“Well, then.” He hesitated again. She studied him. He wasn’t handsome or ugly but rather comfortably in between, with the broad shoulders and thick arms of a soldier. He was, perhaps, the same age as the king but rather more weathered by the hardships of life in the infantry, and if he stumbled with his words it was because he’d had a soldier’s education, not a cleric’s. “Think of a rose blooming all of a sudden in your heart.” He gestured toward the silent forest, all chill and white, a sea of winter. “Think of a rose blooming there, in the snow, where you’d never think to see it. Wouldn’t that be a miracle? Wouldn’t you know that you’d stumbled upon a little sliver of God’s truth?”
“I suppose so.”
He spoke so quietly that she almost couldn’t hear him. “A holy one walks among us. But we mustn’t speak of it, because God hasn’t chosen to make Her messenger known yet. But the rose bloomed in my heart, Eagle. I have no better way to explain it, how I knew it was truth when I heard the preaching about the Sacrifice and Redemption. The rose bloomed, and I’d rather die than turn my back now. I’d rather die.”
There wasn’t a breath of wind.
“Those seem ill-chosen words, friend, considering our situation,” said Hanna finally, not unkindly.
“We’ve had poor luck, haven’t we? God is testing us.”
“So They are.” The cold seeped down into her bones. She chafed her hands to warm them. “But Lord Dietrich was stricken down and died when he professed the heresy.”
“I think he was poisoned by the biscop.” Gotfrid spoke these words so calmly that Hanna expected the sky to fall, but it did not. All she heard was the muffled noises of their party, hidden among the firs: a low mutter of conversation, the sting of smoke in her nostrils from a fire, the stamp and restless whickering of the horses. Twice she heard Lord Lothar’s hacking cough.
“That’s a bold charge,” she said at last.
“You think so, too,” he said grimly, “or else you’d leap to her defense. I think she poisoned him because she saw he wouldn’t back down. He was the strongest of us in faith. She hoped to frighten the rest of us into recanting.” He leaned toward her, close enough that his breath stirred her hair. “Don’t think there weren’t others among the crowd who had heard and believed. They hold the truth in their hearts as well.”