King's Dragon (Crown of Stars 1)

“No need.” She shrugged and gestured to her servants to bring her mule. “I am armored with my faith, Frater Agius, as are we all who have given our lives to Our Lord and Lady. And I am made strong by my brother’s confidence in me—as he is by mine in him.”

“Then it is well we should go.” Yet Agius hesitated as both biscops were helped onto their mounts. He came forward and took the reins of Biscop Constance’s mule in the place of her servant. “But did not the blessed Daisan say, he who spurns what is offered is all too often in want? It is past midday, and if we ride on now, we and the others of Biscop Antonia’s party will have walked all day fasting.”

o;It grieves me to hear of such things,” replied Constance without any indication this was news to her, “but I fear the ill-will of Sabella, for reasons you must know, and in any case I am loath to leave my people—” Here she gestured toward the city, which lay quiet in the midday sun. “—without my guidance, and without my presence to protect them.”

Agius had remained in the background, hidden by the robes of Antonia’s clerics. Now he stepped forward. The bleak dark stain of his frater’s robes stood out starkly against the brighter clothing of his more worldly brethren.

Constance’s expression brightened. She looked delighted. “Agius! You have surprised me.” She released Antonia’s hands and reached and drew Agius to her as if he were her brother. The show of familiarity astonished Alain. “I did not expect to find you in such company.”

Just barely Alain caught in Constance’s tone a muted disgust for the company Agius was keeping. If Antonia noticed it, she made no sign; she beamed as fondly on them as an elderly kinswoman might approve the reuniting of two feuding siblings.

“I travel where I must,” Agius said. He looked torn between his obvious pleasure in seeing Biscop Constance and the dilemma that hung over him as the executioner’s sword hangs over the neck of the condemned. “I follow the path which Our Lady has set before my feet.”

“And that path led you to Sabella’s camp?” asked Constance. If there was sarcasm in her utterance, Alain could not hear it.

“Worldly consideration led me to Sabella’s camp, Your Grace.”

“I thought you had turned your face away from worldly considerations, Frater Agius, when you refused marriage and took the brown robe of service instead.”

He smiled grimly. “The world is not yet done with me, Your Grace. Alas.”

“It is ever thus, that the world intrudes when we wish most devoutly only to contemplate God.” Constance folded her hands together and bowed her head slightly, as if in submission to God’s will. Then she raised her head to look at Agius directly again. “But God in kindness endowed humans with freedom equal to that of the angels. For is it not true that the sun and the moon and indeed even the stars are so fixed that they can only move in the path marked out for them? Yet it is not so with those born of human mothers. Thus must our behavior be reckoned with that of the angels. The praise or blame which a man’s conduct deserves is really his own.” She turned to Biscop Antonia. “Do you not agree, Your Grace?”

Of course Alain recognized at once that the remark was like a barbed spear: meant to sink in with little hope to ease it out without great pain.

Biscop Antonia had impenetrable armor. She nodded. “It is as you say, Your Grace. Thus do Our Lord and Lady judge our actions, by what we do and by what we leave undone.”

Agius made no reply.

This silence Biscop Constance took in stride. “Now that we are met on the road,” she continued, “I pray you will return with me to my hall, where my people will entertain you as is fitting with a good feast and a taste of Autun wine.”

Agius shifted violently. “I have come to ask,” he said quickly, “that you return with us to Sabella’s camp, as Biscop Antonia requests of you.”

“Surely it would be unwise of me to place myself in Sabella’s power, although certainly I hold no personal enmity toward my sister.”

“I will hold myself responsible, and none other, if any harm comes to you, Your Grace.”

“Are you pledging me safe passage, Agius?”

“I pledge to escort you safely back to your city, Your Grace.”

She was startled, though she tried to conceal it. “Then I will agree to go,” she said. “Better peace than war, as the blessed Daisan said.”

“I will go with you, then,” added Agius, “to your hall while you gather anything you need to take to Sabella’s camp.”

“No need.” She shrugged and gestured to her servants to bring her mule. “I am armored with my faith, Frater Agius, as are we all who have given our lives to Our Lord and Lady. And I am made strong by my brother’s confidence in me—as he is by mine in him.”

“Then it is well we should go.” Yet Agius hesitated as both biscops were helped onto their mounts. He came forward and took the reins of Biscop Constance’s mule in the place of her servant. “But did not the blessed Daisan say, he who spurns what is offered is all too often in want? It is past midday, and if we ride on now, we and the others of Biscop Antonia’s party will have walked all day fasting.”

Even Alain did not have to guess at Biscop Constance’s reaction to this statement; she was delighted to be able to offer hospitality. Aunt Bel had said many a time within his hearing: “So does Our Lady judge us, by our generosity at table.” Aunt Bel was so well-known for feeding folk passing through Osna village that less magnanimous householders sometimes fobbed guests off on her. Never had she turned one away.

“Then certainly we must return to my palace and dine,” said Constance with evident pleasure.

They returned, Agius still leading the mule, to Autun. It was the largest city Alain had ever seen, with a stone wall and a stone and timber cathedral and so many buildings all shoved together that he wondered how the folk who lived there did not choke on each other. They passed quickly through the gate and down a wide avenue flanked with timber houses built in a style quite unlike the long-houses of his village. The walls of the biscop’s palace rose to the height of three men. He barely had time to catch his breath before they were led inside its imposing timber frame.

There, he was allowed to sit by the great hearth and eat bread so white and soft it was more like a cloud than what he knew as bread, heavy loaves with thick dark crusts. He was given leave to eat as much as he wished of the best cheese he had ever tasted and the leavings of the fowl and fish that made up the biscop’s simple midday meal. All this while Rage and Sorrow gnawed on hambones still bristling with meat and fat. Probably poor Lackling had never eaten as much pork in his entire cold and lonely life as the hounds devoured in the course of the next hour. It was a terrible thing to sit and eat with such pleasure while Lackling had not even the peace of a marked grave.

But Alain could not help himself. Even helping to serve at Count Lavastine’s table during the visit of Lady Sabella and her entourage he had not seen a meal as casually elegant as this. But then, Biscop Constance was the king’s sister, born of the lineage of kings. The dark beams and tapestried walls, the bustling clerics and the fine linen worn by every least servant, served to remind him how small a place Osna village was. Certainly Aunt Bel and his father Henri were respectable and prosperous freeholders. Of this they and their children could always be proud. Bel had lost children to disease but never to starvation, as many did. But sitting in this hall, even in the ashy corner by the hearth, that pride seemed little compared to the great state employed in the service of princes.