In the Ruins (36 page)

“Do not mock. I will not tolerate it What of Sapientia, Sanglant? Are you responsible for her death?”

“We do not know if she lives, or is dead.”

“Among the Quman savages, living is surely like death. We are not like the Salians or the Aostans or the Arethousans. We Wendish do not kill our relatives in our quest for power.”

“I do not seek power, Aunt. I seek order, where it seems there is no other who can grant it. You witnessed the events of last autumn. We felt its effects most bluntly. I have soldiers who are scarred from burns they suffered in that wind and others who died coughing with ash in their lungs. I did what had to be done. That it is not worse with Wendar’s army is due to my efforts. I will not have it said otherwise.”

“So I witnessed.” Liutgard stood with shoulders locked
back, arms and neck rigid. “So I will swear, as will all of my soldiers and attendants.”

“So I will swear,” said Burchard wearily, “although my own daughter perished.” He paused to touch Liutgard on the arm before continuing. “What became of Princess Sapientia I do not know, only what reports have been spoken of, but she could not have held the army together. Henry willed the kingdom to Sanglant on his dying breath. This I witnessed. This I swear.”

Liath had by this time crept around the wall of the tent as nobles and guardsmen shifted to make way for her, not betraying her by giving her more notice than they would to a faithful hound seeking its master. She wasn’t sure whether their deference annoyed her or placated her. She would never become used to this life. Never. But as Scholastica examined Burchard’s seamed face, Liath slipped onto the stool beside Sanglant and hoped no one would call attention to her arrival, which no one did. There were five sturdy traveling lamps placed on tripods and another four hanging from the cross poles. The light gave every face a waxy quality, too bright, but there also gleamed on one wall the unfurled imperial banner. Gold-and-silver thread glinted in the crown of stars, which was embroidered on cloth and stained with tracks of soot that no one had been given permission to wash out. Even the rents and tears in the fabric had been left. The Wendish banner had been washed and repaired, but not the imperial one.

“It is not part of our law for the bastard child to inherit,” said Scholastica, “but I have observed that laws are silent in the presence of arms. That Liutgard and Burchard speak for you gives strength to your case.” She looked at each duke in turn, as if her disapproval could change their minds, but Burchard merely sighed and Liutgard glared back at her. “Let Theophanu and Ekkehard agree, and it will be done.”

“I have already sent Eagles to Osterburg.”

“I sent Eagles and messengers out as well, when I heard rumor of your coming. While you wait for their arrival, you must disperse your army. I cannot feed so many for more
than three days. Our stores are already low. The weather bodes ill for the spring.”

“I will keep my army beside me.”

“Will you take by force that which you can only win with God’s favor, and the agreement of your peers?”

His frown was quick but marked. Unlike his father, Sanglant did not rage easily, and a few men muttered to see him brush the edge of anger. “I did not seek this position. I am my father’s obedient son. I have done only what he wished.”

“A man may turn away from a platter of meat when he has just eaten, only to crave it when he hungers. We are not unchanging creatures, Nephew. We wax and wane like the moon, and at times we change our minds about what it is we want. Although, I see, some things have not changed.” She gestured toward Liath. “The last, if not the first, or so your grandmother divined. Your concubine?”

“My wife,” he said, his irritation even more pronounced.

“An Eagle is your wife?” she asked, as if he had claimed to have married a leper.

“Liathano is of noble birth out of Bodfeld.”

“A minor family which can bring no worthwhile alliance to your position. Surely it would be wiser to seek a more advantageous match. Duke Conrad’s daughter, or Margrave Gerberga of Austra’s youngest sister, Theucinda. Margrave Waltharia herself, if it is true that her husband died on your expedition, leaving her free. There was some interest there before, between the two of you, I believe.”

“I have what I need.”

Scholastica turned her gaze and examined Liath with a look meant to intimidate. Strangely, Liath found herself caught between an intense boredom at the prospect of having to endure much more of this sparring and at the same time a feeling of being wrung so tight that like Sanglant she could not sit restfully but kept tapping one foot on the carpet.

“Your mother was a heathen?” asked Scholastica at last.

“No, not really, Holy Mother,” said Liath, aware of how disrespectful she sounded and, for this instant, just not caring.

“A Daisanite woman of black complexion whom your father impregnated?”

“My mother was a daimone of the upper air, imprisoned by the woman who later made herself skopos. My father loved her. I am the result of that passion.”

Was that a smile that shifted the lines in that grim expression, even for an instant? Liath had no idea, but she saw that such a bald statement did not confound the abbess although her three clerics made little noises of astonishment. In some cases, a smile is a sword.

“Do you have a soul?” the abbess asked kindly.

Half the people in the tent gasped, while the other half, shocked into silence, stared. Sanglant shifted, ready to rise and confront this challenge, but Liath set a hand on his forearm and he quieted, although she could feel the tension in his muscles, a hound barely leashed and poised to lunge.

“Are not all creatures created by God? I am no different than you, Mother Scholastica.”

Her eyes narrowed and her mouth thinned, but it was impossible tell if she were offended or intrigued. “So you say. I understand that you are educated.”

“Yes, I am educated as well as my father was able to teach me. I can read and write in three languages.”

“You were condemned as a maleficus.”

“I am not one. I was educated as a mathematicus.”

“You admit it publicly, knowing that the church condemned such sorcery at the Council of Narvone? That you were excommunicated in absentia by a council at Autun?”

“I am not afraid of the church, Mother Scholastica.” She was surprised, more than anything, at how weary she felt in defending herself, and how peculiar it was to be shed at long last of the fear that had so long hunted her. Da had taught her to fear; it was the only defense he had known. “I believe in God, just as you do. I pray to God, just as you do. I am no heretic or infidel. You cannot harm me if my companions refuse to shun me, and the skopos and her mages are dead.”

As soon as she spoke the words, she knew them ill
said. The abbess stiffened and turned deliberately away from her.

“I am not accustomed to being spoken to in this manner, Sanglant,” said Mother Scholastica. “Especially not by one who was excommunicated. I have heard tales of this woman. She is infamous for seducing and discarding men.”

“So you believe,” said Sanglant. “I know otherwise.”

“Even your father was not immune.”

“My father was betrayed by his second wife, a pretty woman of impeccable noble lineage.”

“Will your fate run likewise, Nephew?”

He laughed curtly. “Liathano has already made her choice, and I had no say in it. I will not beg her to stay, nor can I prevent her from leaving.”

“Then why do you stay?” the abbess asked Liath, carefully not using her name, as if she were a creature that could not possess a name and therefore a human existence.

“Because I love him.”

“Love is trifling compared to obligation, faith, and duty. Passion waxes and wanes like the moon of which we have spoken. It is more fragile than a petal torn from a rose. You may even believe that your motives spring from disinterested love, but you have not answered my question. What do you want?”

Liath had no answer.

“I pray you, Sanglant, forgive me. I haven’t the patience for court life.”

“No,” he agreed.

She sat on the pallet they shared, watching him where he sat cross-legged at the tent’s entrance. He twitched the flap open and looked away from her to stare out into the camp. The ring of sentry fires burned steadily; a few shapes
paced, as he wished he could. In the royal tent he had room to pace, but he had acceded to Liath’s wishes weeks ago and set aside a smaller tent where they could sleep alone.

Even in Gent he hadn’t slept alone but rather with a pack of dogs as his attendants.

She coughed, bent slightly to scratch her thigh. He glanced at her. She had stripped down to a light linen shift so worn it was translucent. A lamp hung from the crossbeam of the tent, and by its flame he admired how the fabric curved and layered around breast and thigh and hip.

“No,” he repeated. “When you were an Eagle, you had no power and had to endure what was cast before you. Now, you have defeated Anne and her Sleepers. Nothing keeps you here except the memory of Blessing—and your love for me. Otherwise, I have nothing you want, as my aunt suspects.”

“Does she?”

“Perhaps not. She is the third child, after Henry and Rotrudis. She was placed in the convent early and invested as abbess by the time she was fourteen. Obligation and duty are the milk she has drunk all her life. She must believe you seek power or advancement. She may not be able to believe otherwise.”

“What do you believe?”

He shrugged. “I have nothing you want, Liath. Therefore, I believe you.”

She smiled, so sweetly that he laughed, although the sight of her pained him now that he was so close to bearing the full weight of the burden his father had thrust on him.

“With Da, I learned to run from place to place. Fugitives only want never to be caught. They never think beyond their next escape route. I set myself against Anne, and I defeated her—if what we have seen these past months can be called a triumph. What is left to me? I have outrun those who sought to capture me. I have lost my daughter.”

“As have Liutgard and Burchard lost theirs.” He sighed. “And I will become regnant, as my father wished. Will you leave me? It is true you haven’t the patience for court life.”

From this angle he could see, also, the hill on which the
fortress and convent of Quedlinhame stood, ancient seat of his great great grandmother’s inheritance. Lucienna of Attomar had brought lands and wealth to the first Henry, together with allies enough to assure him of support when he reached for and took the throne of Wendar. Without Lucienna and her kin, the first Henry would not have become regnant. In honor of that connection, the old fortress had been turned into the most favored and wealthiest monastery in the land, shepherded always by a girl born into the royal line. Like young Richardis, his aunt, who had renamed herself Scholastica when she entered the church as a youthful abbess three decades ago. She was accustomed to wielding power, and to passing judgment. Henry had trusted her. But she did not trust Sanglant or his half-human wife.

A torch shone on the distant wall, marking the gate. Otherwise, it was dark. As usual, clouds obscured the sky. He let the canvas fall and turned to look at his wife. She remained outwardly as calm as a pool undisturbed by wind or debris. Like the stars, she was veiled. But he no longer believed she was hiding anything from him. All artifice and concealment had been burned away, first in her journey into the aether and then, finally, in the cataclysm itself.

“You said once—” To his surprise, he faltered with the words catching in his throat, but he drove himself onward. “You said that what you saw and experienced in the heavens, with your mother’s kin, gave you peace.”

She nodded. “Yes, peace. More than that. I found joy.”

Jealousy gnawed like a worm, as the poets would say, and poets had a knack for speaking truth. “Joy,” he said hoarsely, hating the sound of the word, hating the sound of his voice because he knew that on this field he was helpless. He had no weapons and no strategy.

She caught his elbow and drew him close. “I did not stay there.” She pressed her lips into the curve of his neck.

Once, this alone would have driven all thought of trouble from his mind. Now, there were many things he wanted to say, but he let them go.

FOR three days they remained encamped outside of Quedlinhame, waiting. Liutgard went into seclusion. By the second day folk came down from the town to trade with the soldiers, not that the soldiers had much to trade with. The men cleaned and repaired their gear, hunted in the woodlands despite the dearth of game, and herded the horses into meadowlands to graze and rest.

With so much time on her hands, Liath flew with the Eagles, although she was no longer truly one of their nest. The twenty who had survived the trek north out of Aosta had gained another fifteen comrades, coming piecemeal into their ranks once the army reached Wendar. Most recently a very young Eagle named Ernst who had been chafing at Quedlinhame for several months had arrived at camp, proclaiming himself eager to be out of that cage. Now, in the afternoon, a dozen Eagles sat together under an awning that protected them from a drizzle. The sky had a grayer cast than usual. The fortress hill seemed colorless, set against the dreary sky. The soft light cast a glamour over the oak forest, while to the east the heavens had brightened to a pearllike gleam where the rain stopped and the clouds lightened. The sun never broke through.

“Not much snow in the mountains when we were crossing,” Hathui was saying to Ernst. “Maybe more came after we crossed. But if there isn’t snow, then the melt won’t swell the rivers come spring.”

“If spring ever comes,” said Ernst. “We had no snow at all. It was uncanny warm all winter. First, there was so much rain the fields flooded. In parts of Osterburg, streets and houses both ran underwater, all the way up to my knees! Nay, wait, that flood came in Askulavre. The bad rainstorms were earlier, back in the autumn. But now there’s only a bit of rain like this. And yet always cloud.”

“My granddad said there was one winter when he was a lad they never saw sun, and all spring, too,” said another Eagle, a southerner out of Avaria with curly dark hair and
big, callused hands. “He lost two of his brothers that next winter. It was worse the year after for they’d eaten most of their seed corn. He used to talk about that time a lot when he was blind and bedridden. I’d sit with him, just to hear the tale, for he liked telling it. Still, I wonder.” He gestured toward the heavens. “Crops can’t grow without sun and rain in the right measure.”