The Burning Stone (Crown of Stars 3)

“Ah.” Her face lit, as at an old toy rediscovered. “That was his name! I had forgotten it. Stranger yet, I saw him a year ago, at the palace of the skopos in Darre. He is an old man now, certainly, but not one whose face I would forget, for he rescued me from misery.”

“Why were you in Darre?” Rosvita found herself compulsively stroking flat the slightly curled edges of the parchment and at once clasped her hands and set them firmly in her lap.

“It is customary when the abbess of St. Ekatarina dies that her chosen successor travel to Darre to be blessed by the skopos. I waited in the palace guesthouse for a week before I was granted an audience with our blessed Mother, Clementia, in her audience chamber. I was there when the Eagle arrived, sent by King Henry of Wendar. I heard him tell his story of Biscop Antonia of Mainni and the accusations of sorcery laid against her. I heard Mother Clementia lay down the punishment of excommunication, and I will tell you honestly, Sister, that I feared for my daughters, the nuns who remained here while I ventured forth. What if we were accused of sorcery because of the creature who haunts the stone crown? Because of these chronicles so conscientiously recorded over the years, that take note of stone circles? What might they accuse us of, for as you have seen yourself, there are secrets hidden here. So I returned, speaking nothing.”

“Yet you are willing to countenance Hugh of Austra working sorcery.”

“I know what it is to be kinless and unprotected, at the mercy of those who have more power than you. Adelheid sheltered here once before, many years ago. She was a sweet, brave child, always cheerful. I would aid her if I can.”

“But Hugh will know your secrets as well. He can use that knowledge against you.”

Obligatia extended a hand to touch the library wall, here washed white and painted with lozenges inside lozenges, like puzzle pieces stacked one upon the next. Rosvita could not imagine living forty years within such walls, even if one learned to let the spirit fly free. A corner, a shadow, or a wall always broke the line of sight; only on the terrace did a vista open up, and then the view never changed. She had grown used to the view changing, like life, a journey where no scene is ever truly repeated, no river ever crossed twice because every river is always a new river from one hour to the next.

“He knows them now in any case,” Obligatia said quietly. After a moment, she went on. “Last summer a lone frater begged leave to spend a night in our guest hall. It is unusual for us to receive guests, as you can imagine. If travelers over St. Vitale’s Pass must leave the main road because of rain, then sometimes they will wash up here, but otherwise we live an isolated life. It is what we seek, each for our own reasons.”

“Yet when guests arrive, it seems according to the testimony of this chronicle that you ask them if they know of any stone crowns.”

“Few of us are immune to curiosity. So I asked our traveler that question. He called himself Brother Marcus. And then he did a strange thing: He called me by my old name, the one I had given up when I chose life as a nun here. He called me ‘Lavrentia.’ How could he have known that name was once mine, for he was younger than I?”

“Who knew in any case that you were last seen alive entering this convent?”

“The Eagle, Wolfhere.”

“Who may have seen you at the skopos’ palace. Yet there must have been other people in the party that you traveled south with forty years ago.”

“In all these years, I have seen no other person I recognized. Mother Aurica is long since dead. My nuns know me only as Mother Obligatia. The Eagle is the only link, and it suddenly seemed strange to me that he had made such an effort to remove me from St. Felicity all those years ago. Why would this other man come and ask for me by my old name? What of my secrets did he know?”

“‘She is back in our hands,’” murmured Rosvita, recalling the scene before the fire high in Julier Pass. “Wolfhere was banished from the court by King Henry years ago. In the time of King Arnulf it was said that he knew more than a man ought. I have myself seen that he can speak through fire. Yet that power is also known as the Eagle’s gift. Did this Brother Marcus give any reason why he wanted to find you?”

“Nay. But I admit freely, Sister, that I was frightened because I feared the woman who removed me from St. Thierry when I was a girl. I had nightmares that she still pursued me. It seems odd to me now that in Salia, in a monastery where women and men were so strictly separated, I managed to find my way into a garden where a monk worked.”

“Hindsight is a marvelous thing. It might have been an accident.”

“I no longer believe it was, and yet I have no proof. Did I not say who came to fetch me in Varre, what person took me away from St. Thierry? It was Sister Clothilde.”

“The same Clothilde who was St. Radegundis’ handmaiden and later her companion in the convent?”

“The same one. I never doubted that she was loyal to Radegundis. I believed then and believe now that she would have smiled kindly and cut the throat of any person who crossed her. No one ever crossed her.”

“Except you. For a novice to have carnal knowledge of a monk, both of them under her care, in the monastery—”

“Nay, Sister, she knew of it. She was the one who witnessed our pledge of marriage. She allowed it to happen. That is why I am telling you this. When I was young, I was too passionate and too starved to think clearly. But Brother Marcus asked questions that woke my memories, and now I can see patterns that I could not read then. You are a historian, Sister. I am sharing my secret with you because I think there is an answer to be found. I think now that they left me alive because I was ignorant.”

“Or because they thought you were dead.”

Mother Obligatia smiled bitterly. “You have a mind for this, Sister. But I am now determined not to let my secret die with me. I lost my first two children because I had no power in the world, no kin to protect me. I now rule as Mother over a tiny convent of six nuns and two lay sisters. That we guard a mystery within was the charge given to the mothers here centuries ago, but I wonder if the skopos and her advisers have forgotten its existence.”

“You have honored me with your confession, Mother.”

“Nay, I have only given you another burden. You have a keen mind and a level heart, Sister. I beg you, find out why a man calling himself Brother Marcus came to our guest hall last summer and asked for me by the name Lavrentia, which I abandoned long ago.”

The rock had a muffling effect, close and confining. On the king’s progress Rosvita had grown accustomed to the shouts of the wagoneers, the neighing of horses, the fall of rain, the heedless song of birds, the smell of the stable, and the laughter of wind on her face. Here, she couldn’t even hear the mice. Lord John and his men might labor a hundred miles away, for all that their work lay invisible and inaudible beyond rock walls. No vibrations, no cracks within the stone brought her any hint of the man who bided his time in the guest hall. Was Hugh still praying? Would God ever forgive him for his sins? Would God forgive her hers?

“There is so much to find out.” Rosvita turned the pages of the Vita to the end. Fidelis had mastered the art of script; even Sister Amabilia had found nothing to criticize in his precise hand. He had spoken of such peculiar things. “The birds sing of the child known as Sanglant,” she said, remembering his words. “Have you ever heard of the Seven Sleepers, Mother?”

“Of course. St. Euseb? tells the story of the Seven Sleepers in her History.”

“You have heard no other tale that mentions them?”