Who are you waiting for? the Bright One had asked it, but only the wind moaning through the stones answered.
“Who? Who?”
3
“YOUR Excellency, we’ve had word that the honored presbyter and his party arrive today.”
Antonia set aside her book. The library in Novomo had so few volumes, even supplemented with those she had removed from the convent of St. Ekatarina, that she had been forced to reread St. Peter of Aron’s The Eternal Geometry three times in the last nine months, although she still didn’t comprehend more than a third of it. Lady Lavinia’s steward waited beside the door, hands folded, as Lavinia paced to the unshuttered window. Light pooled on the table, illuminating the precious chronicle and the huge map inked onto a sheep’s hide cured and treated but left intact instead of cut in sheets for vellum.
“He will bring news of my daughter. There was talk of marriage to one of the king’s Wendish lords, although I would hate to see her forced to live in the cold north. Yet if Father Hugh thinks it for the best …”
Lavinia was a loyal and righteous woman and certainly devout enough that she insisted Antonia deliver the sermon in her household chapel every Ladysday, but she had long since developed an unfortunate infatuation for the handsome presbyter and treated him more as if he were God’s bright messenger than one of God’s humble servants.
“He would not countenance any alliance that might bring her to harm, not after saving her from Ironhead and introducing her into the queen’s household. She is quite the queen’s favorite, I hear. A marriage to a Wendish lord would improve the family fortunes. We could seek further alliances in the north for my kinfolk. But there is a boy of good family in southern Aosta, too, whose family has shown interest in a match with our house.”
As she rattled on, still staring out the window, Antonia cut quills. The lady’s concerns were the heart of the round of life on Earth; a lady must steward her estates and prepare for the next season, breed her herds and tend her gardens. How her children married affected the prosperity of her household and the longevity of her line, and every noble lady and lord had a duty to perpetuate the lineage out of which they themselves flowered.
These toiled worthily in the service of God, who had created all, but they had not been fitted with the task of supervision. That task fell to the elite.
“With all this talk of the emperor and empress riding east to Dalmiaka to make war against the Arethousan Emperor—I don’t know what to expect. None of us know what to expect.”
“Only God can see into the future, Lady Lavinia.”
“So true, Your Excellency! So very true!”
“Do not forget the tale of Queen Salome, who feared that a usurper would supplant her and so went to the witches and begged them to spy into the future on her behalf by raising the ghost of the prophet.”
“Yes, indeed. So it came to pass that for her impiety, a worthy successor took her place.”
“Yet was Queen Salome not a worthy regnant? She was humble. God Themselves raised her up to her high state. It was disobedience, not impiety, that caused her downfall. The witches did as they were told, and were not punished for their act. But the queen had disobeyed God’s voice when God commanded her to kill the tribe of Melia.”
“She was a mother herself! She did not like to put children to death.”
“God may often call upon us to do things that may seem distasteful to our imperfect understanding, but we must never hesitate. Obedience is righteousness.”
With such lessons Antonia strove to educate Lady Lavinia and her household: Hugh had hidden her in plain sight, installed her as a member of Lavinia’s schola, although in truth few visitors came and went from the lady’s palace and fewer still from the court in Darre and least of all any clerics from the palace of the skopos, who might have cause to recognize and betray Antonia.
“Very true, very true,” said the lady distractedly as she leaned on the casement and squinted out into the molten Setentre sun. “There! I see them.” She crossed to the door, paused, and turned. “Will you come to meet them, Your Excellency?”
“I am not walking well today, Lady Lavinia. Best if I bide here and have a tray brought up for my supper.”
“As you wish, Your Excellency.” She hurried out.
Better if Hugh comes to me, as a steward attends his mistress. Perhaps the ploy was beneath her, but her position seemed weak and Hugh’s all the stronger, and she felt it necessary to do what she could to remind him of her lineage and stature and the respect he owed her. She heard only such news as had trickled northward in the months since Decial, when she had arrived here still reeling from her imprisonment. Little enough to feed on, but she had learned to survive on scraps, and she now possessed the entire library hauled out of St. Ekatarina’s Convent, most especially their chronicle, the work of many hands and many generations, a treasure-house of knowledge and observation.