“Do you remember my Eika dogs? What awful creatures they were, not dogs at all, truly. Yet I miss them in one way. I never had to guess their intentions. I could always trust them to go for my throat if they thought I was weakening.”

She hesitated, and he felt the tension in her and turned to kiss her cheek. “Say it. Do not fear me, so that you think you must hold your tongue.”

“Very well, then. Must you be king? With the dogs always circling around?”

“I must,” he said, taking no offense at her question. ‘Alas that my father is dead. I wish it were otherwise.”

“He has other children.”

“They are not fit. Sapientia you know. Theophanu is capable, but she is too reserved and hasn’t gained the love and support of those she would need to lead. Ekkehard is too light-minded. Henry’s children by Adelheid are too young, and anyway they will receive little support in the north if Adelheid were to claim the Wendish throne for them. They may hope to inherit Aosta if they have survived the storm. Nay, let it be. Henry wished for this for many years. Now it has come to pass. I am his obedient son.”

But because she lay so close against him, she felt his tears.

4

SOON the Arethousan army, in retreat, began to meet refugees on the road. As Hanna tramped along behind the wagon to which her new guards had tied her, she studied the folk huddled at the side of the track. Like most Arethousans, they were swarthy and short, with broad faces and handsome, dark eyes. The women displayed a voluptuous beauty that fear and poverty could not yet disguise. They carried bundles on their backs and sniveling children in their arms. Some pushed handcarts piled with belongings. Now and again she would see a man holding the halter of a donkey. More often a family had two or three scrawny goats tied together on a single lead. Once she saw a bloated corpse, but it wasn’t obvious how the man had died.

They stood silently as the army passed. After a time she began to think they were like the mosaics seen in churches in Darre, figures with kohl-lined eyes and magnificent robes frozen forever against a backdrop of open woodland. Only once did she hear one speak.

“I pray you, I’ll do anything for a piece of bread for me and my child.” A skinny young woman clutched a slack-eyed, emaciated child to her hip as she twitched her rump awkwardly to attract the notice of the soldiers.

Bysantius strode forward before any man could step out of line. He slashed at her face with the quirt. She cried out and retreated up the slope through dry grass that crackled around her. A man emerged out of the woods from behind a stand of prickly juniper. He was tugging up the drawers under his tunic as he sauntered back to join the rest, but before he’d gone three steps a woman appeared.