The Burning Stone (Crown of Stars 3)

While Henry mulled over this troubling news, Hanna was given leave to take Wolfhere outside and see that he was fed.

“Why didn’t you stay with them?” she asked.

“I had other duties, as you know, Hanna, and other messages to deliver. How fares it with you?”

She sat with him and told him of her adventures while he picked clean half a chicken that was only slightly charred from too much roasting, then washed it down with bread and ale.

“What do you think these dreams mean?” she concluded. “Are they true visions, or false ones?”

“I cannot tell you. An indigestion in your stomach might cause them. Or it may be you have picked up a strange destiny. I have caught a stone in my shoe now and again, and once it was a beautiful agate that I polished and hung on a chain.” He smiled as at a very old memory. “Nay, I cannot say. I know little of the Eastern tribes.” He chuckled. “I met Prince Bayan in earlier days. Who would have thought Princess Sapientia would have liked him so well?”

“Who would have thought,” muttered Hanna, “that she would have liked him better than Father Hugh? Do you know where Liath is, Wolfhere?”

“Somewhere safe, I should hope,” he replied smoothly. “It would go ill for her to return to a court where she would face trial on the charge of sorcery.”

Since Wolfhere was always surprising her, it took her a moment to respond. “How can you know what happened at the Council of Autun? I only learned of it ten days ago when I joined the king’s progress.”

The summer evening had a drowsy light to it, not quite day and not quite night. “You have seen enough, Hanna,” he said at last. “I can trust you with the Eagle’s sight.”

“What is the Eagle’s sight?” she demanded, but she already had her suspicions.

“Meet me tomorrow at cockcrow out beyond the Lions’ encampment.” He would say no more.

In Taillefer’s chapel the clerics were singing Vigils as she made her way past stables and palace to the field where three hundreds of Lions had set up their campground, with small tents and larger pavilions, wagons placed in a corral, and a dirt arena roped off for training.

Some few Lions were up and about. As commoners and field soldiers, they marched with few servants, and part of their duties were to take care of themselves like the Dariyan legionnaires of old who, it was said, dug their own earthen forts each night when they were on campaign and moreover did not scorn doing so.

She could not pass the sentries without looking for her old friends, but as it happened, she found Ingo out by the wagons with a piece of sausage in his hand and a kitten hissing at him from behind a wagon wheel.

“Friend!” she called just as the kitten scratched, and he yelped, dropping the bit of sausage. The kitten scampered into a mound of straw lying heaped up along the axle. “Now that’s a dangerous foe,” she said, crouching beside him. “I beg pardon for startling you. It looks like a hard-fought battle.”

He sucked on his scratched finger. “Poor things. Their dam was run over by one of the water wagons yesterday and we’ve tried to coax them out, but they won’t come near even to take a bit of meat.”

The waning quarter moon hung low at the trees. The stars were fading as dawn grew around them.

“Skittish,” said Hanna. “So my dam always said, that you can’t shove a child among strangers and expect it to sing and dance.” He smiled. Picking up the sausage, he held it out again and clucked under his tongue, hoping to tease out the kittens. She heard their sharp and almost laughable hisses from their hiding place in the straw. “I haven’t seen your new recruit at the palace,” she added.

Ingo shrugged without taking his eyes off the straw, which had a pronounced wiggle and slip to it; briefly, a gray tail peeped through, then vanished. “Thiadbold’s captain of our company now,” he said, “and he’s decided to keep him busy here in the camp for the time being. No need to make him suffer more than he has already, poor lad. After all he went through, he hasn’t a bad word to say of anyone.”

“She turned on him,” said Hanna in a low voice. “But perhaps he was a bad husband.”

“Hush, friend,” said Ingo suddenly. He rose, and she shifted to see a tall figure coming down the line of wagons with a shovel resting on his shoulder and two huge dogs walking at his heels. He stumbled to a halt just before them and almost tripped. The dogs sat down as polite as you please, without a noise. But she saw who they were now, and she couldn’t help rising to face them, though they made not one threatening sound or movement.

“I beg your pardon, Ingo,” said Alain. “I didn’t see you.” He saw Hanna, too, and offered a polite greeting. Obviously he didn’t know who she was, and she wasn’t about to remind him of Liath, whom he might associate with happier days. He gestured toward the wagon. “Are we moving out today? I didn’t hear any orders.”

“Nay, not today. It’s those kittens—”

“Ah.” He, too, seemed to know about the kittens. He knelt by the wheel, setting the shovel down, and examined the now-motionless heap of straw.

This close to the shovel, Hanna could smell the pungent aroma of the pits and see bits of dirt and stickier substances clinging to the spade’s edge. He had been on nightsoil duty, an odd chore for a man who had not ten days ago walked among the great princes of the realm. But if the labor annoyed him, she could see no trace of resentment on his face; he had an interesting profile, clean, a little sharp because of the cut of his nose. His dark hair was growing out raggedly and had been caught back with a leather string. At this moment, he stared so intently at the straw that she wondered if he had forgotten she and Ingo crouched beside him. Slowly he extended a hand; he made the slightest whistling noise under his breath, hardly a sound at all, but the straw wiggled and shuddered and a tiny pink nose peeped out, then a second, beside it.

His hand did not move, nor had he taken the sausage from Ingo. The gray kitten slipped out of the straw and tottered skittishly forward, sniffed his fingers, then with its little pink tongue began to lick. A second shadow, more motley than gray, staggered out beside the first, followed by a third.

Hanna was afraid to move. Ingo seemed frozen with amazement, sausage dangling limp from his fingers. The hounds watched, eerily silent. One settled down to lick a paw.

After the kittens had licked Alain’s fingers, he turned his hand over slowly and stroked them until tiny purrs rumbled. Still moving cautiously, he scooped them up against his chest, where they settled down, faces hidden.

“I’ll take them to Cook,” he murmured. “Maybe they’ll take some cream.” He gestured with a foot toward the shovel. “I’ll come back—”