Read Online The Miracle Thief by Iris Anthony - Free Book Online

came winging through the air, rustling the willow’s leaves. And then something struck the trunk above me with an alarming thump. As I turned, I realized my curiosity had caught me out.
    Andulf, my knight, was sitting atop his courser, scowling at me. Though he was older than some of my former knights had been, he would probably still go on to do great things. Beneath his gruff manner, blunt features, and his steel-colored eyes, he had that look about him. Many of my past knights were now in my father’s service. I was forever following my father about, and they were forever following me. My father got accustomed to them, and then he came to rely upon them, and soon he had taken my men for himself. There was no quicker way to him than through me, and everyone knew it.
    â€œI was instructed to retrieve you, my lady. And just in time. You look as if you might have wandered across the river to the other side.” He nodded toward the opposite bank.
    Following his gaze, I realized the Danes had made note of our presence. The large one, the chieftain, lifted his horned cup in our direction.
    â€œLook there, they invite you. Why don’t you go? It might lend some interest to an otherwise dull and dreary duty.”
    Andulf was not the worst of knights. At least he talked to me, even when he did not have to. For a long while, before my father had taken to wife, I was the princess. Now I was just a princess. One of many…the least of those many. I was a princess no one had need of anymore. Lotharingian blood did not flow through my veins as it did through the others’. I could offer a bridegroom only an alliance with my father, and he had more enemies than he did relations. I could not bring anyone ties to Lorraine, like my half sisters could. No one cared what I did, and I had no honor to preserve. Everyone knew I was common; my mother had been a palace servant.
    Even so, at eighteen years, I should have long ago been married, but as loyalties throughout the empire shifted, so did my marriage prospects.
    Andulf extended a hand. “We’ve had word the archbishop is returning.”
    There would be news of the treaty then! I came away from the willow and clasped his hand so he could pull me up to sit behind him.
    He took me back to the villa. As we rode through the palisade, the breeze snapped at the banners that had been hung about, announcing the royal presence. There were horses and squires aplenty in the courtyard, evidence of the counselors who had assembled at their sovereign’s behest.
    My father’s eyes followed me as the horse passed by, and I knew he would speak to me later of my whereabouts.
    A shout went up from the gate, and soon the sparkling tip of the archbishop’s jeweled miter came into view, followed by his sweat-stained brow, drooping jowls, and then his crimson-draped shoulders.
    Andulf gripped my hand as I slid from the back of the horse.
    My father did not even wait for the archbishop to approach. He left the villa’s colonnaded porch and strode into the courtyard. “Have they agreed?”
    I stepped up onto the porch the others had abandoned and leaned against one of the columns.
    The archbishop paused, panting, as he grasped his crozier between both hands and clung to it as if he feared to let go. His nephew, a canon, carried the cleric’s parchments. They were followed by a fair-haired monk with strangely pale eyes. “They request a three-month truce, Sire.”
    â€œA truce ?”
    My father’s counselors gasped, and I right along with them. How bold the Danes were to request anything from my father at all! It was their army that had been defeated at Chartres, not my father’s.
    The Count of Paris scowled. “All the better to rebuild their armies and repair their weapons.”
    The archbishop was already shaking his head. “They wish to be allowed to return to their families and take in what remains of the harvest before