Elliott, Kate - Crown of Stars 3 (83 page)

"Indeed, it was his testimony." Her breath came a little ragged, as though she had been running. "That after all these years I should again touch something he once touched—

"You speak in riddles, Mother." She spoke in her calmest voice, but her heart was aflame.

"I think I fell under a spell that summer. He was old enough to be my grandfather, full fifty years of age, and I was perhaps fifteen. He worked in the garden, and because of that I thought he was a lay brother. But he was kind, and sad, and I had always been lonely and alone in the world. We girls at the convent of St. Thierry were never allowed outside the walls. Then I was uprooted from the only place I had ever known and brought to Salia, where I scarcely understood the language. I had taken a novice's vows because I knew nothing else in life, but I found those vows were easy enough to forswear."

" 'I have sinned once, and greatly,'" murmured Rosvita, recalling the scene: the door made of branches lashed together, his refuge a poor hovel so crudely made that the winter winds must have whistled through its gaps day in and day out. The butterfly whisper of his voice. " 'For lying with a woman.'" The thought was almost too blasphemous to utter, but Rosvita had never shied away from wells and ditches when her curiosity led her through rough country. "You were his lover, the one he sinned with."

Obligatia went white, as if she had been slapped, and then she chuckled. "You are well suited to history writing."

"I beg you, I meant no insult! He said he still thought of her with affection."

A single tear budded at the corner of her eye, but it was so dry that the air wicked it away. Obligatia went on with perfect composure. "We did not sin. He did not touch me until he forswore his own vows as a monk, until we spoke the pledge of marriage before a witness, under the eyes of God. We should have left to start a life elsewhere. But we were both foundlings. We had known no place but the cloister. He thought we could remain on the estate as laborers. I see now how innocent we both were.

"Of course it was all discovered when my pregnancy became advanced. The abbess was furious, because she wanted no stain to mar the sanctity of the convent founded by the saintly queen so recently deceased. Ai, Lady, the pain of my labor was as nothing to the pain of being separated from him. They took the child away from me as soon as it was born, but not before I saw that it was a girl. They never spoke of the child again. I never saw Fidelis again either. He was sent away, or locked away. I never knew. I was so terribly alone. Solitude is always worse once you have known companionship.

"I was taken to a convent in Wendar and placed under a vow of silence in a hermit's cell, but I ran away from there because my heart had broken and I could not bear to be alone with my thoughts as one day ran into the next. I could no longer hear God even in the songs of the birds. I wandered destitute for a week or more, eating berries and onion grass. I finally came to a manor house at an estate called Bodfeld. I was taken in because they wanted someone to teach their daughters Dariyan. The nearby convent dedicated to St. Felicity was run by an abbess from a family they had long feuded with, so they refused to ask her help in finding a tutor, but I had enough education to teach the girls how to read and write and figure.

"There was a nephew, the son of the lady's dead brother. He became infatuated with me. I was like any plant starved for water. Events progressed as they will with the young. He insisted on marrying me, and because they were kindhearted and had a plot of land somewhat away from the main house, because he mattered little in terms of their succession and I had the manners of a noblewoman and the education of a nun, they let us marry. In time, I gave birth to a boy-child. We called him Bernard, after my husband's dead father. Then both my husband and his aunt died, and her sister came into the estate. She did not like me. She took the baby from me and gave it to a monastery to raise, since she didn't want the expense of feeding us."

"How cruel," murmured Rosvita, but Obligatia went on steadily, as if she were afraid she would not get it all out of her heart, confined there for so long in silence as she had herself been confined within the rock walls of this convent.

"I was forced to retire to the convent of St. Felicity; but I was ill-treated there because they resented the work I had done at Bodfeld. God willed that an educated man, an Eagle who was the favorite of King Arnulf, sheltered one night at the guesthouse of the convent. It was my duty at that time to bring food for guests, although I had to slide it under a screen, for I wasn't allowed to see them. But I was curious, and he was talkative. Four months later the abbess received a letter from the king's schola, requesting that I be sent to study at the schola in Mainni. "I studied at Mainni for one year. Then that same Eagle came by the schola on his way to Darre with a party of clerics. I was taken south with them so that I might come to the attention of the skopos. I was badly injured in a fall on the passage over St. Vitale's Pass and the party brought me here to recover. Mother Aurica took me in with the promise to send me on once I had healed. But poor Sister Lucida was left as a foundling at the ladder not two months later, and I was given the care of her, such a small, sickly child. I could not bear to leave her, and I no longer trusted the world. Mother Aurica agreed to the deception: We sent word that I had died of blood poisoning. I gave up the name Lavrentia, given me by the abbess at St. Thierry, and I took the name Obligatia, to show that I understood that God had forgiven me for my sins by giving me a child to care for. That was forty years ago."

The story was so incredible that Rosvita could not fasten on it all at once, and in the way of such things got hold of a small detail, almost lost in the retelling. "You must be speaking of the Eagle Wolfhere."

"Ah." Her face lit, as at an old toy rediscovered. "That was his name! I had forgotten it. Stranger yet, I saw him a year ago, at the palace of the skopos in Darre. He is an old man now, certainly, but not one whose face I would forget, for he rescued me from misery."

"Why were you in Darre?" Rosvita found herself compulsively stroking flat the slightly curled edges of the parchment and at once clasped her hands and set them firmly in her lap.

"It is customary when the abbess of St. Ekatarina dies that her chosen successor travel to Darre to be blessed by the skopos. I waited in the palace guesthouse for a week before I was granted an audience with our blessed Mother, Clementia, in her audience chamber. I was there when the Eagle arrived, sent by King Henry of Wendar. I heard him tell his story of Biscop Antonia of Mainni and the accusations of sorcery laid against her. I heard Mother Clementia lay down the punishment of excommunication, and I will tell you honestly, Sister, that I feared for my daughters, the nuns who remained here while I ventured forth. What if we were accused of sorcery because of the creature who haunts the stone crown? Because of these chronicles so conscientiously recorded over the years, that take note of stone circles? What might they accuse us of, for as you have seen yourself, there are secrets hidden here. So I returned, speaking nothing."

"Yet you are willing to countenance Hugh of Austra working sorcery."

"I know what it is to be kinless and unprotected, at the mercy of those who have more power than you. Adelheid sheltered here once before, many years ago. She was a sweet, brave child, always cheerful. I would aid her if I can."

"But Hugh will know your secrets as well. He can use that knowledge against you."

Obligatia extended a hand to touch the library wall, here washed white and painted with lozenges inside lozenges, like puzzle pieces stacked one upon the next. Rosvita could not imagine living forty years within such walls, even if one learned to let the spirit fly free. A corner, a shadow, or a wall always broke the line of sight; only on the terrace did a vista open up, and then the view never changed. She had grown used to the view changing, like life, a journey where no scene is ever truly repeated, no river ever crossed twice because every river is always a new river from one hour to the next.

"He knows them now in any case," Obligatia said quietly. After a moment, she went on. "Last summer a lone frater begged leave to spend a night in our guest hall. It is unusual for us to receive guests, as you can imagine. If travelers over St. Vitale's Pass must leave the main road because of rain, then sometimes they will wash up here, but otherwise we live an isolated life. It is what we seek, each for our own reasons."

"Yet when guests arrive, it seems according to the testimony of this chronicle that you ask them if they know of any stone crowns."

"Few of us are immune to curiosity. So I asked our traveler that question. He called himself Brother Marcus. And then he did a strange thing: He called me by my old name, the one I had given up when I chose life as a nun here. He called me 'Lavrentia.' How could he have known that name was once mine, for he was younger than I?"

"Who knew in any case that you were last seen alive entering this convent?"

"The Eagle, Wolfhere."

"Who may have seen you at the skopos' palace. Yet there must have been other people in the party that you traveled south with forty years ago."

"In all these years, I have seen no other person I recognized. Mother Aurica is long since dead. My nuns know me only as Mother Obligatia. The Eagle is the only link, and it suddenly seemed strange to me that he had made such an effort to remove me from St. Felicity all those years ago. Why would this other man come and ask for me by my old name? What of my secrets did he know?"

"'She is back in our hands,'" murmured Rosvita, recalling the scene before the fire high in Julier Pass. "Wolfhere was banished from the court by King Henry years ago. In the time of King Arnulf it was said that he knew more than a man ought. I have myself seen that he can speak through fire. Yet that power is also known as the Eagle's gift. Did this Brother Marcus give any reason why he wanted to find you?"

"Nay. But I admit freely, Sister, that I was frightened because I feared the woman who removed me from St. Thierry when I was a girl. I had nightmares that she still pursued me. It seems odd to me now that in Salia, in a monastery where women and men were so strictly separated, I managed to find my way into a garden where a monk worked."

"Hindsight is a marvelous thing. It might have been an accident."

"I no longer believe it was, and yet I have no proof. Did I

not say who came to fetch me in Varre, what person took me away from St. Thierry? It was Sister Clothilde."

"The same Clothilde who was St. Radegundis' handmaiden and later her companion in the convent?"

"The same one. I never doubt that she was loyal to Radegundis. I believed then and believe now that she would have smiled kindly and cut the throat of any person who crossed her. No one ever crossed her."

"Except you. For a novice to have carnal knowledge of a monk, both of them under her care, in the monastery—

"Nay, Sister, she knew of it. She was the one who witnessed our pledge of marriage. She allowed it to happen. That is why I am telling you this. When I was young, I was too passionate and too starved to think clearly. But Brother Marcus asked questions that woke my memories, and now I can see patterns that I could not read then. You are a historian, Sister. I am sharing my secret with you because I think there is an answer to be found. I think now that they left me alive because I was ignorant."

"Or because they thought you were dead."

Mother Obligatia smiled bitterly. "You have a mind for this, Sister. But I am now determined not to let my secret die with me. I lost my first two children because I had no power in the world, no kin to protect me. I now rule as Mother over a tiny convent of six nuns and two lay sisters. That we guard a mystery within was the charge given to the mothers here centuries ago, but I wonder if the skopos and her advisers have forgotten its existence."

"You have honored me with your confession, Mother."

"Nay, I have only given you another burden. You have a keen mind and a level heart, Sister. I beg you, find out why a man calling himself Brother Marcus came to our guest hall last summer and asked for me by the name Lavrentia, which I abandoned long ago."

The rock had a muffling effect, close and confining. On the king's progress Rosvita had grown accustomed to the shouts of the wagoneers, the neighing of horses, the fall of rain, the heedless song of birds, the smell of the stable, and the laughter of wind on her face. Here, she couldn't even hear the mice. Lord John and his men might labor a hundred miles away, for all that their work lay invisible and inaudible beyond rock walls. No vibrations, no cracks within the stone brought her any hint of the man who bided his time in the guest hall. Was Hugh still praying? Would God ever forgive him for his sins? Would God forgive her hers?

'There is so much to find out." Rosvita turned the pages of the
Vita
to the end. Fidelis had mastered the art of script; even Sister Amabilia had found nothing to criticize in his precise hand. He had spoken of such peculiar things. "The birds sing of the child known as Sanglant," she said, remembering his words. "Have you ever heard of the Seven Sleepers, Mother?"