Elliott, Kate - Crown of Stars 1 (21 page)

"Give the blessing," spoke the congregation as one.

Agius lifted his hands toward the heavens. He had a strong voice, one suited to the long sermons with which he edified the congregation of Lavas Holding now that Deacon Waldrada was so sick with the lungfever she could not speak above a whisper.

"May the blessed Daisan, who now resides in the bosom of Our Mother, have mercy upon us and save us. May St. Cecilia, whose day this is, and St. Lavrentius, whose bones sanctify this church, and all of the saints, and our mother among the saints, dementia, second of that name, skopos in Darre, intercede for us with the Mother and Father of Life, for They are gracious and loveth humankind. Amen."

Alain waited with the rest of the retainers while Count Lavastine and his kinsfolk left the church. He touched Lackling's elbow, but the boy stared at the great church window, colored red and gold and azure and emerald green, his head skewed oddly to one side so he looked more like a goblin's child than a young man born of a human mother. But he had, always, a fey, misshapen look about him. The rest of the congregation filed out. Alain tugged harder on Lackling's arm, and suddenly the other boy started, glancing wildly around, and fumbled at his belt. He drew out a dirty piece of cloth, unwrapped it to reveal a lump of crumbling cheese and an onion. Eagerly he pressed past Alain and walked with his rolling limp toward the vestibule and the doors.

Alain hurried after him. "Lackling," he called after him, trying to whisper. "You may not. It is forbidden."

"My friend."

Alain turned. Prater Agius regarded him from the altar. Agius' bright gaze made him nervous, and it seemed to Alain that since the episode with the hounds the frater's bright gaze was turned his way far too often. He ducked his head in answer.

"Chatelaine Dhuoda tells me you were destined for the church."

"Yes, Brother." He kept his gaze lowered. "I was meant to enter the monastery at Dragon's Tail."

"A King's monastery, was it not?"

"Yes, Brother."

"Burned to the ground by the Eika, and the monks slaughtered?"

"Yes, Brother."

"Yet you moved swiftly to save the Eika prisoner from further injury, four months ago?"

"Yes, Brother."

"Why is that?"

"The Lady teaches us to be merciful, Brother." He said it quickly, hoping desperately that Prater Agius would end this inquisition so he could get outside before Lackling was discovered.

"You do not hate the Eika prisoner? Though he may have been among those who murdered the men who would have been your brothers? Perhaps, my friend, you were offered to the church against your will?"

Alain flushed, keeping his head down, and did not answer.

"Your parents?" asked Agius, coming down off the dais and walking up the aisle to stand beside Alain. Alain caught the scent of damp wool and the spices of holy water, and a lingering scent of rose oil. Agius' hands were brown and callused, the hands of a man who engaged in manual labor. Yet his accent betrayed him as a man of highest birth.

"I do not know who my mother was, Prater Agius. Henri of Osna, son of Adelheid, fostered me. He is the father I know. My family is from Osna village, my Aunt Bel, who is Henri's sister, and her children, who count me as their cousin. I was raised there."

"Bel and Henri? Named after Henry with a 'y' and Sabella, I suppose, but with a Salian taint. But you are a fosterling?" Agius had sharp eyes, able to cut through to the heart of things. Or so Alain feared.

"Yes, Brother."

"It is said by the people hereabouts that old Count Lavastine, grandfather to the current count, made a pact with devils for those hounds." Alain fidgeted, wishing he was less conspicuous. "It is also said that the bargain drawn up between them demanded blood, and promised blood, and that the hounds would only obey the count or an heir of his blood. I have asked Chatelaine Dhuoda if it is possible that you are the bastard son of Count Lavastine. By my calculations, as I look through the records, he would have sired you just around the time he became betrothed to the woman he later wed. A bastard son sired on a common girl, however pretty, would be an embarrassment, would it not, at such a delicate time? Many such bastard sons are given to the church, to get them out of their family's way."

Some tone in his voice made Alain look up and blurt out: "You? Are you a bastard son given to the church against your will?"

Agius did not smile. "I am not such a one. I entered the church against the wishes of my parents. I was betrothed to a woman I did not want to marry. It would have been a good marriage for my family, but it was not for me, for I had already sworn in my heart to
—" He broke off, and after a hesitation went on. "—to devote my life to Our Lady of Blessings." He placed a hand against his chest. "The Lady blessed my suit. I had a brother younger by one year, handsomer and more inclined to such a marriage, and together we convinced my betrothed that he would make a better match. So I took my vows at eighteen, and my brother married soon after. He is dead now, killed in King Henry's wars." He said it calmly, yet Alain thought his eyes flashed with anger and his mouth twisted down with bitterness. "But you look nothing like. Still, strong blood in a child leads it to resemble the mother."

It took Alain a moment to understand.
You look nothing like Count Lavastine.
That was what Brother Agius meant. "What would it matter if I was Count Lavastine's son?" he asked, angry that Henri could be dismissed so easily. "I was fostered out. Even if it was true, he must have meant to be rid of me."

"Surely you don't believe that would be the end of it, do you? Many a noble lord or lady showers favor and even wealth on the bastard sired or born in noble loins. If your heart is indeed devoted to the church, you must think of what you can bring to Our Lady and the blessed Daisan. A noblelady's son might bring wealth or lands, a nobleman's son an endowment to a monastery or, if he is loved enough, his parent might found an institution in which to house him."

"Even if it were true," Alain whispered, "I am only a merchant's son now. I could never prove such a thing." Even if he wished it were true. A child born into the nobility, even as a bastard, might hope for service with the king, might inherit an estate that would allow him to lead his own warband, or if not that, then gain entrance into the king's elite cavalry, the Dragons.

"I have examined the record of births for the year in which you were evidently born. Of the children born in that year, there are only three who, nameless, escape me. The others died as young children and were lifted up to the Chamber of Light, their deaths recorded in the parish register, or else I have tracked them down and seen them, whole and alive, with my own eyes. Of those three, one was noted as a baby girl and born to a legitimately married couple who soon after left these parts. The other two are recorded simply as babes born to unmarried women whose names are not given, though one, at least, received a penance to perform for her sins. Alas, the deacon who tended the Lavas Church Hearth in those days is now dead, but the cook here has an exceptionally fine memory for these things. She assures me there was no other child born and taken away in that year. Nor has she memory of any foundling left at the church door."

Alain tried to imagine being recognized by Count Lavastine as his bastard son, blood of his blood, invested into a new and exalted rank. But he could only see his father Henri's face, torn by grief as he remembered the woman who had been Alain's mother. A woman Henri had loved.

"You have nothing to say? You are an ambitious boy, are you not?"

"Lord Geoffrey's child, the girl born to Lady Aldegund last autumn, will become Count Lavastine's heir. I heard them speak of it."

"If she lives. If no more suitable candidate can be found. Lady Aldegund comes of Wendish kin. These are borderlands, it is true, but to the people here a child of Varren blood would be preferred. Bastard or not."

"There is no proof," repeated Alain, terribly uncomfortable with Agius and his insistent questioning. Could the frater not let well enough alone? "I have never heard one soul in this holding claim the count got a servingwoman with child. Surely they would gossip about such a thing, if it was known. Count Lavastine had an heir, but the child is dead now, is she not? Surely he will marry again."

"Perhaps. No one speaks of those deaths now, except to say it was a terrible accident. Ah, well. No doubt if Count Lavastine wishes to investigate your birth, he will. Indeed, it is none of my business. He is no kin of mine, and I am in any case sworn to the church now, no longer to the concerns of the world." His voice turned brisk and he looked suddenly preoccupied by other matters. "I will speak to Master Rodlin and Sergeant Fell. I wish you to attend me for one hour each day. I cannot forget you are still sworn to the church. I will tutor you in letters and reading, as is fitting." He turned abruptly to the altar, knelt, and began to pray.

Alain backed down the aisle as silently as he could. Reaching the vestibule, he bolted outside.

Too late! There lay the damning evidence, right next to her. Dressed in sackcloth, her hair streaked with ashes, Withi was huddled, weeping, on her knees on the cold ground next to the church doors. As she had been for ten days now, ever since the captain had caught her fornicating with young Heric in the stables. There had been other witnesses, so he had had no choice but to demand that they confess their faults publicly. Frater Agius had demanded the sinners perform full penance, although the captain had gotten Heric sent home to his own village where his parish deacon might show more mercy.

So Withi wept, her blue eyes no longer pretty but swollen with tears, her face chapped with the cold and her hands red and chafed. Lackling had left the cheese and onion right out in plain sight, as an offering to her, since all he understood was that she was forbidden any food except bread and water. He was hiding at the corner of the church. He darted forward, seeing Alain. His speech sounded more like the grunts and cries of the beasts of the forest than like that of a human man. Withi sobbed out her shame. Some of the men-at-arms paused down the road to look back at her. Alain jumped forward and concealed the dirty cloth with its forbidden treasure under her sackcloth robe.

She gulped down tears. Her hand clutched at the cloth. "You brought that for me?" she whispered. "It is a sin to lighten the burden of a penitent, as if you were a deacon or a frater given leave to lighten the judgment passed on a sinner."

"It's only a lesser sin," said Alain quickly. He could not help but feel sorry for her. Lackling grunted excitedly beside him. "And it wasn't me. It was Lackling
—

She lifted blue eyes to Alain's face. "I won't forget," she said, but to Alain, not to Lackling.

The halfwit screwed his face up and tried to speak. "Wheefoe."

She shuddered and backed away from him.

He was only trying to say her name.

Frater Agius appeared at the door. "Friends." He walked over to them. "Compassion is a virtue, but penance cleanses the soul. For pausing here to speak with this penitent, Alain, you will fast next Ladysday and reflect upon the meaning of the lesson I preached today. May the Lady have mercy on your soul. Amen. Now come. I will speak with your masters."

Like everyone else, Agius ignored Lackling. Alain

had no choice but to follow. What could he do for Withi, after all? She, along with everyone else, had shunned him after Count Lavastine's return and the incident with the hounds, and yet it hurt him to see her reduced to weeping in the dirt outside the church door. Deacon Waldrada had never been this hard-hearted. The best anyone said of Frater Agius was that he judged all with equal harshness, including himself.

Lackling, after loitering near Withi without getting any kind of a sign that she noticed him, finally lost heart and dashed after Alain. He was as loyal as the hounds but rather worse kept. He did not get meat at all, not even on feast days, such a delicacy being too valuable to waste on a simpleton; besides his odd face, he was scrawny and short and he walked with an odd rolling gait with his bandy legs. Even the dread hounds, who snapped and bit at everyone, treated Lackling with indifference, though of course he could not command them. Alain pitied him and did what he could to protect him from the taunts and cruelties of the other young men and women.

Frater Agius strode so quickly, Alain half running to keep up, that they soon passed the young men-at-arms strolling toward the castle. Had Alain been alone, the soldiers would have called him names or spit at him, but he had learned to endure such treatment because he understood that this, like weeping outside the church doors, was a penance, one he must bear without complaint. But now, because he was under Agius' protection, they only looked at him and muttered.

They found Master Rodlin and Sergeant Fell in the castle yard. All was arranged as Frater Agius wished.

"Huh," grunted Sergeant Fell when Agius took his leave. "You have gathered to yourself strange benefactors, my boy." He exchanged a glance with Master Rodlin, who stood, hands folded, perfectly calm.

Alain wanted desperately to ask if these men, so long in the service of Count Lavastine, thought he was the count's bastard son, but he dared not. He simply obeyed.

When it came time for Sergeant Fell to take the young men training as foot soldiers out into the fields, Alain went along as he had all winter. The snow had been light this year, and though the Mass of St. Herodia had not yet been celebrated, marking the thaw, the fields had been swept clean by the winter winds, leaving a plain, flat ground suitable for war games. And if the other young men hit him harder with their padded spearheads than was necessary, slammed him in the head with their bucklers, if they made him stand at the point in formation more often, where the risk was greatest, he did not mind it. Each bruise only made him stronger. Sergeant Fell nodded gravely and said, only once, that he was taking well to the drill.