Prince of Dogs (Crown of Stars 2)

If one only looked clearly at what lay in plain sight, the answer was obvious. He was amazed that it had taken him this long to realize it. He knew how to kill Bloodheart, if only he could get close enough.

2

IVAR was of such little importance to Mother Scholastica that she allowed Master Pursed-Lips to deliver the message, which might as well have been a death blow.

“I’ll hear no more complaining from you, feckless creature!” scolded the schoolmaster. He did not exactly smile, but he clearly felt an unpleasant glee in the words which followed. “Your lord father has replied at last to your unseemly request to be released from your vows. Of course you are to stay in the monastery. You will offer up your prayers in the service of your kin—those living and those now dead. Now.” He rapped Ivar hard on the knuckles with his switch. “Get back to your labors!”

What choice did he have? The daily round at Quedlinhame was, in its own monotonous way, soothing to his bruised heart. Trapped forever. Even Liath had rejected him, and that after everything he had promised to do for her.

Only once a day did this monotony lift, did he feel one iota stirred from the numbness that afflicted his heart and soul. And even this event was attended by obstacles.

“The problem,” said Baldwin, “is that we can’t get close enough to her. It’s all very well to listen to what she preaches, but there is a fence between us.”

“What matters a mere fence?” demanded Ermanrich. “How can you even doubt her, Baldwin? Can’t you hear the truth in each word she utters?”

“How can we truly see how sincere she is if we can’t see her face except through a knothole? What if she has been set here as a test for us?”

“A test, indeed,” murmured Sigfrid, voice muffled by his clenched hands pressed against his lips. Head bent, he had his eyes shut tight and seemed to be grimacing.

Ever since Tallia had come to Quedlinhame, ever since she began speaking in her monotonously fervid voice about the Redemptio of the blessed Daisan, of his death and rebirth, poor Sigfrid seemed engaged in an inner struggle which caused him much pain.

The four boys were not her only audience. Each afternoon just after the office of Vespers she walked barefoot out from under the colonnade to the fence that separated the girls’ side of the novitiary from the boys’ half. Each day for the last three months, no matter how awful the weather, she knelt, covered only by her novice’s drab brown robe, and prayed. Only a few prayed with her every day. One of these was Ermanrich, who knelt on the opposite side of the fence, shivering in snow, in sleet, in gusty winds, in the heavy chill of winter’s hard breath, to hear her speak. Some of the female novices did as well, among them Ermanrich’s cousin, Hathumod.

Baldwin and Ivar came to listen on those days when it wasn’t too much of a hardship. Many of the female novices collected on those pleasanter days as well, or so the boys assumed by the weighty sense of many breaths drawn and released in time to Lady Tallia’s testimony, by the rustling and murmuring of coarse robes, by the whispers of light voices and, now and again, a giggle. But the giggling was never directed toward Tallia’s words. No one ever laughed at Lady Tallia or her heretical preaching.

Lady Tallia never raised her voice. She never traded on her high position, unlike Duchess Rotrudis’ son Reginar, nor did she expect to be deferred to or made much of. Quite the contrary.

Her privations had become legendary among the novices. She never wore shoes, not even in the winter. Her diet consisted wholly of barley bread and beans. She never drank wine, not even on feast days. She never allowed a stovepot by her bed, no matter how cold it became, and she allowed no servant to wait upon her, as the other noble girls did, but rather insisted—when her aunt Scholastica allowed it—on serving the servants as if she were the commoner born and they the noble.

There even circulated a rumor that she had worn a hair-shirt under her robe until Mother Scholastica forbade her to indulge herself in such a prideful display of humility.

“Hsst!” said Baldwin. On his knees, face pressed up against the knothole, he peered through onto that which was forbidden them. “Here she comes.”

Ivar sank to his knees. The cold ground burned a chill into his skin through the fabric of his robe, and he wondered if he should go back inside. But inside sat Master Pursed-Lips, snoring by the stovepot, or Lord Reginar and his dogs, hoping to make life miserable for anyone who disturbed them while they diced. The second-year novices, led by Reginar, always diced just before Vespers, the only time during the day when novices were allowed a short period without occupation.

Only at this time did Tallia have opportunity—and privacy—to speak.

“Then why is it,” whispered Baldwin, turning away from the fence to let Ermanrich press nose and eye up against the knothole, “—if she speaks the truth—that she doesn’t testify in front of Mother Scholastica?” Like most handsome and favored children, Baldwin nurtured a blithe assurance that the adults in charge would bow before any reasonable, or passionately felt, request.

“Why didn’t you just tell your parents you had no liking for the noblewoman who wanted to marry you instead of claiming you had a vocation to the church?” said Ivar.

Baldwin’s beautiful eyes flared. “That wouldn’t have mattered! You know as well as I that liking matters not when it comes time for one family to ally itself with another. Especially for the family which seeks advantage in the match.”

“You’re too skeptical, Baldwin,” said Ermanrich.

“About marriage or Lady Tallia?” Baldwin retorted.

Sigfrid took his turn. As the female novices on the other side settled down with a rustling of cloth and several coughs and sniffles, he leaned back to speak. “Of course she would be condemned by Mother Scholastica and the other authorities if they heard her speaking such heresy!”

“Hush,” said Ermanrich. “I can’t hear her.”

Sigfrid moved aside and let Ivar take his turn at the knothole. Ivar squinted, seeing first a wash of faces and fabric blended together as his sight adjusted. Like the twelve virtues, virgins all, in The Shepherd of Hermas, the female novices and even the meek schoolmistress had gathered around Tallia to listen. Ivar matched faces with virtues. Tallia for Faith, of course; Hathumod for Simplicity; the elderly and mild schoolmistress for Concordia. The rest—unremarkable girls with their hair covered by shawls and with noses red, or white, from cold and their pale hands clasped devoutly before them—would do for Abstinence, Patience, Magnanimity, Innocence, Charity, Discipline, Truth, and Prudence. Of them all, only Tallia had a truly interesting face, drawn to a fine pallor by her austerities. But perhaps it was only her tinge of fanaticism that lent attraction to her. She had nothing of Liath’s warm beauty, but she was the only truly enticing object Ivar had seen at Quedlinhame since Liath had departed with the king’s progress.

“Death is the cause of life,” she was saying now. “By sacrificing the blessed Daisan in that ritual by which the Dariyans flayed the skin from the body of a living man, the empress relieved Him of His earthly clothing. So was He freed forever from His body, which He would not need in the Chamber of Light.”

“But why did he have to be killed like that?” demanded one of the girls. “Didn’t he suffer?”

in and Ivar came to listen on those days when it wasn’t too much of a hardship. Many of the female novices collected on those pleasanter days as well, or so the boys assumed by the weighty sense of many breaths drawn and released in time to Lady Tallia’s testimony, by the rustling and murmuring of coarse robes, by the whispers of light voices and, now and again, a giggle. But the giggling was never directed toward Tallia’s words. No one ever laughed at Lady Tallia or her heretical preaching.