Agnes screamed, or at least she thought she did. Her mouth was open and her throat was raw, but that terrible, animal howl was not coming from her. Through the haze of her drunkenness, Agnes searched the room.
It was the lady Ygraine who screamed. She wailed and shrieked and tore at her clothes. Gamelyn reached for her, pinning her arms to her sides so she could no longer thrash, but she fought him, and they both sank to the ground. Huddling against her son’s chest, she sobbed.
And then there was Marozia, too shocked to move, holding on to her daughter and watching in utter stillness and silence. Meriope hid her face in her mother’s skirts, not weeping, perhaps too young to understand the horror, too bewildered to produce tears.
Agnes could do little but look on, panic rising as her drunkenness ebbed. It knifed through the haze. Liuprand pummeled Childeric and there was nothing just about it, nothing princely. It was barbarism, as sloppy as a tavern brawl.
Only Thrasamund was roused to action. He grasped at Liuprand’s cape and attempted to wrest him away, but Liuprand merely shrugged him off, with a mindless, oxlike twitch, and the great lord fell back against the toppled table as though he had been dealt a blow.
“Get…away…” Thrasamund growled as his retainers rushed to his side to right him. “Stop this madness—stop—”
At first Childeric had struggled, but now he lay still. Yet Liuprand pounded on; he was beyond reason now, excited only by hiswine-stirred rage. The stench of blood hung in the air, almost sweet as it mingled with the splattered remains of the feast. The only sounds were Ygraine’s muffled sobs and the wet, vulgar slap of skin on bloodied skin.
Finally, Agnes was able to summon up some half-numb courage. She stumbled forward and placed a shaking hand on Liuprand’s shoulder, gently, so as not to startle him. Then—slave as he was to her touch—Liuprand stopped. His shoulders slumped. His fists slackened. His labored, uneven breathing filled the hall.
When he looked up at Agnes, his eyes were glazed. Childeric’s blood soiled the sleeves of his doublet, red to each elbow.
“Agnes,” he whispered.
But before another word could fall from his lips, Thrasamund and his retainers descended. They slid Childeric’s unmoving body out from under Liuprand, leaving a lugubrious trail of blood in their wake.
Liuprand rose unsteadily to his feet, as if hobbled by the hugeness of his own form; even now, half bent, he towered over the next tallest man in the room. Agnes saw for the first time a perversity to his size, how it made him something beyond human. It was as if a bitter god had descended from the heavens to punish, with his own hands, the minor crime of a mortal man. And such a minor crime it was, Agnes thought in despair: words, as insubstantial as air.
“Come now!” Thrasamund shouted, beckoning his retainers. “The House of Eyes recants all its honors and renounces all its vows! Your savage cruelty will not be forgotten, Liuprand of the line of Berengar! You have lost our loyalty to your cause!”
His retainers flocked to him. Four men together hefted Childeric’s body onto their shoulders, and Agnes was shocked to see that—very faintly—he did now stir. His eyes were too swollen to blink, but his mouth moved voicelessly.
“And the House of Blood will follow,” Thrasamund snarled. “Come, Gamelyn. Take your lady mother. And take the child, too. She is your possession now.”
Gamelyn had his arms still braced about his mother and did notmove. His expression was one of cold shock. When he continued to stare on in stillness, Thrasamund barked an order to one of his retainers, and the man approached Marozia.
Brusquely, and without a sound, he grasped Meriope and lifted her off the ground. She had been holding fast to Marozia’s gown, and the fabric tore in her tiny fists.
“Mama!” Meriope cried. “Mama, no!”
These were the first words Agnes had ever heard her speak.
Marozia reached for her, but Meriope, writhing and wailing, was transferred into Gamelyn’s stiffly raised arms. At last his icy façade cracked, and his lips curled upward, subtly, in disgust. Then the circle of men closed around them, herding the guests of both houses to the door.
Their heavy, hurried footsteps, and Meriope’s continued wailing, created a terrible din. Marozia gave chase, hiking up her skirts and breaking into a run, arm outstretched and fingers straining, straining, straining toward her daughter. But the hosts of the House of Eyes and the House of Blood were too far ahead. They beat open the great doors and vanished through them. Marozia to fell to her knees, empty hand still held aloft, and let out one single, broken sob.
XV
The princess and the mistress
Agnes was a connoisseur of silence, but even she had never heard quite such a silence before.
It was unique not only for its totality but for its brittleness, too. The air in the chamber had a fragile quality, like glass. Even so much as a sharply drawn breath could shatter it.
All around were the ruins of the feast, the broken goblets, the toppled tables, the wine and food spilled and splattered, and of course the blood. It was in garish smears across the floor. It soaked the hem of Liuprand’s golden cloak. And the whole room reeked of it, that salty tang, like rusted metal, like water from a stinking, stagnant pool.
The guests from the remaining houses did not speak or even move. The women did not attempt to wipe the stains from their skirts, and the men did not call out to their retainers for aid. Agnes’s gaze cast about the room and she saw only blankly horrified faces, wide eyes. Perpetua’s chin was quivering, and she gripped tightly her husband’s arm. Beside her, Lord Rabanus stood as still as a corpse.
It was Marozia alone who shifted. Her arm fell, while her shoulders, cloaked in that stiff black cloth, drew up around her ears. She stared unblinkingly down at the floor, her chest heaving.
Something fell silently from her face—a tear?
And Agnes found she could not bear it, any of it. The pressure of the silence was like the pounding of mallets against a thin, taut drumskin. It echoed through her bones; it gave a hot pulse to the blood in her veins. She thought she had conquered silence, that indeed, she had even conquered pain, but now, in the ebbing haze of her drunkenness,she knew she had done no such thing. How arrogant she had been, how witless. Her pain had only learned new shapes and new currents.
