PROLOGUE (72 page)

What a fine handsome man he was, upright and proud, strong and stern! He dressed much like the other lords, no richer than they, but no one could have mistaken him for anyone but the king.

Surely someday her voice would return to her. Surely someday, if she lived to be an old grandmother, she could tell this story to a host of children gathered at her feet and astonished to hear that a soul as humble as her own had been privileged to see the king himself.

will be the ruin of me! I have already depleted my foodstuffs sending provisions with Count Lavastine. Now I must feed this host, and give up the rest of my stores as well?"

The mistress of Steleshame was overwrought and Rosvita had, alas, been given the task of calming her nerves. Outside, within palisade and ditch, the army set up camp for the night. Obviously, with Count Lavastine and his army ahead of them and the householder in hysterics, they could not expect to stay in Steleshame for more than one night. Rosvita had to admit that she was getting tired of the saddle.

After Sapientia's recovery from childbed, they had ridden north at a steady but unrelenting pace, wagons lurching behind, the army swelling its ranks with new recruits at every lady's holding at which they sheltered and feasted.

"And with Lord Wichman gone now," continued Mistress Gisela while her pretty niece stood behind her and listened to this rant with the calm face of a woman who has learned to survive by being pliant, "who will protect us against the Eika?"

"I should think," said Rosvita, "that with two armies sent against the Eika and with Margrave Judith and Duchess Rotrudis likely to arrive at any day now from the southeast, you need not fear the incursions of the Eika, good mistress."

But the householder only wailed and clutched at her niece's arm. "Ai, Lord! But the count and his force are days ahead of you, Sister! It takes four days to ride to Gent with the main road so neglected and dangerous. By now the Eika could have slaughtered them all and be eating their bones as their evening's feast!"

"Then it is one feast you will not have to provide," said the niece tartly, twisting her arm out of her aunt's grip.

Sister Amabilia and Brother Fortunatus, hovering at Rosvita's back, both made sudden piglike noises and Rosvita turned to see them covering their mouths with the
^!
sleeves of their robes. Fortunatus began to cough. Amabilia snorted unsuccessfully in an attempt to stop laughing and then, luckily, young Brother Constantine came forward to I remonstrate with the young woman for making a joke out I of what was no joking matter.

"I beg you, Brother," interposed Rosvita swiftly, "let us
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•
soothe the fears of good Mistress Gisela. We need only a simple supper, I should think, since the good mistress is no noble chatelaine of a large estate to lay a fine table—

But this was too much for the householder. Goaded into action by this assault on her dignity and wealth, she turned on her niece and ordered fifty cattle slaughtered at once, as well as one hundred chickens and . . .

Rosvita and her clerics beat a hasty retreat to the table within the hall set aside for their use.

"It sounds as if she means to kill every chicken in the I holding," said Sister Amabilia. "I wonder if there will be | any left for the poor souls who bide here."

"There will be no poor souls left at all," retorted Brother Fortunatus, "if King Henry does not drive the Eika out of Gent."

Rosvita left them to their squabbling and walked outside.

There she found Villam sitting on a bench, watching while the inner yard was raked so that the king's pavilion might be set up where no refuse littered the ground. His hand rested quietly on a thigh. The empty sleeve of his lost arm was pinned up to the shoulder so that it wouldn't flap. He smiled and indicated the bench beside him. She sat.

"You are serious today, Lord Villam," she said, noting I his frown.

He merely shrugged. "It is hard for a man, even one as old as I, to watch as a battle approaches while knowing he cannot fight in it
—and has no son to send out in his place." i
"True enough." She did not glance at his missing arm, lost in the battle of Kassel, but surely he did not regret the loss of the arm as much as he did the loss of his son, Berthold, all those months ago
—more than a year!—in the hills above the monastery at Hersfeld. Then she followed his gaze and could not contain a gasp. "Surely she doesn't mean to ride into battle so soon after giving birth?"

Under an awning Princess Sapientia sat in a camp chair, attended by Father Hugh, her favorites, her Eagle, and the servants and wet nurse who took care of baby Hippolyte. A vigorous child, the infant was even now wailing heartily as an armorer measured a stiff coat of leather against Sapientia's frame, stouter now after her pregnancy.

"It has been almost two months since the birth," said Villam.

"Almost two months!" Rosvita shook dust off the hem of her robes and resettled them. "I do not like it, I admit, although she has gained remarkably in strength." Since Sapientia had almost nothing to do with the infant, she had adjusted quickly to her new state: that of uncrowned heir.

Villam nodded. "It isn't enough, truly, that she has proved her worthiness for the throne by right of fertility. She must still show she has the ability to command and to lead, and this is as good a test as any."

"And easy to hand." Rosvita smiled wryly.

It was true: Henry had neither crowned nor anointed Sapientia, but she was seen everywhere with him, she rode beside him on their progress, sat beside him at feast and at council, and was given leave to speak when it came time to exhort the ladies and lords of Wendar to spare troops for the assault on Gent. The infant, who was pleasant to look upon as well as strong, was noted and remarked on everywhere they went, and Sapientia kept it by her at all times
—except at night—as if to remind everyone of her accomplishment. . . and of her new position as heir by that same right of fertility.

"I think we need not fear, Sister," added Villam, reading her silence with his usual sagacity. "She has grown steadier in the past months. And Father Hugh is wise enough to counsel her."

"Is he?"

"Do you doubt him?" he asked, genuinely surprised. "He is much changed."

"I suppose he is," she agreed, but absently, for looking at Hugh where he stood in perfect humble attendance on his princess, she could not help but wonder
—again—about the book.

Ai, Lady, the thought of the book nagged at her. It worried at her, this mouse's hunger, day and night and even, that evening, while she sat in the war council held beneath the broad ceiling of the king's pavilion. The small and ill-fitted hall at Steleshame had been deemed suitable for a householder but certainly not for a king and his retinue of nobles, so they had adjourned to the pavilion, now cramped with bodies all wedged together.

Sapientia sat on Henry's left, Villam stood to his right. Around them stood those nobles important enough to demand or beg entrance to the nightly war council, chief among them young Duchess Liutgard of Fesse, who had joined up with them northeast of Kassel several weeks ago; Father Hugh; Villam's daughter's husband, Lord Gebhard of Weller Gass; the latest Count of Hesbaye, a stocky, placid man rumored to be a doughty fighter; Lady Ida of Vestrimark, who, as cousin to the late Countess Hildegard, was eager to personally avenge her cousin's death as well as lay claim to her lands; and any number of sons or husbands or nephews of prominent landholding noblewomen who had sent their male kinfolk as their representatives.

Sapientia alone of Henry's children now rode with the king. Theophanu had not yet returned from the convent of St. Valeria, nor had they heard any word from her
—although she might well be looking for them in Wayland if she had missed the messenger sent to the convent with news of their march on Gent. Ekkehard had been left with the rest of the children in the schola at the palace of Weraushausen, in the keeping of the monks of Eben, some ten days' ride southwest of Steleshame. The boy had begged to be allowed to attend the march; he was almost of age, after all, and the experience would in truth help temper him, but Henry had left him behind with the others—for safekeeping.

A servant brought wine and passed the cup among the restless nobles.

"We're only four days behind Count Lavastine!" exclaimed Duchess Liutgard in her usual impetuous manner. "I say we march on tonight!"

"And arrive there completely exhausted?" asked Villam.

"Better than arriving there to find the count dead and his army cut to pieces! We can see well enough to march at night
—the moon is nearly full!"

"But our road lies through the forest," said Henry, thus ending the discussion. "I, too, see the need for haste, but not the need to be reckless. I have sent outriders ahead to alert Count Lavastine. We will follow at a steady march without depleting ourselves."

Too restless to remain, with her mind wandering in such an irritable fashion, Rosvita rose and went outside. Just beyond the awning stood the king's Eagle, Hathui, her head upturned to examine the heavens.

It was a drastic step, but Rosvita took it nevertheless: She glanced around to make sure they could speak without being overheard and then asked the woman what she knew of the matter.

"The book?" said the Eagle, obviously startled. "Indeed, I know of the book. Liath always carried it with her, and as far as I ever knew it belonged to her. I suppose it's true she might have stolen it from Father Hugh."

"But you don't think she did?"

"Wolfhere didn't believe she stole it, though she kept it hidden even from him. We all knew she had it, but Wolfhere never demanded she show it to us. He said once to me that it was her right to conceal it from the rest of us, as she wished."

Wolfhere. It seemed to Rosvita that far too much of this mystery revolved around a simple Eagle
—although by all accounts Wolfhere was by no means simple. "You were traveling through Heart's Rest when you came upon Liath and Hanna? The king always wants for Eagles, it's true, and I suppose Wolfhere might have found them likely candidates."

"Nay, Sister. Wolfhere was looking for Liath. Both Manfred and I had been sent out by him to look for a girl answering to her description, but it was only when we joined up again that he told us he'd discovered her. That was when we rode to Heart's Rest together."

"Manfred?"

Rosvita could not read the expression on the Eagle's face, but the marchlander made a shrugging motion with one shoulder, as at a nagging pain. "Our comrade. He was killed at Gent."

So did God remind even the strong that life is short, and grief long-lasting. "I will add his name to my prayers."

"Thank you, Sister!" For a moment Rosvita thought the Eagle meant actually to clasp her hand as she would a comrade's, but she hooked her fingers under her belt instead and with her other hand brushed something out of her eyes. "So may he be remembered on earth and sung into the Chamber of Light."

But the fate of an anonymous Eagle, however tragic, did not lodge for long in Rosvita's thoughts. She had already begun to rearrange the evidence in her mind. Did it begin to form a new and perhaps more interesting picture? "Wolfhere went to Heart's Rest to
find
Liath. He knew her?"

"That I don't know, Sister."

"Father Hugh tells me she stole the book from him while she was his slave," said Rosvita, more irritated than ever. Hugh's story was easy, and convenient, to believe
—and not entirely at odds with what the Eagle had told her—and he
was
the son of a margrave. But Hathui's account of events had an Eagle's eye behind it, and a certain ring of bald truth. "Why should I believe you, a common-born woman, over the son of a margrave?"

Hathui smiled wryly. "God makes the sun to rise on noblewoman and commoner alike. The Lord and Lady love us all equally in Their hearts, my lady."

"Yet Our Lord and Lady follow Their own will in parceling out to individuals whatever They wish. To some They give more, and to others, less. Could we not also argue that we merit what we each receive? That They confer on the elect these gifts of grace that set them apart from others?"

But the Eagle shrugged, her expression untroubled. "All gifts are given to us by God. Without such gifts, no matter how noble, we are dust. So we are all equal before God
— and the honorable word of a common-born woman no different than that of a nobly born man."

It was startling to hear a commoner speak so bluntly, but Rosvita could not gainsay the truth in her words. "There is wisdom in what you say, Eagle."

Hathui touched a finger to her lips as though to force words back before she blurted out something unseemly. The wind lifted dust from ground already stirred up by the passage of so many feet and so much activity. Soon, all too soon, the night would be alive with Eika
—and many of those who marched in this army would die. Rosvita shuddered, although it wasn't cold.