Prince of Dogs

Like Ermanrich, he had become resigned to his fate.

He glanced sidelong at his comrades.

Baldwin sat with chin cupped on hand and stared attentively at the schoolmaster although Ivar knew him well enough by now to recognize that look as one of daydreaming. Ermanrich sneezed, then wiped his nose on his sleeve and resumed fiddling with his stylus. Even Sigfrid was restless; he had a habit of playing with the tip of his ear with his left hand when he was thinking about something other than what went on in front of him.

Ai, Lady. Ivar knew what they were thinking about. He knew who they were thinking about, all of them.

The door to the schoolroom creaked open. As the schoolmaster faltered, every head canted up to see who had interrupted. Brother Methodius came into the room, his expression so dour that Ivar had a sudden horrible fear that the old queen, whose illness had taken a turn for the worse, had actually died.

Methodius called the schoolmaster aside. A low conversation ensued. Ivar stretched his shoulders and then regarded the words inscribed in the tablet before him: docet, docuit, docebit. Thinking of Tallia, he wrote, nos in veritate docuerat. “She had instructed us in the truth.”

Baldwin kicked his foot. Ivar started and looked up to see Brother Methodius signing to them: Come, in silence.

He stood obediently and followed the others out of the room and down the stair, but it became immediately apparent that only he, Baldwin, Sigfrid, and Ermanrich had been singled out. Perhaps Sigfrid knew why, or Ermanrich had heard something from his cousin, but Ivar dared not ask, not when Brother Methodius had already enjoined them to silence.

But quickly enough he began to fear the worst: Methodius led them to Mother Scholastica’s study and ushered them inside, then took up a station beside the door as a jailer bars an escape route from his prisoners. No one else was in the room.

Both shutters in the room stood wide, and dust motes trailed through the sunlight. Outside, a nun worked in the herb garden. From this angle Ivar could not tell if she was weeding or harvesting, only see the curve of her back and the stately, measured movements of a soul at peace with her place in the world and her understanding of God.

Ivar was not at peace.

Baldwin tugged surreptitiously at Ivar’s robe and angled his head, a slight jerk to the right. There, through an open door, another room could be seen with the base of a simple bed in view. There the old queen lay, failing fast—or so rumor had it. A robed figure, shawl cast over her head, knelt at the foot of the bed with her hands clasped in prayer. Ivar made a noise in his throat, surprised. Even with the shawl covering her wheat-colored hair, he knew her posture in prayer intimately by now; he dreamed of it at night.

Suddenly Mother Scholastica stepped into view, concealing Tallia as she crossed the threshold and closed the door behind her. The latch fell into place with an audible click. All four novices dropped at once to their knees in an attitude of humility. Ivar heard her walk across the room and settle into her chair. Crickets drowsed outside, their lazy rhythms punctuated by a sudden burst of song from a wren.

“Heresy,” said Mother Scholastica.

They all four, as one, looked up guiltily at her. But she said nothing more, and her face remained as still as if it were graven in stone as she regarded them in silence. Behind her, a blackbird flitted to perch on the windowsill. He wore his black plumage as boldly as any proud soldier wore his tabard, marked by a bright orange bill and an orange ring around his keen eye. He hopped along the sill as they stared. Ermanrich coughed, and the bird took wing, fluttering away into the garden.

“You have all been contaminated by the words of a girl who is not even sworn to the church. Is this not so? Will you swear before me that you have not been tainted by her false preaching? Will you swear that her false vision of the blessed Daisan has not tempted you?”

Each word rang like the iron-shod hooves of a warhorse charging to battle. Ivar cowered under the weight of her outrage. Ermanrich sniveled. With his hands clasped before him and his head bowed modestly, Baldwin looked the very picture of a saintly penitent—his goodness made manifest in his beauty—praying before God to be forgiven his sins, of which there were few and all of them trivial.

But not one of them—not even her favored young scholar, Sigfrid, promised at age six to a life of learning within the arms of the church—crept forward to swear what she asked.

They could not.

They had heard Tallia speak of her visions. They had seen with their own eyes the marks of flaying on her skin, the stigmata that mimicked the wounds borne by the blessed Daisan in His trial of agony.

They had witnessed the miracle of the rose.