rank, and holy stature would be elected to govern in her place.
“‘Our hearts have not gone astray,’” she murmured, “‘nor have our feet strayed from Your pa
th.’”
3
LIATH dozed in comfort in the soft embrace of Somorhas. It was like luxuriating in a bath filled with rose petals with the water neither too hot nor too cold. She was so spectacularly comfortable that she simply did not want to move or even open her eyes. Nothing hurt; she had not a single nagging discomfort. No reason to hurry forward. She had been on the road for so long it seemed cruel not to rest here a while.
In the distance she heard faint singing, a vocal accompaniment to the chiming music of the spheres. A person could just lie here forever and bathe in the perfect counterpoint of the music, never ending, always melodious and in faultless harmony.
Wind brushed her face. A touch, as soft as a feather, tickled her lips. A cool rush flowed down her throat as though a breath of wind had insinuated itself into her very body.
“Pass through the horned gate of Somorhas, if you would see your heart’s desire.”
She opened her eyes, startled by those sweet-toned words, as fluid as water. Who had spoken? It almost sounded like her own voice. Without realizing she meant to, she rose. A featureless plain surrounded her. The pleasant bed on which she had been resting was simply the rosy-colored ground, boiling with a layer of mist. Alabaster towers bristled on the horizon, as numerous as the spears of a vast army. A vast domed building built entirely of marble stood between her and the forest of towers. She knew at once that in this building she would find a library complete with every scroll and book she had ever wished to read. The towers receded into the mist even as the dome rose before her, flanked by avenues of stone lined with oversized statues of every animal known on Earth and in the sky: ravens and peacocks, panthers and bears, ibex and serpents. Where the avenues met in the forecourt, they joined into a broad stair surmounted by an archway, two ivory pillars linked by a curving arbor of dog roses and belladonna.
As her feet led her forward under the arch, a tremor passed through her body rather as a pan of water, shaken, will run with ripples and wavelets and then quiet. She found herself in a vast hall where churchmen ornamented by scarlet cloaks and clerics robed in wine or forest-green silk hurried about on their errands. Tables lit by a profusion of ceramic lamps stood in rows throughout the hall. Here sat scholars bent over ancient scrolls or freshly copied tomes bound into codices. A pair of young clerics, scarcely more than girls, whispered as they searched through some old chronicle.
On a stand at the center of the hall rested a thick book. She crossed between the tables and halted here. No one glanced at her strangely. No one found her presence remarkable, although she wore only tunic and leggings, quiver with arrows and bow, the gold torque given to her by Sanglant, and the lapis lazuli ring. The stone floor remained pleasingly warm to her bare feet.
As at Quedlinhame, the stand held the library’s catalog: different scribes at many different periods had added to the list. As she leafed through the catalog, she saw where a square Dariyan script, all capitals, changed abruptly to the rounded Scripta Actuaria favored by the early church mothers and gradually picking up the minuscule letters that marked the ascendancy of Salian clerics under the influence of Taillefer’s court schola. These days, the simpler Scripta Gallica held sway, imperial yet elegant.
What riches the catalog laid bare before her eyes! Not only Ptolomaia’s Tetrabiblos but also her magisterial Mathematici’s Compilation, Virgilia’s Heleniad and also her Dialogues, various geographies of heaven and Earth by diverse ancient scholars, the Memoria of Alisa of Jarrow with its detailed instruction in the art of memory, and more volumes on natural history and astronomy than she had ever seen before in one place. She skipped over the massive inventories of the writings of the church mothers but closely examined those pages marked black for caution. The numerous condemnations and tracts against various heresies held no attraction but, as she had hoped, there were forbidden texts on sorcery, like Chaldeos’ The Acts of the Magicians and The Secret Book of Alexandros, Son of Thunder.
How amazing and odd that a library of this scope should exist in the sphere of Somorhas. But hadn’t the voice said that beyond the gateway she would find her heart’s desire?
A small voice niggled at her from deep inside, annoying as a thorn. The merest prick of pain throbbed lightly behind her right eye. Hadn’t she read somewhere that in Somorhas lay only dreams and delusions?
“It cannot be so,” her voice whispered, almost as if she were two people, one watching, one speaking. “In the city of memory a great library stands in the third sphere, where the Cup of Boundless Waters holds sway, the ocean of knowledge available to mortal kind.”
That was true, wasn’t it? Best to make use of the time while she had it. She found the notation listing the location of St. Peter of Aron’s The Eternal Geometry in one of the library chambers and, seeing that others waited patiently behind her to use the catalog, hurried away. At every moment, with every footfall, she expected one of the robed clerics to challenge her. What are you doing here? Who are you? Where have you come from?
No one ever did. It wasn’t that they didn’t see her. Gazes marked her before moving away as easily as if she were someone expected. No one unusual. Not a stranger at all.
The corridor she had thought would lead her to the room of astronomies led her instead, unexpectedly, to a chapel elaborately decorated with gilded lamps hanging from a beamed ceiling and frescoes depicting the life of St. Lucia, guardian of the light of God’s wisdom. Her knees bent as if of their own volition, and in this way she knelt behind a pair of clerics robed in white and cloaked with the scarlet, floor-length capes that in the world below distinguished presbyters in the service of the skopos.
Strange how her thoughts scattered every which way. Because she could not calm her mind enough to lift her thoughts to God, she listened. The two clerics kneeling right in front of her evidently did not have calm minds either, because they were gossiping in low voices while, at the front of the chapel, an elderly man led a chorus of sweet-voiced monks in the service of Sext.
“Didn’t you hear? He saved poor Brother Sylvestrius a lashing.” “Nay, how can Brother Sylvestrius possibly have given offense? He scarcely speaks a word as it is, and sometimes it seems impossible to me that he even knows the rest of us exist because he’s so busy with his books.”
“It was nothing he said, but what he wrote in the annals.”
“Nothing deliberately disparaging, surely? That’s more Biscop Liutprand’s style.”
“Of course not. Sylvestrius wrote a dispassionate account of the crowning, rather than a flattering one.”
“And Ironhead couldn’t abide it. He’d rather hear one of those noxious poets singing his praises as though he were the next Taillefer rather than what he really is.”
“You know what a rage Ironhead can get into.”
“Truly, I do, and have the mark here on my cheek to prove it. Yet how then did Sylvestrius escape the lash? Nay, nay, you need not say. I know who must have intervened.”
“Truly, Brother, he is the sole gentling influence now that the Holy Mother, may God grant her healing, lies ill. He is the one person who stands between Ironhead’s coarseness and barbarity and the lives of so many innocents.”
As if this thought struck them hard with a vision of God’s mercy, they bent their heads in sincere prayer as the old presbyter in front began the Gloria.
Odd to feel that her body was not her own. She rose, quite unexpectedly, and edged backward, but there must have been another door into the chapel that she hadn’t seen before because, instead of backing into the corridor she’d just come down, she found herself in a gloomy, dank passage illuminated by a single flickering torch.
The light was bad, but with her salamander eyes she saw a trio of guards standing at a heavy wood door exactly like a dozen other such doors set into the corridor behind her. The stone walls seeped moisture. The floor stank of earth and cold. No fine lofty ceilings here. No skilled artisans had toiled to make this place a pleasure to look at or walk through.
&
nbsp; “Ach, here’s the key,” said one of the guards. “Poor lads. I hate to think of their heads being stuck up on the wall just for stealing a bit of bread because they was too poor to buy none at market.”
“A bit of bread is one thing,” objected the second guard, “but stealing the king’s bread is quite another.”
“Tchah! King’s bread, indeed.” The third guard laughed coarsely. “That basket was headed for the king’s whorehouse, if you please.”
“Still, what belongs to the king is meant for the king, not for beggars like these two.”
They got the key turned in the lock and with some effort shoved the door open. “Come on out, lads,” said the third guard.
Not more than fourteen, the two boys had the weary, pinched look of children raised in constant hunger, starved rats. One was weeping. His companion was trying to be brave.
“We was just hungry,” whimpered the weeping one, a familiar refrain which had been sung once too often.
“Nay, give them not the satisfaction,” hissed his companion. “We’ll go bravely to our death—”
“Bravely enough, lad,” said the third guard. “I’m under orders to pardon you and turn you loose. Here’s a silver lusira for your trouble. Use it wisely, and get you out of the city. My lord king has a long memory for people who have crossed him, and if he ever recognizes you, he’ll cut off your heads right in the street.”
The weeper wept copiously at this news of reprieve. The brave lad dropped to his knees, trying to kiss the hands of the third guard while at the same time clutching the precious silver to his breast. “I pray you, friend, how can we thank you? God will bless you for your mercy.”