In the Ruins

“Will you? Will you even marry Adelheid?”

With his chin dipped down, his gaze up at her had an almost flirtatious quality. “How will that aid Adelheid’s cause, or my own? Or yours, Your Holiness?”

“In no possible way, if Adelheid does not forgive you and take you back into her counsel. As for the rest, consider who is Adelheid’s heir—younger by far and easier to steer on a proper course.”

That made him think. He sat in silence, gaze drawn in as at an image she could not touch, although she could guess it: Antonia as skopos and Hugh as the deceased queen’s consort, ruling Mathilda as regents.

“Best to rest, Lord Hugh,” she added kindly, “and see if sleep and food ease this trouble that disturbs your mind.”

“It never will,” he whispered to himself.

She nodded, humoring him, but he was far gone, and indeed when he was taken aside to the waiting pallet, hidden behind a curtain, he slept at once and heavily, dead to the world, as it was said by the poets, who knew from sordid experience how cravings make a man pregnable who might otherwise be fortified with temperance.

He slept all day and all night while the queen was caught up in her sorrow, seeing her younger daughter wrapped in a shroud and carried in a box to the crypt in Novomo’s fine church, the only suitable place to lay a princess to rest. The bell tolled seven times, to ring the dead child’s soul up through the spheres. A posset laced with valerian helped the queen to sleep as well, that same night.

The next morning dawned peacefully, as Lady Lavinia had cause to remark when Antonia met her by the fountain after Prime.

“I’ve had word that a train of merchants will reach Novomo by midday. They have ridden all the way from the eastern provinces. One is said to have come as far as from Arethousa! The queen, even in her grief, is sensible of their long journey and wishes to see them feasted properly this afternoon.”

“She is wise. If there is no entertainment, then I think a prudent feast cannot be seen as improper despite her sorrow. The child was not yet two, after all. We cannot be surprised when infants die, as so many do. I do not object.”

Lavinia put a hand into the water and, after a while, looked up. “I pray you, Holy Mother. Will the queen forgive him? He was always faithful to her, and most especially to Henry. I never heard an ill word spoken of him, never a whisper.”

“What do you mean, Lady Lavinia?”

“I do not think it right he should be banished, but I cannot go against the queen’s wishes.”

“What if he should marry the queen?”

“He is a holy presbyter! He is wed to God’s service. It would pollute him to marry!” She faltered. Her cheeks were stained red, as if the sun had pinked them, but of course there was no sun, only the monotony of another cloudy day.

“It would be a shame to stain the beauty of a man as beautiful as he is.”

“I do not know if it would be right, Holy Mother.”

“It is not your place to interpret God’s wishes.”

“No, Holy Mother.”

“Still, there is something in what you say. He might not be the right one. Yet the queen must marry again.”

“She mourns her dead husband, Holy Mother.”

“Henry?”

“Indeed, Holy Mother. She held a great affection for the emperor in her heart.”

A strange way Adelheid had taken, thought Antonia, to show her fondness, but perhaps it was true that she had believed, or convinced herself to believe, that she had no other choice. Hugh, naturally, would fall into any scheme that offered him power, but it wasn’t as clear to Antonia what he felt he would gain by wielding such malevolent sorcery. Possessed by a daimone! Still, perhaps he, too, had done it only out of loyalty to Henry and Wendar. She doubted it. Henry, through the daimone, would have given him anything he wanted. Anything.

Was it actually possible that a man with as much beauty and intelligence as Hugh was so very … small when all else came to be measured? That he was himself chained by being fixed on one thing? Who was slave, and who was master, then? One had escaped while the other still polished his shackles.

“You are a practical woman, Lady Lavinia. Have you a recommendation?”

She sighed and looked toward the fountain. Water wept into the circular pool at the base. “Many nights such thoughts have troubled me, Holy Mother. I am a widow, and have not remarried. I find there is a lack of men whose lineage and temperament please me. In these cruel days, the queen must choose wisely or not at all.”

“Has she spoken to you of such matters?”