Crown of Stars (Crown of Stars 7)

Theophanu sat back.

“I pray you, Nephew, account for me the disposition of your forces. Who rides with you, and who remains behind? Then I will tell you the reports I have heard. I hope they will surprise you.”

“I am already surprised.” He sat, but he was too restless to stay still. He tapped a foot a dozen or more times against the floor before switching to the other one. “What do you mean?”

“I mean villages and estates in the lands west of Quedlinhame have been attacked most viciously by the Lost Ones made flesh. Our enemies look like you.” She surveyed the hall. Her silent clerics, her noble kinsmen, the distant guards: all had a similar Wendish robustness, light hair, big builds. His coloring and his features alone were markedly different. He alone was the bastard, with an outland mother.

Theophanu touched him on the knee as if to remind him that she, too, had an outland mother, a foreigner who had never quite been trusted by good honest Wendish folk. Still, Theophanu resembled her father more than her Arethousan mother.

o;Aunt,” said Theophanu in her cool voice, “I pray you, if that is true, then why would Liathano deny that she is Taillefer’s heir? There is no one to say otherwise, except her. We all believed it. Why would she throw away a claim to power if she sought power?”

“Are you defending her?” asked Scholastica.

“You have not answered Theo’s question.” Sanglant nodded at Theophanu, and he could not keep a smirk from his face. He liked seeing his aunt discomfited. She deserved it.

“She is subtle,” said the abbess finally.

“She is not subtle,” said Theophanu with a shake of her head. “She is a cub among wolves, here at court. She is awkward and as likely to say the wrong thing as to keep silence. Begging your pardon, Sanglant.”

He shrugged. “It’s true enough.”

“Were she subtler,” said Liutgard, “there would be less disquiet. But it’s true, she’s no courtier. She has not the least idea of the duties and obligations that bind the consort. Folk fear her, for they have heard many strange stories about her. Yet it seems there are those among the progress who champion her.” She smiled a little. Maybe it, too, was a smirk, to answer his. “Eagles and Lions. Common-born folk.”

“A common-born woman cannot become queen, not in Wendar,” said Scholastica. “In Salia of old, as it says in the histories, a slave might become a queen if she caught a king’s fancy and aroused his lust—”

Naturally, having said it, she stopped. She thought. She looked at Sanglant, and, God Above, he felt himself blushing.

“So it seems not only in Salia of old,” she remarked, her voice tainted with an ugly tone. “I had forgotten that in her history, so it is said, she was for some time a slave because of her father’s debts. It was said she was Hugh of Austra’s mistress—and he a fine and upstanding frater!”

Sanglant kicked away his chair and strode to the back of the hall, unable to stand still.

“Does this not trouble you, Nephew?” she said to his back.

He turned to make a retort, but paused.

Theophanu leaned forward to clasp her aunt’s hands. Scholastica winced as Theophanu tightened her grip. “Never believe that she went to Hugh of Austra’s bed willingly. If I say anything, Aunt, if you believe me at all, believe that.”

“What do you know of the matter?”

“I know enough. She saved my life many years ago, when she was only an Eagle and I was—foolish and blind.”

“What do you mean? Say more!”

Theophanu would not be drawn.

“Thus is the spider’s web of deceit woven,” said Scholastica as she pulled her hands out of Theophanu’s grasp.

“You are being stubborn,” said Sanglant, pacing back to stand with his hands on the wings of his chair.

“I am? You are the one being stubborn, Sanglant. You, a bastard, born of a foreign woman. King Arnulf said all along that Henry was indecently obsessed with that woman. That Henry had made rash promises to bring her to his bed. I am only a few years younger than Henry. I recall it well!” She smiled mockingly. “An obedient son. Our father’s favorite. Yet for a woman he defied the king. How like Henry you are!”

“I can think of no greater compliment than to be compared to my beloved father,” he said grimly.

She cut him off. “Yet when I look at you, when any person looks at you, they see your mother’s face. They see the face of a people already at war with us.”

There, she struck the blow that stopped him. “At war with us? What do you mean?”

“You have not heard? Ah.” Her eyes tightened. Her mouth became a flat line as she regarded him.