The Cross and the Dragon (30 page)

Illuna nodded and crossed Hruodland’s arms. Elisabeth was ashamed of her anger against the abbess and mouthed a short prayer for forgiveness.

Elisabeth knelt near the bed. “We must pray to Saint Michael the Archangel to watch over his soul.”

* * * * *

Elisabeth could not sleep after matins prayers and visited the ward for the dying. Denis lay on his back, eyes open.

“Denis?” she whispered.

Something did not seem right. She kept staring at him and finally realized what it was. He was still, too still. His chest did not rise or fall.

“Denis?” she asked again. She held her hand under his nose, hoping to feel a breath. Nothing.

By the light of a single candle, she closed Denis’s eyes, bowed her head, and made the sign of the cross.

“You, of all the souls I have known, deserve to go to heaven,” she whispered.

Elisabeth awakened Illuna and the other lay sister who worked in the ward for the dying, two lay brothers, and the priest. While Elisabeth and the lay sisters washed and dressed the body, the lay brothers fetched a coffin. After the priest placed a Host in Denis’s mouth, Elisabeth tied his jaw shut with a band of cloth. She made sure his wooden cross lay over his heart before the lay sisters wrapped him in a coarse linen shroud. Elisabeth stayed up all night and prayed, with the help of her lay sisters.

Prime prayers became a funeral Mass. Word of Denis’s death must have spread. Tenants stood elbow to elbow in the back with the monks and nuns, almost like the Feast of the Resurrection. Denis was buried in hallowed ground but not the orchard cemetery, where Sister Richarde was. After prayers over the grave, Elisabeth and her lay sisters returned to the hospital.

“You should rest,” Illuna said.

Elisabeth shook her head. “The patients need me, need us.”

At the hospital, Elisabeth made her rounds, supervising the lay sisters and speaking with the patients. When she came to the ward for the dying, she saw Illuna had laid Hruodland’s arms to his side and propped him on pillows. She was kneeling beside him as she trickled beef broth down his throat.

He sputtered.

Elisabeth gasped and put her hand to her mouth. Illuna’s eyes grew wide as she pulled the bowl away and kept staring at Hruodland.

A light appeared in his eyes, as if his soul was reconnecting to his body. The eyes looked about the room, the beds, the herbs on the floor, the tub. For the first time, the eyes had an expression: terror.

Illuna backed away from Hruodland. “C-could this be a demon?”

“Fetch the Host,” Elisabeth whispered.

The prince’s eyes followed Illuna as she ran through the ward, out the door, and toward the church. His eyes met Elisabeth’s. They were piercing brown eyes, human, as far as Elisabeth could tell.
But Satan’s servants are deceptive.

Hruodland slurred something in a voice that sounded like the rustle of pages in the wind. Elisabeth was not sure what language he spoke.

“Repeat that,” Elisabeth said loudly in Roman, hoping he spoke her language. “I do not understand you.”

“Where… am… I?” His voice strained over those whispered, slurred words.

“You are in a hospital of the Abbey of Saint Stephen,” she said, clenching her fists, never taking her eyes off him. “And who are you?”

“Hruodland of the March of Brittany,” he said, his voice barely above a breath, trying to separate each word.

Illuna rushed back into the room with the Host and gave it to Elisabeth.

Elisabeth drew herself to her full height and stuck out her chin, determined not to show fear. “Open your mouth,” she commanded.

He complied. She held up the Host and said, “
Corpus Christi
.”

“Amen,” he answered.

She placed it on his tongue and watched his face. A demon would resist the presence of Christ, howl in pain. But he ate it.

“Bring some porridge,” she told Illuna. Turning toward her patient, she smiled and said, “We are going to feed you, Prince Hruodland.”

“Feed me?” He gave Elisabeth a quizzical look and then gazed down at his ribs, his skeletal hands. His nose wrinkled at the smell of his own mess in the bed. His right hand rose briefly and fell.

“What happened to me?” he struggled to rasp.

Illuna returned to the room with porridge and started to feed him as Elisabeth explained, “You were injured at Roncevaux. I was told there was an ambush by the Gascons. They killed every man except you.”

“All dead?” His eyes filled with tears. “Alfihar? Anselm? Eggihard?”

“We were told that you are the only survivor,” she said gently.

He closed his eyes hard. Tears trickled into the stubble on his chin. “I have no memory of the battle.” A stylus scratching on parchment would have been louder. He wept.

“We heard you were quite valiant,” Illuna said. “The others were buried in consecrated ground, and so will…”

Elisabeth gave her a look that cut her off.

Tears kept sliding down his face. Elisabeth took two steps to the cot and wiped his tears with the frayed edge of her sleeve. She regretted telling him about Roncevaux. She was afraid his grief would crush what little strength he had.

“Prince Hruodland, your friends are in heaven now,” she said. “They are happy that you survived. You will trouble their spirits if you keep weeping.”

He calmed himself. He closed his eyes. Elisabeth wiped the last of the tears that hung on his eyelashes. She was worried.

“Surely, someone waits for you at home,” she said, trying to give him a reason to hang on.

“Alda,” he whispered, opening his eyes.

Illuna resumed feeding him. He stared at his protruding ribs again. Elisabeth realized that he might have never known hunger as the peasants had nor seen his own body waste away.

“You have slept for a month,” Elisabeth said. She knew “slept” was not the right word, but she knew no better description. “You have not eaten. Let Illuna finish feeding you. Rest your voice now. It is unaccustomed to speaking.”

After he ate, he blushed when Elisabeth told him the sisters would bathe him.

“We have been bathing you for a month,” Elisabeth said with a laugh.

Two sisters bathed Hruodland and changed his sheets. Illuna finished dressing his bedsores as the terce bells rang. After prayers, Judith asked about the patient.

“Abbess,” Elisabeth replied, “we might be witnessing a miracle.”

Chapter 21

Three days later, Alda was ready for her journey. As she made a final check of the carts, Gerard asked: “Are you certain? It is such a long journey. Why not wait until spring?”

“I need my home,” she said, “and I need to leave now.”

Of all things, this was her one certainty. At Drachenhaus, she would be welcome, and no one would dare to call her faithless or tell lies about her. Alda prayed that she would arrive in time and could convince Gundrada to refuse her consent to nuptials with Ganelon.

“Alda, please,” Gerard said, “can you stay until I do marry?”

“The bishops will find someone to tend to affairs of the home,” she said. “Have you started negotiations?”

“The count of Orleans has a daughter. My uncles wish for me to marry soon.”

“I must not tarry any longer,” she said quickly. “God be with you.”

“And also with you.”

* * * * *

All through the six-week journey to Bonn, questions that had no answers repeated themselves in Alda’s mind. Why did God allow the disaster at Roncevaux to happen? Why could she not believe that Hruodland was dead, when she knew Alfihar and Beringar were? What would she say to her mother? What would she say to her little nephew? And how could three women raise this boy and protect a village?

As they arrived at Bonn’s city gates, Alda’s legs and back ached, and mud splattered her boots and cloak. She smelled of sweat and horses. At the city walls, she sent a servant to let the bishop know of her arrival.

Riding toward the church, Alda remembered the ecstasy of the summer she married Hruodland, the absolute joy of triumph and reunion. She wondered what homecoming had been like this year. Alda stopped her musing when her uncle Leonhard greeted her in the courtyard of his residence. She dismounted.

“Why didn’t you send a messenger a few days ago?” he asked, embracing her.

“I do not have enough guards for both myself and a messenger,” Alda answered.

“Surely, Gerard could have…” He stopped himself and shook his head. “No, he could not.”

“There are not enough young men,” Alda finished for him.

“It was a nightmare.” He shook his head as if to shake off a memory.

“I know. Every city we visited — even the ones whose young men had not died at Roncevaux — has a sadness about it. No one speaks of it, but the sadness hangs in the air as if a giant fist has crushed their hearts. When I go to Mass, I always have the same question: why did God let this happen?”

“My dear, do not lose faith. I don’t know why this happened, but there must be a reason.”

“Some of the bishops have said it was to punish us for sin,” Alda said. “But what sin? We were fighting for the Lord. If we had won, I would understand the deaths as the price for victory. But nothing was gained from this conquest. Hispania is still under Saracen rule.”

“I have asked the same question myself, and I have no answer.” Leonhard put his arm around Alda’s shoulders. “I am glad to see you. The servants are drawing baths as we speak, and then dinner will be ready.”

* * * * *

At dinner, Leonhard told Alda nothing Gerard had not already said, except that Ganelon had been a great help in giving the men a Christian burial. She was surprised by how favorably he spoke of Ganelon, yet she could see that it pained him to see those bodies again in his memory.

“But Alda,” he said, “take comfort. You are still young.”

“What do you mean?”

“I am seeking another husband for you. With your dowry…”

“Did anyone ask me if I want to marry again?” she snapped.

Veronica looked down and said nothing.

“You do not want to marry again?” asked Leonhard.

“There is a man I might have consented to marry, but a union with him is impossible, even if I could bear children.”

“How do you know you cannot produce heirs?”

“Is it not obvious? I bore Hruodland no children,” she said flatly.

Leonhard thought for a moment. “How many winters had Hruodland seen when he married you?”

“Two and twenty, maybe three and twenty.”

“I do not remember hearing of any bastards.”

“No, he had no bastards,” she murmured, looking down. “Why does it matter?”

“If he did not have bastards at three and twenty winters, he might not have been able to engender children. That is what I will tell any suitors,” he said casually, as if he were talking about the weather.

“I will not have you blacken my husband’s name,” Alda said as evenly as she could manage.

“My point is that many men would desire to marry you.” He patted her hand. “You are still young, you have a generous dowry…”

“No,” Alda cut him off. “I do not wish to remarry. I have more than I need. Hruodland left me the bride price in his will. Besides, my mother did not remarry.”

“Your mother is no longer young.”

“And she would not consent to marrying another.” Alda vaguely remembered her mother dictating a message to Beringar and Leonhard that it was Alfihar’s will that she remain at Drachenhaus. Not that it was Alfihar’s decision.

“She refused to leave you and Alfihar, and like Hruodland, her husband had been generous to her in his will.” Leonhard shook his head. “And you are just as stubborn as she is.”