The Gathering Storm (37 page)

“Biscop Constance is a fair woman. She will not judge you rashly,” he said.

“But what of our case, my lord? You walked with Brother Agius before his martyrdom. You heard him speak.”

“Brother Agius was a troubled man.” It was the only answer Alain could give. “I cannot say if he was right or wrong, nor can any of you. Do not imperil your souls by bringing violence to this peaceful place, I beg you. Go to Autun. If your cause is just, the biscop will listen to you.”

“I don’t want to go to Autun!” objected Margrave Judith’s young husband.

“Shut up, Baldwin,” said the redheaded youth. “They’ve
got twenty stout men with staves, and we’ve only got knives. We can hardly preach the truth if we’re dead.”

“We have nothing to fear,” said Sigfrid, “since we walk with the truth. Remember the phoenix, Baldwin. Do not lose faith.”

“I have not lost faith, my lord,” cried Hathumod. She reached up boldly and touched his cheek where the blemish stained his skin, then flushed and pulled her hand away. She fumbled at her sleeve and thrust an old rusted nail into his hand. “I have not forgotten that God tested us by offering us a broken vessel in place of the whole one. I still have the nail.”

Surely the guivre had returned, its baleful glare in full force, because he could not move. The nail burned his skin. He had rid himself of both promises and burdens, but what he had given away to the centaur shaman had returned to haunt and plague him. Would he never be free of Tallia’s sin? Was it possible he loved her still? Was his memory of happiness with Adica only a delirium, caught in the mind of a wounded man?

He refused to surrender to the chains that once bound him.

“This is no longer mine.” He pressed the nail into Hathumod’s pale fingers. “I am not what you think I am. I am bound to this monastery now—”

“Who are you?” demanded the abbot. “You came to us raving about the end times and yet stand here like a lord born into a noble house.”

“He was a Lion,” said Dedi, speaking for the first time.

“Nay, he was a count,” said Hathumod. “It was wickedness and the greed of others that brought him low! I know what he truly is, for I have seen that which follows in his wake!”

“He’s a laborer born and bred,” objected Brother Lallo. “I’ve seen the calluses on his hands. He knows plaiting and weaving as would any child born to a family who work along the sea lanes.”

“These cannot all be true.” Father Ortulfus’ irritation scalded his tone.

“I am no one, Father.” He could not keep the bitterness from his voice, although he knew bitterness was a sin. He must not blame God for the happiness he had shared with
Adica; too well he understood how brief life, and happiness, were. “I am just a bastard born to a whore and an unknown father.”

“Yet those fearsome hounds follow you as meekly as lambs. One might say you had bewitched them.”

“Say what you will,” said Alain. “God alone know the truth of what I am. What kin my mother was born to I cannot say, only that she died a pauper and a whore.”

Hathumod whimpered, the kind of bleat a small animal might make when caught in a falcon’s claws.

“What are you now?” Father Ortulfus’ intent gaze might have been that of the falcon.

“I am grateful to be a common laborer, working in peace at this monastery.”

The sacrist appeared out of the clot of officials who had fallen back at the first sign of violence.

“Think of the oil, Father!” he whispered so loudly that all heard.

The abbot bit his lip, hesitating, then gestured for the sacrist to step back before he addressed Alain again.

“Is it your intention to declare yourself as a converso? To work for a year and a day at this place and then, when that year and a day have passed, to devote your life to God as a monk?”

The night was so still and restful, chill without the biting cold that would come with winter, that its tranquil presence spread a glamour over them, washing away the tensions that had threatened to erupt moments before. The evening breeze touched Alain’s face and spilled peace through his soul. He remembered the breath of healing that passed over his heart after the guivre vanished into the wood. Was it a presentiment?

The man who raised him, his foster father Henri, pledged him to the church in return for the right to foster him. Didn’t he turn away from that vow when he pledged himself to the Lady of Battles? All she had brought him was death.

Nay, love, too. He would not be dishonest. For all the pain it brought him, he would never disavow his love for Lavastine, for Adica, and even for Tallia, who had turned her back on him. For his faithful hounds, who followed him.

It was time to return to the vow first made, although he was only an infant when it was spoken over him.

“Truly,” he said, meeting the abbot’s avaricious gaze, “I will labor here for a year and a day, and then enter the monastery as a monk, devoting my life to God, as it should have been all along.”

“So be it.” Father Ortulfus turned to Prior Ratbold. “Escort our visitors to cells. There’s still the matter of Lord Berthold to investigate. We’ll send a party up to the barrows in the morning. I will interview them further after we’ve seen if there’s any truth to their claim.”

“What if we can’t find them again?” objected handsome Baldwin. “I don’t want to go back to those nasty barrows. They scared me.”

Hathumod turned on him angrily. Her tear-stained face glittered under the moon’s light. “You’ll hush now, Baldwin! I’ve had enough of your whining! No matter what happens next, no harm will come to us, will it, Lord Alain?”

He did not know the future. Yet in his heart he did not fear for them. They were not wicked liars, probably only mistaken in their belief, desperate for the passion brought to them by Agius’ tortured vision.

“No harm will come to you,” he agreed. “Father Ortulfus is a good man. He will listen carefully to what you have to say, as long as you are honest.”

As soon as Prior Ratbold escorted the visitors away, the laborers crept back onto the porch and into the dormitory, slipping away to their cots in the hope no one would notice. Father Ortulfus did not leave immediately. His attendants lingered beside him as the moon rose higher still, bathing the forest’s edge in its gray-silver light. From here, on the porch, they could not see the other buildings of Hersford Monastery, only a corner of the stables, the spindly outlines of apple and pear trees, and the fenced-off garden, fallow at this season except for a rank stand of rosemary.

The sacrist approached Alain, bobbing nervously. He wore a good linen robe, befitting his rank, under a knee-length wool tunic trimmed with fur. “There is a cell free for your use, Brother, set apart from the rest as befits your position among
us, but with a good rope bed, a rug, and other small courtesies.”

Alain regarded him with surprise. “Nay, Brother, what would I want such courtesies for? I will labor among my brethren here until I have fulfilled my vow. A cot in the dormitory is good enough for me.”

Father Ortulfus watched him but said nothing. He and his attendants departed quietly. Alain stood on the porch listening, and after a while he heard the muffled sound of weeping. He walked into the dormitory to find Iso facedown on the coarse hemp-cloth cot, trying to stifle his sobs.

Kneeling beside the youth, Alain rested a hand on his bony back. “All has been set right.”

Iso struggled to speak. Fear made his stammer worse. “B—but th—they’ll th—throw me out. I h—h—have nowhere to g—g—go.”

“Nay, friend, no one will disturb you. You’ll stay here, where you belong.”

As Iso calmed, Alain became aware of many listening ears, those of the other day laborers, poor men, some crippled, some slow of wit, some merely down on their luck or seeking the assurance of a meal every day, who served the monastery with labor day in and day out, although few of these men would ever be allowed to take the vows of a monk. It was so quiet in the dormitory that a mouse could be heard skittering along the eaves. It was so quiet that the moon seemed to be holding its breath. The wind did not sigh in the rafters, nor could he hear the night breeze moving through the trees outside. Rage grunted and settled down beside Alain’s cot. It was too dark to see her as anything but shadow. Sorrow stood by the door, as still as though he had been turned to stone.

“Go to sleep now, Iso,” he said. “Let everyone rest. There is work to do tomorrow. Don’t let your hearts be troubled.”

They did shift and settle, they did go to sleep at last, although Alain lay wakeful for a long time before sleep claimed him. Memories drifted in clouds, obscure and troubling. He still felt the touch of the nail against his skin, like poison, and for a long time he saw Sorrow standing vigilant in the open door.

SHE had once been a captive in hardship. Now she suffered as a captive in luxury. The food was better, and she slept on a comfortable pallet at night in a spacious suite among the devoted servants of Presbyter Hugh. She never saw anyone murdered for sport or out of boredom and neglect, but otherwise the two conditions contrasted little. Twice, a servant of Duke Burchard approached one of Hugh’s stewards, asking that the duke be allowed to interview her himself; after the second refusal, the man did not come again. Hugh allowed no one to talk to her, not even the other Eagles. Seven Eagles besides herself attended Henry at court, including Rufus, but they slept and ate in other quarters to which she was never allowed access. Nor was she sent out with any messages, as her comrades were, riding out to various places in Aosta, north to Karrone, and even one to Salia.

She wore no chains, but she had no freedom of movement. Of course it was preferable to be a prisoner without the misery she had endured under the Quman, even if she had been subjected to far less than the hapless folk forced to follow, and die, in the army’s train.

Of course it was preferable.

That didn’t make it palatable.

If Hugh suspected that she had seen Hathui and heard her accusations, he never let on. Maybe he didn’t think so. Maybe if he thought so, she would be dead by now. In fact, he paid no attention to her at all once she had given an account of her travels and travails to him while a cleric busily wrote it all down. He had questioned her; she had replied. She hadn’t said everything she knew, but perhaps she had said enough. She could not tell if he suspected her of disloyalty or treason. Anyone as unrelentingly benevolent as Hugh could not, as far as she was concerned, be trusted.

And yet.

Small acts of charity softened the path he trod every day. He did not fear to walk into the grimmer parts of the city, where folk lived in the meanest conditions: beggars, itinerant cobblers, and whole families whose work seemed to consist of gleaning from sewers and garbage pits. In a city brimming with poverty, he turned no beggar away without offering the poor man bread and a coin. Laborers were hired out of his own purse to work on the walls and reconstruct buildings damaged in the mild earthquake. Now and again he redeemed captives brought to the market for sale into service as domestic slaves, those who professed to be Daisanites. Each week he led a service at the servants’ chapel to which any person working in the palace, high or low, might seek entry; no other presbyter deigned to humble himself in such a way when there were clerics aplenty available to minister to the lowborn.

No one at court spoke against him. Nor did any whisper of any unseemly connection between the beautiful presbyter and the young queen reach Hanna’s ears. As days passed, Hanna saw herself that Hugh was never alone with Queen Adelheid. Never. It was so marked that she supposed it was done deliberately.

In any case, the queen was pregnant. A second child would seal Adelheid’s grip on the imperial throne. Through all this, Hugh stood at the king’s right hand.

So it was today, on the feast day dedicated to All Souls, the twelfth day of Octumbre. The king received visitors in the royal hall with his court gathered around him. Hanna waited
to the right of the throne, standing against the wall, watching as Hugh intercepted each supplicant before allowing them to ascend the dais and kneel before the king and queen.

No information reached Henry that did not pass Hugh first. He controlled what the king knew and how the king made decisions. Hugh’s influence remained subtle, but pervasive. Was it possible that no one else saw as clearly as she did?

But looking over these courtiers who chatted as they waited in attendance, bright in their fine clothing and precious jewels and baubles, she saw no suspicion in their bearing or their gaze. A wind had dispelled the heat wave that had lingered, according to the natives, unusually long into the autumn season, so it was no hardship to pass the afternoon in gossip and splendor as petitioners came and went, most of them artisans and guildsmen fashioning the many trappings and the great feast that would accompany the coronation.

Now that the king had begun his inevitable transition into emperor, none of the nobles had the kind of companionable intimacy she had seen them once share with Henry back in the days when Margrave Villam and Sister Rosvita had counseled the king. Had Henry become proud? Would the crown soon to grace his head exalt him far above those who had once been his peers?