The Burning Stone (Crown of Stars #3)

The Burning Stone (Crown of Stars #3) Page 180

“This is barbaric!” muttered Theophanu.

“I advise that we retire, Your Highness,” murmured Rosvita in return. “I fear we’ll get no satisfaction here.”

“Then how can we reach Adelheid, or even let her know we are here?” whispered Theophanu. “Lord John has thrown up more obstacles than I thought possible.”

As the prisoners were led away, there came a sudden commotion from the road that led to the north gate, which John’s encampment faced. A young woman had entered the camp, but she staggered, shrieking, with her hair unbound and all in a tangle. When she saw the lord under the canopy, she wailed more loudly still and scratched at her cheeks until blood ran. An infant slept in a sling at her hip, and the blood dripping from her face stained its tiny legs like a sudden blooming of the cowpox.

“Bring that woman to me,” cried John. Hustled forward with more haste then courtesy, still, she did not flinch when she was flung down to kneel before Ironhead. “What is the matter with you, woman? All this crying and wailing makes my ears ring.”

“What kind of mighty warrior makes war on women who have no weapons? Some among our sex do truly take up arms, and to them I commend your violent ways, but the rest of us have heeded the words of Our Lady and we use only the tools given us by the Queen of Heaven. But now I see you have decided to make war upon those of us who have sworn to do our Lady’s work on this earth.”

He looked affronted. “I do not make war on any woman except those who have taken up arms like a man, like the Sazdakhs of old.”

“Is it not a war you make upon us when you deprive us of what is ours by right? You took my cattle a month or more ago, and never once have I complained of that. But now you seek to take from me that which can never be regained once it is lost.” She gestured toward the prisoners. Ironhead shrugged, as if to say he did not understand her. “You will castrate them, as is your habit, my lord, but by what right do you take from them that member which does not belong to them?”

“Well, then, to whom does it belong, if not to them?” he demanded as the soldiers around chuckled. More had gathered; a siege was boring business, and any distraction was welcome.

“Why, to their wives, of course!” she retorted indignantly. “What else keeps us warm at night? What gives us the children we so dearly desire?” She set a work-roughened hand on the sleeping infant. Drying blood stained her coarse fingernails. “Take what else you will from me, my lord, but not that which is most important to me!”

At this, the soldiers all began to laugh uproariously and even John guffawed. “I can’t defend myself against such an argument,” he cried. “Very well, then. You may have your husband back unharmed. But tell me, woman, I must have some means to discipline those who take up arms against me. If your husband fights me again, what may I remove?”

The young woman hesitated only a moment. “He has feet, hands, a nose, eyes. Take what you will of the things that belong to him, but I pray you, leave to me that which is mine.”

This speech sent the soldiers into another great round of laughter. Theophanu, too, smiled slightly as the woman’s husband was unchained from the rest of the wretches fated to go under the knife. “I hope her husband is worthy of such a clever wife,” she said as woman, man, and baby were escorted away.

But Rosvita bent lower, to speak more softly. “I am thinking,” she said slowly, “that if one woman can come out of the city, then another can get in.”

*   *   *

“I am against it,” said Brother Fortunatus. “What if you are caught?”

“I am a cleric,” insisted Rosvita. “Lord John is unlikely to harm me. It he takes me prisoner, I will appeal to the skopos in Darre.”

“Then let me go with you.”

Rosvita indicated the pallet on which poor young Constantine lay moaning, clutching his belly. He had foolishly drunk from standing water and now had a flux. “You must safeguard the books, Brother,” she said to Fortunatus, “and care for young Constantine. Even if he were well, he’s still too young and inexperienced, and I couldn’t trust him to watch over things as you can.”

The arduous trip over the mountains had stripped Fortunatus of both bulk and humor. He frowned now. “Sister Amabilia could have talked you out of this.”

“Nay, Brother. She would have insisted on coming with me.”

That forced a laugh from him, but their leave-taking was somber.

The sun had not yet risen; mist muted the edges of camp and made the tents into hulking beasts hidden by cloud. From among her women Theophanu had chosen Leoba, who was tall, strong, and a trifle reckless, to accompany Rosvita. Too many sent together would attract notice; one deacon alone might attract mischief. With her face and figure concealed in a cleric’s robe and hood, Leoba waited for her at the edge of camp together with the two guards who would escort them through the lines. The dawn mist robed them in secrecy as they passed through undergrowth, crossed a narrow stream, and then left the guards behind at the farthest sentry post on the lip of the flat plain. The hill on which the gates and towers of Vennaci stood shone in mist and the first glimmer of the sun. They walked across empty fields to one of the old paths on which laborers had once made their way back to the safety of the city walls at night.