“A servant meant to carry messages,” retorted Hathui. “By all accounts, although I never saw him, King Arnulf was a kinder master than Anne.”
“Weary,” whispered Hedwig.
Liath leaned forward. “We have exhausted you. I pray you, pardon us.”
“He was weary,” Hedwig repeated, strengthened, it seemed, by a hint of annoyance that she was dismissed so easily when it was to her that Liath had come in the first place. “When I saw him here. The last time. Weary. Troubled. Sad. So might a man be who is at war within himself. Such a man can never be trusted. He can never trust himself.”
Her breath whistled. The speech had winded her. They waited, listening to her labored breathing.
Finally, Liath shook herself and rose. “I thank you for what you have told me, Hedwig.”
The old Eagle’s fingers stirred but she could not, it seemed, lift them off the blanket. Nor could she speak. She wheezed a little.
“I will send Clara to attend you,” said Waltharia.
They left, stepping out into the cold, dark night. The wind stung nostrils and eyes as they walked across the courtyard. At the entrance to the hall, servants were dispatched to take coals, a hot poultice, and an attendant to sit out the night with the old woman.
“Why do the Villams shelter her?” he asked. “Has she no family to take her in?”
Waltharia’s smile made him uncomfortable, and she glanced first at Liath and only after that at him. “She was for a short time one of my father’s many, many mistresses.”
The Eagle was so old a woman that it was easy to forget that Villam, too, had lived a long life.
“My mother, before she died, made me swear to take her in if she needed shelter in her old age.”
“Your mother? Why would she trouble herself in such a way?”
She glanced at Liath. They looked. They smiled, each a little. They did not look at him. “Because my father would not. My father was a good man and a strong and canny margrave, Sanglant, but thoughtless in other ways. Hedwig was one of my mother’s young servants. She became an Eagle after—well, it was considered a disgrace in her family. They threw her out. Had my mother not made provision for her care, she would have died as a pauper.”