Crown of Stars

  She blushed and turned her attention to Baldwin, who was now gesticulating wildly as he related some tale to Ivar that Ivar did not, in fact, appear very interested in hearing. Ivar kept staring at the wagon, shifting his feet, and tugging on his hair. He was standing off at an angle and had not noticed the shift in the concealing beads.

  Well. It was no surprise that Sorgatani would notice Lord Baldwin. True enough, he was breathtaking of feature, but it seemed to her as she watched him talking that there was something a little vacant about that pretty face.

  “Is he crippled or injured in some way?” Sorgatani asked breathlessly. “Has he been wounded? Ah, look! His hand has been cut off. Just like Breschius! Maybe it’s a sign.” Leaning on Hanna, she tightened her fingers as folk do when they grasp the rope that will save them from drowning. “What do you think?”

  Sorgatani wasn’t looking at Baldwin and Ivar. She was looking beyond them where the fading light poured its golden aura over a portion of the fountain and the paved pathway. A pair of sturdy lay brothers was carrying a man on a litter out of the monks’ quarters. They cut along one of the diagonal paths, bringing them close by the wagon. They were on their way, perhaps, to the infirmary. They weren’t in any hurry. The presence of the foreign wagon seemed of no interest to them at all, nor did they show much interest in their patient. They kept pausing between strides to look toward the church, although it wasn’t clear what they hoped to see there.

  The man lying on his back on the litter was covered from feet to hips with a thin blanket. Otherwise, he was naked from the waist up, his left hand resting on a taut belly and his right arm, slightly elevated on a rolled-up blanket pressed along his side, ending in a stump at the wrist. He had good shoulders, and pale, lovely, rose-blushed skin. His eyes were closed, but in the manner of a person who, although awake, prefers to shut out the truth. His golden hair had been washed and combed, and it gleamed when they passed out of the shadow and into that last spill of sunlight lancing through the westward-facing walkway.

  “Can I have that one?” Sorgatani said with a ragged laugh.

  Ai, God! Hugh.

  “Is there any man handsomer than you?” Hanna whispered.

  “There cannot be,” murmured Sorgatani, lips parted, leaning until her face almost brushed the beads as the monks moved past.

  “He is dangerous, that one. Unforgiving, unkind, arrogant, vain, proud, obsessed, and cruel. Forget him, Sorgatani.”

  “But he’s so beautiful. I am Kerayit, daughter of the Horse people. I can break the most vicious-tempered stallion that walks Earth. It is in my blood and my breeding and my training. I do not fear him.”

  The monks passed out of sight. Ivar shook Baldwin’s hand free, grabbed his wrist, and tugged him away from the wagon, and it seemed a trick of the air that she could hear Ivar’s answers but not Baldwin’s questions as they moved away.

  “Yes, that’s right, they all survived. Yes, Sigfrid, Ermanrich, and Hathumod. They’re all here with Biscop Constance. In the guesthouse, I think. Come, I’ll take you to them; that’s where you belong. No. No. I’m not going to stay in the church. I’m going to become a messenger, just like you, for the phoenix, only not in the church. It’s for the best, Baldwin. Trust me.”

  Sorgatani turned away from the beads to grip Hanna’s hands with both of her own, although the gesture caused tears to start up as her lovely face was ripped with desperation and pain. “You are still the King’s Eagle, Hanna. And my luck. That is what I ask of you. Let him become my pura, and I can go back to my tribe knowing I will not be alone.”

  4

  GRIEF strikes each body in a different way. For the longest time Liath drifted in a stupor, clutching the cold hand, vainly trying to heat the corpse and ignite the spark of life that no longer burned within. Folk whispered around her, gliding in and out of view, but their motions were meaningless and random. In no way did they move with the sure predictable paces of the stars. Yet the sun and the moon and the canopy of heaven, raised above us, have no liberty to govern themselves. They are subject to the law; they do what they are ordered to do, and nothing else.

  How much easier, then, to see the fate that awaits you and brace yourself. Wasn’t it better to know the path in advance than to stumble like this?

  Ai, God! Ai, God!

  The child was screaming. She heard it now, and it occurred to her that these hysterics had been going on for some time.

  She had to let go of the hand, and she feared by doing so she would lose him forever, but she had to let go.

  There.

  She tried to stand, but her legs were all pins and needles. Arms steadied her. She sought and found the child who had thrown herself onto the floor of the nave with a ring of troubled onlookers standing carefully back while she shrieked and shrieked, no matter that she was breaking the sanctuary of the holy church and pounded feet and hands on the floor in the throes of a furious tantrum.

  “We were too slow! We didn’t get there fast enough!”

  “Blessing,” she said.

  They parted ranks to let her through. Anna knelt just out of range of those flailing hands and feet.

  “Careful, my lady,” she said in a hoarse voice. She had a purpling bruise on her chin, and she was favoring one arm. “She’s gone wild.”

  “Does the Brother Infirmarian not have some manner of sleeping draught?” Liath asked to the air at large.

  There were so many people in the church, crowding and choking her, that she began to think some were real flesh and others only shadow and light, souls and presences descended from the higher spheres, shifting in and out of existence like a light winking on and off as a hand covers and uncovers its flame.

  “Lady? Liathano?” A voice swam past her. A hand brushed her elbow. “I think she is fainting.”

  Easier to be the sun, who never says, “I will not rise at my regular time.” Easier to be the moon, who wanes and waxes according to the law that set it in motion. Easier to be stars, who rise and set as they are commanded, and the winds, who blow, and the mountains, who remain in the place they are set. They are instruments of the power that set them in motion.

  “Here, lady. Drink.”

  She staggered to her feet.

  Blessing was still sobbing, lips moist and liquid spattered down her chin. “I shouldn’t have stayed with Uncle! I should have gone sooner! Then I would have gotten to him. I would have saved him! I could have! I could have!”

  “You must take more, Your Highness.” Anna was fixed at the girl’s side, holding a cup away and out of arm’s reach. “You must.”

  Captain Fulk stood beside Liath, a hand hovering a finger’s breadth from her arm.

  “I pray you, my lady,” he said in a low voice, “there’s something I must speak of immediately.” She nodded, because God had given humankind liberty to choose for the good or for ill, for the blessing or the curse. “Princess Theophanu is to become regnant by marrying this Eika lord, called Stronghand. It’s agreed that the princess will adopt Blessing as her heir, and that the girl will marry Conrad’s infant son, if the little lad lives.”

  “Become regnant? Blessing?”

  The captain was weary, face shadowed, eyes dark, as he considered the girl now dropping off to sleep. “I don’t know what to think of this alliance with the Eika. Yet they did have us outnumbered and surrounded. They could have done great damage to the armies of Wendar and Varre, but their lord, this Stronghand, did hold back the killing blow. There’s a party of them with us, come to escort the witch woman. To make sure she’s not harmed, I suppose, although she’s more dangerous to us than we are to her.”

  Words, like stars, swung on their course overhead and passed on into the night. She knew she ought to concentrate, but it was so difficult.

  “What of Sanglant?” she asked. “Hanna, bring me the crown.” Then, after all, she remembered he was dead.

  “She’s all that’s left of him.” Fulk’s face was wet, and he smiled sadly. “The little sp
itfire. Thinking she could have saved him! Poor mite.”

  “No, he’s not dead,” she said, but when she turned around and saw him lying still and silent within the ring of light, she knew he was. “I can’t bear it,” she whispered.

  “Nor can any of us, my lady, but we must. Ai, God! We must.”

  5

  CAPTAIN Fulk carried Princess Blessing to the guesthouse, where a soft bed awaited her. Anna knelt beside her. As the girl slept, Anna undid the awful topknot and combed out Blessing’s black hair as well as she could. She could not bear to look at the girl with her hair done up in the manner of savages.

  Fulk was speaking at the door in a low voice, arranging for food and drink, water to wash, a guard to be set over the girl. Two lamps were lit, one set on a tripod by the door and one hanging from a hook in the corner, so the girl would not wake to darkness. She would be well guarded. Sanglant’s guard would see to that.

  She heard them talking: Blessing was to be named as heir to Theophanu. She would marry the son of Conrad and Tallia, now an infant. Someday, God willing, she would be regnant.

  Anna caught the attention of one of the guardsmen, Sibold, the man with the torn throat who spoke now in a hoarse croak that would always remind her of Prince Sanglant’s injured voice. “Is it true that Princess Theophanu will marry an—an Eika prince?” she whispered.

  Sibold had always been a lively, bold man more likely to leap than to look, but his face was pale, he was exhausted, worn right through with grief. “So it is,” he said curtly, then shook his head and turned away.

  She sat cross-legged beside the girl’s pallet, stroking that black hair, too restless to sleep as night came on. With her other hand she traced, over and over, the carved dogs’ heads on the staff. Something about the polish and smoothness of the wood comforted her.

  From outside, a dog gave a low, whuffing bark, as a man might gently call for attention from a dozing merchant. Voices murmured from the porch. The door opened, and a man walked into the room. She recognized him, although he did not walk with his two massive black hounds in attendance, not in here.

  He looked first at Blessing. The princess slept with an arm flung out and her legs tangled in a blanket. He knelt beside her, touched a hand to the girl’s cheek, listened, sighed. Then he looked up at Anna. Tipped his head sideways, eyes narrowing.

  “I know you,” he said softly. “You were at Gent.”

  Choked, she could only nod. But as her hand tightened over the staff, she found her voice.

  “You gave your Holy Circle to an Eika prince” she said.

  He smiled, eyes crinkling with surprise. “So I did.”

  “I-I saw it. Him. He was in the cathedral at Gent. He let Matthias and me escape. He let us go. He could have killed us. Any of the others would have. But he let us go.”

  The young man’s eyes were dark. Like the guivre, his gaze pinned her, as though he would dig all the way down until she had no secrets left. She clutched the staff and, drawn by the movement, he looked beyond her, and saw it.

  He gasped. A slap across the face might have struck him, because he recoiled, eyes widened and head thrown back.

  Yet the sting, however sharp, was brief.

  He coughed, wiped his brow, touched his throat. From outside, a dog barked interrogatively.

  “I pray you,” he said, voice a bit ragged, “where did you get that staff?”

  Must she tell him? He stared at it possessively, and she wrapped both hands around the haft and drew it awkwardly against her body. Words stuck in her throat, but she knew she must speak. She must not remain silent.

  “I-I-Lady Liathano gave it to me.”

  “How came she by it? Do you know?”

  “I-I-we didn’t have it before. In Ashioi country. She found it up at the crown, the one up here, where we walked through from the south. I heard her telling—as we walked down here—she found it by the hermit’s hut. She said—she said—” The words seemed so ridiculous she was afraid to utter them, but he looked at her so steadily that she stumbled on. “She said a—a lion dropped it at her feet.” She braced herself for his scorn, for laughter, for anger.

  He sat back on his haunches. He let out all his breath, and passed a hand over his hair. “No. No.” And then, reluctantly, but as if he could not stop himself from saying it, he said, “It was mine, once.”

  Almost, she sobbed.

  He flicked moisture from beneath an eye. “Might I just—just—” Reaching, he hesitated.

  At length, rigid with fear of losing the staff, she released it into his hands. He traced the carved heads, the length of the shaft, the cut where the wood had been hacked. He shut his eyes, and after a moment opened them. Blessing snorted softly in her sleep and turned over, but did not wake.

  “Let it be passed on to the one who needs it most,” he said, giving it back to her.

  She was ashamed at how she grabbed it from him, but he only smiled gently. He rose, took a step away, paused to turn back.

  “You are not the only survivor from Gent who walks in royal circles this day, now that I think on it. Lord Stronghand’s council includes a man who was once from Gent, called Otto. ‘Papa Otto,’ I heard the others calling him. He’s in Kassel with the rest of Stronghand’s army.”

  Then he left.

  She stared at the closed door as the lamps hissed. Papa Otto! If Princess Blessing was to be the heir, and Princess Theophanu and this Lord Stronghand were to rule, and Papa Otto stood in Lord Stronghand’s council, then surely she and Papa Otto could be together somehow, sometimes.

  Leaping up, she ran after him. He was still on the porch, talking in a low voice to Captain Fulk, whose eyes were red from weeping.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, grabbing his arm. “Here. Here.”

  She pushed the staff at him. Reflexively, he took it. He stiffened, holding it, stroking it. He, too, had tears in his eyes.

  “I have what I need,” she said. “You just gave it to me. Please. This is yours. You must take it.”

  For a long while he did not move, as if he had been struck dumb. But at length he smiled. He touched her forehead with two fingers.

  “For this gift,” he said, “I thank you.”

  Then he was gone.

  6

  DURING Vespers, Rosvita stayed beside Mother Obligatia, who rested comfortably, propped up on pillows, on a litter set across a pair of benches beside the bier.

  “I will remain with my granddaughter,” said the old abbess as the service came to a close. Captain Fulk had carried off the sleeping princess, while Liathano remained kneeling by the bier.

  Rosvita nodded. “I must pay my respects at the guesthouse, to Biscop Constance.”

  She left the church and walked alone to the guesthouse.

  Although the upper suite was usually given to the highest-ranking guest, Biscop Constance had taken the lower rooms because she could not get up the stairs. She greeted Rosvita from a chair. Now and again she rubbed her hands together as if chafing them against cold. The lamplight softened the lines of pain that creased her forehead and around her eyes and mouth. She even smiled, although the gesture quickly flickered into a wince of pain.

  Rosvita kissed the biscop’s ring. The young nun who hovered in constant attendance patted pillows and rubbed Constance’s shoulders, trying to make her more comfortable.

  “I leave in the morning to continue my journey to Autun.” Although Constance’s body was weak, her will remained strong. “I must return to my seat as biscop. Seal the betrothal between Conrad’s son and Sanglant’s daughter. Oversee preparations for the crowning and anointing.”

  “Have we judged wisely, or rashly?” Rosvita asked her.

  “We have judged as well as we can. This Eika lord is far more subtle and farseeing than he seems at first glance. In any case, his army would have crushed both Wendar’s and Varre’s had Theophanu not acted precipitously.”

  “Had you speech with her beforehand? Did you know what to expect?”
r />   “No. I was as surprised as you. That is not even the greater part of what this cataclysm has brought in its wake. These clerics of my loyal schola will begin preparations for the council to be convened next summer. Best if it is held in Autun, under the shadow of the old emperor and the Council of Narvone.”

  “When Biscop Tallia was repudiated, the arts of the mathematici and malefici, any sorcery done outside the auspices of the church, were condemned.”

  Constance reached for and, with an effort, grasped Rosvita’s hand, looked searchingly into her eyes. “Will you support me? You understand that I believe in the miracle of the phoenix.”

  “I will judge fairly. The writings of the church mothers weigh heavily, but I must bow to truth if truth is revealed.”

  They kissed as sisters.

  After checking to make sure the child was settled and her attendant given food and drink and a pallet to rest on, Rosvita walked upstairs where Brother Fortunatus, Brother Jehan, and the three girls had open the books: the Vita of St. Radegundis, their copy of the Chronicles from St. Ekatarina, and the Annals of Autun salvaged from the library in Darre.

  “Fortunatus found a copy of the Chronicle of Vitalia in the library here.” Heriburg brandished the volume triumphantly. “So it is agreed that Taillefer had four daughters who lived to adulthood. Three entered the church, one of them Biscop Tallia. The fourth, Lady Gundara, married the duc de Rossalia. She had three children by him. The eldest inherited the dukedom, the second entered the church, and the third—a boy named Hugo—married the infant daughter of the count of Lavas, Lavastina.”

  “So it’s true that the only remaining descendants of Taillefer in Wendar and Varre are the line of Lavas,” said Ruoda, speaking on top of Heriburg’s last sentence. “But we learned this before, in Darre, Sister Rosvita. Why is it of interest now?”