Ermanrich wiped his tears and said nothing, only held Ivar’s hand and, after a moment, walked with him to the fields so that the convulsions would be witnessed by as many guards as possible.
Ivar hoed for a while, but his heart wasn’t in it. He kept waiting, knowing each tremor that rippled through his muscles would be followed by a harder one. Once a shudder passed through him with such force that he dropped the hoe. When he bent to pick it up, he lost his balance, pitched forward onto the ground, and sucked up a quantity of dusty soil and a shriveled weed just an instant before hooked out of the earth.
“Ivar!” shrieked Hathumod.
He spasmed. A hot flood of urine spilled along his legs, soaking into the ground. He tried to rise, but his arms were useless; they would not respond.
“Plague!” shouted Ermanrich, weeping again.
Shouts rang in the distance. Shudders passed through his frame in waves, strong at first and then each one receding as his vision blurred and hearing faded.
In a waking dream he watched the sky pass overhead, a pale blue almost drained white by the heat of the sun. One cloud spilled past and was lost. He was awake and aware, but not really awake, still dreaming, because he could not move at all, could not truly even feel his own limbs or the rise and fall of his chest. Maybe this was what death felt like. Maybe he was dead, and the gamble had failed.
The ground juddered beneath him as the heavens rolled past above, and after a long contemplative interlude it occurred to him that he was lying in the cart that made runs between the village and the palisade. The shroud covering his body had slipped off his face, and the sun beat down hard. He’d be burned; he knew that much. Sun always burned him if he didn’t keep covered, but he couldn’t move to cover himself and there was some reason he ought not to. Some secret. He had a secret he was keeping.
“Whist! There! What’s that, Maynard?”
“A whole cavalcade. Some mighty noble, I wager.”
“Must be the lady duchess.”
“Ai, yes, so it must.” Maynard hawked and spat. “So. For her.”
“Careful. She’d as like ride her horse over you as spare you for the mines, so they say.”
The cart jounced over the ruts that made the road as the Garters pulled their vehicle aside so the noble procession could pass unimpeded. He heard the clamor of the approach, hooves, talk, a smattering of song, and the rumble of wagon wheels, all wafting over him as the summer breeze did, felt and forgotten and beyond him, now, who was dead. Or so he remembered.
Sparks of memory clotted into recollection. He was carrying a message for Biscop Constance, written on a tiny strip of parchment that they’d rolled up in a bit of oiled sheepskin and which he now concealed within his cheek like a squirrel storing nuts against the coming winter dearth. He was only pretending to be dead.
That was a relief!
“Is that a corpse you’re hauling?” a voice asked.
“Don’t come no closer. One of the folk in St. Asella’s died a nasty death, and they feared it’s some manner of plague brought up from the south with the soldiers.”
“God save us! Have they all fallen sick?”
“Nay, none other. It might only be demons that chewed away the poor lad’s vitals. But they’re taking no chances so we’re to haul him out to the woods where there’s an old church abandoned in days gone. Our deacon’ll say the rites over him there.”
“Let me see him!”
This new voice belonged to a woman. Ivar recognized that imperious tone, rankling and sour. A face loomed to one side. It was a woman past her prime, mounted on horseback, seen out of the corner of his vision and after a lengthy gasp of shade—for she blocked the sun—the light blasted him again and he would have blinked but he could not.
“He’s not breathing, my lady duchess,” said another person. “Ought we to turn aside?”
“Nay, I do not fear the plague. We’ve had no word of it in this region. No doubt some other ill felled him. Elfshot, maybe.”
“True enough, my lady. We’ve heard many a tale of shades haunting the woods in greater numbers than ever, bold as you please and afflicting the common folk who do fear even to seek wood and game though they’ve need of it. Do you suppose that’s what felled this young fellow?”
“It might have.”
With the easy stream of their conversation flowing past, his thoughts began to coalesce into proper order, although their sluggish pace frustrated him. The Garters would dump him in the wood at an old oak tree where the old gods had once demanded sacrifice. A chapel dedicated to Saint Leoba stood there now, proof against lightning, a boon to the righteous. As he must be, if he meant to carry word of Biscop Constance’s plight to Princess Theophanu.