In the Ruins (Crown of Stars 6)

But as she stared at him, eyes wide and a hopeful smile on her lips, he could not say “no” to her. He didn’t know the words. He’d forgotten most things and learned little to begin with. He hadn’t paid attention because he hadn’t wanted to. He’d wanted everything else. Anything out of his reach had seemed so bright and ripe to him, like the perfect apple dangling from a branch too high to ever reach.

“I’ll sing God’s blessing over you,” he said, “in the morning.”

Ai! She was so happy as the rest stamped in and by lantern light stripped down to shifts and cozied into the pallets and platforms tucked up under the eaves that they slept on, all snugged together for warmth. They offered him an honored place close to the hearth, and he lay down beside Erkanwulf and the little lad, who had taken a liking to the rider, but although he closed his eyes, he could not sleep.

After a while Erkanwulf stirred, and whispered, “I’ve never heard you sing a blessing, not once in all this time. You’re just a heretic, not a real churchman, aren’t you?”

“Is there any harm in it?” Ivar murmured. “I served as a novice at Quedlinhame. It isn’t as if a frater or cleric is likely to wander through here. Anyway, they’ve served us a good turn.”

Erkanwulf grunted softly. “I suppose there’s no harm in it. Funny, though. That one, called Martin, he came out of Gent years ago, so I hear. He was a lad then and he settled here and married a local girl. This is their boy.” The child was snoring softly on the other side of Erkanwulf. “The wee lad has never heard of Autun or Lady Sabella or Biscop Constance, but he knows all about Gent and roads east.” His voice got rough, or perhaps his leg was paining him. “What will we do? We’ve only one horse now. You know as well as I do that we’ve nothing but empty promises to carry back to Biscop Constance.”

“Let me think. Something strange is abroad in the world, don’t you suppose? That wind … it sounded liked the cry of a living soul. Made me shiver right down through my skin. It made me think of a verse from the Holy Book, only I can’t remember it right, something about the seas boiling and the wind tossing down trees.”

Erkanwulf snorted. “Every deacon and cleric and frater I’ve ever met has a better memory than you, Lord Ivar, most noble cleric.”

He spoke mockingly, but the words didn’t sting. It was Erkanwulf’s way to tease. A year ago, a month ago, Ivar would have stewed and simmered, turning those words over and over, but not now.

“The verses spoke of the end of the world,” he said instead. “I feel we have been touched by a terrible, grand sword, a weapon wielded by God, or by those among humankind who don’t fear what they should fear. Did you ever see trees fall so? Like sticks kicked over by a boy!”

“I did not. Never in my life, and I’ve stood in forests when the wind howled on winter nights. I thought I would piss myself, I was so scared.”

Rain still drummed on the thatch roof of the hall, steady and ominous.

“That’s right,” agreed Ivar. “It wasn’t natural. Nor were those shades we saw before either. We have to keep our eyes open and be ready to act. We have to get back to Biscop Constance no matter what. And go quickly, as soon as the weather breaks.”

But in the morning, it rained. In the afternoon, it rained. All the next night, it rained. For five days it rained without letting up. The villagers kept busy with many tasks around the long hall and within the warren of huts and hovels and sheds they had erected within their log palisade. They ate the froth meat out of the horse in a series of soups that stretched the meat so that it would feed the two dozen or so folk across several days. Every evening as the light faded they gathered around the hearth fire and demanded Erkanwulf tell them the tale of Gent, or that Ivar regale them with the story of the ill-fated expedition east into the marchlands under the command of Princess Sapientia and Prince Bayan of Ungria.

“Look here, I pray you, my lord cleric,” said Martin late on the sixth day after he’d come in from outside. He stank of smoke. He’d been curing horse meat. He rummaged in a chest and brought out a parchment tied with a strip of leather. This he rolled out on the table. Folk crowded around, whispering as they stared at the writing none of them could read. “It’s our charter! From the king himself, may God bless him and his kin. Do you see the seal here?” He touched the wax seal reverentially. “We just heard it the once, read by that Eagle that rode through here, the one with a dark face. She had to take it away so it could get the king’s seal. Another Eagle, a red-haired one like to you, rode through a year or so after and brought it back to us. But he couldn’t read. Can you read it for us, so we can hear it again?”

How they all gazed at him with hopeful expressions! They were such a sturdy group, healthier than many because the forest provided so much, all but a steady supply of grain and salt which, they’d told him, they traded for. Even in lean years they could survive with less grain. They hadn’t any horses, but three milk cows. They had forage for their goats and sheep as well as certain plants and tubers out of the forest that could be eaten by humankind in hard times even if they weren’t tasty. They ate meat often, and they were proud of it, knowing that folk beyond the forest never fared so well.

He bent over the diploma. The lantern light made the pen strokes waver. He’d never read well nor did he like to, but the months in Queen’s Grave and the unrelenting supervision of Biscop Constance had forced him to labor over Dariyan, the language used both by the church and by the king’s schola for all decrees and capitularies.

They waited, so quiet that the sound of dripping rain off the outside eaves made him nervous. He kept expecting the rain to start up again. Luckily, it was not a long document. He stumbled through it without utterly shaming himself. King Henry’s promise was straightforward: the foresters would be free of service to any lord or lady as long as they kept the king’s road passable for himself and his servants and messengers and armies.

“The Eagle read it better,” murmured Martin’s wife to her husband, then blushed when Ivar looked at her.

“Eagles can’t read,” he said. “They learn the words in their head and repeat them back. That’s what she must have done.”

“Nay, she read it all right,” said one of the older men. “I recall that well enough. She touched each word as she spoke it. How could she know which was which if she weren’t reading? Strange looking girl, too, not any older than my Baltia here.” He set a hand on the head of an adolescent girl perhaps sixteen or seventeen years of age. “I don’t know if she were pretty, but she sure caught the eye.”

o;Let me think. Something strange is abroad in the world, don’t you suppose? That wind … it sounded liked the cry of a living soul. Made me shiver right down through my skin. It made me think of a verse from the Holy Book, only I can’t remember it right, something about the seas boiling and the wind tossing down trees.”

Erkanwulf snorted. “Every deacon and cleric and frater I’ve ever met has a better memory than you, Lord Ivar, most noble cleric.”

He spoke mockingly, but the words didn’t sting. It was Erkanwulf’s way to tease. A year ago, a month ago, Ivar would have stewed and simmered, turning those words over and over, but not now.

“The verses spoke of the end of the world,” he said instead. “I feel we have been touched by a terrible, grand sword, a weapon wielded by God, or by those among humankind who don’t fear what they should fear. Did you ever see trees fall so? Like sticks kicked over by a boy!”

“I did not. Never in my life, and I’ve stood in forests when the wind howled on winter nights. I thought I would piss myself, I was so scared.”

Rain still drummed on the thatch roof of the hall, steady and ominous.

“That’s right,” agreed Ivar. “It wasn’t natural. Nor were those shades we saw before either. We have to keep our eyes open and be ready to act. We have to get back to Biscop Constance no matter what. And go quickly, as soon as the weather breaks.”

But in the morning, it rained. In the afternoon, it rained. All the next night, it rained. For five days it rained without letting up. The villagers kept busy with many tasks around the long hall and within the warren of huts and hovels and sheds they had erected within their log palisade. They ate the froth meat out of the horse in a series of soups that stretched the meat so that it would feed the two dozen or so folk across several days. Every evening as the light faded they gathered around the hearth fire and demanded Erkanwulf tell them the tale of Gent, or that Ivar regale them with the story of the ill-fated expedition east into the marchlands under the command of Princess Sapientia and Prince Bayan of Ungria.

“Look here, I pray you, my lord cleric,” said Martin late on the sixth day after he’d come in from outside. He stank of smoke. He’d been curing horse meat. He rummaged in a chest and brought out a parchment tied with a strip of leather. This he rolled out on the table. Folk crowded around, whispering as they stared at the writing none of them could read. “It’s our charter! From the king himself, may God bless him and his kin. Do you see the seal here?” He touched the wax seal reverentially. “We just heard it the once, read by that Eagle that rode through here, the one with a dark face. She had to take it away so it could get the king’s seal. Another Eagle, a red-haired one like to you, rode through a year or so after and brought it back to us. But he couldn’t read. Can you read it for us, so we can hear it again?”