Sigfrid, after peering through the knothole, was too overcome to speak.
Baldwin only grunted.
* * *
But not a month later, when the snow had finally melted and the first violets bloomed, a climbing rose grew from the very spot where Tallia’s blood had stained the earth. On the Feast Day of St. Johanna, the Messenger, a single bud unfolded into a crimson flower.
“It’s a sign,” murmured Sigfrid, and this time Baldwin made no objection.
It had been almost a year since Ivar had knelt outside the gates and pledged himself as a novice. For the first time since that day, he walked into the great church at Quedlinhame with no thought for his own grievances. His heart was too full with mystery and awe.
3
ALAIN saw her from a distance. He stopped, calling the hounds to heel, and made them sit in a semicircle around him.
“Go,” he said while his escort, his usual retinue of padded dog handlers, a half dozen men-at-arms, and a cleric who had been brought into the household to read aloud to Alain various practical treatises on husbandry and agriculture, stared down the long open slope at the unusual sight of an Eagle walking instead of riding. “Ulric and Robert, go down and escort her to me.”
It was always safer to escort a new person to him; if he approached them with the hounds, anything might happen.
The thin sheen of snow turned the winter landscape a glittering white, muddied by the dark line of the southern roadway and the skeletal orchard that stretched along it on either side. From this vantage he could see the tower of Lavas keep behind him but nothing of the town except trails of smoke rising into the clear sky. On this, St. Oya’s Day and the first day of Fevrua (so the cleric had informed him this morning), the weather remained mild and bright. It was a good omen for those girls who had come to their first bleeding in the past year; they would now sit on the women’s benches at church and those whose families were well-to-do enough might think of betrothing them to a suitable man. In thirty days would come the first day of the month of Yanu, the new year and the first day of spring.
In that new year, if God willed, he would be betrothed.
“Lady Above!” swore the cleric, and the remaining men in his retinue murmured, likewise, in amazement. Alain, too, stared, as the Eagle met the two guards and walked with them up the slope. He had never seen an Eagle arrive except on horseback—for of course Eagles must move swiftly and how better to do that than by riding? But that was not the only strange thing about her.
Young, she had the most astonishing complexion, as brown as if she had just stepped through into winter’s pale daylight from a land where summer’s sun burned night and day in all seasons. She wore quiver and bow on her back, had a sword strapped to her side and leather bag of provisions slung from one shoulder, and strode along as easily as any foot soldier. But there was yet another quality, something he could not name. She had a certain brightness about her, a warmth … it made no sense and yet struck him as one sees the shadow of the mother in her child’s face.
“Autun!” he said suddenly, out loud. “She was one of the Eagles who came to Autun after the battle at Kassel. She brought the news of Gent’s fall.”
The hounds began to whine.
They cowered, heads down, whimpering away from her as she approached. First Good Cheer, then Fear, then the others tried to slink away, as meek as puppies frightened by thunder; only Sorrow and Rage remained, though they, too, stirred restlessly. “Sit!” he commanded and, reluctantly, the other hounds sat. But as the Eagle walked up to him, old Terror flopped down, rolled over, and exposed his throat.
“What a sweet old dog,” the Eagle exclaimed. “I love dogs.” She reached down to pet him.
Terror snapped at her hand, terrified, rolled and scrambled back to his feet, and at once all the hounds were up and barking wildly at her. She leaped back. His retinue did the same reflexively.
“Sit!” commanded Alain. “Sit, you!” He tugged down Sorrow and Rage. “Terror!” He jerked the old hound down by his collar, calmed the others. But even so, when they had subsided, they whined and growled and kept Alain between her and them.
“My lord!” She stared at the hounds, aghast. Alain had never seen eyes as blue as hers, as bright as fiery Seirios, the flaming point of the Huntress’ bow in the night sky. “I beg your pardon—”
“Nay, think nothing of it.” But he was puzzled by the hounds’ reaction. “You have a message for my father?”
“For Count Lavastine, yes.”
“I am his son.”
She was surprised. “I do not mean to interrupt your walk, my lord. If one of your men will show me to the count—”
“I will do so myself.”
“But, my lord—”
He waved aside the cleric’s objections. They had as their object this morning the little abbey of Soisins, founded by his great-grandfather after the death of his first wife in childbirth and added onto by his great-grandfather’s second wife after his own death in battle. “This is more important.” No one argued with him. “Come.” He said it more to the hounds than to the others: where he and the hounds went, the rest followed. “Walk beside me,” he said to the Eagle.
She glanced toward the hounds. “I’m sorry to have startled them. They don’t seem very … welcoming.”
Alain heard the men-at-arms muttering behind him, and he could just imagine what they were saying. “Sometimes they surprise even me, but they won’t harm anyone as long as I’m with them.” With only a slight hesitation she moved up beside him. At once, still growling low in their throats, the hounds flowed to his opposite side, a mass of black coats and legs scrunched together. So intent were they on avoiding her that they scarcely noticed the handlers and men-at-arms hurriedly sidestepping to make room for them.