The Gathering Storm
When they came to the gates, there were indeed guardsmen, but they trundled past in the safety of a mob of complaining, crying women, laundresses by their garb and talk, laden with bedding and dripping garments.
“May God have mercy,” murmured Fortunatus as they cleared the wall.
They had escaped.
They pushed on, looking fearfully from one side to the other, afraid that someone might recognize them and call to them, but no one did. They walked, switching off at the hand cart, trudging along the road with thousands of refugees. Everywhere, in the fields and along the open pastureland that surrounded the city, people had halted in exhaustion. No one dared to spend the rest of the night under a roof.
All this Hanna saw in glimpses, shapes lost in darkness. Dust swathed the sky behind them, veiling half the sky. It was, horribly, a new moon, so dark that the eerie glow of dozens of fires within the city walls, darkened and intensified by the pall of dust, made the place glow like a furnace, the forge of the ancient gods who had once ruled here. Maybe they had returned to wreak their vengeance at last. Maybe God had punished the interlopers.
She took a turn at the cart, pushing until she thought her hands would fall off, teeth gritted as she followed the bobbing lamp held by Jehan. No one had ridden the mounts yet. Without saying as much, they all agreed to save the strength of the poor beasts for later. None of them ate. Hanna wasn’t sure if they had provisions, even water. Her throat ached.
The night wore on endlessly as they took turns pushing the cart and, later, spelling themselves with a ride on the mule. Soon they left the refugees behind and made their solitary way along the deserted road. After a time, the ground sloped up. They had reached the foothills. Pausing partway up the first slope to catch their breath, they all turned to look back the way they had come. Fortunatus pulled the blanket back so that Sister Rosvita could see and held a lamp aloft beside her.
Darre was burning, not just the city itself but the plain all around, the glow of bonfires where people camped out and, closer in to the walls, lines of funeral pyres. Most strangely, to the southwest, in the mountains, the air was spitting sparks. She shuddered. The earth rumbled and stilled beneath her feet.
“Where do we go?” asked Fortunatus. “We can’t cross the Alfar Mountains this late in the year.”
Silence greeted his words. Even Hanna did not know what to suggest. She and Fortunatus had led them this far, but they had come to the end of a rope spun from impulsiveness, courage, and loyalty. Once Hugh discovered in what direction they had fled, he would pursue them.
She shivered as a cold wind drifted down from the highlands.
Rosvita stirred, stretching her limbs. “Listen,” she said in her croak of a voice. “Listen.”
They listened, but they heard only the night wind. Even the noise of the city had fallen behind them.
“We must go where they cannot follow, and pray that we will be given shelter.” With some effort she raised herself on her elbows. Her hair had gone utterly white, startling even through the grime of the dungeon. “We must go to the Convent of St. Ekatarina. Mother Obligatia helped us once before. If she still lives, I pray that she will aid us again.”
4
ON that morning when Hathumod and her companions left Hersford Monastery, the whispering hadn’t gone away with them. For days and weeks after they left, as autumn lingered and winter gathered its strength, their heretical words endured like a ghostly presence among the inhabitants of the monastery and estate. Doubt haunted the monks and the laborers. Many scoffed, but others whispered of signs and miracles, of a phoenix, of lions, and of seven innocent and holy sleepers lost beneath a hill.
Although Father Ortulfus delivered more than one furious sermon on the dangers of heresy, even he could be found at odd intervals consulting books in the library or standing lost in contemplation at the edge of the forest, seeming to stare, as Sorrow had that night, at an unseen threat—or toward a promise.
XII
A CALF IN WINTER’S SLAUGHTERHOUSE
1
IT was a dreary ride in horrible cold weather from Hersford Monastery to Autun. Ivar lost count of the passing days as their escort prodded them grimly along. Once they were forced to spend a week locked up in a freezing outbuilding at a convent because ice floes made a river crossing impassable. Once Prior Ratbold came down with such a bad fever that they had to bide in the stables at an isolated monastic estate while the prior thrashed in delirium, but by the fifth day he sweated out whatever evil humors plagued him and within two weeks felt strong enough to set out again. No one else got sick.
At Dibenvanger Cloister, Sigfrid almost got his tongue cut out a second time when he squeezed through a gap between boards—he was the only one small enough to fit—and sneaked into the novices’ house to preach for the whole evening before Prior Ratbold noticed he was missing.