The Gathering Storm (Crown of Stars #5)

The Gathering Storm (Crown of Stars #5) Page 137

“Look at me.”

Gerwita lifted her head. She had scraped her forehead on the stone; blood trickled into her eyes.

“Did you betray us willingly? For money? Preferment? Out of desire?”

Tears streamed down Gerwita’s round face. At first she seemed unable to speak, but finally she choked out words. “N—nay, Sister Rosvita. I would never betray you willingly, not for anything. B—but he threatened my family. I have a younger brother who is a novice at St. Galle’s, a great honor for our family for we are not of the first rank. He said he feared that harm would come to him, if I did not heed him and aid him. I believed him, Sister. I believed he could harm my brother.”

“Why did you not come to me with this tale at the time?”

“B—because you were in the dungeon!” she cried, outraged and furious and humiliated. “How could you have helped me?”

“What did he want from you in exchange? He can’t have known that an earthquake would strike Darre. He can’t have guessed that it would provide the opportunity for my escape.”

She hid her face in her hands, ashamed. Rosvita could barely make out her muffled words. “He wanted to know what you knew, how much you knew, about the Holy Mother, Anne. The skopos. I—I told him.” She wept again, choking and coughing on the sobs. “God forgive me. I told him everything.”

Fortunatus began to chuckle, then laughed outright.

Outraged, Heriburg slapped him across the face.

“Child!” Obligatia’s voice rang like a hammer.

“Nay, nay, give me silence for a moment,” said Rosvita, rising. Fortunatus’ cheek was red, but the slap had not discomposed him; he still smiled with his usual sly irony, fond of finding a friendly joke in the weaknesses of others. “Brother Fortunatus is right. Gerwita, you did not betray me at all. I think, Daughter, that you may have saved my life.”

“How?” said several of them at once, disbelieving.

Gerwita was too startled to protest.

“Why didn’t Hugh have me killed? I saw him murder Villam. I know he is a maleficus, that he used condemned sorcery to imprison King Henry by insinuating a captured daimone—the very one that had been trapped in the stone crown at the height of this rock—into the king’s corpus. Why didn’t he kill me? My testimony, which is worth something, I believe, could and would condemn him in front of an ecclesiastical court.”

Silence from the rest of them, waiting, tense, confused.

Only Fortunatus understood.

“Because he means to use me to protect himself against Anne. Holy Mother Anne does not know how much. I know about her past. She does not know that I know the secret of her birth, of her incestuous marriage. That her mother still lives.”

“Her incestuous marriage—?” Obligatia whispered faintly, slumping.

“I pray you, Mother. Let me explain later. I think you need not be ashamed of your son’s behavior. Yet think. Hugh knows what I know, because of what Gerwita told him. If I am alive, then he holds a weapon to use against Anne, if need be.”

“Why would he want to harm the Holy Mother?” asked Aurea.

“Because he is an ambitious man. That is his weakness, as Fortunatus has seen.”

“I do not think Presbyter Hugh so simple as to have only one reason for anything he does,” added Fortunatus. “There may be other reasons he has left you alive, Sister Rosvita.”

Hanna spoke harshly. “Perhaps only to let you know that he holds the power of life and death over you. There are a few creatures in this world who hunger for that kind of power.”

“So there are,” agreed Rosvita. “But he does not have me yet, and I do not mean for him to capture me at all.”

She turned to regard Mother Obligatia, who simply nodded, as if she expected the speech that would come next.

“You must trust me, Mother. Where is your prisoner?”

“Not far from here, safely interred. She no longer speaks to us, but I think her still sane.”

“And the creatures from whom you have received your bread—what of them?”

“They are not ours. Soon after we fled into the depths, we found one wounded, and did our best to heal it. After that, one among their number led us to a spring deep beneath the rock beside which one could harvest this bread—although it is no true bread. On this nourishment we have subsisted.”

“Leave your prisoner behind. Free her if need be. I agree that it would sit ill with a good conscience to murder her when she is helpless. Let others judge her and bring her to trial for her sins. We do not have time. Gather up what you must. We will carry you, Mother.”