“Louisa! Come at once to pay your respects to the holy biscop.”
Her eyes widened. She startled and touched the linen scarf that mostly covered her dark hair. “Yes, Father. I pray you, Brother Baldwin, excuse me.”
He smiled at her, and she flushed.
“Shameless!” muttered Ivar.
Beside him, Sigfrid chuckled. “You are no different than any of us. Poor Baldwin. Do we truly love him, or only his beauty? Yet he looks well.”
He looked well. He cast his gaze anxiously over the multitude, found what he sought, and smiled so brilliantly at Ivar and Sigfrid that Ivar actually heard murmurs from the followers who with their carts and donkeys and bundles were moving in a sluggish flow into the clearing. Many faces turned to watch the young cleric as he dismounted and pressed through the crowd. Hands reached out to touch his robe, and seemingly unconsciously he brushed his fingers across the foreheads of small children pushed into his path.
Ermanrich whistled under his breath. “You’d think he was a saint the way they treat him.”
“Ivar!” Baldwin surged forward to embrace him, weeping with happiness. “Ai, God! Sigfrid! Ermanrich! Hathumod!” He kissed each of them, tears streaming in a flood of joy.
“You must greet Biscop Constance,” said Ivar, whose temper had sparked with unfathomable annoyance.
“It worked?” Baldwin asked as guilelessly as a child inquires about the ineffable mystery of God. “She is free?”
Biscop Constance approached them, leaning on her staff and assisted by Sister Eligia. “I am free, Brother Baldwin, in no small measure because of the risk you took in Sabella’s court.”
“Baldwin!” Ivar tried to keep his voice to a whisper, but his irritation kept pushing it louder. “It’s not right to make the holy biscop approach you. You should have gone to her first!”
Baldwin dropped to his knees before the biscop. When she extended her hand, he pressed her ring to his lips. His tears wet her hand. Remarkably, she also had tears on her face.
She, too, was blinded by his beauty.
Ivar found himself wiping rain off his face, only it had stopped raining and he had already dried his face once.
“Are you the one?” she asked Baldwin.
“I am Lady Sabella’s seal. I admit to worse things I did. I was her concubine, it’s true, but I’m not proud of my sins, Your Grace.” His face was so open and innocent that it appeared that whatever he had done he had done without malice or forethought.
“We have all done that which displeases God.”
“And God’s mercy has saved us. I have sworn an oath to God, that I will serve Her alone and for the rest of my days, as penance for my sins and in service of Her glory, which has come down to us out of the heavens and casts its brilliance across the Earth.”
Constance examined him closely. “Are you that one I have heard whispers of? The rose among thorns?”
He shook his head, bewildered by her comment. The captain’s daughter had come as close as she dared to stare at Baldwin, but her father drew her back with a look that might scar.
“Truth rises with the phoenix,” said Constance.
He blushed. “Oh. That. It’s true I made up words to pass the time, and set them to a melody I liked to sing. It was an easy way to help folk remember the phoenix.”
“Then it’s true, for surely you have a form most like to the angels.” She bowed her head.
Baldwin looked up at Ivar and mouthed the words, “What’s true?”
Ivar could only shrug.
She raised a hand and by this means brought silence to the assembly crowded around to hear. “A great evil has fallen upon us. Famine, sickness, war, and dissension plague us. God is angry, yet She has not forsaken us as we have feared. Many here have heard the stories of God’s grace.”
“Truth rises with the phoenix!” cried a woman from the back, and other voices echoed her.
“Do not fear the days to come,” said the biscop as folk around her knelt. “Her glory has come down to us out of the heavens and casts its brilliance over the Earth. If we will only believe, then we will be safe. God will answer us in our time of trouble, grant our every desire, fulfill our every plan. She sends us help from her sanctuary.” She raised Baldwin to his feet as he smiled pliantly with that look of beautiful incomprehension that in Quedlinhame had so charmed his praeceptors. “A holy one walks among us.”
Behind Ivar, Hathumod burst into tears.