Mother and Child
Leo. Wake up!
Leopold sat bolt upright in his bed with a gasp. He looked out the window. Snow was falling; he could see it in the light from the castle bonfires, lit for Christmas. It was sometime in the night before the first day of the holiday. For a moment he had a hard time piecing the previous hours together. He remembered being at the raising of the great tree in the square, then at Christmas Eve Mass with Mathilde and Ursula and his Councillors, staring through the cloud of incense at the crèche on the altar, at the weathered wooden arms of Maria outstretched over the manger and the haloed infant in it. He couldn’t remember how he got home, what he said or did before going to bed, or to whom. The next thing he remembered was the dream.
He was in the castle, but in the days when this had been his mother’s rooms, and she was there with him. He was sitting in her lap, in fact. He must have been very young–too young to be remembering this. In the dream he looked up at Griselde von Regensburg, her wide smile, her pine-green eyes, her golden hair caught back in her wimple. Good news is coming, she said. Merry Christmas, my beloved son…. Leo. Wake up!
Leopold felt something cold on his cheeks and raised his hand to feel the wet tracks of tears. Out. He had to go out.
It was hard to say who was more surprised to see him: the stablehand or Gletscher, who nickered his disapproval as the boy saddled him. But he leapt forward eagerly as ever when Leopold spurred him down the snowy castle road, unworried about the stallion slipping because that was something Gletscher simply never did, no matter the conditions. “Merry Christmas!” the guardsmen called out as they thundered across the moat bridge, the gates standing open for the holiday.
Leopold didn’t know where he was going or why, but Gletscher seemed to, veering left without missing a beat at the fork in the road that tracked east toward the Bohemian border. The moonless, snowy pre-dawn was murky, but Leopold knew he could trust Gletscher not to run him into a ditch or a tree, so he gave the stallion his head and let him run. It felt good to move, to feel the snow and wind sting his cheeks. Though he had turned his dilemma over and over in his head over the last few days, the solution that Bernard had promised him would present itself had so far failed to. Even Ursula had been at a loss for suggestions, only turning pale when he had told her about the king’s letter although it was in fact good news for her–more funding for the hospital, a chance to buy more books and instruments and expand her learning. But she hadn’t seemed the least bit pleased when he pointed all that out.
“You can’t go,” she had replied, and he had only been able to smile at that because in Ursula’s world, it was that simple, and he wished so much that he lived in that world.
Gletscher nickered and Leopold blinked. It was light enough now to make out a dark horse and rider speeding toward them on the road. He reined in at the same time the other rider did, and they stopped close enough to each other that Leopold could hear the man call out, “Your Grace, Graf Leopold. Is that you? Just the man I’m looking for, by all the saints!” Leopold squinted at the rider.
“Freiherr Harald–is it you?”
Ritter Harald von Tiefental spread his arms wide in the saddle. “I and no other!” He was one of the Prince of Salzburg’s chief vassals; Leopold had fought alongside him in the last two Hussite campaigns. He urged Gletscher up next to Harald’s mount, the black giant Sleipnir, and grasped forearms with his comrade in greeting.
“What in God’s good name are you doing out here at this hour in this weather, man?”
“Bringing you tidings from the prince. You can read the letter when you’re safe and warm by your fire, but the news is that Prokop and the Hussites are on the road right now to Basel for peace talks, and Sigismund has suspended the spring campaign in Bohemia in response.”
“What?” Leopold couldn’t believe what he was hearing somehow. Perhaps he was still dreaming….
Harald reached across and slapped his shoulder, snapping Leopold out of his reverie. “Apparently Christmas comes even to a couple of old war dogs like us. Come on, man, don’t just sit there with your mouth hanging ajar. Show me the way to a good fire, a cup of hot wine, and a fat slice or two of stollen!”
They turned their mounts and rode back together toward Kiefersheim. The sun rose as they went, spilling through a gap between the horizon and the clouds to light the snow all around them like a lantern in the dark.
Good news is coming. Merry Christmas, my beloved son….
The Rookery 