Elliott, Kate - Crown of Stars 1 (9 page)

"It's a shame," muttered someone in the crowd. - "The price of the books," whispered Liath.

Without blinking, Hugh handed two coins to the marshal. She stared, trying to get a look at them, but Liudolf
c
losed his hand over the coins quickly, a startled expression on his face which made Liath wonder if
he
had ever seen a nomia either. Hugh turned to Liath. "Will you come? Or must I drag you?"

Da always said to let them think you knew something they did not. Liath spared a glance for Hanna and Ivar, who were standing together under the eaves of the inn, watching her. Hanna was pale, Ivar flushed. Liath nodded toward them, hoping her expression was calm. She began to walk toward the church, which lay down the road from the common. Hugh was caught off guard by her abrupt acquiescence, and he had to hurry to catch up. That gave her some small satisfaction.

He grabbed her arm at the elbow and with that grip walked out of the village and to the chapel, going inside and all the way along the nave and past it into the little warren of chambers behind. All the way to the small chamber where his bed stood.

"Here." He held onto her tightly. This room was rather more luxurious than Liath expected. Prater Robert, who had ministered here before Hugh, had slept on a cot in the nave. The chamber held a finely carved table and chair and a wooden chest inlaid with bright gems and enameling. On the table sat parchment, three quills, and a stoppered bottle of ink. A thick rug covered the floor, an expensive carpet woven with eight-pointed stars. Liath knew better than to let Hugh realize she recognized the pattern as an Arethousan design. A featherbed and a feather quilt lay heaped on the bed. "Here is where you sleep," he said.

"Never."

"Then with the pigs."

"Gladly, as long as it spares me from you."

He slapped her. Then, while her skin still stung from the blow, he pulled her hard against him and kissed her on the mouth. She got a hand in between them and shoved him away.

He laughed, wild and a little breathlessly. "You fool. My mother has promised me the abbacy of Firsebarg as
s
oon as the old abbot dies. With the abbacy I will have entry into King Henry's progress, if I wish it. And in a year or five more, there will be a presbyter's crosier in my hands and I will walk among those who advise the skopos herself. Only give me the book and show me what your father taught you, and there is nothing you and I could not accomplish."

"You took his books already. You
stole
them. They would have matched the debt. I would have been free." His expression chilled her. "You will never be free, Liath. Where is the other book?" "You murdered Da."

He laughed. "Of course I didn't. Died of a bad heart, that's what Marshal Liudolf said. If you think otherwise, my beauty, then perhaps you ought to confide in me. Another season and your father would have taken me into his confidence. You know it's true."

It was true. Da was lonely, and Hugh, whatever else he might be, could be charming. Da had liked him, had liked his quick mind, his curiosity, even his arrogance, since Hugh had the odd habit of treating Da as if he were his equal in social standing. But Da seemed to expect that.

"Da never had any sense in his friends," she said recklessly, to shake off these distracting thoughts.

"I know you've never liked me, Liath, although I can't imagine why. I've never offered you an insult." He placed two fingers under her chin and tilted her face up, forcing her to look at him. "Indeed, there isn't another woman in the village, in this whole frozen wasteland, that I'd ever think of offering my bed, and I've slept with a duchess and refused a queen. Once I'm abbot of Firsebarg you'll have your own house, servants, whatever you wish. A horse. And I don't intend to stop my whole life at Firsebarg. I have plans."

"If you have plans, then they must be treasonous." She twisted out of his grasp. "King Henry and the skopos have never tolerated sorcery. Only the Lady Sabella welcomes heretics into her company."

"How little you know of the church, my beauty. Sorcery is not a heresy. Indeed, the skopos is usually harsher toward heretics than toward sorcerers. Sorcery is only forbidden by the church when it is practiced outside the supervision of the skopos. I wonder what teacher your Da had. And in any case, you would be surprised how tolerant King Henry and the noble princes can be, if only the means further their aims. Where did you hide the book?"

She retreated to the door and did not answer.

He smiled. "I'm patient, Liath. Lady and Lord, what were your parents thinking, to call their child by an old Arethousan name?
Liathano.
An ancient name, linked to sorcery. Your Da admitted as much to me once."

"When he had drunk too much."

"Does that make it less true?" She said nothing. "Where is the book, Liath?" When still she did not speak he shook his head, but the smile remained on his lips. "I'm patient. Which will it be? My bed, or the pigs?"

"The pigs."

With a lightning strike he grabbed her wrist with one hand and slapped her hard once again with the other. Then he embraced her and ran a hand up her back. His breath was hot on her neck. She stood rigid, but when he began to move her toward the bed she fought against him. Got a heel behind his ankle and tripped him. They fell in a heap on the floor, and she pushed away and scrambled to her feet. He laughed and caught her by one knee, jerked her down so hard her knees bruised on the stone and the breath was jarred out of her. Then he let her go and stood, breathing hard. He bowed in the most formal, court manner, offered her his hand to help her to her feet.

"You'll come to my bed willingly or not at all." He pulled a scrap of white linen from his belt, wiped her right hand clean, then bent to kiss her fingers. "My lady," he said, perhaps mockingly. She was too dazed to interpret his tone. His golden hair brushed her hand, and

he straightened. " 'She is dark and lovely, this daughter of Sai's, touched by the sun's breath. Turn your eyes away from me; they are as bright as the star of morning.' '

She shoved her hand behind her back and wiped it against her tunic.

"Now. You will feed the pigs and the hens, sweep this room, get me a bath, and then tell Mistress Birta that she no longer need send a meal over twice a day. You can cook, I suppose?"

"I can cook. May I go?"

He stood aside so she could leave, but she had only gotten as far as the narrow passageway when he called her name.

"Liath." She turned back to see him leaning in the doorway. Even in the semigloom of the little warren of cells, his golden hair and his combed linen robe and his fine, clean skin made him seem to shine as he watched her. "You may even last out the summer with the pigs, but I don't think you'll like it so well when winter comes."

How far she would get if she tried to run away? A useless thought. She would not get far, nor would she have any means to live if she did escape from him. She had seen herself in eight years of running that there were far worse circumstances than these.

Hugh chuckled, mistaking her silence for a reply. "Tell Mistress Birta that she may tally up any food or goods you buy from her, and I'll pay her each Ladysday. I expect a good table. And you will dine with me. Go on."

She went. Going outside to feed the animals that were stabled in the shed alongside the storage rooms, she saw a horseman sitting astride his mount, out in the trees. It was Ivar. Seeing her, he began to ride forward. She waved him away, quickly, desperately. For there was another thing she had seen in Prater Hugh's chamber, resting on the feather quilt. A fine, gold-hilted long sword, sheathed in red leather. A nobleman's sword. She had no doubt that Hugh knew how to use it and

king's dragon
would not hesitate to, even against a son of the local count.

Ivar reined his horse in and sat, watching her, while she worked. After a while she went inside. When she came out again, carrying two buckets yoked on a staff across her shoulders to fill for Hugh's bath, Ivar was gone.

SHADOWS FROM THE PAST
IT
took five days to walk from Osna village to Lavas Holding, the sergeant in charge told Alain. The journey this spring, however, took fifteen days because the chatelaine and her company stopped at every village and steading to accept taxes or rents or a young person in service for the upcoming year. They came to Lavas Holding on St. Marcia's Day, and Alain stared at the high timber palisade that enclosed the count's fortress, the timber great hall built on a rise with a stone bailey behind it. these two central buildings surrounded by a smaller palisade. The village spilled out below the outer palisade, down to the banks of a slow-flowing river.

He had little chance to gape. He and the others were promptly herded into the fort, where they waited in an untidy line in the huge dirt yard
—the outer court—as Chatelaine Dhuoda and her retinue set up a table and began to call the company forward one by one. Alain

found himself in a group of young men, and soon it was his turn to stand before Sergeant Fell.

"Can you ride a horse? Ever handled a spear? Worked with horses, perchance? No, of course not." The burly sergeant motioned for the next man in line to step forward.

"But, sir
—" Alain began desperately. Had it not been promised him, to learn the arts of war?

"Go on, go on! We haven't time to train new recruits into men-at-arms, not now. Count Lavastine is already gone out to hunt the Eika and we're marching out with a second force in twenty days. Get into the other group and don't waste my time, lad."

Chastened, Alain retreated to the other line, this one composed of women as well as men, lads his age, and girls not quite women, folk of varying degrees and ages and stations. He came in time and in his turn before Chatelaine Dhuoda. She asked him a few questions. He did not truly hear himself answer. Though her hair was veiled by a clean linen cloth, it showed a tendency to come free of its confines, wisps of reddish, coarse hair curling at her ears and on her forehead.

"What an accent!" she said to the young cleric in the plain brown robe of a frater who sat next to her, marking out the list for Count Lavastine. "Well, boy, Master Rodlin can use you in the stables. Who is next?"

"But Brother Giles taught me the letters. I can write all of them in a neat hand."

At this, the frater looked up with interest. He had a fierce gaze, like a hawk. "Can you read?" he demanded.

"No ... no, I can't read yet, but I'm sure I could assist with the clerics. I can count
—' The frater had already looked away dismissively, toward the next candidate. Alain turned desperately back to Chatelaine Dhuoda. None of this was going as he had dreamed it would. "Surely you remember my Aunt Bel telling you I was meant to be confirmed as a—

"Move on!" said Dhuoda. A young woman stepped forward to take Alain's place, so Alain had no choice but to do as he was told.

He found the stables and was at once put to work at a job any idiot could manage: filling a cart with manure and hauling it out to the fields. His only companion at this task was a halfwit called Lackling, a boy of about his age who was as thin as a stick, with bandy legs and a misshapen jaw through which he could not form true words. He was skittish and as likely to stare at the clouds or stroke the donkey as to keep to his work, but Alain did not have the heart to be angry at him, poor creature.

"I see you get along well enough with our Lackling," said Master Rodlin that evening after the two boys had been given a hasty supper of cheese and bread and an onion. "You can share the loft with him. Make sure the new lads don't tease him too much. He's a harmless creature and the animals trust him, for I suppose they know he's as dumb-witted as they are."

Lackling made an odd snuffling noise and picked up the crumbs of bread from the dirt floor of the stables. With his treasure in his hands he went just outside and stood, hand out and open, staring at the sky and shuffling nervously back and forth.

Master Rodlin grunted, not without pity. "Thinks the birds will come and feed from his hand," he said. "But Deacon Waldrada says it is our duty as good Daisanites to shelter the weak. And the lad was born here, in the shadow of the fort. His mother died birthing him, for it was a hard birth and perhaps it would have been best had the child died as well, poor dumb creature."

"I was born here," said Alain. "In Lavas Holding, I mean."

Rodlin looked at him with a keener interest. "Who was your mother?"

Now Alain flushed. "I don't know."

"Ah," said Rodlin knowingly. "Fostered out, were you? In a town like this there's always a woman or two who can't admit whose child she bore and so gives it away."

"She didn't give me away. She died birthing me."

"Had she no kin? What about your father?"
A
lain hung his head, seeing the expression on Master Rodlin's face change from curiosity to a thin incurious smile: identified and dismissed as some whore's unwanted bastard.

"Go on, then," continued the stable master. "You'll do well enough in the stables. Just don't go into the kennels."

"There're no hounds in the kennels." "But there will be when Count Lavastine returns. They'd as soon kill you as pass you by, lad. Don't forget it and don't get in the habit of going by there, for your own good. See this scar." He pointed to a ragged white scar that ran from ear to shoulder. "They gave me that, and more besides. Stay well away and you'll be safe."