“Never.”
“Then with the pigs.”
“Gladly, as long as it spares me from you.”
He slapped her. Then, while her skin still stung from the blow, he pulled her hard against him and kissed her on the mouth. She got a hand in between them and shoved him away.
He laughed, wild and a little breathlessly. “You fool. My mother has promised me the abbacy of Firsebarg as soon as the old abbot dies. With the abbacy I will have entry into King Henry’s progress, if I wish it. And in a year or five more, there will be a presbyter’s crosier in my hands and I will walk among those who advise the skopos herself. Only give me the book and show me what your father taught you, and there is nothing you and I could not accomplish.”
“You took his books already. You stole them. They would have matched the debt. I would have been free.”
His expression chilled her. “You will never be free, Liath. Where is the other book?”
“You murdered Da.”
He laughed. “Of course I didn’t. Died of a bad heart, that’s what Marshal Liudolf said. If you think otherwise, my beauty, then perhaps you ought to confide in me. Another season and your father would have taken me into his confidence. You know it’s true.”
It was true. Da was lonely, and Hugh, whatever else he might be, could be charming. Da had liked him, had liked his quick mind, his curiosity, even his arrogance, since Hugh had the odd habit of treating Da as if he were his equal in social standing. But Da seemed to expect that.
“Da never had any sense in his friends,” she said recklessly, to shake off these distracting thoughts.
“I know you’ve never liked me, Liath, although I can’t imagine why. I’ve never offered you an insult.” He placed two fingers under her chin and tilted her face up, forcing her to look at him. “Indeed, there isn’t another woman in the village, in this whole frozen wasteland, that I’d ever think of offering my bed, and I’ve slept with a duchess and refused a queen. Once I’m abbot of Firsebarg you’ll have your own house, servants, whatever you wish. A horse. And I don’t intend to stop my whole life at Firsebarg. I have plans.”
“If you have plans, then they must be treasonous.” She twisted out of his grasp. “King Henry and the skopos have never tolerated sorcery. Only the Lady Sabella welcomes heretics into her company.”
“How little you know of the church, my beauty. Sorcery is not a heresy. Indeed, the skopos is usually harsher toward heretics than toward sorcerers. Sorcery is only forbidden by the church when it is practiced outside the supervision of the skopos. I wonder what teacher your Da had. And in any case, you would be surprised how tolerant King Henry and the noble princes can be, if only the means further their aims. Where did you hide the book?”
She retreated to the door and did not answer.
He smiled. “I’m patient, Liath. Lady and Lord, what were your parents thinking, to call their child by an old Arethousan name? Liathano. An ancient name, linked to sorcery. Your Da admitted as much to me once.”
“When he had drunk too much.”
“Does that make it less true?” She said nothing. “Where is the book, Liath?” When still she did not speak he shook his head, but the smile remained on his lips. “I’m patient. Which will it be? My bed, or the pigs?”
“The pigs.”
With a lightning strike he grabbed her wrist with one hand and slapped her hard once again with the other. Then he embraced her and ran a hand up her back. His breath was hot on her neck. She stood rigid, but when he began to move her toward the bed she fought against him. Got a heel behind his ankle and tripped him. They fell in a heap on the floor, and she pushed away and scrambled to her feet. He laughed and caught her by one knee, jerked her down so hard her knees bruised on the stone and the breath was jarred out of her. Then he let her go and stood, breathing hard. He bowed in the most formal, court manner, offered her his hand to help her to her feet.
“You’ll come to my bed willingly or not at all.” He pulled a scrap of white linen from his belt, wiped her right hand clean, then bent to kiss her fingers. “My lady,” he said, perhaps mockingly. She was too dazed to interpret his tone. His golden hair brushed her hand, and he straightened. “‘She is dark and lovely, this daughter of Saïs, touched by the sun’s breath. Turn your eyes away from me; they are as bright as the star of morning.’”
She shoved her hand behind her back and wiped it against her tunic.
“Now. You will feed the pigs and the hens, sweep this room, get me a bath, and then tell Mistress Birta that she no longer need send a meal over twice a day. You can cook, I suppose?”
“I can cook. May I go?”
He stood aside so she could leave, but she had only gotten as far as the narrow passageway when he called her name.
“Liath.” She turned back to see him leaning in the doorway. Even in the semigloom of the little warren of cells, his golden hair and his combed linen robe and his fine, clean skin made him seem to shine as he watched her. “You may even last out the summer with the pigs, but I don’t think you’ll like it so well when winter comes.”
How far she would get if she tried to run away? A useless thought. She would not get far, nor would she have any means to live if she did escape from him. She had seen herself in eight years of running that there were far worse circumstances than these.
Hugh chuckled, mistaking her silence for a reply. “Tell Mistress Birta that she may tally up any food or goods you buy from her, and I’ll pay her each Ladysday. I expect a good table. And you will dine with me. Go on.”
She went. Going outside to feed the animals that were stabled in the shed alongside the storage rooms, she saw a horseman sitting astride his mount, out in the trees. It was Ivar. Seeing her, he began to ride forward. She waved him away, quickly, desperately. For there was another thing she had seen in Frater Hugh’s chamber, resting on the feather quilt. A fine, gold-hilted long sword, sheathed in red leather. A nobleman’s sword. She had no doubt that Hugh knew how to use it and would not hesitate to, even against a son of the local count.
Ivar reined his horse in and sat, watching her, while she worked. After a while she went inside. When she came out again, carrying two buckets yoked on a staff across her shoulders to fill for Hugh’s bath, Ivar was gone.
III
SHADOWS FROM
THE PAST
1
IT took five days to walk from Osna village to Lavas Holding, the sergeant in charge told Alain. The journey this spring, however, took fifteen days because the chatelaine and her company stopped at every village and steading to accept taxes or rents or a young person in service for the upcoming year. They came to Lavas Holding on St. Marcia’s Day, and Alain stared at the high timber palisade that enclosed the count’s fortress, the timber great hall built on a rise with a stone bailey behind it, these two central buildings surrounded by a smaller palisade. The village spilled out below the outer palisade, down to the banks of a slow-flowing river.
He had little chance to gape. He and the others were promptly herded into the fort, where they waited in an untidy line in the huge dirt yard—the outer court—as Chatelaine Dhuoda and her retinue set up a table and began to call the company forward one by one. Alain found himself in a group of young men, and soon it was his turn to stand before Sergeant Fell.
“Can you ride a horse? Ever handled a spear? Worked with horses, perchance? No, of course not.” The burly sergeant motioned for the next man in line to step forward.
“But, sir—” Alain began desperately. Had it not been promised him, to learn the arts of war?
“Go on, go on! We haven’t time to train new recruits into men-at-arms, not now. Count Lavastine is already gone out to hunt the Eika and we’re marching out with a second force in twenty days. Get into the other group and don’t waste my time, lad.”
Chastened, Alain retreated to the other line, this one composed of women as well as men, lads his age, and girls not quite women, folk of varying degrees and ages and s
tations. He came in time and in his turn before Chatelaine Dhuoda. She asked him a few questions. He did not truly hear himself answer. Though her hair was veiled by a clean linen cloth, it showed a tendency to come free of its confines, wisps of reddish, coarse hair curling at her ears and on her forehead.
“What an accent!” she said to the young cleric in the plain brown robe of a frater who sat next to her, marking out the list for Count Lavastine. “Well, boy, Master Rodlin can use you in the stables. Who is next?”
“But Brother Giles taught me the letters. I can write all of them in a neat hand.”
At this, the frater looked up with interest. He had a fierce gaze, like a hawk. “Can you read?” he demanded.
“No … no, I can’t read yet, but I’m sure I could assist with the clerics. I can count—” The frater had already looked away dismissively, toward the next candidate. Alain turned desperately back to Chatelaine Dhuoda. None of this was going as he had dreamed it would. “Surely you remember my Aunt Bel telling you I was meant to be confirmed as a—”
“Move on!” said Dhuoda. A young woman stepped forward to take Alain’s place, so Alain had no choice but to do as he was told.
He found the stables and was at once put to work at a job any idiot could manage: filling a cart with manure and hauling it out to the fields. His only companion at this task was a halfwit called Lackling, a boy of about his age who was as thin as a stick, with bandy legs and a misshapen jaw through which he could not form true words. He was skittish and as likely to stare at the clouds or stroke the donkey as to keep to his work, but Alain did not have the heart to be angry at him, poor creature.
“I see you get along well enough with our Lackling,” said Master Rodlin that evening after the two boys had been given a hasty supper of cheese and bread and an onion. “You can share the loft with him. Make sure the new lads don’t tease him too much. He’s a harmless creature and the animals trust him, for I suppose they know he’s as dumb-witted as they are.”
Lackling made an odd snuffling noise and picked up the crumbs of bread from the dirt floor of the stables. With his treasure in his hands he went just outside and stood, hand out and open, staring at the sky and shuffling nervously back and forth.
Master Rodlin grunted, not without pity. “Thinks the birds will come and feed from his hand,” he said. “But Deacon Waldrada says it is our duty as good Daisanites to shelter the weak. And the lad was born here, in the shadow of the fort. His mother died birthing him, for it was a hard birth and perhaps it would have been best had the child died as well, poor dumb creature.”
“I was born here,” said Alain. “In Lavas Holding, I mean.”
Rodlin looked at him with a keener interest. “Who was your mother?”
Now Alain flushed. “I don’t know.”
“Ah,” said Rodlin knowingly. “Fostered out, were you? In a town like this there’s always a woman or two who can’t admit whose child she bore and so gives it away.”
“She didn’t give me away. She died birthing me.”
“Had she no kin? What about your father?”
Alain hung his head, seeing the expression on Master Rodlin’s face change from curiosity to a thin incurious smile: identified and dismissed as some whore’s unwanted bastard.
“Go on, then,” continued the stable master. “You’ll do well enough in the stables. Just don’t go into the kennels.”
“There’re no hounds in the kennels.”
“But there will be when Count Lavastine returns. They’d as soon kill you as pass you by, lad. Don’t forget it and don’t get in the habit of going by there, for your own good. See this scar.” He pointed to a ragged white scar that ran from ear to shoulder. “They gave me that, and more besides. Stay well away and you’ll be safe.”
“Why would the count keep such vicious hounds?” asked Alain, but Rodlin was already walking away, intent on more important duties than chatting with a motherless stableboy.
Lackling, crumbs still in hand, came back inside, looking disconsolate. Alain sneezed and wiped the dust of hay from his lips. “I don’t suppose you know about the hounds,” said Alain.
“Moewr,” said Lackling. “Hroensgueh lakalig.”
Alain smiled sadly at the halfwit. Wasn’t it only self-pity to feel sorry for himself when faced with this half-grown manboy no longer a child and yet incapable of becoming a true man? In Osna village he had been Bel’s nephew, and that counted for a great deal. Here he was just a village boy from the outlying lands who didn’t know swordcraft and had nothing further to recommend him and no kin to come to his aid. So they made him a stableboy and ordered him to shovel manure. But he had his wits and his strength and a whole body.
“Come,” he said to Lackling. He took the halfwit by the elbow and led him outside where dusk shaded the stone tower in a wreath of shadow and the last glint of sun sparked off the banner riding above the palisade gate: two black hounds on a silver field, the badge of the counts of Lavas. “Open your hand. Here, I’ll cup your hands in mine. Now we must just stand still enough….”
So they stood as dusk lowered down and the beasts thumped and rustled in the stables and the outer court quieted as day passed. A sparrow came, flitting out of the twilight, and perched on Alain’s forefingers where they peeped out from underneath Lackling’s smaller hands. It took a crumb. Lackling crowed with delight and the bird fluttered away.
“Hush,” said Alain. “You must remain quiet.” They waited again, and soon another sparrow came, and a third, and ate all the crumbs off Lackling’s hands while the halfwit wept silently with joy.
Master Rodlin proved indifferent to Alain as long as the boy did as he was told. In fact, that first month while Sergeant Fell prepared his new soldiers to march out, everyone proved indifferent to Alain. He watched while the other boys got into feuds that escalated to fistfights and once to a knifing. He stared, shamed and yet shamefully curious, while the young men-at-arms flirted with the servant girls and slipped away with them to a dark corner of the loft. He studied the more experienced men as they readied their weapons and honed their fighting skills.
On St. Kristine’s Day, she who was the holy martyr of the city of Gent, a woman cloaked and badged as a King’s Eagle rode in to deliver a message to the count. That night at supper in the hall, sitting at the lower tables, Alain watched in astonishment as the Eagle’s conversation with Chatelaine Dhuoda, at the upper table, degenerated into an argument.
“This is not a request,” said the Eagle with obvious indignation. “King Henry expects Count Lavastine to attend his progress. Are you telling me that the count refuses?”
“I am telling you,” said Dhuoda calmly, “that I will send a message to the count with Sergeant Fell and his company when they march out in two days’ time. When Count Lavastine returns at the end of the summer, I am sure he will act as soon as he is able.”
“If you send this sergeant and his company back with me, it would go a good way toward convincing King Henry of the count’s loyalty.”
“Only the count can make that decision.” Dhuoda gestured for more ale to be brought. Alain recognized by now that wine was reserved for the most favored visitors, which this King’s Eagle clearly was not. “The Eika burned a monastery and two villages already this spring. The count needs every able man in his county to strike back and protect his lands. But of course I will include all that you have said in the message my clerics write to him.”
But it was clear to everyone present, and especially to the Eagle, that although Dhuoda’s answers were perfectly legitimate, they were also evasive.
The Eagle left the next day, still looking angry. And the day after that Sergeant Fell and his company marched out. The remaining horses and cattle—except for a few workhorses, the donkeys, one old warhorse, and a lame cow who still gave milk—were taken out to the summer pastures. Most of the village worked out in the fields, labored in their vegetable gardens, or gathered fruit in the forest beyond the cultivated land. The few
servants left in the holding went about their business with an efficiency that left them plenty of time to drink and dice in the long pleasant evenings.
No one bothered Alain; no one noticed him to make sure he did his work. Every night, lying beside Lackling in the loft above the stables, he would touch the wooden Circle of Unity Aunt Bel had given him and then draw out the string from which hung the rose and finger the soft petals. The vision he had seen from Dragonback Ridge above Osna Sound seemed so distant now. He would have thought it an illusion, born of storm and sorrow, except that the blood-red rose he wore as a necklace beneath his shirt had not withered or died.
In the holding, a quiet month passed. Trained by a navigator, Alain watched the skies when it was clear; the moon waned and waxed to full and began to wane again. Lackling showed him where all the best berry bushes ripened, in bright clearings hidden away in the forest. He found a path leading farther up into the hills, but the boy became frightened and dragged him away from it.
Alain asked Master Rodlin if he knew of any old trails in the forest, and the stable master merely said that an old ruin lay up in the hills beyond and that more than one foolish boy had broken leg or arm climbing on crumbling walls. Like the kennels, it was something even a halfwit avoided.
Now that most of the stable animals were gone, Alain was given whatever odds and ends of the worst work were left, whatever task no one else wanted to do. He spent more and more time leaning on a shovel inside the empty stables and staring at nothing. That moment up on Dragonback Ridge when the Lady of Battles had invested him with her terrible sword seemed like wishful dreaming now. How could he have been chosen for a special trial? Unless digging out the latrines was one.