“Never!”
“—for it is the will of Our Lady and Lord that woman cleave to man, and man to woman, all but those who cleave instead to God and turn away from the vanities and temptations and empty pleasures of the world.”
“Is that all I am to you—!”
“Your Highness. I pray you, speak no harsh word to me, for I could not bear it. Now, what else troubles you?”
Liath dared not move, though a stone pinched her thigh. All the others breathed the even breaths of sweet dreaming.
“Theophanu.”
“You need not fear Theophanu.”
“That is all very well for you to say, but—”
“Your Highness. You need not fear Theophanu.”
Something in his tone made Liath shiver, and as if the slight shift of her wool cloak on the hard stone floor alerted the princess, her voice changed.
“Are you sure all of them sleep?” she hissed.
“No one can hear us whom you need fear, Your Highness.” He shifted on the bed, and Liath heard the muffled sighing sound of two people kissing passionately.
“Ah,” gasped Sapientia at last, “how I long for the day when I am rid of this burden—live and healthy, God grant—so that we may again—”
“Hush.” He moved away from her and again, hidden from all but Liath, began to wind the gleaming threads, as faint as spider’s silk, between his fingers. “Sleep now, Your Highness.”
Her breathing gentled and slowed, and she slept. Liath lay as still as stone, but he shifted on the bed, rolling back until he lay above her as a boulder poised on the edge of a cliff shades the delicate plants beneath in its shadow. She held her breath.
“I know you are not asleep, Liath. Have you forgotten that I had many nights to study you, where you lay beside me, to study your face in repose, or when you were only pretending to sleep? I know when you sleep, and when you do not. And you are not sleeping now, my beauty. All the others sleep, but not you. And not me.”
He could only speak in this way if he was sure everyone else slept, and how could he know that? Or perhaps he did not care. Why should he? He was the abbot of a large institution, the son of a powerful margrave, an educated churchman out of the king’s schola. She was nothing compared to that, a King’s Eagle, a kinless fugitive whose parents had both been murdered.
“Tell me, Liath,” he continued in that same soft, persuasive, beautiful voice, “why do you torment me so? It is wrong of you to do so. I cannot understand what power lies in you that eats at me so constantly. You must be doing it on purpose, you must have some scheme, some end, in mind. What is it? Is it this?”
He shifted. She would have screamed, but she could not, she could only lie in mute dread, and then his fingers brushed her cheek, probing for her lips, explored them softly before tracing down over her chin to her vulnerable throat. Bile rose, burning her tongue.
“Come up here,” he whispered, fingers drawing a pattern on her throat.
If she went to him now, perhaps he would stop tormenting her. If she only made him happy, if she obeyed him, he would be kind to her.
As quickly, the thought washed off her as water slides down a roof. She rolled away from him, bumping up against a sleeping servant. Sapientia murmured, half waking, and a man laughed in the corridor outside.
“Damn,” muttered Hugh. She cringed, waiting for the blow, but he only shifted away from her and at last she heard his breathing slow and deepen. All the others slept on, so gently, so peacefully. Only she did not sleep.
2
MORNING came none too soon, and she crept out as soon as there was any least graying of darkness toward light through the cracks in the shutters. A few torches burned by the entrance to the kitchens as servants began to prepare for the afternoon’s feast. Mist wreathed the palisade and twined around corners, covering the courtyard in a dense blanket of cold. Drops of icy rain stung her cheeks.
The gates were already propped open, but no one had yet ventured out to the privies beyond. Most servants were not yet up, and any of the noble folk would use their chamberpots rather than venture out so early. But Liath could see perfectly well in the morning gloom, and she wanted a moment of freedom. She relieved herself and started back, but when the gates loomed before her out of the trailing mist, she was seized with such horror that she could not move except to sink down to her knees. The ground was bitter cold; wet soaked up through the fabric of her leggings.
They did not see her, but she saw them: concealed from the sight of any in the courtyard within, Hugh paused in the lee of the gate to meet Princess Theophanu. The princess was hesitant, drawn but reluctant, as a half wild but starving creature shies forward, then away, then forward again to sniff at food laid out by alien hands, suspicious of a trap but desperate to slake its hunger.