Page 66 (1/1)

"Impossible," she said

"Certainly unexpected," said the old woatia I aees noas abbess of the convent of St Ekatarina’s We bided there in our rock tower in Aosta for one I have much to tell you, dear child, and many questions to ask"

"How can it be?"

"Will you hear the tale?" It was difficult to tell if a sudden diffidence had overtaken her or if she was out of breath

"I will hear this tale," said Liath, who found she could herself scarcely catch breath to form words She leaned closer "Rest when you must I pray you, speak softly Do not strain yourself"

How strange that it should see her hands as she spoke in a voice that did not penetrate farther than the tiny audience drawn in tightly around her: Liath, and the two nuns who held light aloft They, too, see, in silence, as if their bodies resonated hatever ees and shadowed valleys of the rumpled blankets were the only landscape in this scene Rain pattered over the roof and faded

"I aave birth to another child"

The tapestry of Liath’s life and lineage had always concealed atia’s story wove inholes So it became clear as Liath asked questions where she must and answered those she could An hour passed as the story unfolded She drank a cup of ale, shared with the old worandmother It was still unthinkable to use that word, but she ht all be a fabrication or a ut that this piece of the story made all the rest explicable

Bernard and Anne were half siblings Obligatia herself had been used as a pawn in the dynastic schemes woven by the Seven Sleepers It was hard to knohat Biscop Tallia and Sister Clothilde had hoped for when they had shoved the fourteen-year-old-girl into the path of the fifty-year-old monk, except that they needed a coitimate son born to Taillefer No one would ever know the whole, now that Anne was dead, and even Anne could not have co because in many ways she had also been their pawn, their creation

"Soatia finished "The rest I know of my own experience"

"Are you tired? If you th lived there still! "No, I will go on I have lived past er, dear child I held on only for this, to see you and to touch you I can see in your face that my beloved boy Bernard was your father, but how comes it that Anne claimed to be your mother? Is it true?"

"It is not My mother was a fire daimone enticed to Earth and trapped here by a net of sorcery Bernard loved her Not Anne The daimone was my mother This I know because I have walked the spheres …"

What walking the spheres entailed, and how she had con of distaste, distress, or fear at discovering--or at any rate having confirhter was not wholly huenerous and affectionate and wise and cal and indeed she possessed every quality that Liath had ever drea since resigned herself to never having and never knowing

"There is one thing, though," Liath added "Brother Fidelis was the son of Taillefer and Radegundis My father was born to you and a lord born into the line of Bodfeld"

"I always called hih, for he was quiet and sentle" She chuckled The er seemed to cause her pain "And nervous of his aunts and uncle, though he defied them to marry h "But ere your parents?"

Obligatia s I was raised at the convent of St Thierry I had a different name, then Left behind like so much else"

"Where is St Thierry?"

"In Varre In the duchy of Arconia"

Liath lifted the old woman’s hands and kissed each one and set them back on her blankets "You lost two husbands and two children--all taken fro prey to grief and anger?"