In the Ruins (33 page)

“As we travel, we will discuss what choices we have,” Constance agreed. She paused and turned her head as though seeking something.

The soft light cast its muted glamour over the clearing.
Horses grazed at the sparse grass. They were being led in groups to water at the nearby stream, heard as a quiet laughter beneath the constant noise of men walking, talking, hammering a stronger axle into one of the carts, and, here and there, singing.

“What song is this?” Ivar whispered to Sigfrid, who sat cross-legged beside him with his bony hands folded in his lap and his thin face composed and calm.

“I’ve not heard those words before,” said Sigfrid, “but I know the melody well enough.” He hummed along, picking up the refrain at once.

“Truth rises with the phoenix,” echoed Ivar. Wind rippled, bringing a spatter of rain. He wiped his eyes as the mizzle shushed away into the trees. Above the chatter of men and the clatter of branches, he heard the tramp and rumble of an approaching procession.

Naturally, Baldwin rode at the front on a handsome roan mare. His seat was matchless. Even his clerical robes, cut for riding, fell in pleasing folds and layers about his legs and was swept up in back to cover his mount’s flanks. A well-dressed girl of about fourteen rode beside him on a sturdy gelding. She was so dazzled by Baldwin’s attention to her that she did not notice the captain approaching with a frown on his face.

“Louisa! Come at once to pay your respects to the holy biscop.”

Her eyes widened. She startled and touched the linen scarf that mostly covered her dark hair. “Yes, Father. I pray you, Brother Baldwin, excuse me.”

He smiled at her, and she flushed.

“Shameless!” muttered Ivar.

Beside him, Sigfrid chuckled. “You are no different than any of us. Poor Baldwin. Do we truly love him, or only his beauty? Yet he looks well.”

He looked well. He cast his gaze anxiously over the multitude, found what he sought, and smiled so brilliantly at Ivar and Sigfrid that Ivar actually heard murmurs from the followers who with their carts and donkeys and bundles were moving in a sluggish flow into the clearing. Many faces turned to watch the young cleric as he dismounted and pressed through the crowd. Hands reached out to touch his robe, and seemingly unconsciously he brushed his fingers across the foreheads of small children pushed into his path.

Ermanrich whistled under his breath. “You’d think he was a saint the way they treat him.”

“Ivar!” Baldwin surged forward to embrace him, weeping with happiness. “Ai, God! Sigfrid! Ermanrich! Hathumod!” He kissed each of them, tears streaming in a flood of joy.

“You must greet Biscop Constance,” said Ivar, whose temper had sparked with unfathomable annoyance.

“It worked?” Baldwin asked as guilelessly as a child inquires about the ineffable mystery of God. “She is free?”

Biscop Constance approached them, leaning on her staff and assisted by Sister Eligia. “I am free, Brother Baldwin, in no small measure because of the risk you took in Sabella’s court.”

“Baldwin!” Ivar tried to keep his voice to a whisper, but his irritation kept pushing it louder. “It’s not right to make the holy biscop approach
you
. You should have gone to her first!”

Baldwin dropped to his knees before the biscop. When she extended her hand, he pressed her ring to his lips. His tears wet her hand. Remarkably, she also had tears on her face.

She, too, was blinded by his beauty.

Ivar found himself wiping rain off his face, only it had stopped raining and he had already dried his face once.

“Are you the one?” she asked Baldwin.

“I am Lady Sabella’s seal. I admit to worse things I did. I was her concubine, it’s true, but I’m not proud of my sins, Your Grace.” His face was so open and innocent that it appeared
that whatever he had done he had done without malice or forethought.

“We have all done that which displeases God.”

“And God’s mercy has saved us. I have sworn an oath to God, that I will serve Her alone and for the rest of my days, as penance for my sins and in service of Her glory, which has come down to us out of the heavens and casts its brilliance across the Earth.”

Constance examined him closely. “Are you that one I have heard whispers of? The rose among thorns?”

He shook his head, bewildered by her comment. The captain’s daughter had come as close as she dared to stare at Baldwin, but her father drew her back with a look that might scar.

“Truth rises with the phoenix,” said Constance.

He blushed. “Oh. That. It’s true I made up words to pass the time, and set them to a melody I liked to sing. It was an easy way to help folk remember the phoenix.”

“Then it’s true, for surely you have a form most like to the angels.” She bowed her head.

Baldwin looked up at Ivar and mouthed the words, “
What’s true
?”

Ivar could only shrug.

She raised a hand and by this means brought silence to the assembly crowded around to hear. “A great evil has fallen upon us. Famine, sickness, war, and dissension plague us. God is angry, yet She has not forsaken us as we have feared. Many here have heard the stories of God’s grace.”

“Truth rises with the phoenix!” cried a woman from the back, and other voices echoed her.

“Do not fear the days to come,” said the biscop as folk around her knelt. “Her glory has come down to us out of the heavens and casts its brilliance over the Earth. If we will only believe, then we will be safe. God will answer us in our time of trouble, grant our every desire, fulfill our every plan. She sends us help from her sanctuary.” She raised Baldwin to his feet as he smiled pliantly with that look of beautiful incomprehension that in Quedlinhame had so charmed his praeceptors. “A holy one walks among us.”

Behind Ivar, Hathumod burst into tears.

“YOUR Excellency! I pray you, forgive us for disturbing you. Come quickly, Your Excellency!”

The servant’s voice was shrill with a panic that roused Antonia out of a restful sleep. She grunted and slapped a hand over her eyes to shut out the flicker of lamplight as the clumsy servant leaned over her and the sting of oily smoke made her cough.

“Your Excellency!”

“I have woken.”

The fool woman remained poised there, as stupid as a cow. “Come quickly.”

In the adjoining room, little Berengaria began to wail as Mathilda’s shrieks filled the air. The servant groaned and fled, leaving Antonia to rise in her shift and grope her way through the dark room to the opened door that led from one chamber into the other. There was, mercifully, lamplight, and a trio of servants hastily shoving a heavy table out of the way.

Young Mathilda was spinning, arms straight out and rigid, hands in fists. “Get away, you beast! It has red eyes! Why can’t anyone else see them?” She sobbed gustily.

“Your Highness, if you will only sit down—”

“Shan’t! You’re trying to kill me! Just like Mama and Papa! They’re never coming! You did it! You did it!”

She swung wildly, battering her attendants. They skittered back to circle as nervously as a pack of dogs waiting to have a stone thrown at them.

One of the double doors leading out into the courtyard creaked open and Captain Falco slipped in. He was dressed, armed, and alert. He slept athwart the doors on the pavement outside, but despite his constant faithful presence and the quiet surroundings in Novomo where they had bided many weeks now, Mathilda still suffered from night terrors.

“I hate you! I hate you!” she shouted, but it was not clear whom she hated, or what she feared.

“Your Highness,” ventured Captain Falco.

“Go away! Go! Go!” She stamped her feet over and over, drumming them on the floor, and flailed with her arms as she screamed and screamed. It was as if she was possessed by a demon.

“Your Highness!” said Antonia sternly.

A nursemaid had caught up Berengaria, who could not cry for long before starting to cough, and bent her efforts to soothing the little one.

“Take her into my chamber,” said Antonia. “Get her away from her sister! You should have done it at once, when you saw the fit coming on.”

The nursemaid whimpered, and started for the other door, but Mathilda leaped forward and grabbed at her shift.

“No! You shan’t steal her away! She’s mine!”

Berengaria set up a wail that at once broke into racking coughs, and the child was wheezing and gasping for breath as Mathilda began to jump up and down shrieking with each leap, completely out of control.

“Captain Falco! You must restrain her!”

He hesitated. He hated to do it. He knew the princess fought him, and despised him, although he had never done one thing to harm her. Indeed, his softness had done the most damage, no doubt. A stern hand must control a hysterical child.

“Captain!”

She would not do it herself. Last time, Mathilda had bitten her.

He turned his head, caught by a new sound. Out in the courtyard, torchlight gleamed. She heard a cacophony of voices and the clatter of many feet advancing on them. Falco drew his sword and stepped into the doorway, calling for his men. Mathilda was still screaming. The hapless nursemaid scuttled to the safety of Antonia’s chamber.

There came a slap, like an arrow thumping into wood. Falco fell to his knees and cried out. The second door slammed open, and an apparition appeared—gaunt, filthy, and ragged but entirely alive.

“Mama!”

Mathilda flung herself forward and hit her mother so
hard that the queen would have tumbled over if so many attendants were not already pressing up behind her. All of the princess’ hysteria collapsed into noisy, grieving, frightened sobs. She clung to her mother for what seemed an hour while no one spoke and Adelheid grasped her, dry-eyed, until at last the girl cried herself to sleep.

By this time the nursemaid had crept back into the room with her mouth gaping open like a simpleton’s and Berengaria silent and slack in her arms.

“Captain,” said Adelheid in a low voice.

He had by now recovered from his shock and joy. At her direction, he took Princess Mathilda out of her arms and carried her to her bed. The child was so heavily asleep that she did not even stir. Adelheid beckoned to the nursemaid, who brought Berengaria to her. The toddler was still awake but now too weak after her fit of coughing to do more than gaze blankly at her mother.

“What is wrong with her?” The hoarse quality of Adelheid’s voice did not change. She did not weep, or storm, or show any sign of anger or joy.

“It’s the cough, Your Majesty,” said the nursemaid, stumbling over the words. “She’s had that cough since the storm that overset us all.”

“Demons were set loose in the world,” said Antonia briskly. “They have found a way in to where weakness and innocence offer ripe pickings.”

Adelheid glanced at her, but Antonia could not interpret what feelings, if any, stormed beneath her pinched features. It was not that the young queen was no longer pretty, although certainly she had lost her bloom. It was as if the light that animated her had been snuffed out. She was cold and hard, like a woman who would never laugh again.

“Have you no honey for her throat?” asked the queen, speaking sternly to the nursemaid. “Ground up with chestnut meat, it might soothe her. She has always suffered these fits, as I’m sure you have not forgotten.” She noted each of the other attendants with her gaze. “I would have a bath, although I am sorry to disturb you all from your rest.”

Lady Lavinia pushed forward out of the throng. “Let us
only be thankful you have survived, Your Majesty. Anything in my power to give you is yours.”

“You have endured the storm better than many,” observed Adelheid. As servants scurried off to haul and heat water and lay out clothing, she walked forward into the chamber to stand beside the bed shared by her daughters.

“The wind caused much damage, Your Majesty,” said Lavinia, “but my people have set to work with a will to repair roofs and fences and walls with winter coming on. For a few days afterward there was some ash fall, but not so much that we could not sweep it off the streets and dig out the few ditches and pits that it disturbed. Still, there has been no sun for many months. It has been a hard winter.”

For a long while Adelheid watched her daughters. Berengaria, too, had fallen asleep, but her thin face was pale and she whistled with each exhalation. A steward brought in cracked chestnuts, and the nursemaid sat down at the table to grind them into a paste she could mix into honey.

Beyond, in the courtyard, torches and lamps were lit and servants scurried to and fro. Captain Falco had vanished, replaced by two solemn guardsmen. Lavinia yawned silently and rubbed her eyes, but did not stray by one step from Adelheid’s elbow. The lady of Novomo was worn and worried but steadfast. She had lost less than most: her daughter had been sent north soon after Adelheid’s departure for Dalmiaka, and so had weathered the storm in her mother’s hall. Of her close kin, all were accounted for; all were alive.

Soon it would be dawn, such as dawn was these days without any sight of the sun’s disk ever appearing to promise that the light of God’s truth would soon illuminate all of humankind. God had clouded the heavens as a sign of Their disapproval.

“I have seen such things….” murmured Adelheid, more breath than speech. She did not weep, although her tone harrowed her listeners.

“What have you seen, Your Majesty?” asked Lavinia, wiping a tear from her own face.

“God’s wrath. I was spared only because I prayed to
God that I might see my daughters once more. That they are safe is the best I could hope for. Henry is dead, murdered by his own son.”

“Patricide!”

The servants whispered together, and this rush of conversation, like the press of wind through trees, flowed outside into the courtyard from whence it would no doubt be blown throughout the entire palace and town.