King's Blood (10 page)

It was heady, that knowledge. If he was not careful, he could get cocky. Then they would find another way to trap him.

But not tonight. Not tomorrow, either. Lanfranc was going to crown him, and the other two were going to bless him. After that, what would be would be. He could bow to fate, too—as long as it went the way he would have it.

CHAPTER 11

Sister Cecilia had been gone for more days than Edith was old enough to count. She was supposed to be on retreat in one of the daughter houses, meditating on her sins, but the folk of air had told Edith she was in London. Sister Cecilia's brother was king now; she had helped to crown him.

The land did not feel any better because there was a king in London. It was still riddled with rot like a bad cheese. Maybe parts of it were not rotting so quickly, but that was all the good that Edith could find.

Here in the abbey, the greyness was spreading without Sister Cecilia to keep it in hand. Edith tried to stop it, but she did not know how. She had not come that far yet in her learning.

Sister Gunnhild's lessons were not as terrible as she had feared. Mostly they were in Latin—speaking and reading and writing—and most of them were about holy things: prayers and psalms and lives of saints. Sister Gunnhild had a particular fondness for fallen women who repented and turned back to God. She loved Mary Magdalene best, but there were many others—more than Edith had ever known existed.

Sister Gunnhild was only a grey, grim person in the abbess' presence. In the little cell in which she taught Edith, little by little she showed a softer face. She was actually pretty under the veil and the habit. She had a fair Saxon face and wide blue eyes, and her eyebrows were the color of wheat. Edith supposed her hair must be the same.

She had a beautiful voice. She sang the prayers and the psalms, and taught Edith to sing them, too. Edith loved the music, the way it put order in the world. The stars sang like that, and the folk of air when they came down near the earth.

“Aren't you supposed to teach me other things, too?” Edith asked her one day. Harvest was past and winter was closing in. It was nearly Martinmas, with grey rain and thickening of mist, and every morning was a little colder.

Sister Gunnhild paused. She had been setting out the scrap of parchment for Edith to write on, while Edith sharpened a quill for a pen. “Other things?” she asked. “What would those be?”

“I can learn Latin and psalms with the other novices,” Edith said. “I don't need a special tutor.”

She held her breath. She still was not entirely sure what Sister Gunnhild would think or do.

As Edith had hoped—and maybe prayed a little—she did not take offense. She finished setting out the parchment and the ink, but she set the book aside from which Edith was to read and copy. She was using the time to think, Edith thought, and find words to say that Edith might understand.

Edith did not try to help her. Grown people never appreciated that from a child. She waited instead, with her hands folded as she had been taught.

Sister Gunnhild's smile was surprising, because it was so warm. Edith would never have thought she had that much warmth in her. “You see a great deal,” Sister Gunnhild said. “More than your aunt guesses, I think. Or your mother, too?”

Edith shrugged. “Old people don't see as well,” she said. “Old people who are very holy—some things they don't see at all. They don't want to.”

The fair brows rose. “Am I old, then?”

“A little,” Edith said, though it might not have been wise.

Sister Gunnhild looked as if she could not decide whether to laugh or glare. In the end she chose neither. She asked instead, “Do you know why I was put in charge of you?”

“Because your father was a king,” Edith answered.

“Indeed,” Sister Gunnhild said. “And you know which king he was?”

“Harold,” said Edith. “The last one who was Saxon.”

“Yes,” Sister Gunnhild said.

“He wasn't royal,” said Edith. “Not the way my mother is. She goes all the way to Alfred. Whereas he—”

“He was still king,” Sister Gunnhild said. Her tone was mild. She did not seem angry. “He had no Norman blood.”

“We don't, either,” Edith said. “That was Edward, who was king before your father. His mother was a Norman. My mother's grandfather was his brother, but
his
mother was Saxon.”

“You were well taught,” said Sister Gunnhild.

“Mother said I should know where I came from,” said Edith, “and why it matters. I'm to help take England back. I don't know how. I think Mother Abbess does. Do you?”

“I don't think so,” Sister Gunnhild said. “I'm to make a good Christian of you. And a good Saxon.”

“Aren't they the same thing?”

“One would think so,” Sister Gunnhild said.

“I think maybe they're different,” said Edith.

She could tell that she had gone too far. Sister Gunnhild's face closed up. She reached for the book and opened it without looking. “I think you think too much,” she said. “Here. Copy this page.”

Edith had copied it only a day or two before. But she did not think it was a good time to say so. She set her lips together carefully and reached for pen and ink and parchment. Mutely, obediently, she copied Latin words onto scraped parchment, just as she would do an hour later when she went to lessons with the rest of the novices.

 
A little before Martinmas, Sister Cecilia came back. There was no great homecoming and no particular welcome. She was simply there again, singing the office in the morning—and with her presence, some of the greyness lifted from the chapel.

Edith felt as if she had been holding her breath for weeks and now could let it go. She supposed it should bother her that she needed a Norman here to feel as if she could breathe. But that was the way it was.

She had been escaping when she could. The Otherworld was very close here, except in the chapel and near Mother Abbess. Sometimes it was so close that she could see through to it even while she was with the other novices, at lessons or performing duties.

She had learned to be very quick and clean about passing back and forth. It was quiet on the other side, and peaceful. Folk of air flocked there, but she never saw any other human, or anything that troubled her unduly. Even the dead parts, the withered woods and blasted heaths, were empty and strangely clean. It was only in the mortal world that they were rotten and foul.

Now with Sister Cecilia back, Edith did not have so pressing a need to escape. She still did it because she could, and because she loved the quiet. As winter closed in, it went on being summer there, except in the dead lands.

She knew a place where roses grew, white as snow and red as blood. They had no thorns like mortal roses; they made wonderful and fragrant garlands. She had brought a single white rose back while Sister Cecilia was away, and kept it deep in her box of belongings, wrapped in a bit of linen. It did not wither or die like a mortal rose, but went on blooming. Little by little the scent of it crept through everything in the box, until it all smelled faintly of roses.

It was her secret, so perfect and so wonderful that she saw no need at all to look at it. Simply knowing it was there was enough.

It was the memory of that, and the ghost of its fragrance, that kept her breathing in chapel, and let her sing the psalms with the other novices when she might have been gasping and wheezing instead. Even after Sister Cecilia came back, she kept it in her heart, folded as close as the rose in the linen. It was a great comfort.

 
On Martinmas eve, the Otherworld was closer than ever. Even the chapel seemed less grey, and Edith thought she saw a glimmer beyond it, like stars through fog. The scent of roses crept out of the box and surrounded Edith's cot. The folk of air came drifting down to bathe in it.

She was strangely restless. She endured her lessons with less patience than usual. Those with the novices seemed intolerably dull. Her hour with Sister Gunnhild was simply intolerable.

The sky was heavy and weeping rain. Recreation today was in the cloister, for those who were minded to brave the damp and the cold. The less hardy stayed inside with lamps and candles and bits of lessons or needlework.

Edith eluded both. They each thought she was with the other, which suited her very well. She slipped out through the cloister, running through a brief downpour of rain, and slipped and darted and slid and halted in sunlight.

Warmth surrounded her. The scent of roses was dizzying. She shook mortal rain out of her gown. Where it fell on the grass, it turned to diamond and crystal.

She laughed, because she could only be here for a little while, but while she was here she was free.

Her laughter faded. Something was different. The sun was as bright as ever, and the air as warm, but it felt odd underneath.

The peace of emptiness was gone. Things were moving, stirring. There were powers in this place, stronger and more solid than the folk of air.

Much stronger. Much more solid. They were taking shape beyond the field of roses: tall people and fair, much fairer than any mortal could be. Even in the sun, they seemed to walk in moonlight and starlight. Their hair was long and shining, their faces white and cold and keen. Their eyes were like bright steel.

Edith was not afraid of them. She supposed she should be. They knew she was there: they knew everything that happened in their country. But they did not mind. She belonged there, too, in a way.

They were mounted on things like horses, if horses had fangs and clawed feet. They had swords and bows and heavy spears for hunting boar. Their hounds were as tall as ponies and as white as bone, with ears as red as blood.

One of the pale riders cast a glace at Edith. There was a mount for her if she would take it. It was more like a horse than some of the others, and its eye was not quite as wild.

As she reached for the rein, a firm and solid hand held her back. “Not yet,” said Cecilia. She bowed to the pale lord and said to him, “Her time is not yet come.”

The pale lord frowned slightly, but he bowed, giving way to her will. She bowed back, as a queen would.

The eerie hunt rode away. Edith stood forgotten. “That wasn't fair,” she said.

“That,” said Cecilia, “wasn't safe. They were hunting the black boar that feeds on mortal flesh and drinks mortal blood. Maybe they were sharing power with you. Maybe they were thinking of a sacrifice. Blood of kings, child: you have plenty of that. It's a potent magic.”

“They didn't want my blood,” Edith said.

“How do you know they didn't want your soul?”

Edith opened her mouth to answer that, but the words would not come. She did not know anything.

“You will,” Cecilia said with a sudden shift from stern to almost gentle. “Come now. A day will come when you can ride with them. Today you belong in the abbey. Since you walk so well between the worlds, I have a gift for you: a bit of magic. You'll be warded when you come back. Then you'll be safe from temptation.”

“What if I don't want to be?”

“When you have the knowledge to judge that,” Cecilia said, “then you'll be free to do as you please. Now come.”

There was a power in the words, a twist of magic. Edith had no power in her to disobey.

She thought about resenting it. But Cecilia had told her she would come back. She would have to be safer, that was all. She could understand that. Safe was good, if one was young and small and in great need of teaching.

She would grow up. Maybe not fast enough to suit her, but it would happen. That was as sure as the shift from sun to rain, from immortal garden to mortal cloister.

And when she was grown up—then things would be different. She would be much more powerful and much more wise. She would give the orders then, and lesser people would obey. Someday even, maybe, she would be a queen.

PART TWO

JUDGMENT
anno domini 1093-1094

CHAPTER 12

The wind wuthered across the empty land. There was a raw edge to it. Along the crumbling stretch of the Roman wall, patches of winter's snow still lingered.

Most of William's army had gone ahead to Carlisle. He had paused for a bit of hawking, trying the wings of a new gyrfalcon in this stark and forbidding country. The escort that rode with him was as hardy as he—he would not have kept the pack of them with him if they had not been—and as happily inclined to linger for a day or two, far away from the drudgery of the court.

He had spent the past year getting Cumbria firm in hand. That was done and well enough. A bit of court in Carlisle, then back to the south for another round of convincing fractious barons that he was, indeed, king.