The Gathering Storm (Crown of Stars 5)

No one at court spoke against him. Nor did any whisper of any unseemly connection between the beautiful presbyter and the young queen reach Hanna’s ears. As days passed, Hanna saw herself that Hugh was never alone with Queen Adelheid. Never. It was so marked that she supposed it was done deliberately.

In any case, the queen was pregnant. A second child would seal Adelheid’s grip on the imperial throne. Through all this, Hugh stood at the king’s right hand.

So it was today, on the feast day dedicated to All Souls, the twelfth day of Octumbre. The king received visitors in the royal hall with his court gathered around him. Hanna waited to the right of the throne, standing against the wall, watching as Hugh intercepted each supplicant before allowing them to ascend the dais and kneel before the king and queen.

No information reached Henry that did not pass Hugh first. He controlled what the king knew and how the king made decisions. Hugh’s influence remained subtle, but pervasive. Was it possible that no one else saw as clearly as she did?

But looking over these courtiers who chatted as they waited in attendance, bright in their fine clothing and precious jewels and baubles, she saw no suspicion in their bearing or their gaze. A wind had dispelled the heat wave that had lingered, according to the natives, unusually long into the autumn season, so it was no hardship to pass the afternoon in gossip and splendor as petitioners came and went, most of them artisans and guildsmen fashioning the many trappings and the great feast that would accompany the coronation.

Now that the king had begun his inevitable transition into emperor, none of the nobles had the kind of companionable intimacy she had seen them once share with Henry back in the days when Margrave Villam and Sister Rosvita had counseled the king. Had Henry become proud? Would the crown soon to grace his head exalt him far above those who had once been his peers?

o;Go to sleep now, Iso,” he said. “Let everyone rest. There is work to do tomorrow. Don’t let your hearts be troubled.”

They did shift and settle, they did go to sleep at last, although Alain lay wakeful for a long time before sleep claimed him. Memories drifted in clouds, obscure and troubling. He still felt the touch of the nail against his skin, like poison, and for a long time he saw Sorrow standing vigilant in the open door.

XI

SIGNS AND PORTENTS

1

SHE had once been a captive in hardship. Now she suffered as a captive in luxury. The food was better, and she slept on a comfortable pallet at night in a spacious suite among the devoted servants of Presbyter Hugh. She never saw anyone murdered for sport or out of boredom and neglect, but otherwise the two conditions contrasted little. Twice, a servant of Duke Burchard approached one of Hugh’s stewards, asking that the duke be allowed to interview her himself; after the second refusal, the man did not come again. Hugh allowed no one to talk to her, not even the other Eagles. Seven Eagles besides herself attended Henry at court, including Rufus, but they slept and ate in other quarters to which she was never allowed access. Nor was she sent out with any messages, as her comrades were, riding out to various places in Aosta, north to Karrone, and even one to Salia.

She wore no chains, but she had no freedom of movement. Of course it was preferable to be a prisoner without the misery she had endured under the Quman, even if she had been subjected to far less than the hapless folk forced to follow, and die, in the army’s train.

Of course it was preferable.

That didn’t make it palatable.

If Hugh suspected that she had seen Hathui and heard her accusations, he never let on. Maybe he didn’t think so. Maybe if he thought so, she would be dead by now. In fact, he paid no attention to her at all once she had given an account of her travels and travails to him while a cleric busily wrote it all down. He had questioned her; she had replied. She hadn’t said everything she knew, but perhaps she had said enough. She could not tell if he suspected her of disloyalty or treason. Anyone as unrelentingly benevolent as Hugh could not, as far as she was concerned, be trusted.

And yet.

Small acts of charity softened the path he trod every day. He did not fear to walk into the grimmer parts of the city, where folk lived in the meanest conditions: beggars, itinerant cobblers, and whole families whose work seemed to consist of gleaning from sewers and garbage pits. In a city brimming with poverty, he turned no beggar away without offering the poor man bread and a coin. Laborers were hired out of his own purse to work on the walls and reconstruct buildings damaged in the mild earthquake. Now and again he redeemed captives brought to the market for sale into service as domestic slaves, those who professed to be Daisanites. Each week he led a service at the servants’ chapel to which any person working in the palace, high or low, might seek entry; no other presbyter deigned to humble himself in such a way when there were clerics aplenty available to minister to the lowborn.

No one at court spoke against him. Nor did any whisper of any unseemly connection between the beautiful presbyter and the young queen reach Hanna’s ears. As days passed, Hanna saw herself that Hugh was never alone with Queen Adelheid. Never. It was so marked that she supposed it was done deliberately.

In any case, the queen was pregnant. A second child would seal Adelheid’s grip on the imperial throne. Through all this, Hugh stood at the king’s right hand.

So it was today, on the feast day dedicated to All Souls, the twelfth day of Octumbre. The king received visitors in the royal hall with his court gathered around him. Hanna waited to the right of the throne, standing against the wall, watching as Hugh intercepted each supplicant before allowing them to ascend the dais and kneel before the king and queen.

No information reached Henry that did not pass Hugh first. He controlled what the king knew and how the king made decisions. Hugh’s influence remained subtle, but pervasive. Was it possible that no one else saw as clearly as she did?

But looking over these courtiers who chatted as they waited in attendance, bright in their fine clothing and precious jewels and baubles, she saw no suspicion in their bearing or their gaze. A wind had dispelled the heat wave that had lingered, according to the natives, unusually long into the autumn season, so it was no hardship to pass the afternoon in gossip and splendor as petitioners came and went, most of them artisans and guildsmen fashioning the many trappings and the great feast that would accompany the coronation.

Now that the king had begun his inevitable transition into emperor, none of the nobles had the kind of companionable intimacy she had seen them once share with Henry back in the days when Margrave Villam and Sister Rosvita had counseled the king. Had Henry become proud? Would the crown soon to grace his head exalt him far above those who had once been his peers?

She wondered if she had dreamed that flash of blue in Henry’s eyes. Perhaps Hathui had betrayed the king and tried to drag Hanna into the conspiracy. Perhaps her own loyalty to Liath had disoriented her, complicated by the familiar tangle of envy, love, fidelity, and a tiny spark of resentment. Yet Liath had left her and the Eagles behind. Why should she cling to a friendship that had likely meant far more to Hanna than it ever had to Liath?

She could not shake constancy. She understood better now the fears and weaknesses that had driven Liath. Whatever had happened in the past, she could not abandon the memory of the fellowship and harmony they had shared.

She had a sudden, odd feeling that someone was looking at her. Turning her head, she caught sight of a cleric sitting among a dozen others at a table to one side of the king’s throne. These members of the king’s schola were at work writing down the names and pledges of each of the artisans, making a careful record of the great undertaking they had now all embarked on which would culminate in the first Emperor since the days of Taillefer, one hundred years before.

One man had paused in his writing to look at her: Brother Fortunatus, who had given the sermon at St. Asella’s. He did not look away immediately when their gazes met. He studied her, frowning slightly, serious; he had a gaunt-looking face, as if he had once been a lot heavier and healthier and happier with the extra weight. No doubt he wondered why she walked among Hugh’s entourage. No doubt he wondered if she had betrayed him.

A courtier approached the king to introduce three aged clerics, residents of the famous institution of the learned St. Melania of Kellai. They had studied the Holy Verses and with careful prognostications had several well-omened dates to suggest for the coronation itself. The king and queen listened as the scholars argued over the relative benefits of a coronation held on the feast day of St. Peter the Discipla, which was also Candlemass, or that of St. Eulalia, two days later, whose attendance at the birth of the blessed Daisan would bring her saintly approval to the birth of a new empire.

Beside Hanna, two of Hugh’s clerics were chatting softly in counterpoint to the discussion going on publicly before the king.