Child of Flame Page 11

  Silence spread in their wake.

  An open space had been cleared in front of the king’s table to give the entertainers room to perform their tricks as well as a space where those petitioners lucky enough to have gotten this far could kneel while they waited for the king’s notice. The petitioners crouching along the edge of that empty space did not notice him because they were so intent on the king. Sanglant got a good look at the king for the first time, his view blocked only by the antics of the jugglers. Henry looked remarkably hearty, even a little flushed, as the young noblewoman laughed while gold and silver balls flashed in the air between the three jugglers. Sanglant used his boots to discreetly nudge a raggedly-dressed man out of his way. The man glanced up, startled, and scuttled to one side, causing a cascade as all the petitioners scrambled for new places. Princess Theophanu, seated at the king’s right hand, noticed the movement and tracked it back to its source. Her expression did not change, although it may have whitened a little, and her hands tightened on the cup she was in the act of lifting to her lips. The cleric standing behind her chair staggered backward, as if he had been kicked in the back of the knees.

  A path opened through the throng, blocked only by the jugglers, who remained intent on the balls tossed between them. Sanglant ducked under the flying path of one shiny ball, caught another in his right hand, and was through their net just as Fulk swore under his breath. A ball hit the captain on the shoulder, fell, and shattered on a circle of ground swept clean of rushes that the jugglers had marked out for their tricks. The pony, hauled in this far and perhaps lulled by the stink and the carpet of rushes and tansy laid down on the floor into thinking it had come into a stable, chose this moment to urinate, loud and long.

  Henry rose with easy grace. At that moment, as Henry looked him over, Sanglant realized that his father had noticed him as soon as he had entered the hall. As might a captain laying a counter ambush against bandits hiding in the forest, the king had simply chosen to pretend otherwise.

  “Prince Sanglant,” he said with a cool formality that tore at Sanglant’s heart. “You have not yet met my wife, Queen Adelheid.”

  Obviously, Henry was still furious at his disobedient son, since this was the very woman whom his father had so desperately wanted him to marry. She was pretty, certainly, but more importantly she had that energy about her that is common to women who find pleasure in the bed. No doubt that, together with the Aostan crown she wore, accounted for the becoming blush in his father’s cheeks and the smile that hovered on his lips as he regarded his disgraced son, come limping back scarcely better than a beggar.

  Who was laying an ambush for whom?

  Adelheid had the audacity, and the rank, to look him over as she would a stallion. “Handsome enough,” she said clearly, as if he had caught them in the middle of a conversation, “but I have no reason to regret my choice. You’ve proved your fitness as regnant many times over, Henry.”

  Henry laughed. Made bold by the king’s reaction, some among the audience felt free to chuckle nervously or snicker in response, by which time certain men had made their way through the crowd to throw themselves at Sanglant’s feet.

  “Your Highness!”

  “Prince Sanglant!”

  He recognized Fulk’s men, who had evidently been serving at table or standing guard throughout the hall. Heribert arrived, pressing through the knot of petitioners who were crowded closest to the king’s table, and knelt before him, grasping Sanglant’s hand and kissing it.

  “Sanglant!” he said triumphantly, as out of breath as if he’d been running. “My lord prince! I feared—”

  “Nay, friend,” said Sanglant, “never fear. I pray you, rise and stand beside me.”

  “So I will,” said the young cleric, though he wobbled a little as he got to his feet.

  “Who are these, who have come forward?” asked Henry. “Does Brother Heribert not serve Theophanu?”

  Theophanu still clutched her cup. Old Helmut Villam, seated beside her, leaned to whisper to her, but she was obviously not listening to him. She merely nodded, once, curtly, to Sanglant, before setting down the wine cup.

  “This is my retinue, Your Majesty,” said Sanglant at last. “These are men who have pledged loyalty to me.”

  “Don’t I feed them?” asked Henry sweetly. “I didn’t know you had the lands and wherewithal to maintain a retinue, Son. Certainly you scorned those that I meant to honor you with. I don’t even see a gold torque at your throat to mark you as my son.”

  But Sanglant had his own weapons, and he knew how to counterattack. He stepped aside to reveal his mother.

  She stood in a spray of light cast from the high windows. The light made bronze of her hair, burnished and finely-woven into a tight braid as thick as her wrist. She had rolled down the sleeves of Liath’s tunic and belted it in the usual manner around her hips, although even with a length of material caught up under the belt the embroidered hem still lapped her ankles. Yet despite the unexceptionable appearance of the clothing, she blazed with strangeness as alien as a sleek leopard glimpsed running with thundering aurochs.

  She said nothing. She didn’t have to.

  “Alia!” Henry paled noticeably, but he had been king for too many years not to know when to retreat. The mask of stone crashed down over his expression, freezing the merriment in the hall as thoroughly as any magic could have. The goat baaed, followed by complete silence. No one seemed to notice the flutter of wind moving through the robes and cloaks of the seated nobles as Jerna explored the hall.

  Finally, Alia spoke. “I come back, Henri,” she said, pronouncing his name in the Salian way, “but I am not believing that you cared for the child as you promised to me you would.”

  III

  TWISTING THE BELT

  1

  THE seeds of conflict bloomed at such odd times that it was often easy to forget that they had been sown long before, not risen spontaneously out of fallow ground. Rosvita of North Mark had been a cleric and adviser at court for twenty years. She knew when to step back and let matters take their course, and when to intervene before a crisis got out of hand.

  Although King Henry now stood, the rest of the assembly still sat in astonished, or anticipatory, silence, staring at the confrontation unfolding before them. Even wily old Helmut Villam, seated to her left at the king’s table, seemed stunned into immobility, mouth parted and fingers tightly gripping the stem of the wine cup he shared with Princess Theophanu, which the princess had just set down.

  Rosvita gestured to Brother Fortunatus to pull back her chair so that she, too, could rise. He hurried forward at once. Although like everyone else in the hall he could scarcely keep his gaze from the father, mother, and child whose battle was about to play out on this public stage, he had also been trained by Rosvita herself. There were many traits she could tolerate in the clerics who served her, but to be unobservant was not one of them.

  “This is the woman we’ve heard so much about!” he murmured in her ear as she rose. “God preserve us!”

  His gaze had fastened on the Aoi woman. He was not the only person in the hall ogling her. Her features were striking but not beautiful, and although admittedly her hair had the glamour of polished bronze, she wore it caught back in a complicated knot that made her look peculiar rather than regal. Her gaze was fierce and commanding, even combative. She was not afraid to look Henry in the eye, and her proud carriage suggested that she considered herself the regnant and Henry her subject.

  “I come back, Henri,” she said, pronouncing his name in the Salian way with an unvoiced “h” and a garbled “ri,” “but I am not believing that you cared for the child as you promised to me you would.”

  “I pray you, Your Majesty,” said Rosvita smoothly into the shocked silence that followed this outrageous accusation, “let chairs be brought so that our visitors may sit and eat. Truly, they must have a long journey behind them. Food and drink are always a welcome sight to the traveler. Indeed, let Prince Sanglant’s
mother abide in my own chair, and I will serve her.”

  Henry stared so fixedly at the foreign woman he had once called “beloved,” and whom it was popularly believed he would have married had he been permitted to, that finally Queen Adelheid rose with cool aplomb and indicated Rosvita’s seat to the right of Helmut Villam. It was not actually Adelheid’s prerogative, but Adelheid was neither a fool nor a quitter.

  “Let a chair be brought for Prince Sanglant so that he may be seated beside me,” she said in her high, clear voice. “Let his lady mother be honored as is her right and our obligation, for it was her gift of this child to my husband which sealed his right to rule as regnant in Wendar and Varre.”

  Sanglant stepped forward. “I have a child.” His voice had a hoarse scrape to it, as though he were afflicted with pain, but his voice always sounded like that. Years ago he had taken a wound to the throat in battle.

  He untied a bundle from his back, uncoiled linen cloth, and a moment later held in his arms a yearling child, as sweet a babe as Rosvita had ever seen, with plump cheeks, a dark complexion, and bright blue eyes. “Da da!” she said in the ringing tones of imperious babyhood. He set her on the ground and she took a few tottering steps toward the king, swayed, lost her balance, and sat down on her rump. Lifting a hand, she pointed toward Henry and said, with despotic glee, “Ba! Ba!”

  Sanglant swept her up, strode forward and, by leaning over the feasting table, deposited her in Henry’s arms. The king did not even resist. Many yearling babies would have shrieked in rage or fear, but the tiny child merely reached up, got a bit of the king’s beard between her fingers, and tugged.

  “Ba!” she exclaimed, delighted.

  “Jugglers!” said Henry hoarsely. He sat and downed the contents of his wine cup in one gulp while the baby tried to climb up to his shoulder to get hold of the gleaming coronet of gold he wore on his brow—not the king’s crown of state, too heavy and formal to wear at a feast, but his lesser crown, a slender band of gold worn when circumstances called for a lesser degree of formality.

  Prince Sanglant’s smile was sharp. Turning, he tossed the silver ball to the nearest juggler. The poor man jerked, startled, but his hand acted without his mind’s measure and he caught the ball. The hall came alive then, as dawn unfolds: people recalled the food on their platters; the jugglers returned to their show of skill and daring; the soldiers who had come forward to publicly and thus irrevocably mark their allegiance to Prince Sanglant rose and waited for his command. Sanglant spoke quietly to Captain Fulk, after which the good captain dispersed his men efficiently, obtained the lead lines of the pony and the goat, and, leading the two animals, retreated from the hall while Sanglant came forward to take his place at Adelheid’s left. The young cleric, Heribert, who had appeared so mysteriously in the Alfar Mountains, stuck close by Sanglant’s side. It was he who took over serving the prince, although before he had served Theophanu. The princess’ expression remained as blank as stone. She rose and went to kiss Sanglant, once on either cheek, and he caught her closer and whispered something which, amazingly, brought a whisper of a smile to her face, seen and gone as swiftly as the flutter of a swallow’s wing.

  “Go to Princess Theophanu,” Rosvita said to Fortunatus in an undertone. He hastened away to stand behind the princess’ chair so that she would have a person of fitting rank to serve her now that Brother Heribert had, evidently, defected to her half brother.

  Sanglant turned his attention to charming Adelheid while Henry had his hands full of clambering, enthusiastic baby. Something fundamental had changed in the prince in the fourteen months he had been gone from the king’s progress. Rosvita had seen battle joined on the field, and she had seen skirmishes played out in the subtler fields of court, but never before had she seen Sanglant maneuvering, as he obviously was now, in the political arena. Of course, before he hadn’t had a child and a wife.

  Where was Liath?

  “You I will be thanking, woman,” said the one known as Alia, who came up beside her. “You are one of the god-women, are you not?”

  It took Rosvita a moment to translate the strange phrase. “Yes, I am a cleric. My service is devoted to God and to King Henry. I pray you, Lady, sit here, if you please. Let me pour you some wine.”

  But the foreign woman remained standing, examining Rosvita with a stare that made her feel rather like what she supposed an insect felt before the hand of fate slapped down upon it. She was shorter than Rosvita and powerfully built, with the same kind of leashed energy common to warriors forced into momentary stillness. Alia did not smile, but abruptly the tenor of her expression changed. “You spoke in the way of an elder,” she said abruptly, “when you rose to offer guesting rights. For this short time, there will be no fighting between Henri and his son.”

  “So I hope,” agreed Rosvita, but in truth the observation surprised her. She did not know what to expect from the Aoi woman. She did not know anything, really, about the Aoi except for legends half buried in ancient manuscripts and tales told around hearths at night in the long halls of the common people. Like many, she had begun to believe the Aoi were only a story, a dream fostered by old memories of the ancient Dariyan Empire, but it was impossible to deny the evidence of her own eyes. “Sit, I pray you.” At times like this, one fell back on basic formality. “Let me pour you wine, if you will, Lady.”

  “To you,” said Alia without making any movement toward the chair, “I will give my spoken name, because you are wise enough to use it prudently. I am known among my people as Uapeani-ka-zonkansi-a-lari, but if that is too much for your tongue, then Kansi-a-lari is enough.”

  Rosvita smiled politely. “With your permission; then, Lady, I will address you as Kansi-a-lari. Is there a title that suits you as well? I am unaccustomed to the customs of your people.”

  “Kansi-a-lari is my title, as you call it.” With that, she sat, moving into the confines of the chair with the cautious grace of a leopard slinking into a box that might prove to be a cage.

  The feast ground on, lurching a little, like a wagon pulled over rough ground, but entertainers took their turns, platters of beef, venison, and pork were brought hot from the outdoor cookhouses, and wine flowed freely. Petitioners shuffled forward in waves and were sent on their way with a judgment or a coin or a scrap from the king’s platter for their pains. A poet trained in the court chapel of the Salian king sang from a lengthy poem celebrating the virtues and fame of the great emperor, Taillefer, he who had risen from the kingship of Salia to the imperial crown of Darre. Emperor Taillefer stood alone in the ranks of the great princes, for no regnant from any land in the one hundred years since his death had gained enough power to duplicate his achievement. None until Henry, who had now, through marriage to Adelheid, allied his kingdom of Wendar and Varre with the country of Aosta, within whose borders lay the holy city of Darre. Of course the poet meant to praise the dead Emperor Taillefer while flattering the living king, Henry, whose ambition to take upon himself the title “Holy Dariyan Emperor” was no secret to his court.

  “Look! The sun shines no more brightly than the emperor, who illuminates the earth with his boundless love and great wisdom. For although the sun knows twelve hours of darkness, our regnant, like a star, shines eternally.”

  The entrance of Prince Sanglant and his mother, while never forgotten, was subsumed into the familiar conviviality of the feast. And anyway, it gave everyone there something to gossip about as the banquet, and the poet, wore on.

  “He enters first among the company, and he clears the way so that all may follow. With heavy chains he binds the unjust and with a stiff yoke he constrains the proud.”

  After all, it was the fifth day of feasting, and even the heartiest of revelers might be forgiven for growing restless after endless hours of merriment and gluttony. In an odd way, Rosvita was grateful to serve rather than sit. She attended to Alia as unobtrusively as possible, so as not to startle her or give her any reason to feel spied upon or threatened.

 
“He is the fount of grace and honor. His achievements have made him famous throughout the four quarters of the earth.”

  The Aoi woman did not invite conversation. Young Lord Fride-braht, seated to her right, was certainly too much in dread of her strange appearance and fierce gaze to speak one single word to her. Even old Villam, who had known Alia those many years ago in her brief time at court and who certainly had never before lacked the spirit or courage to flatter an attractive woman, attempted only a few comments before, in the face of her disinterest, he gave up. Alia watched the king, the court, and occasionally her son. She ate and drank sparingly. In this way, the feast continued without further incident.

  The poet finished his panegyric at last, and a cleric came forward to give a pleasing rendition of “The Best of Songs,” the wedding song taken from the ancient Essit holy book.

  “My beloved is mine, and I am his.

  Let me be a seal upon your heart,

  like the seal upon your hand.”

  The king’s favored Eagle, Hathui, beckoned to Rosvita. “His Majesty will take his leave of the hall now.”

  “What make you of this turn of events?” asked Rosvita. Although Hathui was only a common-born woman, she had a keen eye and the king’s confidence.

  “It is unexpected.” Hathui laughed at the absurdity of her own statement. Henry had gotten the baby settled on his knee and was now feeding her the choicest bits, mashed into a porridgelike consistency, from the platter he shared with his queen. “I believe the king would be better served if he sorts it out in the king’s chambers, in some manner of privacy, away from the assembly.”

  Almost as if he had overheard the Eagle’s statement, Sanglant rose to toast the newly married couple. Despite his common clothing, he had the carriage of a prince and the proud face of a man who expects loyalty and obedience in those who follow him. He knew how to pitch his voice to carry over the buzzing throng.