PROLOGUE (47 page)

"Are you sure all of them sleep?" she hissed.

"No one can hear us whom you need fear, Your Highness." He shifted on the bed, and Liath heard the muffled sighing sound of two people kissing passionately.

"Ah," gasped Sapientia at last, "how I long for the day when I am rid of this burden
—live and healthy, God grant—so that we may again—"

"Hush." He moved away from her and again, hidden from all but Liath, began to wind the gleaming threads, as faint as spider's silk, between his fingers. "Sleep now, Your Highness."

Her breathing gentled and slowed, and she slept. Liath lay as still as stone, but he shifted on the bed, rolling back until he lay above her as a boulder poised on the edge of a cliff shades the delicate plants beneath in its shadow. She held her breath.

"I know you are not asleep, Liath. Have you forgotten that I had many nights to study you, where you lay beside me, to study your face in repose, or when you were only pretending to sleep? I know when you sleep, and when you do not. And you are not sleeping now, my beauty. All the others sleep, but not you. And not me."

He could only speak in this way if he was sure everyone else slept, and how could he know that? Or perhaps he did not care. Why should he? He was the abbot of a large institution, the son of a powerful margrave, an educated churchman out of the king's schola. She was nothing compared to that, a King's Eagle, a kinless fugitive whose parents had both been murdered.

"Tell me, Liath," he continued in that same soft, persuasive, beautiful voice, "why do you torment me so? It is wrong of you to do so. I cannot understand what power lies in you that eats at me so constantly. You must be doing it on purpose, you must have some scheme, some end, in mind. What is it? Is it this?"

He shifted. She would have screamed, but she could not, she could only lie in mute dread, and then his fingers brushed her cheek, probing for her lips, explored them softly before tracing down over her chin to her vulnerable throat. Bile rose, burning her tongue.

"Come up here," he whispered, fingers drawing a pattern on her throat.

If she went to him now, perhaps he would stop tormenting her. If she only made him happy, if she obeyed him, he would be kind to her.

As quickly, the thought washed off her as water slides down a roof. She rolled away from him, bumping up against a sleeping servant. Sapientia murmured, half waking, and a man laughed in the corridor outside.

"Damn," muttered Hugh. She cringed, waiting for the blow, but he only shifted away from her and at last she heard his breathing slow and deepen. All the others slept on, so gently, so peacefully. Only she did not sleep.

rVlORNINGr came none too soon, and she crept out as soon as there was any least graying of darkness toward light through the cracks in the shutters. A few torches burned by the entrance to the kitchens as servants began to prepare for the afternoon's feast. Mist wreathed the palisade and twined around corners, covering the courtyard in a dense blanket of cold. Drops of icy rain stung her cheeks.

The gates were already propped open, but no one had yet ventured out to the privies beyond. Most servants were not yet up, and any of the noble folk would use their chamberpots rather than venture out so early. But Liath could see perfectly well in the morning gloom, and she wanted a moment of freedom. She relieved herself and started back, but when the gates loomed before her out of the trailing mist, she was seized with such horror that she could not move except to sink down to her knees. The ground was bitter cold; wet soaked up through the fabric of her leggings.

They did not see her, but she saw them: concealed from the sight of any in the courtyard within, Hugh paused in the lee of the gate to meet Princess Theophanu. The princess was hesitant, drawn but reluctant, as a half wild but starving creature shies forward, then away, then forward again to sniff at food laid out by alien hands, suspicious of a trap but desperate to slake its hunger.

He touched her hand in an intimate manner, twining fingers through hers but in no other way touching her. He spoke. She replied. Then he slipped something into her hands. It winked as sun cut through a gap in the trees, dispelling an arm of mist that shadowed the gate: his panther brooch.

Furtively, Theophanu hurried back inside. He lingered, looking about, looking for
her,
but she was still hidden by mist and the flash of the rising sun. He turned and walked out toward the privies.

Liath jumped up and bolted inside the gates
—and ran into Helmut Villam. He caught her in a strong grasp as she jerked back and stumbled. The sleeve hung empty below the elbow of his other arm, the wound he had received at the Battle of Kassel when he had defended King Henry against the false claims of Henry's half sister, Sabella.

"I beg your pardon, Lord Villam," Liath gasped.

"You are well, I trust, or in a hurry about the princess' business?"

"I was only out
—I beg your pardon, my lord."

"No need to beg anything of me," he said without releasing her, a certain spark in his eyes as he looked her over. He was at least fifteen years older than King Henry but still robust in every way, as everyone on the progress continually joked. "It is I who should beg comfort of you, for it is cold these nights and I have been, alas, abandoned to shiver alone."

At any moment Hugh would come back through the gates and find her. "I beg you, my lord, you are too kind, but I wear the badge of an Eagle."

He sighed. "An Eagle. It is true, is it not?" He released her and clapped his hand to his chest. "My heart is broken. If ever you choose to heal it . . ."

"I am sensible to the honor you do me, my lord," she said quickly, retreating, "but I am sworn."

"And I am sorry!" He laughed. "You are well spoken as well as beautiful. You are wasted as an Eagle, I swear to you!" But he let her go.

She could not bring herself to return to the confinement of Sapientia's supervision. And she had one other thing to check on. She went in search of her comrade.

She found Hathui sitting on a log bench outside the stables, polishing harness for the day's hunt. Her gear lay at her feet, and she looked up, smiled wryly at Liath, and beckoned for her to sit down beside her. "There is plenty for you to do." She gestured toward a pile of mud-splattered harness. The light had changed, spare and silver now although the sun had not yet cleared the surrounding trees. Hathui's hands, gloveless, were chapped red with cold.

"I must return," said Liath. "Her Highness will be looking for me when she wakes. I just wanted to
—'

"I know." Hathui glanced to her right where saddlebags lay heaped. "Still in my possession."

"You are a good comrade," said Liath.

"I am your comrade in the Eagles!" Hathui snorted. "And I will expect no less of you, Liath, when I must ask for your aid. Here, now. Will you trim my hair again?" Her hair, shorn short, had gotten ragged at the ends.

Liath took out her knife, tested it on a strand of hair, and then began carefully to trim the ends. "Your hair is so fine, Hathui," she said. "Not coarse, like mine. It's so soft, like the touch of a beautiful cloth."

"So my mother always said." Hathui spit into a cloth and used it to rub a shine into her bridle. "That is one reason I dedicated my hair to St. Perpetua when I swore myself to her blessed service."

"Should I cut my hair?" Liath asked suddenly, remembering Villam.

"What does
that
mean?"

"I only . . . it's just...oh, Hathui, on my way back from the privies the margrave asked me if...if, you know
—"

"Did he tell you the sad story of how his paramour has gone over to Lord Amalfred and he is most cold at night?"

Liath snorted and then, unable to stop herself, laughed. "Did he proposition you, too, Hathui?"

"No, indeed, for I wear my hair shorn, as you say. But he did once, some years ago when I first came to the Eagles and spent time at court. Wolfhere told me that Villam is one of those men afflicted with lust or perhaps certain tiny fire daimones have taken up residence in his loins and dance there night and day. He is notorious for having a taste for very young women and a new one frequently. It is no surprise to me that he has gone through four wives, or is he on his fifth now?"

"But if he has so many concubines and lovers
—?"

"I don't mean he wears his wives out with his physical attentions, but with grief, for he's always straying, and though he is a good man, a cunning general, and a wise counselor in other matters, King Henry at least knows better than to emulate him in this."

"How can I avoid him?"

"It is impossible to avoid anyone on the king's progress. But Villam is a good man, more so than most, and if you are modest and respectful when you are around him, so that he knows you mean to keep to your Eagle's vows, he won't bother you again. What do you have in the bag, Liath?"

She almost nicked the other Eagle's neck. "Nothing. Something. It's a book."

"I
know
it's a book. We saw it at Heart's Rest. What sort of book is it that you hide as if you'd stolen some of the king's treasure and mean to keep it hidden for fear of losing your life if you were found out?"

"It's mine! It was Da's. I can't tell you, Hathui, you or anyone. Some words aren't meant to be spoken out loud or they attract
—some words must be kept in silence."

"Sorcery," said Hathui, and then, "ouch!"

"I beg your pardon." Liath staunched the wound with the end of her tunic. "It isn't bleeding much."

"Was that to punish me for my curiosity?" But Hathui sounded more like she was about to laugh than to get angry.

"You just startled me."

"Liath." Hathui sighed, set down her bridle, and turned 'round. Over her shoulder Liath could see the walls of the hunting lodge still wreathed in mist. Servants led horses out from the stable doors. Men and woman came and went from the privies. Smoke boiled up from the kitchens as the roasting for the afternoon's feast was begun, and servants grimy with smoke and soot hauled buckets and kettles up from the river beyond the palisade gates. "Every village in the marchlands has its wisewoman or conjureman. We listen to what they say, because it's always wise to hear the words of the elder folk, what few of them there are. Some of them only tell stories from the old days, before the Circle of Unity came to the outlanders and the Wendish tribes. Aye, those tales are so dreadful and exciting that I fear for my soul when I hear them. Sometimes I still dream of those tales, though their heroes and fighting women are all heathens. Ha!" She clapped her hands to chase off a thin little dog that had sidled over to sniff at her gear. "Anyway, certain of the old ones have powers no one speaks of out loud. But anyone who lives on the edge of the wilderness knows that if you call out the true name of the creatures that live beyond the walls and fields, you might attract their notice and then they would
come.
Where I come from, we call that sorcery."

"Ai, Lady," said Liath, not needing to turn round to know who was approaching her.

"Ai, Lady, indeed." Hathui's eyes narrowed as she looked past Liath. She rose, inclining her head. "Father Hugh."

"Princess Sapientia requires the services of her Eagle," he said crisply. He said nothing else but did not move until Liath put away her knife and turned to follow him.

"Does
she
have the book?" he asked in a low voice as they crossed the courtyard. "Eagles are notoriously faithful each to the other. One would scarcely think common folk capable of such loyalty. But how can you trust her, a mere freewoman, and not trust me, Liath?"

She did not need to answer because Sapientia was already waiting, impatient to be out on the hunt. She busied herself with duties beneath an Eagle, for Sapientia had servants aplenty, but keeping busy kept her away from Hugh. At last they rode out, a great cavalcade of noble riders, their servants on foot, the hounds and their handlers, and the king's foresters who lived year round in the tiny village beside the royal lodge. Amid the noise and shouting and hubbub, Liath noticed a sudden and disturbing detail: Theophanu had clasped her hip-length riding cloak with a gold panther brooch. No one else appeared to notice, not even Sapientia.

.A first, the forest around the lodge lay fairly open. Trees grew back at shoulder height where they had been cut for firewood for the king's hearth; half-wild pigs raced away into the shelter of brush and young trees. But soon the foresters led them into the older, deeper, uncut woods. The hounds were released, and the hunt was on.

Their course led them down a ravine and up a steep slope where half the riders had to dismount and lead their horses. Burrs caught on their cloaks. A gap formed between a forward group of the hardiest
—and most reckless—riders, and a more cautious group. The unmounted servants lagged behind. Liath could barely keep up with Sapientia, who even halfway through her pregnancy was determined to ride at the head of the host.