Crown of Stars (Crown of Stars 7)

The text was succinctly written and began on the paler, flesh side of the vellum. The cream-colored grain side was blank and the corners showed a tendency to curl in that way. The parchment had a hole in it, and the scribe had drawn her ruled lines and written in her text around the flaw. The script had an old-fashioned look to it. For one thing, it used all uncials, as they had done in those days. The scribe’s hand had no beauty; Liath could have done a better job. But she could read it.

“‘I, Henry, by the Grace of God in Unity, Regnant over Wendar, do grant to the inhabitants of Freeburg the customs and privileges written below …’” Reading, she was reminded of that day years ago in the forest holding west of Gent, when she had read aloud a charter very like to this one. “Whoever shall acquire property by clearing wastelands shall hold it for the same price as her house…. No one, not the regnant nor anyone else, shall demand of the householders of Freeburg any requisition or aid…. They shall pay neither tariff nor tax upon their food or the wine they have grown in their own vineyards. … Whoever lives in the holding a year and a day shall afterward remain undisturbed.’”

o;Where was that?” asked Master Helmand as the folk around him whispered and nodded.

“There’s a stone circle. That’s where we camped last night.”

“Old ghosts walk there. No one goes willingly to that place.”

It was clear to Liath that the man thought them fools for having camped on haunted ground, but the confession seemed to peel off a layer of suspicion from his scrutiny. After all, how badly can fools threaten an armed village?

“You know the convent?” she asked him. “We had hoped to ask for a guide to show us the way.”

“Oh, yes. They come twice a year to trade with us and sing a mass and read the prayers for the dead.”

Liath gestured toward the chapel, seen now to be so small that no more than twenty folk could crowd into its nave. “You have a chapel, I see.”

“Yet no deacon.” He hesitated, glanced at the other elders, and went on as they fluttered their hands and nodded their heads eagerly. “Perhaps you’d take a request to the regnant, Eagle. We’ll host you gladly, though we haven’t much in our stores after this long winter and no good spring. We’re beholden to the regnant here, as you know. Freeholders. We have a charter!”

“Have you?” Liath asked with interest. “When was it written?”

He cleared his throat. Everyone looked embarrassed. “Well, then, in the time of the old Henry, father to the first Arnulf, long since. We only hear it read aloud but twice the year at spring and fall, and this year at springtide none came from the convent to us.”

“Did they not?” Liath looked at Thiadbold. He shrugged. “Have any gone to see if there is trouble there?”

“The river flooded. The ford hasn’t been passable for months. There’s no other way through.”

“Is there no hope of us winning through?”

He beckoned to a man standing up on the walls. This one came down, and it appeared he was a hunter and tracker for the holding, one who ranged wide.

“I’m called Wulf,” the man said by way of introduction after Helmand had explained the situation. He looked to be about Thiadbold’s age, somewhere between late twenties and middle thirties, dark-featured, wiry, tough, with handsome eyes and a warp to his chin from an old injury. “I was up that way ten days ago. It might be better now. We can try.”

“We must try,” said Liath to him before turning to the elders. “We’ll be grateful for your hospitality. I can read that charter for you, if you’ve a wish to hear it.”

Oh, they did.

An entire ceremony had collected around the twice-yearly reading of their charter in the same way flotsam collects around a boulder rising from the sandy seashore. A table and chair were carried out into the open air and a cloth thrown over the table. Every household brought cups and drink and set them on the common table. Last, a pale horn was produced from a locked chest. Its call rang four times, once at each corner of the stockade, before they put it away. Lanterns were lit as the inhabitants gathered, stationing themselves in a tidy semicircle, children at the front, adults behind. All remained standing as Master Helmand emerged from the largest longhouse with a small cedar chest in his hands. He set it on the table, opened it reverently, and uncovered folded parchment. This he opened on the table, one hand pinning down the top and the other the bottom. Lanterns were set on either side, although there was still enough light for Liath, at least, to read the bold letters.

The text was succinctly written and began on the paler, flesh side of the vellum. The cream-colored grain side was blank and the corners showed a tendency to curl in that way. The parchment had a hole in it, and the scribe had drawn her ruled lines and written in her text around the flaw. The script had an old-fashioned look to it. For one thing, it used all uncials, as they had done in those days. The scribe’s hand had no beauty; Liath could have done a better job. But she could read it.

“‘I, Henry, by the Grace of God in Unity, Regnant over Wendar, do grant to the inhabitants of Freeburg the customs and privileges written below …’” Reading, she was reminded of that day years ago in the forest holding west of Gent, when she had read aloud a charter very like to this one. “Whoever shall acquire property by clearing wastelands shall hold it for the same price as her house…. No one, not the regnant nor anyone else, shall demand of the householders of Freeburg any requisition or aid…. They shall pay neither tariff nor tax upon their food or the wine they have grown in their own vineyards. … Whoever lives in the holding a year and a day shall afterward remain undisturbed.’”

The formula had a parallel construction to that diploma given to the freeholders in the Bretwald by the younger Henry, although the details differed. The villagers listened as intently as scholars as she read slowly and in a clear voice.

“‘This privilege was confirmed by Henry, by faith and oath approved and accepted by the following persons… in the year 660 since the Proclamation of the Holy Word, on the 11th day of Sormas, on the feast day of the Visitation.’” She looked up in surprise. “That’s today!”

Having no deacon to count the calendar for them, they, too, were shocked and delighted. They set to drinking with a cheer. First the children—who would lay claim to these lands when they inherited—drank. After them, the elders, who had husbanded the land, and last of all the householders who now worked the fields. There was enough for all, a rare enough thing, Liath thought as she sipped at the sour cider, which was starting to go to vinegar but had not quite turned.

On such an auspicious occasion all lingering suspicion vanished. Lions and Eagles were fed, and housed at random, some in the longhouses and some in byres or stock sheds on beds of heaped straw. Liath asked for no place greater for herself than any other, and the captain, seeing this without commenting on it, offered her no primacy. For the first time in many days she slept soundly, half buried in a heap of scratchy straw with only a blanket beneath and one thrown over herself where she had wrapped herself in her wool cloak. In old days, long ago, she had often slept so on the road, traveling with Da and later as an Eagle. Slipping into sleep, she could imagine Da near at hand, murmuring under his breath, talking to himself, as he often did when there was no learned adult with whom to converse. How he loved to chat. For all his lonely isolated ways, Da had loved people and loved talking and discussion and argument for argument’s sake. He had had a restless, roving mind, unsettled, dissatisfied, and most likely unsatisfiable. She tucked her saddlebags against her chest. The book was a comforting presence, for all the trouble it had caused her. It was, in a way, Da’s conversation with himself all those years. She wept a little, thinking of him, and fell asleep, and dreamed of Blessing as a tiny baby sleeping at peace in her arms.

“Liath? Ai, God! It is her!”

That Hanna’s voice should so trouble her dreams did not surprise her, not after marching for two days with the Lions. They were in the dream, too.

“Well, I told you it was her,” said one, sounding aggrieved.

“Since when should anyone believe your wild tales, Folquin?”