One of the guards was asleep. The other yawned, disinterested, as Alain got to his feet. Sorrow woke at once as Alain ventured into the sparse cover of wood that lay twenty paces behind the camp. The hound followed, whining softly.
Alain relieved himself. The moon had already set, but a thin line of red rimmed the eastern sky. From the far side of camp he heard the sound, muted by distance, of clerics and fraters singing the service of Lauds, first light. As he turned to move out of the trees, Sorrow closed his jaws over Alain’s wrist and tugged. Alain tripped over undergrowth.
“What’s that?” A harsh whisper sounded from deeper in the wood.
Sorrow leaned so hard on Alain that the young man fell to hands and knees. Now he was partially screened by low bushes. He peered out through their branches to see two figures carrying between them a bulky weight. They had stopped to rest.
“Hush,” said the other.
Alain was silent. Sorrow was silent. The two mysterious men were silent. The clerics and fraters sang, distant voices blending in the chill air as the sky faded from black to gray.
“Nothing,” said one of the men. “We’d best hurry before camp wakes.” He hoisted the thing they carried up higher against his chest and they moved away through the curve of the wood toward the eastern end of camp.
They were carrying a body.
Alain’s heart went cold. Sorrow licked his hand. Together they crept after them, Alain keeping one hand on the nape of the hound’s neck. To reassure himself, he slipped a hand inside his tunic to touch the rose, still alive, still in bloom. The prick of its thorns gave him courage.
He could not tell if the body was man or woman, alive or dead. They carried it all the way round to the outskirts of Lady Sabella’s encampment, where the kitchen tent was set up, and then even past that and past the livestock, to where a shrouded cage rested fifty paces away from any tent or fire. A man, face hooded, arms bound in heavy leather wrappings, met them.
They spoke in low voices. At first Alain could not hear; no man would have been able to. But an Eika …
Alain strained, stilling himself until he heard Sorrow’s soft panting, heard each individual voice, some true, some off, as the clerics sang the final cadences of Lauds. He heard the scraping of claws against wood, the clack of twigs in the dawn breeze, heard even the loam as it crushed down beneath his fingers.
“… will have no questions being asked.”
“Brought him from the estate by Autun. Them are the Biscop of Autun’s lands, and so they be the false king’s lands. So does Biscop Antonia say, that false king’s men are fair game.”
The keeper grunted. “As long as we get no trouble of it. You must have walked all day, then, from the lands outlying Autun. Is he still alive?”
“Seems to be breathing. I gave him the drink, just as much as you said. Hasn’t woken or eyes fluttered once. What’s it for? Make him taste better?”
The keeper’s voice radiated his distaste. “No need to make him suffer more.”
“You feel mercy for the false king’s man?”
“I do my job. Now stand back.”
“We can’t watch?”
The keeper snorted. “Watch all you wish. You’ll regret it.”
Some tone in his voice made the other two back away. But Alain knew suddenly he could not stand by, not this time.
He jumped up. Sorrow nipped at his backside but missed, and Alain crashed out of the undergrowth.
“Stop!” he cried.
The two men grabbed him at once and wrenched his arms behind his back. He struggled briefly, but together they were much stronger than he was alone. A thud sounded, inside the cage, as if something had thrown itself against the slats.
“We could throw this one in,” said one of the men. “He’s fresher and younger.”
Sorrow bounded, growling, out of the trees. The two men instantly let go of Alain and backed off, drawing long knives.
“That’s one of Count Lavastine’s hounds,” said the keeper nervously. “Do naught to harm it.”
Sorrow sat himself down, leaning against Alain’s legs.
“Don’t do it,” pleaded Alain. “It isn’t merciful. It isn’t right”
This close, Alain saw the keeper had but a stump of one hand; his face was scored with old deep gashes on forehead and jaw, one of which had torn out his right eye, now healed as a mass of white scar tissue. A bronze Circle of Unity hung at his chest. “It must be fed, boy. Fed with fresh blood. Or do you volunteer to throw yourself in?”
Alain shuddered. But the memory of Lackling’s terrified mewling and sobbing was still strong in him. His fault. His to atone. He thought suddenly of Frater Agius and his dangerous, heretical words: that the blessed Daisan offered himself as a sacrifice in order to redeem us from our sins; that by sacrifice we make ourselves worthy. Driven by this memory, by the intensity which pervaded Agius’s speech and prayer, Alain took a step toward the cage.
Sorrow butted Alain so hard from behind he fell onto his knees. Sorrow got a good grip on his arm, tight enough that his teeth pressed painfully into flesh but not so hard that they drew blood. The two men sidled closer, knives up. Sorrow growled but did not let go.
“There’s one as disagrees with you,” said the keeper with rough amusement. He bent to the body that lay limp at his feet, hooked his elbows underneath the sleeping man’s armpits. Despite his lost hand, the keeper was a strong man; he dragged the body easily to the cage, fussed with some kind of attachment, and rolled up a small barred door not more than the breadth of a big man’s shoulders in both height and width.
“Let me go!” said Alain fiercely. Heedless of the pain, he wrenched his arm out of Sorrow’s grip and flung himself forward. He would stop this murder. He must.
The keeper jerked up his head and then, the movement an extension of his surprise, yanked the shroud half off the cage, revealing—
The two men behind Alain cried out in fear before their exclamations froze in their throats.
The great eye slewed round—for it had only one eye; the other was a mass of putrefaction, worms writhing in infected flesh, maggots crawling out from the pus to wriggle down its beaklike snout. Its gaze struck him like the sword of God.
He could not move.
But he could stare, throat choked with horror. With pity.
It was a sickly creature, however monstrous its appearance. Like a huge bird, it had two taloned feet and two wings, molting now. Feathers and waste littered the cage’s floor. Like a dragon, it had a sinuous tail and a featherless head, scaled to an iron gleam, but with a yellowish-green cast beneath, the sign of a creature that is no longer healthy. It heaved its great body awkwardly across the cage toward its meal.
The keeper began to shove the body in, but suddenly the body shuddered and a tiny gasp escaped the unconscious man, the gasp of a man coming awake out of—or into—a nightmare. The huge foot scraped at the body, sunk its talons into flesh, and yanked it inside the cage.
Mercifully, the keeper threw the shroud back over the bars. Alain heard a muffled moan and then the sounds of an animal feeding voraciously. The grip of the guivre’s eye let him go. He fell forward, shivering convulsively, and began to weep. But he still did not move, though now he could. What he had seen was too horrible.
The keeper closed the tiny door and chained it shut. He peered at Alain with his one good eye. “You’d best go with them, lad. Biscop will want to see you.”
Biscop Antonia. It was she, of course, who was behind all this. Frater Agius had refused to confront her in the ruins that night or in Lavas Holding on the following day. Now, it seemed, Alain would have no choice but to do so—or else, with Sorrow, fight a foolish skirmish he could not win.
The knowledge left him with a sudden feeling of peace as he was led away, Sorrow padding obediently at his heels.
That feeling of peace, of resignation to God’s will, seeped away as he waited in the antechamber of the tent while outside the biscop led the service of Pri
me, the celebration of sunrise and a new day. All the noble ladies and lords stood in attendance.
But when Biscop Antonia returned, still resplendent in her white vestments trimmed with gold, her biscop’s staff held confidently in her right hand, and listened to the whispered explanation of one of her clerics, she merely said:
“This one again? Brother Heribert, take a message to Count Lavastine that the boy will march with my retinue for the time being. Lavastine will make no objection.”
The cleric left. Alain knelt outside, miserable and frightened, while the tent came down and was packed into a wagon. Sorrow refused to budge from his side. No one spoke to him, only glanced at him sidelong, but two guards remained at his side.
Just as all was ready, the nobles mounting their fine horses, a commotion eddied through their ranks. A black shape darted free from behind a line of wagons and Rage bounded over to him, taking up her station beside Sorrow. No one tried to stop her. Her presence heartened him as nothing else could.
As the company started forward, two men-at-arms shoved him forward. He walked. What else could he do? Not knowing what to expect was, perhaps, the worst of it. Would he be punished? Executed? Fed to the guivre? He could not imagine what Biscop Antonia meant to do with him.
They marched all that day at a steady pace, stopping at midday to water the horses. They marched through hill country, mostly farm and pasture land with stands of forest topping the hilltops and long rides. It was easy country to move through, shallow fords, good grazing for the livestock that traveled with them, not a trace of any force loyal to King Henry.
But in the late afternoon the hills rolled into a long downslope that looked over the valley of the River Rhowne. From here, blurred by afternoon haze, Alain saw the stone tower of the cathedral of Autun, so far away it looked like a mason’s tiny model. They had come to the border of the lands controlled by the Duke of Varingia; beyond lay the heart of the old kingdom of Varre, known as the duchy of Arconia. And beyond the duchy of Arconia lay Wendar.
Army and train came to a halt and began to settle in for the night. Alain was directed by his guards to enter the tent. There, at the biscop’s order, he sat on a stool. The hounds followed him quietly and draped themselves over his feet.
She put him under the supervision of one of her clerics, a young man with pale blue eyes whom she named as Willibrod. Red lesions encrusted the cleric’s hands and neck. While he sat, he shaved wood into holy Circles of Unity and carved letters into the backs of those Circles. Oddly enough, he also bound strands of hair and bits of leaves and some other thing, plucked from what looked like the fletchings for an arrow, onto the backs of these Circles and then strung each one on a leather cord, to make a necklace.
“You are a cleric in training?” asked young Cleric Willibrod. “You are clean-shaven, as befits a churchman.”
Alain blushed, easy to see on his fair skin. It still embarrassed him horribly that he could grow nothing more manly than a bit of pale down on his chin. He had not shaved, and yet this cleric, who sat next to him, could not tell whether he was unshaven or clean-shaven.
“I was promised to the monastery,” he stammered out finally, “but I serve Count Lavastine now as a man-at-arms.”
The cleric shrugged. “It is not unknown for monk or cleric to serve in a lord’s army, for is it not sung that while Our Lady tends the Hearth, Our Lord wields the Sword?”
Biscop Antonia came in. Servants surrounded her, bringing a pitcher of water and a fine brass basin and soft white linen so she might refresh her face and hands. Others brushed dust and travel dirt off her vestments while a woman braided Antonia’s long silver hair, draping a shawl of white linen over the biscop’s head when she was through. Atop the shawl two clerics placed her hat—her mitre—the mark of her rank as biscop. Tall, pointed both at the front and at the back, the mitre was made of a stiff white cloth and trimmed with thickly embroidered gold ribbons. Two white and gold tassels hung from the back of the hat all the way to her feet.
A cleric handed Antonia her crosier and she turned, surveying her retinue with a kindly smile on her face as if to show her gratitude for their service. Her gaze came to rest on Alain. He bowed his head swiftly, mortified he had been caught staring at her and her ablutions. So he did not see her expression, only heard her voice when she spoke.
“There is another I requested be brought to me many days ago. He has not yet arrived?”
“Not yet, Your Grace.”
“I hope he can be with us by Compline.” She spoke mildly, even hopefully, but Alain now recognized the undercurrent that eddied around her. For all that her aspect was kind and her voice gentle, she did not allow her will to be disobeyed. Clerics scurried away; others took their place, and as a united party they processed out so the biscop could lead the service of Vespers, the evensong.
Cleric Willibrod, left in charge, allowed Alain to kneel and pray as Vespers was sung in another part of the camp. During the final psalm, two soldiers appeared at the open tent entrance. With them, as if he were under arrest, came Frater Agius. His brown robes looked travel-stained and rumpled, and he was limping. Alain was so surprised he jumped to his feet in mid-phrase.
Agius shook free of the guards. He knelt at once to finish the last lines of the psalm, and Alain, shamed by the frater’s piety, copied him.
“I thought you had stayed behind at Lavas town,” whispered Alain after the last Alleluia was sung. “I thought you did not intend to ride with Count Lavastine.”
“I did not.” Agius rose, glared at the guards, and limped over to wash his face out of the same fine brass basin used by the biscop. Alain was both astounded and entranced by this show of worldly vanity and arrogance on the part of Agius. The frater wiped his face and hands dry with the same soft white linen the biscop had used. “It is not my part in life to involve myself with the worldly disputes that tempt those who have been seduced by the glamour of earthly power and pleasures.”
“Then why are you here?” Alain demanded.
“I was summoned against my will.”
Agius promptly sat down in the cushioned chair which even an ignorant lad like Alain, unaccustomed to the ways of the nobility, could see was reserved for the biscop. This act of flagrant defiance set Alain shaking. The hounds, catching his mood, stirred restlessly, thumping their tails on the ground and lifting their heads to watch intently.
“I beg your pardon, Brother,” said Willibrod nervously. He began picking at the scabs on his skin. “That is Biscop Antonia’s chair. It is not fitting for a lowly brother to sit—”
Agius glared the poor cleric into silence.
Through the entryway, Alain saw torches flickering. Biscop Antonia had returned.
2
“IS it fitting,” asked Biscop Antonia in her mild voice after the outraged gasps of her servants had quieted, “that a simple frater of the church presume to sit in the seat of one whose elevation was ordained by the hand of the skopos herself?”
“Our Lady has already judged my heart and found it wanting. It is Her mercy and Her forgiveness I strive to be worthy of. Not yours.” Certainly Agius was furious, to speak so.
“You are angry, child. Is this the heart you display to Our Lady and Lord?”
The frater did not seem in the least moved by the biscop’s soft words. “She knows what is in my heart.” He stood up, no longer looking like a lowly churchman brought before a high-ranking biscop but rather like a nobleman made angry by a retainer’s presumption. “You do not.”
A shocked murmuring rose from the crowd of servants; Antonia stilled it with a gesture. “Who speaks now, Frater Agius? The humble frater?” Her voice grew suddenly hard and accusing. “Or the proud son?”
He actually winced, though he did not back down. “I will do penance for my pride. What do you want of me, Your Grace? Why have you had me brought here? I serve the world no longer.”
“But you live in the world nevertheless. We cannot escape the world, Frater Agius, thoug
h we strive to do so. Even you have not yet learned to submit your will to that of Our Lady and Lord. Some part of your heart still lives in your old station, where you are accustomed to having your own way.”
“Our Lady will judge me,” he repeated stubbornly. “What do you want of me?”
If there had been any tiny line of harshness in her face, it dissolved now into a sweet smile made the more reassuring by her round, pink-cheeked face and her twinkling blue eyes. “To visit with your niece, of course.”
“My niece!” He almost roared the word.
“She is being fostered by the Biscop of Autun.” Her placid countenance remained unmoved by his anger. “Did you know that?”
“Of course I knew!”
“It was by your suggestion, was it not?”
He glared, refusing to answer.
“You will remain here for the time being.”
“Do you mean to make me a hostage?”
She signed. At once her servants and retainers left the tent until only she, Alain, the hounds, and Agius remained. She glanced once at the hounds and evidently decided she was safe with them—or with Alain, who controlled them. “I mean to make you a weapon.”
“I am no longer a weapon to be used in worldly pursuits, Biscop Antonia. When I pledged myself to the church, I pledged myself to no longer care for the things of this world.”
She smiled gently. “We shall see.” She nodded serenely at Alain and left the tent.
Agius followed her, but his way was blocked by guards. For a moment, Alain thought Agius meant to push past them, to force a confrontation. Abruptly he dropped to his knees to pray, wincing when his wounded leg—obviously not yet healed although it had been almost two months since Sorrow’s bite—took his weight. It took Alain some time to distinguish words out of the mumbled flow of syllables.