The Burning Stone (Crown of Stars #3)

“I hope the prince doesn’t take long.” His teeth chattered. He had been shivering all day, and knowing that the prince and his official retinue would be better housed, and given more than lukewarm gruel for their supper, only made it worse.

“He must do what is proper, for his grandmother,” retorted Baldwin primly. He had a mirror and was checking his face to see if his shave was clean enough. “Come under the blanket with me, Ivar. It’ll be warmer.”

“I won’t!” he said with more heat than force. “You know I’ve taken vows as a novice. It wouldn’t be right.”

“Prince Ekkehard and all his companions have taken vows as novices. That doesn’t stop them.”

“But I don’t want to be like them,” retorted Ivar. Yet he wondered in his heart if the person he most despised was himself. Baldwin sighed and went back to his shaving.

That evening bells began to toll, the somber roll of the Quedlinhame cathedral bell blending with the lighter ring of the town bell.

“Someone’s died,” observed Baldwin wisely. “Come on!” He tugged on his cape and pulled the hood up to conceal his face.

“But if we’re seen by someone at the monastery who knows us—”

“Why should they look if they think we’re townsfolk? I can’t abide staying shut up here any longer.” Like the wind, Baldwin had enough energy to pick Ivar up like a leaf and carry him along with him outside and into the crowd.

“The queen is dead.” The wail started on the edge of the crowd as they flowed up the steep road that led to the monastery gates. By the time they reached the gates, the crowd had an edge of hysteria, weeping and wailing, a wild noise like beasts gone mad.

“They’ll never let us in,” Ivar shouted. It would be better so. The walls of Quedlinhame monastery scared him. He’d escaped once; if he went inside again, maybe he’d never get out.

But laybrothers did open the gate, and crossing that threshold had a miraculous effect on the crowd. Once they stepped through onto holy ground, they calmed. A baby squalled, but otherwise the huge crowd—hundreds of people, more than he could count—went forward in as much silence as so many shuffling footsteps and smothered sobs could grant it. Many of them clutched Circles and prayed soundlessly. As the crowd filed into the cathedral under the watchful gaze of half a dozen elderly nuns who looked as fierce as watchdogs, Ivar kept his hood pulled forward so that no one would see his red hair. Baldwin used his elbows, hips, and one well-placed pinch to squeeze them forward and in the end they found room just inside the door, far away from the altar. The stone pillars, carved with dragons, lions, and eagles, loomed over Ivar. Once he had prayed under their vigilant eye. He began to shiver. What if they bore some magic within them, what if they could see and recognize him for what he was? Hadn’t he betrayed the church by running away from Margrave Judith? Hadn’t he rebelled against the very authority of the church by listening to Lady Tallia’s preaching?

Baldwin put an arm around him to warm him. Townsfolk stamped their feet and rubbed limbs leached of heat by the rain. The smell of so many unwashed winter bodies gave off its own heat. His fingers hurt as warmth flooded back.

When the nuns and monks marched in, all the townsfolk knelt. The stone floor was, predictably, hard and cold; his knees hurt. In an awful silence frayed only by a child’s cough and the whispering of cloth as people shifted position to see better, the body of Queen Mathilda was carried in on a litter. She was tiny, frail, and shrunken, dressed in the plain robe granted to the humblest sister of the church. But she wore rich rings on her fingers, and a slim gold coronet circled her white hair. Mother Scholastica and Prince Ekkehard walked behind the bier, and once the dead queen was laid in state, the abbess came forward to kiss her bare feet. Then Prince Ekkehard, too, was allowed this privilege. The novices filed in silently to kneel at the base of the stairs that led to altar and bier. Ivar stared, hoping to pick out Sigfrid among their number, but their hoods and bowed heads concealed them too well.

Mother Scholastica stepped behind the altar. At her side, Brother Methodius began to chant the opening prayer for the Mass for the Dead.

“Blessed is the Country of the Mother and Father of Life—”

“Lies!” On the steps a slight figure leaped up to address the townsfolk caught in the opening cadence of prayer, at their most responsive before the flow of the liturgy lulled them into a stupor. “You have all been made blind by the darkness spread over this land because of their lies. The true course of Her miracle and Her Holy Word has been hidden away. For God found a worthy vessel in the holy Edessia. God filled her with the blessed light, and in this way she gave birth to the blessed Daisan, he who partakes both of the nature of God and of humankind. He brought God’s message to all of us, that he would suffer and die to redeem us from the stain of darkness that lies within all of us—”