Elliott, Kate - Crown of Stars 3 (82 page)

Ivar began to turn round, to silence him—and bumped into a girl of perhaps twelve years of age. She was stout, well-formed, with the golden-blonde hair common to these parts and a peculiar cast of skin, a kind of reddish, nutty brown. She grabbed his elbow and looked him right in the eye, as if trying to see into his heart. Dirt smeared her chin but she was otherwise clean. A well-polished wooden Circle of Unity hung at her chest.

"What is it, child?" he asked, in the way of fraters. She tugged on his elbow, then signed, "Come," in the sign language used by churchfolk. Ermanrich was well launched into a sermon, and townspeople gathered to listen, some with interest, some with scorn, some no doubt because they had nothing better to do. The girl pulled at him again, and signed again. "What do you want?" he demanded.

She didn't reply, but she pointed at the pictures and made stroking movements, as with a brush. Abandoning Ermanrich, he followed her.

She walked quickly, ducking into an alley. A stray dog nosed through trash. A broken pot had been abandoned in a shadowed comer under overhanging eaves. They emerged onto a street and walked alongside the wall of the palace compound from whence Lord Wichman lorded it over the town; he had topped the walls with bright banners, red and gold, black and silver, that fluttered in a wind off the river. The girl tugged on Ivar's hand, and they cut through a courtyard where a dye-pot bubbled over an open fire and a delicately-formed girl-child of some four years played with a doll sewn out of scraps of cloth. She looked up and babbled meaningless syllables at them, but Ivar's companion only made the sign of "silence" toward the girl before pulling him on. Beyond well and cistern stood a small door; Ivar had to duck his head to avoid hitting it. They came into an alley made dark by houses built out over the narrow lane until they almost touched walls above. Rounding a corner, he blinked away the sunlight. There, alongside a freshly plastered compound wall, a crowd of about fifteen people had assembled to stare. The girl tugged him forward, and when the townsfolk saw that she came attended by a frater, they stood aside to let Ivar through.

Beyond them, working feverishly, a slight, robed figure drew figures on the wall and filled them in with dyes: pollen gold, willow purple, cornflower blue, juniper brown. The blessed Daisan, released from the mortal clothing of his skin, rises to the Chamber of Light to rejoin his Holy Mother. His disciplas, below, weep tears of joy—

The painter turned to dab at a pot of ink, and Ivar saw his face.

"Sigfrid!"

He jerked up, spilling the pot, turned full to face his accuser. His thin face looked sweetly familiar, but there was something wrong with the set of his jaw.

"Ai, God! Sigfrid! What are you doing here?" Ivar leaped forward and grasped him by the arms, then hugged him. "How did you come to leave Quedlinhame?"

Sigfrid wept a few tears. His gentle face shone with joy as he embraced Ivar in his turn. Then, with ink-stained hands, he pointed to his feet and signed, "Walk." His feet, like Ermanrich's were sore-ridden, callused, and filthy.

"We were there, Sigfrid, at the death of Queen Mathilda. Baldwin and I were in hiding because we ran away from Margrave Judith, and we escaped with Prince Ekkehard, but we couldn't stay in Quedlinhame Convent with the prince because we thought they might recognize us but we went to the church anyway and we heard you, we heard you jump up and start preaching. They dragged you away. Did they throw you out? How did you come to be
here?"

Sigfrid didn't answer. That supple, sharp mouth merely smiled softly, betraying the intelligence that lit his being. Sigfrid was alive in a way the rest of them weren't. Once he believed, he believed with all of him, every particle. Ivar saw it shining from his face, and for an instant he was seized by the ugly claws of jealousy: Why should Sigfrid be granted such certainty while he spun in this agony of doubt?

But wasn't that only the voice of the Enemy, seeking to make him hate his friend?

He grabbed him by the shoulders. "Sigfrid, speak to me."

Sigfrid indicated the wall, and his hands and then opened his mouth.

They had cut out his tongue.

"God's mercy!" cried Ivar. "Who did this to you? Was it bandits on the road?" Sigfrid shook his head, all the time regarding Ivar with an expression brimming with unspilled joy.

Ivar felt his breath coming in gasps as the awful truth dawned. "They did this to you at Quedlinhame?"

Sigfrid signed, "Yes."

Simply enough: Mother Scholastica had ordered it done, but Sigfrid showed no sign of anger, of hate, of sorrow. God's will had been done: They had cut out his tongue, but they hadn't silenced him. Speaking with the tongue was only one way of talking.

It all flowered then, like the rose blooming from the blood of the blessed Daisan. Sigfrid had given up his tongue because he was not afraid to speak the truth. But Ivar still had a tongue.
He
could still speak, just as Ermanrich preached a few blocks away.

God had chosen them to witness the miracle. In their turn, they must give testimony. After all, it was that easy, God's will made plain. He saw now how everything had led him to this moment, and where they would go from here, riding east with Prince Ekkehard and Lord Wichman into those lands where the hand of the false church did not grip so tightly.

Ivar faced the crowd, now some two dozen in number. The mute girl stared at him, eyes wide, waiting. The whole world was waiting.

"My friends," he began.

IN the hours between Sext and Nones Rosvita sat in the library with the chronicle of St. Ekatarina's convent open on the lectern before her. Most of the entries were innocuous enough:
In the year : There was a great plague among the birds. In the year : The queen sent her youngest daughter to become abbess over us. In the year : A blizzard came untimely in Cintre and all the grapes withered. A party of clerics from Varre stayed three weeks in the guest hall. In the year : Certain omens were seen in the villages, and there was a comet that blazed in the southern sky for two months, and after this there was an earthquake. Many villagers came to the ladder to beg for bread. The king died in Reggio.

Would the chronicle record Queen Adelheid's death?
In the last months of the year : The queen starved to death at the convent of St. Ekatarina.
Or there might be other outcomes.
In the year : The queen was strangled by her husband, John Ironhead, after a child was bom to her who had a legitimate claim to the throne. Ironhead named himself regent for the infant.

Could they trust Hugh? Would they condemn themselves by trafficking in magic, even to save their own lives? Could his claims possibly be true in any case?

Was history merely a record of one bad choice made in place of a worse one? They had so few options left, and all of them desperate. Yet did it have to be so? She had searched in many chronicles, had learned to read between the lines and in the marginalia so that she wouldn't discover too late things that she ought to have known, that needed to be woven into the story so that her history of the Wendish people would be complete. There was always something that had been left hidden, something that had been forgotten.

What is in plain sight is hidden best, as the old saying went.

The pattern developed slowly and increased markedly over the last one hundred years, after the death of Emperor Taillefer. They began as marginalia but soon appeared within the main body of the text, listings that made no sense but mostly were linked with a comment about a noble entourage that had sheltered unexpectedly in the guest hall: Hersford in the duchy of Fesse, seven stones; Krona in the duchy of Avaria, nine stones; Novomo in the county of Tuscerna, eleven stones; Thersa in the duchy of Fesse, eight stones.

Mice scratched in the walls. "Sister Rosvita. I hope I do not disturb you?"

She started, slapping a hand down over parchment, then chuckled as Mother Obligatia hobbled in. "I thought you were mice, and then I remembered there aren't any mice here." She rose hastily and drew forward a bench so that Obligatia could sit.

"There are mice, surely enough. Most of us are mice, creeping along the halls of the powerful. If we do not stay out of their sight, they will crush us."

"Strong words, Mother."

"Surely the ways of queens and princes are no mystery to you." She rested a hand on the
Vita
of St. Radegundis, which lay closed on the second lectern next to the almost finished copy, abandoned these hours by Sister Petra, who had gone to help carry water. "Have you found your answers?"

"Nay, I have only found more questions, Mother. I am too curious. It is the burden God have given me. What am I to make of entries like this one: 'St. Thierry in the duchy of Arconia, four stones.' The convent of St. Thierry is near the seat of the count of Lavas, is it not?"

"So it is," said Obligatia, not looking at the chronicle. "I was raised in the convent of St. Thierry, although I never saw Lavas Holding myself. Who rules there now?"

"Count Lavastine, son of the younger Charles, grandson of the elder Lavastine. His heir is a well-mannered and serious young man, Lord Alain, although I must note that he was born a bastard and only accepted as Lavastine's heir about two years ago."

"You are a true historian, I see. Lavastine had no legitimate heirs?"

"He was given no child born in legal marriage. Here is another entry, a place I have visited, above Hersford Monastery." She touched the entry. "Seven stones, just as it says here. Ai, God, Villam lost his son there, who had gone to play among the stones."

"The boy died?"

"I do not know. Young Berthold vanished with six companions. No one knows what became of him, but I had always assumed that he crawled too far in the darkness and fell, and was killed. Now I'm not sure what to believe. Poor child. He had the making of a good historian. He should have been put in the church."

"Ah. It is always a terrible thing to lose a beloved child."

"These are all stone crowns, are they not? When Henry was still prince, he lost his Aoi lover at Thersa, the one who gave him his son, Sanglant. She, too, vanished among the stones, so the story goes." She turned another page, searched it, and read out loud. "Brienac in the lordship of Josselin in Salia, seven stones. Here, another with seven stones, in the ruins of Kartiako. I did not know there were so many stone circles."

"No one can know, unless they look. That which is in plain sight is easily hidden."

"But they were built a very long time ago, even before the Dariyan Empire. The chroniclers of that time mentioned them as being ancient then, and they wondered if giants had once roamed the earth. No one knows who built them."

"Who do you think built them?"

"Giants, perhaps. But if it were giants, then why have we never found the remains of palaces fit for giants? I think Lord Hugh is right, that the Aoi must have built them." It was difficult to say; giving Hugh any truth undercut her desire to condemn him utterly. "If that's so, then their secret was lost."

Within the walls of the convent, wind did not blow, only a faint whine heard as down a far distance. No oil burned in the library, and with the sun no longer overhead to pierce down through the shafts, it had become quite dim. Rosvita only noticed it now as she looked at the convent chronicle and had to squint to read the letters; the change had come so gradually.

"I do not want my secrets to be lost," said Mother Obligatia. Her fingers brushed Rosvita's like the flutter of a moth's wings, moved on to the
Vita.
"I have held them close to my breast for many years. But this book is a sign." She opened the
Vita
at random and read aloud.

" 'When the women of the court came to Baralcha, they brought the finest clothing sewn of Katai silk and embroidered with thread beaten out of gold and silver, but the blessed Radegundis would not wear the garments of earth, however splendid they might be. She would not come before the emperor dressed in gold and silver but only in the robes of the poor, which she had herself woven out of nettles. And the women of the court were afraid. They feared the displeasure of the emperor would be turned on them, who brought her to the holy emperor dressed like a pauper instead of a queen, yet in her beggar's robes the blessed Radegundis so outshone the multitude in their rich cloth

ing that even the emperor's fierce hounds bowed before her in recognition of her holiness.' " Her voice failed, and she shut her eyes. Like all old women, it was hard to judge her age. Her skin was wrinkled but otherwise soft and white, that of a woman who has spent much of her life indoors. She had a noblewoman's hands, unmarked by the calluses brought on by hard labor but still strong.

"Brother Fidelis ended his days at the monastery at Hereford," said Rosvita, seeing that his book had uncovered a deep well of emotion in the abbess. What had brought it on? "He must have been almost one hundred years old when I spoke to him. He gave the book to me just before he died. It was his last gift. It was his testimony."