Prince of Dogs

Page 53

In the silence of Korvei Convent, where nuns communicated by hand signs, Rosvita had learned the trick of reading lips. She had even used this skill to learn things forbidden to novices. Now, curiosity piqued, she tried to puzzle out syllables and sound from the movements of the young woman’s lips—
—and was baffled. The Eagle read not in Wendish or in Dariyan, but in another language, one Rosvita could not “hear” through seeing. Where had such a young person learned to read? What on earth was she reading?
Rosvita glided softly out of the room, passed through an arch, and emerged into the library hall, blinking at the sudden shift in light. Here, at individual carrels, several nuns read. Cabinets stood along the walls, shut and latched. The catalog rested on a lecturn carved with owls peeking out from oak trees. It lay open. Rosvita skimmed the titles listed on the page: St. Peter of Aron’s The Eternal Geometry, Origen’s De Principiis, Ptolomaia’s Tetrabiblos, Abu Ma’shar’s Z?j al-haz?r?t.
Rosvita blinked back amazement. Could it be this book that the girl read? She recognized the language, here transposed into Dariyan script, though she could not read Jinna herself. Did the girl claim Jinna ancestry, revealed in her complexion? Had she been trained to read the Jinna language? This was a mystery indeed. The young Eagle would bear watching.
Given the company it kept, the book appeared to be about matters astronomical. Surely even the librarian here, for all her faults, would catalog books about the weather—which took place in the sky—near to those about the heavens. Rosvita flipped idly through the pages, searching for what she was not sure, but could find nothing that seemed to be what she wanted.
Distracted, she shrugged and stretched and examined the room. From here she could see into the scriptorium, where nuns and monks worked in silence writing correspondence and making copies of missals and old texts. The monastery had recently received from a sister institution six ancient papyrus scrolls written in Dariyan and Arethousan. These were being recopied onto parchment and bound into books.
Drawn by the light pouring in through the windows and the quiet murmur emanating from the scriptorium, Rosvita wandered past the cabinets and out under a wall set with arches into the scriptorium. Here some of the novices had assembled to observe the scribes at work—work they would themselves be engaged in once they became monks. One restless boy, his hood slipped back to reveal curly red-gold hair and a pale freckled face, sidled up to the schoolmaster and made a hand sign: Necessarium. With obvious disgust, the schoolmaster signed assent. No doubt the poor boy had been consigned to the monastery against his will and now chafed at the discipline: Rosvita had seen such novices in her time at Korvei.
With a sudden and violent start she recognized the boy. Ivar had not yet been born when she entered Korvei Convent, and she had actually only met him on two occasions. Perhaps she was mistaken; perhaps this was not Ivar at all but merely a northcountry boy who resembled him in coloring. But their father, Count Harl, had written to her not six months ago telling her that Ivar was to be pledged as a novice at Quedlinhame. It had to be him.
Ivar hurried out of the scriptorium, not noticing Rosvita. But he went on into the library rather than going outside. And meanwhile, three other novices distracted the schoolmaster, asking him about a parchment laid on one of the desks. Clearly they meant him not to notice where Ivar had gone.
So Rosvita followed him.
He hurried through the library hall and vanished into the warren of dim rooms beyond. She entered cautiously and was quickly rewarded by the sound of voices, so soft that had she not been listening for them she might have thought it the sough of the wind heard through the windows. By listening for direction and sound, as the fulgutari were said to observe the movement of storms, she managed to creep close enough to overhear without being seen.
“But your vows—”
“I care nothing for my pledge! You know that. My father forced me to become a novice here, just because of—” Here he bit off a word. “I’m not like Sigfrid, I have no vocation. And I won’t be like Ermanrich who resigned himself long ago—”
“But is it so easy to be released from that pledge? Ai, Lady. Ivar, I’m flattered—”
“You don’t want to marry me!”
Rosvita almost stumbled and gave herself away, but she had just enough presence of mind to lay a palm against the carven door of one of the cabinets: the same one, she noted with a dry smile, in which resided Isidora’s Etymologies. She recognized the image carved into the oak door. It was St. Donna of Pens, the famed librarian of the first convent founded by St. Benedicta, holding scroll and quill pen. If only Quedlinhame’s librarian had followed the good saint’s example, this fine collection of books would not be arranged in such disorder.