Crown of Stars Read online

  Was it better to remain silent and hope to escape notice, or to assume that whatever creature made the noise already knew she was here? She chose prudence, and therefore silence.

  Once more she heard the scraping but this time, after the second scrape, it did not resume.

  Cautiously, she probed the wound, and while it remained tender and painful, it was already drying out and knitting. She rolled carefully onto hands and knees and found she could crawl without pain overwhelming her. She felt her way forward. The rock floor proved unnaturally level. No abyss gapped. No loose stones impeded her path. She counted each hand fall so she could gauge the distance, and at two hundred and eight the feel of the air changed markedly and in ten more hand paces she reached a wall. It rose sheer out of the floor, almost perpendicular. Its relatively smooth face and the curve where wall joined floor suggested that man-made effort had helped form it. Her thigh ached and her knees hurt and her hands stung, but the darkness made her too nervous to stand and walk. After a rest she felt around for anything to mark her place but could not find even enough loose pebbles to construct a marker. Finally, she eased down her drawers and peed, like a dog. She hadn’t much; she desperately needed water, but waiting in the middle of the pit was no way to go about getting it.

  She crawled. She was too weak to crawl quickly, so it was possible to taste the air and run her right hand up the rock face as high as she could go to search for an opening. She forced herself to pace a hundred hand falls before resting, and to rest no more than a hundred slow breaths before going on. Her knees became bruises and one of her palms bled, but the wound in her thigh did not reopen, so she kept going.

  It was hopeless. She found four shards of rock, which she tied up in her sleeve. One was sharp enough to use as a weapon, if it came to that, and the others could mark her starting point if she ever got back there in such time that her mark was still moist. She found no trace of water and no hint of any kind of opening that might lead her out.

  After one thousand three hundred and sixty-nine hand falls, she found a smear of liquid smelling of urine: her own mark. She had come full circle. If there was a tunnel leading out of this cavern it was either high up in the wall or somewhere out on the cavern floor, drowned in darkness and easy to miss no matter if she crossed and crisscrossed the floor a hundred times as she weakened, thirsted, and failed.

  She was trapped.

  There it was again: two scrapes, a silence, and two scrapes. But she listened for a long time after, and heard nothing more.

  4

  ROSVITA sat in the hall of the convent of St. Valeria with The Book of Secrets open on a table before her. She had stolen this book years ago, and lost it again soon after, so she had never had leisure to examine it page by page. A monstrous document, absolutely fascinating. The book contained three books. One was written on paper, in the infidel manner, and with the curling script used by the Jinna. It was impossible to decipher. The middle book was written on ancient, yellowed papyrus, the alien letters glossed here and there in Arethousan. “Hide this” read the first words of the gloss, and so Bernard had hidden it. Most of the text was not translated, but what was written in Arethousan allowed her to guess that this scroll preached the most dangerous heresy known to the church, that of the Redemption.

  She hadn’t the strength to consider it now. She turned to the first portion of the book.

  The man called Bernard, Liath’s father, had compiled a priceless florilegia. For years he had written down every reference he had found to the arts of the mathematici. She was familiar with the methods of timekeeping according to the rising of stars and constellations, but much of what was recorded here she found difficult and technical: quadrant, angle, equant point, trine, and opposition. There was a catalog of several hundred stars, including the latitude, longitude, and apparent brightness of each one, written in such a tiny hand that it was almost impossible to read. But other selections she could skim as she paused on each page to marvel at its secrets, many of them contradictory.

  The whole universe is composed of nine spheres. The celestial sphere is outermost, embracing all the rest … In it are fixed the eternally revolving movements of the stars. Beneath it are the seven underlying spheres, which revolve in an opposite direction.

  Below the moon all is mortal and transitory. Above the moon, all is eternal. In the center is the Earth, never moving.

  Her hypotheses are that the fixed stars and the Sun are stationary, and that the Earth is borne in a circular orbit about the Sun.

  It is easily demonstrated to anyone that the immutable aether is distributed over and penetrates all the wholly changeable substance around the Earth.

  The most chance events of great importance clearly display their cause as coming from the heavens.

  The stars weave the fate of humankind.

  Maybe so, but God had created the stars and every part of the universe, as the blessed Daisan taught, and she recalled the blessed Daisan’s words as well:

  The sun and the moon and the fixed and wandering stars are subject to law, that they only do what they are ordered to do and nothing else. However, it is given to humankind to lead life according to free will.

  “Sister Rosvita!”

  The voice startled her out of her book. “I pray you, Sister Acella! I did not see you come in.”

  Sister Acella had the pouched mouth and narrowed eyes of an angry woman, and she did not hesitate to speak her mind. “What rumor is this I hear? You send the Eagle to call me, yet already I hear the soldiers saying that you mean to abandon the convent and force us to leave!”

  “You must.”

  “We will not go.”

  With a sigh, Rosvita closed the book. She had lingered over it for too long since Hanna had dropped it in her lap together with the news that Liath was gone, possibly dead, and almost certainly in the hands of the Ashioi.

  “Sister Acella, you must go. In the name of the regnant, I command it.”

  “Henry is dead! So they say. If the bastard Sanglant is king, you have no status in his progress.”

  “I maintain my position in the regnant’s schola, having not heard otherwise.”

  “You cannot command me!”

  “I can, and I will, because I must.” She rose, sorry that it had come to this. “It is no longer safe here. Do you think, Sister Acella, that I wish your treasure-house of books to fall into the hands of the Ashioi? Into any hands, except that of the church?”

  Acella remained silent, but she nodded, to show she would listen. Already, Rosvita saw in her expression the first bitter acceptance of the unfortunate truth.

  “If one raid can come, so can another. I ask myself, how can the Ashioi raid in so many places so far apart in place and so close together in time? We ourselves suffered an attack in Avaria, and the one last night. We hear reports from these Lions of raids to the north and west. Everywhere, it seems. Although it took our party weeks—months!—to journey over the Brinne Pass out of the south.”

  Acella looked at the book, and Rosvita opened it to display the closely written pages of the star catalog.

  “The Ashioi are using sorcery. They are walking the crowns. Some among them can weave the crowns. We cannot take the chance that they do not know of this library. We must protect it at all costs. You will pack up your books and take provisions and any animals and seed corn and cuttings from your best trees. All else, abandon. If we are fortunate, you may lead your sisters back here one day.”

  “We must burn the books, as it is written in our charter.”

  “I cannot allow it.” She did not say, but she knew it was understood: I have a cohort of Lions to carry out my will.

  “Do not be tempted by sorcery! That one, called Liathano—she cannot understand what we have studied for generations here at St. Valeria. Tempestari can change the weather, call in winds, or a storm, but this passes briefly. They can bring no great change.”

  “A spell woven thousands of years ago brought a cataclysm to
us all. There must be a way to counteract its effects.”

  “Beware of tampering with what you do not understand, for if this tale is true of a spell woven long ago that brought about this cataclysm, then who knows what meddling will bring! This is why the church condemned these arts. They are too dangerous. No person can control them, not truly. So Mother Rothgard taught.”

  “I believe you,” Rosvita said, “but we must not turn aside onto the path of deliberate ignorance if there is any possibility that we might save ourselves by walking a more treacherous road.”

  For a long time Sister Acella said nothing, but the subtle play of feeling on her face spoke as in words.

  “It must be done,” repeated Rosvita, “and the entire library given into the hands of Mother Scholastica at Quedlinhame, if you will not have it given to the custody of the king’s schola.”

  “We dare not trust the king,” said Acella, “who, if the rumor we hear is true, beds the very woman whose hands are black with sorcery.”

  She walked out, passing Hanna, who walked in.

  Hanna looked at Acella’s tense back, at Rosvita’s expression, and whistled softly. “Did she protest?”

  “She did. Never mind it, Hanna. What news?”

  “Aronvald says that we can leave in the morning. All will be ready. There are a pair of wagons in one of the sheds that can be repaired easily.” She paused, and Rosvita listened with her to the telltale sound of hammers pounding.

  She still had a hand on the book. “Frater Bernard traveled in the east, and there he found strange things,” she murmured.

  “I beg your pardon, Sister?”

  “Nay, nothing. If you will, Hanna, find Fortunatus and ask him to oversee the packing of the library. Him alone, none other. Let Heriburg and Ruoda aid him.”

  “You think Sister Acella will try to hide books from you?”

  “Impossible to know. There must be a record in the library of every codex and scroll that is here. Ask him to find that, and match each book as it is packed away. Nothing can be left behind or forgotten.”

  “Yes, Sister.” She hesitated.

  “Is there something you wished to say, Hanna?”

  “It’s just—what did you think of Liath’s plan, Sister? That she wanted to learn the arts of the weather workers, in order to banish the clouds and cold weather. Do you think the church would allow it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you condemn her for thinking so?”

  “For thinking like a mathematici, which she is?”

  “I suppose.”

  “Well, it is difficult to know if the ends justify the means in a case such as this one, after we have seen the terrible cataclysm wrought by sorcery. Had the ancient ones not troubled the orderly working of the universe with their spell, we would not suffer now. You must understand, Hanna, that I am skeptical at this notion that sorcery can save us when it is sorcery that harmed us in the first place.”

  “You saved us with sorcery, when you wove the crown and we escaped Lord Hugh.”

  “I cannot believe otherwise. I am alive because of it.”

  Rosvita smiled. “I thank you, Eagle. I am not always sure that my path is a righteous one.”

  “That is why we trust you, Sister, because you lead us with honesty.”

  Unexpectedly, the words brought tears to Rosvita’s eyes. Hanna saw it, and she leaned forward as if to touch Rosvita’s hands but pulled back at the last moment with a wry smile, and hurried off on her errand. Eagles did not comfort noble clerics. It was not their place.

  Yet the gesture reminded Rosvita of Hathui, whose dignity was unimpeachable. The Lord and Lady love us all equally in their hearts, Hathui had said. We are equal, before God.

  Rosvita stepped outside, onto the porch, and watched the Lions and guardsmen at work, hammering, packing, hauling. There were sealed jars of oil and a basket of last year’s apples hauled up from a cellar. There were precious iron and bronze tools, copper-lined buckets, and baskets filled with iron nails and tallow candles. Skeins of spun wool, wool cloth, a churn, a cream pot and paddle, strickles, parchments still stretched on frames, an ox yoke but no ox, and the convent bell with its clapper sheathed. The library was an annex built off the chapel and sharing its tile roof, and here Fortunatus directed half a dozen nuns as they wrapped and stowed books in baskets and in crates being nailed together on the spot by a pair of Lions. Sister Acella emerged from the infirmary, carrying bundles of dried herbs.

  “Sister Rosvita, how may we aid you?” asked Sister Hilaria, coming out onto the porch with Diocletia beside her. “If you will sit with the Holy Mother, we will do what we can.”

  “Diocletia, if you will take an accounting of the bedding and household items in the hall, and pack what is necessary for the journey or too valuable to discard. Hilaria, I pray you, attend Sister Acella.”

  Hilaria smiled sharply. Nothing escaped her. “I’ll see that no stray items are left behind.”

  It was a relief to return into the hall and seat herself under the eaves beside Mother Obligatia. Princess Sapientia bided in the bed next to them, singing a nonsense song:

  tru la tru lee tru lo tru lye

  where the river flows, did the crow fly

  “Books are a precious treasure,” said Mother Obligatia, when Rosvita had poured out her concerns to the old woman.

  “Even books as dangerous as the ones hidden here?”

  “Even so. In ancient days folk recalled all things in their heads and in this way passed down knowledge from mother to son and father to daughter. What is written in books is more easily lost.”

  “Do you think so?”

  “Think of the library at St. Ekatarina’s. I still weep to think of it abandoned, perhaps forever lost.”

  “We have a copy of your chronicle. My history. The Vita of St. Radegundis.”

  “So few! What if they were the only books which escaped this cataclysm? All of St. Marcia, lost!”

  “There are other copies.”

  “A few, and those scattered. Eustacia’s Commentary on her dream. St. Alisia’s Memoria, and the holy writings of the Holy Mother, St. Gregoria. St. Augustina’s wise words—although now that I think on it, she was a bit of a prig, running wild in her youth and then scolding others ever after. What of St. Peter the Geometer and his Eternal Geometry?”

  “Which I do not fully understand.”

  The abbess chuckled. “You are not the first to make that admission. What of the Catechetical Orations of St. Macrina? What of Biscop Ariana’s Banquet?”

  “That’s a heretical text. By an Arethousan!”

  “So it is, but so entertaining. Have you never read it?”

  “I have not!”

  “Ah! She had a wicked eye and a wickeder tongue, that one, rather like our dear Brother Fortunatus. I cannot believe it is better that even her heretical writings be thrown out. Best they be remembered, so we remember how to argue against them. They are chronicles in their own way. Like Eusebē’s History.”

  “Like the Chronicle of Vitalia,” agreed Rosvita, recalling the books she and her novices had read in Darre, “and the Annals of Autun.”

  “Just so. Memory is our armor, and our weapon, Rosvita. Otherwise we are vulnerable again and again.”

  “So we are.” Rosvita squeezed Obligatia’s cold hands as gently as she would handle a newborn pup. “We must soldier on and do the best we can.”

  “Where do we go?”

  “To the regnant.”

  “Ah. Then I shall meet my grandson-in-law.” She smiled. “I look forward to it. A fine, brawny, handsome man, so they say.”

  “So he is. More than what he seems.”

  “Cleverer than he looks?” the old abbess chuckled.

  “So it appears from the news we have heard of the battle in Dalmiaka and these new tidings from Wendar, if it is all true.”

  “tru lo tru lye tru la tru lee

  where the river flows, did the deer flee”

  “What
will happen,” Obligatia asked in a low voice, “when we are come with Sapientia?”

  “I don’t know. She does not seem capable of ruling.”

  “Our chronicles tell us that fitness was no barrier to the kings of Salia and Aosta. There are here and there stories of feebleminded children raised up to the throne, and ruled by those who held their leading strings.”

  “It is not true of the Wendish, for we Wendish have always demanded that our regnants be worthy of the name.”

  “Is Prince Sanglant that one? Worthy of the name?”

  “Laws are silent in the presence of arms, so it is said. Sanglant possesses the loyalty of the army. And, if the story is true, Henry’s blessing, and the luck of the king, without which no regnant can prosper. The rest of his claim is not as strong. According to the Lions, there is debate and dissension on the matter of his queen, who was excommunicated and is known to be a sorcerer. That cannot help him.”

  Mother Obligatia considered these words, and at length touched the book Rosvita held on her lap. “Will we see her again? Do you think her lost?”

  “Like the books?” Rosvita had forgotten The Book of Secrets, clutched against her. She was afraid to let it go, as if it would vanish once no part of her body grounded it to the Earth. “She is lost to us. We must leave, quickly, before we are attacked again. We must pray we reach Quedlinhame and the king’s progress safely. As for the rest, I cannot know. It is taught that the daimones of the upper air can see into both past and future. But we are mortal, you and I, bound to the present.”

  “Mere clay,” agreed Obligatia, and the thought made her smile as she patted Rosvita on the hands in the same manner she would pat a child’s head to comfort it. Her gaze strayed toward the nuns busy at their packing and came to rest on Sister Diocletia, who was peering into a chest and counting something on her fingers: eleven. At the far end of the hall, a young nun hung shutters and locked them into place against the coming departure. It was a sturdy hall, meant to weather storms and years. When all this trouble passed, it would still be standing.

  “I would be at peace, having met her at long last,” said Mother Obligatia, “but I have a few questions I must still ask her. Therefore, I am selfishly sure that she must still be alive and that she will return to us.”