Prince of Dogs

Lady and Lord! Her little brother, now a novice, wanted to marry some unknown and unnamed woman! Their father would be furious.

“Ivar,” said the unknown and unnamed woman in a calm voice. Her accent was slight but peculiar. “Ivar, listen to me. You know I have nothing, no kin—”

This was all it took, that he would become infatuated with a kinless woman! No wonder Count Harl had sent him to the monastery: to get him out of trouble.

“—or none who know me. I have safety in the Eagles.”—The Eagles!—“Surely you understand that I can’t marry you unless you offer me that kind of safety.”

The Eagle Rosvita had seen loitering in this chamber earlier had waited here for this very assignation! At that moment, groping as for a stone, Rosvita could not recall the young woman’s name. Instead, the cleric leaned against the carved cabinet doors and settled herself for a long wait while she listened to her brother launch into an impassioned, if whispered, plea for love, marriage, indeed every part of the world which six months ago on entering Quedlinhame he had sworn to renounce forever.

7

“I’LL leave the monastery,” Ivar concluded. “We’ll travel east and find service in the marchlands. There’s always need for soldiers in the east—”

“But don’t you understand?” she said with fine disregard for his sincerity. Did she not think he could do what he pledged? Did she not understand that he would do anything for her? “Until you had such a place, until I was assured of such a place, I can’t leave the Eagles. How can you ask me to?”

“Because I love you!”

She sighed, brushing a hand across her lips, breathing through her fingers. He wanted to kiss those fingers but dared not. After their first embrace—in the privies—she had become, not cooler but more distant.

“I love you as well, but as a brother. I can’t love you—” Here the hesitation. “—in that way.” Her second hesitation was longer and more profound. “I love another man.”

“You love another!” Angry, he said the first name that came to his lips. “Hugh!”

She went still and cold and deathly rigid.

“Ai, Lord, forgive me, Liath. I didn’t mean to say it. I know—”

“It doesn’t matter.” She shook herself free. Dim light sifted in through the stout cabinets of books, books upon books upon books, so many that their weight alone felt like a pile of stones crushing him. Just as Liath’s words crushed him. “This man’s dead. I trust you, Ivar, but if it ever came to pass that all obstacles were put aside and we married, you must understand I could never love you in the way I loved him.”

If. “If” sounded to Ivar like a very good word.

“Lady!” She rested a hand—too briefly—on his shoulder. The warmth of her flesh burned him through his coarse robes. “I sound so selfish. But I’m alone in the world. I have to protect myself.”

“No, I am here.” He gripped her hand in his, the clasp of kinship. “I am always here. And Hanna is with you, surely.” In the privies, he had not had time to ask about Hanna, only time to arrange this meeting—only time to kiss her. He had dreamed of Liath last night and embarrassed himself in his sleep, but the others, Baldwin, Ermanrich, and Sigfrid, had helped him hide the traces.

“Hanna was sent south with Wolfhere, to escort Biscop Antonia—” She shook her head, impatient with herself. “You wouldn’t know about that. I beg you, Ivar, understand that—it’s not just Hugh I need to be safe against. It’s … it’s other things, things that chased Da and me for years until they finally caught up and killed him, and I don’t know what they are. Ai, Lady.” She leaned forward, against him—but not to embrace him as he wished, only to whisper as if she feared the walls themselves, the books in their silent waiting, might hear. “Do you understand?”

A year ago, Ivar would have dismissed all these concerns with a wave of the hand and with grandiose plans that came to nothing. But he was older now, and he had, amazingly, learned something.

“All right, then,” he said, as calmly as he could, for she was still leaning against him. “You will marry no man but me.”

She gave a caught-in laugh, more a sob perhaps. “I could never have married him. If not him, then you, because I can trust you.” But she said it wistfully, as if she still mourned that other man whose name she dared not utter out loud.

Ivar felt he might float, he was so happy. She trusted him.