Uprooted(77)

The archbishop held up the net and prayed long and sonorously, and then he turned and flung the net over the queen’s head. It settled over her gently and the edges unrolled, draping to her feet. Then to my surprise the monk stepped forward and put his hands on the mesh and spoke. “Yilastus kosmet, yilastus kosmet vestuo palta,” he began, and went on from there: a spell that flowed into the lines of the net and lit them up.

The light filled the queen’s whole body from every side, illuminating her. She shone atop the platform, head up straight, blazing. It wasn’t like the light of the Summoning. That was a cold clear brilliance, hard and painful. This light felt like coming back home late in midwinter to find a lamp shining out of the window, beckoning you into the house: it was a light full of love and warmth. A sighing went around the crowd. Even the priests drew back for a moment just to look at the shining queen.

The monk kept his hand on the net, steadily pouring in magic. I kicked my horse until she grudgingly moved in closer to the Falcon’s and leaned from my saddle to whisper, “Who is he?”

“Do you mean our gentle Owl?” he said. “Father Ballo. He’s the archbishop’s delight, as you might imagine: it’s not often you can find a meek and biddable wizard.” He sounded disdainful, but the monk didn’t look so very meek to me: he looked worried and displeased.

“And that net?” I asked.

“You’ve heard of Saint Jadwiga’s veil, surely,” the Falcon said, so offhanded I gawked at him. It was the holiest relic of all Polnya. I had heard the veil was only brought out when they crowned the kings, to prove them free of any influence of evil.

The crowd was jostling the soldiers now to come nearer, and even the soldiers were fascinated, the tips of their pikes rising into the air as they let themselves be pushed up close. The priests were going over the queen inch by inch, bending down to squint at her toes, holding each arm out to inspect her fingers, staring at her hair. But we could all see her shining, full of light; there was no shadow in her. One after another the priests stood up and shook their heads to the archbishop. Even the severity in his face was softening, the wonder of the light in his face.

When they had finished their examination, Father Ballo gently lifted the veil away. The priests brought other relics, too, and now I recognized them: the plate of Saint Kasimir’s armor still pierced with a tooth from the dragon of Kralia that he had slain; the arm bone of Saint Firan in a gold-and-glass casket, blackened from fire; the golden cup Saint Jacek had saved from the chapel. Marek lifted the queen’s hands onto each, one after another, and the archbishop prayed over her.

They repeated each trial on Kasia, but the crowd wasn’t interested in her. Everyone hushed to watch the queen, but they all talked noisily while the priests examined Kasia, more unruly than any crowd I’d ever seen, even though they were in the presence of so many holy relics and the archbishop himself. “Little more to be expected from the Kralia mob,” Solya told my half-shocked expression. There were even bun-sellers going around the crowd hawking fresh rolls, and from atop my horse I could see a couple of enterprising men had set up a stand to sell beer just down the road.

It was beginning to have the feeling of a holiday, of a festival. And finally the priests filled Saint Jacek’s golden cup with wine, and Father Ballo murmured over it: a faint curl of smoke rose up from the wine, and it went clear. The queen drank it all when they put it to her lips, and she didn’t fall down in a fit. She didn’t change her expression at all, but that didn’t matter. Someone in the crowd raised up a cup of sloshing beer and shouted, “God be praised! The queen is saved!” People all began to cheer madly and press in on us, all fear forgotten, so loudly I could barely hear the archbishop giving his grudging permission for Marek to take the queen into the city.

The crowd’s ecstasy was almost worse than the soldiers’ pikes had been. Marek had to shove people out of the way to get the wagon up next to the platform, and lift the queen and Kasia back into it bodily. He abandoned his own horse and jumped into the cart and took the reins. He liberally lashed people away from the heads of the horses with the carter’s whip to make room, and Solya and I had to bring our horses right up to the back of the wagon as the mob closed in again behind us.

They stayed with us all the five miles left towards the city, running alongside and after us, and when any fell off the pace, more came to swell the ranks. By the time we reached the bridge over the Vandalus, grown men and women had abandoned their day’s work to follow, and by the time we reached the outer gates of the castle we were barely moving through a wildly cheering crowd that pressed in on us from all sides, a living thing with ten thousand voices, all of them shouting with joy. The news had traveled already: the queen was saved, the queen was uncorrupted. Prince Marek had saved the queen at last.

We were all living in a song: that was how it felt. I felt it myself, even with the queen’s golden head swaying back and forth with the rocking wagon and making no effort to resist the motion, even knowing how small our real victory had been and how many men had died for it. There were children running beside my horse, laughing up at me—and probably not in any complimentary way, because I was one enormous smudge with tangled hair and a torn skirt—but I didn’t mind. I looked down and laughed with them, too, forgetting my stiff arms and my numb legs.

Marek rode at our head with a nearly exalted expression. I suppose it must have felt to him, too, like his life had become a song. Right then, nobody was thinking about the men who hadn’t come back. Oleg had the stump of his arm still bound up tightly, but he waved the other to the crowd with vigor, and kissed his hand to every pretty girl in sight. Even when we had gone through the gates of the castle, the crowd didn’t abate: the king’s soldiers had come out of their barracks and the noblemen out of their houses, throwing flowers in our path, and the soldiers clashing their swords on their shields in a clamoring applause.