Prince of Dogs

Page 40

Ivar yawned and painstakingly impressed the word into the wax tablet. He was a slow writer and reader, having only learned the alphabet upon leaving the world and entering the monastery. Mundus, the world. Ivar very much wanted to be out in the world right now. He shifted, trying to get comfortable on the hard wooden bench, but of course it was impossible to get comfortable. One was not meant to be comfortable in the monastery but rather and always discomforted by one’s own unworthiness in the face of God’s majesty.
However, if he slid forward just so, he could lean a little farther into the sunlight that spilled over the table. The heat of the sun melted through the coarse fabric of his robe. The warmth was too powerful a spell. Ivar dozed off over his tablet while the schoolmaster, lecturing to the row of third-year novices, droned on about the elegant style on display in St. Augustina’s City of God.
Something nudged Ivar’s foot, and he snorted and started awake, losing his grip on his stylus. It fell to the stone floor, and the sound of its impact in the silent chamber resounded in his ears at least as loudly as if one of the huge stone pillars in the church had just crashed down.
But Fortune was with him this day, as She had not been yesterday when he had been caught trying to look at the female novices. Ermanrich—for he was the culprit who had nudged him awake—made a quick sign with his free hand: Look.
The schoolmaster had walked to the door and was now speaking in a low voice with Brother Methodius, prior of the monastic half of Quedlinhame as well as Mother Scholastica’s deputy. Finally he turned back to survey his pupils and signed: Stand.
Dutifully, they stood. Ivar stooped to grab the stylus off the floor and set it next to the tablet, for once free of the punishment that would normally attend his carelessness.
“Come.” Brother Methodius stepped forward. “You are to be granted the honor of attending the adventus of King Henry. Keep silence, I pray you, and keep your heads bowed humbly.” His eyes glinted, and Ivar thought the good brother suppressed a smile. “No doubt Our Lord and Lady will forgive you a single glance at the magnificence of the king’s progress as it passes by, if you are not yet strong enough to resist such temptation.”
He signed in the hand language learned by all the monks. Come. The novices formed rows quickly, for they had by now much practice in obedience. But even Sigfrid’s eyes were wide with awe at the thought of seeing the king.
Ivar had never seen the king, of course. Heart’s Rest and the North March of Wendar was too far north, too remote, and too poor to be of much interest to the king; the counts of the North March were left to rule as they wished, unless that rule came into direct conflict with the king’s authority. During Ivar’s lifetime such an incident had never happened, but his father, Count Harl, could dimly recall an expedition by the King’s Dragons—his elite cavalry—to put down a northern rebellion in the time of the younger Arnulf many years ago.
Here at Quedlinhame, of course, they could expect to see the king frequently. King Henry preferred to spend Holy Week at the foundation ruled over by his sister, Mother Scholastica, and inhabited by his widowed mother, Queen Mathilda, now a nun. In autumn, as it was now, the king and his court often rested here on their way to the royal hunting lodges in the Thurin Forest.
The king! Even Ivar, who tried very hard to dislike everything at Quedlinhame excluding his new friends, could not help but be excited. As they walked down the steps from the schoolroom and out of the dormitory, he noticed as if for the first time what a veritable hive of activity the great monastery had become. Servants swept pavement or whitewashed exterior walls. Women aired out blankets and featherbeds at the guest houses. By the kitchens, wagons waited in neat rows, their beds heaped with vegetables, casks of ale, baskets of ground wheat and rye, and crocks of honey. Cages of chickens stood stacked by the slaughter pit and a half dozen servants worked feverishly, chopping off heads, while others carried the dead chickens to huge vats of boiling water and threw them in to scald off the feathers. Butchered pigs and cattle hung, draining, from the beams of the slaughterhouse shed. The bakery fires roared, and the smell of cooking permeated the air.
The line of novices joined that of the assembled monks and they walked out together under the great archway that spanned the gate. Up until the time of the first Henry, Quedlinhame had been a fortress, part of the vast inheritance his wife, Lucienna of Attomar, had brought to their marriage. Together they had dedicated both the fortress and their only daughter Kunigunde to the church, and at age sixteen she had become first abbess—first “Mother”—of Quedlinhame Convent. During her long rule the foundation had expanded to include monks—which unfortunate ambition had transpired in the end to bring Ivar here to this prestigious foundation against his wishes.