And—it was in the same hand as the copied vitae. All of which was enough to quicken my pulse.
But I soon found it was not about Martin. It was a page of the vitae master’s records: which vitae had been copied, which had been undertaken but were not complete, which were being considered but were not yet a certainty. Excitement surged past disappointment. Holding it was like a brush of hands across the years with the master librarian who had shepherded this massive archival work. This was his hand, his thoughts, a place where he survived, not just his work.
Reluctantly, I put it aside.
The fourth page was as much tedium and time as the first had been, and, in the end, to as little result.
But my heart quickened again when I turned to the fifth.
Like the sheet of notes, this page was larger and unruled. The hand was similar. Possibly the same. I couldn’t be certain. The leaf was barely readable, and illegible in parts. The parchment had been gnawed by mice. Some of the holes were as large as a fingernail. The script was smeared by damp or devoured by rot. I was almost certain a line of paw prints crossed from corner to corner, like one of Liath’s forebears had stepped in spilled ink and traversed the page.
Martin’s name was in the fourth line. I thought.
“Hal?”
“Have you found something?”
“Maybe. What does this word look like to you?”
He scooted his chair closer. “That?” He considered it, a forefinger rubbing at the opposite arm as if the concealed scars itched. “That’s Martin’s name. I think.”
“Me too.”
He crammed closer, brushing my side as we bent our heads over the leaf. I thought of my brother Murrow again. Mouthing words aloud, we wrenched meaning from the text, as much as remained:
After the [word lost] of the first years of King Davin [two words lost] enjoyed peace and safety. [Two words lost] Kolon [word lost] no exception. After his wife’s death, [word lost] Martin [word lost] rode alone through his lands.
[entire line lost]
...dirty child with black hair and ragged clothes. [word lost] October [word lost] cold and windy. [two words lost] Martin stopped [word lost] and asked the child where [three words lost]. The child said he was alone. Lord Martin gave the boy food [two words lost] asked again where his family was. The boy [four words lost] died. He shivered [word lost] cold wind.
[two words lost] impulse Lord Martin cut his cloak in half, [two words lost] around the boy and pulled the child [word lost] horse. When Lord Martin learned [two words lost] child’s name was Linas, [two words lost] that of his lost wife, he [three words lost] the child his ward.
The boy thanked [two words lost] for his kindness and asked if he [word lost] the Defender [two words lost] Charles Henry.
Martin rebuked [whole line lost]. Linas claimed his [two words lost] had seen [four words lost]. Martin resolved to go [word lost] to learn whether [word lost] was true.
No one knows [two words lost] where Martin went [three words] but soon after he and the child Linas
[two entire lines lost]
[half a line lost]...rumor reached Ragonne that Martin [two words lost] east to found a sanctuary [word lost] saradomus [three words lost] ancient tongue of [five words lost].
A brief note followed, written smaller but in the same hand: “This is all [two words lost] about Martin de Kolon’s departure. I will record it [word lost] vita but it is of [word lost] use because [entire line lost].”
Unvoiced Brusterian wisped across my lips. All the scholars since Cynan Maccus had smiled upon us.
“You found it,” Hal breathed.
“We found it.”
He stood, stretched, then froze mid-stretch. “It’s morning. Isn’t it morning now?”
I consulted my body’s sense. “Yes. Just after dawn, I think.” We listened. The low sounds of servants in the stairwell and passages heralded the palace’s waking.
“Definitely morning,” he said. “I have to go. The Horsemaster—”
“No, Hal.” I jumped up also. “We only just found it. We need to read it again—”
“You read it again. I have to go muck stables.” He muffled a head-splitting yawn with the back of a hand.
“I knew it was late...”
“Not anymore. Now it’s early.”
“I’m sorry.”
He paused, his hand on the latch of the outer door. “Don’t be. I’m honored to have been here.”
“Thank you.”
He opened the door and was gone.
He was so much like Murrow. I blinked back a sudden flood of misery. I missed my brothers as I hadn’t in years. Generous- hearted, duty-centered Murrow. Cedrick, the only one of us who resembled our mother, who like her had a wide and wicked sense of humor. Birnan, serious as only a youngest child trying to show his worth can be. Most of all, Utor. Our oldest brother, who had more or less raised me after our mother’s death. I was too old to be left with the nursemaid assigned to Cedrick and Birnan but the wrong gender to join Utor and Murrow’s official training, and in danger of our father’s grief-wrought neglect. Utor kept me at his side, close as a belt-knife. I learned a great deal watching his training, and more, after hours, when Utor taught me the attacks and stances I’d watched him learn. When Anhud, our father’s armsmaster, finally began my ‘real’ training, he was surprised to find how much I already knew.
Utor had not agreed with our father’s decision to make a match for me with Francis. Nothing he had taught me could help in Ferrant. One could not physically resist the king to whom one had been given. Perhaps our mother could have advised me how to subtly evade his attentions. Perhaps she knew about Mistress Baynor’s herbs. But I was only a child when she died, too young to have been taught whatever she might have shared about the handling of husbands.
Six years I had been away. I could have gone back. Vere allowed novicios one visit home each year. The Roth would have given me leave if I had asked it. I had not. I had pulled anger and pride tight around what remained of Maudlin of Bruster when Francis had cast her off under her own name rather than the Valenian name he’d made her take. Tedora, Queen of Ferrant, had gone like smoke in a stiff wind. I had hemmed the tatters of Maudlin, that she might not unravel further, and at Vere I stitched those fragments into Doctora Bann.
I had told myself that I did not wish to return. I hated my father. But that was untrue. I did not. Not fully. I knew why he had sought the alliance with Francis, even if I had doubted, as Utor had, that it would succeed. We were shown to be right, but my father could not have known it would turn out so. Bruster did not reward cautious rule. Yet I could not go back. I had told myself I had seen disgust and rejection in Utor’s eyes but that was not true either. It had been pity. A sea of unendurable pity which I had no steerboard to navigate, nor even a boat to keep my head above the waves. It was a lesson we learned early in Bruster. Avoid ungovernable waters if you did not care to drown.
***
When I could not keep my eyes on the book any longer, I left to sleep for a few hours. But I was back in the library by mid-afternoon, still so tired that idle thoughts danced through my head. If I kept working all night and sleeping in the day, would I eventually become an owl? Eating rabbit was fine but mice—
I shook my head. Weary foolishness.
As if the mere thought of mice had called her, Liath appeared, sliding through the door behind Torrell as he brought a late noontide basket. I spent an idle moment wondering how Mistress Baynor had known I wasn’t here yet at the usual time, then shrugged. I doubted much took place in the palace she didn’t know about.
I bent to scoop up Liath. “Where have you been? I haven’t seen you for weeks. All libraries need a cat. Even rotting, dreadful excuses for a library—Ah.” My hand moved from her back to her belly, and the reason for her absence was clear from her milk-filled teats. I gave her head a final scratch and set her down on the worktable. Even the cat. I scrubbed my cheekbone with the heel of one hand, refus
ing to think of Hilde’s sons. Francis’ sons. I reached for the leaf.
Liath curled into a neat circle in one corner. I read the fractured text again, then sharpened a quill and wrote a translation in modern Valenian so I could study the new information without having to use the battered original.
It wasn’t much. And yet it was. More pieces. The shadowy outlines of a picture, if not the image itself, were emerging.
Martin’s meeting with the child had sparked some process of thought which led to his disappearance and ultimately his disinheritance. Some time later, rumors reached Ragonne that Martin had gone east to create a sanctuary, a saradomus in the old language. Some old language. I tried to imagine a language so old that the vitae clerk considered it old, when his tongue was ancient to us. Who spoke it? What might they have known?
My attention moved back to the text. Saradomus. The bawdy song called Martin “the Holy Founder.” Founder of Sera Serdent? Put together with the new passage, it seemed likely. Saradomus could easily result in the variant forms Sera Serdent and Saradena.
Saradomus...Saradena...sanctuary...for what?
The passage didn’t say but I supposed something to do with children. Martin’s journey was caused by his encounter with a lost, most likely orphaned, child. It stood to reason he’d create a shelter for others like the boy he’d found.
Or perhaps I merely had children in my heart that day. I had to be wary of assumptions.
But the text did say something else. Charles Henry.
The Saradenian letter demanded we return to the “behaviors and expectations of Carolingian tradition” and restore neglected “Henrican observances.” The coincidence was too great to be credible. Charles Henry had to be connected. ‘Henrican’ derived from the man’s second name while ‘Carolingian’ came from a form of his first name. Not the Valenian ‘Charles’. The Brusterian version of the same name, ‘Carolus’.
Two names, one of them Brusterian. Was Charles Henry a scholar? If so, what did that mean?
And the boy Martin found, Linas, called Charles Henry ‘the Defender’. Defender of what? I turned back to the original, checking the line again but the words remained stubbornly obliterated. Children, my mind whispered again, but I was chary of giving it too much credence.
I’d found the source of Saradena’s grievance. I still didn’t know what it meant. The passage gave no hint what the “behaviors and expectations of Carolingian tradition” and “Henrican observances” might be. But it did tell me where they came from. Charles Henry. I needed to find more about Charles Henry. How he had become the source of what now held sway in Saradena, and in which cause Saradena threatened us.
I pulled a deep breath, suffused with satisfaction and relief, welcome as a fire in winter. The hunt was no less intense, nor was the pleasure less gratifying, because the prey was on parchment not its heels.
I rose, took out Martin’s Old Valenian vita, and, sharpening my quill once more, copied the passage into it. As the vitae clerk had meant it to be.
***
After Hal’s sleepless night I wasn’t expecting him that evening, but he arrived nonetheless, in a storm of clattering and banging that had me rushing into the outer room.
Arms laden, he staggered into the room as I caught the door and held it open. “What are you...?”
He set down a steaming pail covered with a cloth, then handed me a wrapped bundle that’d been tucked precariously under one elbow. “This is a loaf Mistress Ruth sent. This,” he plucked the handle of a basket from the crook of his other arm, “is our supper.”
I set both on the table and tapped the bucket with my foot. “And this?”
“Ah. Yes. That.” He took out a small bundle. “Mistress Baynor sent these for you.”
I could feel my forehead wrinkling.
“A change of clothes. And—” His eyes sought a corner of the room. “Hot water and a cake of soap. She thought...with the importance and urgency of your work...you may not have had...time...to ask one of the household staff to launder your things...or draw you a bath.”
With growing mortification, I understood. So Hal and Mistress Baynor had put their heads together and decided I smelled a bit ripe? Ha. They should’ve been with me in Vere. Some of those men hadn’t bathed in years.
They should’ve been with me in Vere...half-blown annoyance wilted. Mistress Baynor would have liked nothing more.
Something stung between my shoulders. Mistress Baynor’s kindness had been unrelenting since I arrived. Meals. Advice. Assistance. The suggestion that led to my unlocking the Old Valenian at last. How I’d spoken to her... I felt my cheeks flame. I owed her thanks, and an apology.
I sniffed. After I bathed and changed. It was true. I reeked.
Chapter XXXIII
I wriggled, trying to become settled in the borrowed dress. I could feel a damp nimbus spreading across the back from my wet braid. My stomach rumbled and I thought of the basket, waiting in the library. It would keep. I had something I needed to do first.
***
The kitchen was empty but for Mistress Baynor, for which I was cravenly grateful.
She had turned when I opened the door. “Doctora Bann. Good evening. How may I help you?”
I knelt before her, the cloth of my shift and over-dress cushioning the stone floor only in part. Pressing both palms together I raised them to her, as a retainer swears fealty to his lord.
“Most humbly do I beg your pardon.” I spoke formally, in the manner in which oaths were taken and court guests received. “I spoke you ill. Throughout the Three Lands it is held that I, the castoff queen, have no honor to call my own. I say otherwise. But at the least I am clerk to a worthy lord, and may draw from his deep well of honor. In wronging you, I have stained that honor. I am in your debt, lady, and I beg you to command me, when you find it convenient, how I might discharge my account.”
“Doctora Bann.” She spoke softly, laying her hands over mine as a liege lord would in accepting his vassal’s homage. “I held no charge to you before. But since you ask my pardon, know I grant it, and willingly. I ask but one thing.”
“Name it,” I said.
She shifted her hands, taking mine into her own and drawing me to my feet. “I will not ask you to promise to find Saradena. That may not be in your power. I do ask you to keep looking.”
“I never meant to do otherwise,” I protested.
“I know.” She squeezed my hands gently before releasing them. “Your thoughts are ever there. I knew you spoke in distraction and frustration, not true intention to wound.”
I was not convinced this charitable interpretation was, in fact, accurate. I suspected that, goaded by my failure, I had given way to an impulse to inflict pain on the nearest person available. “But—”
“Enough of this,” she interrupted. “What have you found?”
I told her about the loose page of Old Valenian, what it told us about Martin, his saradomus, and Charles Henry.
“Well done. Very well done. You found something. Something big.”
“Thanks to you.”
As her brows touched, I explained how I’d unraveled the secret of reading Old Valenian from her suggestion.
“How intriguing,” she said. “I’m pleased to have been of assistance. And I’m glad you came by. I was going to stop at the library on my way home. Something has come for you. And I have news to share.” She drew a roll of parchment from her belt pouch.
I was disappointed to see the seal was that of Vere, not Kolon; the next instant discomfited by that disappointment; the next, hastily breaking the seal and unrolling the parchment. Magistre Poll! Had he found something about Saradena?
Dear Alumna...
Magistre Poll’s hand. But the words were lightly written, and shakily formed. What was wrong? What had happened? I turned my gaze back to the letter:
Dear Alumna,
I write with ill news and I will tell them straightaway. Prolonging will not make them easier to hear.
/> Vere has nothing to offer in regards to the question you posed in your last letter. I am sorry. I have searched our books, and have discretely questioned those of our colleagues whom I trust, but no one has heard or read of the land about which you expressed a desire to know more. I wish Vere could offer more aid in this matter.
My maestro had searched Vere and found nothing. My thumbnail worried the broken seal on the letter’s other side. I was more troubled than I would have expected. I had hoped more than I had realized that Magistre Poll would be able to add to what I’d found.
I would have to write back and ask him to check for Charles Henry. There was still a chance Vere’s vast collection might hold something useful to understanding the Saradenian letter.
I read the passage again. He did not write ‘saradena’, I noted approvingly. It was risky enough, although unavoidable, to have written it in my letter. A lump rose in my throat when I noted his phrase our colleagues, his offhand acknowledgement that he considered me a scholar like the others.
I turned my attention back to the letter:
The other news I must relate is equally bitter: the Pedagno is dead.
I blinked, shock quelling for the moment the mourning that would follow. Pedagno Honre Olwen had been a relatively young man, for a scholar, and could have governed Vere many more years. What had happened?
But Magistre Poll did not explain what had ended the Pedagno’s life so unexpectedly. Other matters pressed him more urgently:
When Honre became the Pedagno, he named his successor, as is the custom. Alumna, he chose me. I am now the Pedagno.
My gaze cast upwards as I sought to grapple this new information. I had not known how the Pedagno was chosen, nor that my maestro would succeed Pedagno Olwen. Novicios were not privy to the internal workings of Vere; even doctores were not given information of that sort. Only the magistrum, the permanent scholars of Vere, knew. It had been clear from the beginning I would not be invited to become magistra, and they had been unwilling, even Magistre Poll, to divulge much.
Homegoing (The Tall Ships of Saradena Book 1) Page 23