So did God remind even the strong that life is short, and grief long-lasting. “I will add his name to my prayers.”
“Thank you, Sister!” For a moment Rosvita thought the Eagle meant actually to clasp her hand as she would a comrade’s, but she hooked her fingers under her belt instead and with her other hand brushed something out of her eyes. “So may he be remembered on earth and sung into the Chamber of Light.”
But the fate of an anonymous Eagle, however tragic, did not lodge for long in Rosvita’s thoughts. She had already begun to rearrange the evidence in her mind. Did it begin to form a new and perhaps more interesting picture? “Wolfhere went to Heart’s Rest to find Liath. He knew her?”
“That I don’t know, Sister.”
“Father Hugh tells me she stole the book from him while she was his slave,” said Rosvita, more irritated than ever. Hugh’s story was easy, and convenient, to believe—and not entirely at odds with what the Eagle had told her—and he was the son of a margrave. But Hathui’s account of events had an Eagle’s eye behind it, and a certain ring of bald truth. “Why should I believe you, a common-born woman, over the son of a margrave?”
Hathui smiled wryly. “God makes the sun to rise on noblewoman and commoner alike. The Lord and Lady love us all equally in Their hearts, my lady.”
“Yet Our Lord and Lady follow Their own will in parceling out to individuals whatever They wish. To some They give more, and to others, less. Could we not also argue that we merit what we each receive? That They confer on the elect these gifts of grace that set them apart from others?”
But the Eagle shrugged, her expression untroubled. “All gifts are given to us by God. Without such gifts, no matter how noble, we are dust. So we are all equal before God—and the honorable word of a common-born woman no different than that of a nobly born man.”
It was startling to hear a commoner speak so bluntly, but Rosvita could not gainsay the truth in her words. “There is wisdom in what you say, Eagle.”
Hathui touched a finger to her lips as though to force words back before she blurted out something unseemly. The wind lifted dust from ground already stirred up by the passage of so many feet and so much activity. Soon, all too soon, the night would be alive with Eika—and many of those who marched in this army would die. Rosvita shuddered, although it wasn’t cold.
“I would say one thing more, if you will, Sister.”