Elliott, Kate - Crown of Stars 1 (15 page)

liath
was turning leaves and manure into the damp ground for next year's garden when Hugh appeared from the stable, leading his piebald mare. She glanced up at him, but he said nothing and seemed content to watch her work. When she had finished the row, she stopped, leaning on her shovel, and regarded him evenly.

He smiled, looking pleased with himself. "I'll be gone for twelve days, north to Freelas to get news from the biscop and to minister to the holdings between here and the town. You may take your meals at the inn while I'm gone. But you will dine with me on Ladysday after next."

Liath ducked her chin, in assent. He had ridden to Freelas six weeks ago and been gone eight glorious days. Something in her expression must have given away her feelings. He dropped the mare's reins and walked forward. Stopping before her, he lifted a very clean, very white hand and brushed her tangled hair, that which had escaped from her braid, back out of her eyes while she held herself stiff.

"There," he said, and went back to the mare. He swung on with the leisurely grace of much practice and studied Liath a moment longer from this high seat. "Take a bath. There's an underdress and a fine long gown in the chest. I want you to wear those when we dine." He reined the piebald around and rode off to the road and away, north, into the forest. Oddly, for a man wearing a frater's plain brown robe, split for riding and

thrown over a nobleman's dress of tunic and hose, he wore his long sword strapped to his back.

Liath finished five more rows before she went to the kitchen to wash her face and hands. The water from the well was cold and getting colder as summer passed into autumn. Oh, yes, the summer had passed easily enough. But it was getting chilly at night. Last night she had been grateful when Trotter had rolled up against the wood rail set between her dry bed of straw and the pigs' pen, to give her warmth at her back.

She sighed and dried her hands on her tunic, then stoked up the fire to keep the great copper pot of porridge simmering. It was a little too hot in the cookhouse, a small building set a few strides away from the sprawling haphazard warren of chambers that had grown out over many years from the chapel. The central core of this warren of rooms had been built, it was said, by a frater from the kingdom of Aosta. Unaccustomed to the cold winters, he had sealed and insulated the timber frame so the building kept in warmth too well. She had probably been more comfortable out in the pig shed this summer than Hugh had been in his cell.

She sneezed, wiped a scrap of straw from her face, and went outside. Sun shone down on the autumn trees, turned gold and fire-red, and on their taller, evergreen companions. Hugh rode out frequently to make his rounds of the sick and dying and those isolates who simply wanted the comfort of a holy man's sermons and prayers, but those rounds lasted an afternoon or, at best, a single night. She had not dared, when he rode before to Freelas, to go anywhere or to attempt anything, she had been so sure for all eight of those days that he was simply lurking out of her sight waiting to catch her out. But Hugh
did
have his duties, and he did carry them out faithfully. This time, perhaps, she could risk the hike up to where Hanna had buried the book.

She thought of the book constantly. Could hardly fail to, because though Hugh had not spoken of it once this long summer, she knew it was always in his thoughts.

She knew it by the way he looked at her, by the way he fingered the other books in front of her, as if to remind her of what she had hidden from him.

There are degrees of freedom among the unfree. Hugh owned her body. He did not own her mind or her soul.
The Book of Secrets
still belonged to her.

She rummaged through the storage rooms until she found a piece of oilcloth and the hand towel. With a last glance up the north road, she set off west into the rolling wooded hills.

It was fine early autumn weather. As she left behind church and chapel, pig shed and stables, kitchen and garden, she felt a weight lift from her. Hugh's oppressive presence, everything that reminded her of her loss of freedom
—all these, for this short walk, were gone. For this hour, she was no longer chained in the ranks of the unfree. Da would have wept to see her so, knowing that it was his own folly that had forced her into slavery. Poor Da. She wiped away a tear. She was so lonely.

A bird trilled. A squirrel chirruped and scampered out along a branch. Fallen leaves and summer's debris cushioned her strides. She sang. It came out husky and low at first, hesitant, then with more confidence; she sang an old song her mother had taught her, words whose meaning she did not know although they had a mellifluous flow that joined with the exotic melody to make beauty. She knew Dariyan well enough that she could guess these words were related to the language of that long-dead empire, for they were some of the same cadences.

"Liath."

She stopped dead. "Hanna?"

Behind, an animal rustled in the trees. But when she whirled to look, there was nothing there. A trick of the breeze or the wish of her mind. The faint memory of her mother's voice. That was all. She went on.

When she came to the clearing where the ancient oak stood, she paused at the edge of the trees and listened for a long time and intently. A bird sang, the same repeated five-note whistle. In the distance she heard a steady, rhythmic chopping, someone out getting wood. Nothing else. She was alone.

After so long, she was amazed how vividly the book came to mind, how she could feel the texture of its pages against her skin, changing as the reader leafed through the book. For
The Book of Secrets
was truly three books, bound together.

The first book was written on parchment in Dariyan, the language of the church and of the old empire which had been born in the city of Darre, far to the south where now the skopos reigned at the great Hearth of Our Lady. Except for the first three pages it was all written in her father's hand or, toward the end, in her own, a long and rather confused compilation of the knowledge gleaned over the years by a mathematicus, thrown together as though Da had copied every reference he could remember or find in whatever library had been at hand during his travels. Although she had not memorized the entire florilegia, scraps of it emerged, quotations like fish swimming to the surface.

"Astronomy concerns itself with the revolutions of the heavens, the rising and setting of the constellations, their movements and names, the motions of the stars and planets, Sun and Moon, and the laws governing these motions and all their variations. . . .

"The mathematici seek the secrets of the heavens even beyond these laws, for such movements invoke the powers and such powers can be used for sorcery. . . .

"So also the sea wonderfully agrees with the Moon's circuit. They are always companions in growing and waning. . . .

"If in the month of Novarian you ring the bell for Vigils when you see Arktos rise, then thirty psalms may be sung without difficulty. . . .

"Do not shave when the Moon is in the sign of the Falcon.
...

"In this manner, when Aturna and Erekes are in opposition, the daimones of the seventh sphere may he drawn down through the second sphere and if the Moon is full her influence will pull them into the bonds of your invocation.
..."

The third book was written in the infidel way
—on paper—and in the infidel's language, its curling loops and swirls like fanciful bird tracks. This was the great Jinna astronomical tract,
On the Configuration of the World,
written by the infidel scholar al-Hasan ibn al-Haithan al-Tulaytilah. This copy came from the great scholar's own scribes, for they had met him when they resided for over two years at the court of the Kalif of Qurtubah in the infidel kingdom of Andalla.

The oldest and most frail of the books, written on yellowed and brittle papyrus, was bound into the middle. The hand that had painstakingly written out each word and page had done so in an alphabet she did not know, but the ancient text was glossed with notes in Arethousan. Its contents remained a mystery, for Da could not read the old text either, and though he knew Arethousan, there was simply no time to teach her a new and difficult language. What time they did have for learning he used to hone the skills she had: her memory city, her knowledge of the stars, her understanding of Wendish and Dariyan and Jinna. According to Da, she had spoken Salian and Aostan as a child, but she had long since forgotten them.

"Better to know three languages well than half a dozen badly, "
he would say to her.

The bird whistled again. Nothing moved except wind through the branches. She took in a breath for courage and walked across the clearing to kneel beside the old oak. Low, among roots bursting up through the ground, a little den lay, half filled in with leaves and debris. She worked quickly with the trowel, digging it out.

A branch snapped behind her. Birds shrieked, wings beating as they lifted out of the trees toward the safety of the sky. Silence fell. She started up, but it was too late.

Fool, and a greater fool yet. There stood Hugh at the clearing's edge, smiling. He walked forward slowly, savoring his victory. Liath planted her feet on either side of the gaping hole, even raised the trowel in useless protection. But what good would a garden trowel do against a man trained at arms and carrying a sword?

"Dig it out," he said, halting before her. He was too fine a man to get his hands dirty or to sully the hem of his fine azure tunic
—where had his frater's robe gone?—by kneeling in the dirt.

She threw the trowel down. "No. Do it yourself."

He hit her so hard backhanded that she fell stunned to the ground. She could not make her hands move, or her legs, but she heard the soft noise the trowel made, stabbing into the dirt and debris and spilling it to one side, a shower of earth, like water.

Hugh gave a satisfied grunt. "There," he murmured.

She pulled in a deep breath, sucking in a cloud of fine dirt, and choked, coughing. But she could move again. She could not let him get the book. It was all that was left to her. She shoved herself up, trembling, only to see Hugh shake out an empty roll of cloth.

He stared. Streaked with dirt and damp from earth and leaves, the cloth stirred sluggishly in the breeze. Horrified, she scrambled forward on her hands and knees and dug frantically into the den. But the den was empty.

"It's gone!" She slumped forward and leaned her head against the oak.
Gone.
Some animal had rooted it out and torn it to bits. A child, digging for eggs, had found it and taken it home for fuel for the fire. Ai, Lady and Lord! Such a precious thing, to be lost so stupidly. If she had only thought of a better place to hide it, but she had only had one brief chance, begging Hanna before she was dragged off by Marshal Liudolf to her jail; the old oak was their favorite meeting place. What if Hanna had not hidden the book at all, but had only said she had? What if Hanna had taken it for herself
—?

But this was Hugh's influence. If she could not trust Hanna, then nothing and no one, ever again.

"Damn you," said Hugh. "A pretty charade. But I'll have the book, Liath. I am more patient than you can imagine."

She ducked her head, waiting for the blow, but it never came. She heard his footsteps and turned to see him walking away. He vanished into the forest. A moment later she caught a glimpse of his mare; the sound of their passage through the undergrowth receded into the afternoon.

She began to cry, then squeezed her eyes shut. She would not give in to despair. All summer she had held out. If she gave in now, she might as well give herself entirely to Hugh.

"Never that," she said in a low voice. She wiped hard at her eyes to let the pain still the tears and, finally, went back to the chapel. First, she must talk to Hanna. As Da always said:
"Take one step at a time so you may know where to place the next one."

This time, wise to Hugh, she waited an entire day before she went to the inn. Master Hansal stood outside, daubing chinks in the timber walls. He laid off working when he saw her. "Greetings, child," he said in his slow, gruff voice. He looked to see her. "Prater Hugh came by yesterday to say he's off to Freelas for these twelve days to visit the biscop. You're to eat with us. Very generous, to my mind."

Very generous.
Liath touched a hand to her left temple, where Hugh had hit her. It still hurt. "Good day, Master Hansal. Is Hanna in?"

"Yes. She's inside, helping the Mistress. I'm sure she can visit a moment, if you've time."

"Thank you." She hurried inside, relieved to get away from him.

Mistress Birta leaned over the great hearth, placing scrubbed turnips one by one into a bank of coals set off from the blazing fire. Finishing, she straightened. "Liath! It gladdens my heart to see you, child. Prater Hugh was by."

Liath stopped short. Where was Hanna? "Mistress Birta. I give you greetings in return."

Birta shook out her apron. She smelled of scallions. "I am well, truly, by the blessing of Our Lady and Lord. And you, lass? I was sore worried, I confess, after your father died. But the frater has been generous, more than generous, that I can say. There's many a freeholder works harder 'an you and lives not so well nor eats meat four times a week. I don't say you don't deserve it, mind. He's not a bad man, is Frater Hugh. A bastard he might be, and proud, but he's of noble blood, so we must expect that. I've never heard it said that he's stinted in his duties. Never afraid of the sick or too high to visit the humblest. Why, old Martha by River's Bank, dying of the pox, asked him to lay hands on her for his blessing and he was not afraid to do so."