The Miracle Thief (21 page)

“I cannot—”

When I tried to stop, he drew his knife and pressed the tip to my cheek.

“Don't—please don't!”

Godric had run up behind him and was reaching for him, but somehow the chieftain seemed to know it. He grabbed me by the hair before turning and slashing at Godric with the knife.

“I will do it. I will go!”

The chieftain released me as he grabbed Godric around the neck with his arm.

I walked out onto the snow slide.

“Anna, don't do it!”

Turning my back on them both, I placed my attention on what lay ahead. The new slide had not cleared all the snow from the road. The top had simply fallen away to reveal a lower layer. Unlike the snow we had been traveling through, this layer was topped by a glaze of ice. With each step, my feet broke through the crust. The farther I walked, the deeper the snow became.

From the slope high above me, a trickle of snow began to fall from the overhang, gathering in both volume and fury as it came. I retreated to let it pass, praying it would not take me with it. As it swept by with a rumble, it ruffled my hair and assaulted my ears.

A cry from behind made me turn.

The Dane had forced Godric to his knees and was holding the knife to his neck.

Trembling, I started forward once more. The slide had filled my footsteps and added depth to the snow. As I advanced this time, plunging my feet into the slide and then pulling them out, the snow reached well above my gartered stockings, halfway up my thighs. Soon I was panting from the effort. But as I took another step, the snow separated beneath me in a great spreading crack.

I stopped, closing my eyes in anticipation of death.

But it did not come.

Opening my eyes, I saw the crack had gone around me through the snow, and as I watched, that portion slipped away toward the ravine. As it fell, I moved as fast as I could and eventually gained the other side.

My triumph was short-lived.

It was not Godric who followed in my footsteps. The Danes sent the clerics across first, on foot. And then, after leaving their horses, they took up their weapons and crossed as well. Several times, more pieces of the slide broke off and cascaded into the abyss. Finally only Godric and the Dane who had claimed me for his own were left.

As Godric bent to shoulder his pack, the Dane kicked him in the stomach and then kicked him again as he fell to the ground. As the heathen ran through the slide, just short of the middle, the rest of the overhanging snow on the cliff above him broke off in a thundering cloud and slid down the hill, taking him with it. His screams echoed through the night.

As the snowy mist roiled and then blew away, I saw the form of Godric in the moon's light as he advanced through the remains of the slide. As he reached us, I caught up his hand in my own, and I did not let it go.

***

It took me hours to stop shaking. When my trembling would not cease, Godric pulled me close and shared his mantle with me. We walked on for some time together, ragged of breath, struggling to keep to the path.

I concentrated simply on putting one foot in front of the other, stepping neither to the right nor to the left, trying to keep free from the encumbrance of the drifts. We walked and walked, and it seemed we hardly went anywhere at all.

The world was white and only kept getting whiter.

Eventually, when the road turned, we found shelter from the wind and the snow. Though we stopped there, we did not sleep; it was too cold for sleep. But we rested. And there, I listened to a conversation between the Danes and the clerics.

“They say the best is to attack with no warning. Then they will have no time to prepare.”

The canon was scowling. “Tell them this is an abbey. They are nuns and—and laypeople. They must be given the chance to give us the relic of their own volition.”

“This is not the way they prefer to conduct their raids.”

“But this is not a raid! And we will
ask
for the relic, we will not just take it.”

The monk translated and then listened as the chieftain spoke. “You may ask if you like, but he will still plan on taking it.”

“That's not the way it's done!”

“Not your way, perhaps, he says, but this is his way.”

“He must at least give me a chance to warn them!”

As dawn came, the snow stopped, and the winds slowed. We could hear quite clearly now the ringing of church bells. And as the sun crept over the mountains, down at the bottom of the hill, we could see the abbey's snowcapped palisade, a church's spire rising from within it.

At a nod from the chieftain, the canon started down the snow-swept road.

And so, we sat there in our shelter, and we waited.

Gisele

ROUEN

“You might have left the chest there, my lady.” I was finishing my supper as Hugh's voice broke into my thoughts.

I looked over to find him at the window.

“I did not wish to betray your secret entrance.” My knife trembled as I applied more butter to my bread. I had not been expecting him. I had been expecting no one at all.

“Why don't you eat with the rest of them?”

“Do you want to come down from there?”

“Are you asking me in?”

I was, in fact, though I did not wish to admit it. In my solitude, I had found myself poor company. “I fear if you sit there much longer, you might topple from your perch.”

He made a show of pushing away from the window and sailed through the air, arms stretched above his head. He landed with a grand flourish like some tumbler. Then he came over and stood, staring at me as I ate, as if he were some poorly fed hound.

“You aren't going to eat it all, my lady?”

“I was planning to.” But I could hardly bear his sorry face. “You can have the bread if you wish.”

He reached out and took it from me before I could give it to him, and then leaned over to inspect the rest of my plate. “That meat looks rather spoiled.”

“I suppose you wish to test it for me.” I pushed it toward him with the tip of my knife.

He shoved it into his mouth and chewed. Then he shook head quite violently. “It's no good. You won't want it.”

“I am grateful for your concern.”

Once done with eating, he took a tour of the room, standing at length in front of an embroidered panel I'd had hung from the wall. Turning his head this way and that, he studied it. “What is it?”

“Charles the Great.”

“What's he doing?”

“Converting the heathens.”

“What for?”

“Because they're
heathens
. They have no faith.”

He frowned. “They don't seem very happy about it.”

“It was either that or be executed. But now they all have eternal salvation.”

He turned toward me. “They say the Dane you're to marry is going to convert.”

“How did you hear about that?”

“Everyone knows about it. So what will you do?”

I blinked. “About what?”

“I mean…where will you go? What will you do after? Once you're married?”

“I suppose…I suppose I will do what I do now. Only I shall do it elsewhere.” I had not thought on it before.

“You do not seem very happy about it.”

“How would you like to be married to a pagan?”

He stooped to poke around at the ashes in the middle of the room where a fire should have been. “But he won't be a pagan when you marry him. He'll be a Christian.”

“I rather suspect he'll be a Christian pagan.” I could not imagine him kissing the archbishop's ring or kneeling in front of the altar of a church. I could not envision him humbling himself before anyone.

“Or maybe he'll be a pagan Christian.”

“There is no such thing as a pagan Christian. One either is or is not.”

“But you just said he'll be a Christian pagan.”

“That was not what I meant. What I mean to say is…well, I meant it, but not in the way you understood it.”

“What else was I to have understood by what you said?”

I wished he were not so vexing. “I do not wish to discuss the marriage any longer.”

“But
you
should have the most to say of anyone, and everyone has been speaking of it for days.”

I returned my attentions to my plate. I was sorry I had let him eat the rest of the food.

“Danes do terrible things.”

“So I have heard. And as I told you, I do not wish to speak of it any longer.”

“Why not?”

“How would you feel if you were betrothed to marry some foreign woman who did such terrible things?”

“I should think I might sleep with one eye open.”

“Yes. And so you must understand how I fear for my life.”

“The archbishop says it's for the glory of God.”

I might have thought God had enough glory, if I did not know it would put my eternal soul at risk. “It is not he who has to marry, is it? It's quite easy to tell someone else to go risk their own life while you spend yours shut up in a cathedral.”

“I should think you would feel honored to be so blessed, my lady.”

“But then you are not me, are you?”

He fell silent as he seemed to contemplate my desperate situation. “I suppose you cannot appeal to my lord, the king.”

“Can you suppose I have not already tried? But he says it is a question of honor.”

“But what if you were
already
married. Then you could not marry the Dane.”

For the first time I did indeed wish I had already married.

“Why could you not marry me instead?”

And to think, I had already made that very suggestion. Had it been only several short weeks before? “You're hardly of an age, and—”

“I've thirteen years already. I don't think my father would mind.”

Mine would! “We cannot be friends, and I cannot ever marry you. Our fathers are enemies. They would neither of them approve. Besides, if I were to marry someone other than the Dane, it would be Rudolph of Burgundy or the Count of Vermandois.” Though they being nearly the age of my father, I hardly thought them much better than the Dane.

“No, you wouldn't.”

“Yes, I believe I would.” My father had long talked of both men as matches.

“My oldest sister is to marry the Burgundian, and the other is to marry the count, because you're to marry the Dane. It's all working exactly as they planned.”

There was a plan? “Are you certain?” How could there be a plan? My father had been as surprised as I when the archbishop told him I'd been promised in marriage.

He nodded.

“But how do you know?”

“Because I was with them when they were speaking of it.”

They? “Who? Who was it you heard talking? Because my father—”

“
My
father and the archbishop.”

They had planned it? How could they plan it without my father's knowledge? “But how would they know what the Danes would—?” I felt my jaw drop as everything became clear. And then I gasped. There was treachery afoot! I'd been offered to the chieftain like some piece of bait. He had not
asked
for me, he'd been
given
me. And with me promised to the pagan, the count's daughters could marry whomever he wished, forging alliances, which for my father were now impossible. The queen's children would not be ready to marry for years. If any grand unions were to be accomplished before then, my father had need of me in order to do it. Did my father even realize what they'd done? He couldn't. Otherwise, he would not have allowed it.

“My father says I'm to be a king one day.”

“King!” Could he not be silent for even one moment? “I'd like to see you try.”

“You don't think I'd be a good one?”

“I think you've no chance of becoming one. How would you do it? Your father would have to be king for you to become one. And your father is not the king;
my
father is.”

“That's what my mother says.”

“Your mother is right. But why are you telling me these things?”

His gaze dropped from mine. “Because I wish to help you. And because my father doesn't like it when I ask questions. And besides, your father being the king, I thought you should know.”

“Do you know my knight?”

“The big one? With the face that looks as if it were hewn with an ax?”

“Yes.” That was him. In a man of lesser stature, his rough features would have been considered faults. “Can you tell him I wish to speak to him?”

“Why can you not do it yourself?”

“Because we aren't speaking.”

“Then how do you plan to talk to him?”

“Can you do it or not?”

His chin lifted. “Of course I can do it, but my father won't let anyone come up here.”

“
You
do.”

“I'm not supposed to. But I've thirteen years now. I ought to be able to do as I please.”

That's what I had once thought. I had thought that everyone else ought to do as I pleased as well.

Hugh had left off playing with the ashes to sit on the stool beside mine, interrupting my reverie. “Everyone says you're not the king's real daughter.”

I pushed my plate away. “Then everyone lies.”

“You
are
his real daughter?”

“I was his real daughter before he started having daughters again with the queen.”

His brows folded. “Then why does everyone say—?”

“Because everyone doesn't know what I do.”

“Even my father says it.”

“And your father hates mine. What else could he be expected to say?” I wished the boy would stop talking. I was trying to think!

“Why would everyone say such a thing if it wasn't true?”

“What they mean to say is my father never married my mother.”

He colored. “Why not?”

“She ran away before he could.” I had to tell my father what I had just discovered. But how could I leave the palace without being seen?

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why did she run away?”

Because she hadn't wanted me. Wasn't that clear? “I have no idea.”

“Well, I don't mind that you're not the king's real daughter. I think you're very beautiful.” Now he was blushing even more.

It was vexing how easily he went from being a boy to being a man. I never seemed to know to whom I was speaking. “You are very kind, but that cannot help me. I'm still to be married to the Dane.”

We sat there some, the both of us thinking, chins in our fists.

He stirred. “If I were king, I would not make you marry him.”

I gave him a sidelong glance. “Thank you.”

“I would give one of my sisters to him instead.”

“I do not think she would thank you as well as I.”

“No. But she's sour and mean. She's not like you.”

Truly, I needed to think, and he did not look as if he would soon be departing. “Will someone not soon be missing you?”

“No. They're all with the Danes.”

“I thought the Danes went back home to plow their fields.”

“They may have. But they're here now. They're encamped outside the city. My mother says it's blasphemy, but my father doesn't seem to mind.”

“They're
here
? In Rouen?”

***

Truly, I had to tell my father all Hugh had told me. Had he known the count colluded with the pagans, he would not have been so quick to agree to the treaty. Andulf would not help me, of that I was certain. He was too concerned with obeying my father to understand sometimes the only way to honor a command was to break it. If I went to him with my news, I feared he would only tell me Saint Catherine must have knowledge of this treachery, and God in His heaven as well, and why could I not just wait for the return of relic the way I had been told to in the first place? And then he would most probably watch me even more closely.

Hugh was right: the only way to avoid marrying the Dane was to marry someone else first. Someone of my own choosing, a marriage that would be irrevocable and unimpeachable. What I needed was an abbey where I could marry myself to God.

If I were going to leave—and now I was certain I had to—then I would have to manage it on my own. But how could I find a way out of this place, which had only one entrance and exit? And that, always guarded?

I asked Hugh the very next day.

His brows rose in alarm when I spoke of escape. “But, you want to leave? I might never see you again!”

“Never is a very definite word.”

“Then when?”

“When what?”

“
When
would I see you again?”

“I could not say.” Never, if I had my way.

“
I
can rescue you. As I have said before, you have only to marry me.”

Was ever anything more vexing than a boy who considered himself a man? “And who would marry us? The archbishop? The same man who has been plotting with your father?”

“No.”

“And neither would any of the priests dare to do what he will not.”

“We could…we could run away!”

“And how would your father reward you for scuttling all his plans?”

From the look on his face, I imagined his only reward would be a very great punishment. The memory of that bruise was still stamped upon his cheek. And there was a mark now on his forearm as well.

“I truly don't see why you cannot marry me.”

Now he was pouting! What I would have done for such a luxury. But there was no time. “Because both our fathers would disapprove. And if we do not have consent, we have nothing.”

“When I am king, then I shall forbid people to force their children into marriage. Especially their daughters.”

“Hugh.”

He looked up into my eyes.

“If you're going to be a king one day, then you must always keep your promises. And do you remember? You said once you wished to help me.”

He dropped to one knee and took up my hand in his. “I will. And I promise I will always love you.” Having said the words, he pressed a reverent kiss onto my palm.

There was a sort of certainty to his words that made me think he meant them. But that was foolish. “Love is tiresome and tricky, and no one ever says what they mean about it.”

His chin tipped up with a stubborn tilt. “I do. I said it, and I meant it.” He blushed, the flames licking the tips of his ears. “What do you want me to do?”

“Is there any way through these palace walls other than the gate?”