“Prince Sanglant!”
He recognized Fulk’s men, who had evidently been serving at table or standing guard throughout the hall. Heribert arrived, pressing through the knot of petitioners who were crowded closest to the king’s table, and knelt before him, grasping Sanglant’s hand and kissing it.
“Sanglant!” he said triumphantly, as out of breath as if he’d been running. “My lord prince! I feared—”
“Nay, friend,” said Sanglant, “never fear. I pray you, rise and stand beside me.”
“So I will,” said the young cleric, though he wobbled a little as he got to his feet.
“Who are these, who have come forward?” asked Henry. “Does Brother Heribert not serve Theophanu?”
Theophanu still clutched her cup. Old Helmut Villam, seated beside her, leaned to whisper to her, but she was obviously not listening to him. She merely nodded, once, curtly, to Sanglant, before setting down the wine cup.
“This is my retinue, Your Majesty,” said Sanglant at last. “These are men who have pledged loyalty to me.”
“Don’t I feed them?” asked Henry sweetly. “I didn’t know you had the lands and wherewithal to maintain a retinue, Son. Certainly you scorned those that I meant to honor you with. I don’t even see a gold torque at your throat to mark you as my son.”
But Sanglant had his own weapons, and he knew how to counterattack. He stepped aside to reveal his mother.
She stood in a spray of light cast from the high windows. The light made bronze of her hair, burnished and finely-woven into a tight braid as thick as her wrist. She had rolled down the sleeves of Liath’s tunic and belted it in the usual manner around her hips, although even with a length of material caught up under the belt the embroidered hem still lapped her ankles. Yet despite the unexceptionable appearance of the clothing, she blazed with strangeness as alien as a sleek leopard glimpsed running with thundering aurochs.
She said nothing. She didn’t have to.
“Alia!” Henry paled noticeably, but he had been king for too many years not to know when to retreat. The mask of stone crashed down over his expression, freezing the merriment in the hall as thoroughly as any magic could have. The goat baaed, followed by complete silence. No one seemed to notice the flutter of wind moving through the robes and cloaks of the seated nobles as Jerna explored the hall.
Finally, Alia spoke. “I come back, Henri,” she said, pronouncing his name in the Salian way, “but I am not believing that you cared for the child as you promised to me you would.”
III
TWISTING THE BELT
1
THE seeds of conflict bloomed at such odd times that it was often easy to forget that they had been sown long before, not risen spontaneously out of fallow ground. Rosvita of North Mark had been a cleric and adviser at court for twenty years. She knew when to step back and let matters take their course, and when to intervene before a crisis got out of hand.
Although King Henry now stood, the rest of the assembly still sat in astonished, or anticipatory, silence, staring at the confrontation unfolding before them. Even wily old Helmut Villam, seated to her left at the king’s table, seemed stunned into immobility, mouth parted and fingers tightly gripping the stem of the wine cup he shared with Princess Theophanu, which the princess had just set down.
Rosvita gestured to Brother Fortunatus to pull back her chair so that she, too, could rise. He hurried forward at once. Although like everyone else in the hall he could scarcely keep his gaze from the father, mother, and child whose battle was about to play out on this public stage, he had also been trained by Rosvita herself. There were many traits she could tolerate in the clerics who served her, but to be unobservant was not one of them.
“This is the woman we’ve heard so much about!” he murmured in her ear as she rose. “God preserve us!”
His gaze had fastened on the Aoi woman. He was not the only person in the hall ogling her. Her features were striking but not beautiful, and although admittedly her hair had the glamour of polished bronze, she wore it caught back in a complicated knot that made her look peculiar rather than regal. Her gaze was fierce and commanding, even combative. She was not afraid to look Henry in the eye, and her proud carriage suggested that she considered herself the regnant and Henry her subject.
“I come back, Henri,” she said, pronouncing his name in the Salian way with an unvoiced “h” and a garbled “ri,” “but I am not believing that you cared for the child as you promised to me you would.”
“I pray you, Your Majesty,” said Rosvita smoothly into the shocked silence that followed this outrageous accusation, “let chairs be brought so that our visitors may sit and eat. Truly, they must have a long journey behind them. Food and drink are always a welcome sight to the traveler. Indeed, let Prince Sanglant’s mother abide in my own chair, and I will serve her.”
Henry stared so fixedly at the foreign woman he had once called “beloved,” and whom it was popularly believed he would have married had he been permitted to, that finally Queen Adelheid rose with cool aplomb and indicated Rosvita’s seat to the right of Helmut Villam. It was not actually Adelheid’s prerogative, but Adelheid was neither a fool nor a quitter.
“Let a chair be brought for Prince Sanglant so that he may be seated beside me,” she said in her high, clear voice. “Let his lady mother be honored as is her right and our obligation, for it was her gift of this child to my husband which sealed his right to rule as regnant in Wendar and Varre.”
Sanglant stepped forward. “I have a child.” His voice had a hoarse scrape to it, as though he were afflicted with pain, but his voice always sounded like that. Years ago he had taken a wound to the throat in battle.
He untied a bundle from his back, uncoiled linen cloth, and a moment later held in his arms a yearling child, as sweet a babe as Rosvita had ever seen, with plump cheeks, a dark complexion, and bright blue eyes. “Da da!” she said in the ringing tones of imperious babyhood. He set her on the ground and she took a few tottering steps toward the king, swayed, lost her balance, and sat down on her rump. Lifting a hand, she pointed toward Henry and said, with despotic glee, “Ba! Ba!”
Sanglant swept her up, strode forward and, by leaning over the feasting table, deposited her in Henry’s arms. The king did not even resist. Many yearling babies would have shrieked in rage or fear, but the tiny child merely reached up, got a bit of the king’s beard between her fingers, and tugged.
“Ba!” she exclaimed, delighted.