by Kate Elliott
A messenger from the king; a noble lord and his son; even Lord Wichman, who after so many months engaged in constant skirmishing looked ill-kempt beside his noble comrades. The assembly quite took Anna’s breath away, but not nearly as much as when the young lordling turned as if aware of her stare and looked right at her.
She cringed, knowing she ought not to stare. “Anna!” But Matthias’ muttered warning came too late.
The young lord crossed over to her, the hounds right behind him, and bent to touch a finger to her wooden Circle. “Poor child,” he said kindly. “I saw you at the roadside, I think, when we were marching in. Did you come from Gent?”
She could only nod.
“Are you one of the children who escaped through the tunnel?”
“Yes, my lord,” said Matthias gamely, having a voice. Anna had lost hers. The black hounds panted, tongues lolling, so near to her that she expected them to suddenly bolt past their lord and tear her to pieces. But they made no movement, nor did they growl or bark. They simply sat, watching their lord with eyes the color of melted honey.
The young lord lifted the Circle from her chest and regarded it quizzically. “I once wore a Circle fashioned such as this, but I have it no longer.”
“What became of it?” asked Lord Wichman who, more restless than the hounds, had come up beside the young lord. He glanced incuriously at Anna; he did not recognize her as the girl he had chastised on that winter raid months ago.
The young lord’s mouth quirked into a smile as fleeting as Wichman’s attention. “I gave it to an Eika prince.” He let go of the Circle and Anna, gaping, staggered slightly as if having lost the touch of his hand she was no longer anchored to the earth.
To an Eika prince.
It could not be. She wanted to ask but dared not. She ought to ask but was afraid to.
The young lord had already looked past her to Matthias. “Lady Above,” he said softly. “You have some injury, I think?”
Matthias bobbed his head respectfully, fighting to balance himself on his crutch. “I was taken as a slave for a time among the Eika, my lord.” His voice was amazingly steady. “Lord Wichman freed me on one of his raids, my lord,” he added, knowing it wise to flatter as many lords as were within earshot.
“You took the wound then, among the Eika?” asked the young lord. He had dark eyes and an expressive face, filled now with pity as he laid a hand on Matthias’ filthy and matted hair. “Poor child. I wish you may have the healing you deserve.”
“I’m a man now!” retorted Matthias suddenly.
Anna winced.
Lord Wichman snorted and gave a stiff, sharp laugh.
But the young lord only nodded. “So you are, come young to it through hardship. What is your name, friend?”
This was too much even for Matthias, who lost his boldness. “M-m-matthias, my lord.”
“And this is your sister?” The lord took his hand from Matthias’ head and smiled at Anna.
“My sister, Anna. It’s short for Johanna, my lord, the blessed Daisan’s discipla.”
“So it is. How came you to remain here when we have heard from the mistress of this place that most of the refugees—the children—were sent south?”
“Our grandfather was too feeble to make the journey, so we stayed on here after the others left.”
“Then I pray Our Lord and Lady watch over you.”
Only after he moved on, did Anna begin to cry, her tears as silent as the slip of rain down a wall.
“Anna!” Matthias set a hand on her shoulder. “Anna! What is it? Did they scare you? The hounds were big, weren’t they, fierce-looking, but they’re nothing like the Eika dogs. You don’t need to cry.”
Struck dumb.
She opened her mouth to speak but could not form words or make them whole in the air. There was something she ought to have asked but had not asked, something she ought to have done but did not do, something she was meant to accomplish but had turned her gaze away from as the well-fed merchant turns her gaze away from a starving beggar, not wanting to see him.
“Anna!” Matthias clutched her shoulders, his weight sagging onto her as, frightened, he shook her. “Anna! What is it? Ai, Lady, it was the hounds, wasn’t it?” He pulled her tight against him in an embrace. The noble lords moved out of sight, heading back to the hall.
It wasn’t the hounds. But she could not speak words to tell him so.
Terrified now, he grabbed his stick and hobbled back to their hut with her in tow, but Helvidius and Helen were gone. “Anna! Say something to me!”
Unlike the Eagle last night, faced with a heartfelt plea, she had not spoken. She had not acted. Like a fish tossed from water to dirt, she could only thrash helplessly. She was bitterly ashamed, and scared—so scared.
“Lord protect us!” whispered Matthias. “I must take you to the herbwife. A devil has gotten into your throat and stolen your voice.”
She grabbed his hand and gripped it until he winced. She shook her head fiercely, so that he would understand. She had been struck dumb by God’s hand, not that of the Enemy or such of its minions as skittered through the world hoping to make mischief.
But Matthias had always been stubborn.
In the morning, Count Lavastine and his army marched out, the count and his son at their head—and Lord Wichman and his unruly retinue with them. Gisela’s niece stood in the shadows and counted through a pouch filled with silver sceattas.
After the army vanished down the forest road, Matthias took Anna to see the herbwife. The old woman listened to their troubles and took a knife in exchange for her treatment: a noxious-smelling salve which she applied to Anna’s throat and a more palatable tea brewed of waybroad and spear-root which Matthias insisted on trying first. Anna gulped the remainder down dutifully, but the day passed with no change in her condition.
That evening, Matthias led Anna to Lord Wichman’s deacon, who had remained behind rather than ride into battle. A woman of noble birth, she eyed them with misgiving, as well she might considering their filthy condition and obvious look of common-born children seeking a boon.
“She can’t speak, good deacon,” said Matthias as he thrust Anna forward.
“Many’s the child too weak or slow-witted to speak,” said the deacon patiently. “Or has caught a sickness, although that’s more common in wintertime. Or she may have taken a blow to the head in one of the skirmishes.”
“Nay, good deacon.” Matthias was nothing if not persistent. Otherwise, they would never have survived Gent. “She spoke as good as me until yesterday.”
“Go see the herbwife, then.”
“We’ve done so already.”
“Then it’s in God’s hands.” A mute child among so many who were injured in countless ways was of little concern to the deacon, good woman though she was. She prayed over Anna, touched her on the head, and indicated she should move on.
“Do not go yet, child,” she said to Matthias, who had moved away with Anna. “I remember you. You were sore wounded by the Eika, were you not? I came to pray last rites over you some months ago, but you survived by God’s mercy, and indeed I thought you must live out the rest of your days as a cripple. I see that God have healed you in the meantime. It is a blessing we must all be thankful for, that some have escaped this terrible time with whole bodies and strong minds.”
Anna had been so terrified at losing her voice that she had scarcely had time to notice Matthias. He had been so busy fussing over her that he had taken no notice of himself. But like the sun rising, the light dawned on her now: Matthias wasn’t limping.
Hastily he unwrapped the much worn and stained leggings from his calf, and there they stood, both of them gaping while the deacon looked on mildly, unaware of how remarkable—indeed, how impossible—the sight of his leg was now to their eyes.
No festering wound discolored the skin; no horrible, unnatural bend skewed his calf where the bone had broken and healed all wrong. The leg was straight, smooth, and strong.
He w
as a cripple no longer.
But even so, there was yet one more wondrous event in store for them.
Four days later the shout came from far down the west road.
“The king! The king rides to Steleshame!”
Anna and Matthias, like every last soul in and around Steleshame, ran to line the road for the adventus of King Henry as he and his retinue, armed for war, rode in to the battered holding.
The magnificence of his host would have struck any soul speechless. The king did not notice her, of course. She was only another dirty common child standing barefoot in the dirt beside the road.
What a fine handsome man he was, upright and proud, strong and stern! He dressed much like the other lords, no richer than they, but no one could have mistaken him for anyone but the king.
Surely someday her voice would return to her. Surely someday, if she lived to be an old grandmother, she could tell this story to a host of children gathered at her feet and astonished to hear that a soul as humble as her own had been privileged to see the king himself.
2
“IT will be the ruin of me! I have already depleted my foodstuffs sending provisions with Count Lavastine. Now I must feed this host, and give up the rest of my stores as well?”
The mistress of Steleshame was overwrought and Rosvita had, alas, been given the task of calming her nerves. Outside, within palisade and ditch, the army set up camp for the night. Obviously, with Count Lavastine and his army ahead of them and the householder in hysterics, they could not expect to stay in Steleshame for more than one night. Rosvita had to admit that she was getting tired of the saddle.
After Sapientia’s recovery from childbed, they had ridden north at a steady but unrelenting pace, wagons lurching behind, the army swelling its ranks with new recruits at every lady’s holding at which they sheltered and feasted.
“And with Lord Wichman gone now,” continued Mistress Gisela while her pretty niece stood behind her and listened to this rant with the calm face of a woman who has learned to survive by being pliant, “who will protect us against the Eika?”
“I should think,” said Rosvita, “that with two armies sent against the Eika and with Margrave Judith and Duchess Rotrudis likely to arrive at any day now from the southeast, you need not fear the incursions of the Eika, good mistress.”
But the householder only wailed and clutched at her niece’s arm. “Ai, Lord! But the count and his force are days ahead of you, Sister! It takes four days to ride to Gent with the main road so neglected and dangerous. By now the Eika could have slaughtered them all and be eating their bones as their evening’s feast!”
“Then it is one feast you will not have to provide,” said the niece tartly, twisting her arm out of her aunt’s grip.
Sister Amabilia and Brother Fortunatus, hovering at Rosvita’s back, both made sudden piglike noises and Rosvita turned to see them covering their mouths with the sleeves of their robes. Fortunatus began to cough. Amabilia snorted unsuccessfully in an attempt to stop laughing and then, luckily, young Brother Constantine came forward to remonstrate with the young woman for making a joke out of what was no joking matter.
“I beg you, Brother,” interposed Rosvita swiftly, “let us soothe the fears of good Mistress Gisela. We need only a simple supper, I should think, since the good mistress is no noble chatelaine of a large estate to lay a fine table—”
But this was too much for the householder. Goaded into action by this assault on her dignity and wealth, she turned on her niece and ordered fifty cattle slaughtered at once, as well as one hundred chickens and …
Rosvita and her clerics beat a hasty retreat to the table within the hall set aside for their use.
“It sounds as if she means to kill every chicken in the holding,” said Sister Amabilia. “I wonder if there will be any left for the poor souls who bide here.”
“There will be no poor souls left at all,” retorted Brother Fortunatus, “if King Henry does not drive the Eika out of Gent.”
Rosvita left them to their squabbling and walked outside.
There she found Villam sitting on a bench, watching while the inner yard was raked so that the king’s pavilion might be set up where no refuse littered the ground. His hand rested quietly on a thigh. The empty sleeve of his lost arm was pinned up to the shoulder so that it wouldn’t flap. He smiled and indicated the bench beside him. She sat.
“You are serious today, Lord Villam,” she said, noting his frown.
He merely shrugged. “It is hard for a man, even one as old as I, to watch as a battle approaches while knowing he cannot fight in it—and has no son to send out in his place.”
“True enough.” She did not glance at his missing arm, lost in the battle of Kassel, but surely he did not regret the loss of the arm as much as he did the loss of his son, Berthold, all those months ago—more than a year!—in the hills above the monastery at Hersfeld. Then she followed his gaze and could not contain a gasp. “Surely she doesn’t mean to ride into battle so soon after giving birth?”
Under an awning Princess Sapientia sat in a camp chair, attended by Father Hugh, her favorites, her Eagle, and the servants and wet nurse who took care of baby Hippolyte. A vigorous child, the infant was even now wailing heartily as an armorer measured a stiff coat of leather against Sapientia’s frame, stouter now after her pregnancy.
“It has been almost two months since the birth,” said Villam.
“Almost two months!” Rosvita shook dust off the hem of her robes and resettled them. “I do not like it, I admit, although she has gained remarkably in strength.” Since Sapientia had almost nothing to do with the infant, she had adjusted quickly to her new state: that of uncrowned heir.
Villam nodded. “It isn’t enough, truly, that she has proved her worthiness for the throne by right of fertility. She must still show she has the ability to command and to lead, and this is as good a test as any.”
“And easy to hand.” Rosvita smiled wryly.
It was true: Henry had neither crowned nor anointed Sapientia, but she was seen everywhere with him, she rode beside him on their progress, sat beside him at feast and at council, and was given leave to speak when it came time to exhort the ladies and lords of Wendar to spare troops for the assault on Gent. The infant, who was pleasant to look upon as well as strong, was noted and remarked on everywhere they went, and Sapientia kept it by her at all times—except at night—as if to remind everyone of her accomplishment… and of her new position as heir by that same right of fertility.
“I think we need not fear, Sister,” added Villam, reading her silence with his usual sagacity. “She has grown steadier in the past months. And Father Hugh is wise enough to counsel her.”
“Is he?”
“Do you doubt him?” he asked, genuinely surprised. “He is much changed.”
“I suppose he is,” she agreed, but absently, for looking at Hugh where he stood in perfect humble attendance on his princess, she could not help but wonder—again—about the book.
Ai, Lady, the thought of the book nagged at her. It worried at her, this mouse’s hunger, day and night and even, that evening, while she sat in the war council held beneath the broad ceiling of the king’s pavilion. The small and ill-fitted hall at Steleshame had been deemed suitable for a householder but certainly not for a king and his retinue of nobles, so they had adjourned to the pavilion, now cramped with bodies all wedged together.
Sapientia sat on Henry’s left, Villam stood to his right. Around them stood those nobles important enough to demand or beg entrance to the nightly war council, chief among them young Duchess Liutgard of Fesse, who had joined up with them northeast of Kassel several weeks ago; Father Hugh; Villam’s daughter’s husband, Lord Gebhard of Weller Gass; the latest Count of Hesbaye, a stocky, placid man rumored to be a doughty fighter; Lady Ida of Vestrimark, who, as cousin to the late Countess Hildegard, was eager to personally avenge her cousin’s death as well as lay claim to her lands; and any number of sons or husbands or nephew
s of prominent landholding noblewomen who had sent their male kinfolk as their representatives.
Sapientia alone of Henry’s children now rode with the king. Theophanu had not yet returned from the convent of St. Valeria, nor had they heard any word from her—although she might well be looking for them in Wayland if she had missed the messenger sent to the convent with news of their march on Gent. Ekkehard had been left with the rest of the children in the schola at the palace of Weraushausen, in the keeping of the monks of Eben, some ten days’ ride southwest of Steleshame. The boy had begged to be allowed to attend the march; he was almost of age, after all, and the experience would in truth help temper him, but Henry had left him behind with the others—for safekeeping.
A servant brought wine and passed the cup among the restless nobles.
“We’re only four days behind Count Lavastine!” exclaimed Duchess Liutgard in her usual impetuous manner. “I say we march on tonight!”
“And arrive there completely exhausted?” asked Villam.
“Better than arriving there to find the count dead and his army cut to pieces! We can see well enough to march at night—the moon is nearly full!”
“But our road lies through the forest,” said Henry, thus ending the discussion. “I, too, see the need for haste, but not the need to be reckless. I have sent outriders ahead to alert Count Lavastine. We will follow at a steady march without depleting ourselves.”
Too restless to remain, with her mind wandering in such an irritable fashion, Rosvita rose and went outside. Just beyond the awning stood the king’s Eagle, Hathui, her head upturned to examine the heavens.
It was a drastic step, but Rosvita took it nevertheless: She glanced around to make sure they could speak without being overheard and then asked the woman what she knew of the matter.
“The book?” said the Eagle, obviously startled. “Indeed, I know of the book. Liath always carried it with her, and as far as I ever knew it belonged to her. I suppose it’s true she might have stolen it from Father Hugh.”
“But you don’t think she did?”