In the Ruins

Page 167

“Hsst!” said the sergeant in her ear. “Up out of here, girl, or we’ll all be in trouble.”
They fled up, and just in time, for the sergeant had just shoved her out the door and over to the pits to pretend she was at some kind of filthy work with her head bent down to hide her face when she heard all the soldiers with bowing and scraping in their voices as some august presence departed the tower and went on his way.
“Idiot,” said the sergeant, coming over to her and yanking the pail out of her hand. “No one was to disturb them! I’ll take care of the prisoner today. You go back up, and keep your mouth shut and your feet where they belong.”
“How was I to know?” she said, and he slapped her.
Later, as the cloistered hours passed without incident, the sergeant relented and came up himself to gossip with Lord Berthold, his favorite. The queen’s younger daughter had died the day before, which explained the tolling of the bell. There was anyway to be a feast that night, if a solemn one, because an envoy had come from a distant land, but he wasn’t sure where, maybe Arethousa, come to parley with the grieving queen. So that was why it was that Berthold and his retinue could not leave the upper chambers for any possible reason this day.
Therefore they expected no visitors late in that afternoon with the courtyard gone quiet and a murmur rising from the great hall whose roof could be seen from the east facing windows. There, most of those who lived in the palace had gathered to feast or to serve. The smells rising from the kitchens made Anna’s stomach hurt and her mouth water.
Berthold and Elene played another game of chess by the window, glancing at each other in a way that Anna recognized as dangerous and that, mercifully, Blessing did not see for what it was. Two attractive young people thrown together for hours and days and weeks on end. How well Anna knew where such intimacy led! She wiped her eyes, but there weren’t any tears left for Thiemo and Matto. They had vanished under the hill with Berthold’s companions, with their old life, with all that had transpired before the storm.
Heribert sat beside Blessing, who for once was frowning at tablet and stylus and with awkward strokes getting some of her letters right. Anna sat down on the carpet near Blessing’s feet, and went back to mending a tear in Blessing’s other shift. Julia sat on the bench, embroidering. Lord Jonas was downstairs playing dice with Odei; those two could go at it for hours, and the spill of dice across the floor was, like a poet’s song at a feast, a steady accompaniment to other labors. Berda sat in a shadowed corner grinding a root into powder. The light came gloomy through the open windows, and it was cool, but no one wanted to shutter themselves in.
Elene sniffed, wiped her nose, and looked up, holding a lion in one hand. “Do you smell that?”
Berthold stifled a yawn. “Smell what? I hate sitting indoors all day.”
Berda glanced up as well. “It is sharp,” she said, touching her nose.
The lady frowned. She did not set down the lion. “Now it’s gone. I thought….” She, too, yawned, and caught herself.
Even Anna yawned and almost pricked herself with her needle. Her grunt of frustration set off an avalanche of yawns among all of them, except Heribert.
“The curve here, Your Highness. It is uneven.”
“I’m just tired! I can do better!”
“Yes,” he agreed. “So it appears from the way you are yawning. There is a sharp glamour in the air. It tingles in the bones.”
Berthold pushed the chess pieces aside and pillowed his head on his arms. “Just a nap, and we’ll start again.”
Elene’s head lolled back. The lion fell out of her hand, and when it struck the floor she jerked upright. “What is that?” she demanded. “A glamour … a spell …”
Anna was so tired. The languor smothered her. The walls spoke in whispers, reminding her of the peace of the sleep which awaits every soul, the crossing into death….
Soft footsteps mounted the stair-step ladder. A middle-aged man appeared in the opened trap. He was named Brother Petrus, one of the holy clerics who served the Holy Mother.
“Up here, my lord,” he said as he clambered out.
She pricked herself with the needle, and the pain woke her. A drop of blood swelled.
Blessing had fallen asleep against Heribert’s shoulder. Berthold roused dully, lifting his head. Elene struggled, reaching for the lion she had dropped on the floor. Berda snored softly, head lolling back against the wall, her throat exposed.
An angel climbed out of the trap and paused to regard the chess table and the pair of young nobles fighting sleep.