In the Ruins (Crown of Stars 6)

1

“I don’t like you,” said Blessing, “so go away.”

Although Lady Lavinia’s enclosed garden had not yet begun to bloom, Antonia found a measure of peace there when she was not tutoring Princess Mathilda or receiving petitioners and penitents in the great hall beside Queen Adelheid. She had been sitting in solitude on a stone bench considering the nature of evil and the punishments and penance most fitting for oath breakers. Hearing the shrill voice of her enemy’s child, she leaned forward to peer through the foliage that concealed her. A screen of clematis grew alongside the picturesque ruins of a tiny octagonal chapel, a remnant from the old Dariyan palace that had once stood here. Beneath her feet a mosaic floor, swept clean, displayed an antique tale involving two hounds, a huntress, and a half naked man. She had often encouraged Lady Lavinia to destroy the floor, but while the lady was otherwise all compliance, in this matter she refused most obstinately.

“You can’t make me go. You’re my mother’s prisoner.”

“I can punch you in the face.”

“Bastard of a bastard!”

“Am not!”

“Are so!”

“Brat! Leave off!” A masculine voice entered the fray. Antonia parted the leaves with her hands so she could see. She had succumbed once to a man of that line. It was a bitter failing to know that a youthful face and laughing, generous features might warm her still, although he was young enough to be her grandson. Berthold Villam sauntered up from the far end of the garden along the paved pathway that paralleled the irrigation channel. He was conversing amiably with his Aostan guards.

The two girls faced each other like two young furies, although Blessing looked years older. Yet their expressions and stances were remarkably similar. It was difficult to remember, seeing a woman budding out of the girl, that Blessing was very young despite the age of her body. She looked ready to spit or bite, as little hellions may do, but Berthold’s command fixed her to one spot where she fumed and got red and then white as her temper flared.

Princess Mathilda spat at Blessing’s feet before bolting for the safety of the colonnaded porch where two of her servingwomen waited in the shadows. As they led the girl away, their chatter faded out of earshot.

“… and Meto said what? Here, now, Your Highness, your mother said you weren’t to speak to the child for she’s not of your station and a wild thing indeed. Let’s go in. So, go on. What did Meto say to her when he found out she meant to marry Liutbold?”

“Marry Liutbold! Is that what that was about? That’s the first I heard of it. What can she have been thinking?”

“She’s stupid,” said Blessing.

Berthold halted beside the girl, scratching at the peach fuzz he had been growing for the last three months. “Princess Mathilda is a royal princess just as you are, Your Highness. You’d do better to make her an ally than an enemy.” He had switched to Wendish, which the guards did not, perhaps, understand.

“She’s an enemy.”

“Perhaps. But she keeps stumbling into you when she isn’t supposed to see you at all.”

“That’s because she hates me.”

“She might. Or she might wish for a child her own age to play with. She might want to like you, and act like this because she doesn’t know how else to get your attention.”

How had this youth come to be so wise?

“She’s not my own age! I’m older!”

“You look older, brat. But you don’t act it!”

“I do!” She bit her lip. She pouted. But she shut up and fixed a stare on Berthold that would have eaten another man alive.

“Come, brat,” he said more fondly, extending a hand.

o;The nobles support me. As long as they support me, the church is limited in how far its influence can reach.”

“That may be, but I do not wish to remain an excommunicate in the eyes or heart of the church. Of course it didn’t affect me at Verna or when I was with the Ashioi because I didn’t even know of it. In the final march against Anne it mattered little. Now it matters a great deal. I know what I must do.”

“What is that?”

“You won’t like it.”

“Is that meant to encourage me to dissuade you?”

“I mean to do it, because I know it’s right.”