The Burning Stone (Crown of Stars #3)

The Burning Stone (Crown of Stars #3) Page 87

Stubbornly, he did not reply.

Her hiss, between gritted teeth, gave Ivar a shiver of fear.

“The court is a bad influence on you! You still bear a personal grudge against the prince, do you not? That he, a bastard, was given power in the secular world and you were not, is that not so, Hugh?”

With one hand he gripped the cloth of his tunic, folded around one knee; the other lay open, pressed against the floorboards palm down to hold himself up. His breath came ragged, and his gaze seemed fixed on something invisible to everyone else in the room. “That she should go willingly to him when she has spurned me—!”

She extended a leg, caught him under the chin with the toe of her sandal, and tipped his head back so that he had to look at her. “You have gone mad with jealousy.” She stated it in the same way any noble lady might examine her cattle and see that some were afflicted with hoof-rot: calmly, but with a little disgust at her own bad luck. “Your mind has been afflicted by her spells.”

She lowered her foot and stood. “Go,” she said to her courtiers. “Speak of this to the folk hereabouts, what you have heard here—that the girl has bound him with her evil spells. See how she has reduced him. We all know Father Hugh’s elegant manners. This is no natural state.” They scurried away obediently.

“Go heat a bath for him so that we may wash some of the poison out,” she said, and a half dozen servants hurried into the adjoining room. Then she turned to her entourage. “Lord Atto, I haven’t forgotten the matter of the king’s stallion, Potentis. I have spoken with the king myself, and if that bay mare of yours comes into season while we are on progress with the king, you may try for a foal out of Potentis. Go speak with the king’s stablemaster, if you will, to arrange it.”

Lord Atto was all effusive thanks as he retreated, but Judith had already beckoned forward one of her servingwomen. “Hemma, I have considered this matter of your daughter’s betrothal, and I think it a good match for her to wed Minister Oda’s son. But I have it in mind to gift her with that length of fine linen cloth we picked up in Quedlinhame. If you will see to it that it is packed and made ready, I will have it sent with the messengers who are returning east. Then your daughter will have time to sew some clothing out of it for the wedding feast.”

With one pretext or another, she sent them away until only she, Hugh, her two eldest servingwomen, and Baldwin and Ivar remained. Her pleasant manner vanished, and she spoke in a hard voice. “Now you will tell me truly what this means.” She took Hugh’s chin in a hand and turned his head up to look at her. “I can scarcely believe the rumors I hear. Did you try to murder Princess Theophanu? After it was forbidden you at Zeitsenburg, have you soiled your hands again with bindings and workings, this pollution that you call sorcery?”

The light from the open window dappled Hugh’s face, mottling it with shadow and light and the discoloring bruise. His expression, nakedly anguished, underwent some cataclysmic change as he stared up at his mother, who had bent the full force of her will upon him. A shudder shook through his body and he collapsed at her feet.

“I beg you, Mother,” he whispered. “Forgive me. I have sinned.”

She grunted, but that was all the reply she made, and she seemed to be expecting more.

“Ai, God,” he prayed, “protect me from temptation.” His hands hid his face. “I know now what came over me. It was a trap her father laid. As soon as I saw her, I burned for her despite my prayers day upon night offered up to Our Lady and Lord, Whom I begged to protect me. But he bound me and trapped me, and even after he died, I could not escape from her.”

She appeared unmoved by this recital. Ivar could not tell whether she believed it, but it seemed to satisfy her. “You are bored as abbot,” she said finally, “and when a man of your intelligence becomes bored, then the Enemy sends his minions to tempt him. And indeed a mere abbacy is not the position due your consequence.”

He looked up, strangely dry-eyed after his weeping confession. “What do you mean?”

“Be obedient to my wishes, Hugh, and you shall have more.” She took hold of his ear, twisted it so that one more tweak would cause pain, and with the other hand brushed a finger affectionately over his moist lips and with that same finger touched her own lips, as if sipping off his sweetness. “I have never failed you, Hugh. I have given you everything you have asked me for.”

“You have,” he said softly. Hesitated, then fell silent.

She let go, stepped back, and let him stand. “You will not fail me. Do not see her again, and we can salvage your reputation.”