by Kate Elliott
“That’s not funny,” said Ekkehard savagely. “Wichman is a beast! Theucinda doesn’t deserve to be forced to marry him!”
Ah. For the first time, there was real passion in Ekkehard’s voice.
“How much older is Gerberga than you?” Sanglant asked. “I trust she never leaves you alone with her younger sister.”
“I would never!” he cried in a tone of voice that betrayed he had thought often of just what it was he would never do. “It’s just she’s a third child, like me. She knows what it’s like …” He bit a lip and glanced sideways at his brother and sister, gauging their reaction. Like all of Henry’s children, he was a good-looking young man, although he would have been more attractive had his features not been marred by a perpetual expression of sullen grievance. “… to be a third child.”
“You are fourth,” said Theophanu.
“Third, if one counts only legitimate children!” he retorted.
Even in the dim light, Sanglant could see how his younger brother’s cheeks were flushed. His eyes had narrowed with anger, or resentment; in Ekkehard, it was hard to tell the difference.
“Do not forget,” Sanglant said in his mildest tone, “that you were shown mercy, Ekkehard. You fought and killed your own countrymen.”
“As did you! You rebelled against our father! Some say you killed him yourself and now pretend otherwise.”
The thrust had no force in it, not for Sanglant, so he wasn’t prepared when Theophanu slapped Ekkehard so hard that the blow brought tears to his eyes as he gasped. Leoba choked down an exclamation.
“I will have no fighting here to demean the memory of our father!” said Sanglant.
“Is this some poison Gerberga has been feeding you?” Theophanu demanded. “Who has said it?”
“No one.” He wiped his eyes, trembling. “No one. Gerberga doesn’t believe it. She told him so. She said only a fool would believe you killed Henry, and anyway, Liutgard and Burchard would never support you if you had, and they were there and they saw it all. It’s true about the daimone, isn’t it? It’s true?”
“It’s true,” he said, glancing toward Hathui, who despite her appearance of contrite prayer was no doubt listening closely. “Being true, as it is, I wonder that the margrave of Austra shelters the man who truly betrayed Henry.”
Ekkehard sniffed and wiped his nose with the back of a hand.
Waiting for his brother to speak, Sanglant realized that he, too, was trembling, that he had in him reserves of hatred he hadn’t known he possessed. Bloodheart was dead, and any power he had left to harm Sanglant resided in Sanglant’s heart and head alone. He had other enemies, of course, some of whom had not yet declared themselves. But he had only one man he truly hated.
“That’s the other thing she wants,” said Ekkehard, his voice shaky. He glared at Theophanu. Her expression was cool and distant, without trace of the anger that had flared.
“That who wants?” asked Sanglant, who had now stuck in his head the image of his enemy, to whom God had given exceptional beauty. Why did the wicked flourish and the innocent suffer? Why did God allow beauty to grow in a vat of poison?
“That Gerberga wants,” said Ekkehard irritably, “in exchange for her support of your claim to the throne and crown of Wendar.”
“Of course. Eastfall and Westfall must have strong margraves in these times. I am agreed to this, and I see no reason not to marry Lady Theucinda to a worthy man, a younger son, perhaps, who has not yet been claimed as another woman’s husband.”
“Or been killed in Henry’s wars!”
“Enough, Theo! What is the second request, Ekkehard?”
He smiled, but it wasn’t a kind smile. “There is something Gerberga wants very much, that she cannot have because of a promise she made to her mother when she was named as Judith’s heir. She can’t go against a promise sworn to her mother, surely you see that.”
“I see that. What is it she wants?”
Through the open doors, the graying of shadows heralded the approaching dawn. Birds cooed sociably. A creature scrabbled in the rafters. Then, once again, it was silent. Even the guards had ceased speaking in that undertone that had drifted at the edge of Sanglant’s hearing all night.
“She wants to be rid of Hugh,” whispered Ekkehard. “She hates him, but she promised her mother never to harm him, no matter what, and to give him shelter when he needed it. Margrave Judith loved him best of all. Just as our father loved you, the bastard, the least deserving.”
An explosion of pigeons burst out of the arcade, fluttering away into the twilight sky. The sound of their passage faded swiftly as they flew over the town and out past the walls. Sanglant’s senses were strung so tautly that he imagined them skimming over the fields. He felt he could actually hear the pressure of wing beats against the air as their flight took them over woodland and farther yet, racing south into the uncut forest lands where beasts roamed and lawless men hid from justice.
Theophanu clutched his hand, pressed tightly. “Beware. Hugh is the most dangerous of all.”
A certain pleasant, malicious warmth suffused Sanglant. “‘Nor will any wound inflicted by any creature male or female cause his death.’ Was I not so cursed? Hugh can’t kill me.”
“Perhaps not,” said Theophanu, “but he can strike at your kinfolk. At your Eagle. At your wife.”
As if her words were an incantation, a shape appeared at the door, limned by the pallor of dawn. Hathui was already on her feet, ready to move.
“Liath!” He started forward to meet her, but he had not gone halfway down the nave when he halted, seeing what she carried.
Memory struck hard.
She thrust the bundle she carried into his arms. “Keep it safe for me, I beg you,” she said to him before she rode away to carry the king’s word to Weraushausen, to Ekkehard and the king’s schola. Years ago.
The book had been the talisman that had linked him to her in those days when he had thought of nothing except her, because the memory of her had been the only thing that had kept him sane when he suffered as Bloodheart’s prisoner in Gent. The book had brought her back to him. He had kept it safe, and she had married him because she trusted him where she trusted no one else.
She thrust it into his arms.
“See here, Sanglant! Touch it! Look! It’s Da’s book.”
“Where did you get it?” he said hoarsely, and even Theophanu exhaled at the anger that made his voice tight. “Hugh had this. Have you seen Hugh?”
Her expression was bemused, not frightened. She should be frightened and angry! “Not really. He saw me. He gave the book to me.”
“Did he speak to you?”
She hesitated, seeing Theophanu and Ekkehard recoil at his tone. She saw Hathui but not with any indication that she understood the danger the Eagle was in. “I must speak to your aunt, Sanglant.”
“Did he harm you?”
“Me? He can’t harm me. I would have killed him if he’d tried to touch me.”
Hugh had touched her somehow. Her mind was filled with him, or with what he had said to her, words she would not repeat to her own loving husband who thought at this moment that he was likely to batter himself bloody with jealousy.
“If he gave the book back to you, it’s because he has some plot in mind.”
“He might have copied it out. He’s had it long enough. It’s what I would have done.” She spoke the words distractedly. She wasn’t really listening. He knew how she fell away from the world when her mind started churning and turning, caught by the wheel of the heavens and the mysteries of the cosmos.
“He wants something he thinks he can get by disarming you in this way.”
“He didn’t disarm me!” she retorted indignantly, then frowned. “Well. It’s true he took me by surprise.”
“No doubt he hopes we’re quarreling over it now. Sow discord. Plant doubts. Reap the harvest. I expect he’s grown more subtle.”
The comment made her fall back to earth and actually see him. She leaned ag
ainst him, ignoring Theophanu and Ekkehard’s stares, and with the book crushed between them she smiled so dazzlingly up at him that he got dizzy all over again. “Just as you have?” she asked him.
He laughed. “So easily I’m disarmed!”
“I pray you, Sanglant,” said Theophanu, “if you will not have people say that she has wrapped you in a spell, then you ought not to act in public like a besotted fool. Even our father once asked this woman to become his mistress.”
Ekkehard was staring with mouth agape and eyes wide. “Ivar of North Mark was in love with her, too,” he murmured. “She was condemned as a sorcerer at Autun, at Hugh of Austra’s trial, don’t you remember? She was named as a maleficus. She was excommunicated by Constance and a council of biscops and presbyters! Henry raised no objection!”
“I wasn’t there,” said Sanglant, “or it wouldn’t have happened.”
Liath pushed away from him, but she left the book in his hands. “It’s true enough, everything they say.”
“Let us not have this argument again, Liath. You are my wife, and will be my queen.”
“I pray you, Your Majesty,” said Hathui. “Listen.”
Footsteps drummed on the church’s porch as with the flowering dawn came the many nuns and monks and clerics to sing the morning service. Mother Scholastica walked at their head, attended by the great nobles of the realm: Duchess Liutgard, Duke Burchard leaning on a staff, Margrave Gerberga, Margrave Waltharia, the children of Duchess Rotrudis the four biscops, three abbots, and many more. Hugh was not among them.
Yesterday the assembly had sung the mass while, beneath, workers had prepared a place in the crypt beside Queen Mathilda. This morning Henry would be laid to rest, and the world would go on.
“Sanglant,” said his aunt as she halted in front of him. He kissed her ring. She turned to his siblings. “Theophanu. Ekkehard.” They kissed her ring in like manner as the monastics filed forward along the aisles on either side as a stream of bowed heads and folded hands.
“There is much yet to be discussed,” said Mother Scholastica. She looked at Liath but did not, precisely, acknowledge her. “But that must wait. Who will carry Henry’s bones into the crypt?”
“The great princes,” said Sanglant, “as is fitting.”
He stepped aside to allow Mother Scholastica to move forward into the apse and up to the holy altar. Hathui retreated into the shelter granted by Fulk and his soldiers. The great princes crowded up behind Sanglant as he knelt on the lowest step, Theophanu to his right and Ekkehard to his left. They were silent as Mother Scholastica raised both hands and the assembled monastics sang the morning service.
“Let us praise and glorify God, who are Eternal.”
Sanglant could not keep his thoughts on the psalms, which flowed past him as might boats on a river spilling onward toward the eternal sea that is God. Memories of his father spun into view and then receded from sight: setting him on the back of his first pony, giving him his first set of arms, teaching him the names of birds, sending him out to his first battle arrayed in the Dragon’s plumage, explaining somberly to him why he could not marry Waltharia, laughing over mead, repudiating and exiling Wolfhere, weeping at his injured voice, demanding that he accept his place as Henry’s heir. Henry often said that it was necessary for the regnant to give in order to get what he wanted; he had given Sanglant everything, and in the end he had gained what he wished, although he had died to obtain it. His empire was shattered, but Wendar had not fallen. His son would not let it fall.
As the others stood, Sanglant realized he still held the book. He thrust it into Liath’s hands, ensuring that all there saw the exchange and wondered at it. This, too, his aunt would mark now and question later. With his siblings and his cousins, he hoisted the box, and with incense trailing around them and the steady prayers of the monastics muffling the sound of so many footsteps, they carried the coffin down stone steps into the crypt. Down here the bones of his Dragons had rotted until they gleamed.
No. He shook his head, sloughing off the memory. That had been Gent, and this was Quedlinhame. This weight was that of his beloved father, not his faithful Dragons, but they had all died regardless. They were not protected by the curse that left him, in the end, safe from a death that could capture others but never his own self.
Lamps shone in splendor around the open tomb into which they placed the coffin, a glass vial of holy water, the neatly-folded but still bloody clothing in which Henry had died, and a dried bouquet of red dog roses, always Henry’s favorites. There were none in bloom in Mother Scholastica’s famous rose garden, so they had pillaged the herbarium for a suitable tribute. Later, a stone monument would be carved and placed upon the marble bier, but for now a slab of cedar carved with curling acanthus and stylized dog roses was slid into place. The stone made a hoarse scraping sound, as though it, too, grieved. There were more prayers, and the lamps, one by one, were extinguished.
Before the last lamp went out, he marked Hathui’s position, close by him, in case there was trouble.
For a long while they breathed in the silence of the crypt. He rested with hands on the slab, but it was cold and dead. How deep did fire smolder within marble, he wondered? Could this dead tomb erupt into flame through Liath’s perilous gift? For an instant, shuddering, he feared her, who might kill any of them and burn down the entire town around their corpses if it pleased her. If she were angry enough. If she were wicked and listened to the Enemy’s lies.
In darkness, doubts crept into the heart.
“Enough,” he said roughly, pushing away from the tomb.
Someone at the back of the crowd snapped fire to a wick. He hoped it was done naturally and not by Liath’s sorcery, but no one muttered in surprise or made a sign against the Enemy. He saw the faces of his companions surrounding him. Liutgard of Fesse was frowning and pensive, lines graven deep around her mouth, and he supposed she was thinking of her daughters. Burchard of Avaria had his eyes shut, while Waltharia watched Sanglant expectantly. Theophanu seemed cast of the same marble as the effigies around her; Ekkehard looked bored. Gerberga, like Waltharia, studied Sanglant; meeting his gaze, she nodded to acknowledge him, to show that she had received his answer via Ekkehard. She had very much the look of her mother about her but without the cruel line of mouth that had betrayed Judith’s essential nature: every creature under her power would do exactly as she wished or be punished for disobedience. Yet Henry had often said that Judith was a good steward for Austra and Olsatia; those who obeyed her, flourished.
Wichman was scratching his neck and eyeing Leoba, who was drawn tight against the shelter of Theophanu’s presence. Wichman’s sisters, Imma and Sophie, spoke together in whispers, a miniature conspiracy caught out by the unexpected light. The church folk stood together as a united group behind the formidable presence of his aunt.
Hathui, marking his scrutiny, nodded.
Liath stood behind him and to his left. He could feel her but not see her. It was as if she did not want to be seen.
“Nephew,” said Mother Scholastica. “If you will assist me.”
She did not need his aid to ascend the steps, but she desired to show the assembly that they acted in concert. In the church they remained for the brief service of Terce, and when the monastics had filed out to return to their duties about the cloister, he retired with his aunt and his most intimate noble companions and kinfolk, just a few, not more than a dozen or so, to her study.
She sat in her chair. The traveling chair, the royal seat carried into Aosta and back again, was unfolded for Sanglant, and benches drawn up in ranks for the rest. He was only prime inter pares, first among equals. Yet Liath remained standing behind him after the others sat. She still held the book. One of its corners pressed into his back. Hathui took up a position by the door. Fulk and the rest of the guard had places outside, guarding all the entrances.
Mother Scholastica lifted an owl feather from her desk. The point had been trimmed to make a quill. She wore clothing
rich not by ornamentation but because of the quality of the dye and fineness of the weave. The golden torque that signified her royal kinship shone at her throat; the golden Circle of Unity that marked her status as a holy abbess hung from a golden chain; she displayed only two gold rings on her hands, needing no greater treasure to advertise her high rank both as the daughter of a regnant and as God’s holy servant, shepherd over the most holy and important cloister founded and endowed by the Wendish royal house. She controlled so many estates and manor houses spread across so wide a region that half of Saony might be said to be under her rule.
“Very well, Nephew,” she said. “You have the support you desire. None here will speak against you, and your army. You have brought Henry’s remains home to be buried, which is the action of an obedient son and, perhaps, of a righteous ruler who has served God and his regnant honestly. In three days’ time I will anoint you. Then you will commence your king’s progress through Saony, Fesse, and Avaria so that the lords and clerics and common folk can see that order has returned to our land.”
He said nothing. She had not attacked yet. He was waiting for the first strike.
“You have proved your fertility at least twice over, according to reliable reports,” she continued, “although we know that one child is deceased and the other most likely so.”
The book, against his back, shifted so that a corner dug painfully in against one shoulder. He wasn’t sure if Liath was only startled, or if she’d done it on purpose. Twice over. He did not look at Waltharia.
“Yet there must be heirs. Among the Wendish only those who wear the gold ring—” She touched the torque that wrapped her neck. “—may become regnant. It’s true you wear the gold ring, but before this no bastard child has contested for the right to rule. Many protest that an illegitimately born child has no right to the throne. Custom argues in their favor. Yet I have studied certain histories in the last two days. One alternative is to allow you to rule as long as you designate as your heir a child legitimately born to one of your siblings.”
Margrave Gerberga smiled and glanced at her young husband.