The other riders had gone on, but the young woman lingered, eyeing the crowd of children with a frown, shaking her head all the while. “I don’t know what she’ll do. But we must ask for help. More Eika scouts are sighted every day. More villages are burned. Their circle is growing wider. Soon they will engulf all of us. There are too many people here already. Mistress Gisela can’t support them all.”
Her comrades called to her and she urged her horse forward, leaving the camp behind.
Most of the children wandered back to the old poet and told him what the rider had said.
He snorted. “As if Mistress Gisela supports any but her own kin and servants, and those with coin to pay for food and protection. Alas that there is no biscop here to feed the poor.” Anna noticed all at once how thin he was. A film of white half-covered his left eye, and his hands had a constant small tremor.
“Who is Duchess Rotrudis?” she asked.
Trained as both listener and singer, he found her in the crowd and nodded toward her, acknowledging her question. “Rotrudis is duchess of Saony. She is the younger sister of King Henry. Alas that the Dragons fell. That was a terrible day.”
“Why hasn’t the king come to rescue us?” asked a boy.
“Nay, lad, you must recall that the world is a wide place and filled with danger. I have traveled over its many roads and paths. It takes months to get news from one place to another.” Seeing their expressions shift from hope to fear, he hurried on. “But I have no doubt King Henry knows of the fall of Gent and mourns it.”
“Then why doesn’t he come?”
He only shrugged. “The king may be anywhere. He may be marching on his way here now. How can we know?”
“Have you ever seen the king?” Anna asked.
He was surprised and perhaps taken aback by her question. “I have not,” he answered, voice shaking and cheeks flushed. “But I have sung before his son, the one who was captain of the Dragons.”
“Tell us more of the story,” said a child.
“Tell us something that happened to you, friend,” said Anna suddenly, knowing she ought to return to the tannery but not quite able to tear herself away.
“Something that happened to me,” he murmured.
“Yes! Yes!” cried the other children.
“You don’t want to hear more of the lay of Helen?”
“Did it happen to you?” asked Anna. “Were you on the ship?”
“Why, no, child,” he said, half chuckling. “It happened so long ago that—”
“You were a child then?”
“Nay, child. It happened long before Daisan received the Holy Word of God and preached the truth of the Unities, bringing Light to the Darkness. It happened long, long ago, before even the old stone walls you see in Steleshame were built.”
“I’ve never been inside Steleshame,” Anna pointed out. “And if it happened so long ago, how do you know it’s true?”
“Because it has been passed down from poet to poet, line for line, even written down by the ancient scribes so it would be remembered.” Then he smiled softly. Amazingly, he still had most of his teeth, but perhaps a poet took better care of his mouth, knowing that his fortune rested there and in what he could recall from his mind. “But I’ll tell you a story that happened to me when I was a young man. Ai, Lady! Have you ever heard of the Alfar Mountains? Can you imagine, you children, mountains that are so high that they caress the heavens? That snow lies thick upon them even on the hottest summer’s day? These mountains you must cross if you wish to travel south from the kingdom of Wendar into the kingdom of Aosta. In Aosta you will find the holy city of Darre. That is where the skopos resides, she who is Mother over the Holy Church.”
“If the mountains are so high,” asked Anna, “then how can you get over them?”
“Hush, now,” he said querulously. “Let us proceed with no more questions. There are only a few paths over the mountains. So high do these tracks rise along the rugged ground that a man can reach up and touch the stars themselves at nightfall. But every step is dangerous. No matter how clear at dawn, each day may turn into one of blinding storm—even at midsummer, for summer is the only season when one may cross the mountains.
“Yet some few attempt the crossing late in the season. Some few, as I did, try it even as late as the month of Octumbre. My need was great—” He raised a hand, forestalling a question. “It had to do with a woman. You need ask no more than that! I was warned against attempting the crossing, but I was a rash youth. I thought I could do anything. And indeed, as I climbed, the weather held fair and I had no trouble …”