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“I will not yield on this matter. I am already married.”
She had endured much and complained not at all. She had not seen her own lands in more than four years. Her daughters grown apace while she was gone, her stewards in charge of Fesse, all this she had left behind because of her loyalty to Henry. She had lost half her men, and she had not complained. She had lost her heir, and she had not complained.
“There is a line even I will not cross, Sanglant. I have suffered too much to allow my lands to be laid under a ban because you have fixed on such a creature as that one.”
“A creature—do not insult her!”
“Do not misunderstand me. I do not dislike her. But they whisper about her. They fear her.”
“In Gent they placed flowers at her feet.”
“So they did,” she admitted. “Let the biscops and abbesses be content with her. Let the excommunication be lifted and the holy women offer their blessing. Then we shall see.”
“Will you support me, in that case? In Autun, when the ban is lifted from her?”
“We shall see.”
It was all she would promise. Her words worried at him as a dog worries at a much chewed bone.
“What have you heard?” he said at last. “What whispers?”
She was a cool one, educated, strong, fertile, and confident, his peer, equal to him in rank. Legitimately born, she needed no justification to hold her position and title as duchess of Fesse, the last descendant of Queen Conradina through the queen’s younger brother Eberhard, who had been Liutgard’s great grandfather.
“Do you listen to what you do not want to hear?” she asked him. “You ought to.”
2
THE palace at Goslar was one hundred years old, built in the days of the last queen regnant, Conradina. It boasted a sturdy hall, a stable, and a motley collection of outbuildings including a kitchen and a smithy. A shoulder-high palisade surrounded the palace. Beyond it lay gardens, orchards, fields, and the estate whose inhabitants tended the grounds year round. Goslar belonged to the Wendish regnant, but, as Liath recalled, the steward who administered it was appointed by the abbess at nearby Quedlinhame.
Thus they arrived to find Mother Scholastica entrenched with her retinue. Although outriders rode ahead to alert her to the king’s arrival, she did not emerge to offer Sanglant greeting but waited inside to receive him.
“She means me to appear as the supplicant,” he said to Theophanu and Liutgard, who rode on either side.
Liath sat, mounted, away from the rest of the noble companions, examining the scene thoughtfully. She appeared more interested in the layout of the buildings than in the architecture of court politics. For some reason she looked particularly beautiful today with her hair drawn back into a braid, her dusky face filled out and healthy, her blue eyes bright; that uncanny way they had of seeming now and again to spark with laughter or anger still startled him. She was no longer too thin, as she had been before: when he first met her; in their days at Verna; when she had returned to him after the cataclysm. Despite their constant travel and the occasional dearth of food on the trip north, she had gained flesh in all the right places. As he knew, and yet wanted to rediscover again and again and again.
Liutgard tapped his arm. “If you do not stop staring at her like a lackwit, then every soul in this army will continue to believe she has used her sorcerer’s power to bewitch you.”
Her sharp comment caught him off guard. He looked at her, then at Theophanu. Theophanu shrugged.
“Do you believe it?” he demanded.
“I do,” said Liutgard. “It’s said she ensorcelled Henry in the same manner.”
“That wasn’t her fault! Or her intent! She never had any interest in Henry. She’d already chosen me.”
“A wise decision, since Henry would never have married her,” observed Liutgard.
“What do you say, Theophanu?” he said, really irritated now.
She smiled as a cat might be said to smile, having the cream set before it. “I think you are famous for your weakness for women, Brother. It is remarkable that one contents you. Some might call that a form of magic.”
“Do you?”
She raised a tidy eyebrow. “I do not. She is handsome in a way that attracts men. The question might better be, why does she care for you above all other men when, it seems, she might have had any of them?”
Liutgard laughed for the first time in weeks. “Are you become a wit, Theophanu? Look at him! So brawny and handsome as he is. Women fall at his feet, and into his bed.”
“This is not amusing.”
