To the ferryman’s disgust, the others crowded over to stand alongside Ivar. The ferry pitched like an ungainly horse, and water spilled onto the boards and seeped away.
“Where do you think the biscop has gone?” Hathumod asked.
“She’s duke of Arconia as well as biscop of Autun,” said Ermanrich. “She’ll have duties elsewhere in the duchy, not just in Autun. When I was a novice at Firsebarg, I saw her one time when she rode by on her progress.”
He glanced at their guards, standing at the opposite railing to make a counterbalance. The ferryman and his assistant pulled mightily, dragging them along while the current did its best to wash them downriver.
“Biscop Constance is a fair-minded noblewoman,” Ermanrich went on more quietly. “I’ve never heard any but a respectful word spoken of her, even where it couldn’t be heard. She’ll be a fair judge.”
“If there can be a fair judge,” muttered Ivar.
“You must trust in God, Ivar,” scolded Sigfrid. “Hasn’t She watched over us all along?”
Baldwin leaned against Ivar, folded a warm hand over one of Ivar’s cold ones, and bent his head close. “Of course she has.” His voice caressed like a gentle kiss. “We’d be dead two or three times over if it wasn’t for God. I’d still be married to Margrave Judith.”
Who had died three years ago. It didn’t seem right, or possible that so much time could have passed. Had Father Ortulfus lied to them as a cruel jest?
“Ivar, what do you think will happen if Biscop Constance isn’t there?” asked Ermanrich expectantly. The others echoed his question: shy Hathumod, frail Sigfrid, even Baldwin, although Baldwin didn’t speak, only batted his gorgeous eyelashes in attractive confusion.
They waited for him to speak. They looked to him for answers. Why on God’s earth did they think he had any answers, when he couldn’t even fathom his own heart? Yet they expected him to lead them. They counted on him.
They needed him.
“There!” Baldwin pointed. “Now do you see it?”
Ivar glimpsed a stone tower among trees, lost as the ferry pulled laboriously in to shore. The banner flying from that tower didn’t look like Biscop Constance’s white-and-gold standard.
Before disembarking, Ivar paused to study the flowing river. Had he only dreamed the water nymphs? Certainly he now saw nothing except water streaming past, its melodious song singing in his ears. Their horses were brought, they mounted, and rode on. Where they came out of the trees, Autun rose before them, its main ramparts clambering along a defensible hill and more recent settlements sprawled below the old walls along the river, each ringed by a palisade. The biscop’s palace stood between a timber-and-stone cathedral and the old duke’s tower, a squat watch post built entirely out of stone in the time of the Dariyan Empire. Above these magnificent edifices, on the highest portion of the hill, lay Taillefer’s famous palace and the splendid octagon chapel where his earthly remains were interred in a marble tomb.
The banner flying from the biscop’s palace displayed the green guivre, wings unfolded and red tower gripped in its left talon, that marked the presence of the duke of Arconia.
“Strange,” murmured Prior Ratbold. “Why isn’t the biscop’s banner flying at its side, as it ought to?”
They waited at the main gates while the Autun guards sent for a captain from the citadel, a man called Ulric. He had a grim face and a cynical eye, and orders from his superiors.
“Heretics, is it?” he asked wearily, as if he’d heard this tiresome refrain a hundred times already that day. “Come all the way from Hersford Monastery, have you? Isn’t that in the duchy of Fesse?”
“So it is, Captain,” agreed Ratbold, “but you might recall Father Ortulfus was but recently a member of the biscop’s schola. That’s why he was given the abbacy at Hersford when it fell vacant.”
“Ah, yes, so he was.” Ulric grimaced in much the same way as might a man commanded to eat maggots. “I’ll take these prisoners from you, Prior, and see that they are housed as they deserve. You may return on your way.”
“Without even a night’s shelter and a hot meal for our pains?” Anyone would have been outraged at this insult, and Prior Ratbold was not the most sweet-tempered of men. “I can’t believe we’d be turned away after a journey of four weeks’ time, standing in muck to our ankles and likely snow coming on.” The monks muttered among themselves, shocked by such a breach of the customs of hospitality. “Where are we to stay this night?”
