Prince of Dogs

“One woman?”

He betrayed himself, but surely that did not matter. She already knew. He caught in his breath abruptly, a stab of pain in his lungs. What had happened to Liath? What if she was thrown out of the Eagles?

“A woman who traveled with the king’s progress,” continued Mother Scholastica in that same emotionless voice. Not emotionless, no—she spoke without being torn by emotion, without the violent feelings that ripped him apart from within.

Ai, Lord. The memory of embracing Liath—even in the stink of the privies …

“This, too, will pass, Ivar. I have seen it happen so many times.”

“Never!” He leaped to his feet. “I will always love her! Always! I loved her before I came here, and I will never stop loving her. I promised I would marry her—”

“Ivar. I beg you, take hold of yourself and remember dignity.”

Panting with anger and frustration, he knelt again.

“As the blessed Daisan said, ‘For desire is a different thing from love, and friendship something else than joining together with evil intent. We ought to realize without difficulty that false love is called lust and that even if it gives temporary peace, there is a world of difference between that and true love, whose peace lasts till the end of days, suffering neither trouble nor loss.’”

He could not speak. He stared fixedly at one of the paned windows which let light into the study. A branch scraped the glass as it swayed in a rising wind, and the last remaining leaf dangled precariously, ready to fall.

“You must have your father’s permission to marry. Do you?”

There was no need to answer. He wanted to cry with shame. None of this had gone as he had planned.

“Do not think I take this lightly, child,” she said. He risked a glance up, for a certain note of compassion had surfaced in her tone. She did indeed have an expression on her face that he could almost call sympathetic. “I can see you are firm in your resolve and passionate in your attachment. But I am not free to let you go. You were given into my care by your father and your kin, you spoke your vows—willingly, I thought—and were taken into this monastery. It would be unwise of me to let every young person walk free at each least impulse toward the world.”

“This isn’t an impulse!”

She lifted her ringed hand for silence. “Perhaps not. If it is not an impulse, as you claim, then time will not dull it. I will send a message to your father, and you will wait for his reply. What you propose is not an undertaking to be entered into lightly, just as we should not any of us enter into the church lightly.” By this mild rebuke she scolded him. “There remains also the young woman to be considered. Who is she? She has a name, I have discovered—an unusual name, Arethousan. Who are her kin?”

“I don’t know anything about her,” he admitted finally. “Not really. No one in Heart’s Rest did.”

“Is she of noble birth?”

He blinked. Perhaps silence was the better choice. Liath and her father had been close with their secrets. And her father had died—although only Liath had claimed it was murder; Marshal Liudolf had decreed the death came of natural causes.

“Answer me, child.”

He did not like the stern look Mother Scholastica fixed on him. “I—I think so. Her father was educated.”

“Her mother?”

He shrugged. “She never had a mother. I mean—we never knew of her mother.”

“Her father was educated—? Was he a fallen monastic, perhaps? Ah, yes, I see it in your face.”

“I don’t know that he was. But we all thought he must have been a monk once, or perhaps a frater—”

“If he left the church, he would scarcely speak of such an act out loud. Educated in and then fled from the church. You are sure she was his child?”

“Yes!” he exclaimed, indignant on Liath’s behalf.

“Not his concubine or servant?”

“No! Of course they were father and child.”

“It might explain all,” said Mother Scholastica, musing now; she appeared to have forgotten Ivar’s existence, and certainly cared nothing for his indignation. “Why she could read Jinna.”

Read Jinna? What else was hidden in Liath that she had never shared with him? He had a sudden sick intuition that Frater Hugh might not have been interested in Liath only for her beauty and youth.

“Dark of feature. A fallen churchman. Perhaps my mother was right. A frater may travel as a missionary to the four quarters of the world, even unto the Jinna heathens who worship the fire god Astereos. Such a man might have been seduced by the potions and perfumes of the east, such a man might have forsworn his oath to the church and gotten a child on an eastern woman and then, as an honorable Daisanite, refused to leave the child behind to be raised as a heathen. That would explain her complexion and her ability to read. Well, Ivar.” The abrupt change of subject startled him, her sudden cooling of interest in him. “It is good you confessed this to me. Return to the novitiary. You will study. You will obey. In time, if you do your duty and remain meek and humble, I will call you here again and let you know what answer your father has given.”