“Is that all? I think there is more.”
“I am looking for a woman.”
She smiled, misunderstanding him. Hathumod touched the back of a hand to her mouth, repressing a sound. She stared at Alain with a remorseful gaze. There were others behind her whom Alain recognized from court, and from his sojourn at Hersford Monastery: among them the handsome young man who had once been Margrave Judith’s husband. How long ago it seemed that he had walked up on that porch to interrupt a fight between Prior Ratbold and a ragtag collection of five clerics and two Lions! How these heretics had fetched up in Biscop Constance’s train he did not yet know.
“The woman I am looking for was an Eagle,” he continued, “and then afterward I heard a story that she ran off with Prince Sanglant.”
“Liath!” A red-haired young man stepped forward so angrily it seemed he meant to strike.
“Brother Ivar!” Constance’s tone was a reproof. Ivar shrugged a shoulder, shifted his feet, but did not move back to his former place beside the beautiful bridegroom whose name, Alain abruptly recalled, was Baldwin. The beauty was now, incongruously, dressed as a cleric. His eyes were wide, and his right hand fingered a gold Circle of Unity whose surface was chased with filigree. He wore a ring, bright blue lapis lazuli.
Alain’s breath caught; words vanished. He knew that ring, once most precious to him.
“Go on,” said the biscop.
“I pray you,” he said, finding his voice. “Where did you get that ring, Brother?”
There was a moment of confusion. Then Baldwin looked toward the red-haired Brother Ivar, who answered.
“In a tomb buried deep in a hillside, a heathen grave far east of here. What matters it to you?”
“Ivar,” said the biscop softly, “I will suffer no disrespect toward those who come honestly before me.”
“It was the same place we got the nail,” said Hathumod, “and the Lion’s tabard and weapons. How came these things there, to such an ancient grave?”
To touch again the gift she had given him! The thought coincided with a curious look on the handsome cleric’s face as the man clutched his other hand possessively around the one on which he wore the ring.
Fingers may brush, and yet after all two people may be separated by a gulf that cannot be bridged. “Never mind it,” Alain murmured. Adica was gone. Taking the ring from a man who cherished it would not bring her back. Yet it was nevertheless difficult to speak through the pain in his heart.
“Liathano is indeed the one I seek. Have you news of her whereabouts?”
“Why do you wish to know? What business do you have with her?” demanded the redhead.
“Hush, Ivar!” Hathumod punched his arm. He shot a glance at her that pierced, but she only made a face at him.
“I would know the answers to these questions likewise,” said Constance, “although I must tell you, in truth, Alain of Osna, that I do not know what has become of the Eagle. I have been held as a prisoner by my half sister Sabella for over five years. What news we have is scant, gathered by Brother Ivar and young Erkanwulf. King Henry has lingered many years in Aosta seeking an imperial crown. Sabella and Conrad between them have usurped the governance of Varre. Who can blame them, when Henry abandons his people? Princess Theophanu bides in Osterburg, protecting Saony, which is the ancient seat of my family’s power. Prince Sanglant defeated a Quman army at the Veser River and afterward rode east seeking griffins and sorcerers with which to battle a mysterious cabal of sorcerers who he claimed intended to destroy the world. He is said to have ridden south to Aosta in pursuit of his father and the sorcerers. More than that I do not know.”
“Ah,” said Alain. “Some knew, then, of the coming storm. It was not in vain that the Old Ones spoke to me.”
“The storm? The one that swept over us last autumn?”
“It was the final closing of a spell set in motion centuries ago.”
He surprised her, who was a woman not easily startled. She touched her left ear as if she were not at all sure she had heard those words spoken. “What mystery is this you speak of? Have you some hidden knowledge of events lost in the past in the time of the blessed Daisan?”
“This took place long before the time of the blessed Daisan. They are hidden from us only by the passage of years. Only by death, which hides us all in the end. I pray you, have you any news of the one called Liathano?”
“Of her, no. She was lost in a haze of fire.”
“Truth rises with the phoenix,” murmured the beauty, and Alain felt the pinch of those words in his heart as though some unnoticed hand were trying to get his attention.
“What did you say?” he asked him.
“‘Truth rises with the phoenix,”’ the young man repeated patiently, and his smile made the folk nearby murmur and point as if he had just done something extraordinary. “We who believe in the truth and the word speak so, to acknowledge the sacrifice made by the blessed Daisan, who died so that our sins might be forgiven.”
“Agius’ words are seeds grown in fertile soil,” said Alain.
Constance shut her eyes, touched a finger to her own lips as she might touch the mouth of a lover.