Prince of Dogs

Not even these troubling thoughts could dampen Ivar’s excitement as the entire community left the enclosure in dutiful silence and walked down the hill on the stone-paved avenue that led through town. They walked out beyond the town walls and along the road for at least a mile. They passed townsfolk, standing at the side of the road, who had left their tasks and brought themselves and their children to witness the arrival of the king. Out here, newly sown fields of winter wheat wore brown earth laced with shoots of tender green as their autumn garb. The view behind was dominated by the great hill on which stood the ancient fortress that was now the monastery; the towers of the church pierced the deep blue of the heavens, reaching toward God. They halted on either side of the road, two lines of simply-clad brothers and sisters of the church and the many layservants who served them and God both—perhaps two hundred souls in total.

Ivar heard the king’s progress before he saw it. He heard a muttering as of many feet and hooves and rolling wheels, felt the subtle vibration as a tremor rising up through the soles of his feet. He heard them singing, many voices raised in a joyful psalm. The strength of their combined voices, the sheer power of it, made him shiver with joy; not even a full prayer service and the chanting and singing of the monks and nuns in unison at Quedlinhame made him feel this sudden pull to be torn away from his own person and become some other one, one who could join in the concordia, the power that attended upon the king’s presence.

I sing of loyalty and justice.

I will raise this psalm to Thee, Our Lord and Lady Who are God in Unity.

I will follow a wise and blameless course whatever may befall me.

I will go about my house in purity of heart.

I will set before myself no sordid aim.

I will hate disloyalty.

I will silence those who spread tales behind men’s backs.

I will not sit at table with those who are proud and pompous.

I will choose the most loyal for my companions; my servants shall be folk whose lives are blameless. Morning after morning I will put all wicked men to silence

and I will rejoice in all on God’s earth which is good.

The schoolmaster always enjoined his pupils to keep their heads bowed and their eyes toward the ground, for in this way they made themselves smaller and indicated their insignificance. But as the cavalcade drew near enough that he could hear the small noises of a hundred or more souls in movement, Ivar could not help himself. He had to look.

Ermanrich stirred beside him, and Baldwin drew in a sharp, surprised breath. Only Sigfrid kept his head dutifully bowed.

A King’s Eagle rode in front, as herald. She wore the scarlet-trimmed cape and the brass badge of an Eagle, and she stared straight ahead at the road before her; she had a hard, interesting face, broad shoulders, and the look of a person sure of her position and name in the world. In her right hand she held a staff, its haft wedged against her boot. The king’s banner draped from the staff, curling down to hide the hand itself, for there was no wind to lift the banner.

Behind her rode six young nobles honored this day with a position at the head of the procession. They, too, carried pennants, one for each of the duchies under Henry’s rule: Saony, Fesse, Avaria, Varingia, Arconia, and Wayland. Ivar guessed the four boys and two girls to be about the same age as himself; the girl holding the standard of Arconia had hair as pale as wheat and fingers so delicate that he wondered how she had the strength to grip the banner pole. He wondered whose child she was. If only he had been sent to court, instead of to Quedlinhame, then he might have ridden proudly at the front of such an adventus—an arrival—as this! His gaze skipped back to the riders who followed directly behind the pennants.

In this group of nobles, each one attired magnificently in fine embroidered and trimmed linen tunics, in fine leather riding boots, with handsome fur-trimmed capes or richly colored wool cloaks thrown over all, the eye still leaped immediately to King Henry. Ivar had never seen him before, yet he knew instantly that the middle-aged man riding in the center was the king though he wore no crown. He needed no crown. The weight of his authority was like a mantle cast over his shoulders. He wore clothing no plainer and no richer than the others, one prince among many, but the leather belt that girdled his waist, embossed with the symbols of each of the six duchies that made up the kingdom of Wendar and Varre, and the many small and subtle gestures of the others as they deferred to him, proclaimed him prima inter pares, first among equals. From the back of a handsome bay mare, he surveyed the hooded monks and nuns, most of whom still stared fixedly at the ground, with stern approval for their humility.