Crown of Stars

by Kate Elliott

  In the outer courtyard, surrounded by the hilltop palisade, servants gathered by the well to draw up water and gossip about last night’s feasting. Smoke steamed out of the kitchen. A score of soldiers were marching out of the main gate, heading down into town, but they did not call or speak or sing. Only the tramp of their feet gave them away. She found one of the narrow stairs set into the wall alongside the oldest tower, a stone donjon built a hundred years before by Saony’s first duke. Here, by tradition, the duke lived when she wasn’t traveling her domain. Theophanu’s soldiers stood on guard, but they let her pass. She walked out along the palisade walk to one of the corner brace-ways. Mounting a ladder, she got up to a sentry post, planks built out over the wall.

  Someone was here before her, a slight figure leaning on the rail and staring east toward distant hills and endless forest.

  “Lady Theucinda.”

  The girl had not even heard her coming. She yelped, jerked, and flushed, turning to see her, but recovered quickly. “My lady Liathano. Did you come looking for me?”

  “No. I came to admire the view.”

  The view was remarkable. The town opened like a skirt around the palace hill. The river flowed in a broad bend, fading into the hazy distance south and north. Farmers were already moving beyond the town wall, pushing carts filled with night soil and herding livestock out to field and pasture. The bell rang at the modest cathedral, which had been built in the new part of town about thirty years ago in the days of the younger Arnulf.

  Theucinda seemed inclined to remain silent, so Liath leaned on the railing and watched as the day unveiled. The clouds seemed lighter today, but the sun did not break through. It was still ungodly cold although last night they had celebrated the Feast of St. Sormas, which marked the thirteenth day of the month of Avril, about six weeks after the spring equinox. In Heart’s Rest, folk usually planted at the end of the month of Yanu or, in a particularly cold year, at the very beginning of Avril. Osterburg lay many days’ journey south of Heart’s Rest. Seen at this distance, the wide forest remained bare. Only the evergreens showed signs of life.

  “Liath?”

  She turned. A redheaded man stepped off the ladder, staring at her in surprise. He wore a Lion’s tabard, much mended, and the insignia of a captain.

  “Captain Thiadbold!” She grinned, delighted to see him. “How come you here?”

  “I’ve been here for a year or more—three years, now that I think on it. We’ve made some expeditions to the north coast and west of here to drive out bandits and rebels. And you?” He recalled himself, and offered a more respectful bow. “An Eagle no longer, my lady. I pray you, forgive my boldness.”

  “There is nothing to forgive. I would rather be treated as your comrade of old than—this other thing. You marched east, did you not? With Prince Bayan and Princess Sapientia? That happened after we parted ways.”

  He whistled. “A long road that was. You know the route as well as I after we put down the rebellion in Varre.”

  They chatted a little about that time, old comrades recounting shared adventures: Lady Svanhilde and her reckless son, Charles; the battle at Gent and the death of the Eika chieftain Bloodheart.

  “We traveled on progress after that. Down to Thersa and afterward to Werlida.” He looked a little embarrassed. “You’ll recall that, I suppose.”

  “I do. And after that, where did you go? You’ve had a long, difficult journey, I think. In the king’s service.”

  “That we have, and lost half my men, alas. It was quiet for a while, in Varre. We went to Autun and saw the holy chapel where the Emperor Taillefer sleeps. Now that was a fine sight!” He grinned, but an instant later he frowned. “After that, indeed. We were sent east with Princess Sapientia and Prince Bayan. He was a good man, Prince Bayan. A good commander. I suppose we reached too far. Wendish folk ought not to walk beyond the marchlands.”

  He went on for a while about the grassy eastern reaches, about a battle at a place he called “Queen’s Grave” on account of an old burial mound with a ruined stone crown at its height. Their retreat, it seemed, had succeeded only on account of Prince Bayan’s steady nerves and canny tactics. There had been trouble in Handelburg.

  “And through no fault of her own, I will tell you,” he said harshly, “that Eagle, Hanna, was sent out to her death. For that I blame …” He faltered, looked right at Lady Theucinda, and with some effort made an obvious decision to be prudent rather than bold.

  “She didn’t die,” said Liath, suddenly cold.

  “Nay, so we discovered later. Her tale is no good one, though. We met up with Prince Sanglant—His Majesty, that is—at Machteburg. There we recovered a few of our men, a handful, nothing more. They’d turned heretic. Yet I tell you, I think in a time as troubled as now it should not matter if a man is a heretic but whether he can fight.”

  Theucinda looked at him and seemed about to say something. But she did not.

  “You’ll hear no argument from me,” said Liath, “but the church mothers will say otherwise.”

  “I pray you, then, do not repeat what I have said.”

  “I will not. After Machteburg?”

  “After Machteburg, we sought out the Quman. They had pressed far into Wendar. They burned and looted and killed as they went. It was a terrible thing, that brought us in the end to the battle at the Veser.”

  “You saved my daughter in that battle.”

  He shrugged. “It was a hard fight.”

  “I know.”

  He looked at her, puzzled by her words, and she fell silent. She could not tell him that, as she walked the spheres, she had glimpsed the fight on the knoll and stayed her hand. She had not loosed her one remaining arrow to save her own daughter. Even so, assailed with guilt, she knew she had made the right choice. The necessary choice.

  Perhaps that was why she often felt like a monster.

  “Yet we did win it in the end,” he added. “We did win.”

  “Tell me.”

  Thiadbold was a good observer, and he had the knack for recounting the worst episodes with a kind of wry humor and the best with modesty. He described the battle quickly and with a remarkable sense for the movements of the various groups. “Just as we thought all was lost, that we’d be slaughtered to a man—and child, too, I’m sorry to say—the prince came. His Majesty, that is. A better sight I have never seen!” He laughed, but his laughter was leavened by sadness. “Good men I lost. Too many. Still, that’s the way of it. We won, and they lost.”

  “You did not march east afterward with Sanglant.”

  “We did not. His Majesty took only mounted troops. We were sent west to escort an Eagle—well, Hanna, again.”

  “She did not ride east with Sanglant?”

  “She was very ill. She’d been held captive by the Quman, by the beast himself.” He hesitated. “I hear he’s dead now.”

  “He’s dead.”

  He paused, as if expecting her to say more, but she did not, so he went on.

  “Well. We escorted the Eagle to Gent. Afterward, she was sent south to Aosta. That’s the last I have heard of her. We were sent by order of the prince—His Majesty, that is—to serve Princess Theophanu while he was in the east. That we did. Here in Osterburg mostly, repairing the walls as well as those expeditions I mentioned before.” He traced his Circle, which dangled at his chest. “Full circle, I suppose you would say. Now we will serve the regnant again.”

  “Is that what you hope for?”

  He grinned. “What must I say to the woman who knows him best? Of course it is what I hope for!”

  She laughed. It was easy to fall into the companionable banter she’d known before. It was easier to be an Eagle than a queen.

  He sobered. “He’s a fine commander. The best, after his father the king.”

  She wanted to talk about Hanna, but Theucinda still stood there. She had turned her back to them and was staring east into the haze.

  “Why are you out here, Thiadbold? Is this your
watch?”

  He indicated Theucinda with his chin, then gestured toward the old tower where Theophanu had taken up residence. Sanglant had placed Theucinda in Theophanu’s custody. The girl had a mouselike exterior, petite, fine-boned, with a delicate prettiness that could easily attract the notice of a stubborn, spoiled, and disaffected youth like Ekkehard. She had not wailed and wept when Sanglant’s hunting party had caught up with her and Ekkehard outside Walburg. It was difficult to tell if she had wanted to be caught, or if she saw that weeping would do her no good and so did not indulge herself. In either case, her lack of tears made her interesting.

  Thiadbold waited.

  “I pray you, Lady Theucinda,” said Liath. “Do you come here often, so early in the morning?”

  The girl looked at her as if deciding whether she wanted to speak. At last she shrugged one shoulder. “At times. We have only been here seven days. They watch me.” She glanced at Thiadbold, not meeting his gaze. “They think I’ll run again,” she said bitterly.

  “Will you?”

  “Where would I run? Gerberga won’t have me back, and Ekkehard is gone with her. Even so, with no retinue I could never hope to ride all the way to Austra to find him. Therefore, why should I try?” She shrugged again.

  “I would have done it,” said Liath. “And farther yet.”

  “So you say! If all the stories I hear of you are correct, then you are nothing except a frater’s by-blow, or else you are an emperor’s lost heir. You are the king’s concubine, or his queen. You are an excommunicated sorcerer, or else you were touched by the hand of a holy saint. You can cause the heavens to burn, or men’s hearts to be swayed by lust for you. A simple Eagle, or a soulless daimone. How easily it comes to you to say such words! Why do you think it should be so simple for me?”

  The bitter words took Liath aback. Thiadbold coughed and looked away, as if he wished he had not heard.

  “Forgive me!” the girl whispered. Tears brimmed. Her mouth trembled, and she clutched the railing as if she expected to be blown off the ramparts in a gust of furious wind. “Don’t burn me!”

  Liath felt sick. That look of terror was its own judgment.

  “Don’t fear me,” she said raggedly. “I do not mean to hurt any person.”

  “I’ll go now, Captain,” said the girl in a choked voice. She swept up her skirts in one hand and clambered down the ladder.

  It took all Liath’s courage to look Thiadbold in the eye. Would he reject her as well?

  His gaze remained steady. He brushed a finger along the dimpled scar where he had lost part of an ear. “You fought with us. We Lions don’t forget our friends.”

  “I thank you.” It was difficult to get the words out without bursting into tears.

  He nodded gravely, and left to follow Lady Theucinda.

  Liath rested her elbows on the railing and studied the beauty of the land and the hazy pearllike glamour of the early morning light. Maybe the clouds had lightened. Maybe the sun would break through soon. But her pleasure in the day had vanished.

  How could Sanglant ever hope to make her his queen when such rumors spun through his own retinue? Especially when many, even most, were true. And did she really care? She had no wish to be queen, to be saddled with the burdens, duties, obligations, and intrigues that any consort must shoulder. Yet to be his concubine, to share him with another woman—because the regnant must wed—was unbearable. To leave him was unthinkable.

  What a fool Theucinda was! That girl could never understand that it had been easy to leave the Eagles and ride away with Sanglant, back when Sanglant had been nothing more than captain of the King’s Dragons.

  “I will not be defeated by this,” she said, and she listened, hoping the wind had an answer for her, but naturally it did not.

  IV

  FOOL’S ERRAND

  1

  WHERE they first caught sight of the cathedral tower the road bent through the remains of an old oak wood, now eaten in from all sides by clearing and felling.

  “God spare us!” Atto exclaimed. “Mara! Look!”

  She stopped obediently and lifted her head. Midway through pregnancy, she was also weary and dirty. “Are we there yet?” she asked as she squinted into the distance.

  “Look how tall!” exclaimed Atto. “How can a person build so high and not have it fall? All of stone!”

  “Yes, truly,” she said in a bright voice as her gaze tracked over the tops of trees and the wash of sky without stopping on the tower. Finally she looked at Atto, waiting for him to give the word to start walking.

  The cathedral was easily seen in a gap between trees. Smoke drifted out of the cover of wood, but those streamers could not conceal the massive block of stone that marked the bell tower, fully three stories tall. The clouds lay in a high gray-white sheet across the heavens; maybe it was brighter today than it had been yesterday, although it was certainly no warmer.

  “Can you see the tower, Mara?” Alain asked in a low voice that Atto, still exclaiming, would not notice.

  She shrugged, but he had learned enough about her in the past few days to understand that she never contradicted Atto and never said one word that might displease her betrothed. It was strange to Alain that Atto took no notice of the way she could not see things far away.

  Atto sniffed. “What’s that up ahead? I smell woodsmoke. And shit.”

  Alain smelled it, too, and more besides, a pall in the air that he had come to associate with despair. He started forward, but Mara did not walk until Atto told her to, and she hung between the two men, nervous of the hounds and shy of each footfall. She had brown hair pulled back away from her face and mostly covered by a scarf, and a pleasant face at its liveliest when she was exclaiming over the beauty of flowers, but her shoulders were hunched all the time. She was like a dog wondering if it is about to be scolded. Alain pitied her, caught between two strong-minded men, yet he also wondered what would happen if she ever spoke up for herself.

  The hounds, ranging ahead, loped back with ears raised and noses testing the breeze. Where the path bent under the trees they came upon a haphazard ring of settlement, hovels built out of crooked branches and roofed with patched canvas or tightly woven saplings smeared with leaves mixed into mud, now dry. The woods had been hacked back around the shantytown, leaving gaping holes in the canopy. There must have been three-score people squatting here, huddled in threadbare cloaks, staring at the travelers with the numbed anger of folk leached of hope and weakened by hunger. It stank, and it seemed people had done little more than move a few steps away from their ragged shelters to relieve themselves, not even digging pits or designating one spot for refuse. What possessions they owned sat in baskets or chipped pots. In one cage, guarded by a young man with a sharpened stick, rested a scrawny hen. Children crouched in the dirt and did not scamper along the path as healthy, curious children do when travelers pass by. This lapse caused even Atto to look nervous. He slammed the butt of his spear showily on the ground with every other step so everyone would see they were armed. Mara covered her nose and mouth with a hand and was stifling either cries or retches.

  The people watched as they passed. None spoke or moved to disturb the lonely crackle of fire in the single pit dug into the ground and fueled by smoking green wood. Their silence was its own voice, telling him that these ragged folk had given up hope. They did not stir until they heard a new sound.

  It came first as a hollow rat-a-tat, as if a distant woodpecker drummed its spring call. Alain was so surprised to hear bird life that he halted and tilted his head, seeking the direction of the sound. All around the hush deepened. One woman gasped audibly. Goaded by that noise, people stumbled up, grabbing children and sacks and baskets. They bolted for the shelter of the woods. By the time the band of cavalry swept around the bend, shouting and laughing, the clearing was empty, the shelters and fire pits abandoned. One forgotten little child sat on its naked rump with hands balled into fists and face red as it bawled in terror.

  “
We should have run,” whispered Mara, trembling as she clutched Atto’s arm.

  “Hush!” he scolded her. “We’re nothing to do with them. Stand your ground!”

  Alain whistled the hounds in close as four men challenged them. Other soldiers ranged through the camp cutting ropes and beating down roofs with spears and knives. There was no point to the destruction; they were just enjoying themselves. Two carried lanterns, and they set fire to the hovels, which burned quickly as the child continued to scream.

  “Shut that thing up!” said the sergeant without looking toward it. His men wore leather jerkins, but he had a mail shirt and a real iron helm with a brass nasal and leather sides. He waited on his mount two horse lengths from Alain, eyeing the hounds with the squint-eyed interest of a bored fighting man who has at last seen something he considers dangerous.