“Wash yourself, my friend,” said Alain finally. “Is it not what Our Lady would wish, that we appear before her cleansed?”
He was not sure Agius heard the words, so he shook out his clothing as best he could, let himself dry off, and dressed. The guards shifted at their positions, anxious to return their charges to the biscop’s custody.
“You are right,” said Agius suddenly. He took off his frater’s robe. Under it, against his skin, he wore a coarse shirt woven of linen and horsehair. But Alain noticed at once that his leg, where Sorrow had bitten him, was dirty, red, and swollen. Before Alain could utter a word, Agius removed his hair shirt.
Alain could not restrain a gasp. Even the guards murmured in awe and horror.
The stiff cloth had rubbed Agius’ skin raw. In places, the open skin was festering.
“Doesn’t it hurt?” Alain whispered, feeling the pain like fire on his own back and chest.
Agius threw himself full length on the ground, hands clenched, awful tortured skin exposed. “It is no more than I deserve. I betrayed one for the other, only to find myself betrayed in return. Ai, Lady, I thought only to help the child, for the love I bore Frederic.”
“But you saved your niece, surely?”
“Saved her from what? She still remains in Sabella’s custody, since Sabella’s creature now acts as biscop of Autun in Constance’s place. I could not even take the child to safety, back to her mother’s castle or to the king’s progress. I pray that the king learns of these deeds soon, for they will make him very angry.” He spoke more slowly now, almost savoring the words. “The king’s anger is a terrible thing to behold.” A slight moan escaped him, the sound of a creature mourning. “Ai, Lady, You will judge me harshly, as I deserve. I vowed to leave the world and enter Your service, and yet the world pursues me and grants no mercy from its burdens. Forgive me my sins. Let my belief in the true knowledge of Your Son’s sacrifice grant me a measure of peace in my heart.”
So on he went, back to his prayers. The guards muttered, listening and watching.
Alain did not know what to do. In an odd way, Agius reminded him of the piteous guivre: wounded and suffering in a cage made for it by others. Yet the guivre was of itself no pitiful thing; it had a fierce and hideous nobility, separate from human concerns.
After a bit, the hounds ventured closer, then nudged at Agius’ prostrate body. The frater did not react to this threat. Perhaps Agius hoped, at that moment, they would tear him to pieces and have done with it. But instead, Sorrow licked at the wound on his leg and Rage licked the sores on his back.
Alain hurried forward to find Agius weeping silently. He knelt and whispered soothing words to him as he might to Aunt Bel’s youngest daughter Agnes when she was caught in nighttime fears.
Finally, Agius let Alain help him into the water and wash.
But that night Agius did not eat, nor did he the next day as they marched on, leaving Autun behind. Only in the evening did Alain coax him to take a crust of old bread, scarcely fit for beggars.
Watched as they were, this piece of information was conveyed to Biscop Antonia. She took Alain aside the next morning and thanked him kindly for his care of Frater Agius.
“Although he professes a heresy,” she said gently, “I hope to bring him back to his senses and into the church again.”
But Alain feared, in Agius’ silence and stubborn fixed stare, that the frater had taken into his head some kind of terrible idea, that he meant to do something rash or dangerous. Agius prayed incessantly, even while walking. At every halt in the march he spoke to a growing audience of the curious about the revelation of the Son, the blessed Daisan, through Whose sacrifice our sins are redeemed.
XI
A MOUSE’S HUNGER
1
“LET us rest here,” said Rosvita to her escort. She indicated a log that had, by the grace of Our Lady and Lord, come to rest like a bench just where the path broke out of the forest atop a ridge. From this plain but serviceable seat one could see the valley spread out below, the plaster and timber buildings of Hersford Monastery, the large estate, and the several villages strung like clusters of grapes along the Hers River.
She was not sure a magnate of Helmut Villam’s stature would deign to sit on such a humble seat. But she sat down and, after a moment, handing the reins of his horse over to his son, so did he.
The thin wail of a horn carried to them on the stiff wind that blew along the ridge top. They watched as out of a copse below the king and his company emerged, bright banners signaling their passage.
A white banner marked with a red eagle in profile now flew among the other—more familiar—pennants. Duchess Liutgard of Fesse had arrived at Hersford Monastery yesterday. Hersford lay on the border between the duchies of Saony and Fesse; it was traditional for the reigning duke to escort the king across into her domain. Liutgard had inherited her position at a very young age—and perhaps because of her youth she adhered strictly to the old forms.