Even Alain did not have to guess at Biscop Constance’s reaction to this statement; she was delighted to be able to offer hospitality. Aunt Bel had said many a time within his hearing: “So does Our Lady judge us, by our generosity at table.” Aunt Bel was so well-known for feeding folk passing through Osna village that less magnanimous householders sometimes fobbed guests off on her. Never had she turned one away.
“Then certainly we must return to my palace and dine,” said Constance with evident pleasure.
They returned, Agius still leading the mule, to Autun. It was the largest city Alain had ever seen, with a stone wall and a stone and timber cathedral and so many buildings all shoved together that he wondered how the folk who lived there did not choke on each other. They passed quickly through the gate and down a wide avenue flanked with timber houses built in a style quite unlike the long-houses of his village. The walls of the biscop’s palace rose to the height of three men. He barely had time to catch his breath before they were led inside its imposing timber frame.
There, he was allowed to sit by the great hearth and eat bread so white and soft it was more like a cloud than what he knew as bread, heavy loaves with thick dark crusts. He was given leave to eat as much as he wished of the best cheese he had ever tasted and the leavings of the fowl and fish that made up the biscop’s simple midday meal. All this while Rage and Sorrow gnawed on hambones still bristling with meat and fat. Probably poor Lackling had never eaten as much pork in his entire cold and lonely life as the hounds devoured in the course of the next hour. It was a terrible thing to sit and eat with such pleasure while Lackling had not even the peace of a marked grave.
But Alain could not help himself. Even helping to serve at Count Lavastine’s table during the visit of Lady Sabella and her entourage he had not seen a meal as casually elegant as this. But then, Biscop Constance was the king’s sister, born of the lineage of kings. The dark beams and tapestried walls, the bustling clerics and the fine linen worn by every least servant, served to remind him how small a place Osna village was. Certainly Aunt Bel and his father Henri were respectable and prosperous freeholders. Of this they and their children could always be proud. Bel had lost children to disease but never to starvation, as many did. But sitting in this hall, even in the ashy corner by the hearth, that pride seemed little compared to the great state employed in the service of princes.
What the great ones spoke of he had no idea. He ate too much and then his stomach ached from the rich food, to which he was not accustomed. The long walk back to Sabella’s camp seemed to take an eternity. Each step jolted him. He leaned, alternately, on Rage and then on Sorrow, to keep his balance. The two biscops rode side by side, not giving pride of place to the other. Agius, evidently set on maintaining his pose as simple frater rather than duke’s son, continued to lead Constance’s mule.
Alain hoped he would make it to camp without throwing up by the side of the road.
But after an hour and with the day neither too warm nor too cold and the wind a pleasant touch on his face, he began to feel better. Of them all, only Agius looked steadily worse as they came closer to Sabella’s camp.
Scouts had run ahead. As their party crossed the last rye field before the camp began its sprawl through pasture and light woods, soldiers and campfolk appeared to line their path, to stare at the royal biscop. Together, Antonia and Constance made a striking pair: cheerful age and stern youth. To see two biscops in the same cavalcade was a rare sight, and Alain wished suddenly and painfully that Lackling could be alive to see it, for he so loved all that was bright and lovely to look upon—even if only from a distance. But Antonia had brought death to the boy. How could she ride with such a smooth countenance, as if nothing troubled her conscience?
But was it not Agius who spoke of the inner heart? As Aunt Bel said: “A smooth countenance without reflects a calm soul within.” So Alain had always believed. Now he wondered. How could any person make dealings with blood and dark shades and by that means bring about the death of an innocent simple boy, and yet show no sign of that terrible sin in her face?
Lady Sabella waited in front of the great tent surmounted by her banner. Her daughter Tallia stood beside her, looking pale and cold in a gown of silk the color of harvested wheat. Duke Rodulf and her other partisans stood at her side or a few steps back; Count Lavastine, in their midst, appeared wooden, drained of life. Sabella did not come forward to greet her half sister but rather waited for Constance to dismount and walk forward in her turn.
“Sister,” said Constance mildly, “I give you greetings. It is my devout hope we can mend these troubles that have torn our family apart.”