“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.
2
MORNING 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 fo
r 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.
3
AT 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.
Oak and beech had lost most of their leaves, though a scattering of pale gold and dull red leaves still clung to the branches of the trees. Here and there evergreens stood in clumps, shafts of dense green. Ghosts of morning mist wove around the boles of trees and settled in hollows or near pools of standing water. A light rain fell intermittently.
The progress of the hunters sounded a steady din through the litter and deadwood on the forest floor. Breaking through a dense growth of bracken, they flushed a covey of partridges. The king’s huntsmen laid about themselves and clubbed some down, dragging the dogs still with the company out of reach of the birds. Ahead, braches belled.
“Deer!” cried a forester. The chase was on.
Now the forward group itself split into two groups, King Henry and the older nobles falling behind to leave pride of chase to the younger adults. Sapientia rode to the fore, Liath laboring after her on a gelding more hardy than agile. Lord Amalfred, Lady Brigida, young lords and ladies shouting and whooping in their excitement, all pressed forward. Theophanu came up beside Liath, face intent. The panther clasp sparked in a flash of sunlight through the branches. She glanced back over her shoulder and, reflexively, Liath did as well. Hugh was behind them, but his presence was curiously lost to Liath as if for once he was not aware of her at all. His head was bent over his saddle and his lips moved soundlessly. With his left hand he clasped a tiny gold reliquary hung on a golden chain around his neck.
Sapientia disappeared into bracken. Lord Amalfred’s horse shied back, refusing to cross through the heavy growth of fern, and he kicked it forward, angry.
“Your Highness!” A forester called out to Theophanu. “A path! This way!”
Faced with a wall of bracken or a clear, if narrow, path, Liath chose to ride after Theophanu, but the princess’ horse was superior to hers in these woods, fearless and surefooted. Theophanu forged ahead as if she meant to catch up and pass her royal sister. As if she meant to have for herself what her sister wanted to possess.
“Out of the way! Out of the way!” cried a man behind her, and Liath just got her gelding aside before a group of some dozen young nobles including Lord Amalfred pounded past on the track. “I see the deer!”
“A deer! A deer!” The others took up the cry.
Liath saw it, too, a handsome doe springing away before them, bolting through the trees. Amalfred and the others pulled up, taking aim.
Except it wasn’t a deer. It was Theophanu, riding farther ahead of them into trees still wreathed with morning mist. It was an illusion. The memory of Gent hit her so like a blow that her hands went lax on the reins and she gasped aloud. An illusion that only she could see through. Even Sanglant, who wanted to believe, had not dared to.
She screamed. “Halt! Don’t shoot!” She yelled as loudly as she was able. “Your Highness! Say something! Pull up your horse!”
Did her warning reach that far?
Theophanu slowed her horse and began to turn, as if she had heard….
“Ai, Lady!” cried one of the noblemen. “It’s slowed. Now’s your chance!” He turned to wave a new rider forward. “Princess Sapientia. Come forward.”
But Lord Amalfred had already drawn down. “This one is mine!”
“Stop!” cried Liath, but Hugh rode up beside her and set his hand on her arm. Her voice vanished.
Theophanu was still turned, raising a hand in acknowledgment; there was an instant when her face registered the tableau behind her. Her expression froze in horror.
Amalfred shot. Another lord shot. The arrows sped toward their target.
She would not be powerless this time! She wrenched her arm out of Hugh’s grasp. Please God let her bring fire through her eyes alone. Let the fire in the vision of the burning stone pass through her as through a doorway, as though a daimone of the fiery sphere above had reached down below the moon and pressed its blazing touch onto the speeding wood of the arrows.
Both arrows ignited in midair. Theophanu threw herself off her horse. The wailing and shouting that deafened Liath now was its own conflagration.
“My God, the princess!”
“A miracle! A miracle!”
“Lord Amalfred, what meant you by this?”
“But I saw a deer. These others—!”
As all protested that they, too, had seen a deer, Sapientia began to sob noisily. Liath threw her reins over the horse’s head, dismounted, and ran forward; she stubbed her toes on a log, jumped over another only to have her boots sink into the dense litter of fallen and rotting leaves in her haste to reach Theophanu.
The princess’ hair lay in disarray, braids fallen loose, her riding tunic twisted at her hips, her gold-braided leggings ripped at the knees, her face scraped and stained with dirt. She shoved herself up and reached for her knife as Liath dropped down beside her. “Have you come to finish the job at her bidding?”
Liath threw up her hands to show she was empty-handed. “Your Highness! Are you hurt?”
“Your voice.” Theophanu’s eyes flared with astonishment. “Your voice is the one I heard warni
ng me. What treachery is this?”
“They saw a deer where you rode, Your Highness.”
“I am no deer to be hunted and slain. Was this an accident, Eagle?”
But now a forester had come up, and the crowd like a mindless writhing creature moved across the wood to engulf them. Back on the path, Hugh comforted a weeping Sapientia.
By now the king had come up to the others, and in their babble of voices Liath heard repeated over and over that all dozen or so there and even in addition the foresters had seen not Theophanu but a deer.
“Witchcraft,” someone said.
“A miracle,” said another.
“Too many damn fool young hotheads hunting for prizes and seeing visions in the mist,” said Villam with disgust.
“This day’s hunt ends now,” said King Henry. A groom helped him dismount. He came up to his daughter and extended a hand. She took it, and he raised her up off the ground. “You are unhurt?” he asked. Villam by now had forced order into the milling mob behind them, pressing them back from the frightened horse. Far away, hounds bayed wildly. Henry released Theophanu’s hand and beckoned a huntsman forward. “Follow the hounds,” he said, “and bring back to the lodge whatever meat you take.”
The man nodded. Soon, foresters and huntsmen went on alone, though some of the young nobles clearly wished to go with them.
“May I have a moment alone to collect my wits, Father,” Theophanu. asked, “before I ride again?”
He gestured to his attendants to back off and himself moved away. Liath began to retreat, but Theophanu signed to her, and Liath hesitated, afraid to be seen with her, afraid not to obey.
“Was it an accident?” the princess repeated, her gaze hard, her mouth a thin line. “Did my sister devise this treachery?”
The thought of Sapientia concocting any kind of intrigue made Liath’s mouth drop open in amazed disbelief. “Your sister? No! But it was not an accident—” Then she broke off. She had revealed too much.
Theophanu said nothing for a long while. Slowly, one scratched and bleeding hand came up to touch the panther brooch that held her cloak closed. “Was it sorcery? And from whose hand?”