by Kate Elliott
Rosvita caught herself on the lip of the basin. Water splashed her hand and cheek, spitting from the mouths of snakes. “Hugh,” she whispered, remembering the passage he had read from The Book of Secrets that day when she and Theophanu and young Paloma had overheard him in the guest chapel at the convent of St. Ekatarina’s. Remembering the daimone he had bound into a silk ribbon that night when he had helped Adelheid, Theophanu, and the remnants of their entourages escape from Ironhead’s siege of the convent. “A daimone can be chained to the will of a sorcerer, and if he be strong enough, he can cause it to dwell in the body of another person, there to work its will. ‘Until one mouth utters what another mind whispers.’”
“Can it be true, Sister?”
“If you saw what you describe, it cannot be otherwise. But I tremble to think it might be true.” Her heart was cold, not hot. Her hands seemed frozen, and her mind clouded and useless. The amulet burned at her breast. “Yet where was the queen?”
“Ai, worst of all! She stood to one side and watched him do it! Cool as you please she told her servingwoman to tell the skopos that the deed was done and that from now on matters would proceed as they knew was best.” Calm, practical, levelheaded Hathui, a common woman with so much good sense and simple courage that she had been granted the king’s signal regard, broke down and wept, tears flowing down her cheeks in echo of the monstrous fountain behind them. But she was able to do it silently, so that her sobs would not alert the night guards.
Rosvita took the lamp from her hand. “Do you know where Villam is?”
“I went to him first, but when we got back to the king’s chambers, the king was gone and his steward said he had gone to hold an audience with the skopos. Villam sent me to rouse you. He said we must meet him in the skopos’ palace. He thought if we got hold of King Henry before the spell bit too deep—”
Shock gave way to a curious, almost luminous clarity. Even in the darkness, with a waning quarter moon and the lamp’s faint glow their only light, she could see the medusa’s face, carved out of a marble so white that it seemed to gleam, leprous and pallid, an evil spirit sent to overhear the complaints of travelers come to burden the regnant with their petty cares and quarrels.
“Villam is in danger.” The words tolled in her heart like the knell of death, singing the departed up through the spheres toward the Chamber of Light. “We cannot act hastily, for they have power against which our good faith avails us nothing. We must catch Villam before he does something rash. Come.”
Hathui knew the servants’ corridors in the skopos’ palace well, since she often carried messages from regnant to skopos. A pair of guards at the entrance to the kitchens chatted amiably with her for a few moments about the current favorites for the horse races to be held in three days, then let her through without questions. Quickly, Hathui led them into the main portion of the palace. Even in the middle of the night a few servants walked the back corridors, carrying out trash or chamber pots, hauling water for the many presbyters and noble servitors of the skopos who would need to wash in the morning. None seemed suspicious when Hathui asked if they had seen the king; the Eagle had a natural gift with words and an easy confidence, although it clearly cost her to put a careless face on things. But in the end, servants saw everything: the king, escorted by Presbyter Hugh, had gone up to the parapet walk. They had not seen Queen Adelheid.
A spiral staircase of stone led from the guards’ barracks all the way up to the parapet walk. By the time they reached the top, Rosvita was puffing hard. The night air, pooling along the walk, had at last a hint of autumn in it. A breeze cooled the sweat on her forehead and neck. Hathui started forward along the walkway, which angled sharply along the cliff’s edge overlooking the river below, now hidden in darkness.
“Wait.” Rosvita took the lamp from the Eagle and, wetting thumb and forefinger, snuffed the wick. “Better that we approach without being seen.”
They waited for their eyes to adjust, but fanciful lamps molded in the shapes of roosters, geese, and frogs rode the walls at intervals, splashes of light to guide their path along the narrow walkway. Wisps of cloud obscured the stars in trails of darkness. Was that Jedu, Angel of War, gleaming malevolently in the constellation known as the loyal Hound? Hathui, walking ahead, put out a hand to stop her in a pool of shadow between two broadly spaced lamps.
A faint stench of decay rose off the river, the dregs of summer. According to the locals, only the winter rains would drive it away. The wind shifted, and Rosvita pulled her sleeve across her nose to muffle the smell.
She heard voices, two men, one angry and one as sweetly calm as a saint.
With Hathui beside her, she moved forward cautiously, hugging the interior wall, until they came to a sharply angled corner of a main tower and could see onto a wider section of the walkway, set between the square tower at their back and its twin, opposite. Three men stood there, one silent beside a landing that led to a second set of stairs, one leaning gracefully on the waist-high railing that overlooked the abyss, and the third halfway between the two, as though to make a shield of his body. Even without the light of two lamps set on tripods, Rosvita would have known two of them anywhere.
The bell rang for Vigils.
“But Margrave Villam,” said Hugh most reasonably as he rested against the railing while the wind played in his hair and lifted the corners of his presbyter’s cloak, “you do not understand fully the gravity of the dangers facing all of us, which remain hidden from mortal eyes. Like my mother, I act only to serve the king.”
Villam seemed ready to spit with fury. She could see it in the way he held himself as he took a single threatening step toward Hugh, the way his hand brushed his sword’s hilt. Hugh was unarmed. “You! Sorcerer! I never knew what you did at Zeitsenburg, but the whole court knows what your blessed mother thought a fitting punishment for you, her golden child! To humble you by making you walk into the north like a common frater. What would she say to this night’s treachery?”
“What treachery is that? King Henry walks beside me to meet with the Holy Mother. Who has been speaking to you, friend Villam?”
Villam glanced at the man standing rigidly beside the stairs. In that moment, Rosvita realized that she had not recognized him; his posture and stance were utterly wrong, not her beloved king’s at all. “Your Majesty,” Villam entreated, “do we not ride out in two days’ time to return to Wendar, where the people cry out in hope that you will soon come to aid them?”
“We will not return to Wendar,” replied Henry in a voice that rang hollow, like a bell.
“But the news from Theophanu! The Quman raids that devastate the marchlands! Geoffrey in Lavas, besieged by drought and famine and bandits. What about Conrad, who may already be plotting? Two Eagles have come, pleading for your return! Your Majesty!”
“We will stay here and unite Aosta, and receive our crown, Adelheid and I, crowned as emperor and empress. We will send emissaries to every kingdom, to each place where a stone crown is crowned by seven stones, and there they will await their duty to save all of humankind from the wicked sorcery of the Lost Ones.”
“But, Your Majesty, it is not practicable. The emperor’s crown will fall quickly from your head if you lose Wendar to the Quman, or to Conrad, who has married your niece! What of Sapientia, fighting in the marchlands? What of Theophanu, who sends an Eagle to beg for your swift return? Aosta must wait until you have settled affairs in Wendar!”
“And Mathilda anointed as our heir.”
“Your Majesty!” The soft chanting of clerics and presbyters, intoning the service of Vigils, floated up to them even as Villam sounded ready to weep. “Your Majesty. Your children by Queen Sophia !”
“Mathilda anointed as my heir,” repeated Henry. With his arms clamped tightly against his sides, he moved only his lips, like a statue, like a slave caught in fear for his life.
Villam drew his sword and turned on Hugh. The presbyter had not moved but only watched, one hand stretched out along the
railing, his slender fingers stroking the stout wood railing as a woman might pet her cat. “You’ve bewitched him! That is not the king’s voice! That is not the king! You’ve used foul sorcery to pollute his body and imprison his mind!”
Impossible to say what happened next. Villam lunged. Hugh moved sideways, pantherlike, as graceful as one of the acrobats she’d admired yesterday evening. He even had a startled look on his face, as though surprised. But Villam hit the wooden railing with a crash, sword still raised.
The railing splintered and gave way. Villam staggered outward, cried out as the sword slipped from his fingers, but he had only one arm to grasp with as Hugh reached out to him and it was not enough to save him. He fell. Hathui gasped out loud. Her hand closed on Rosvita’s and held on there, as tight as a vise, but neither woman moved as Villam’s shriek of outrage and fear faded to silence. Nor did King Henry make any least acknowledgment that his eldest, dearest, and most trusted companion had fallen to his death right in front of his eyes.
After a moment in which Rosvita thought she had actually gone deaf, the distant voices from various chapels in the palaces and down in the city reached heavenward again; she knew the service so well that scraps of melody and words were enough to reveal to her the entire psalm.
“I cry aloud to God when distress afflicts me,
but God have stayed Their hand.
In the darkness of night, have They forgotten me?
Can the Lord no longer pity?
Has the Lady withdrawn Her mercy?”
“Come out,” said Hugh. “I know you’re there.”
How soft his voice, and how delicate. Not threatening at all. An eddy in the breeze roiled around her as suddenly as an unseen current turns a boat in the water of a swift-flowing river.
“Come forward, I pray you,” he said.
She slipped her hand out of Hathui’s strong grasp, trying to shove the Eagle away, trying to give her the message to run, to flee while one of them could.
Who would come to their aid? Whom could they trust?
Stepping forward into the light, she said the only thing she could think of to give the Eagle a hint of her thoughts. “A bastard will show his true mettle when temptation is thrown in his path and the worst tales he can imagine are brought to his attention.”
“Sister Rosvita!” Hugh looked honestly surprised, as though he had expected to see someone else. “I regret that you are here.” He whistled. Four guards clattered up the stairs, pausing only to bow before the king before they knelt in front of Hugh. “Take her into custody. Beware what wild accusations she may speak, for I fear her heart has been touched by the Enemy.” Henry stood rigid, watching as though he were a stranger, his expression cold and hard. Certainly his features had not changed, but he looked nothing at all like the king she knew. “Come, Your Majesty, we must attend the Holy Mother.”
But as Hugh crossed to the stairs, he paused beside Rosvita, frowning. “I had not hoped for this, Sister Rosvita, nor for what must come now. You know how much I admire you.”
“Traitor,” she said coolly. The shock of Villam’s death burned in her heart, but she would never let Hugh see how much it hurt. No doubt he could crush her in an instant. All she had left her were her wits. She had to spin more time for Hathui to escape.
“Is it possible that all I have ever been taught is wrong? That the outer seeming does not reflect the inner heart? Can it be that you have stolen from some more worthy soul that handsome and modest aspect which you wear as though it was given to you by God? Do so many trust you because of your beauty and your clever words while darkness eats away at your heart? Do you not fear the judgment of God and the terrors of the Abyss? Can it be that you have corrupted the queen and the Holy Mother both, with your bindings and workings? What would your mother say were she to stand before us now, seeing what I saw?”
“Enough!” His anger, sparking suddenly, died swiftly as he got control of himself. “‘The purified and serene mind has forgotten the passions,’” he said, as if to himself, as if reminding himself of a lesson he had not yet learned and wished devoutly to comprehend.
“‘Virtues alone make one blessed,’” retorted Rosvita.
He sighed and moved on.
“What must we do with her, my lord?” asked one of the guards.
“Take her to the dungeon. I’ll deal with her later.” He and Henry descended the broad steps and soon the lamp he carried was lost to view.
The chief guard made no effort to speak to her, merely gestured with his spear. She saw no reason to fight them. They led her back the way she had come, along the walkway, to the guards’ staircase that spiraled down into the palace and farther yet, into the bowels of the hill where lay the dungeons in which those wicked souls were confined who had come afoul of the church. The dank air caught in her lungs, but even when she was marched down a dark corridor, thrown into a cell scarcely wider than her outstretched arms, and left in blackness to sit on moldy straw, she did not, entirely, despair.
Ai, God, Villam was dead, murdered by some trick of Hugh’s.
King Henry had become a puppet dancing to another man’s strings, possessed by the very daimone Hugh had freed from the stone circle at St. Ekatarina’s Convent.
But in those last moments, caught by Hugh, and on her trip down to this dungeon, there had been no sign of Hathui.
6
DUCHESS Rotrudis was dying. The cloying smell of her sickness made her bedchamber almost unbearable. Sanglant stood as close as possible to the window although, even so, no freshening breeze stirred the air inside the room. Even with torches burning to give light and with incense set in three burners around the chamber, it stank.
Her dutiful daughters argued by her bedside, ignoring the half-conscious woman moaning faintly on the bed.
“Nay, I was born first. Deacon Rowena will confirm it!”
“Only because you’ve offered her the biscopry once Mother is dead! Everyone knows that because I have the birthmark on my chest, it means I’m firstborn.”
The two young women looked ready to come to blows, and their respective attendants resembled half-starved dogs preparing to fight over a juicy bone.
Lord Wichman sprawled on the duchess’ chair, legs stretched out in front of him and arms crossed on his chest, wearing a smirk on his face as he watched his older sisters shriek and quarrel while their mother suffered unregarded beside them. He hadn’t even kissed his mother’s hand when he’d come in the room; he hadn’t looked at her at all except for a single grimace as he took in the shrunken body of the once robust woman.
“I pray you, Cousins,” said Sapientia, attempting to step between them, “this dispute avails you nothing. Surely your mother knows which of you was born first. Surely a midwife attended the birth.”
“The midwife is dead, poisoned by Imma!”
“Liar and whore! We weren’t more than five years of age when the old woman died. I had nothing to do with it. But you’ve never answered how the deacon’s record came to be burned up six years ago.”
“Oh! As if it wasn’t you who had the idea to do it, Sophie!”
Wichman had paid more attention when his brother Zwentibold was brought in on a litter to be placed by the hearth, where he, too, was now dying, from wounds taken on the field. Zwentibold remained silent except, now and again, when a tormented groan escaped him and the pretty young woman who was evidently his current concubine hastened forward to dab his lips with wine. It was easy to let the gaze linger on the curve of her body under her light gown, hiding little, promising much, and easier still to notice that Wichman never took his gaze off her.
“How can it be you don’t know which of you was born first?” demanded Sapientia, looking from one sister to the other. The two looked alike mostly in their broad faces and ruddy complexions, big women with years of good eating behind them. Imma had her mother’s nose, while Sophie bore the red-brown hair that had, evidently, distinguished their dead father. The innocent question unleashed
a torrent of abuse and accusations, hurled from one to the other.
“She always favored you!”
“Nay! She only pretended to favor me because she wanted to keep me on a leash like a dog. You’re the one who got all the freedom. You’re the one who gained because everyone thought you must be angling for the title!”
“I pray you, Cousins, this is no way to show respect. Duchess Rotrudis can hear every word—”
“As if she hasn’t enjoyed every word of it, the old bitch!”
“Hah! You licked sweetly enough the honeycomb when it still had honey on it!”
Looking half their size and having none of their shrill stridency, Sapientia was helpless to stop them while, all around, nobles and attendants crowded in, eager or aghast to see such a show. Sanglant watched as Sapientia tried to calm them down, to no avail. She saw what needed doing, but she hadn’t the authority to do it. They saw no reason to listen to her.
Wichman rose and stretched before padding over to Zwentibold’s litter. The pretty attendant shrank away, but there was no way, here at Osterburg, that she could escape the son of the reigning duchess. Zwentibold had taken her, after all, with or without her consent, and Wichman clearly had decided to follow where his brother had first plunged in.
Just as Wichman, smiling with that ugly spark of unrestrained lust that marred his features, slipped a hand up the girl’s rump and tested its roundness, Sanglant strolled forward. He got hold of Wichman’s other arm and jerked him forward to stand beside his sisters. Wichman resisted, pulling away.
“I would not if I were you,” said Sanglant softly. “I claim her, and I’ll cut off your balls if you touch her. You know what my promise is worth, Cousin.”
Fuming, Wichman raked his hair back from his head and shot a leer back at Zwentibold’s concubine. But he stayed where he was, next to Sophie.