by Kate Elliott
No one moved in the deserted square. Now and again dogs barked. Wheels squeaked as a wagon passed down a distant street. Someone coughed, and a moment later a man came out of a house, stopped to look at Ivar, and strode away past the barracks, soon lost as night concealed his tracks. With so many people crammed all into one small space, surely there should be more noise, like the pastures and fields and compound of his father’s estate which had always been busy with coming and going except in the worst winter and spring storms.
He shivered and stamped his feet. They had agreed that if Erkanwulf was gone too long, then Ivar would retreat back to the cottage in the woods, but just as he was beginning to get really anxious the side door to the barracks cracked open and a figure slipped out and hurried across to him. Ivar groped for his short sword and began to draw it, but relaxed as Erkanwulf trotted up, breath steaming.
“Come on! Captain’s here, off duty, and willing to hear us out. Hurry!”
They ran across the square and were ushered into a lamplit room at the end of the barracks hall where Captain Ulric slept and ate. The captain was sitting on a bench beside two of his sergeants, all three picking at the remains of a chicken.
Ivar’s eyes watered, but he forced himself to look at the captain instead, trying desperately to ignore the trickle of moist juices. He was so hungry.
“I didn’t expect to see you again, Brother Ivar,” said the captain, although his tone wasn’t unfriendly. He meant what he said.
“With your help, Captain, we were able to reach Princess Theophanu.”
“So Erkanwulf led me to understand. What news?”
“None. Her Highness sorrows to hear of her aunt’s plight, but she has no army and no treasury and cannot act against Lady Sabella and Duke Conrad. She offered us coin, fresh horses, good cloaks, and such weapons as we might use to defend ourselves, but nothing more than that. She bides in Osterburg at the seat of the duchy of Saony. That is all.”
“The Wendish king, the first Henry, was duke of Saony before he became king.” Ulric pushed the chicken away but paused with a hand on the wooden platter as he caught the desperation of Ivar’s gaze. “You two look hungry.”
He shoved the carcass toward them, then engaged his sergeants in conversation while the two young men stripped every last scrap of meat and fat from the bones. Ale was brought, and the cup refilled after they had drained it. That, and the warmth and smoky draft from the lamps, made Ivar so tired that he forgot his rehearsed arguments.
“Do you mean to support Biscop Constance, or not?” he demanded. “If you do, I have a plan that may allow us to free her. If not, then I pray you will let me go my way without hindering me, and let Erkanwulf remain here with no punishment. He’s been a loyal soldier.”
“Oh, I know it,” said Ulric without looking at Erkanwulf, but Erkanwulf grinned at hearing those words and his shoulders lifted as he self-consciously rubbed the dirty stubble of a beard grown along his jaw. “But if you free Biscop Constance, what then? She has no loyal soldiers and no treasury. She is in no wise different than her niece in Saony. Better she remain safe in Queen’s Grave. If she escapes, Lady Sabella will hunt her down and this time kill her.”
“We must move quickly. I will need your help, horses, provisions, men to escort us. A special seat built onto a saddle so that the biscop can ride, because she is crippled.”
“If all this comes to pass, then what?”
“We will ride to Wendar, to the town of Kassel. That way, Lady Sabella holds no noble Wendish hostage in Varre. Once the biscop reaches the duchy of Fesse, she can choose herself whether to ride to Osterburg.”
Ulric was a cautious man. They both spoke in low voices. His sergeants, cool, stalwart men who spoke no word but only listened, sat so still and alert that a mouse could not have crept through that tiny chamber without being caught. Ivar wasn’t sure whether they were listening to the conversation or listening for sounds from outside, in the barracks where the last conversations of men making ready for rest played out, and out of doors beyond the single closed shutter.
“A large guard protects the palisade and gates enclosing Queen’s Grave. How are they to be suborned?”
“Not at all. They will believe they are only following Lady Sabella’s orders.”
For the first time, Ulric looked surprised. One of the sergeants rolled his eyes and tapped a foot thrice on the ground, as though impatient with this nonsense.
“Nay, hear me out.” Ivar hadn’t known how passionate he had become about this idea over the last few weeks. He had a debt to pay twice over, and perhaps, if he were honest, he could admit that it was as much for himself as for the biscop that he wanted so badly to succeed. “I know someone in Sabella’s retinue. I hope to persuade him to steal what we need.”
Once Captain Ulric had heard the whole thing, he sat for a while in thought with his bearded chin propped on a hand, then stood. “Very well. I’ll give you cover until dawn. After that, you must leave Autun, and Arconia, and never come back. Or, at the least, never be caught. If you come into my custody, I will be forced to treat you as a criminal and hand you over to Lady Sabella. I can assure you, she will not be merciful.”
3
IN the end he needed no particular disguise, only a cap drawn down over his head to cover his red hair. Any lowly servant could be found wearing such a thing to keep his ears warm in this cold winter weather. His robes, although cut for riding, were dirty and patched enough to pass as those of a laboring man, and the months of labor at Queen’s Grave had given his chapped hands something of the look of those of a man born and bred to labor. He was hidden in plain sight with his gaze cast down and a slump in his shoulders to minimize his height; the sons of noble houses had a tendency to grow tall. Count Harl had always noted this with a certain arrogance, sure of God’s favor manifest in the straight limbs and handsome faces of his children, but after so long on the road Ivar had begun to think it was more likely that he had simply gone hungry less often as a child than folk like Erkanwulf and frail Sigfrid.
Captain Ulric had friends among the servants. One of these, an amiable woman with dark hair and pale blue eyes, took him with her when she made her evening rounds carrying buckets of coal to fill the braziers in the lady’s suite. He staggered under a pole laid over his shoulders as she weighted it down with two full buckets on either side, their handles hooked into notches cut into the wood. A cover hid the hot coals, but heat radiated off the bronze buckets, warming him.
“Come along,” she said, “but say nothing.” She carried only the empty buckets, tongs, and shovel, so he was sweating and his legs shaking by the time they climbed the steps that led up to the old palace, once the imperial winter residence of Emperor Taillefer.
They passed by the broad porch of the famous octagonal chapel where lay the emperor’s tomb. A pair of bored guards stood on watch, chatting as they chafed hands and stamped feet to keep warm.
“Yes, the lad would have been whipped to death, I’m thinking, and all for a loaf of bread, but the lord cleric intervened and got him sent to the church as a servant instead. Hoo! That was a stroke of fortune.”
“Or God’s work done through man’s hands.”
“Truth rises with the phoenix! Here, now, did you hear about—”
“Come!” whispered his guide, seeing how Ivar had slowed to listen. He hurried after her.
The central palace, built all of wood, was an echoing hall and terrifically cold within, but they passed through to a separate wing where the lady and her personal retainers made their home. Like Count Harl, but unlike her brother the regnant, Sabella had planted herself in one place and traveled only brief circuits of the countryside when the mood took her or a pocket of discontent needed quelling.
Beyond the smaller audience chamber lay a series of rooms that housed her attendants and clerics. They passed through the tiny room set aside for her schola, dark and empty now. The sloped writing desks were veiled by shadows, and chests and cabinets sealed
tight against vermin. Beyond that lay a handsome chapel, lit at this hour by a dozen lamps molded into the shape of guivres. Quietly, they set down the buckets next to a trio of braziers. A woman knelt on cold stone although there were carpets aplenty to cushion her knees. Her wheat-colored hair was braided back from her face and covered with a mesh of gold wire threaded with pearls, held in place with a golden coronet. Because her back was to them, Ivar could not see her face, but he did not need to see her face. He had stared at her back, at her profile, at her pale, drawn features through that hole in the fence in Quedlinhame often enough that he would know her anywhere and instantly. It wasn’t only her rich burgundy underrobe and fur-lined overtunic that betrayed her as a woman of highest station. It wasn’t only the heavy golden torque shackling her slender neck that announced her royal status.
He recognized as well that particular way she had of clasping her hands, perfected in those days when it had hurt her to press her palms together because of the weeping sores, her stigmata, the mark of her holiness and the sign of the Lady’s favor. The ones she had inflicted herself, by digging at her skin with a nail, so Hathumod claimed.
If Tallia had been lying about the sores, then was it possible she had lied about the heresy as well? What if the phoenix was a lie?
Nay, God had sent Tallia to test their faith. She was the flawed vessel that leaked God’s word but could never hold it. They had seen the truth when the phoenix rose and healed Sigfrid.
She prayed all in a rush, words crammed together.
“Let them be chaff in the wind.
Let their path be dark and precipitous.
Let the unworthy fall to their deaths.
They hid a net to trap me.
They dug a pit to swallow me.
Let that net trap them, and the pit swallow them!”
Meanwhile, Johanna, the servant, transferred ash into the empty buckets and hot coals into the braziers.
“Are we done?” asked a childish voice.
“Do not disturb me!” Tallia exploded. Leaning back, she exposed a small child kneeling on bare floor in a position that had, previously, concealed her existence from Ivar. She cracked the little girl across the cheek, her own expression suffused with rage. By the movement of her body under her robes, it was obvious she was hugely pregnant. “How many times have I told you!”
“I don’t want to pray so many times. Papa said—”
“You’ll fall into the Abyss with the others! You’ll do as I say, Berengaria!”
The girl had pinched, unattractive features. Her skin was blotchy, neither dark nor pale, and she seemed all mismatched somehow, nose too small, lips too large, nothing quite right on her. Her sullen expression only exaggerated her sour looks.
“Must you make so much noise!” cried the lady, turning to glare at Ivar and Johanna. “Aren’t you finished yet, bumbling around like cattle?”
“Yes, my lady. I pray pardon, Your Highness,” said Johanna in a mild voice. “But I am always taken by the holy whisper of God when I pause here. It’s as if I hear Her voice, whenever you pray.”
Tallia’s expression softened, although she still had a tight grip on her daughter’s tiny wrist. The child whimpered as the princess frowned. “That’s right. I’ve seen you before. I remember you. What is your name?”
“I’m called Johanna, Your Highness. After the discipla who was martyred in such a cruel way, yet loving God and professing Her worship and Her Unity, now and forever.”
Horribly, that fervid gaze turned on Ivar, and he ducked his head but not before seeing how her eyes narrowed and a cunning, frightened look came to her face. “Who is this, then? He looks familiar, but I don’t know …”
“He’s my cousin from the countryside, Your Highness, come new to town. He was here some months back helping out but had to go back to aid his ill mother, who passed up to the Chamber of Light after many months of agonizing sickness, may God grant her peace now that she is well shut of the world.” Johanna was a babbler, and it was obvious she had learned long since how to lie to avoid the lady’s ill temper.
Ivar kept his shoulders bowed and his face cast down, hoping Tallia would not recognize him.
“Does he believe in the Redemption? I’ll have no servant toiling in my house who is a heretic!”
“Oh, he believes, indeed, Your Highness!”
“He must say so himself! He must! People lie to me. They say they’re dead and then they’re alive again. They say I will rule, but then they keep the reins in their own hands. They babble about the phoenix, when the phoenix doesn’t matter, and only because of his handsome face and pretty ways—”
Into this tirade clattered the duke, emerging out of a different door with an older and extremely handsome daughter in tow. He was dressed for riding, as was the girl, and he slapped his gloves against his thigh to announce his arrival.
Tallia ceased speaking as though he had struck her.
“Where’s Berry?” he roared.
The girl shrieked, leaped away from her mother, and pelted across the floor to throw herself into her father’s arms. In that instant, her face was transformed. “I wanted to go! I wanted to go!” she cried.
“For the sake of God and peace, Tallia, you told me she was too sick to go riding!”
“She is ill in her soul, my lord,” she said, shuddering, a hand on her belly.
“Too sick! Puling and moping will kill her, not keep her healthy! Do you want her to die as did the two others?”
“You can’t talk to me like this!”
The older girl, just broaching puberty, rolled her eyes in a way that reminded Ivar strikingly of the sergeant with Captain Ulric. Indeed, she had a martial stance that suggested she trained and rode and knew how to handle weapons.
“I told you,” repeated Conrad. “I told you to let the child have done with all this praying. That’s what clerics are for. Twice a day is enough. She needs exercise and a good appetite.”
Tallia was white with anger, but the little girl held onto her father with an unshakable grip.
“Let me stay with you, Papa. Let me stay with you!”
“Of course you’ll stay with me, as you should.”
“I hate you!” Tallia whispered.
He laughed. “That’s not what you said last time you came crawling to my bed.”
Tallia sobbed, then cast a glance of pure loathing at the older daughter and throttled her own tears.
Johanna tugged at Ivar’s sleeve. “Let’s go.”
He set his neck under the yoke and lifted the buckets. He sidled sideways through the door and trudged after Johanna as they walked down a corridor that ended in a set of double doors.
“It’s like poison,” she said in a low voice. “Most of the time, thank the Lady, they stay in Wayland where they belong, but Lady Sabella will have her daughter in Autun to give birth with her own midwives attending.”
“Why? Hasn’t Wayland any midwives?”
“It’s agreed between them. If the young queen gives birth to a boy, Lady Sabella gets him to raise. If a girl, naturally, the duke takes her. The last two died before they were weaned. Only the eldest has survived so long, and her not yet seen five summers.”
“Lady Tallia doesn’t want to raise her own sons?”
Johanna paused before the doors with a hand on one latch. “Lady Tallia has no say in any decision, for all that she’s the last descendant of the royal house of Varre and they call her queen. She’s a frightened, petty, mean-hearted creature. For all that, I do pity her, caught between the stallion and the guivre.” She flicked a glance at the closed door, as if she could be heard by listening ears. “Have a care, Brother Ivar. The stallion is hot-tempered and hotheaded yet honest in its passions and will kick and bite to protect its fillies. It’s the guivre’s cold glare that will kill you.”
She lifted the latch and opened the door for him to slide through, careful as he balanced the pole on his shoulders so that the buckets would not clang against the walls.
>
In this fine chamber a middle-aged man with attractive features strummed a lute and sang a cheerful song about the fox that devoured the chickens despite the farmer’s efforts to hold it at bay. Tapestries covered the walls, and a dozen or more lamps, fearsome guivres with flame spouting from their eye sockets, gave light to the pleasant company collected around Lady Sabella. Her hair was half gone to gray, but she seemed otherwise vigorous and alert as she reclined on a couch and chatted with a circle of companions: several noblewomen, two men in cleric’s robes, and a blond man who sat with his back to Ivar. Two stewards waited beside the hearth next to a table laden with platters of meat and bowls of sweets and fruits, lightly picked over but otherwise ignored. They watched for any sign or gesture from their mistress. One marked the entry of the two servants and nodded at them briskly, a signal to get on with their work.
A third cleric sat at a writing desk, intent on his calligraphy, head bowed and pen scratching easily on parchment. Ivar skipped over him and fixed his gaze on the back of the blond man seated beside Sabella. There was something wrong about his shoulders. They were too broad, and his hands, when he gestured, were as wide as paddles, the hands of a man comfortable wielding a great sword with little thought for its weight and the thickness of the pommel.
Definitely not Baldwin.
“Hsst!” Johanna nudged Ivar toward the brazier placed beside the writing desk.