Lady Waltharia did indeed escort them to Walburg, but she left them at the gates in the care of a steward and herself rode off to pursue their enemies.
Planks had been thrown hastily down over the outer ditch to accommodate the sally. Anna walked over, feeling safer that way as a servant led her mule. The planks shifted under her feet, and she had to throw out her arms to keep her balance before she reached solid ground. The next bridge led directly under the wall, guard towers looming on either side and murder holes spaced at intervals. She heard voices murmuring down the holes and glimpsed movement, soldiers watching from the safety of their fortifications. The gate creaked open; they passed through into Walburg itself.
For a city under siege it was remarkably clean and orderly. Avenues wrapped around the hill where the original fort had risen. Newer streets, all of them lined with plank walkways, radiated outward from the cathedral square. Tents had been thrown up in the square and in a handful of vacant lots in neat lines to accommodate refugees, but most of the unbuilt ground had been given over to orchards and gardens, provision against the siege. Smaller than Gent’s cathedral, the basilica of St. Walaricus had a tidy look about it, everything squared off, the lintels painted with intertwined spirals and linked circles flowering into wreaths and the tower decorated with a carved tree on each face, painted silver.
“The Villam sigil is the silver tree,” explained Zacharias as they passed through the cathedral square on their way up to the fortified palace.
“So it is,” agreed Heribert, “but so also was St. Walaricus martyred by being hung from a tree by a heathen prince.”
“Clever of Villam to dedicate the cathedral to Walaricus, was it not? Then he could have it both ways.”
Heribert looked surprised. Anna liked him much better than she liked Zacharias, who had spit in God’s face, but even so, he made her kind of uncomfortable just because he was always so tidy and clean even in the worst camp conditions. Sometimes she just didn’t see the point of being so fussy.
“Do you think Villam chose to dedicate his cathedral to St. Walaricus just so he could display his own sigil upon the church tower without anyone calling him to account for such presumptu-ousness?”
Zacharias laughed. “Do you suppose Villam did not? He’s a more clever man than I, friend.”
“Than I devoutly pray we be spared his intrigues.”