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“You deserted me,” Antonia said, keeping her voice low so others would not hear. Long had it festered. Until this moment, she hadn’t realized how angry he had made her. “You disobeyed me! I never gave you permission to leave me.”
“I remember you,” said Heribert in a voice not his own. “He never liked you.”
“What do I care if he liked me or not! He is a bastard, no better than a dog! It is your desertion of the one to whom you owe allegiance that offends God.”
“I acted because of what was in my heart. I loved him, but he is lost to me and I can love no other.”
She slapped him.
His face, so finely bred and once so familiar, seemed that of a stranger as he carefully drew his sleeve out of her grasp and turned to the guards. “I would follow them I know,” he said with his back to her as if she were no better than a servant. No one to whom he owed fealty. No one who mattered one whit to him.
She fell, and fell, into the Pit, into a fit of coughing furious sickening rage, but he was already beyond her and she would not make a scene with servants walking past and Captain Falco watching beside the door with rebuking curiosity.
“Are you well, Your Excellency? I pray you are not ill.”
Falco did not so pray. He distrusted her. Few could love the righteous. They envied and hated them instead.
But her son. Her own son, for whom she had sacrificed so much!
Heribert would be punished, of course. Did it not state in the Holy Verses that children were commanded to respect and honor their mothers and fathers, or else be stoned to death?
Yet Heribert was weak. She knew that because she had raised him to be weak and compliant. It was the bastard, the false one, the enemy—Prince Sanglant—who had corrupted him.
Therefore, it was Sanglant who had to fall.
PART THREE
ADVENTUS
IX
WELL MET
1
THE adventus of Sanglant, son of Henry, into the ancient citadel of Quedlinhame at the head of his victorious army would be commemorated in poetry and song, Liath supposed, but no doubt the poets would sing of fine silken banners rippling in the breeze and gaily caparisoned horses prancing under the rein of their magnificently-garbed riders, a host splendid and brilliant beyond description, shining in the light of the sun. That’s what poets did. This ragged army and dreary day offered no fodder for song, so song would make of them something they were not.
But march they did along the road, silent, weary, hungry, but not beaten. On this gray, late winter day, the view before them was dominated by the hill and its ancient fortress, now the cloister ruled by Sanglant’s aunt, Mother Scholastica. The fields on one side of the road lay in stubble, and on the other a field of winter wheat had sprouted mostly weeds.
Scouts had ridden ahead to inform the abbess of their arrival, and that wise woman had sent her novices and nuns and monks out to line the road as a way of greeting the man who claimed the regnancy and who possessed, more importantly, the corpus of the dead king. Townspeople stood back, staring rather than cheering. They looked thin and pale. Like the wheat, they hadn’t had much to subsist on over the winter. As the army trudged between the rows of robed novices and sturdy monks, Liath peered into those faces, although she knew Ivar was long gone from Quedlinhame.
On that other adventus, so well remembered, Henry’s troops and clerics had sung triumphant hymns as a processional. That so many of Sanglant’s still breathed was a testament to his leadership, but certainly their arrival stirred no festive mood and no songs. Not yet. The songs would be written later.
No one in Wendar had heard Henry, with his dying breath, name Sanglant as his heir. In Wendar, Sanglant would have to fight with intrigue, diplomacy, and force of personality. These weapons, which he liked least, he would of necessity wield most.
It was not going to be easy.
That, certainly, became clear as soon as they saw the welcoming party arrayed in the middle of the road: two men and two women in cleric’s robes and a woman wearing the key and chain of the mayor. Liath sorted faces, and turned her attention inward in order to race through her palace of memory, marking names and features.
Sanglant was ahead of her in thought although he rode at her left hand on his gelding, Fest. She heard him mutter under his breath. The words escaped her, but the tone was sour.
“Ha!” said Duchess Liutgard, who rode to his left and was never shy of speaking her mind. “Now the game starts in earnest, Cousin. Where is your aunt? She has snubbed you by not coming out to greet you herself.”
“Is the insult worse to me, or to my father?” asked Sanglant grimly. “He deserves better state than this trifling welcome.”
A monk whose face seemed familiar to Liath came forward from the group and bowed his head. “Your Highness. You are welcome here to Quedlinhame, ancient home of your father’s grandfather’s maternal lineage. I pray you, Your Highness, let me lead your horse into the town as befits your rank.”
“You are the prior?” asked Sanglant.
