Theuderic of Metz lay on his back, staring up
at the blueness while his life seeped slowly away into the earth
beneath him. A piece of gold-threaded green silk blew across his
line of vision, revealing a rusty-red stain on the brightness of
the scarf. Theu was too weak to turn his head, but he knew from
where the silk had come. Hugo lay beside him, already stiff and
cold, like the rest of his men scattered nearby. Hrulund and Turpin
and their men were dead, too, along with Eggihard the seneschal and
Anselm the Count of the Palace, all of them slain by their fellow
Christians, just as India had warned.
India
…
The weight of the chain mail on his chest
made it difficult to breathe. His armor had never felt so heavy
before. But he had never been so weak before. Theu thought about
his son, growing up safe in his grandmother’s care, and knew
Charles and his mother together would see to it that the boy fared
well. No cause for worry there, only sadness that he would not see
his son again.
India
…
She had loved him so willingly, and now she
would know for the second time in her short life the heartbreaking
loss of a man she loved, and she would have to go on without him.
He was the more fortunate one, for the pain of knowing he would
never see her again would be brief … only a few minutes more, an
hour at most.
He was too weak to pray aloud, but he found
the words in his mind, one by one, forming them carefully, fighting
the weariness that made thought increasingly difficult.
Please send India home. Don’t leave her in
this time. Send her home…and please…please… send someone to love
her
….
The blue sky seemed nearer now. It was
surprisingly painless to die in this way, on a mountainside, with
the heavens so close.
India … love
… The blue enveloped him,
drawing him upward, into a profound and blessed peace.
“Love never dies. Love lives on.”
He did not have time to think about who had
spoken those words. He only knew they were the last ones he would
ever hear in his present life. It no longer mattered that in this
lifetime he would never meet India again, because though his eyes
were now blind to earthly sights, the blue surrounding him rolled
back, so that the endless ages were revealed to him, century upon
century, before him and behind him … eternity … and he understood …
and smiled … and gave himself gladly to what awaited him.
“Love never dies. Love lives on.”
Marcion returned to Agen with the courier who
bore the terrible news. They entered the reception room
unannounced. India, Bertille, and Danise were sitting together, the
other two trying to make India laugh by telling silly jokes. When
she first saw Marcion, India felt a glimmer of hope that eased the
numbness of the past few days. She half expected to see Theu come
in behind him.
“Marcion!” Bertille sprang to her feet and
ran to him, throwing her arms around him. And Marcion, not caring
who saw them or whether Bertille’s mother had given permission or
not, set down the heavy bundle he was carrying so that he could
lift his betrothed off her feet and kiss her hard. Something in the
desperate way he held Bertille quenched India’s brief hope and must
have touched Danise, too, for when India rose to go to Marcion,
Danise was right behind her.
“The queen?” asked the courier, looking about
the room.
“She’s in the women’s quarters,” India said,
pointing. “Through that door. She will want to receive you at
once.” She did not ask what news he carried. His message was for
the queen’s ears first. They would all know what it was soon
enough, and suddenly India did not want to hear it.
Marcion set Bertille on her feet again,
looking at her sadly before he released her. His eyes met India’s.
He did not have to say anything. She knew –
knew
– and she
experienced a sensation of drifting in empty space unanchored by
any attachments.
“India.” Marcion’s hand was on her arm. In
his tear-filled eyes and on his face she saw all the pain he was
feeling.
“India, you are pale as a ghost.” Bertille
took her hands and began to rub them. Danise clutched at India’s
elbow.
“I think I have known since Theu left Agen,”
India said, “that I would never see him again. Not in this world.
Still, I could not stop hoping.”
There came a long, despairing wail from the
direction of the women’s quarters, followed by the sounds of
several women weeping.
“Not Charles?” cried Danise, wide-eyed and
frightened-looking.
“Charles is well enough, said Marcion,
“though he mourns deeply and blames himself for what has happened.
He says now that he should never have gone into Spain.”
They were joined at that point by Sister
Gertrude, who at the courier’s first word of disaster had left the
queen’s side to find Danise. They stood together before Marcion,
Bertille still holding both of India’s hands, Danise clinging to
her arm, Sister Gertrude looking fierce, ready to defend the
younger women if she could. But even she could not protect them
from the news Marcion brought.
“Tell us everything,” said Sister Gertrude.
“It is better to know than to wonder in ignorance.”
Obeying her, Marcion described first the
bitter end of the Spanish campaign and how Theu had volunteered to
serve under Hrulund, before he went on to tell the women what
Charles and his companions, including himself, had found when they
returned to Roncevaux to discover why the rear guard had failed to
appear at their rendezvous.
“From the lack of our dead along the heights
of all that long and winding pass, Charles has concluded that
Hrulund foolishly posted no scouts to watch for attack upon his
flanks,” Marcion said. “Worse still, from the positions of the
bodies, we could tell that when the attack came, the rear guard was
riding in front of the baggage train, not along its sides and
behind it as they should have been deployed if they were going to
guard it properly. Only a few men were at the very end of all the
carts and the stragglers.”
India thought she understood why Theu had
gone with Hrulund. She had given him knowledge of the future, and
that knowledge had changed his actions, as he had said it could. By
adding his best men to Hrulund’s force he had doubtless hoped to
prevent or to fight off the ambush she had warned him of. Her own
thoughts having become intolerably painful at this point, she began
to listen to Marcion again.
“Hrulund and Bishop Turpin, Eggihard and
Anselm.” Marcion recited the list of the dead, including the men of
Theu’s band. At each name, India recalled a face and remembered
seeing that man ride off with Charles. When Marcion said Hugo’s
name, Danise cried out as if she had been stabbed.
“Theu’s band was the group at the very end,
exactly where the rearguard ought to be,” Marcion said, his voice
breaking. “I should have been there, too, but Charles insisted on
keeping me with him.”
“Danise, you have heard enough. Come away,”
said Sister Gertrude, “come to our room and weep in private.
Bertille, help me with her, she may faint on the way. India, you
come too.”
“Later,” India said, and gave all her
attention to Marcion, whose pain she could feel in her own
heart.
“After I was taken from my family and brought
from Lombardy to Francia,” he told her, “there were those who
called Theu my jailer or my keeper, but he was never that to me. He
was like an older brother, and he and Hugo became my dearest
friends. Now they are gone. I should have been with them, to help
them at the last.” His shoulders began to shake. India drew his
head down onto her own shoulder and held him while he shuddered
with tears for the men they both loved.
They were not alone in their grief. The news
had spread rapidly, so that everyone in the palace knew it within a
few minutes after the courier had told the story to the queen. All
the routine daily activities stopped at once, and a mournful
silence fell over the palace, broken only by the sound of
weeping.
“Why don’t you cry, too?” Marcion asked,
dashing the last traces of tears from his eyes and straightening
his shoulders.
“I have cried all my tears already,” she
said, her voice dull and lifeless, “every day and every night of
these last months. I have no tears left.”
She had a deeper grief than Marcion knew, for
added to her sense of loss was guilt. If she had not warned Theu
about the ambush and about Hrulund’s foolhardiness, might Hugo have
survived to marry Danise and sire children who would have made
their own impact upon the world? And what of Eudon, who had
recovered from a boar wound in Saxony only to die in Spain? What of
Osric, who would never again ride through some city gate or
fortified outpost entrance calling out Theu’s name and title with
youthful pride and pleasure? And all the rest of that brave band –
she knew and loved every man of them, and now she felt as though it
was her fault they had died so young. And Theu most of all, who had
listened to her warnings and taken them to heart and tried to do
something about them – and who had died as a result. She stood
bowed by regret and grief and guilt, until Marcion spoke again.
“I brought Theu’s armor back.” He picked up
the bundle he had dropped on the floor when Bertille embraced him,
and set it on the table. Opening it, he pulled out the chain mail.
“They stole everything worth the taking, including all the swords,
but Theu’s
brunia
was so badly damaged they didn’t bother
with it. Still, I think a good armorer might be able to repair it.
Charles said to send it to his son.”
India touched the cold metal links, spreading
the body of the
brunia
out on the table until she could see
the tear through which Theu’s life had drained. At the very edge of
the tear there was one rivet that had been pulled half out of its
link by what must have been a powerful thrust, too strong for any
mortal to withstand. She touched the tear in the
brunia
,
putting her finger over the damaged link where the head of the tiny
rivet had been snapped off.
“The fabric of life,” she whispered, thinking
of a spring evening in Aachen.
She could not cry. The tears were there,
inside her, but she could not let them out. She rocked back and
forth, holding the edges of the tear together as if her fingers
alone could restore the damage, could make the
brunia
whole
again and bring Theu back, too, alive once more, strong and
loving.
“Give it back to me, India. I should not have
shown it to you.” Marcion took the
brunia
from her. “Charles
has asked me to pack up the rest of Theu’s belongings and send them
to his mother. If there is anything of his you want, I’m sure she
wouldn’t mind.”
She looked at him from pain-filled eyes,
still rocking back and forth, though her hands were empty now –
hands and arms, both empty.
“I have my memories,” she said. “I don’t need
anything else.”
“You are welcome to go to Lombardy with me.”
The
brunia
folded away, Marcion sat down beside her.
“Bertille and I would be happy to have you live with us, in our
home.”
“Two men,” she said, as if she had not heard
him. “Two fine men. My husband first, then Theu. Both died too
soon, and all my efforts to save them could not help either. Why?
Why?”
“I don’t know why one man lives and another
dies. Why was I with Charles and not with Theu when he needed me?”
Taking a ragged breath, Marcion put his arm around her and pulled
her head onto his shoulder, holding her as she had held him
earlier. Only when she felt his tears falling on her cheek did the
knot that had lain in her chest for so long begin to loosen, and
she was able to cry at last.
Charles came back to Agen two days later,
leading a sorrowful army. He would not speak publicly about what
had happened, leaving it to Alcuin to announce that there would be
a memorial mass for the dead on the next day, after which the
entire court was to move eastward at once, traveling far across
Francia, to Auxerre in Burgundy.
“He may think the farther he is from the
Spanish border, the easier it will be for him and for us, but
that’s not so,” Bertille said. “There’s no forgetting what has
happened. India, he has ordered Marcion and me to hold our wedding
as planned, saying we need to turn our thoughts to a happy
occasion, and so we will be married in Auxerre. Will you be
there?”
“I don’t know,” India replied. “I have the
oddest feeling of being suspended between two places, two times. I
can’t explain it.”
“I think I understand.” Bertille put her arms
around India, and it was as though Willi was hugging her, freely
offering her vitality and affection to India. “My mother told
Danise this morning that all grief eases with time, so please
believe that yours will, too.”
“Never,” India whispered. “Never.”
At India’s insistence, Marcion went with her
to the chapel where Theu’s body lay next to Hugo’s. Most of the
dead had been buried at Roncevaux. Only a few had been brought back
to Agen. Marcion had made certain that Theu and Hugo were among
them.
“Hugo’s coffin is closed already,” India
said.
Marcion did not respond to the question in
her voice, nor did he look at her.
“You said you identified him.” It sounded
like a challenge.
“I recognized him by the scarf Danise gave
him. He always wore it wrapped around his right arm,” Marcion told
her gruffly, then would say no more on the subject.
“I’m sorry.” She made her voice softer, so he
would know she was not angry with him. “How difficult that task
must have been for you.”