It was difficult to find dry wood, but enough was found that they breathed in smoke half the night and were bitten up anyway. The wind came steady out of the northeast. Late, very late, Alain woke and, startled, found himself staring up at the heavens. Blanche snored softly beside him.
Stars winked, and then were covered again by cloud.
“Ah!” he said, although he hadn’t meant to speak.
“Do you see?”
“I pray you, Chatelaine. Can you not sleep?”
“I cannot sleep, my lord. But I saw there a glimpse of hope. God smile on my journey. It is right that I sought you out. For months we have seen no sign of the sky. But now … now I have.”
“Any spell must ease in time.”
“You persist in believing that these clouds are the residue of a vast spell woven by human hands?”
“I know they are.”
“Not God’s displeasure?”
“It is true that some evils fall upon us without warning or cause. Yet so many of the evils that plague us we bring about by our own actions. Why should we blame God? Surely God weep to see their children act against what is natural and right. So the blessed Daisan would say. So Count Lavastine said. We aren’t made guilty by those things that lie outside our power, but we aren’t justified by them either. Evil is the work of the Enemy. It is easier to do what is right.”
“Think you so, my lord? It seems to me that humankind have in them a creeping, sniggering impulse to do what is wrong.”
“Yet none say it is right. Those who do wrong make excuses and tell stories to excuse themselves or even blame their folly on God, but their hearts are not free of guilt. That guilt drives a man to do worse things, out of pain and fear. It is a hard road to walk and more difficult still to turn back once you’ve begun the journey.”
She chuckled scornfully. “Many folk say they are doing right and believe it. The Enemy blinds them.”
“They blind themselves.”
“Who is to say that the wicked don’t flourish and the innocent fall by the wayside? Where is God’s justice when it is needed?”
He peered at her, but it was difficult to make out her face with the cloud cover cast again over the heavens. “It is in our hands, Mistress Dhuoda. We have the liberty to choose our own actions.”
“What if we choose wrong?”
He sighed, thinking of Adica. The wind sighed, echoing his breathing. Reeds rustled out in the marsh. A man rolled over, making a scraping noise against the ground as he turned in his sleep. Blanche snorted, seemed about to rouse, and settled back into slumber.
“Why didn’t God fashion us so we could do only what is right, and never what is sinful?” she continued.
“Then we would be no different than the tools we ourselves carry. If we did what is right, we would receive no merit from it, not if we had no choice. We would be slaves, not human beings.”
“It might be better so,” she murmured.
“Do you think so?”
“Sometimes I do,” she said, and after that nothing more.
At length he fell asleep.
2
THEY came to Lavas Holding on St. Abraames’ Day. From a distance, the settlement looked little different than the place he had first seen seven years ago—or was it eight? It was difficult to keep track.
The high timber palisade surrounded the count’s fortress with its wooden hall and stone bailey. Beyond the wall the village spilled down a leisurely slope to the banks of the river. Now, however, a fosse and earthen embankment circled the village and the innermost fields, orchards, and pasturage, cut in two spots by the course of the river. Many of the locals looked familiar to Alain, but all of the men at arms were new and by the sound of their words not Lavas born and bred but from farther east.
“Where is Sergeant Fell?” Alain asked the chatelaine as folk pressed close to stare.
“He was given leave to retire back to his home village, with no more than ten sceattas for all his years of service. And likewise, the others, with little enough or nothing, turned off because Lord Geoffrey feels safer with milites brought from his wife’s kin’s lands to protect him. It’s brought grumbling, and rightly so.”