Técnicas para evaluar los impactos ambientales

Magdeburg, Saxony

Near the Feast of St. Augustine, August, 1227 Dark eyes. Piercing her, sharper than any Cainite’s fangs.

Cold hands, cold lips, and a burning in her blood. Hot, dry humors that needed to be cooled, the fire quenched…

Margery was well regarded even by the native Ger-man servants in the household; she was a kindly mistress, and had provided salves for burns and tisanes of herbs to soothe fevers and other ills even back in Finsterbach. The dawn was lighting the horizon when she came down to the kitchen, but Hans and his wife Eva were already up, stoking up the coals and preparing for the day’s work. It was nothing to pour a cup of cool ale for madame’s medi-cine, and of course he hoped she would feel better soon.

She accepted it with thanks, and then sat in a far cor-ner of the kitchen with her basket of medicines and poultice makings. A tiny vial with a tightly sealed cap provided what she needed: She poured its contents into the ale, then packed it away again. The taste was odd, unfamiliar; it burned in her mouth and sent tingles over her entire body as she gulped it down. Surely she had used this before—perhaps the ale flavored it oddly. Most of her medications did work better in wine. She was suddenly hot, sweating… her hand fell on a piece of parchment at her side, English lines written in her own hand, the ink still fresh:

I am so sorry. Please forgive me. I cannot bear this any longer, the weight of the sins on my soul. Please tell Peter I never…

A cold fear suddenly washed through her. She re-membered then exactly which vial she had taken from her basket, and knew then what her fate would be.

“Peter!” She struggled to her feet, but her legs would no longer support her, and she fell to the rush-strewn floor. “Peter!”

She was dimly aware of someone calling her name, of Eva come to her aid, but oil of monkshood worked too quickly. By the time he came, running down the stairs in a very undignified manner to fall to his knees beside her, to cradle her in his arms, she could no longer speak. When he bent to kiss her, it took all her remain-ing strength to turn her face away, knowremain-ing how that would be the last and cruelest hurt she would inflict on him, but better that than he taste his own death from her lips. Peter… my love… milady… what… have I done?

* * *

Josselin knew something was wrong even as he passed through the city gates—he couldn’t put his fin-ger on it, but there was a darkness that touched his soul as he rode slowly through the empty streets. The house showed lights within, but no lantern on the gate—and even that oversight was foreboding.

Anton the groom, one of the servants whom Josselin himself had chosen, met him in the yard, took his steed Sorel’s reins and whispered the news fearfully, as if he wasn’t sure he was even allowed to talk about it. Josselin thanked him, left Sorel in his care, and then hurried to Rosamund’s chambers.

“Where have you been?” Rosamund demanded, when he came in. “You said you’d only be gone a few nights!”

It had been three years since he had tasted her blood, but her anger still cut him. “I’m sorry, petite. I only just heard.”

“I needed you,” she managed. Tears were already welling up again in her eyes. “I needed you here.”

He came and sat beside her on the bench, drew her into his arms. “Rosamund. My sweet lady. I am sorry, ma petite. But I’m here now.” He glanced around the room. Blanche hovered nearby, her own eyes red and weepy. “Where’s Peter?”

The girl shook her head. “I don’t know, milord.

He rode out this morning, right after she—” Blanche swallowed hard. “He was distraught, milord.”

I can imagine he was. Both Peter and Margery had been in Rosamund’s service a long time—her first mor-tal attendants, and always the most devoted to their mistress. There had been bitterness between them of late, Josselin had observed, which he had found puz-zling, but hadn’t thought too much about. Now he wondered if he should have done something, spoken to one of them, tried to help. “Do you know why she would want to do such a thing?”

Rosamund raised her head from his shoulder. “Bring me the note.”

Blanche brought it. He glanced at it, then held it for Rosamund to see. “What does it say, petite?”

She read it aloud to him.

“Please tell Peter she never what?” he asked. “What sins?”

“I don’t know, Josselin! I don’t know why she—

she did this, I don’t know why Peter—” She swallowed, tears welling up in her eyes, and reached for him; he held her close and let her mourn. His own heart ached as well. Margery had always been kind to Fabien, for which he was grateful, and generous to him; to Rosamund she had been so very much more.

His full attention was focused on Rosamund’s grief and his own, but when Blanche dropped to her knees, he looked up. Alexander himself stood in the door way, clearly having let himself in, or ignored the efforts of servants to announce him properly. His youthful fea-tures showed deep concern and sympathy.

“My poor rose,” he murmured, holding out his hands to her as if he expected her to jump up from the bench and run to him. “I just heard the news. I’m so dreadfully sorry to hear about poor Margery. Whatever possessed her to do such a thing, and to you? Especially now, when you needed her the most!”

Josselin nudged Rosamund gently, turning her a bit so she would notice their lord’s presence. Even in her grief, however, she knew her duty; reluctantly she rose, left her brother’s arms, and went to Alexander’s.

Josselin fought down his own irritation, feeling himself and Rosamund intruded upon, her grief trivialized like a child crying over a broken toy. Alexander had known Margery only for her blood. What Margery had been to Rosamund was a relationship Josselin suspected that Alexander would never understand.

Alexander kissed Rosamund’s cheeks, lapping up her tears, murmuring softly to her. Then he seemed to realize Blanche and Josselin were still standing there, watching his performance. “Go on, girl,” he said to Blanche. “I can see to milady well enough. I’m sure you have other things you should be doing.”

Blanche was not the brightest of girls, but she knew a dismissal when she heard one. She swallowed hard, curtsied, and fled.

Alexander turned to Josselin, whose irritation was already growing into something much far more virulent.

Rosamund, however, kept her wits, and forestalled the likely confrontation before it began. “Josselin. Please—

could you find Peter for me? I’m worried about him.”

—You promised, Josselin. It can be borne, and you will allow it….

Josselin met her eyes, took a deep breath, let it out. “I’ll find him, milady.” He took refuge in action;

he bowed, strode out, and then managed to hold his anger down until he reached his own chamber below, where he drew his sword and, in one blow, split the table in two.

Fifteen minutes later, he was once again mounted.

He thought for a moment—where might Peter have gone? But he could think of only one likely refuge.

Josselin urged Sorel towards the west gate, paid his toll to be let out again, and then was on the road towards the Teutonic commandery and hospital of St. Mary’s.

* * *

“He arrived sometime this morning after Prime, Brother Abelard told me,” Brother Renaud said, “and spent practically the whole day prostrate on the floor in the church, in great anguish of soul, even during the day offices. I finally persuaded him to come to my cell and rest. Strictly speaking, we’re not allowed to have visitors there, of course, but under the circumstances the Hochmeister gave his permission.”

Josselin had never been in the monks’ quarters, even in Kronstadt; the secular knights and their men had kept to their own quarters, whose limited ameni-ties had still been considerably more luxurious than those he suspected the monks enjoyed. Now he glanced around him with an outsider’s curiosity at the interior courtyard of the Teutonic commandery of St. Mary, with its cobbled paths winding between small bushes, an herb garden and a statue of the Virgin, surrounded by the vaulted brick cloister and the tall, soaring walls of the church and the main keep.

“Has he said exactly what happened?” Josselin asked. “Milady did not have opportunity to give me more details.”

“Some, but his grief has not allowed him to say very much as yet. I hadn’t the heart to press him too hard.”

Renaud led him down one side of the cloister, and then through what Josselin guessed was the refectory for those of the order who needed mortal sustenance.

Here they went down a circular stair and then down a long, tall passageway with very few doors. At the end

of this there was a turn, a short, straight stair down, and then a small antechamber and a broad door lead-ing to a large chamber beyond.

The Cainites of the order did not have private cells but, like their mortal brethren, slept in one large dor-mitory. This chamber, Josselin guessed, was under the church itself; it had a great vaulted roof and a number of thick pillars supporting the floor above, which pro-vided a number of neatly separated, if not private, alcoves the brothers used as their sleeping chambers.

Renaud’s own alcove was near the door, a bare little nook with a narrow cot, an unadorned chest for his monk’s garb and mail, and a few hooks on which to hang a white mantle, his sword, and a white shield with the order’s black cross. Peter sat slumped on the bed, eyes closed, lips moving as his fingers counted the beads on a rosary.

“Peter?” Josselin said softly, waiting for the brief pause after a paternoster, not wishing to interrupt Peter’s devotions more than he must. Peter didn’t respond, though he did not move on to the next bead, but sat there unmoving.

“Peter.” Josselin went down on one knee beside the bed and its silent occupant, and laid a gentle hand on the mortal’s arm. “Our lady asked me to find you.

We’ve been worried about you.”

Peter’s eyes were red and swollen, his face smeared with grime and the tracks of his tears, his thinning hair in disarray, his clothes dusty. “Well, milord,” he said finally, in a voice a bit hoarse from weeping, “here I am.”

“Are you ready to come back?”

“Hans told me she called my name,” Peter mur-mured. “She wanted me beside her… but by the time I got there, it was too late. There—there was nothing I could do.”

Josselin laid a hand on his shoulder. “I’m sure you did all you could, Peter. It’s not your fault.”

“They won’t even let me bury her in consecrated ground…” Peter whispered, eyes closed. “Not as a sui-cide. It’s a mortal sin. So many sins… I should have married her, it’s all my fault….”

“We will find a resting place for her, I promise,”

Josselin told him. “Come back with me.”

“I—I suppose milady needs me,” he murmured, rubbing at his eyes wearily. “Can’t waste any more time, then. Too many things to do. Must—must go—”

Josselin, his own heart aching at Peter’s misery, was about to suggest that perhaps he could stay a night or two at St. Mary’s if he wished, to rest and pray, but Renaud forestalled him.

“She does need you, Peter,” the younger Cainite said, before Josselin had his thoughts together. “How can she not? Who else can she depend on at this time? You know how useful Blanche is going to be, she’s far too fleece-headed to handle anything of import on her own. Lady Rosamund needs you, Peter, now more than ever.”

Josselin saw Peter’s back straighten up, and only then remembered what it had been like to be a mortal in ser-vice under the blood, to desire more than anything else his lady’s approval, and to be needed. “She needs you, Peter,” he said, picking up on Renaud’s instinct. “Our Savior knows I can’t write her letters for her.”

That almost got a hint of a smile, and Josselin con-tinued. “And she needs you to help her with Margery.

You know what has to be done, and how Margery would have wanted it. You are milady’s right hand, and she cannot manage without you.”

Peter stood up, and Josselin rose with him. The mortal rubbed at the grime on his cheek, then brushed at the dirt on his tunic. “If I might prevail on your kind hospitality one more time, Brother Renaud, for water to wash my face? I—I would not appear before milady looking like a beggar.”