Elliott, Kate - Crown of Stars 3 (13 page)

Here, on the grounds of the palace, they waited in the large, open interior field—not quite a courtyard—for the king to make his way to his quarters, which lay on the other side of a stone chapel. A stately timber hall with its foundations set in stone graced the southern side of this complex of buildings. The king's stewards parceled out quarters according to rank and favor, but no sooner had Alain gotten the hounds settled in a makeshift kennel outside their assigned guesthouse than the count came looking for him.

"King Henry has asked that we attend him in a private council. Come, Son. Make yourself presentable." He glanced toward the kenneled hounds who, hoping for a caress, wagged their tails and whined. "Bring two of the hounds as well."

The king received them in a spacious room with all the shutters taken down to admit light and air. Only Helmut Villam, a half-dozen servingmen, and Sister Rosvita attended him. Henry sat on his traveling chair, carved cunningly with lions as the four legs, the back as the wings of an eagle, and the arms as the sinuous necks and heads of dragons. The king leaned forward as his favored Eagle spoke softly into his ear. Seeing Lavastine and Alain, he straightened.

"Let him come to me at once if you can coax him within the ramparts. Otherwise—" He glanced toward Villam, who gave a barely perceptible nod. "—let him range as widely as he wishes

at this time. Better that the court not see him when he is in such a restless and wild humor."

She bowed and strode briskly out of the chamber. Henry gestured to a servingman, who left the chamber in the Eagle's wake. Then he nodded to Sister Rosvita and, with a troubled expression, she read aloud from a letter.

' 'To my brother, His Illustrious Majesty, Henry, regnant over Wendar and Varre. With a heavy heart and a disquieted mind I must relate to you these tidings, that our niece Tallia cannot remain at Quedlinhame. She has been spreading the taint of heresy among my novices and has polluted over twenty young innocents with her preaching. I advise caution even as I commend her into your hands. It seems to me that marriage would best distract her from these falsehoods.' "

Henry signed, and Rosvita stopped reading. "Do you still want the marriage to go forward?" he asked Lavastine bluntly. "The charge of heresy is a serious one. Mother Scholastica has taken Tallia's youth into account in judging her fit, at this time, for mercy. The girl claims to have had visions, but whether they have come to her through the agency of the Enemy or merely through her innocent trust in bad counselors we cannot say. If she does not repent of these views, the church may be forced to take more drastic action."

Lavastine raised an eyebrow, considering.

Heresy.
Alain knew in his gut to whom Tallia had listened: Prater Agius. It was as if the heresy of the flaying knife and the sacrifice and redemption of the blessed Daisan was a plague, passing from one vulnerable soul on to the next. Agius had been granted the martyr's death he so desired. Wasn't that a mark of God's favor? But why should God favor a man who preached a heresy against God's own truth?

Yet the thought of losing Tallia because of Agius' preaching infuriated him. Anger welled up in his heart, and Rage growled beside him.

"Peace," murmured Lavastine, and the hound settled down to rest its head on its great paws. He turned to the king. "Lady Tallia is young yet, Your Majesty. And she has not, alas, been exposed to the wisest of counselors. A steadying influence—" He nodded toward Alain. "—will calm her young mind."

"So be it," said Henry, not without relief.

"The sooner this transaction takes place, the better," added Lavastine. "I must return to my lands before autumn so that I and my son can oversee the autumn sowing. A hard winter awaits us because of the men who died at Gent...those same men who gave up their lives to return Gent—and your son Sanglant— into your hands."

The door opened and the servingman returned with two young women in tow. One, with a plump and eager face, stared at the king with mouth agape and then recalled herself and knelt obediently. The other, shawl askew to reveal wheat-pale hair, was Tallia.

Alain had to shut his eyes. He was overtaken by such a surge of anticipation and relief and simple, terrible desire that he swayed, trembling all over, until Sorrow nudged up under a hand to give him a foundation to steady himself on.

"Uncle," said Tallia so softly that the commonplace noises from outside almost drowned out her words "I beg you, Uncle, let me retire in peace to a nun's cell. I will take vows of silence, if that must be, but do not—

"Silence! You are not meant for the church, Tallia. In two days' time you will be wed to Lord Alain. Do not seek to argue with me. My mind is made up."

Alain looked up to see Tallia kneeling before the king. Her cheeks were scoured to a dreadful pallor, and she was as thin as a beggar in a year of bad harvests, but she was still beautiful to his eyes. It was more than her beauty that affected him; another inexplicable, unnamable force had taken hold of him and he could only stare, stricken dumb with shame for the desire he felt even as she turned a pleading gaze on him and with tears rolling down her cheeks bent her head as in submission to the terrible fate that had overtaken her.

FATHER Hugh never argued. He merely smiled when another disagreed with him, then spoke with such gentle persuasion that his disputants rarely recognized that he almost always got his way. But Hanna had learned to read signs of his agitation. Right now he was wringing the finger of one of his gloves, held lightly in his left hand, twisting it round and round as he listened to his mother's advice to Princess Sapientia.

"Prince Sanglant is a threat to your position only if you let him become one, Your Highness," Margrave Judith was saying. Hanna stood behind Sapientia's chair; the margrave sat like an equal beside the princess in a chair almost as elaborate as the regnant's throne. All of her other attendants—including her new husband and her bastard son—stood while the two noblewomen conversed. "It is true that your father the king has neglected you because of his affection for the prince. I speak bluntly because it is only the common truth."

She spoke bluntly because she was powerful enough to do so. A sidewise glance brought Hanna a glimpse of Ivar's bowed head. He had a flush in his cheeks that bothered Hanna, as if a disease had come to roost within him that he was not yet aware of. Yet in such a situation, she could not hope to speak to him.

"What do you advise?" Too restless to sit still for long, Sapientia jumped up and began to pace. "I do not dislike my brother, although I admit since we rescued him from Gent he behaves strangely, more like a dog than a man."

"His mother was not even human, which no doubt accounts for it." Judith lifted a hand and Hugh, obedient son, brought her a cup of wine. He moved so gracefully. Hanna could scarcely believe she had seen this elegant courtier strike Liath with cold fury. He was so different, here at court. Indeed, he was so very different in all ways from the men in Heart's Rest, the village where she had grown up: his elegant manners; his fine clothes; his beautiful voice; his clean hands. "But women were made by God to administer and create and men to fight and toil," continued Judith. "Cultivate your brother as a wise farming-woman cultivates her fields, and you will gain a rich harvest for your efforts. He is a notable fighter, and he carries the luck of your family with him on the battlefield. Use his good qualities to support your own position as heir to the regnant. Do not be so foolish as to believe the whispers that Henry wishes to make him Heir. The princes of Wendar and Varre will not let themselves be ruled by a bastard, certainly not a male bastard, and one as well who has only half the blood of humankind in him."

Sapientia paused by the window. Something she saw outside caused her to turn back and regard Margrave Judith with a half smile. "Count Lavastine's heir was once named a bastard. And now he is legitimate—and marrying my cousin this very night!" "Tallia is an embarrassment. Henry did well to give her as a gift to Count Lavastine as reward for Lavastine's service to him at Gent. It rids Henry of Tallia."

"And gives Lavastine a bride with royal connections for his heir," said Sapientia thoughtfully. "I think you did not meet Lord Geoffrey, who is Lavastine's cousin and was his heir before Lord Alain appeared. He is a nobleman in every respect, certainly worthy of the county and title."

"Lavastine is cunning. Once Lord Alain and Lady Tallia produce an heir, Henry will be forced to support Alain if Lord Geoffrey contests the succession."

Hugh spoke suddenly. "What if King Henry decides to marry Prince Sanglant in like manner, to give him legitimacy?"

Startled, Judith glanced at him as if she had forgotten he was there. "Do you actually think Henry so far gone in his affection for Sanglant that he would consider such a thing?" "Yes," he said curtly.

"No," retorted Sapientia. "I am Heir. I have Hippolyte to prove my worthiness. It's just that you hate Sanglant, Hugh. I see how you detest him. You can't bear that I might like him, even though we grew up together and he always treated me kindly when we were children. But your mother is right." Judith nodded in acknowledgment, but Hanna noted how hard her gaze was upon her son, as if she sought to plumb his depths and thereby know his mind. "Sanglant is no threat to my position—unless I let him become one. And by seeming to fear him because my father favors him and shows an old fondness for him, it weakens me—not him." She spun around to look at Hanna. "Is that not so, Eagle? Is that not exactly what you said to me yesterday?"

Ai, Lady! They all looked at her. She wished abruptly that she had never spoken such rash words to Sapientia. But Sapientia, if young and foolish, had promise if only someone bothered to give her practical advice, and Hanna had a store of practical advice harvested from her own mother.

"Wise counsel," said Margrave Judith with a gleam in her eyes that made Hanna exceedingly nervous. "What do
you
say, Hugh?"

Hugh had a certain quirk to his lips that betrayed irritation. He smiled to cover it now. His voice remained as smooth as honey, and as sweet. "It is God's will that sister love brother. For the rest of us, we must treat weak and strong alike with equal compassion."

"Still," mused Judith, "I had not considered the possibility of a marriage for Prince Sanglant. I will propose to Henry that he marry Sanglant to my Theucinda."

"You would marry your own legitimate daughter to my bastard brother?" asked Sapientia, astonished.

In her mind's ear, Hanna could hear her mother's voice commenting. She knew exactly what Mistress Birta would say: that Margrave Judith, a wise administrator, was merely gathering the entire flock of chickens into her own henhouse.

"Theucinda is my third daughter, just now of age. Gerberga and Bertha have their duties, their estates, and their husbands and heirs in Austra and Olsatia. Theucinda can serve me in this way, if I think it advantageous." She drained her cup, still watching her son. "But I do not concern myself as much with Sanglant's marriage. Do not forget that Henry may marry again."

"As you did," said Hugh stiffly, glancing toward Baldwin and as quickly away as if embarrassed to be caught looking.

Judith chuckled. "What is this frown, my pet? I must have my amusements." By
not
glancing toward Baldwin she called attention to his presence because everyone else then looked at him. The poor boy was, truthfully, the prettiest creature Hanna had ever seen; as was now commonly said among the servingfolk, he had the face of an angel.

Hugh seemed about to speak. Abruptly he moved forward to take his mother's empty wine cup and have it refilled. When he returned it to her, she touched his wrist as lightly as a butterfly lights on a flower to sip its nectar, and for a moment Hanna thought that something passed between them, mother and son, an unspoken message understood by what could be read in the gaze and in the language of the body. But she did not hold the key to interpret it.

When Judith left, Ivar was hustled away together with Baldwin, and Hanna could only catch his eye as he crossed the threshold. He lifted a hand as if in reply, and then was gone. For the rest of the day, preparations for the wedding feast consumed her attention. Mercifully, Hathui pressed her into service to escort two wagons to an outlying farmstead where stores of honey and beeswax candles had been set aside for the regnant's use as their yearly rent.

She loitered at the farmstead, talking to the old beekeeper while his adult children and two laborers loaded the two wagons with casks of honey and carefully wrapped bundles of delicate wax. His youngest son eyed her with interest.

"Ach, the king himself!" said the old man, whom Hanna quite liked. "I've never seen King Henry. It's said he's a handsome man, strong and tall and a fine general."

"So he is."

"But I have seen Arnulf the Younger with these own eyes, and that sight I'll never forget. He came here by this very farm when I was a young man, with his escort all in rich clothes and with such fine horses that it nearly blinded a man to see them. I remember that he had a scar under his left ear, somewhat fresh. He rode with an Eagle at his right side, just like you, a common Eagle! Only it were a man. Strange it were, to see a common man riding next to the king like his best companion. But he died."