A third cleric sat at a writing desk, intent on his calligraphy, head bowed and pen scratching easily on parchment. Ivar skipped over him and fixed his gaze on the back of the blond man seated beside Sabella. There was something wrong about his shoulders. They were too broad, and his hands, when he gestured, were as wide as paddles, the hands of a man comfortable wielding a great sword with little thought for its weight and the thickness of the pommel.
Definitely not Baldwin.
“Hsst!” Johanna nudged Ivar toward the brazier placed beside the writing desk.
Obviously Sabella kept Baldwin sequestered. Perhaps after they had replenished the coals in this chamber, they would move on to the noble duchess’ most intimate inner chambers.
He set down the buckets and looked up into the confounded gaze of the cleric who had, until an instant before, been so busy writing that his face had been concealed.
Writing!
His fingers were stained with smudges of ink. The parchment was virgin; no one had written on it before. Ivar had just enough experience of the cloister to know that the knife had seen little use in scraping away mistakes, although half the page was covered with flowing, handsome letters.
The cleric’s pale skin flushed pink, and a single tear trembled at the lower rim of his right eye. Snapping his mouth shut, he fixed his gaze back on his quill, checked the tip, dipped it in ink, and set back to work. The letters poured out of his hand fluidly, fluently. He wasn’t even copying from an exemplar, but writing from memory.
Even the masters at Quedlinhame, who had spoiled him because of his handsome face and pliant manners, had agreed that Baldwin was too stupid to learn to read and write beyond the simplest colloquies meant to teach ten year olds.
Johanna appeared at Ivar’s elbow, nudging his foot. He winced, and aided her as she stoked up this brazier and moved on to the rest placed around the chamber to warm Lady Sabella and her entourage where they lounged at their ease.
“As dreary as this winter has been, at least the Eika have not raided,” the blond warrior was saying.
“Nay, Amalfred, all last year they confined their raids to Salia,” remarked one of the women. “Easy pickings there.”
“If Salia falls, then why not strike at us?” he retorted.
“We shall see. The merchants say it’s too early to sail yet, that the tides and winds aren’t favorable. They say some kind of enchantment has troubled the seas. We’ll be safe if the winds keep the Eika from our shores.”
“Perhaps.” Lady Sabella’s gaze flicked incuriously over the two servants as they went about their task in silence. She glanced toward the cleric, who was bent again over his writing.
Ivar could not interpret the way her lips flattened into a thin line that might betoken suppressed passion, or disgust. The two emotions were, perhaps, related, he supposed as he kept his face canted away from her. He had himself swung wildly between those feelings, back in the days when restraint had been the least of his concerns, when he and Baldwin had run away with Prince Ekkehard and his companions. Right now, however, he was as flushed and out of breath as if he’d been running. Who could have thought he had missed Baldwin so very dearly?
“Perhaps?” asked the warrior. He was a man boasting perhaps thirty years. He spoke with the accent of the west and was most likely a border lord. “Pray enlighten us with your wisdom, Your Highness.”
“Perhaps,” she repeated, her gaze sliding smoothly away from Baldwin, as if he were of no account. “The Eika are not all that threaten us, although it is true they raided all along the Salian shore last summer and autumn. According to reports.”
“My lands are overrun with Salians,” said one of the women.
“With our stores low, their presence threatens us,” answered Sabella. “We must act in concert to drive them back to their homes.”
“What of those who accept the truth?” asked the lord. “The heresy of the Translatus is still accepted by the apostate clergy in Salia. If the refugees who have accepted the truth return home, they will be executed.”
“Then their blood will be on the hands of their masters. God will judge. But the winter has been cold. Our stores are low. Strange portents trouble us. Nothing has been the same since that terrible storm that struck last autumn. I have refugees of my own from within my duchy to feed. I cannot feed Salians as well. Let the Eika conquer them—and feed them! To the fishes, if necessary.”
“Ha! They say there are people in the sea who eat human flesh.”
“They say some in the west who are starving eat human flesh, Lord Amalfred,” observed Sabella.