Crown of Stars (Crown of Stars 7)

Before her injuries, Constance might simply have overawed him, being a noble woman so grand and mighty that a simple farmer would be too tongue-tied to utter a word in her presence, but what she had suffered had made her less formidable in appearance, although Ivar knew that she had not changed.

“Lord Geoffrey is resting, and I am here with Count Lavrentia, as you see. We will write down your statement, here,” she gestured to Sigfrid, “if you will tell us to what purpose your village sent you.”

A man might frown so, Ivar thought, making ready for a charge against an armed and powerful enemy. But the man swallowed, braced himself by letting out a sharp exhalation, and began in a firm if slightly rushed tone.

“We lost our deacon last summer to the black rot, and most of our seed corn, as well as a dozen or more good folk in our village. We were hoping the count might see fit to send another deacon our way so that we can live properly and pray when it is fitting and hear the stories of the Holy Verses told out to us. We were promised a few year back that we’d have the use of this new plough we heard tell of, to break up some bottomland, but we’ve heard no more of it. It would aid us this year especially with the weather bad as it is. We’ve had a score settlers come to our valley, driven out of a pair of villages that were torn right down in the great storm last autumn. We can’t feed all without this new land put to the plough. And with them, we’re asking we be allowed to pay a lower tithe this year, to hold back more of what we grow so as to feed the many more mouths we have and will have next winter. My lady. And if I may be bold, Your Holiness.”

“Go on.”

Sigfrid’s quill scratched as he wrote. Baldwin was staring dreamily at the fire.

“We have a tax we pay to Lady Hildegard, but she died when the roof of her hall fell in the storm.”

“Yes, it’s been recorded,” said Constance. “She left no immediate heirs. I’ve been told there is a cousin from farther east who will inherit, but there’s been some trouble finding her.”

“Yes, Your Holiness. So we pray, Your Holiness, for the lady’s steward has dealt poorly with us in the past and now is threatening to come with men-at-arms and rob us to pay our back taxes. If the lady doesn’t come soon, we are come to ask if another steward might be set over us who will govern more justly.”

“You are bold,” said the girl.

“Begging your pardon, my lady. We are desperate, Your Holiness. We thought all was lost last year, and then—” He faltered, twisting the cap.

Baldwin smiled in that way that calmed because it dazzled.

“Go on,” said Constance kindly.

“There were signs and portents, Your Holiness. A scythe I had borrowed—I lost its iron blade in the pond, and yet it was returned to me although it was hopelessly lost in the water and weeds. My niece, a good girl, was killed when a wall fell in on her, I swear to you in God’s name that she stopped breathing, but she lived, and lives still, a sharptongued brat but one we all love. These were portents of change. Don’t you think?”

“Miracles,” said Constance sternly.

He bowed his head.

“Tell us again, and in more detail,” she said, “for I have a wish that my clerics will record all these stories. I have heard many tales these days, here in Lavas, and others on the road. Strange tidings.”

Lavrentia looked at her hands.

Constance looked at Ivar and nodded, but he was of no use to her. He could barely scratch out his letters in the crudest fashion imaginable, and unlike some clerics he had no trained memory to recall the Holy Verses in their entirety or recite the genealogy of regnants and nobles back to the tenth generation.

The farmer began telling a confused story about a madman dressed only in dirt and moss. As Baldwin began writing, Ivar went outside where he kicked pebbles across the courtyard and all the way to the gate and farther yet to the fosse and walked aimlessly before coming to the little church where the peculiar and unsettling stone effigy of the last count rested.

He set foot on the porch but saw that another person knelt, praying and weeping, in the dim interior: Lord Geoffrey.

I am not the only troubled soul. And were his troubles so very desperate? Discontent was not the same as desperation. Watching the shadowed figure from the porch of the little church, Ivar sensed that, outside, he waited under the skies of a far finer day than the one that, inside, plagued Geoffrey with rain and tempest. Lord Geoffrey had lost his wife, and his cousin—if he had held much affection for the deceased Count Lavastine, which Ivar had no way of determining. His now-crippled daughter had only a tenuous hold on the county claimed in her name, and his two young sons were being held in Autun in the tender care of Lady Sabella. The local folk muttered against him, and some said openly that Geoffrey had usurped the place of the rightful heir in order to get the lands and title for his daughter and thus—because she was still a child—himself.

No wonder he wept.

Back by the gate, the watch bell rang. A pair of banners fluttered in the distance as a party of riders approached the holding.

“What news?” demanded Geoffrey, emerging from the church.

“I don’t know,” said Ivar, taken aback by that brusque tone.

“Didn’t Biscop Constance send you? Who are those riders?”

“I know no more than you do.”

“Then you know that this life is only tears and suffering! Or do you clerics have some psalm for that, to tell us otherwise?”

Ivar couldn’t think of any. The psalms all ran together in his mind, praising God, smiting foes, rejoicing at deliverance, and punishing those who did not act as they should, although the blessed Daisan had taught that to act against what is right was, in a way, its own punishment since humankind knew that it were better and easier to do what is good than what is evil.