The Gathering Storm (Crown of Stars 5)

“Hush!” scolded Ortulfus. “Speak no ill gossip lest you bring the sickness back on yourself. Lord Ivar, at Hugh of Austra’s trial you yourself admitted to consorting with a woman condemned and outlawed for the crime of sorcery. How am I to judge? I must send all of you to Autun.”

“I don’t want to go back to Autun!” cried Baldwin. “And you didn’t tell them about the lions!”

“Ai, God,” said Gerulf impatiently, forgetting his station as a humble Lion, “his ravings won’t help our case any.”

“Nay, hold,” said the prior suddenly. “What lions?”

“The lions on that rock outcropping,” said Baldwin irritably. “The one by that tiny old shelter.”

Father Ortulfus set down the deer. His expression grew pensive, even troubled. The sacrist whispered furtively to the chief scribe, and the cellarer rubbed his hands together nervously while the prior plucked at his keys.

They knew something. Here lay the opportunity.

“I saw the lions, too,” Ivar said at once. “They came at night while I was on watch with Sigfrid. They drove off a pack of wolves and kept watch over us where we sheltered under an overhang near by the hovel.”

The abbot wavered.

They had struck on the one thing that might convince him. “You never said you saw the lions!” exclaimed Baldwin indignantly. “You let everyone think I was a maniac!”

That quickly, Father Ortulfus’ support slipped away. Picking up the deer, he surveyed his prisoners with a sigh of derision. “Convenient that you recall just now to mention that you saw lions, Lord Ivar.”

“But I did see them,” Ivar insisted, hearing his voice grow shrill. It was so hard to stay calm when disaster stared them in the face. God have mercy! Mother Scholastica had cut out Sigfrid’s tongue for speaking heresy. What would Biscop Constance do to them?

“Why did you not mention it to your companions?” Ortulfus went on. “To see a lion in this part of the world would be an unexpected event, would it not? Did you see a lion, Lord Ermanrich? Lady Hathumod? Gerulf? Dedi?”

One by one, reluctantly, they shook their heads.

“Why did you say nothing?” repeated Ortulfus.

“I—I—it seemed like a dream to me. In the morning, I didn’t see any tracks, so I thought perhaps I had dreamed about lions only because of what Baldwin had said.”

“And you, Brother Sigfrid?” Father Ortulfus’ tone was the more damning for being so composed.

“There were lions, my lord abbot, but unless you see them with your own eyes, you cannot understand that they exist.”

“So be it. Suspected on the grounds of heresy and sorcery. Biscop Constance must judge this matter, for I cannot. Prior Ratbold, make ready a party to escort them to Autun for trial.”

3

“I went St. Asella’s once,” Hanna admitted as she ate supper that evening with the other Wendish servants in Hugh’s retinue. “Do you go often?”

“Indeed, we do,” said Margret the seamstress. Normally she had a piece of embroidery or mending on her lap. It was strange to see her clever hands engaged in any other activity, even so commonplace a one as spooning leek and turnip stew into her mouth. “My lord Hugh is most generous, as you know, and gives us one morning a week to attend Vespers at St. Asella’s.”

“You’re not frightened at going down into the lower city so late? The Aostans don’t love the Wendish.”

“They do not love us,” said Vindicadus the scribe, “but they’ll be ruled by us no matter what they wish.” He glanced at Margret.

The seamstress brushed a tendril of graying hair out of her eyes. “We walk down in daylight. That is safe enough. By the time evening song is over, we are all together. We walk back to the palace as a troop. None bother us, even if a few throw curses our way.”

“I wonder if I might come with you. It gladdened my heart to hear a lesson given in Wendish. My ears grow weary of hearing Aostan, if you’ll pardon me for saying so.”

“No need to ask our pardon, but you must ask the steward.” “Vindicadus” wasn’t the name given him by his mother. He came of low birth from a village in western Avaria but had learned to read and write regardless and been allowed to take the cleric’s tonsure in a frontier monastery in Austra, where his talents (and, it was rumored, his pretty face and pleasing figure) had come to the attention of Margrave Judith. He had evidently flowered young and faded quickly, for although a well enough looking man he had gone to fat, and it wasn’t clear to Hanna by what chain of events he had ended up in Darre. Hugh used him to make copies of any royal cartularies and capitularies which might be of interest to the skopos and to run errands.

The next day the steward said there was no objection to such an expedition as long as Hanna remained with Margret and Vindicadus. The holy presbyter was a generous lord and favored those of his servants who obeyed him and did right by God.

So she found herself the following evening, as the service of Vespers began, sitting toward the back of the nave in St. Asella’s, watching and waiting while Margret and Vindicadus bent their heads in prayer.

“May the Mother and Father of Life have mercy upon us—” Two male clerics led the service this day, but she saw Fortunatus and the three young women standing at the rear of the choir. Was that Aurea, the servant woman, sitting on the third bench? Even with lamps burning along the aisle, it was hard to tell because the drape of her shawl concealed her face.