“Very well,” said Sanglant. “There is much to tell that you will not have heard.”

“Much to tell.” Theophanu looked at their brother, Ekkehard, but he remained standing passively beside his wife, Gerberga, who was now the margrave of Austra and Olsatia because she was Judith’s eldest legitimate child.

No love lost between those two, she thought, for Ekkehard’s stand suggested a coolness between him and his older wife. Hugh’s silence suggested volumes, which Liath could not yet read.

How had Hugh come here? Where had he been? She had seen him briefly in the interstices of the great weaving, but he had vanished. Unlike the others, he had not died.

Of course not.

He shifted so slightly that no one who was not held by a taut thread to his presence would have noticed. She noticed. In the manner of a young woman who does not mean to inflame male desire by glancing up, just so, from under half-lowered lashes that suggest both desire and modesty, he looked up to meet her gaze.

It was all there to be seen, all that he wished for, everything he remembered. He had not changed.

But she had.

Sanglant muttered a curse under his breath. His sword hand tightened on the arm of the chair. He rose, and Hugh looked away from Liath.

“How soon can the funeral be held?” asked Sanglant.

“We will need an entire day to prepare the body,” said the abbess. “The day after tomorrow is the Feast of St. Johanna the Messenger. It would be an auspicious day to commend his soul to God.”

“So be it. I will bring his body to you at first light.”

6

HE rose before dawn. Barefoot, wearing only a simple shift, he walked beside the cart as it creaked up the road to the gates of Quedlinhame. The grind of the wheels on dirt sang a counterpoint to the multitudes who had gathered along the road to mourn the passing of their king. Folk of every station cried out loud, or tore their hair, or wept psalms: ragged beggars and sturdy farmers, craftsmen and women with callused hands, silk-clad merchants, and simple laborers. They sobbed as the cart rolled past, although in truth there was nothing to see except a chest padded by sacks of grain so it would not shift when the cart lurched in potholes and ruts.

He wept, too, because it was expected of him but also because he grieved for his father, whom he had loved.

He had lost so much, including his schola, Heribert and Breschius, but he had gained the remnants of Henry’s schola, and it was these who walked behind the cart carrying the Wendish crown and the Wendish banner to display to the crowd. They sang, in their sweet voices, the lament for the dead, although the wailing of the crowd almost drowned them out.

“Put not your trust in the great.

Not in humankind, who are mortal.

A person’s breath departs.