The Burning Stone

A light still burned within the lower chamber of the old stone tower. Antonia glanced inside to see Liath seated on a bench at the new table recently built by prince and cleric. That they should set themselves to carpentry was appalling, of course, but on the other hand, the old table had been atrocious, gapped, listing, rotted at one corner. The new tables they had built for tower and hall were a great improvement.



Liath was reading, her finger tracing words across the vellum page, her lips forming the words as she read but rarely uttering an actual sound. She was the quietest reader Antonia had ever seen, uncannily silent:



“Ah,” Liath said suddenly, to herself. “If all things fall toward the center at an equal pressure, and if therefore the universe as a whole would be always pressing against the Earth on all sides and of a uniform nature, then the Earth would need no physical support to rest at the center of the universe.”



“What are you reading?” asked Antonia. Liath was a strange creature; although she was Anne’s daughter, there was something unnatural about her, not least that she was capable of reading in such dim light.



Liath started up, surprised, banged her thighs on the table, and muttered a word under her breath. “I beg your pardon, Sister Venia,” she said politely, closing the book. “I hadn’t realized it was dark. I’m reading Ptolomaia. I never had a chance to read the Syntaxis before, only excerpts from it. I see now that although I’ve read On the Configuration of the World there was a great deal hidden in its words that I never fully understood.”



Antonia had never heard of a book called On the Configuration of the World, but she was not about to admit it to this ignorant child who still dressed like the common Eagle she once had been and who did not have the decency to conceal her unattractive passion for the crude creature she called “husband.” It was tremendously hard to see her as the daughter of Anne, who was arrogant and cold and in all other ways everything one would expect from the scion of a noble house. Just which noble house Anne was from Antonia was still not sure, because her compatriots had not yet taken her fully into their confidence, but she was not stupid: she was beginning to see the pattern that had been woven here.



Liath wrapped the book in its leather binding and put it away in the cupboard, then frowned for a moment at the tablet on which she’d been writing, mathematical calculations drawn from an ephemerides, a collection of tables which showed the daily positions of the heavenly bodies. She hesitated, fingered the stylus, then made a correction to her calculations. “What do you think?” she demanded imperiously, thrusting the table out for Antonia to look at.



It was immensely irritating that this callous young woman should grasp so easily what was for Antonia the most excruciatingly difficult part of the education of a mathematici. No wonder the church had condemned such arithmetic as the scratches of the Enemy’s fingers when they had sat in judgment on Biscop Tallia, an adept of the art and the daughter of Emperor Taillefer, at the Council of Narvone one hundred years ago. “That is for Sister Anne to correct,” said Antonia sternly. “I came only to tell you that it is time to go in to supper.”



“Is Sanglant back yet?” demanded the girl. She had no respect for the dignity due her elders. She seemed quite unconscious of the elegant manners that Heribert, for instance, wore as unthinkingly as his robes.



“He has gone to cleanse himself, I believe.”



“Oh! I’ll go fetch him to supper.”



Antonia began to reprove her, but she already slipped past, quick even with the early belly of pregnancy on her. Poor Sister Anne. The child had been poorly brought up. It must, indeed, be a daily affront to Anne to see her own daughter behave with the manners of a commoner and the thoughtless insolence of a petty prince. Sanglant might be uncouth, but even his manners, court-bred as he was, were better than Liath’s. Like a dog, he was trainable.



Antonia followed her through the twilight, past the orchard and the vineyard, to the grassy meadow where a pond lay nestled against a slope, almost swallowed in darkness. She heard the two men laughing with that easy companionship common to the male kind, feckless creatures that they were.



Then Sanglant called, suddenly, in the kind of voice that carries over the clash of battle: “Liath! God forbid you come any closer or you’ll despoil our chaste cleric, who stands here quite as his mother made him.” There was a loud splash.



Alarmed, Antonia moved closer to see the moon’s light illuminating the water, where Heribert’s slender figure stood waist-deep, hands on his hips. Sanglant came spluttering up from the water next to him and burst into merry laughter as water sluiced off his chest and back and head. He had been dunked.