He set foot on the porch but saw that another person knelt, praying and weeping, in the dim interior: Lord Geoffrey.
I am not the only troubled soul. And were his troubles so very desperate? Discontent was not the same as desperation. Watching the shadowed figure from the porch of the little church, Ivar sensed that, outside, he waited under the skies of a far finer day than the one that, inside, plagued Geoffrey with rain and tempest. Lord Geoffrey had lost his wife, and his cousin—if he had held much affection for the deceased Count Lavastine, which Ivar had no way of determining. His now-crippled daughter had only a tenuous hold on the county claimed in her name, and his two young sons were being held in Autun in the tender care of Lady Sabella. The local folk muttered against him, and some said openly that Geoffrey had usurped the place of the rightful heir in order to get the lands and title for his daughter and thus—because she was still a child—himself.
No wonder he wept.
Back by the gate, the watch bell rang. A pair of banners fluttered in the distance as a party of riders approached the holding.
“What news?” demanded Geoffrey, emerging from the church.
“I don’t know,” said Ivar, taken aback by that brusque tone.
“Didn’t Biscop Constance send you? Who are those riders?”
“I know no more than you do.”
“Then you know that this life is only tears and suffering! Or do you clerics have some psalm for that, to tell us otherwise?”
Ivar couldn’t think of any. The psalms all ran together in his mind, praising God, smiting foes, rejoicing at deliverance, and punishing those who did not act as they should, although the blessed Daisan had taught that to act against what is right was, in a way, its own punishment since humankind knew that it were better and easier to do what is good than what is evil.
“The actions of humankind are a mystery,” he said at last, “since many do evil things who ought to know better, and some do good when they mean to do ill.”
Geoffrey grunted as if irritated and set out for the gate to greet the newcomers. Ivar hastened after him, and came to the hall in time to hear a haughty young man, with the bearing of a youth raised in a noble house, speak to Geoffrey and Constance while a crowd gathered to listen.
“Lady Sabella sends this message to Lord Geoffrey of Lavas, regent for Lavrentia, count of Lavas. ‘Tidings have reached me that you are sheltering Biscop Constance, who has fomented rebellion against me. Turn her over into my custody, in Autun, or your sons will be forfeit, executed for your treason.’”
“Treason!” Geoffrey raged. The messenger held his ground, unmoved by the lord’s anger. “They are children! The younger hasn’t seen four summers.” He pressed the heels of his hands against his forehead and muttered curses while his daughter sat small and quiet behind him. “It would have been better if they had died with their mother!”
Lavrentia’s face crumpled as she fought to restrain tears.
“Despair is a sin, Geoffrey,” said Constance, taking hold of his arm and drawing his hands down.
“Am I to rejoice instead?”
She caught his gaze and held it, and after a moment his wild look subsided to something more like shame. Ivar squeezed forward through the ranks to his friends, who were waiting beside the hearth. The messenger glanced their way, attracted by Ivar’s movement through the assembly, and dismissed them with a smirk.
“I would not have burdened you with my presence if I had known Sabella would threaten you in this particular way,” said Constance.
“She’s listening to Salian advisers!” Geoffrey seemed ready to laugh. “Salians are always murdering their children to clear their own path to the throne or to riches.”
“So the chronicles suggest,” agreed Constance in a mild tone that was meant to warn him, but Geoffrey was not able to listen.
“They might be dead already. Then nothing will be served by giving you up to her as well. Better stick with what we know is true. Or Sabella may be bluffing. She may not have the heart to kill two innocent children.”
“Do you think so?” asked Constance.
He swayed, jerking side to side as though tugged this way and that by a sharp pull on a rope. “I don’t know what to think! How can it have all gone wrong? I must go! I’ll exchange myself for them! Let her kill me if she wishes! I would welcome death!”
“Lord Geoffrey! For shame!”
He hid his face. His daughter sobbed into her hands, echoing her father. The company of retainers and servants stood in awful silence, and a few crept away like beaten dogs hoping not to be noticed. The messenger watched carefully, absorbing the scene into his memory so that, Ivar suppose, he might report Geoffrey’s weakness to Sabella.