“I wasn’t there,” said Sanglant, “or it wouldn’t have happened.”
Liath pushed away from him, but she left the book in his hands. “It’s true enough, everything they say.”
“Let us not have this argument again, Liath. You are my wife, and will be my queen.”
“I pray you, Your Majesty,” said Hathui. “Listen.”
Footsteps drummed on the church’s porch as with the flowering dawn came the many nuns and monks and clerics to sing the morning service. Mother Scholastica walked at their head, attended by the great nobles of the realm: Duchess Liutgard, Duke Burchard leaning on a staff, Margrave Gerberga, Margrave Waltharia, the children of Duchess Rotrudis the four biscops, three abbots, and many more. Hugh was not among them.
Yesterday the assembly had sung the mass while, beneath, workers had prepared a place in the crypt beside Queen Mathilda. This morning Henry would be laid to rest, and the world would go on.
“Sanglant,” said his aunt as she halted in front of him. He kissed her ring. She turned to his siblings. “Theophanu. Ekkehard.” They kissed her ring in like manner as the monastics filed forward along the aisles on either side as a stream of bowed heads and folded hands.
“There is much yet to be discussed,” said Mother Scholastica. She looked at Liath but did not, precisely, acknowledge her. “But that must wait. Who will carry Henry’s bones into the crypt?”
“The great princes,” said Sanglant, “as is fitting.”
He stepped aside to allow Mother Scholastica to move forward into the apse and up to the holy altar. Hathui retreated into the shelter granted by Fulk and his soldiers. The great princes crowded up behind Sanglant as he knelt on the lowest step, Theophanu to his right and Ekkehard to his left. They were silent as Mother Scholastica raised both hands and the assembled monastics sang the morning service.
“Let us praise and glorify God, who are Eternal.”
Sanglant could not keep his thoughts on the psalms, which flowed past him as might boats on a river spilling onward toward the eternal sea that is God. Memories of his father spun into view and then receded from sight: setting him on the back of his first pony, giving him his first set of arms, teaching him the names of birds, sending him out to his first battle arrayed in the Dragon’s plumage, explaining somberly to him why he could not marry Waltharia, laughing over mead, repudiating and exiling Wolfhere, weeping at his injured voice, demanding that he accept his place as Henry’s heir. Henry often said that it was necessary for the regnant to give in order to get what he wanted; he had given Sanglant everything, and in the end he had gained what he wished, although he had died to obtain it. His empire was shattered, but Wendar had not fallen. His son would not let it fall.
As the others stood, Sanglant realized he still held the book. He thrust it into Liath’s hands, ensuring that all there saw the exchange and wondered at it. This, too, his aunt would mark now and question later. With his siblings and his cousins, he hoisted the box, and with incense trailing around them and the steady prayers of the monastics muffling the sound of so many footsteps, they carried the coffin down stone steps into the crypt. Down here the bones of his Dragons had rotted until they gleamed.
No. He shook his head, sloughing off the memory. That had been Gent, and this was Quedlinhame. This weight was that of his beloved father, not his faithful Dragons, but they had all died regardless. They were not protected by the curse that left him, in the end, safe from a death that could capture others but never his own self.
Lamps shone in splendor around the open tomb into which they placed the coffin, a glass vial of holy water, the neatly-folded but still bloody clothing in which Henry had died, and a dried bouquet of red dog roses, always Henry’s favorites. There were none in bloom in Mother Scholastica’s famous rose garden, so they had pillaged the herbarium for a suitable tribute. Later, a stone monument would be carved and placed upon the marble bier, but for now a slab of cedar carved with curling acanthus and stylized dog roses was slid into place. The stone made a hoarse scraping sound, as though it, too, grieved. There were more prayers, and the lamps, one by one, were extinguished.
Before the last lamp went out, he marked Hathui’s position, close by him, in case there was trouble.
For a long while they breathed in the silence of the crypt. He rested with hands on the slab, but it was cold and dead. How deep did fire smolder within marble, he wondered? Could this dead tomb erupt into flame through Liath’s perilous gift? For an instant, shuddering, he feared her, who might kill any of them and burn down the entire town around their corpses if it pleased her. If she were angry enough. If she were wicked and listened to the Enemy’s lies.
