The Cross and the Dragon (20 page)

She heard a gurgle from the bed, the same noise her baby sister had made hours before her death. Eyes wide, Alda turned toward the sound. His voice weak, Milo was speaking to Luc. The bishop dabbed his fingers with chrism oil. Chanting in Latin, he made the sign of the cross several times on the dying man’s body.

Last rites
, Alda thought, bowing her head.

Luc gestured for the family to come to the bedside, where everyone knelt. As Milo wheezed and gurgled, Luc led the Pater Noster and prayers to the Blessed Mother and Saint Michael the Archangel to protect Milo’s soul from the demons gathered around the bed, like a pack of wolves circling a deer, ready to rip it to shreds.

Shortly after matins, Milo fell silent.

* * * * *

After the body was washed, rubbed with a clove perfume, and dressed, the family knelt and made the sign of the cross while Luc placed the Host in the dead count’s mouth. A servant bound Milo’s jaw shut with a strip of linen. Alda left the solar with the now dowager countess. They had their own duties to the late count.

Grabbing a servant’s arm, Alda said in heavily accented Roman, “Go church. Ring bell. Run!”

The bell would tell the city their count had died. Its song would scare away the demons and help Milo’s soul see the path to heaven. The servants were already awake, waiting for this moment. They tried not to weep. If Milo’s soul saw a tear, he would have a difficult time leaving this world.

Alda caught up with the dowager countess in the kitchen and listened to her mother-by-marriage order a feast fit for a warrior returning home. Alda recognized the Roman words for “bread” and “swine.”

I am lady of this house now,
she thought.
I must learn this language.

Alda and the dowager countess returned to the hall as the bell started to clang wildly. They watched servants carry Milo’s body down the stairs to the hall and lay him on an embroidered shroud, near the coffin they had just built. The servants placed coins on his eyes and put tiny, yellow buttons of tansy flowers in his hands along with his silver cross. They wrapped the shroud around the old count, placed him in the coffin, and packed tansy around his body, releasing a smell like pine, mint, and smoke. With the rest of the family, Alda knelt beside the coffin while Luc led prayers for the dead.

When the prime bells rang, four menservants picked up the coffin and carried it, leading a procession to the church. As the faithful crowded into the sanctuary, Milo’s coffin was placed on a stand at the altar. With incense burning, Bishop Luc celebrated a funeral Mass for his brother and announced that Hruodland was the prefect of the March of Brittany.

Hruodland gave bread, beer, and alms to the beggars outside the church on behalf of his father. The commoners set up their party in the square and had their wake the same time the nobles had their feast. The eating, dancing, laughing, and storytelling lasted all day and all night. The next morning, the coffin was shut, sealed with pitch, and wrapped in leather. Menservants took Milo to the family crypt under the sanctuary and laid him with his deceased wives.

* * * * *

On a clear morning three weeks later, the dowager countess spoke to Alda in Frankish as they returned to the manor after prime Mass. Her accent was so heavy Alda asked her to repeat it.

“I return father house,” the dowager countess stammered.

“You welcome here,” Alda said in stilted Roman. She was not merely being polite. The dowager countess had helped her learn the language as well as the servants’ names and characters.

“I bore Count Milo no children,” the young widow said slowly in Roman. “My womanly courses started this morning. Now that I am certain there is no child in my belly, I wish to return home.”

The keys to the castle jangled on a thick ring at Alda’s hip. Now, it was Alda’s duty to command the servants, make sure the meals were cooked, the castle was kept clean, the laundry was washed, chinks in the walls were fixed, baths were drawn every Saturday. She forced her mind to think in Roman and not to slip back into Frankish.

“God be with you,” Alda said in Roman.

“And also with you,” the dowager countess replied. She looked over her shoulder and spoke in a low voice. “Be wary of my late husband’s brothers. They hate strong, clever women, and you are both.”

Chapter 15

March 777

Rennes

Alda checked the carts a final time before the journey to the spring assembly. The leather-lined carts for beer and wine were full. Others had enough bread, salted and pickled beef and pork, and dried apples, pears, and apricots to sustain them until they could reach an abbey and bake more bread and buy more beer. She lifted a leather cover and inspected the tribute exacted from the Bretons as the price for peace with the Frankish king: furs, gold, bolts of linen and wool, and kegs of fine white wine. After she made sure the gold and jewels from the March of Brittany were secure, Alda dropped the cover and nodded to the guard.

She looked over her shoulder at the livestock. The cattle the Bretons had given mingled with the cattle from the March of Brittany.

Without bending down, she patted the sleek, black head of the year-old mastiff she and Hruodland would give the king. “You will make a fine hunter and a good sire.”

Ignoring the doxies who were going to trail the baggage train, she walked past the foot soldiers to the front of the procession. She stroked a filly and patted a colt, both of which she and Hruodland planned to give to the king. She looked over the colt’s mane and tail and called to one of the grooms.

“When you comb him tonight, make sure you get this tangle from his mane,” she said in Roman.

Hruodland, wearing armor, helped Alda onto her mare and mounted his stallion beside her.

“Everything in order?” he asked.

Gerard was mounted on his steed. Veronica rode pillion with a huntsman.

“Yes,” Alda replied, pulling her marten-fur-lined cloak closer to ward off the chill in the spring morning air.

Hruodland raised his sword and signaled for the procession to move forward. The road east briefly ran parallel to the Vilaine, now swollen and muddy with spring rains and melted snow.

Hruodland returned his sword to its sheath and donned a pair of leather gloves. The rain started to fall again as they entered the forest. Buds of leaves and flowers were forming on the trees, and the earth was turning green with the awakening of spring flowers. Alda shivered and pulled her cloak closer to her body with her free hand.

“I cannot believe we are traveling to a Saxon city,” Alda told Hruodland.

“It is Paderborn,” Hruodland said. “It has taken several years, but we have finally pacified the Saxons. Uncle Charles wants to show the world his victory by having his spring assembly there.”

Alda no longer translated Uncle Charles into King Charles. After three years, she had become accustomed to her husband’s manner with the royal family.

“I thought the Saxons could never be pacified,” she said, grinning. “All my life, I have feared those heathens.”

“They are Christians now, and many of their leaders will be at the assembly. Of course,” he added, patting his sword hilt, “we’ll watch them and make sure they keep their oaths.”

“The Bretons say they are Christians, too.”

“They are Bretons.” Hruodland spat on the ground. “They are Christian in name only.”

“That’s what I think of the Saxons. Why should we trust them now? They have broken their oaths before, and their rat of an overlord is still free.”

“If you call exile in Nordmannia free.”

“I hope Widukind rots there, but what’s to stop him from coming back?”

“Our might — the same way it pacifies the Aquitanians, the Lombards, the Bretons, and the Gascons. The Saxons will see that our God is stronger than their devils.”

The party traveled until twilight and made camp. After a priest celebrated vespers Mass, Hruodland shed his armor with the help of menservants, and soldiers began unloading blankets and bread. Some searched for twigs and logs dry enough to burn. Alda looked over her shoulder and was glad no one was watching her. She reached into a saddlebag and withdrew a small pouch. Although she was shivering, she took off her gloves and tucked them into her girdle. She undid the cord of the pouch and withdrew a dried leaf. She closed the pouch again and returned it to the saddlebag. She looked about again. The men were still busy. Veronica was coming toward her with wine, bread, and a plate of pickled beef and dried apricots.

Alda crushed the leaf between her palms, rubbed them together, cupped her hands, put them to her face, and drew in a breath.

“What are you doing?” Veronica asked.

Despite herself, Alda was startled. She looked around again. Everyone was still busy with blankets and fires.

“I am inhaling the fumes of catnip,” Alda said in a low voice. “The wise woman in Rennes said it will open my womb.”

Veronica took a sip of wine and offered it to Alda. Alda took a drink.

“I wonder if this curse is the vengeance Ganelon promised when he learned I was going to marry Hruodland,” she whispered to Veronica.

“I do not think Ganelon is intelligent enough to think of such a thing, and even if he did, he would not disobey the Church’s prohibition on sorcery. He would seem to be more pleased with throttling someone with his bare hands.” Veronica cringed.

Alda nodded. Veronica’s words were strangely comforting.

Alda had first become alarmed that she and Hruodland had not conceived a child when they were spending their second Nativity together.
How could this be?
she had asked Saint Mary, Mother of God, after the Mass to celebrate Jesus’s birth. She had knelt before a carved, painted, wooden statue of the Blessed Mother and the infant Jesus.
How could I be barren? Why would God curse me this way? Please, give me a child.

In the months that followed, Alda gave bread and blankets to pilgrims and beggars who had come to the churches at Rennes, Nantes, and Vannes. She gave coins to the Church so it could care for and school the foundlings left on its steps. She had hoped her gifts would atone for her sins and lift this curse.

Still, she did not conceive. She looked for hope in every little ache in her belly, every little feeling of nausea, every time she felt a premature tenderness in her breasts, every time she gained weight. Disappointment had come every month.

* * * * *

The travelers continued their journey east. As the days grew longer and warmer, the green shoots on the forest floor metamorphosed into flowers. The buds on the trees burst into blossoms and leaves. The spring rains continued, feeding the rivers and streams and turning the dirt on the road into muck.

At each city and town — Le Mans, Paris, Reims, Aachen, Cologne — their numbers increased. It was much like the journey to Geneva, although no war was planned this year.

They went north by horseback, foot, and cart to Lippeham, where they crossed the Rhine. In a thick forest in full leaf and bloom, they followed the Lippe River east for nine days, crossing it on a bridge close to the ruins of a Roman fortress. They arrived at the Pader, one of the Lippe’s tributaries, and followed it south.

At midday, Alda beheld her first sight of the city: stumps of what were once large trees just outside the city’s great gate, under which the river flowed. When they passed through the gate, the peasants stopped what they were doing in the fields and watched the procession. Unlike Frankish men, the Saxons wore their hair and beards long. They had sheepskin cloaks that laced at the right shoulder, knee-length wool tunics, and loose breeches bound with garters. Like the Saxon men, the women wore sheepskin cloaks. Unlike Alda’s gowns, the Saxons’ loose-fitting woolen dresses had no sleeves. Many wore colorful, voluminous veils.

“This is not what I expected at all,” she said.

“What did you expect?” Hruodland asked.

“I thought Saxon land would have the mark of the Devil — gnarled trees, a wall shaped like fangs, fire burning from the earth, the stink of brimstone,” she said. “This is so… ordinary.”

“Good,” Hruodland said. “It means we succeeded.”