by Kate Elliott
“It’s not me you should be thanking. I would have let you hang. But there is one at court who chooses the rose of mercy over the sword of justice.”
“Ai, Lord and Lady!” breathed the brave one in the tone of a child who has just recognized the visitation of an angel. “Was it that one, who we saw in the square next to the lord king?”
“Truly, that one. Don’t forget that some walk closer to God than do the rest of us sinners. You can thank him in your prayers.” Two of the guards, working together, dragged the door shut. It scraped noisily over the stone floor, the sound grinding and echoing down the corridor.
With a grunt, the first guard led the two boys away. Liath did not move while the others lingered.
“You could have kept the silver and let them hang,” whispered the second guard. “How do you dare go against the king’s wishes?”
“The king will have forgotten the incident in a week’s time. Poor lads, they hadn’t any harm in them. I remember being that hungry and desperate once. But don’t ever think I’d have kept the silver, boy.” The third guard’s voice got tight as he chided the other. “Not when you know who gave it to me to give to those poor lads. We get two meals a day in the king’s service. They’ve nothing, all the poor wandering in the streets while the king raises taxes in order to buy more soldiers for his army.”
“How would he have known, the one who gave it to you, if you’d have kept it? You could have let them go and kept it for yourself. That’s a month’s wages!”
“Tchah! He’d know.”
“And he’d punish you?”
“Truly, so it would be punishment, to be called before him and have to look him in the eye who is a better man than any of us. I’ve no wish to go standing there before him while he forgives me for giving into temptation, not a word of blame from him, who knows how sinful humankind is and how we struggle with the evil inclination. I’d rather not sin than be shamed before him.”
“Oho, is that why you’ve not been to Parisa’s brothel in the last month?”
“So it is, lad, and I’ll never go again. I’m courting a young woman who’s a washerwoman down by the Tigira docks. I mean to marry her and live a Godly life.”
“Once this war is over.”
“Once this damned war is over. Have you heard the latest rumor?”
Moving from the corridor under a stone archway that led to a staircase, they vanished from her view, carrying the only torch. Their conversation was quickly muffled by stone and distance. Her legs carried her after them, but by the time she reached the staircase she could only follow the receding glow of torchlight. She climbed quickly, chafed by a sudden cold draft of wind. Between one breath and the next, the torch went out, leaving her in pitch-blackness. She climbed the stairway by touch, fingers brushing the dressed stone, feeling the cracks and flaking mortar smoothing away beneath her skin until it seemed to her that she was in a narrow stair with wood walls, wood floors, and a ceiling so low that it brushed her hair. She stumbled up against a latch. Though her fingers touched the latch, they hesitated.
Her jaw had gone tight, clenched hard, and the pain brought a rush of questions. Where was she? Had she unwittingly descended back to Earth?
Quickly vanquished and fled. “Walk through the door,” her voice murmured, “and I will be one step closer to my heart’s desire.” Wasn’t it true? Surely it was true. She set her hand on the latch just as she heard muffled sounds of weeping to her right. Startled, she jerked back as the latch twitched, turned from the other side, scraped against wood, and snapped up.
The door was thrown open.
A pretty young woman blinked into the darkness. She had a fresh scar on her upper lip and wore only a shift, the fabric so finely woven that Liath saw the blush of her nipples beneath the cloth. “Oh, thank the Lady,” she said, grabbing Liath’s wrist and tugging her out into a bright chamber where a rosy light poured in through four unshuttered windows. “You got her safely hidden.”
The mellow light pooled over a parquet floor and set into relief a set of frescoes depicting such obscene subjects that Liath blushed. Her new friend pressed past her into the hidden cupboard—for such it was—and helped the weeping woman out from the shadows. She wore the long and rather shapeless wool tunic, dyed a nondescript clay red, worn by common folk, although unlike the Wendish style she wore also a tightly fitted bodice and a brown apron over it. Her hair was bound up in a crown of braids rather than covered by a light shawl, as a respectable Wendish woman’s would be. Beneath the streaked tears and the frightened expression, Liath could see that she was remarkably pretty, blackhaired with the kind of eyes one could stare into for hours. She shrank away from the sight of the huge bed and its silken canopy.
“I’ll not be abused by him without a fight!” she said in a voice made hoarse by screaming. “He may be king, but I’m a Godly married woman and I only come to pray at the cathedral to ask for God’s mercy on my poor sick child.”
“Hush,” hissed the pretty woman. “He’s gone now. What did you say your name was?”
“I’m known as Terezia. Ai, Lady!” She began to snivel again, overcome by relief. “I was just there in the Lady Chapel, praying, when in he come and grabbed me right out of there. What was I to say to the king? I never imagined—” She began to sob again while the pretty woman in the shift gave Liath a look to show that she’d seen this scene played over many times before, a shared glance of commiseration and disgust. “—that he would try to rape me. If it hadn’t been for that holy man who come in and put a stop to it—”
“Yes, friend, if it hadn’t been for him.”
“I thought the king was like to run him through. Ai, Lady, how brave he was!” Her eyes shone with remembered admiration.
“And so handsome.”
“And a holy presbyter, sister, not for the likes of us, so go back to your good husband and your sick child. Hurry, now, for the king might come back any time.” Two doors stood open, one leading into an opulent hallway and the other to a narrow servants’ corridor. She beckoned toward the servants’ corridor. “Go on. That’ll get you down to the servants’ hall. My friend Teuda will get you out of the palace. She’ll be waiting at the bottom of the stairs.”
“What about you? Aren’t you wanting to escape as well?”
The pretty woman laughed lightly. “Nay, we’re the king’s whores. We’re paid well enough to want to stay.”
“But you’re so pretty.” Terezia looked ready to faint again, and she hadn’t even gotten as far as the door, stopping to lean on the back of a chair. “Why would he be coming down to the cathedral to abduct God-fearing women who’ve just come there to pray when he has lemans as pretty as you to warm his bed?”
“Poor innocent,” said the whore with the slightest hint of contempt. “He does it because he can. Nay, listen. I hear someone coming.”
Terezia bolted down the servants’ corridor. Before the noise of her hasty escape had faded, the whore threw herself onto the bed with a chuckle. Rolling over, she reached for a silver tray, found a goblet, and raised herself up to sip at the wine contentedly. “Ai, Lady. When I think of those poor women slaving all day at their washing or cooking or raising a host of brats in a filthy hovel down by the marsh, I thank God that you and I lie here in silks.”
“Beauty doesn’t last forever,” said Liath, feeling the headache coming back. What a sight she herself must look in her tunic, fallen loose because she had no belt, with her quiver strapped to her back. Yet the whore smiled as seductively at Liath as if she, too, wore a fine shift to mark her exalted status, as if they had shared other intimacies here in this light-draped chamber while they waited for the king. Liath even took a step forward, as if to go lie down on that bed beside the pretty whore, as if her body meant to do what it willed without consulting her. It was like fighting a stubborn horse, to grab hold of a chair and sit down solidly, with a thump.
“Oh, don’t talk to me like that,” said her companion now. “I’ve seen you
eyeing him when he comes in with Ironhead.” She laughed, not kindly. “Iron head, indeed. He’s as elegant as an ax, is the king. Pump and grunt, that’s him. Nothing like his presbyter, is he, darling? My Lord, now there’s a true man, all bright and handsome, clever and kind, with such a beautiful voice as you can get all lost in, and the hands of a saint. Haven’t you ever snuck into St. Thecla’s Chapel to watch him praying? I have, and I know you have, too. I just wonder what it would be like to have those hands soliciting me. Haven’t you just? Haven’t you? All witty and elegant as he is, thoughtful and wise. But I see the look in his eyes. He’s all lit inside, God’s chosen one.” She sighed so passionately, shifted so sensuously on the bed, that Liath felt all on fire, remembering the ecstasies known to the body. “Don’t you wish he’d choose you?”
“Yes,” she whispered, not sure what question she was answering, except that arousal warred with nausea as her thoughts sharpened for an instant. She had to get out of here. She lurched out of the chair, tipping it over behind her, and fled to the door.
But instead of the safety of the servants’ corridor, she stumbled into an anteroom so soft with carpets that her bare feet made no sound as she hurried across the room to the only open door. Out of breath, she leaned against a doorframe painted with a mural depicting the ancient Emperor Tianathano driving a chariot pulled by griffins.
In the dim chamber beyond, a man was reading aloud from the Holy Verses in a voice so beautifully composed and melodious that like a roped lamb she was drawn in past a carved wooden screen into a vast and subdued bedchamber shrouded by approaching death.
“‘In those days,’” the voice declaimed, “‘young Savamial came into the service of God. One day she was given the task of sleeping beside the holy curtain that concealed the glory of God. The lamp burning beside the holy curtain had not yet gone out, and while Savamial lay sleeping in the temple the voice of God called out to her, and she answered, “I’m coming.” She ran to the veiled woman and said, “Here I am. You called me.” But the veiled woman replied, “I didn’t call you. Go back to sleep.’”
That harmonious voice made her head throb painfully. A single lamp hung from a tripod set beside the bed. It illuminated an aged woman, so frail that the hands lying on the coverlet were seamed with blue veins, as pale and thin as finest parchment. Her eyes were closed. One could only tell she was alive because she had the merest brush of color in her cheeks and, once, an eyelid flickered at the expressive lift of the reader’s voice. Another man stood back in the shadows, looking on with a rapt face. The reader’s face was concealed from Liath because his back was turned, but she saw how his robe fell in elegant drapery from his shoulders. His hair gleamed golden in the lamplight as he continued to read.
“‘So she went back and lay down again. But God called a second time, “Savamial!” Savamial got up and ran to the holy woman and said, “Here I am. You called me.’”
“Hugh,” Liath breathed, lips moving although she hadn’t meant to make a sound. A sick, horrible pain clutched in her guts, and she could not move.
He turned to see who had come in. “Who is there?” he asked softly. She knew she should run, but her legs moved her forward into the soft glow of the lamplight. Seeing her, he looked surprised and even a little shy. Was he actually blushing as a youth might faced with the lady for whom he has conceived a sweetly guileless passion? It was hard to tell because the light was behind him.
He carefully closed the book and handed it to his companion, who took it without demur as Hugh rose and came to stand before her. Already the knot in her gut and the aching in her head subsided, subsumed under a flood of new thoughts.
She had actually forgotten how beautiful he was—not a shallow beauty that bloomed quickly and withered with the next season, but something bone-deep, unfathomable because golden hair and a certain arrangement of features cannot by itself create a pleasing face. Why had God seen fit to shower him with that combination of lineaments and expressiveness, charm and intensity, whose sum is beauty?
“Liath! I—” He broke off, confused and flustered. “Where have you come from? Why are you here?” He glanced back at the elderly presbyter, who stood serenely by the bedside of the aged woman, watching the lamplight twist over her pallid face. “Nay, come, let’s go outside to talk. I can’t understand how it is you’ve come here.”
But they had barely crossed the threshold into the anteroom, and her lips parted to speak, she not even knowing what she meant to say, when a middle-aged presbyter with the stout girth of a person who’s eaten well since childhood hurried into view.
“Thank God, Your Honor. I hoped to find you here. How is the Holy Mother?”
“She has not changed, alas, Brother Petrus. May God have mercy. I’ve been reading to her.”
“Yes, yes.” The stout presbyter was clearly in a mounting frenzy, hands twitching, shifting his weight from one foot to the other like a child who has to pee. “You must come at once. The king—”
“Of course I’ll come.” Hugh looked at Liath, opening his hands as if to say, “what can I do?” “Will you wait?” he asked her in a low voice. “Or perhaps, I don’t know, I can’t believe— Nay, perhaps you’ll not wish to wait.”
Perhaps it was curiosity that goaded her, even as it occurred to her that there was nothing about him now at all threatening. “I’ll come with you, if I may,” her voice said.
His face lit. He smiled sweetly, then looked away as if embarrassed at his own reaction.
“I pray you, Your Honor, I fear there’ll be violence if you don’t come quickly—”
“Don’t fear, Brother Petrus. Let us go.”
One lavishly decorated corridor led to the next. She was lost in a maze of staircases and archways, colonnades and courtyards. At last they crossed out of one palace compound and into a second. Here, where the great hall abutted a long wing of princely chambers, they stepped outside into a small courtyard ringed by fig and citron trees. In the center, on a dusty oval of ground, soldiers took arms training. Yet under the rosy light of a cloudy day, so strangely bright that she realized she had no idea what season or hour it was, something in the ring wasn’t going right.
One man, wearing a grim iron helm and a heavily padded coat, was in the process of pounding some poor youth into the dirt.
Brother Petrus was so out of breath that he could barely wheeze out an explanation. “You know how it is… a woman down at prayers in the cathedral… he saw her… conceived a lust… had her brought to him… but then he was called out of his chambers… and returned to find her gone. He’s in a fury. You know how he hates to be crossed.”
Hugh’s mouth tightened. He lifted a hand to his face, laying the back of that hand to his cheek as though at a memory unlooked for and unwanted. The iron-helmed man had a blunted sword carved from wood, but by now he was simply laying into his victim as though he’d forgotten everything except that reflexive snap, over and over, of his sword arm. The young man was crying out loud, begging for mercy. Soldiers stood back, uneasily, but no one moved to stop them.
Hugh unbuckled his belt and stripped out of his presbyter’s robe to reveal a simple linen tunic and leggings beneath, the kind of thing worn by a noble lady’s younger son when he rides off in the retinue of his elder cousin. He was tall, lean, and strong. He gestured. A servant, running, brought him a padded sword.
“Nay, my lord king,” he said in a clear, carrying voice as he stepped out onto the oval, “this poor lad’s not much of a contest, is he? I’ll test you.”
The king hesitated between one blow and the next, lifting his head. Liath caught a glimpse of a cruel gaze behind the visor. He spoke with the voice of a man plagued by a surfeit of spleen.
“No doubt it was your doing the woman was taken out of the palace, my precious counselor.”
“She was a married woman praying for God to heal her sick child. She has both a father and a husband in the mason’s guild, my lord king. How does it benefit you to insult the men who
build and repair the city walls?”
“I’d have given her back unharmed!”
Seeing that Hugh had no helmet, the king pulled off his before leaping forward. Hugh was ready for him. He hadn’t the breadth of shoulder of a man always in armor, but clearly he had trained for war. And why not? Abbots and churchmen often led contingents to war. Such a man must be ready, even in the midst of prayer, to answer when the regnant called.
The king had far less grace than a bull. He had strength, exasperation, and experience as he thrashed and struck, but there came no physical pleasure in watching him at work. As elegant as an ax, his whore had said of his lovemaking, all pumping and grunting. Watching him fight, Liath could well believe it.
Watching Hugh fight, she saw how Hugh measured his opponent and worked him patiently, saw the grace of his movements, never too subtle or too bold. Sweat broke first at the back of his neck. Somehow, she remembered that: how he would get a sheen of sweat there and down between his shoulder blades. How his hands would get moist. A bead of sweat trickled down his forehead. His gaze never left his opponent; like a lover, he had eyes for no one else.
Not even for her.
She found her hands at her own throat, and she was trembling hard, choking, shaking all over. The dance of swordplay went on regardless, bruises traded, a cut lip, hair gone damp with sweat. The king had a scar on one cheek that flared vividly the more he sweated. He had a look about him that suggested he didn’t fight so much for love of fighting but rather because he wanted to win. Hugh was overmatched, both in size and in prowess, but since Hugh didn’t care about winning, he could focus all his efforts on defense.
Her hands fell to her side. Strange that she had reacted like that. She had nothing to fear. Eventually the king stepped back and, panting, tossed his padded sword aside. He wiped sweat from his brow as he chuckled.