Child of Flame (Page 301)

Rosvita rolled it up. “No word of this to anyone, Aurea. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, my lady.” She asked no questions where they were not wanted. That was one reason Rosvita had kept her in her service for so many months.

“Fortunatus, I must ask you to keep this with you for a little longer.” She handed him the rolled-up parchment. After a pause, he tucked it up his sleeve. “Go and see what is keeping Ingeld and Eudes.” As he left, she seated herself again while Aurea poured wine into her silver cup and sliced off a hank of bread. Her stomach growled for the first time in days. “Let him in, Ruoda.”

Lord Hugh’s messenger was a stout, diffident presbyter, older than Rosvita, with a placid manner and neat hands. “Sister Rosvita, the queen requests your presence.” He waited a moment, then went on in his slow way, which made it easy to understand him. “It gladdens my heart to see you eating, Sister. Everyone knew how ill the summer fever took you. It’s always northerners who take it hardest, it seems.”

“I thank you, Brother—Petrus, is it not?”

“You are kind to remember me, my lady.”

Was Hugh kind to use a senior presbyter as his errand boy, as if Petrus were no better than a common steward? Or was he only showing Rosvita the respect he felt she deserved because of her status as one of Henry’s cherished counselors?

“Let me but finish, Brother Petrus.”

The meal was quickly taken, shared with the young clerics and with Aurea, who finished up anything left over. Normally Rosvita might not break her fast until after the service of Sext, but with illness she knew she needed to eat more frequently in order to gain back her strength. Girls, of course, would eat whenever they could. Petrus had the habit of stillness. With folded hands, he bowed his head and shuttered his eyes. His lips moved in a silent prayer. Unaccountably she felt needled by his calm piety. Why should she not trust Hugh? He had shown nothing but complete loyalty both to his king and to God in the weeks since they had arrived in Aosta. In truth, some said—although never within Hugh’s hearing—that Henry and Adelheid would have faced far more resistance had Hugh not quelled Ironhead’s mercenary troops.

Fortunatus arrived with the rest of her retinue in tow: timid Gerwita, serious Eudes, the Varingian brothers Jehan and Jerome, and Ingeld, who was very young but recommended particularly by Biscop Constance herself. Bolstered by their presence, like a noble lady with picked warriors at her back, she let Petrus escort her through the Hall of the Animals and outside along an arcade surmounted by a procession of saints, each one lovingly carved into the marble.

Hugh received them outside the queen’s apartments. “I pray you, Sister Rosvita, be of good cheer. We have news from Wendar that comes ill today, with Princess Mathilda still feverish.”

The men had to wait outside. Not even Hugh entered the queen’s private apartments. Rosvita found Adelheid still seated in bed while one of her servingwomen finished plaiting her wealth of dark hair, tying off the end of the braid with a gold ribbon. A net of gold wire interlaced with tiny sapphires dressed her hair.

Two noblewomen had been allowed to sit on stools beside the bed. Rosvita recognized the two Gislas, neighbors in the region of Ivria. They had obviously been arguing.

“This cannot go on,” Adelheid was saying firmly. “Jinna pirates have attacked the coast thrice now, this summer, and because you two are feuding over a plot of land, no one can join together for long enough to end the raids.”

“But, Your Majesty—!” began the one called Gisla the Red, for her bright red hair.

“Nay, I have made my judgment. You both have children of marriageable age besides your heirs. Your second son, isn’t his name Flambert?”

“So it is, Your Majesty,” replied Gisla the Red, “but—” Adelheid turned to the other Gisla. “Flambert shall marry your third daughter, Roza, who I believe is now thirteen years of age.”

“But, Your Majesty—!” objected the other Gisla.

“They shall take the disputed lands as their own, and on their children I shall settle the title Counts of Ivria. Then you shall both have a share in lands none of which were wholly yours to begin with, but which came empty of a lordship by reason of the Jinna attacks.”

Gisla the Red bowed her head. “A fair judgment, Your Majesty.” Was it what she had been after all along? Rosvita did not know her well enough to judge.

The other Gisla had more objections, but she knew better than to make them now. “I will bow to your wishes in this matter, Your Majesty, but I will expect your assistance with provisions and troops in order to drive out the pirates.”