The Burning Stone

Page 222

Sigfrid signed, “Yes.”
Simply enough: Mother Scholastica had ordered it done, but Sigfrid showed no sign of anger, of hate, of sorrow. God’s will had been done: They had cut out his tongue, but they hadn’t silenced him. Speaking with the tongue was only one way of talking.
It all flowered then, like the rose blooming from the blood of the blessed Daisan. Sigfrid had given up his tongue because he was not afraid to speak the truth. But Ivar still had a tongue. He could still speak, just as Ermanrich preached a few blocks away.
God had chosen them to witness the miracle. In their turn, they must give testimony. After all, it was that easy, God’s will made plain. He saw now how everything had led him to this moment, and where they would go from here, riding east with Prince Ekkehard and Lord Wichman into those lands where the hand of the false church did not grip so tightly.
Ivar faced the crowd, now some two dozen in number. The mute girl stared at him, eyes wide, waiting.
The whole world was waiting.
“My friends,” he began.
4
IN the hours between Sext and Nones Rosvita sat in the library with the chronicle of St. Ekatarina’s convent open on the lectern before her. Most of the entries were innocuous enough: In the year 287: There was a great plague among the birds. In the year 323: The queen sent her youngest daughter to become abbess over us. In the year 402: A blizzard came untimely in Cintre and all the grapes withered. A party of clerics from Varre stayed three weeks in the guest hall. In the year 479: Certain omens were seen in the villages, and there was a comet that blazed in the southern sky for two months, and after this there was an earthquake. Many villagers came to the ladder to beg for bread. The king died in Reggio.
Would the chronicle record Queen Adelheid’s death? In the last months of the year 729: The queen starved to death at the convent of St. Ekatarina. Or there might be other outcomes. In the year 731: The queen was strangled by her husband, John Ironhead, after a child was born to her who had a legitimate claim to the throne. Ironhead named himself regent for the infant.
Could they trust Hugh? Would they condemn themselves by trafficking in magic, even to save their own lives? Could his claims possibly be true in any case?
Was history merely a record of one bad choice made in place of a worse one? They had so few options left, and all of them desperate. Yet did it have to be so? She had searched in many chronicles, had learned to read between the lines and in the marginalia so that she wouldn’t discover too late things that she ought to have known, that needed to be woven into the story so that her history of the Wendish people would be complete. There was always something that had been left hidden, something that had been forgotten.
What is in plain sight is hidden best, as the old saying went.
The pattern developed slowly and increased markedly over the last one hundred years, after the death of Emperor Taillefer. They began as marginalia but soon appeared within the main body of the text, listings that made no sense but mostly were linked with a comment about a noble entourage that had sheltered unexpectedly in the guest hall: Hersford in the duchy of Fesse, seven stones; Krona in the duchy of Avaria, nine stones; Novomo in the county of Tuscerna, eleven stones; Thersa in the duchy of Fesse, eight stones.
Mice scratched in the walls. “Sister Rosvita. I hope I do not disturb you?”
She started, slapping a hand down over parchment, then chuckled as Mother Obligatia hobbled in. “I thought you were mice, and then I remembered there aren’t any mice here.” She rose hastily and drew forward a bench so that Obligatia could sit.
“There are mice, surely enough. Most of us are mice, creeping along the halls of the powerful. If we do not stay out of their sight, they will crush us.”
“Strong words, Mother.”
“Surely the ways of queens and princes are no mystery to you.” She rested a hand on the Vita of St. Radegundis, which lay closed on the second lectern next to the almost finished copy, abandoned these hours by Sister Petra, who had gone to help carry water. “Have you found your answers?”
“Nay, I have only found more questions, Mother. I am too curious. It is the burden God have given me. What am I to make of entries like this one: ‘St. Thierry in the duchy of Arconia, four stones.’ The convent of St. Thierry is near the seat of the count of Lavas, is it not?”
“So it is,” said Obligatia, not looking at the chronicle. “I was raised in the convent of St. Thierry, although I never saw Lavas Holding myself. Who rules there now?”
“Count Lavastine, son of the younger Charles, grandson of the elder Lavastine. His heir is a well-mannered and serious young man, Lord Alain, although I must note that he was born a bastard and only accepted as Lavastine’s heir about two years ago.