“Do not tarry too long, my sister, for your words interest me greatly, and I fear I have not too many more days upon this earth.”
Rosvita bowed her head, touching her forehead to the old queen’s wrinkled hands. Then she stood and retreated.
“Who are these?” the old woman asked, looking at the two Eagles.
Henry glanced back. At first he appeared surprised. Then he registered Hathui. “My faithful Eagle,” he said wryly. He looked beyond Hathui—Liath flinched when his powerful gaze focused on her. For an instant it was like Hugh’s gaze, penetrating, absolute; like the strike of lightning, it could obliterate her. But Henry only marked her and looked away without further interest. “This other Eagle was at Gent. Together with Wolfhere she witnessed the destruction of the Dragons and the death of—” His voice broke, unable to speak the name of his dead son.
“Together with Wolfhere,” said the queen thoughtfully, as if the name meant something to her. Liath stared at the gray stone, at its uneven surface and rough grade. No polished marble or fine granite blocks graced this common nun’s cell. “Come forward, child.”
One did not disobey a queen, even one who now professed to be a nun, not when she used that tone of voice. Liath hooked a foot under her body, stood, took seven small steps forward, and knelt again. Only then did she look up.
Gray eyes as cool as winter storm clouds and yet with a deep calm beneath them met Liath’s gaze. “You are some relation to Conrad the Black, perhaps?” Queen Mathilda asked. “I have seen such coloring nowhere else, except perhaps in—” She made a tiny gesture with one hand, a scissoring of fingers quickly made and quickly vanished. Mother Scholastica rose and left the cell. Henry still gripped his mother’s other hand, the one that lay so still upon the rough wool blanket. Mathilda had the most delicate wrists Liath had ever seen on an adult. Her small hands were weathered with work, for Queen Mathilda was famous for serving in common with the other nuns, such was her humility. “You are no relation?”
Liath shook her head, not trusting herself to speak.
“You were in Gent?”
Liath nodded. Lady Above, please let her be satisfied with this knowledge; please let her not demand that Liath tell the entire awful heart-wrenching tale again, so that she had to live through it again: that last vision seen through fire, Sanglant struck down by an Eika ax and Bloodheart gloating above his fallen body, holding aloft in his bare bloody hand the golden neck torque that signified the prince’s royal kinship.
At that moment Liath realized Queen Mathilda did not wear the golden torque, though her son and daughter did. But she was not born of the royal lineages of Wendar and Varre. She had only married into the family. At this moment, under that calm gray but utterly penetrating gaze, Liath could not remember where Mathilda came from, of what kin, of what country—only that she had ruled as queen beside Arnulf the Younger, his second wife, and that she now examined Liath with keen interest and not a little understanding.
“You knew Sanglant,” she said.
Liath nodded, dared say nothing in answer. I loved Sanglant. But the prince was not for her; even Wolfhere had warned him away from her. “Down that road I dare not walk,” Sanglant had said to her, for was he not an obedient son? “Be bound, as I am, by the fate others have determined for you. That way you will remain safe.”
But the fate that had bound Sanglant, captain of the King’s Dragons and bastard son of a king, was nothing like the fate she struggled against, whose bonds she could not even recognize. Just as well, she thought bitterly, that he was killed. It was only safe to love someone who was already dead.
Her expression betrayed her.
“The last,” said the queen, comprehending the whole, “if not the first. Pretty enough that any might understand why he was tempted. That is enough, child. You may go.”
Liath was mortified. To be discovered, to be seen through so easily, and by a woman who did not even know her! Henry was staring morosely at the far wall, idly twisting the signet ring on his right hand, not paying attention. Villam had gone outside to the sun. Only Hathui and Rosvita witnessed. Perhaps the queen had spoken too softly for them to hear. Liath dipped her head obediently and retreated, still on her knees, back to the safety of the door and Hathui’s shadow.
But a queen—a girl brought from foreign lands to marry an older and possibly indifferent man—surely must learn to study faces and puzzle out intrigue from every line and utterance. After all, she had gotten her son onto the throne of Wendar and Varre despite the claim of the elder half sister—Arnulf’s only living child from his first and some said more legitimate marriage. It would not do to underestimate a woman like Mathilda, no matter how weak she looked now.
Liath was allowed to leave, although Hathui remained with the king and the king appeared determined to remain for some while with his mother. Outside, no one asked her to run errands or carry a trifling message. She couldn’t enter the innermost cloisters, of course, but when the king’s progress had come to Quedlinhame it was impossible to stop visitors from wandering the grounds and gardens of the monastery. She climbed the outer wall and found a vantage point from which to look down over the foundation.
All monasteries—whether housing monks or nuns—were built on the same general plan, one laid out three centuries ago by St. Benedicta, founder of The Rule. Liath had seen plans of various monasteries, and once she had seen a thing and committed it to memory, it was the work of a moment to dredge it up again. Mathilda. She searched in the city of memory. Past the gate surmounted by the Throne of Virtue stood the halls of the kingdoms. She found the one inscribed with the Dragon, Lion, and Eagle of Wendar and went inside. On the dais Henry sat alone now that his queen, Sophia, had died. Behind him, through a curtain, lay the chamber of Arnulf the Younger, flanked on the right by his first wife, Berengaria of Varre, and on the left by Mathilda. This seated statue of Mathilda held in its right hand a scroll bearing the names of her nine children and in its left, signifying her descent, a small banner embroidered with the sigil of the kingdom of Karrone.
Liath backtracked to the hall of Karrone. There among the gathered dead and living nobles of the royal house, all cast in stone, she found Mathilda. Granddaughter of Berta, princess and later Queen of Karrone, the first Karronese prince to defy her Salian overlords and style herself regnant. Daughter of Berta’s only son, prince and later King Rodulf, the last of Berta’s five children, all of whom had held the throne, each in succession. Having seen the chronicle of the monks of St. Galle, Liath could even recall the dates of their reigns and their deaths. Rodulf had reigned from 692 until 710. His death had brought forth two claimants to Karrone’s throne: his niece Marozia and his grandson, Henry. Marozia had seized the throne by right of proximity, and Henry, newly crowned king of Wendar and Varre, was too young in power to contest her. Instead he had married his younger brother Benedict to her daughter, also called Marozia; these two now reigned in the mountainous kingdom of Karrone as Queen Regnant and King Consort.
All of this Liath remembered, and much more besides. It was only in the central tower, the highest point in the city itself, that a door stood which she could not unlock—behind it rested Da’s secrets, all he had kept hidden from her. She shook her head impatiently and scanned the monastery, searching for a small building with its own cloister, set apart from the others: the novitiary.
Eventually the novices would have to emerge from the novitiary, to pray, to attend to their bodily needs, to perform manual labor. The Rule enjoined that all nuns and monks spend some part of each day in labor, “for then are they truly laborers for God when they live by the labor of their hands.”
She hunkered down to wait, finding a patch of warm autumn sun and tugging her cloak tight around her. The sudden cold autumn wind on her neck made her shudder, and she was abruptly seized with an unreasoning panic, heart pounding, breath caught in her throat and her hands trembling as if with a palsy. But Hugh wasn’t here. He wasn’t here. She still had the book, and other weapons besides. To calm herself, she touched them one by one, like talismans: Her short sword rested easily on her left hip; her eating knife nestled in a sheath; the weight of her bow, quiver, and arrows made a comforting presence on her back.
xpression betrayed her.
“The last,” said the queen, comprehending the whole, “if not the first. Pretty enough that any might understand why he was tempted. That is enough, child. You may go.”
Liath was mortified. To be discovered, to be seen through so easily, and by a woman who did not even know her! Henry was staring morosely at the far wall, idly twisting the signet ring on his right hand, not paying attention. Villam had gone outside to the sun. Only Hathui and Rosvita witnessed. Perhaps the queen had spoken too softly for them to hear. Liath dipped her head obediently and retreated, still on her knees, back to the safety of the door and Hathui’s shadow.
But a queen—a girl brought from foreign lands to marry an older and possibly indifferent man—surely must learn to study faces and puzzle out intrigue from every line and utterance. After all, she had gotten her son onto the throne of Wendar and Varre despite the claim of the elder half sister—Arnulf’s only living child from his first and some said more legitimate marriage. It would not do to underestimate a woman like Mathilda, no matter how weak she looked now.
Liath was allowed to leave, although Hathui remained with the king and the king appeared determined to remain for some while with his mother. Outside, no one asked her to run errands or carry a trifling message. She couldn’t enter the innermost cloisters, of course, but when the king’s progress had come to Quedlinhame it was impossible to stop visitors from wandering the grounds and gardens of the monastery. She climbed the outer wall and found a vantage point from which to look down over the foundation.
All monasteries—whether housing monks or nuns—were built on the same general plan, one laid out three centuries ago by St. Benedicta, founder of The Rule. Liath had seen plans of various monasteries, and once she had seen a thing and committed it to memory, it was the work of a moment to dredge it up again. Mathilda. She searched in the city of memory. Past the gate surmounted by the Throne of Virtue stood the halls of the kingdoms. She found the one inscribed with the Dragon, Lion, and Eagle of Wendar and went inside. On the dais Henry sat alone now that his queen, Sophia, had died. Behind him, through a curtain, lay the chamber of Arnulf the Younger, flanked on the right by his first wife, Berengaria of Varre, and on the left by Mathilda. This seated statue of Mathilda held in its right hand a scroll bearing the names of her nine children and in its left, signifying her descent, a small banner embroidered with the sigil of the kingdom of Karrone.