Prince of Dogs (Crown of Stars 2)

YOUNG Tallia, her wheat-colored hair and wheat-colored gown rendering her almost colorless, knelt on the hard stone floor before Mother Scholastica’s chair. The girl carefully avoided the carpet laid on the floor, as if she dared not succumb to the luxury of padding beneath her much-abused knees.

“I beg you!” she cried. “I want nothing more than to dedicate my life to the church in memory of the woman I was named after, Biscop Tallia of Pairri, she who was daughter of the great Emperor Taillefer. If you would let me pledge myself as a novice here at Quedlinhame, I would serve faithfully. I would humble myself as befits a good nun. I would serve the poor with my own hands and wash the feet of lepers.”

The king, pacing, turned at this. “I have had several marriage offers for you, none of which I am tempted to act on at this time—”

“I beg you, Uncle!” Tallia had the dubious ability to make tears spring out at any utterance. But Rosvita did not think this entirely contrived: The girl had a kind of tortured piety about her, no doubt from living with her mother Sabella and her poor idiot of a father, Duke Berengar. “Let me be wed to Our Lord, not to the flesh.”

Henry lifted his eyes to heaven as if imploring God to grant him patience. Rosvita had heard this argument played out a dozen times in the last six months—indeed, Tallia seemed to have memorized the speech—and the cleric knew Henry wearied of it and of the girl’s dramatic piety.

“I am not opposed to your vocation,” said the king, turning back finally and speaking with some semblance of patience, “but you are an heiress, Tallia, and therefore not so easily removed from the world.”

The girl cast one beseeching glance toward Queen Mathilda, who reclined on a couch, then clasped her hands at her breast, shut her eyes, and began to pray.

“However,” said Mother Scholastica before the girl could get well-launched into a psalm, “we have agreed, King Henry and I, that for the time being you will reside with the novices here at Quedlinhame. But only until a decision has been made over what will become of you.”

By this means, of course, Henry and Scholastica placed Tallia as a virtual hostage in the middle of Henry’s strongest duchy. But Tallia wept tears of gratitude and was finally—thank the Lady—led away by the schoolmistress.

Queen Mathilda said, into the silence, “She seems fierce in her vocation.”

“Indeed,” said Henry in the tone of a man who has been pressed too far. “Her privations are legendary.”

Mother Scholastica raised one eyebrow. She studied the owl feather—her quill pen—that lay by her right hand; touching its feathers briefly, stroking them with the tip of a finger, she looked at her mother. “Excessive piety can itself be a form of pride,” she said drily.

“So did I observe in you,” said the old queen with the barest of smiles, “when you were young.”

“So did I come to observe in myself,” said Mother Scholastica without smiling. Here, in her private study with only family and clerics in attendance, she had let slip her white scarf to reveal hair, rather lighter than Henry’s, liberally sprinkled with gray. Only three years younger than Henry, she looked perhaps ten years younger. This contradiction was much debated in the matristic writings. Women, blessed with the ability to bleed and to give birth, suffered from that birthing if they took advantage of the blessing, while those who pledged themselves and their fertility to the church, living their lives as holy virgins, often lived much longer lives. Mathilda, who had given birth to ten children and been widowed at the age of thirty-eight, looked as ancient and frail as Mother Otta, the abbess of Korvei Convent, but Mother Otta was ninety and the queen only fifty-six.

Now, later that same day, these thoughts came back to Rosvita as she knelt with the congregation in the Quedlinhame town church. Thunder rumbled in the distance as Mother Scholastica intoned the final words of her homily.

“The Lady does not give out her blessing freely. This is God’s way of teaching a lesson to humankind. Although the gift of bearing children is certainly a blessing, the means by which we mortals can in some measure know immortality, all earthly beings are tainted with the infinitesimal grains of the primordial darkness that mixed by chance with the pure elements of light, wind, fire, and water. That intermingling brought about the creation of the world. And those of us who live in the world are thereby stained with darkness. Only through the blessed Daisan’s teaching, only through the blinding glory of the Chamber of Light, can we cleanse ourselves and attain a place at Our Lord’s and Lady’s side. So ends the teaching.”

The brethren—monks and nuns from Quedlinhame—sang the Te Deam, the hymn to God’s glory. Their voices blended with the fine precision of a choir used to singing in concord. With this music as accompaniment, King Henry entered the church in formal procession.

Rosvita stifled a yawn. It was so very muggy for this late in the year, and she was not as young as she once had been. It was no longer easy to stand—or kneel—through an entire service. For how many years had she traveled with the king’s progress? How often had she seen the banners representing the six duchies carried in and displayed, symbol of the king’s earthly power? How many times had she watched the ceremonial anointing, robing, and crowning of the king on feast days? Yet even now as King Henry ascended the steps that led to the altar stone and Hearth, the familiar quaver of awe caught in her throat.

Bareheaded but clad in a robe woven of cloth-of-gold, his shoes detailed in gold braid, King Henry knelt before his sister, Mother Scholastica, offering himself before the Lady’s Hearth. Every soul knelt with the king. The abbess combed his newly cut hair with an ivory comb encrusted with gold and tiny gems. She anointed him with oil, on the right ear, from the forehead to the left ear, and on the crown of his head.

“May Our Lord and Lady crown you with the crown of glory, may They anoint you with the oil of Their favor,” she said.

Assisted by certain local nobles singled out for this honor, she placed the robe of state over his shoulders; trimmed with ermine, woven of the finest white wool, the cloak bore the emblems of each duchy embroidered across its expanse: a dragon for Saony, an eagle for Fesse, a lion for Avaria, a stallion for Wayland, a hawk for Varingia—and a guivre for Arconia.

“The borders of this cloak trailing on the ground,” the abbess continued, “shall remind you that you are to be zealous in the faith and to keep peace.”

Rosvita shuddered, thinking of the guivre—the terrible basilisk-like creature—whose presence had almost won the Battle of Kassel for Sabella.

But Sabella had not won. A monk and a boy had killed the guivre, surely a sign of God’s displeasure at Sabella’s attempt to usurp her half brother’s power. Henry’s luck—the luck of the rightful king—had held true.

Now Mother Scholastica handed Henry the royal scepter, a tall staff carved out of ebony wood and studded with jewels, its head carved into the shape of a dragon’s head with ruby eyes gleaming.

“Receive this staff of virtue. May you rule wisely and well.”

On this staff the king leaned as Mother Scholastica crowned him in the sight of all the folk who were present.

“Crown him, God, with justice, glory, honor, and strong deeds.”

A great sigh swept through the crowd, mingled awe and pleasure at the rare sight of their king crowned and robed in the sight of God and his countryfolk.

From the gathered host a single voice cried out: “May the King live forever!” Other voices from the crowd answered the first with the same words until the acclamation was a roar of approval.