The Gathering Storm (Crown of Stars #5)

The Gathering Storm (Crown of Stars #5) Page 351

Seventy-three days they had remained confined at the monastery, each day a hatch mark scratched onto a loose brick pried out of the courtyard wall, but since the monks remained silent, it was impossible to find out exactly what date it was, although they might all guess that it was summer. It was so blazing hot that each trip down into the rock to fetch water from the hidden spring was a relief and, even, a luxury. At first only Hilaria, Diocletia, Aurea, and Hanna had the strength to complete the climb, but eventually every one of them except Petra and Mother Obligatia could negotiate those stairs.

Fortunatus bent over the table to examine Heriburg’s calligraphy. “A sure hand, Sister, and much improved.” He glanced at Rosvita as if to say “yet never as elegant as Sister Amabilia’s.”

She smiled sadly at him. How many of these truehearted clerics would survive their adventure? Amabilia certainly was not the first casualty of these days, nor would she be the last if all that they had heard predicted actually came true. It had proved far easier to write of the great deeds that formed history than to live through them.

“We must pray we survive to see the outcome of these events,” she said at last.

Sister Diocletia came into the chamber, rubbing her hands. She had connived olive oil out of the guards and it was this she used to manipulate and strengthen the old abbess’ limbs.

“She’ll sleep for a bit,” she said, “but she’s well today, as strong as she has been in months. However much it has chafed at the rest of us, this long rest has saved her.”

“Bless you, Sister,” said Rosvita, knowing that the young ones needed to hear such words, to believe that the confinement wasn’t wasted; that they hadn’t doomed themselves. They hadn’t fallen into Anne’s grip yet. There was still hope.

From far away, as if the sound drifted in on a cloud, they heard muffled shouts. Soon after, footsteps clattered outside. The door creaked open on dry hinges, and Hanna burst in, her face red and her hands empty, without the buckets of water they depended on.

“Sergeant Bysantius has returned!” she exclaimed. “He’s taking us to his commander. We leave tomorrow!”

The broad valley had so much green that it made Hanna’s eyes hurt, and she could actually see flowing water, a dozen or more streams splashing down from surrounding hills. After ten days spent crossing dry countryside, Hanna inhaled the scent of life and thought that maybe they had come to paradise.

The others crowded up behind her to exclaim over the vista and its bounty of trees: figs, olives, oranges, mulberries, and palms. But Sergeant Bysantius wasn’t a man who enjoyed views: He barked an order to his detachment of soldiers, and the wagons commenced down the cart track toward the land below. He was still the only one riding a horse; the wagons were pulled by oxen, slow but steady, and they had a trio of recalcitrant goats whose milk kept Mother Obligatia strong.

As she trudged along beside the foremost wagon, exchanging a friendly comment or two with the Carter, Hanna shaded her eyes to examine the valley. Its far reaches faded into a heat haze, although certainly the weather was not as hot as it had been through much of their time confined to the tiny cliff monastery. In the center of a valley a small hill rose, crowned with ancient walls and a small domed church in the Arethousan style, almost a square. Beyond and around the hill a formidable ring wall appeared in sections, half gnawed away by time or by folk needing dressed stone for building. Tents sprouted like mushrooms on the plain around the old acropolis and mixed in among what appeared to be the ancient ruins of a town now overgrown with a village whose houses were built of stone and capped by clay-red the roofs.

“Tell me what you see, I pray you,” said Mother Obligatia, who lay in the back of the wagon on her stretcher, wedged between dusty sacks of grain.

“It’s a rich land, with more water than we’ve seen in the last three months altogether, I think.” She described the vegetation, and the layout of the buildings, and last of all described the tents. “It’s an army, but I can’t make out the banners yet.”

Mother Obligatia thanked her. “If they had meant to kill us, they have had plenty of opportunity. I suppose we are meant to reside as hostages. Yet among whom?”

“I wish I knew,” replied Hanna, “but I fear we shall discover our fate soon enough.” She clasped the old woman’s hand briefly, then let go in order to negotiate a badly corrugated stretch of road over which the wagons jounced and lurched; she lost her footing more than once, turning her ankle hard and gritting her teeth against the pain.