Crown of Stars

  One man dismounted and cuffed the little boy, but his shrieks doubled in their piercing shrillness.

  “Eh!” cried the man, snorting and coughing in an exaggerated manner. “He stinks! Whew! This is no boy, but a sow’s get!”

  “Stay!” said Alain to the hounds.

  “Hold! There! You!” said the sergeant, as Alain pushed past the outthrust spear and strode over to the terrified child.

  The soldiers looked curiously at him and did not interfere as he knelt beside the child. The little boy did stink. He was a stick figure, skin and protruding bones, nose running, skin rimed with dirt and worse filth, and his face was covered with sores and the fading scars of cowpox. It amazed Alain that so frail a child had survived the contagion. He wondered where the boy had suffered the outbreak, and where the demons that spread the disease were traveling now.

  “Hush,” said Alain softly. “Hush, child. What is your name?”

  The boy hiccuped. Where his gaze slid across Alain’s regard he hesitated, stilled, calmed, and looked at him, as if transfixed by Alain’s face.

  “What is your name?”

  “Dog,” whispered the little boy.

  “Your name is ‘Dog’?”

  “Dog.” He lifted a whip-thin arm to point at the hounds.

  “Yes, two dogs. Where are your father and mother? Your sisters and brothers? Where are your kinsmen, child?”

  “Dog.”

  “Where is your mother?”

  “Dog.”

  The soldiers had gathered to enjoy the spectacle. The sergeant grunted. “Certain it is! That child likely had a bitch for a mother!”

  His men chortled at his wit.

  The child’s face pinched. His lips trembled, and he drew in breath for a cry.

  “Hush,” said Alain, although it was difficult not to speak in an angry tone that would frighten the child. Without standing, he turned to frown at the sergeant. “What sport is there, I pray you, in teasing a creature as helpless as this one is? Had you orders to drive off these poor folk?”

  “These poor folk! You’re not from hereabouts, are you? They say all manner of people have taken to the roads since last autumn. It’s a sign of the end of times.”

  “Is it?”

  “These poor folk! Swindlers and beggars and whores and thieves and murderers, each one of them. We had to drive them out of Autun because they made so much trouble. Now they camp here and trouble honest travelers on the road and honest farmers in the fields. That brat is the bastard of some bitch who sold herself to any man who would pay. No one will miss him. Look!”

  The sergeant’s gesture encompassed the entire squalid encampment, now burning. Beyond, Alain saw a flash of movement out among the trees. Someone was watching from a hiding place.

  “Maybe he’s got no mother. Maybe she died. No one wanted him. They just left him here. What will you do with a filthy creature like that who has no kinfolk to take care of him? He’s better off dead. Can you say otherwise?”

  “Do you mean to take God’s place and judge the worth of the soul of another human creature? We are all equal in the sight of God.”

  “Are you a frater? With that beard? What matter, anyway? Who has bread for an orphan child? I don’t.”

  “What of the lady who rules in Autun? Doesn’t she feed the poor, as is her duty?”

  The sergeant’s amused expression soured. He beckoned to his men. “Let’s go. We’ve driven them out.”

  “For today,” said Alain. “Won’t they come back? Where else have they to go?”

  The sergeant turned his attention elsewhere. “What about you?” he said, indicating Atto. “Why didn’t you run?”

  “I’m nothing to do with the ones who were camping here,” said Atto. Mara huddled beside him. “I come from my village to join the milites in Autun. I heard the lady seeks soldiers.”

  “Hoo! Ho!” Some of the soldiers jeered. “A country boy come to swing his spear in the town!”

  Flames eating through a heaped mattress of dry leaf litter caught in a length of canvas and blazed. Elsewhere, fires ebbed down to glow as they lost hold of good fuel.

  “We share and share alike,” said the sergeant. “How about your girl? Or is she your sister?”

  “My betrothed,” Atto said, measuring the look in their eyes and, by the expression in his own, not liking it.

  The sergeant marked the hounds, who sat, and Alain, who knelt beside the silent boy. He marked the shadows out in the far trees, but it was obvious from his expression that he had no intention of striking into the woods although it would be easy to do so.

  “I like the way you stand up for yourself,” he said to Atto. “Can you ride?”

  “I’ve ridden donkeys. We have no horses in my village. I’ll learn.”

  “Maybe.” The sergeant examined Mara, who shrank closer to Atto’s side. “You rode that girl, I see. Come on, then. If the captain will take you, maybe he’ll set you up in the guard. They need men to police the streets and man the gates. Lots of beggars these days causing trouble when we don’t have enough food for those who deserve it.” He lifted his chin defiantly as he looked at Alain, as if daring him to contradict his judgment, but Alain only watched him, waiting to see what he would do next. He gestured, and his men fell into ranks for the ride back.

  “Where do they come from?” Alain asked, rising. The hounds looked at him but did not move.

  “My soldiers? Autun. Villages nearby. From the lady’s estates, and elsewhere.”

  “I meant the beggars causing your lady so much trouble.”

  The sergeant raised a hand to command his men, and led them off at a walk. Atto and Mara abandoned Alain without a word, although Mara glanced back at him and seemed, perhaps, to be crying. But she made no protest.

  He had not, in truth, come to like Atto as the three of them had walked the road together these past few days, and although he pitied Mara he could not manage to respect her, even if he was sorry to find himself so hardhearted toward a person as anxious as she was. So it was that, scolding another man for being judgmental, he had already succumbed to the same fault himself.

  Once the patrol was out of sight, Alain rose slowly so as not to frighten the boy and with his knife cut into the bottom portion of his cloak and ripped off a length of fabric. He had just tied this garment around the boy’s scrawny shoulders when the first figure ghosted back into the clearing, clutching a stout stick and a precious bronze bucket dented on one side as if by the kick of a horse. They came in pairs and trios and now and again as a single form clutching a precious bundle, or a cracked bowl, or a ragged handkerchief knotted around an unseen prize. They scavenged through the camp pretending to take no notice of Alain and the boy and the hounds, looking once and not again, as if by ignoring the stranger he would vanish. They took what they could carry. They looked like scarecrows, awkward, pale, ridiculous except for the desperation visible in their scuttling walks, their pinched shoulders and lowered heads, their sharp gestures and the way their gazes darted toward the road and the trees at each snap or thump or whisper of branches when the breeze gusted into a moment of real wind. The boy took no interest whatsoever in the people among whom he had been living. He kept staring at the hounds.

  “Where are you from?” Alain asked finally, wondering if anyone would answer.

  His voice, not loud, sounded as a crack of thunder might on a sultry day. Most of the refugees scattered into the woods. Where they meant to go he could not imagine.

  There was one bolder than the rest, a man whose age was impossible to guess because he was missing most of his teeth and was so thin his face had sunken in like that of an ancient tottering elder. His skin was weathered. His hair was matted with dirt and therefore colorless, tied back with a supple green twig to keep it out of his eyes.

  “Better not to go to Autun,” the man said. “Honest folk lose their homes there. Beggars are beaten on the streets and tossed out the gates.”

  “Are you from Autun?”
/>
  “I am.”

  “Now you hide here in the woods. Why is that?”

  “Driven out, when the milites needed places to barrack troops.” He spoke in a level voice, as about the weather. Whatever outrage or grief he felt remained hidden. He looked too weary and weak to shout or cry. “We’ve nowhere else to go, so we camp here.” He gestured, indicating the filthy campsite.

  “Has the lady of Autun no barracks in her palace for troops?”

  “Not for so many as serve her now.”

  “Why needs she so many soldiers?”

  He flicked a fly off his arm and sank down into a squat. He was so thin that he looked likely to topple over if the wind came up. “How would I know?”

  “You might guess. You might see things, and come to your own conclusions.”

  He blew his nose and wiped mucus away with a forearm already streaked with unnameable substances. “I might. She fears some will take from her the duchy as they did before. Her Wendish brother took it from her. I saw that, I did.” He tapped himself on the chest. His ribs showed like bare twigs, his chest was sunken, yet he squared his shoulders a little, proud of what he remembered and what he had worked out, a common man never privy to the plotting and planning of his noble rulers. “Now she’s gathering soldiers to fight, she and that one they call Conrad the Black. I’ve seen him, too. Him and his lady wife, the one they call our queen.”

  The one they call our queen.

  There, in his heart, Alain felt the tremor, the pain of the affection and loyalty he had offered her which she had rejected. She had turned on him twice over. She had tried to kill him.

  But the memory was only that. It no longer had purchase. It no longer dug deep. He was sorry for it, that was all, that folk caused pain because of their own fears. He was angry because folk did do so much damage to the innocent and guilty alike because of their own fears. On his own account, he was free of the burden of desiring revenge. That gave him a measure of strength.

  “Lady Sabella. Conrad the Black. Tallia. Who do they mean to fight?”

  The man shrugged. “How am I to know the comings and goings of the great nobles?”

  “Why must they cast out the innocent folk who lived honestly in Autun, such as you and these others?”

  The man said nothing. A rattle of illness sang in each of his exhaled breaths from a rot settled into his lungs. The child sat unmoving, fixated on the hounds, and that one word slipped again from him.

  “Dog.”

  The hounds waited patiently, heads lifted as they sniffed the air. Out in the woods he heard the rustle and snap of movement, but no one joined them in the clearing. After a while Alain realized he would receive no answer.

  “What of this child? Where are his kinfolk?”

  The man picked at a scab below his lower lip. “Mother’s dead. Has none else.”

  “None to take charge of him?”

  A shake of the head gave him his reply.

  “Who cared for him?”

  “None cared. He ate what scraps he could reach. He’ll be dead in a few days more.”

  “If none among you cared whether this child lived or died, then truly it’s as if you have turned your back on humankind. We must be compassionate and look each after the other.”

  “There’s not food enough for all.” The man gestured with an elbow. “You’ve somewhat in your sack. Do you mean to share it or keep it to yourself?”

  “I’ve bones for my hounds, nothing more. I’ve myself not eaten since this morning.”

  “I’d eat what I could gnaw off a bone. I’m that hungry. I beg you.”

  Over the last few days he had fed all but two of the bones from the dead deer to Sorrow and Rage. Alain rose and, crossing the clearing, gave one of these to the man. The strip of flesh and fat and tendon still attached gave off the odor of meat that is turning bad. The man grabbed it out of his hand, grunting and slobbering in his haste to choke down what he could. As he ate, half a dozen ragged souls crept out of the woods with gazes fixed on Alain as on a gold talisman held dangling before avaricious eyes.

  “Please, please,” they said.

  The boy braced himself on his stick arms and, panting and snuffling, dragged himself toward Alain. His legs trailed after him, and now it was possible to see both had been broken and healed askew, so he couldn’t use them. Alain scanned the clearing. A trio of men crept up behind him and a woman approached with a stout stick raised in one hand.

  “Told you,” said the man with the bone. “Best give us the rest of it and your cloak and clothes if you want to walk out alive.”

  Desperate men cannot be shamed.

  Rage and Sorrow rose, growling. Alain hoisted his staff.

  “You may choose now,” he said clearly. “I do not want to fight you, but I will not be robbed.”

  “If you will be merciful, then give us all you own for we need it, I pray you, master!” called the woman with the stout stick. She was so thin and ill looking that at first glance a decent person would pity her, yet she crept forward with lips pulled back in a rictus grin that was no smile.

  Best to move swiftly.

  He whistled. The hounds loped toward him, and once they moved the folk scattered back, fearing those teeth. He grabbed the little boy and hoisted him up and over his back, and with Sorrow and Rage at either side strode into the forest. All the way through the woodland he heard them shadowing him to either side, waiting for an opening, but none came; the hounds were vigilant.

  The child said, “Dog. Dog.”

  He reeked, the poor thing, and as they came out of the woods and to the open fields striping the land around the distant walls, he peed. Warm liquid trickled down Alain’s side. There wasn’t much urine in the child, but the scent of it stung. Rage barked, swinging his head around to sniff Alain’s hip.

  Out here farmers ploughed, although it was late in the season for such work. A pair of soldiers patrolled on horseback. They cantered over, looking him up and down while circling clear of the hounds. The younger was a freckled lad about sixteen and with a tentative grip on his spear. His companion looked tougher, twice his age, with darker hair and a scaly patch of skin on one cheek that had been scratched until it bled.

  “Who are you?” the elder asked. “What’s your business in Autun?” He indicated the child with the blade of his spear. “Beggars not allowed in Autun. Go elsewhere.”

  “I found this child abandoned in the woods. Has the biscop no foundling home? Is there no monastery nearby that takes in orphans?”

  “I don’t know,” said the man, “but not likely, I’d say. Haven’t grain enough to feed the lady’s household and her army. Certain there isn’t spare for a dirty crippled brat like that one. See you there, Jochim,” he said to the lad, “see his twisted legs.”

  “He’s crippled,” said the lad brightly.

  “So he is, but was he born with the twisted legs? Or did his mam or uncle gave it a twist so as folk would pity him and give bread and coin?”

  “Nay.” The lad shook his head. “Nay, no mam would do that. Would she?”

  “Some might. Or a handsome uncle, like this one who carries him. Look at his decent clothes, who leaves a babe wrapped in only a bit of torn cloth. He found a babe forgot in the woods? I know what lurks in the woods. All those driven out of town by my lady’s order. Thieves and whores and murderers. Nay, fellow.” He lowered his spear to block the path. In the distance a pair of farmers looked their way. “We want none of your kind in our town.”

  “His cloak is shorn off,” said the lad. “See? That’s what the babe is wearing. Why would he tear his own cloak, if it’s true he cares nothing for the babe but only his own comfort? He could buy a rag from a peddler for nothing and save the cloak.”

  “Dog,” said the child.

  “Unless he were kicked out of town and the babe’s rag lost in the wood.”

  Alain sighed. “I’m no beggar. If you’ll tell me where I can find a foundling home, I’ll take this child the
re.”

  They shrugged. The youth seemed eager to depart. The elder lingered. “Don’t matter whether I believe you or think you’re lying. You can’t enter the city with that begging child. Everyone can see he’s a beggar’s child. No entrance.”

  “Are there no poor sitting in the lady’s hall, fed by her stewards?” asked Alain. “Can it be she has forgotten the ancient custom? Did not King Henry feed a dozen beggars every day off his very own table?”

  The elder spat. “Get on. Speak not of Henry, the usurper. Well! He’s gone now. Some say he’s dead.”

  “Did he so?” asked the youth. “A dozen beggars, every day?”

  “Or more, on feast days,” said Alain, standing his ground.

  “How do you know?” demanded the elder. “How could a man such as you know? How could you have stood in the hall where noble folk took their supper?”

  “I was a Lion, once.” And more besides, but he would not speak of those days to this man.

  “A Lion!” The youth whistled appreciatively, with a look of respect. “A Lion! They take some tough fighting, it’s said. Duke Conrad takes in any Lions that come this way. Strays, like.”

  The gaze of the older soldier had shifted in an intangible way. “Were you now? Seen any fighting? Ever kill a man?”

  Weary, Alain met his gaze. “I have seen fighting. I killed a man.” One who was already dying.

  “Huh. I believe you. Huh.” He glanced toward the town walls where twin banners curled limply at the height of the tower, concealing their sigils. The clouds moved sluggishly overhead, although it often seemed to Alain that they did not move at all, not anymore. “The lady needs soldiers. There’s a bed and a meal every day if you join up with her. Interested?”

  “What of the child?”

  “Is he some kinsman of yours?”

  “I found him abandoned in the woods, just as I said.”

  “Then why burden yourself with him? Look at him! That child’s half dead, crippled, useless. Can it even speak?”

  “Dog,” said the babe.