In the Ruins

The wagon under which Aurea had sheltered was too heavy to drag, but Hilaria discovered a handcart in decent shape, needing only a small repair to the axle because it had tipped over and spilled its load of bundled herbs.

“Some peddler following the army,” said Aurea as she helped the girls gather up what could be salvaged: lavender, mostly, sage, tufts of bay and basil, and feverwort. “A bag of chestnuts! Why would anyone abandon such treasures?”

“Perhaps the peddler is dead,” said Ruoda sharply. Gerwita began to snivel.

“We’ll stay together,” said Rosvita, seeing that tempers would run high with exhaustion and fear driving them. “Take turns hauling the cart.”

They set off with Rosvita in the lead beside Diocletia. Behind them, Fortunatus and Teuda carried Mother Obligatia’s litter. Heriburg followed with the precious books slung over her back. Ruoda and Gerwita shepherded Petra, while Jerome and Jehan took turns pushing the cart. Tireless Hilaria paced up and down the line to spell those who needed a rest, and Aurea set herself as their rear guard. They had no particular destination but made their way through rippling lakes of torn and crumpled canvas, past discarded shoes and forgotten harness, an iron kettle, a red cap, and a broken leather strap affixed to a bronze Circle of Unity in the Arethousan style with crossed bars quartering the interior. The armies had left an eerie silence in their wake but for the wind grumbling through scraps of canvas and a dog snuffling at an overturned wagon, trying to dig its way in to something caught underneath.

But for the wind and the dog, nothing and no one moved in the haze. Those folk the armies had not taken with them had, evidently, fled the scene, fearing worse to come. It was difficult to imagine what could be worse than what they had suffered during the night.

“Look!” murmured Diocletia. “There’s someone—there!”

A figure huddled in a clearing notable for the lack of debris on all sides except a single expanse of splotched canvas that had once been a grand tent and a scattering of spears tumbled on the ground. The creature crouched with its head buried in its dirty riding skirts and its arms wrapped around its knees, like a child.

Rosvita gestured for the others to halt. She ventured forward cautiously with Diocletia beside her. The nun paused to pick up a spear, and Hilaria and Aurea hurried up beside her to gather up the rest. They walked softly, but even so, the person seemed utterly lost not to have heard their approach. They halted a body’s length from her—it was now obvious it was a woman—and Diocletia moved sideways so that if the woman was armed and dangerous she might not strike them both dead with one blow. How had it come to this, that a holy nun should think like a soldier, weighing tactics? Was this to be the fate of all humankind in the weeks and months to come?

“Friend,” said Rosvita in Arethousan, as gently as she knew how. “We will not harm you.”

At first, she gained no response. But at last that dark head stirred and a woman raised a tearstained face to stare at her with an expression of such hopelessness that Rosvita felt tears in her own eyes drawn out by that naked anguish.

She was stunned as she recognized the other woman. “Your Highness,” she said in Wendish. “I am Sister Rosvita. Do you remember me? Where is King Geza?”

“I divorce you,” said the princess, each word formed so precisely that it seemed she was repeating a phrase spoken by someone else. Her gaze was bleak, and her hands were dirty, as if she had been digging.

“Are you alone, Your Highness?”

Sapientia’s laugh was that of a madwoman, quickly cut off. “A prince without a retinue is no prince!”

“We are your retinue, Your Highness.”

Sapientia stared at her for a long time without answering. Rosvita began to doubt the princess had heard her.

Fortunatus crept up beside Rosvita and leaned to whisper in her ear. “There is no one left, Sister. She’s been abandoned, just as we were.” He sounded as shocked as she felt. “She is King Henry’s daughter! What will we do?”

“We must take her with us.”

A robed person swept past them and heedlessly knelt down within range of the princess. “Come, little lamb,” she said in Dariyan. “You’ve strayed far, but we’ll take care of you now.”

It was Sister Petra. Her expression was calm, almost blank, but her voice had a soothing gentleness. If Princess Sapientia understood her coaxing, spoken as it was in Dariyan, she made no sign, but she allowed herself to be helped to stand, she allowed herself to be herded along without protest. She said not one word more as they made their way through the wreckage of the camp, always moving upslope and away from the distant ocean, until they came at long last to a pine wood whose sparse canopy gave them a measure of shelter as the light changed and became rather more dense. Night was coming on, although a glow remained in the sky, painting the heavens a deathly orange-red. They rigged up a serviceable shelter and dined sparingly on a stew of leeks and turnips flavored with a bay leaf and cooked over an open fire in the kettle they had found in the deserted camp.