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On Dhearc, the shortest day of the year, light triumphed at last over the advance of night. Candles were lit to aid in that battle. Some fallen candle, surely, had kindled this fire; the bitter irony did not escape her. But Hanna could only sniff back tears, feeling the heat of fire blazing on her cheek as she held Liath and tried to get her to stop shaking and babbling and crying, but Liath could only go on and on about fire and rape and ice and power and sleep as if she had truly lost her mind.
“Liath,” said Hanna sharply, “you must stop this! The king has arrived.”
“The king,” whispered Liath. She sucked air in between clenched teeth. She struggled more fiercely than she had against Folquin’s hold, but in the end she fought herself out of hysteria and into something resembling control. “Stay by me, Hanna. Don’t leave me.”
“I won’t.” Hanna looked up as she tasted a new scent on the wind. “Is it raining?” But there were only a few clouds. “Look at the fire. It’s as if all the timber’s gone.” Indeed, the fire was ebbing, although it was as yet far too hot to venture close.
“Don’t leave me, Hanna,” Liath repeated. “Don’t ever leave me alone with him, I beg you.”
“Ai, Lady,” murmured Hanna, suddenly afraid. “He didn’t—”
“No.” Her voice dropped to a whisper, barely audible. Her hands gripped Hanna’s so tightly it hurt. “No, he didn’t have time to—” Her hands convulsed, her whole body jerking at some horrible memory. “I called, I reached for fire—” Shaking again, she could not go on. The wind had come up, fanning the flames. Beyond, king and retinue approached. Already a small entourage had gone out to meet him and give him the terrible news, although surely he could divine the worst from any distance. The air stank of burning.
“Hanna, don’t desert me,” Liath breathed. “I need you.” She rested her head on Hanna’s arms. Her hair was caked with soot, as were her arms and hands, every part of her. She was so grimy that anything she touched came away streaky with soot. “I didn’t know—I didn’t know what Da was protecting me from.”
“What was he protecting you from?” Hanna asked, mystified.
Liath looked up at her, and her bleak expression cut Hanna to the core. “From myself.”
7
SISTER Amabilia had saved the Vita of St. Radegundis.
This single thought kept leaping back so insistently into Rosvita’s mind that it became hard for her to attend to the council at hand. Brother Fortunatus sat at her feet, hands still gripping the loose pages of her History, which he had grabbed instead of the cartulary he had been working on. She had thanked him profusely, as he deserved, poor child. But though it would have been a blow to lose the History, she could write it again from memory.
Sister Amabilia had saved the Vita. Had it burned, it could never have been restored. Brother Fidelis was dead. Only this copy remained, except for the partial, also saved by Amabilia, which the young woman had herself been copying from the original.
Rosvita felt sick to her stomach just thinking about it. What if the Vita had been lost? Gone up in smoke to join its creator, Fidelis, where he rested in blessed peace in the Chamber of Light?
“But it did not,” she murmured.
Her clerics glanced at her, surprised to hear her comment while the king was speaking. She smiled wryly at them and made the gesture for Silence just as Amabilia opened her mouth to reply.
“… to the efforts of my faithful clerics who rescued my treasury and much of the business of the court, and mostly to Father Hugh. He stayed to the end until all who could be brought out of the fire were saved. He risked his own life with no thought for himself. Where is Father Hugh?”
“He is still with Princess Sapientia, Your Majesty,” said Helmut Villam.
They stood or sat, all in disorder, in the hall of a well-to-do merchant. Even so, most of the court could not crowd in. They had slept out in the fields and forest last night, in barns and hayricks and under such shelter as could be found, safely away from the fire. Rosvita had been glad of straw for bedding; most of the court and the townsfolk rousted from their homes had been glad simply to have a roof of some kind over their heads. It had rained half the night. Now, in the morning, with the palace smoldering and a light rain still falling, Henry had felt it safe enough to venture back into town and take shelter there while he held council.
Burchard, Duke of Avaria, and his duchess, Ida of Rovencia, sat beside the king. Burchard had the look of a man who has touched Death but not yet realized it; Ida looked stern, tired, and very old, as befit a woman who has seen her two eldest sons die untimely.
The king himself looked tired. Though his tent had been salvaged from the fire, he had not passed a restful night. Last to sleep, sitting by his pregnant daughter’s bed, he had been first to wake and with a number of attendants had walked to the palace to investigate the remains.
It was still too hot to enter. A few pillars stood, the remaining roof sloped precariously, about to cave in, and the stone chapel was scorched but otherwise intact. All the chapel valuables—a reliquary containing the dust of the thighbone of St. Paulina, the gold vessels for holy water, and the embroidered altar cloth—had been saved.
“What of the cause?” asked the king now.
A palace steward came forward. He had obviously slept in his clothing and himself risked his life in the fire, for his sleeves were ripped and stained with soot and the hood of his cape was singed and blackened. “No one knows, Your Majesty. All the Candlemass candles were carefully watched. We always set them in clay bowls so if they spill there won’t be danger of fire. Alas, the Lions have testified that some among their number fell asleep while gaming in the barracks. Perhaps they knocked over a lamp.”
Henry sighed. “I see no point in casting blame, not when a dozen souls lost their lives, may God grant them peace. Let us consider this as a sign that we take our leisure at our peril, as long as Gent remains in the hands of the Eika. Thus does our sport blind us to our duty. Let greater care be taken in the future.”
Sister Amabilia had saved the Vita of St. Radegundis from the fire.
The book lay on Rosvita’s lap, swaddled in a lamb’s wool blanket, the softest cradle Rosvita had found for it. She had slept with it clasped to her breast last night, though its presence had triggered strange dreams, and she would not let it out of her grasp today.
Was this obsession unseemly? Perhaps it would be best to give the original to the monastery at Quedlinhame and keep only Amabilia’s copy for herself, to keep herself free of the sin of esurience—that greedy hunger she had for the knowledge that had died with Brother Fidelis: his knowledge, some of which was retained in the Life he had written.
o;What was he protecting you from?” Hanna asked, mystified.
