Prince of Dogs (Crown of Stars 2)

“We’ll go back,” said Matthias. “They’ll need workers in the tannery. Lord and Lady Above, I don’t know what we’re to do with you and Helen! Two mutes!” Then he hugged her to show he wasn’t angry about it. He was scared; Anna knew that, just as she knew he was right. They had to go back to Gent. They had to find Papa Otto who had saved them so long ago.

“Master Helvidius will speak for you, won’t you, Master?” continued the young man. “It won’t matter that you can’t talk.”

But the old poet fidgeted.

They sat on a log—the ruins of an outbuilding half burned and left to rot after the Eika raid on the holding last autumn—and watched the traffic on the road. Men dragging carts, women burdened by heavy packs, two ragged deacons, laden donkeys, and now and again a rich woman with oxen drawing her wagon and a small retinue of servants following behind. Now indeed Mistress Gisela’s claim that Steleshame had once been a bustling holding along a main road seemed like truth and not an exaggeration built upon her own thwarted desire for status and wealth.

Their own small bundles leaned against the log to their right, but Matthias, for all his eagerness, could not quite make the first step onto the road, and Master Helvidius had not even removed his meager possessions from their hut.

“The army will march back by,” said Helvidius. “There are many noble lords and ladies among them who heard me declaim not four days ago. Surely they’ll wish for a poet of my skills in their retinue.”

“You’d leave us! You won’t come with us!”

Anna set a hand on Matthias’ tattered sleeve.

“What ever will I do in Gent?” whined Helvidius. “The mayor and his kin are dead. I don’t know what lady will demand the right to collect the tolls there, or if the king keeps them for himself. I heard it said that the king intends to found a royal monastery there and dedicate it to St. Perpetua, the Lady of Battles, in thanks for the deliverance of his son. Monks won’t wish to hear me sing of Waltharia or proud Helen!” He pried Helen’s grubby fingers off his knee and transferred her to Anna, but she lost interest and squatted in the dirt to rescue a ladybug about to be crushed by the old poet’s wandering sandals. “Nay, Gent won’t be the same place. I must seek my fortune elsewhere.”

“And what about us!” demanded Matthias, jumping to his feet. “You would have died over the winter if we hadn’t taken you in!”

Anna grabbed his hand and made a sign with her free hand. No. One of the lowly clerics in the retinue of Lord Wichman had seen her plight and taught her a few simple hand signs, those used among the monastics, with which to communicate.

Matthias grunted and sat back down, looking sulky.

They heard a new voice. “Go, then! After all I have done for you, raised you when your dear mother died, taught you all I know of spinning and weaving, fed you with my own—!”

“Whored me out when it suited your purpose!”

The scene by the gates of Steleshame had all the volume, and drama, that was lacking when Helvidius sang The Gold of the Hevelli before an ill-attentive and drunken audience.

“I will no longer claim kinship with you, ungrateful child! Expect no hospitality in this hall! Stealing from me!”

“I have taken no more than what my mother’s inheritance brought me.” With those words, Gisela’s niece turned her back on her aunt and started down the hill. She carried a rolled-up bundle of cloth and clothing on her back and she, unlike most of the travelers, commanded an entourage: three women whom Anna knew came from the weaving hall and a young man who had recently married one of them. The young man hauled a cart laden with a dye vat, sheepskins, beams for a loom, and a number of smaller items tucked away in pouches, pots, and small baskets; the women carried, variously, an infant, some of the small parts of the loom, and rolled fleeces.

“You’ll starve!” Gisela shouted ungraciously after them.

Anna had a sudden instinct that now was the time to leave. She got up, grabbed her bundle, and beckoned to Matthias to do the same. He was so strong now that it was no trouble for him to carry a bundle as well as little Helen, who for all her cheerful smiles and gangling limbs still weighed next to nothing. Perhaps, somehow, Anna thought, she’d given her voice in trade for his crippled leg; it wasn’t such a bad exchange.

Helvidius did not follow them. Helen began to cry.

The little girl’s cry brought the niece’s attention, who walked a short way ahead of them. She halted her group and turned, surveying the children.

“I recognize you,” she said. “You were the last to escape from Gent. Come, walk with us.” She addressed Matthias. “Perhaps you know Gent well enough to advise me.”

“Advise you in what?” Matthias asked cautiously.

“I mean to set up a weaving hall. There are good sheep-farming lands east of the city, so it will be easy enough to trade for wool. And ships have always sailed in and out of Gent, trading to other ports.”

Matthias considered. “I could help you,” he said at last, “but you’d have to give some kind of employment to my sister, Anna, and let our little one, Helen, free with the other children in the hall.” Here he gestured toward the sleeping infant, cradled in swaddling bands and tied to its mother’s back.

Anna tugged furiously on Matthias’ arm, but he paid no attention to her.

But the niece only smiled. “And yourself, Master Bargainer? No, I recall now: You work in the tannery.”

“So I do.”

“Very well, then. I think we can make a fair bargain that will benefit each of us. Will you walk with us?” She smiled so winningly at Anna that Anna could not help but smile back. She was certainly a pretty woman, but she had something more than that inside, a certain iron gleam in her eyes that suggested a woman who would make a way for herself despite what obstacles the world threw into her path.

Matthias glanced, questioningly, at his sister. Anna merely signed a Yes.