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Alain flushed, keeping his head down, and did not answer.

“Your parents?” asked Agius, coming down off the dais and walking up the aisle to stand beside Alain. Alain caught the scent of damp wool and the spices of holy water, and a lingering scent of rose oil. Agius’ hands were brown and callused, the hands of a man who engaged in manual labor. Yet his accent betrayed him as a man of highest birth.Advertisement

“I do not know who my mother was, Frater Agius. Henri of Osna, son of Adelheid, fostered me. He is the father I know. My family is from Osna village, my Aunt Bel, who is Henri’s sister, and her children, who count me as their cousin. I was raised there.”

“Bel and Henri? Named after Henry with a ‘y’ and Sabella, I suppose, but with a Salian taint. But you are a fosterling?” Agius had sharp eyes, able to cut through to the heart of things. Or so Alain feared.

“Yes, Brother.”

“It is said by the people hereabouts that old Count Lavastine, grandfather to the current count, made a pact with devils for those hounds.” Alain fidgeted, wishing he was less conspicuous. “It is also said that the bargain drawn up between them demanded blood, and promised blood, and that the hounds would only obey the count or an heir of his blood. I have asked Chatelaine Dhuoda if it is possible that you are the bastard son of Count Lavastine. By my calculations, as I look through the records, he would have sired you just around the time he became betrothed to the woman he later wed. A bastard son sired on a common girl, however pretty, would be an embarrassment, would it not, at such a delicate time? Many such bastard sons are given to the church, to get them out of their family’s way.”

Some tone in his voice made Alain look up and blurt out: “You? Are you a bastard son given to the church against your will?”

Agius did not smile. “I am not such a one. I entered the church against the wishes of my parents. I was betrothed to a woman I did not want to marry. It would have been a good marriage for my family, but it was not for me, for I had already sworn in my heart to—” He broke off, and after a hesitation went on. “—to devote my life to Our Lady of Blessings.” He placed a hand against his chest. “The Lady blessed my suit. I had a brother younger by one year, handsomer and more inclined to such a marriage, and together we convinced my betrothed that he would make a better match. So I took my vows at eighteen, and my brother married soon after. He is dead now, killed in King Henry’s wars.” He said it calmly, yet Alain thought his eyes flashed with anger and his mouth twisted down with bitterness. “But you look nothing like. Still, strong blood in a child leads it to resemble the mother.”

It took Alain a moment to understand. You look nothing like Count Lavastine. That was what Brother Agius meant. “What would it matter if I was Count Lavastine’s son?” he asked, angry that Henri could be dismissed so easily. “I was fostered out. Even if it was true, he must have meant to be rid of me.”

“Surely you don’t believe that would be the end of it, do you? Many a noble lord or lady showers favor and even wealth on the bastard sired or born in noble loins. If your heart is indeed devoted to the church, you must think of what you can bring to Our Lady and the blessed Daisan. A noblelady’s son might bring wealth or lands, a nobleman’s son an endowment to a monastery or, if he is loved enough, his parent might found an institution in which to house him.”

“Even if it were true,” Alain whispered, “I am only a merchant’s son now. I could never prove such a thing.” Even if he wished it were true. A child born into the nobility, even as a bastard, might hope for service with the king, might inherit an estate that would allow him to lead his own warband, or if not that, then gain entrance into the king’s elite cavalry, the Dragons.

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“I have examined the record of births for the year in which you were evidently born. Of the children born in that year, there are only three who, nameless, escape me. The others died as young children and were lifted up to the Chamber of Light, their deaths recorded in the parish register, or else I have tracked them down and seen them, whole and alive, with my own eyes. Of those three, one was noted as a baby girl and born to a legitimately married couple who soon after left these parts. The other two are recorded simply as babes born to unmarried women whose names are not given, though one, at least, received a penance to perform for her sins. Alas, the deacon who tended the Lavas Church Hearth in those days is now dead, but the cook here has an exceptionally fine memory for these things. She assures me there was no other child born and taken away in that year. Nor has she memory of any foundling left at the church door.” pqdm.com