The Book of Earth Read Online Free Page A

your ritual is now satisfied, may I present to you my beloved daughter Erde?”
    If the baron had hoped that chivalry would overwin humility, his gambit failed. The robed man bowed deeply but did not remove his hood. “My lady.”
    This is not Guillemo Gotti
, Erde decided suddenly.
How peculiar. Why doesn’t the priest speak for himself?
She was sure her grandmother would have rooted out the real man right away, or coaxed him into revealing himself, but Baron Josef chose to play along, launching immediately into a detailed recitation of arrangements for the funeral and the subsequent festivities. He may not have known how many servants worked for him but he knew all the proper protocols.
    Meanwhile, Erde surveyed the other twenty-nine white robes and made her own choice. Four pairs from the back, within a few quick strides of the open door, one man seemed slightly shorter, slightly broader than the others. She had first picked him out by the quick gleam that his eyes made, catching the silvery light from the clerestory as they flicked about the hall. Mapping out the exits, or counting the guardsmen? Taking the measure of their young captain so prominently displayed by the baron’s side? The other brothers kept their eyes fixed forward. Erde pondered this mystery. Brother Guillemo might willingly ask shelter and board of Josef von Alte, but perhaps he did not trust him. Was it because he came from so far away in Rome, and therefore did not trust any stranger?
    She studied her candidate further, taking care not to be noticed. He was older, too, than the others, with pockmarked skin only partly hidden by his thick black beard and anonymous cowl. She could make out a narrow ferretynose and full red lips. The priests Erde had known from the churches in the villages were mostly pale, dry creatures with bovine dispositions. The castle chaplain was reserved and precise. But this man’s face was worldly and manipulative. He reminded her of some of her father’s vassal lords, the sort who’d drink with him late into the night and the next day, scheme against him behind his back. She knew they did so. Her chamber-woman had told her all about it. Sometimes Fricca’s gossipy nature had its uses.
    “And so, my lord baron,” the false-Guillemo was saying, “with your noble permission, we poor mendicants will retire to rest after our long journey and pray, in order to properly prepare for this solemn occasion and to be received into such high-born company.”
    The baron nodded. “My permission, good Brother, and gladly.”
    The priest bowed and melted back into the ranks of his fellows. When the entourage had proceeded grandly and irritatingly slowly into the courtyard, Baron Josef rose, signaling his guard captain to follow, and strode from the hall. The court relaxed into a hubbub of debate and discussion. Suddenly invisible, Erde slipped from her ceremonial chair and darted through the crowd.
    “Alla! Alla!” She caught up with the nurse-midwife as the old woman struggled up the circular stair toward her chamber off the gallery. “Alla! Such a thing I have to tell you!”
    “Hello, moonface. Don’t be tearing that fine dress, now.” Beneath her midwife’s white head cloth, Alla’s hair was thinning, but her eyes were bright and her round fine-seamed face demanded the same frank honesty that it offered. “Really knows how to lard it on, that one, doesn’t he?”
    “Listen to me, Alla, listen!” Erde squeezed past on the narrow stair and faced her, mounting the steps backward with the velvet gown hiked up past her shins. “You know what? It’s not really him! I mean, that’s not him, the one who spoke!”
    “Slow down, lightning, so a poor ancient can understand.”
    Erde gained the top step and took a breath. Seeing Alla always reduced her self-image to that of an eight-year-old,until she caught herself and remembered she was nearly fourteen. “The monk who spoke to Papa is not really Brother