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rail lay dusty and level as they walked along, following the path of an irrigation ditch half overgrown with weeds. Everywhere she saw the legacy of conflict: ripe barley unharvested, fallow fields that should have been sown with winter wheat instead grown waist-high with weeds, a distant herd of cattle trampling through a stand of oats. Adelheid’s people could not come out; Ironhead either had sufficient supplies, or he chose to leave the fields to rot as a message to the people trapped within the walls.
The young noblewoman said nothing as they walked, kept her hood down over her face to disguise her Wendish features. The loose robe disguised her body but could not hide her height. Even here, alone, she kept silence: practiced it, Rosvita supposed, for the time when Rosvita’s skill at dissembling would see them through the lines or find them exposed and taken prisoner.
John Ironhead might be merciful and take a ransom for them, or he might be stubborn. Rosvita knew better than to dwell on such thoughts. Yet she was glad enough of Leoba’s silence and the careful way she concealed herself from view. As they walked, Rosvita rehearsed her speech, trying quietly on her tongue the slurs and lisps with which these northern Aostans disfigured the clean sounds of Dariyan.
Ironhead’s main encampment lay to the west. Here along the northern wall where only a postern gate opened along the river, his guards had set up watch posts. They had been here long enough that some had built shacks, and there was a brisk business with prostitutes who now left those same shacks in twos and threes to slip back into town, hands clutched over coins or gripping scarves wrapped around bread and cheese. A few vendors had come from town, too, cloaked by night, and now here at dawn they packed up their wares, gorgeous silks, linens, silver spoons, such luxuries that, in the face of dwindling food supplies, might not seem so important when children cried with hunger.
“Here, Sisters! Where have you come from?” The guard who stopped them had greasy hair, and a thread of meat had caught in his yellowed teeth.
“Which kind of sisters?” cried another guard, snorting with laughter as he grabbed roughly at their hoods. He yanked back Rosvita’s hood and they all exclaimed over her northern paleness; then, with a stick, he prodded back the hood that concealed Leoba.
Rosvita’s heart curdled with fear. It was not Leoba at all. Yet surely she should have known what would happen when the princess acquiesced so graciously as Rosvita insisted that it would be too dangerous for Theophanu herself to attempt to slip through the lines. If Ironhead’s men caught them, he would have a noble prisoner to ransom and a sharp blade to hold over her father’s head. Obviously her words had fallen on deaf ears. Theophanu neither flinched nor showed any expression as the guards poked at her with their sticks. Clearly they had not been in Ironhead’s camp yesterday: they did not recognize her.
The thought hit her at random, like the voice of the Enemy whispering of betrayal: no person seeing Sanglant for the first time could mistake him for anything but a king’s son. But without her retinue, it was impossible to know how exalted Theophanu’s status was.
“Mayhap we should turn these over to Lord John,” said the greasy guard.
“We are good deacons of the church, as you can see,” said Rosvita coldly, slurring and lisping her words as much as she could manage. The anger she did not need to feign, and if she spilled it out on them, then perhaps she would manage not to betray her anger at her lady for putting herself in such jeopardy. “We have come all this long walk from the archbiscop’s palace at Raveni because we heard that many women have fallen into disrepute due to this siege, which disturbs God’s peace. We mean to lead them back onto the path of righteousness.”
“Is there much bread on the path of righteousness?” demanded the greasy guard, and this jest earned him a round of laughter from his companions.
“There is no bread sweeter than God’s forgiveness,” retorted Rosvita sternly. “Will you pray with us, Brothers?”
Bu they didn’t want to pray; they were satiated, and bored, and saw no threat in two deacons crazy enough to want to enter a besieged city. But they were alert enough to argue.
“We’ve orders not to let anyone go in. You’ll bring them news.”
“Oh, hell, Aldericus, the whores take news in every day. You can’t tell me that you don’t squeal out bits of gossip before, during, and after. Half those whores are spies for the queen.”
“Lady’s tits, for all we know, one of them whores is the queen! That’s a hot line of women, they say, going back to old Queen Cleitia when she ruled Darre. They say she took no less than six husbands and made every new presbyter prove himself to her on her couch and the ones she liked best were forced to satisfy her again and again and again until she tired of them or a handsome new face come along. It’s no wonder she warred with the skopos, who in those days was of a similar mind. That’s all women think about!”
They all snickered and guffawed, but some watched her and Theophanu closely. Rosvita could not hide her scorn, but Theophanu had the Arethousan gift of showing no emotion; her expression remained guileless and haughty.
“There is much sickness in the town.” Rosvita had brought silver with her, but she wondered now if a bribe would seem too suspicious. “Both my young Sister and I are healers, and God have spoken to us and told us to come minister as we can among the sick and the sinful. And we shall wait here, praying, in this camp and tell each of our sisters in sin that they must turn aside from the path of folly and uncleanliness, for every day and every week as long as you are here, my brothers, until we are allowed to go inside to help those who are in need.”
As a threat, it worked well enough. None of the guards wanted holy sisters praying publicly and attracting attention to the illicit activity taking place under the shadow of the siege.
“Go on! Follow the whores! You’ll get less pleasure from them than we did, I’d wager!”
With laughter and mocking calls at their backs, they crossed the no-man’s-land, the empty stretch of ground that marked out a bow’s shot from the walls, and came to the postern gate.
The city guards were thinner, and less cheerful, and didn’t want to let them in in case they were spies sent by Ironhead. Rosvita had to bribe one with silver to get through the gate, but after he’d palmed the slender bars, he took her despite that to the guardhouse. The stone barracks built up against the wall stank of filth and excrement, and most of the soldiers lounging on the cots or on the floor were sick with colds or open, raw sores. But they did not look dispirited. The stone walls wept moisture; it stank of mold and unwashed sweat. Rosvita sneezed, and their escort murmured reflexively: “Health to you, Sister. May the Enemy’s creatures all flee your body and leave you whole.”
The captain had his own windowless room at the base of the guardhouse. There was no door, only a ragged cloth hung across the threshold. A rash covered one side of the captain’s face, and his nose wept mucus. The soldier set the silver bribe down on the table before him while he sipped at a cup of wine and eyed them with the resignation of a man who has heard it all.
“I tolerate the whores and the peddlers because every scrap of bread they bring in gives us a brief reprieve on our stores of grain. And because they bring us news. But I have no patience for spies, even ones robed as clerics.”
“And I have no patience with fools,” said Theophanu, coming to life at last. She had remained silent for a long time. “I am Theophanu, daughter of King Henry of Wendar.” As if she knew he might doubt her claim, she pulled her robe away from her neck to reveal her gold torque.
That was all it took.
The captain jumped to his feet. “Your Highness! I’d heard that a force had come from the north, but I thought it was just a rumor. People will say anything to get a scrap of bread, and Ironhead’s men aren’t idiots. They know to feed us lies. If this is true—”
“If it is true,” Theophanu pointed out coolly, “then you had better escort us to Queen Adelheid at once.”
Their escort led them through winding streets to the heart of Vennaci: a huge open square fronted on four sides by the cathedral, the town hall, the marketplace, and the palacio. There they were handed over to the care of a steward. The servants who haunted the palacio corridors, like the soldiers, looked thin, but nowhere in the streets or among the soldiery or the citizens of Vennaci did Rosvita see panic or the flush of desperation which precedes defeat. There was enough water, and obviously someone was doing a good job of administering the food supply.
But the grain stores couldn’t hold out forever.
