Heaven's Fire Read Online Free Page A

they’d been taken.
    Peeling back the blanket, Rainulf sucked in a breath and executed a hasty sign of the cross. The face on which he gazed was so densely covered with yellowish pustules as to completely mask its features. The poor creature’s thin white hair was the only indication of age. Had Rainulf not known the body to be that of the rector, he might even have thought it to be female.
    “It’s best this way,” the woman said. Rainulf turned to find her standing right behind him, leaning on the shovel and staring thoughtfully at the dead priest. “He went blind in the end. Some of them do, you know.”
    “I know.” He swallowed hard. She looked at him inquiringly, and he met her eyes, drawn to something in them that surprised and touched him. Compassion. She felt compassion... for him! Here she was, suffering from this appalling malady that killed and blinded and disfigured; yet, sensing his own grief, his own nightmare, she had it within her to feel sympathy for him.
    A most strange woman , he thought, holding her gaze. In their warm depths he saw curiosity and humor, and something else... wisdom. The wisdom of the ages.
    “How old are you?” he asked.
    She laughed, displaying teeth so straight and white as to be the envy of the noblest lady. Her smile was delightful, and infectious. Rainulf was actually tempted to laugh himself—odd, given that he hadn’t laughed in a very long time, and somewhat inappropriate under the circumstances. Instead, he marshaled his expression and asked, “What’s so funny?”
    “You,” she said. “You’re rather an odd person, that’s all.”
    “Me?” He pulled the blanket back over the body and stood. “What’s odd about me ?”
    She shook her head, grinning. “Asking my age like that, out of the blue, and before you’ve even asked my name. That’s the kind of thing I do.”
    “What?”
    “Ask the wrong questions at the wrong time.” He noticed a shiver course through her; she shook it off and smiled gamely. “Or so Father Osred used to say. He said I was like a little child, always asking questions.”
    “I’m very much the same, but then, I’m a teacher. It’s in my nature to ask questions—and, of course, to question the answers.”
    She nodded knowingly. “ Disputatio .”
    Rainulf was taken by surprise that this obviously lowborn woman knew the Latin term for academic debate.
    She laughed again. “I know many things.”
    He bowed slightly. “Of that I have very little doubt.” She was remarkably well spoken for a woman in her circumstances, in addition to being well informed about things no Oxfordshire peasant had any business knowing of. Rainulf wondered where she had learned so much.
    She studied him for a moment. “I’m three and twenty years of age. And I know French as well as English and Latin, although I prefer speaking English. And my name, if it’s of any interest to you, is Constance.”
    “Constance,” he repeated. “A very pretty name. From the Latin. It means unchanging.”
    “I know.”
    Of course , thought Rainulf with amusement.
    She screwed up her face. “I hate it. Why should one want to be constant , as if change were some great evil? If it weren’t for change, everything would stagnate, would it not? And that which stagnates tends to putrefy, like a river that ceases to flow. What good can there be in that?”
    Rainulf stared in awe at this fragile, exhausted young woman, her eyes glazed with fever, discoursing on the nature of change. She was right, of course; change was the very fabric of life itself. And death.
    “My father wanted to name me Corliss,” she continued, “but my mother wouldn’t let him, worse luck.”
    “Corliss. Isn’t that a man’s name?”
    She frowned indignantly, an expression that, on her, was unaccountably charming. “It’s for a man or a woman! And it’s much more suited to me than Constance!”
    “Perhaps you’re right,” he conceded with a little bow. He nodded toward Father