Elliott, Kate - Crown of Stars 3 (61 page)

But he wasn't pure. No one was, nothing could be, trapped in the impure world. Alone, he couldn't even find the courage to preach the True Word, and he resented Baldwin—now free of Judith, after all—for not joining him in prayer. There wasn't any satisfaction in praying alone. Indeed, after enough days in their company, he began to wonder why he should stay sunk in pain and grief when he might as well be as careless and fickle as they all were.

A terrible rumor greeted them when their party rode into Quedlinhame: Queen Mathilda was dying. Ekkehard's steward found Ivar and Baldwin lodging in the house of a Quedlinhame merchant, since they dared not risk them being recognized at the monastery itself, where the prince would stay with his aunt. But the merchant spent all his time at the town church praying for the health of the old queen. They had no fire, and it was cold and miserable with an autumn drizzle shushing on the eaves above them.

"I hope the prince doesn't take long." His teeth chattered. He had been shivering all day, and knowing that the prince and his official retinue would be better housed, and given more than lukewarm gruel for their supper, only made it worse.

"He must do what is proper, for his grandmother," retorted Baldwin primly. He had a mirror and was checking his face to see if his shave was clean enough. "Come under the blanket with me, Ivar. It'll be warmer."

"I won't!" he said with more heat than force. "You know I've taken vows as a novice. It wouldn't be right."

"Prince Ekkehard and all his companions have taken vows as novices. That doesn't stop them."

"But I don't want to be like them," retorted Ivar. Yet he wondered in his heart if the person he most despised was himself. Baldwin sighed and went back to his shaving.

That evening bells began to toll, the somber roll of the Quedlinhame cathedral bell blending with the lighter ring of the town bell.

"Someone's died," observed Baldwin wisely. "Come on!" He tugged on his cape and pulled the hood up to conceal his face.

"But if we're seen by someone at the monastery who knows us—'

"Why should they look if they think we're townsfolk? I can't abide staying shut up here any longer." Like the wind, Baldwin had enough energy to pick Ivar up like a leaf and carry him along with him outside and into the crowd.

"The queen is dead." The wail started on the edge of the crowd as they flowed up the steep road that led to the monastery gates. By the time they reached the gates, the crowd had an edge of hysteria, weeping and wailing, a wild noise like beasts gone mad.

"They'll never let us in," Ivar shouted. It would be better so. The walls of Quedlinhame monastery scared him. He'd escaped once; if he went inside again, maybe he'd never get out.

But laybrothers did open the gate, and crossing that threshold had a miraculous effect on the crowd. Once they stepped through onto holy ground, they calmed. A baby squalled, but otherwise the huge crowd—hundreds of people, more than he could count—went forward in as much silence as so many shuffling footsteps and smothered sobs could grant it. Many of them clutched Circles and prayed soundlessly. As the crowd filed into the cathedral under the watchful gaze of half a dozen elderly nuns who looked as fierce as watchdogs, Ivar kept his hood pulled forward so that no one would see his red hair. Baldwin used his elbows, hips, and one well-placed pinch to squeeze them forward and in the end they found room just inside the door, far away from the altar. The stone pillars, carved with dragons, lions, and eagles, loomed over Ivar. Once he had prayed under their vigilant eye. He began to shiver. What if they bore some magic within them, what if they could see and recognize him for what he was? Hadn't he betrayed the church by running away from Margrave Judith? Hadn't he rebelled against the very authority of the church by listening to Lady Tallia's preaching?

Baldwin put an arm around him to warm him. Townsfolk stamped their feet and rubbed limbs leached of heat by the rain. The smell of so many unwashed winter bodies gave off its own heat. His fingers hurt as warmth flooded back.

When the nuns and monks marched in, all the townsfolk knelt. The stone floor was, predictably, hard and cold; his knees hurt. In an awful silence frayed only by a child's cough and the whispering of cloth as people shifted position to see better, the body of Queen Mathilda was carried in on a litter. She was tiny, frail, and shrunken, dressed in the plain robe granted to the humblest sister of the church. But she wore rich rings on her fingers, and a slim gold coronet circled her white hair. Mother Scholastica and Prince Ekkehard walked behind the bier, and once the dead queen was laid in state, the abbess came forward to kiss her bare feet. Then Prince Ekkehard, too, was allowed this privilege. The novices filed in silently to kneel at the base of the stairs that led to altar and bier. Ivar stared, hoping to pick out Sigfrid among their number, but their hoods and bowed heads concealed them too well.

Mother Scholastica stepped behind the altar. At her side, Brother Methodius began to chant the opening prayer for the Mass for the Dead.

"Blessed is the Country of the Mother and Father of Life—"

"Lies!" On the steps a slight figure leaped up to address the townsfolk caught in the opening cadence of prayer, at their most responsive before the flow of the liturgy lulled them into a stupor. "You have all been made blind by the darkness spread over this land because of their lies. The true course of Her miracle and Her Holy Word has been hidden away. For God found a worthy vessel in the holy Edessia. God filled her with the blessed light, and in this way she gave birth to the blessed Daisan, he who partakes both of the nature of God and of humankind. He brought God's message to all of us, that he would suffer and die to redeem us from the stain of darkness that lies within all of us—

A shriek of frustration burst from the schoolmaster. Three monks leaped up, scuffled with the young novice, and hauled him away while he still shouted, his words muffled by a hand pressing his mouth closed. Ivar stood stunned while around him people burst into frenzied talk, pointing and questioning.

"That was Sigfrid," whispered Baldwin. "Is he gone mad?"

"That's what's become of him without us to protect him."

"We'll have to get him free."

"How can we get him free?" Ivar's laugh left a bitter taste. He dragged Baldwin back by the elbow. "Let's go. What if they find us here?"

He knew that look on Mother Scholastica's face as, slowly, the multitude quieted in the face of her anger. She looked mightily displeased as she spoke to Brother Methodius. He nodded, knelt by the bier, kissed the dead queen's robe, then left the church by a side door.

Mother Scholastica lifted her hands. "Let us pray, Sisters and Brothers. Let us pray that God forgive us our sins, and that through prayer we may follow the example of the blessed Daisan,he who was the child of God brought forth into this world through the vessel of St. Edessia, he who through his own efforts found the way to salvation that we all may follow. Let us pray that we may not be stained by those desires which the Enemy casts upon the ground like jewels, tempting us to pick them up for they glitter so brightly and their colors attract our eye. Let us be humble before God, for Their word is truth. All else is lies."

"We must stay and listen!" hissed Baldwin. "Prince Ekkehard will be able to get Sigfrid free. His aunt can't refuse him anything."

"Do you think so? I know better." He,was bigger and stronger, and he was shaking with fury and helplessness as he hauled Baldwin backward.

"We'll look more suspicious if we run away!"

At the threshold, the people who hadn't found room inside pushed forward, trying to see what had caused the commotion, and those disturbed by Sigfrid's outburst or by the squeeze inside pressed outward. Ivar followed their tidal flow, two steps forward, one back, two forward, until they came out into a drizzle and the finger-numbing chill of a mid-autumn day.

Baldwin pouted all the way down the hill. But for once Ivar wasn't minded to give in to his pretty sulk. The only thing worse than abandoning Sigfrid was to be caught themselves. Mother Scholastica would not be merciful.

They stumbled down the road churned muddy by the crowd, slipped more than once until their leggings and sleeves and hands dripped mud. They had nothing to wash with, and so huddled in the loft while mud caked and dried, then crumbled with each least movement. Baldwin sulked with the only blanket wrapped around him. Ivar paced because he could not sleep, and it was too cold to be still.

Why had Sigfrid done it? Had he bided his time all this while only to burst like an overfull winesack at the sight of so many willing ears? Would he, Ivar, have done anything as courageous— and so blindly stupid? Was he brave enough to act on what he believed, to preach, as Tallia had, as Sigfrid had, and accept the consequences?

It was an ugly truth, but it had to be faced: He was nothing but a cold, miserable sinner.

"Oh, Ivar," said Baldwin. "I'm so cold, and I love you so much. I know you're just shy because you've never—

"I have so!" he retorted, face scalding. "That's how my father always celebrated his children's fifteenth birthday. He sent me a servingwoman—"

"To make a man of you? It's not the same. You were just using her the way Judith used me. You've never done it just for yourself and the one you were with. That's different."

"I did after that, when I—"
When I thought about Liath.
And she had thrown him away.

"Just doing it once won't matter. You'll like it. You'll see. And you'll be a lot warmer."

It really didn't matter, did it? That it did matter was the lie he'd been telling himself all along: look what had happened to Sigfrid. At least Baldwin cared for him, in a way Liath never had. He dropped down beside Baldwin and, cautiously, nervously, touched him above the heart. Baldwin responded with a sudden, shy smile, the touch of a hand on his thigh, sweet breath at his ear.

And then, after all, it proved easier to live only in sensation.

In the morning, Milo arrived out of breath, nose bright red from the cold. "Go out of town now," he said, "and wait on the road to Gent."

Beyond the gates they walked a while to warm themselves; as the traffic along the road began to pick up, Ivar got nervous. He used a stick to beat out a hiding place within the prickly branches of an overgrown hedge. There, with the blanket wrapped round them, they waited.

"We could have done something for Sigfrid," muttered Baldwin.

"Just like you could have done something when Margrave Judith came to fetch you? We're powerless against them. Or do you want to go back to your wife? It was certainly warmer with her!"

Baldwin only grunted.

Wagons passed, then a peddler on foot and, later in the morning, clots of pilgrims dressed in rags, weeping and wailing the name of Queen Mathilda. No doubt word had already been sent to King Henry, by horse, but these humble pilgrims would spread the news among the common people in return for a bit of bread and a loft to sleep in.

Something stirred in Ivar's gut, a feeling, an idea—or maybe just hunger.

"Look!" Baldwin jumped up, got his hair caught in the hedge, and swore as the branches yanked him to a halt. By the time Ivar had freed him, Prince Ekkehard's cavalcade had come up beside them.

"How did you get so muddy?" said the prince with a frown for Baldwin.

"We had to walk here, my lord prince. What news of our friends?"

Prince Ekkehard had a habit of blinking two or three times before he replied, as if it took him that long to register words. He was all sun and light when happy but as sullen as a rainy day when annoyed. Right now he glowered. "It is no easy thing' to question my aunt, I'll tell you that. That comrade of yours is quite mad, and disrespectful, too. Imagine treating my grandmother's memory in such a way! I didn't like him, and my aunt said there's some terrible punishment in store for him, so it's no use to pine over him. He's lost to us."

"But you promised—

"Enough! There's nothing I can do." Then he grinned. "But I got in a good kick to my awful cousin, Reginar. I told my aunt that the abbacy of Firsebarg has come free now that Lord Hugh is being sent to the skopos for punishment, so she's sending him there. He was so grateful that he promised to do me a favor, so I told him there was a novice there called Ermanrich whom I'd seen in a vision, and that I wanted him to come to Gent to serve me." His young attendants giggled. "Come now, fair Baldwin." He turned coaxing, seeing that Baldwin still pouted. "I did what I could."

"You could have got Sigfrid as well."

"There's nothing I could do against my aunt when she was in such a rage! He'll deserve whatever punishment she metes out. What a terrible thing—" The young prince faltered, seeing Baldwin's expression. "But I did everything else just as you wished, Baldwin. You do love me, don't you?"