Chapter 88: THE SALT OF THE THIRD STONE (II)

The ford at Tulln lay under a skin of ice the color of old pewter, and the horses picked their way across it with the delicacy of men walking on a frozen pond. Konrad rode first, his father’s sword strapped across his back beneath the grey cloak, and the brother rode behind him, hood drawn, hands buried in his sleeves as though he feared the cold would steal his fingers. The monastery at the water’s edge had shrunk behind them in the mist, its bell tower no more than a needle stitching fog to sky.

They had left before the snow could bury the path. The priest’s warning—*only until the thaw*—sat in Konrad’s chest like a swallowed stone.

“You have not asked me her name,” the brother said, when the far bank rose from the mist. “The widow. You have not asked what she looks like, or how she lives, or whether she will receive you.”

“I know her name.”

“Do you? Hedwig von Eppenstein is what the world calls her. But the woman at Tulln has not answered to that name in seven years. She calls herself Sister Salome, and she keeps bees, and she prays with the Poor Clares when the mood takes her. She will not open the door to a Habsburg.”

Konrad reined in. The horse blew steam, stamped. “And to you?”

The brother’s smile was the old one now—Konrad’s smile, the one he wore like a mask. “To me she opens the door because I bring her salt. There is a spring three miles east, and the salt from it is the only thing that eases her hands in winter. She is a proud woman. She will not ask for charity. So I bring her salt and pretend it is a tithe from the monastery.”

“And the daughter?”

“Agnes.” The brother’s voice changed on the name, softened at the edges. “Seven years old. She has your father’s eyes and her mother’s stubbornness. She knows nothing of you. She believes her father died before she was born.”

Konrad looked at the frozen river, at the willows bowed under snow. “You have been her father.”

“I have been her uncle. It is enough.”

They rode on. The road along the north bank was a tunnel of bare trees, their branches clacking like bones in the wind. Konrad’s thoughts circled back to Prague, to the lion’s table and Ottokar’s ultimatum, to the double who wore his face and the letter against his heart that named him heir. The river remembers, Hedwig had said. But what did a river remember of a man who had drowned in it?

The house stood apart from the village, a low stone building with a thatched roof and a chimney trailing smoke the color of pearl. Bees hummed in straw hives along the south wall, sluggish in the cold, and a girl in a grey dress was scattering ash on the path to melt the ice. She looked up at the sound of hooves, and her face—her face was a mirror held up to Konrad’s own childhood. The same stubborn chin, the same watchful eyes. She did not smile.

She ran inside.

By the time they dismounted and knocked, the door was opened by a woman in a widow’s wimple, her hands red and cracked, her eyes the color of the river in spring. She looked at the brother first, then at Konrad, and something in her face closed like a door.

“You brought him,” she said. Not a question.

“He is her father, Salome.”

“He is a Habsburg.”

“He is also her father.”

She stood in the doorway a long moment, the cold air curling around her like a cat. Then she stepped aside. “Come in. The fire is small, but it is warm.”

Inside smelled of beeswax and rye bread and the sharp tang of salt. The girl, Agnes, sat at a table by the hearth, her hands folded, her eyes fixed on Konrad with the intensity of a hawk. She had been told, then. Perhaps she had always known. Children have a way of knowing what is hidden from them.

“You are the one who killed the man at the fair,” she said.

Konrad stopped. “What man?”

“The one with the yellow beard. He came here asking questions. Mother would not let him in, so he waited at the ford for three days. Then he went away.” She tilted her head. “You are not him. You have a different face.”

“Agnes,” Salome said. “Fetch water.”

The girl did not move. “He has the sword. The one in the tapestry. The wolf and the lion.”

Konrad looked at the brother. The brother looked at Salome. And Salome, the widow who had once been Hedwig von Eppenstein, sat down heavily on a stool by the fire and pressed her ruined hands together until the knuckles went white.

“She knows everything,” she said. “I told her when the priest came. The priest who was not a priest. He had a scar, like you. He asked questions about the boy Peter, and the girl at the convent, and the ledger of bones. He said he was your brother. He said he had waited for you at the monastery and that you would come. He said—” She stopped. Swallowed. “He said you would try to take her from me.”

The silence stretched. The fire spat. Outside, a bee droned against the window, confused by the warmth.

“I have another brother,” Konrad said slowly. “One I did not know until this winter. He wears my face. He claims to have waited for me. He warned me that Anselm was never mine.”

“Then there are two of them,” Salome said. “Because the man who came here wore your face and spoke with your voice, and he asked about the children, and he said the king in Prague would pay well for what I knew.” She looked up, and her eyes were not the river in spring but the river in flood. “I told him nothing. But he took something.”

She rose and crossed to a chest in the corner, lifting a loose stone from beneath it. In the hollow beneath lay a small leather pouch, which she placed on the table. It was empty.

“The wolf’s-head ring,” she said. “Hedwig’s ring. The one she gave you. He took it. He said it was the only proof you would need, and that you would not miss it until it was too late.”

Konrad touched his own hand, where the ring had been. It was gone. He had not noticed. When? On the road? At the monastery? In the frost-mirror, the man who wore his face had reached out—had touched his hand—had he taken it then? Or later, in the dark of the boat, when the priest had blessed him and he had slept?

“He is not your brother,” Salome said. “He is something else. Something the river sent.”

Konrad looked at the empty pouch, and then at his daughter, who watched him with his father’s eyes, and he understood at last what Hedwig had meant. The river remembers. But it does not remember kindly. It remembers what you tried to drown.

The brother—the true brother, the one with the scarred face and the sad smile—stepped forward and touched his sleeve. “We must go. If he has the ring, he can pass anywhere. He can claim your name. He can claim her.”

Salome caught Konrad’s arm. Her grip was cold and strong. “Take her with you.”

“To Prague? To the lion’s den?”

“To wherever you are going. Because he will come back for her. He said as much. He said you would not be able to protect her, and he was right.” She looked at Agnes, and the girl rose from the table and came to stand beside her mother, and then—slowly, gravely—beside Konrad. “She is a wolf’s cub. She belongs with the pack.”

Konrad knelt. He looked into his daughter’s face, and for a moment he saw himself at seven, standing in the courtyard at Habsburg, watching his father ride away for the last time. He had not known then that he would never see him again.

“Agnes,” he said. “Do you know who I am?”

“You are my father,” she said. “And you are going to kill the man who took the ring.”

The fire cracked. Outside, the bee had stopped droning. Konrad rose and looked at the brother, and the brother looked back, and neither of them spoke the thing they both were thinking: that the man with Konrad’s face was not the only thing the river had sent. There was also the thaw. And the thaw was coming faster than any of them knew.