Monks walked through the gate. She looked for Ivar’s pale, familiar face.
“Come, come, Liath. We wait upon the king. He does not wait upon us. Why are you staring so?”
Liath shook off the older woman’s hand and followed beside her as they crossed the field. Ahead, the king and a few of his most trusted retainers gathered by the stairs that led up to the church’s portico. “I know someone who is a novice here—”
“Ivar, son of Count Harl and Lady Herlinda.”
Liath glanced sharply at her. “How did you know?”
“Hanna told me. She told me all about Ivar, her milk brother.”
It stung, the dart of jealousy, that Hanna had formed such a friendship with this tough marchlander woman. Liath liked Hathui but could never be comfortable with her. She dared not trust anyone she had met after Da’s death. Trusted no one now, except Hanna. Except possibly Ivar, if she could find him.
No one else, except Sanglant—and he was dead.
“Never meant for me even if he had lived,” she muttered.
“What?” asked Hathui. Liath shook her head, not answering. “Hanna said Ivar loved you,” Hathui added in an altered tone of voice. “Do you feel guilt for it still, that Frater Hugh condemned him to a life as a monk though it was no wish of the boy’s? Only because he interfered with what Hugh wanted?”
“Hanna told you a great deal,” said Liath, voice choked.
“We are friends. As you and I might be, but you are such a strange, distant creature, more like a fey spirit than a woman—” Hathui broke off, not because she wished to avoid offending Liath—Hathui said what she meant and intended no offense by it—but because they had reached the king. King Henry caught sight of Hathui and indicated with a gesture that she should walk behind him as they proceeded into the church. Liath stumbled over her own feet and hurried to catch up, not knowing where else to walk except behind Hathui. In the midst of so many fine nobles she could nurse her pain in private because, to the noble lords and ladies, she was merely an appendage of the king, like his crown or scepter or throne, not a real living person they had to take any notice of. She was simply an Eagle, a messenger to be dispatched at the king’s whim.
Hanna had every right to tell Hathui whatever she wished, had every right to count Hathui as a friend. Wolfhere and Hathui and poor dead Manfred—the three Eagles who had rescued her from Hugh—surely knew or guessed the truth of her relationship to Hugh, knew that he had kept her warm in his bed though he was a holy frater and dedicated to the church, that he had gotten her with child and then beaten her nearly to death for defying him, after which beating she had miscarried. In the end, worn down by exhaustion and fear, she had given him The Book of Secrets and all it represented: her submission to him.
Only the arrival of Wolfhere and his two companion Eagles had saved her. They had rescued her from Hugh; she had not truly escaped him. Liath glanced up at Hathui’s sturdy back, she who walked directly behind the king. Hathui had not once treated Liath with disrespect or scorned her, even knowing she had been a churchman’s slave and concubine. Hathui might be only a freeholder’s daughter, but the freeholders of the marchlands were notoriously proud. The king himself had seen fit to bestow on Hathui his favor. In the four months Liath had ridden with the king’s progress, she had seen how Hathui was called frequently to the king’s side, how he now and again asked her advice on some matter. This was indeed a signal honor for a woman born of common farmers.
Yes, Hanna had every right to count Hathui as a friend. But that endless niggling fear pricked at Liath: What if Hanna came to prefer Hathui? What if she loved Liath the less for liking Hathui more? It was a weak, unkind thought, both toward Hanna and toward Hathui. Liath could even now hear what Da would say were he alive to hear her confess such a thing: “A rosebush can give more than one bloom each season.”
But Da was dead. Murdered. And Hanna was all she had left. She wanted so desperately not to lose her. “No use fretting about the donkey,” Da would say, “when he’s safe inside the shed and you’ve loose chickens to save from the fox.”
At that moment Hathui glanced back at her and gave her a reassuring smile. They entered the church. It was surprisingly light inside the nave, a long lofty space with a wooden ceiling made of a checkerboard of crossbeams. A double row of arched windows set high in the wall, well above the decorative columns that lined the nave, admitted this light. The party walked forward solemnly so that Henry and his sister could kneel before the Hearth. Liath admired the parallel rows of columns, two round columns alternating with every square one to form the central nave. Eagles and dragons and lions adorned the capitals, carved cunningly into stone; these symbols of power served to remind visitors and postulants alike whose authority reigned here, second only to God in Unity. The floor was paved in pale yellow-and-dun granite. She tried, superstitiously, not to step on any of the cracks seaming the blocks into a larger whole.
