King's Dragon (Crown of Stars #1)

King's Dragon (Crown of Stars #1) Page 69

“No, Your Grace. He is bound by chains.”

Agius looked back sharply. Alain clamped his mouth shut. He had a sudden feeling that Frater Agius did not want him to speak about the Eika prisoner to the biscop. Agius had his own secrets and, evidently, his own plans. But the Lady smiled on him: Biscop Antonia did not ask any further questions about the prince.

“You are a well-spoken boy also. Quite unlike an untutored country lad.”

“I know my letters, Your Grace. Frater Agius has been kind enough to teach me to read, and I knew something of numbers from my aunt, who manages a large household.”

“She is a well-bred woman, I take it.”

He could not help but smile. “Yes, Your Grace. My Aunt Bel is a very fine woman, and mother of five living children and as many grandchildren born so far.” Perhaps more, since he had been gone; with the blanket last winter had come a verbal message that Stancy was pregnant again. Had the child been born yet? Did it live? Was it healthy? Had Stancy survived the birth? He was swept with such a sudden wave of homesickness that he almost faltered. He did not expect to miss them all so very much. Henri would be setting out again after Holy Week, as he did every year. Who would repair the boat this year? Who had tarred it last autumn? No one did as careful a job as Alain did. He hoped Julien was devoting as much time to helping Henri with the boat as he was to courting the young women in the village. And what of the baby? It must be well grown by now, if it had survived the winter. But surely it would have survived the winter; it was a healthy child, and Aunt Bel took good care of her own.

They walked for a time in silence. When they came to the clearing they halted to look out over the ruins, bare stone tumbled in a spring meadow strewn with yellow and white flowers. A broad stream ran along the other side of the clearing: He had not seen it on Midsummer’s Eve, but now the running water flashed in the midday sunlight as it flowed swiftly past the grass, bordered by a low rim of white stone, and vanished into the farther edge of forest.

“The Emperor Taillefer is said to have possessed a pack of black hounds,” said Biscop Antonia suddenly, her gaze on the ruins but her voice far away, as if she had been thinking about this during the long silence. “But so much is said about the Emperor Taillefer that one can scarcely know which is truth and which a story spun by the court poets for our entertainment.” Then, like an owl striking abruptly, she turned her gaze on Frater Agius. “Is that not true, Brother?”

“As you say, Your Grace.”

“Surely you have sterner views of truth than that, Frater Agius.”

He looked, oddly enough, ashamed. “I follow the Holy Word as well as I can, Your Grace, but I am imperfect and thereby a sinner. It is only through God’s unselfish love that I may be redeemed.”

“Ah, yes,” said the biscop. She smiled sweetly, but Alain suspected she and the frater had just conversed about something else entirely. “Shall we go down?”

They circled the clearing to find the original entrance, where a fallen gatehouse still stood sentry. Crossing into the ruin, Alain was struck by how different it looked now: No glamour gave the stone an unnatural gleam; shadows lay foreshortened on the ground, patches shading grass and overgrown paving. Once fine buildings had stood here. Now this was only a graveyard, the markers of a lost and forgotten time. He followed the biscop as she walked down the roadway, heading into the heart of the complex. She paused now and again to examine the carvings left on the stone: a double spiral, a falcon, its wings feathered with pockmarks, an elaborately dressed woman in a gown of feathers whose head was a hollow-eyed skull.

The clerics murmured, seeing these traces of the pagan builders. Lackling stubbed his toe on a half-buried block of stone and began to cry.

“There, there, child,” said the biscop, comforting him, though he was as grimy as only a stableboy could be. Agius stood with his hands folded at his waist and his gaze fixed disapprovingly on the altar house.

“Come along,” she said to Lackling. His sobs ended as soon as the pain faded, and he sidled away from her and dogged Alain’s heels. They arrived at the altar house. The clerics hung back, but Biscop Antonia crossed the threshold without the least sign of uneasiness. Alain followed her inside. Lackling would not enter.

“You came to these ruins,” said the biscop without turning round. She examined the white altar stone. “Or so I have heard the report, from Chatelaine Dhuoda, from Count Lavastine, and from the testimony of the half-free girl, Withi, who is to marry the young soldier. The girl told me she saw black hounds running in the sky but that you did not see them. She said when she first caught sight of you, you were looking toward this building and talking to the thin air, where no person or no thing stood. Did you see a vision?”