Maze of Moonlight by Gael Baudino

Author:Gael Baudino [Baudino, Gael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Books
Published: 2011-10-09T14:45:39+00:00

Chapter Seventeen

Spring in Adria was warm and dry, and above Maris, the sky was blue and cloudless: the perfect weather for an Easter celebration. The fortress complex that dominated the entire northern half of the city was decorated this Sunday with fresh flowers, and ribbons and pennants floated from its every spire and window. The rest of the city was aflutter with hangings that ranged from bedsheets in the poor sections to, in the rich, elaborate tapestries commissioned especially for the day; and in the streets, the crowds were fierce, surging, a sea of eyes and faces that lapped about the players, pageants, musicians, and acrobats that Ruprecht, baron of Maris, had summoned to help celebrate the central and most profound mystery of Christendom.

But Ruprecht did not allow the secular entertainments to reign alone, for as he was a pious man, he was profoundly conscious of the deeper significance of the day. He had risen early to sing lauds with his chaplain (he prided himself on knowing by heart the entire year of psalmodic devotions), had attended mass twice (once in his private chapel, once in the cathedral), and had spent the rest of the morning in meditation before the figure of the Crucified One that dominated his bedroom.

He prayed for guidance, for Maris was the light of true religion in a land that was, with few exceptions, plunged into heretical night. The pernicious advance of the Roman papacy in England and in the Holy Roman Empire had turned Adria into a dark world of corruption in which even a papal legate could be hunted down and killed with complete and arrogant impunity. Ruprecht thanked God that France at least still rejected the simoniacal impostor who slouched so bestially upon a counterfeit Throne of Peter!

Justified, encouraged, Ruprecht rose from his devotions then, and descended from his tower bedroom. Though his inner prayers continued, he had business to attend to, for he could think of no better way to discomfit the forces of Satan than to show them with what pomp the true servants of God could celebrate the risen Christ.

He spent the morning inspecting the great kitchen, edifying the servants with solemn words about the significance of the day, speaking personally to the officers of his household, and more importantly, instructing his wife on the importance of her appearance and deportment at the festivities. A baron, after all, was judged by the company he kept: peasant girls in homespun might be good enough for a nest of savages and madmen such as Aurverelle, and little drabs for Hypprux, but the lady of Maris had to display nobility in every point of her bearing.

Just before lunch, though, he paused in his study and picked up a sheet of parchment. “What's this?”

“Another letter from Christopher of Aurverelle, messire,” said his chancellor, William. “It came yesterday.”

“Just like a devil-worshiper to shove business beneath my nose on a day like today!” Ruprecht examined the salutation, tugging thoughtfully on his beard. In the vernacular, of course.

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