The Miracle Thief (17 page)

Startled from my work, I turned and then followed the direction of her outflung finger. Over by the hearth in the middle of the room, one of the boys was on his hands and knees, sifting through the ashes.

“Take it away from him, I tell you!”

As I walked over to the lad, he fished a charred twig from the hearth.

Poor lad. He could not have been more than six or seven years old, and in a place like this, he must have been in want of amusement. I could not find it in my heart to blame him for that. I put a hand to his shoulder. He flinched at my touch, threw an arm up over his face, and backed away from me. And then, as I watched, he put the twig to his mouth and took a bite.

“Stop! You cannot—!” I reached for his hand.

Sister Sybilla joined me, face purpled with rage. “Do we not feed him? Do we not lodge him? And this is how we are thanked?” She grabbed him by the arm. “Out with it!” She put a cupped hand to his mouth.

He closed his fist around the twig and shoved it behind his back as he screwed his mouth shut.

“Out with it!” She grabbed hold of his ear and gave it a twist.

His mouth dropped open as his eyes filled with tears.

Applying the heel of her hand to his back, she gave a mighty whack, and the bit of twig flew out of his mouth. “Now give me the rest!”

He gave his head a solemn shake.

“Give it to me! Or I shall—I shall—” She wrenched his arm from his back and pried his fingers apart. Scraping the twig from his hand, she threw it into the fire. And then, taking up a broom, she pushed all the rest of the ashes and charred wood back toward the flames.

Clamping his palms to his ears, he began to scream.

I put a hand to his arm.

He kicked at me and then sprang away toward the door.

“Stop him!” Sister Sybilla shook her broom at his back.

The young lord looked up from a book he had been reading and scrambled to his feet, but by then the lad was long gone.

“Sweet Mary, Mother of God!” She clapped a hand to her mouth, looking as shocked as I was those words had come from her lips. “I give him bread. I give him gruel. And he insists on eating—!” Her words were choked by her frustration. Her face sagging with exhaustion.

“I am sure he does not mean it as ingratitude.”

“What else could it be? For what other reason would he insist upon doing it? And before my very face?”

“Are there not things to which all of us cling? Even when, by their very baseness, they cannot be good for us?”

She looked at me for a moment, mouth slack with incomprehension. And then she lifted her chin in umbrage. “The next time he comes to me with a splinter stuck through his tongue, I'll send him to you to remove it. Eating things like that! If he does not stop, he will surely die. And then he'll know I was right. And so will you!”

“He cannot know what he's doing.”

“Cannot—! How could you sift through the ashes of the hearth and sneak out a burnt twig,
from
the
ashes
mind you, and then hide it in your hand and not know what you're about?”

“He cannot mean to offend you by it.”

“Me! Better to worry about the offense he gives to his creator. Wood was not meant to be eaten! Spurning God's good food for a—a—a piece of wood!” She spluttered away toward the others, but I could not help thinking we all spurned God's good provision at one time or another for things just as vile and incomprehensible as that boy's burnt piece of wood.

***

At vespers, the abbess stopped me as I left the church to return to Sister Sybilla.

“Are you still here?” It was clear she had rather hoped I would not be.

I did not answer.

She smirked. “Do you find the hospice amusing? Are you happy with your new position?”

Was I happy?

Another woman in a different place had once asked me that question.

Both women had known I was not.

The other woman, the Queen Mother, had reached out to pat my cheek after she had asked her question, but I had stepped back, out of her reach into Charles's chamber.

She had followed me into the room. “I cannot blame you if you are not. It's rather gloomy here, shut up in the city. But summer should be better. We'll go to the countryside then. You remember. You'll be able to ride with Charles in the hunt every day. That should be amusing.”

I had never liked horses, and I had not ever been trained to hunt. As the queen never went, there had been no need for me to go either.

“I had forgotten. You don't like to ride. Not to worry. It won't seem long, and then we'll be off to Compiègne, and after to Laon. I heard Charles say he might even want to spend some weeks at Verdun this year.”

The talk of travel wearied me. “Why do you hate me so?”

“
Hate
you! You flatter yourself.”

“You seem to despise me.”

“It would be hard to despise someone I so rarely think of, would you not agree?”

“Is it his love you begrudge me?”

“Love. Hate. Two of the most tiresome words I know.”

“He can love us both. We do not have to be in competition for his affections.”

She turned and came at me. “Love us
both
! How generous you are. How gracious you seem. But how could that ever be? How could he love the woman who would tie his hands, as well as the woman who wants nothing but to see him succeed in reuniting the empire? Can you not see he must choose?”

She thought I would keep him from his fondest dream?

“Losing his heart to a base, common woman, placing his passions above his duties! At last, he is in a position to reclaim the kingdom his forbears lost, and yet he is bewitched by you. Like father like son. And I will see you in hell before I let you ruin him the way that daughter of a whore ruined his father!”

I began to see the foundation of bitterness that lay beneath her humiliations. The hurt that stoked her fury. And then I understood: it wasn't me she hated. What she hated was the love I'd been given. “You are jealous of me.” I possessed what she had always wanted. She may have gained Charles the throne, but I had gained his heart. I was loved.

“Jealous? Such nonsense. How could I be jealous of you? I will make him be the king his father was not. You can only degrade him. You are nothing. You have nothing, and you can bring him no honor. He will listen to me; he
needs
me.” She seized me by the arm. “I am the queen, the rightful queen. I always was. I always will be. Can you not see? There is no place for you here.”

“I never asked for a place. I do not want one. I want only to be with him.”

“God in heaven!” she scoffed. “As if that were nothing. You ask for everything! How completely noble that sounds. And how utterly selfish you are!” She left the room in a whirl of Tyrian purple-colored robes, and I did not see her that evening. She sent word down to the great hall that she was ill.

But that did not keep her words from echoing in my thoughts. Was I as selfish as she claimed me to be?

As the concubine of the king, I had gotten into the habit of avoiding the archbishop, but the next week, I sought him out. And when I found him, I asked him whether the Queen Mother was right.

“I only ask, Your Excellency, because I want to do what is right.”

“For whom?”

“For…for everyone.”

“Then you must cease your sinful pursuits. No good can come of them. You must know God cannot approve of you.”

I did know, and it shamed me. But there was no undoing what had been done, and Charles said we would marry. So what else, pray heaven, was I to do but wait? “Am I…
am
I being selfish then?”

“We are all of us selfish.”

“But am I being selfish by being here. The Queen Mother says I am distracting.”

“Woman is ever distracting to Man.”

“But she says if I stay here, then the king can never fulfill his duties.”

He peered at me more closely. “How so?”

“She says I have no family, no influence. That I can do nothing for him.”

“Are you saying he means to
marry
you?”

I did not understand why everyone always seemed so surprised. We hardly spoke of anything else between us, and yet, it seemed no one else had heard of our plans.

***

I asked Charles about it that evening as he changed his tunic for supper. I had just returned Gisele to the arms of her nursemaid. “Have you told anyone about us?”

He laughed as he nuzzled the babe's smooth, plump cheek. “Do you not think they may have already guessed?” She squealed as he tweaked her nose before sending the nursemaid away.

“I meant have you told anyone about our plan?”

“What plan?” He kissed me. It was a deep and lingering kiss, which made me struggle to hold onto my thought.

As he edged me toward the bed, through great effort I pulled myself from his arms. “Charles? Have you?”

“What? Told anyone what?”

“That we are to marry.”

“I had thought…” He advanced upon me once more. “Had I not told you? I thought for certain I had…” His words broke off as he grinned.

I might have returned his smile as I usually did, but I wanted an answer.

He tried to tickle me with the silk tasseled tip of my girdle. “Why? Have you?”

“I told the archbishop today, and he seemed bothered by the idea.”

“Ah.” Leaving off his pursuit of me, he opened the door and stepped into the hall. Summoning his valet, he asked the man to fetch one of his crowns, and then he returned his attentions to me. “I hate to wear them, they pinch like the devil at my ears, but some Lotharingians are here and—”

“Charles!”

He took up my hand and held it to his heart. “These things…they take time. I do intend upon telling him. I plan on telling everyone. But not yet. Things are so unsettled just now. In autumn …maybe then…”

“But we
are
to marry?”

“Of course we're to marry. Why would we not?”

“I just… I think… People think… I do you no good.”

“You do me no
good
? How can you say that?”

“I can do nothing for you but—”

“Who is it that says these things?”

“I think people were hoping you would marry for alliances or for armies or—”

“Then these people will be doomed to disappointment.”

“But I am no one, Charles. I have no influence: no father and no uncles. And you need people to help you if you hope to—”

He laid a finger across my lips. “I do have people to help me. And there are plenty of men who come here offering alliances, but I have no one else to love me. Not the way you do.”

I might have believed him if his mother had not kept harping at the idea. She appeared at my door one night when I had slipped from the evening's amusements early to take solace in my bed. She swept into the room and dismissed the maids who served me. Then she stood by the fire in the center of the room, hand at her hip as she surveyed the place.

“I thought I might find you here.”

I fumbled with the counterpane as I pushed myself to sitting.

She raised a hand. “Do not bother yourself. I know how you feel. It's never pleasant to be where you are not wanted.”

“It is not that I am not wanted, it is that
I
do not want…” I sighed. It's that I did not wish to be reminded, by the look in people's eyes, that they did not want me there. She was right.

She had come toward the bed, brow raised. Now she was looking down at me with something quite close to pity in her eyes. “And Charles did not stay you?”

He had not.

“He is too much like his father. If you are to survive here, then you will have to make them accept you. And then, once you have done it, they will want you. And eventually, he might too.”

He already did want me. He had never made me feel as if he did not. That is how I had come to be in his bed. Charles had never been the problem. “He never said—”

“Has he not? But he should. He must. He ought to make clear what he expects people to think of you. Do you really believe they would snub you as they do if the king had spoken on your behalf?”

I had not thought on it before.

“Or perhaps I am mistaken. Perhaps he already has.”

It was true the court had turned itself inside out trying to please their new king. The moment he made known his wishes, there was a veritable rush of nobles trying to meet them. “What if?”

Her eyes narrowed. “What if…what?”

“What if you are right?”

For once she did not mock me. If she had, perhaps I would have chosen a different path. She put a hand to the curtains that hung about the bed, running a finger over the gold embroidery. “If you cannot bring yourself to believe me, then ask him. Ask him what it is he wants. And then you will see for yourself whether there is a place for you here.”

I lifted my chin, for I did not like the way she presumed to know me. “I shall.”

“Good.”

And I did not like the way her lips lifted at the corners as she left.

I did not see Charles for the next week, at least not long enough to talk to him. The war with Odo for control of the kingdom had consumed his attentions, and he spent all of his time with his counselors.

Feeling rather neglected and not willing to wait any longer to speak to him, I decided to accompany him as he rode one afternoon, exchanging the muddy, winter-worn city for the budding spring in the countryside outside the city's walls.

“Juliana!” He smiled when he saw me approach the stables.

My heart leaped to witness his regard. Surely his mother was mistaken.

He sent his men out ahead of us so we could ride together. And then he dismissed the grooms so he could help me mount. He cupped his hands, stooping forward so I could lift myself up. And then he handed me the reins. “You do not usually ride.”

“No. I do not like it. But, I do like you.”

He took up my hand and kissed it. “I saw Gisele this morning. She smiled at me.”

Who would not smile at him, so brave, so noble, so handsome was he?

“You should ride more. You would learn to like it.”

I did not think that possible. As we passed through the city's walls, I saw that ahead of us, at the crest of a hill, his nobles were waiting. If I wanted to ask my question, I needed to do it quickly. “I wish to ask you something.”

“Ask of me anything you like.” These past months of wearing a crown seemed to have given him a newfound confidence.

“What is it you want, Charles?”

He eyed his waiting nobles. “What do I want?”

I nodded. “More than anything, what is it you want?”

“I want to put the empire back together.” He nudged his horse toward mine, extending his hand toward me.

I put mine into it.

“I have the support of Burgundy and Aquitaine, and once I have Lorraine, then I will know I am surely blessed. Can you imagine it? Taking up residence again at the palace in Aachen as the great King Charles did so long ago? I was named for him, you know.” As we approached the hill, he continued on about the empire in general and Lorraine in particular, but already I had heard enough. What he wanted more than anything was nothing I could give him.

The Queen Mother might be cruel, and she might be jealous of my claim to Charles's affections, but she was right. And she had been right all along.

***

Once I had made the decision to leave, I could not go quickly enough. There had been nothing at court, save Charles, to keep me, so there was no point in staying. Only, I did not know where to go.

My father and mother had perished in an attack by the Danes. The Queen Mother and Charles had been my only family. The obvious choice would have been to seek out an abbey, but I had a daughter now. And so, I made the last of my great mistakes. I told the Queen Mother of my plans.

“You wish to take the child? Are you mad? She is the only thing of worth you've ever brought him. And now you wish to undo it?”

By the time she had finished talking, she had convinced me to leave the babe behind with her. How could her words have failed to move me? She told me that to have any hope of a future at all, Gisele needed to cease being
my
daughter and start being the king's daughter. It was the only way to save her from a life like mine. And besides, what would a girl like me, unmarried with a child, come to in the world outside the palace walls? What could I offer my child, daughter of a king, that could compare with the court's comforts and luxuries? Could I raise her in golden cloth and silks? And then marry her off to a noble? What was a mother's love, after all, when beset by the practicalities of a cold, cruel winter? And besides, if I left her at the palace, the child would always be a princess. She would always be safe.

If I left without my child, the Queen Mother promised to send me with a dower to the royal abbey at Rochemont. And there no one would know about my past unless I chose to tell them.

I agreed to everything, agreed to it all, and I might have managed to leave without any trouble if Charles had not intercepted me at the palace gate. He was there waiting for me, holding our daughter in his arms.

The noble who rode with me aided me to dismount. His squire held my horse's reins.

Charles strode toward me. “You cannot leave. I will not allow it.” Anger and hurt warred in his eyes.

“I must go. It's for your own good.”

“Why can't I say what's for my good and what's not? I'm to be king, after all. Just as soon as I can get Odo to agree.”

The child stirred in his arms.

“Hush! You've woken her.” I had already kissed my babe good-bye. I did not know if I could do it again.

“Take her.” He thrust the bundle at me. “If you will not stay for me, then stay for her.”

“I—cannot.”

“How am I—how am I supposed to rule without you?” His brows were twisting as his eyes promised things I should never have hoped to believe in.

I took in a great sniffling breath and tried to smile. “You won't be able to rule with me. You have not got any allies. And you need those more than you need me.”

“Who told you that? They lie!”

A great tearing sob of a laugh broke from my throat. “It was your mother, my lady the queen.”

“You cannot leave. We are—we are going to be married!”

“I did not think, in fact, that you wanted to.”

“Did not want to! How can you say such a—?”

“I shame you.”

“How can you even think—!”

“You never planned a wedding. You never told anyone at all.”

“Because I wanted them all to love you the same as I did.”

I did not know what to believe. I wanted his words to be true. I yearned for them to be true, and yet the things the Queen Mother and the archbishop had told me made the most sense.

As I hesitated, he seized my arm and forced the child into the curve of it.

I tried to refuse her. “Charles—!”

“Don't you love her? Don't you love me?”

“I can't—don't make me—” I broke off as I gave voice to the sob that had gripped my throat. “I can do nothing for you. Can you not understand? You need—oh, you need so much more than me!” The babe was crying now in earnest. We'd woken her with all of our jostling. I raised her to my breast and bent to kiss her soft cheek and breathe in her sweet scent. And I feared then I could not do it. I could not leave them. I thrust the babe toward him. “Take her!” I fairly screamed the words at him. “Take her from me! Give her everything I cannot.”

“And what do you want me to do with her?” Unshed tears had brightened his eyes. He had sunk within his mantle and stood there looking far younger than his age. He clutched our infant child to his chest as she squalled against him. “What am I supposed to do?”

I could not stay. Not if I wanted to leave. I backed away from them both. “Keep her. Love her.” I could speak no longer for the tears that had gripped my throat and were now cascading down my cheeks.

Love
her
for
me, on my behalf. Love her twice as much again as I would have.
That's what I had wanted most to say. But at that time, like so many others that had been and would later come, words had failed me.

***

I do not much remember the journey to the abbey. My escort was small. Just the one noble and his squire, and the noble paid me little mind. It was the squire who fetched what I needed as we made our way from inn to inn. Did it take a week? A full fortnight? I do not know. My heart was numb; my soul was dead; my grief had nearly rent my mind in two.

I had fifteen years when I left my beloved and gave up my daughter as well. I want to think I would choose differently, having grown older and presumably wiser. But I knew myself better now, and still the Queen Mother was right. I could not have been what Charles needed; it had not been in my nature. I had not been enough.

I could not fault him for taking me into his bed. I was to blame as much as he. And never once, after I had given myself to God, had I overstepped my bounds. Never once had I tried to take for myself a position that belonged to someone else, or to ask for anything I did not deserve. In fact, I asked for nothing, save the tending of Saint Catherine's altar. And so I tried to content myself with the life I had been given. And surely, my troubles were not so weighty as some. In a world tormented by wars and famines, anger and strife, my life at the abbey could have been considered a veritable paradise. I was not unaware of my blessings.

Charles would have fought for me. Of that I was now certain, just as I was certain I would not have been worth the fight. Had I been someone else… Perhaps then. If I had not been me, then I might have stayed. But there was no use mining old regrets.

***

As I went about my new work, I tried to put away all thoughts of the young abbess and did my best not to despair of the days to come. While I went about my tasks, I whispered prayers to Saint Catherine just the same as I always had. And in between prayers, I assigned names to my charges, who did not have them. The girl who would not talk, I called Ava. She did not seem to mind. The boy who hopped about so sprightly, flapping his arms, I named Pepin. The mimic I called Otker. And he who insisted upon eating twigs, Gerold. The heir I simply called Young Lord, since he ruled the hospice as if it were his own domain.

Sister Sybilla insisted I wasted my time. She said they hadn't the sense to know their own hands from their feet. But I paid her no mind, and I added their names to those I brought before Saint Catherine.

I asked for no miracles. In this place to which the least habitually came, these were truly the least of all. But I did not fault them for it. Neither did I have the impudence to wish them other than they were. What we were was God's business. If these ills they had been given were a penance, then they must endure like the rest of us. And if they had managed to find themselves here, it must be for some reason. For some eternal purpose. If they could not understand the benefit of righteousness in this life, we were to pray they might be able to do so in the next. And so I pleaded for an ease of body and mind. And a stillness of spirit to those who did not have it.

As I walked in from attending the office of compline one night, Sister Sybilla found me. She seemed to have been lurking by the door. “There is a problem with our young lord, and the only one who ever dares to approach him is you.”

It was true I had taken to speaking with him. In spite of Sister Sybilla's dire warnings, I had never seen any evidence of a demon's possession. And his manner of speaking and his way of being brought back memories of my former days. Of time spent in a court filled with nobles and their courteous pleasantries. I had not found his wits lacking at all.

“He keeps kicking at the back wall, and he's bloodied his foot.”

“Why have you not pulled him away?”

“He will not let me. He threw me to the ground when I tried. And now all the others have grown frightened.”

Inside the hospice, pandemonium reigned. Pepin was walking in circles, flapping his hands. Ava had stopped up her ears and was wailing. Gerold had dropped to the floor and was rocking back and forth as he whispered words I could not understand. And Otker latched on to me as I passed, peering up at me through those curiously slanted eyes. “Poor lord, poor lord.”

Sister Sybilla had spoken the truth. The young man was kicking at the wall as if he hoped he might break through it.

I whispered a prayer as I approached. “Young Lord?”

He twisted his head, regarding me with a wild-eyed, panicked gaze. “Don't make me stop. Don't make me stop.”

“You're hurting yourself.” His shoe had fallen off, and kicking at the wall had made a bloody pulp of his foot.

“I can't stop. Don't make me.” His handsome face twisted into a grimace. What spirit was this that possessed him? In spite of his menacing words, his tone was frantic. “Why can't I stop?”

I turned to Sister Sybilla. “Keep the others in the corner.”

“Don't make me stop.
Don't
make me stop!”

I put a hand to his sweat-soaked brow. His head lurched beneath my palm as he kicked out again at the wall. “I won't. I won't stop you.” I couldn't. I wasn't strong enough. “I want only to keep you from hurting yourself.”

“I can't stop. I
can't stop
!”

Searching for some way to protect him from himself, I drew a blanket from one of the pallets, rolled it into a cushion, and held it up in front of the wall.

His next kick nearly wrested it from my hands.

I made my grip more secure, turning my face from the path of his foot. “There now. Is that not better?”

The strain on the boy's face seemed to ease. By turns, his kicking slowed. And then, finally, it ceased altogether, and he dropped to the floor, panting. When he looked up at me, it was through shamed, guilt-ridden eyes. “I could not keep from doing it, and I did not want to hurt Sister Sybilla, but I just… I could not stop.”

I stooped to kneel beside him. “What makes you do such things?”

“I don't know. I tried not to, truly I did, but after a while, I just had to. I could not keep myself from it.”

Poor, tormented soul.

He sprawled against the wall, spent and panting, his fine tunic rent at the bottom into shreds. “You won't send me away?”

There was no place to send him to. He and all the others were our charges just as surely as they were our prisoners. Their bodies entrusted to our care, and their souls… We tried to redeem their souls as well. “No. We will not send you away.” I would pray for him, as I did for them all.

Pepin had wandered over. He sat down beside us and stroked the young lord's silk embroidered sleeve, running a finger up and down the twining braid and across the silver threads. Though the young man's sister had never once come to see him, at least his family still had the decency to clothe him well.