Child of Flame (Crown of Stars #4)

She hissed, like a cat ready to claw. “What’s her name? Where is she?”

“Not walking on this Earth.”

The whore began to snivel. “I hate God for stealing you. You ought to be warming women’s beds, not praying on cold stone.”

“Don’t hate God,” he said gently. “Pray for healing.”

“What do I need healing for? You could heal me, if you’d come to me. Aren’t I pretty? Everyone says so. All the other men desire me.”

“Beauty doesn’t last forever. When men no longer desire you, you’ll be cast onto the street. Which will serve you better, Daughter? Men’s lust, or God’s love?”

“It’s all very well for you to babble piously about God’s love! What other profession is open to me? My mother was a whore. There are at least five presbyters smirking like saints in the skopos’ palace who might be my father, any one of them! What am I to do, a girl like me, bastard daughter of a whore, except be a whore in my turn? That’s the only life I know. What respectable man would want someone like me?”

He didn’t flinch under the assault of her scathing fury. “I happen to know,” he said quietly, “that there is a certain respectable sergeant of the guards at the skopos’ palace who has a brother who is a tailor down in the city. That brother has had cause to visit the sergeant a time or two, and he saw you in the garden more than once. I expect he even makes excuses to come visit his brother in the hopes of catching a glimpse of you. But of course to his way of thinking, what chance has a common tailor like him with little enough to offer compared to the silks and wine given you in the king’s suite?”

“His kin would all know I was a whore, and hate me for it,” she muttered, but the edge of anger in her voice had muted. She sounded unsure of herself, afraid to hope. “He’s probably some ugly, leprous, wizened dwarf anyway, who can’t get a decent wife.”

“Ah, well. I happen to know he visits his brother every Ladysday and that they attend Mass together in the servants’ chapel.”

“You lead that Mass,” she said, surprised. “Everyone knows you do. All the servants talk about it. But I know that the presbyters don’t let whores into the church, the old hypocrites, poking their lemans in the nighttime and calling them nasty sinners during the day.”

“When I lead Mass in the servants’ chapel, no one is turned away, no matter what they have been in their past. No matter what they have done.”

She knelt at his feet abruptly, bowing her head. “I pray you, Father, forgive me. You know I’d do anything for you in return for your kindness and mercy.”

“So be it, Daughter.” He touched her on the head, his blessing, and she caught in a sob, jumped up, and hurried away.

It was too dark to see his face. He stood there for so long that Antonia wondered if he was on the verge of turning around and going back into the feasting hall. The bell tolled the end of Compline, and she recalled belatedly that she had other obligations. But she dared not move until he at last shook himself and walked away down the colonnade, returning to the skopos’ palace. When she could no longer hear his footfalls, she followed that same path past the great hall and through the monumental court where king and skopos might meet to survey their troops in times of trouble. Her feet thudded quietly on the cobbled stone walkway. Light rain moistened her skin. A servant hurried past toward the hall, carrying a lamp and a basket, and a brace of presbyters hastened from their prayers to the promised joviality of the feast already in progress.

The whore’s words stayed with her. Would these pious presbyters spend their nights in carnal pleasure, only to turn around the next day and condemn sinful humankind? Truly, God’s creation had slipped to the very edge of the Abyss. It needed a firm hand to guide it back to holy ground.

The skopos’ palace was a warren of chambers suitable for intrigue, or so it seemed to Antonia. Heribert might have corrected her; once, after he had spent a year in Darre studying at the palace schola, he had returned with many a boring explanation of how the palace had been built out of the remains of an old Dariyan emperor’s residence, then expanded upon, partially destroyed in a fire, and rebuilt, only to be expanded again during the time of Taillefer.

But while Anne might keep secrets, she had not come to the skopos’ palace to skulk about like a thief. She had already a suite of chambers suitable to a cleric of the highest rank and a bevy of servants and lesser clerics to serve her. By the time Antonia reached the innermost chamber of Anne’s suite, where the Seven Sleepers met each week to discuss their progress, the others had already all arrived and taken their places. Polished silver cups gleamed under lamplight, and after servants poured wine, they retreated soundlessly and closed the doors, leaving Anne and her four companions alone.