“It looks like that stable boy, the one the old count took for his son and who was fooling him all along, the cheat.”
“Nay! Do you think so, Heric? I’ve heard all kind of stories—that Lord Geoffrey’s daughter ain’t the rightful count and that there wouldn’t be such bad times if that son had stayed on. Wouldn’t Lord Geoffrey be happy to show the doubters that the cheater was nothing more than a madman? There might be a great deal of silver in it for us, if we took him along to Lavas Holding.”
“Silver! Don’t you remember how he tossed us out after all that time we’d served the old count, bless his soul? Why shouldn’t Lord Geoffrey cheat us as well even if we did do him a good turn?”
The wind was dying. Far beyond, he heard the bleating of sheep and Treu barking and barking and barking, but the snow of angels had turned to flowers winking and dazzling in front of his eyes until the whole world turned the white-hot blue fire of a blacksmith’s flame, searing his body.
“As if we can live with what work we can find now, eh, Heric? Building walls for a bowl of porridge. That’s no way to live!”
“Least we eat almost every day.”
“You lost your spirit in the war.”
“I lost my spirit when Lord Geoffrey threw us out to make room for his wife’s uncle’s war band! Didn’t even give us a loaf of bread for our pains and our wounds.”
“Why not try? It’s a gamble. It might not be the same man. Lord Geoffrey might want nothing to do with him. But we might win something.”
“Why not?” said Heric as light showered down around him, obscuring his face. The wind moaned in through the cracks in the shed and up among the rafters. “Why not, indeed? The stable boy never did me any favors, did he? Even tried to take my girl, before she left me for a man who could give her a meal every day. Here’s some rope.”
4
“AFTER hearing this news of Princess Theophanu’s troubles, and after reflecting upon his triumphs in the south, the king decided to settle his affairs in Aosta and return north to Wendar.”
When Heriburg’s quill ceased its scratching, the young woman looked up. “What next, Sister Rosvita?”
Rosvita sighed and looked over her company. They had become accustomed to long stretches of silence, and in truth this prison was a remarkably silent place, with the sound of the wind and the occasional skree of a hawk almost the only noises they heard. Now and again a guard might laugh; at intervals they heard wheels crunching on dust; the monks never spoke nor ever sang even to worship. She had come to believe that the brothers who lived here had all had their tongues cut out.
Prison was a species of muteness, too, but she had rallied her troops and kept them busy marking the hours of each day with worship, discussing the finer points of theology and the seven arts and sciences and memorizing the histories that they knew and the three books they possessed, her History, the Vita of St. Radegundis, and the convent’s chronicles. Fortunatus proved especially clever at devising puzzles and mental games to keep their minds agile.
Now Fortunatus, Ruoda, Heriburg, Gerwita, Jehan, and Jerome all looked at her expectantly. The Eagle was out fetching water—of all of them, Hanna had the least ability to remain peaceably within such monotonous confines, although when Rosvita taught the others to understand and speak Arethousan, which she did every day for several hours, Hanna had shown an unexpected facility for that language.
Sister Hilaria was sitting with Petra out in the courtyard while Teuda continued her fruitless attempts to garden. Sister Diocletia and Aurea were in the next chamber massaging Mother Obligatia’s withered limbs, a duty done in privacy. She heard one murmur to the other, and a stifled grunt from Obligatia, followed by a chuckle and an exchange of words too faint to make out.
“In truth,” said Rosvita finally, “that is as far as I have got. I confess that when I composed the History in my mind, while in the skopos’ dungeon, I stopped there. I could not bring myself to speak of that night when I saw Presbyter Hugh murder Helmut Villam. I had not the courage to record the queen’s treachery. As for the rest, I must rely on your testimony to construct a history of the months I was imprisoned in the skopos’ dungeon. What remains to be written beyond that has passed unknown to us, or has not yet come to pass. Now we write the events as we live them.”
Seventy-three days they had remained confined at the monastery, each day a hatch mark scratched onto a loose brick pried out of the courtyard wall, but since the monks remained silent, it was impossible to find out exactly what date it was, although they might all guess that it was summer. It was so blazing hot that each trip down into the rock to fetch water from the hidden spring was a relief and, even, a luxury. At first only Hilaria, Diocletia, Aurea, and Hanna had the strength to complete the climb, but eventually every one of them except Petra and Mother Obligatia could negotiate those stairs.
Fortunatus bent over the table to examine Heriburg’s calligraphy. “A sure hand, Sister, and much improved.” He glanced at Rosvita as if to say “yet never as elegant as Sister Amabilia’s.”
She smiled sadly at him. How many of these truehearted clerics would survive their adventure? Amabilia certainly was not the first casualty of these days, nor would she be the last if all that they had heard predicted actually came true. It had proved far easier to write of the great deeds that formed history than to live through them.
“We must pray we survive to see the outcome of these events,” she said at last.
Sister Diocletia came into the chamber, rubbing her hands. She had connived olive oil out of the guards and it was this she used to manipulate and strengthen the old abbess’ limbs.
“She’ll sleep for a bit,” she said, “but she’s well today, as strong as she has been in months. However much it has chafed at the rest of us, this long rest has saved her.”
“Bless you, Sister,” said Rosvita, knowing that the young ones needed to hear such words, to believe that the confinement wasn’t wasted; that they hadn’t doomed themselves. They hadn’t fallen into Anne’s grip yet. There was still hope.
From far away, as if the sound drifted in on a cloud, they heard muffled shouts. Soon after, footsteps clattered outside. The door creaked open on dry hinges, and Hanna burst in, her face red and her hands empty, without the buckets of water they depended on.
“Sergeant Bysantius has returned!” she exclaimed. “He’s taking us to his commander. We leave tomorrow!”
The broad valley had so much green that it made Hanna’s eyes hurt, and she could actually see flowing water, a dozen or more streams splashing down from surrounding hills. After ten days spent crossing dry countryside, Hanna inhaled the scent of life and thought that maybe they had come to paradise.
The others crowded up behind her to exclaim over the vista and its bounty of trees: figs, olives, oranges, mulberries, and palms. But Sergeant Bysantius wasn’t a man who enjoyed views: He barked an order to his detachment of soldiers, and the wagons commenced down the cart track toward the land below. He was still the only one riding a horse; the wagons were pulled by oxen, slow but steady, and they had a trio of recalcitrant goats whose milk kept Mother Obligatia strong.
As she trudged along beside the foremost wagon, exchanging a friendly comment or two with the Carter, Hanna shaded her eyes to examine the valley. Its far reaches faded into a heat haze, although certainly the weather was not as hot as it had been through much of their time confined to the tiny cliff monastery. In the center of a valley a small hill rose, crowned with ancient walls and a small domed church in the Arethousan style, almost a square. Beyond and around the hill a formidable ring wall appeared in sections, half gnawed away by time or by folk needing dressed stone for building. Tents sprouted like mushrooms on the plain around the old acropolis and mixed in among what appeared to be the ancient ruins of a town now overgrown with a village whose houses were built of stone and capped by clay-red the roofs.