Brother Daniel departed.
Now Wulf could hold out a hand to Madlenka. “And we too, Your Eminence?” he asked as she hurried to his side.
D’Estouteville grunted and frowned. “And where do you think you are off to in such a hurry? Heading for a bed, I shouldn’t wonder!”
Louis and Sybilla both chuckled, sharing smiles.
“Definitely,” Madlenka said.
Ladies were never so outspoken. Everyone stared at her in shock and even Wulf was startled. With Anton not yet buried? “Definitely?”
“Definitely,” she repeated. Her smile lit up all Rome.
He was still getting to know this Amazon he loved. Their life ahead would surely have stormy patches when two strong wills collided, but rather a wildcat than a lapdog.
“Definitely,” he agreed.
“Mph!” said the cardinal. “We cannot condone such carnality outside holy matrimony. Father Giulio, will you do the necessary, please?”
The priest looked outraged at this roughshod shortcut through proper ritual, but he would not argue with His Eminence.
“Certainly. Wulfgang Magnus, as the Holy Father has specifically ruled that there is no impediment…”
CHAPTER 45
Wulf took his bride into the privacy of limbo and kissed her. There was no danger of either letting go. Between kisses they spoke of love and longing; they promised faith and happiness. They spoke also of sorrow and guilt.
“I truly mourn Anton,” Madlenka said. “Had there been time, I might have accepted my duty to love him. You would have gone away-I might have managed.”
Wulf doubted that he could ever have recovered from the loss, but that did not stop him from mourning his closest brother. “He gave you no cause to love him. And me very little, but I shall miss him terribly. Had I known he was hurt, I could and would have healed him.”
“He did give me up, remember? He wanted us both to be happy. He would not stand between us.”
When Otto forced him not to… But what she had said was true.
“There is no cure for death, and only time heals wounds. My father told us that when he was dying.”
She already knew that Anton was dead and the Pomeranian flag flew over Gallant. He listed what else had happened in the two days they had been apart: that he was now Sir Wulfgang, so she was no longer a countess, but he was the prince’s master of horse, so they would live in Mauvnik, and her name was officially Magdalena, and they would have to make up some story about who she was and how they met. And they had to sup at the palace that evening.
She kissed him again. “First things first,” she whispered. “Let’s find that bed. I can tell that you need it. So do I. And I want there to be no doubt that we are now husband and wife.”
An offer he could not refuse. He opened a gate. “Welcome to the Bacchus, in Mauvnik. The Horse Room.”
She stepped in and peered around in near-darkness. “Did you say ‘room’ or ‘stall’? Is that bed really big enough for what you have in mind?”
Oh, that smile! Was his face as flushed as hers?
“What I have in-”
“At last!” Justina appeared in a swirl of cold air.
Madlenka jumped in alarm and he tightened his embrace. He peered over her shoulder at the twilit landscape beyond the new gate. “Where is that?”
“Elysium. A former monastery and the Saints’ meeting place. Lady Umbral is in conference with the Agioi, and we have been waiting for you. Come!”
Reluctantly he unwound himself from Madlenka so they could obey, but they were still holding hands as they stepped through the gate into a tiny paved courtyard, barely more than a passage between two stone buildings. A river of wind rushed through it, billowing his cloak and the women’s dresses. Straight ahead was a perilously low parapet, and beyond that, nothing, only air and sky, all the way to far-distant hills, dark against the last glow of sunset. Overhead the stars were wakening.
“You must be careful what you say,” Justina said, pushing through the wind to a low doorway. “Weigh every word. And you keep that temper of yours firmly nailed dowwhat n, Wulfgang. You had better leave all the talking to your cadger.”
Madlenka squeaked in alarm.
Wulf squeezed her hand. “She just means you must not let me lose my temper.”
“Yours? What about mine? My temper’s much worse than yours.”
“No, it’s not! Mine is a hundred times worse.”
“Imagine what ferocious children we will have!”
“How many? Five brothers to teach one another fighting and five sisters to love?”
“Will you two alley cats stop that!” The old lady had managed to wrestle the door open. She ducked under the lintel, but both Wulf and Madlenka had to stoop as they followed, still defiantly holding hands. The wind slammed the door behind them and continued to moan through chinks in the shutters.
The room they had entered was roughly square, packed with a motley crowd of standing men and women. Four brass lanterns dangled on chains from smoke-stained ceiling beams and swung wildly in the draft, providing little light and making shadows dance over rough-plastered walls. Heads turned toward the newcomers, and bodies shuffled aside to open a narrow aisle, along which Justina scampered, with Sir Wulfgang and Lady Madlenka at her heels.
Wulf thought there must be forty or fifty people present, and about half of them sported halos. Assume, then, that this was a meeting of both falcons and their cadgers, prearranged so that the three’s-dangerous rule did not apply. The participants must have gathered from far and wide, for their dress styles varied hugely, and even the odors that wafted by on drafts were alien: fish, garlic, lavender, horse, cumin, and cinnamon. He squeezed past monks and nuns, men-at-arms, serving women and grand ladies, gentlemen and workers, priests both Catholic and Orthodox, Muslim men in turbans with womenfolk in burkas… old and young, fat and thin. He soon worked out that those on his right must be Agioi supporters, and the Saints’ contingent was to his left.
He confirmed that guess when Madlenka and he reached the front row and Justina directed them to go and stand next to the left-hand wall. She then disappeared back into the crowd. The room had once been a chapel, for the low dais that stretched across that end would have been the sanctuary and held an altar. Now this was a courtroom, so the judges sat there. To the left, on a high-backed chair just a few feet in front of him, was a lady in white, and he knew at once that she must be the mysterious Lady Umbral. She was slim and probably tall; her gown was finely styled and glittered. But what she herself looked like remained a secret even now, for the chair bore the sort of canopy called a cloth of estate, which shadowed her face. More than dim lighting was at work, though; some sort of sorcery was masking her features even more. If he met her again tomorrow he would not know her. The intent must be that no Speaker could Look through her eyes or open a gate to wherever she might be.
On the right side of the dais, the man cross-legged on a divan was a real surprise, for he was a Turk, and the Agioi were supposedly the Orthodox counterparts of the Catholic Saints. Of course, the Orthodox patriarch still dwelt in Constantinople, and the Ottoman sultan who ruled there now would undoubtedly keep a firm hand on the Speakers in his empire. Not just a Muslim, either, for he was wearing the garishly multicolored uniform of the sultan’s janissary warriors-high headdress with a neck cloth, baggy trousers, curved sword, dagger, and all. Personal slaves of the sultan, originally Christian boys taken in tribute and forcibly converted to Islam, janissaries were the most dreaded warriors in the known world. Even without his Speaker nimbus he would have looked dangerous: big, slit-eyed, tough as tempered steel, and very little older than Wulf himself. Unique among Muslim
