In the Ruins (Crown of Stars 6)

“I know who you mean!” said Erkanwulf from his seat on the bench. “We rode with her, Captain Ulric’s band out of Autun, that is. She was riding with Count Lavastine’s army, but she was a King’s Eagle, after all. I’d wager it was the same one.”

Ivar sat down, clenching his hands. He shut his eyes, and at once they fussed around him and Martin’s wife, called Flora, brought him ale to drink to clear his head.

“I will never be free of her.” He hadn’t meant to say it out loud. He laughed, seeing them stare at him. Erkanwulf looked skeptical. Martin looked puzzled. Flora’s mouth had turned up softly, and her gaze was gentle, as though she had guessed it all. She touched her young husband on the shoulder, and he started, glanced at her, and reading something in her expression—words weren’t the only marks that could be read!—he rolled up the diploma and stashed it away in the chest beneath the community’s other precious possessions.

“You said you’d give us your blessing, Lord Ivar,” he said. “Will you do so?”

“I’ll do so.”

He rose. Old memories clung. They were a stink he would never be rid of. Liath had never been his, and she would never have chosen him. She sure caught the eye. He wasn’t the only man to have thought so. But it no longer mattered. The world had changed in a way he did not yet understand.

“Stand before the hearth fire with clasped hands,” he said to Martin and Flora. He’d never witnessed a commoner’s wedding. Rarely did a deacon officiate in any case, since the law of bed and board made a marriage. He dredged for scraps of verse, God’s blessings for fecundity, the wedding of church and humankind as bride and groom, the necessity of holding fast to faith.

“For healthful seasons, for the abundance of the fruits of the earth, and for peaceful times, let us pray. Have mercy upon us, now and ever, and unto ages of ages.”

Flora wept. Martin sobbed. Their son skipped around them in glee while the baby waved its chubby arms. Balt and his daughter broke out a flute and a fiddle, and the others took the table down and cleared a space for dancing. Erkanwulf tested his healing ankle by spinning Uta round and round, and he came back, laughing, to sit and rest and grimace.

“Don’t be so grim,” he said to Ivar. “Standing there with your arms crossed and a frown like my grandmam’s! Heh! She never smiled one day in her long life! My da used to say that a spell had been put on her when she was a young sprite that she’d drop dead if she was ever happy, so there you are. She was the oldest person I ever saw till the day she dropped dead.”

The story teased a grin out of him. “Was she smiling?”

“She was not! It wasn’t the curse that felled her. She got hit in the head by a piece of wood that flew free when one of my uncles was chopping up a log. A little like my poor horse, now I think on it.”

“Erkanwulf! How can you speak so disrespectfully of the dead?”

“She was a mean old bitch. That’s just how it was. No one was sorry to see her go except the dog.”

Like me. But he shook himself. It was, a lie he told himself, and he didn’t know why. He had told himself that lie for years, ever after Hanna had chosen to go with Liath over him. But he had seen how false the lie was the day Sigfrid, Ermanrich, and Hathumod had cried to see him risk his life for Biscop Constance. He had seen how false it was the day Baldwin had given up his freedom for the rest of them. He had seen how false it was the day Baldwin wept, believing him dead. Maybe Hanna, and Liath, had scorned him, but there were others who needed him. Who were waiting for him.

He grabbed Erkanwulf’s shoulder. “As soon as the road’s clear enough that the horse isn’t at risk, we’ll go.”

“If you wish,” agreed Erkanwulf. “You’ve got a strange look on your face. Has an imp gotten into you?”

“It’s time. We’ve got to act while we have the chance.”

“Time for what?”

“Time for Captain Ulric and all the men loyal to him to choose whether to act, or to give way. Princess Theophanu can’t help us. It’s up to us to free Biscop Constance. There’s only one way to do it.”

3

A burning wind struck with such ferocity that every tent in camp was laid flat. A hail of stinging ash passed over them where they huddled under whatever shelter they could find. After all this, after the rumbling and groaning of earth faded, the terrible glare of lightning gave way to a sickly gleam that Hanna at long last identified as dawn. She crawled out from under the wagon into the cloudy light of a new day in which everything had changed. She had taken shelter with Aurea, Teuda, and poor, addled Petra with her perpetually vacant expression.

“Stay there,” she whispered to the others. Their pale faces stared out at her.

“Do you see Sister Rosvita?” Aurea looked ready to scramble out, but Hanna waved her back.

“Stay there! You can’t imagine—just stay there.”

It was impossible to think such a day could ever dawn. It was impossible to imagine a world that resembled the one she surveyed now. The great traveling camp made up of the combined armies of King Geza of Ungria and Lady Eudokia of Arethousa looked like a field of rubbish. A few brave souls staggered to and fro uttering aimless cries into the dawning light. Clouds covered the sky. The air, especially to the south and west, was yellow because of a dragging haze that obscured her view in every direction beyond an arrow’s shot. Only to the east was it vaguely lighter. A layer of ash covered everything, and it seemed most of the animals on which the army relied had fled. She had grit on her lips and in her eyes, and a skin of ash over every part of her body, even beneath her clothing, even under her eyelids.

“Hanna!”

She stumbled forward over a broken tent pole to grasp the arms of Sister Rosvita. “God be praised, Sister! Where are the others?”

“I have them all accounted for except Aurea, Teuda, and poor Sister Petra.”

“They are with me. What of Mother Obligatia?”