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her, and from the
look of him, he wants to speak with you.”
    “So he does. Danise, I will rejoin you
later.” Count Clodion hurried off in the direction of the royal
pair.
    “Stay here a moment, Danise,” Sister Gertrude
instructed. “You don’t want to appear before Charles and Hildegarde
with that creature by your side. They might imagine you have
decided to accept Clodion’s suit. Really, Savarec, how could you
even think of handing Danise over to that dreadful man?”
    “He was a great warrior in his youth,” said
Savarec.
    “Yes, forty years ago in Charles Martel’s
time,” Sister Gertrude snapped. “With his teeth rotting and his
muscles grown stringy with age, Clodion has nothing to recommend
him now.”
    “For his courage in battle Clodion was
awarded an important title,” Savarec responded with his usual
patience. “He was also given large estates, which he has managed
well. He is one of the richest men in all of Francia. If Danise
were to marry him, Clodion has promised she would never want for
anything.”
    “What nonsense!” declared Sister Gertrude.
“Clodion was known for a miser forty years ago; I doubt if he has
changed in his old age. Furthermore, he has at least a dozen
children by his previous wives and uncounted brats by his
concubines. Several of those women are still living. Women and
children alike, they will all expect Clodion’s lands to be divided
among them when he dies. No, Danise would not be welcome in
Clodion’s family, nor would any children she might bear to him.
Tell me, Savarec, do you really want your daughter in that
disgusting man’s bed?”
    “Now, see here,” Savarec began, losing his
patience at last.
    “Please, please,” Danise begged. “Do not
quarrel on my account. I have not yet decided to marry anyone. I
haven’t even met Autichar of Bavaria.”
    “Another prize specimen,” muttered Sister
Gertrude, fortunately speaking too low for Savarec to hear her.
“Are there no decent men in Francia who are looking for wives?”
    “Count Redmond seemed very nice,” Danise
remarked, hoping to calm the nun’s rising irritation.
    “That young fool? He’ll wear you out in bed.
If you were to marry him, you would have a child every year.”
Laying a hand on her arm, Sister Gertrude stopped Danise in her
forward progress toward Charles and Hildegarde. “My dear girl, I am
only trying to protect you. A man can break a woman’s heart. A man
can be the death of a woman, either because she loves him and he
will not love her, or because he loves her too well and too often,
and thus gives her too many babies.”
    “Would you have me avoid all men?” cried
Danise. “I am not sure I want to do that.”
    “Oh, child, child, if only I could make you
understand the heartaches and the loneliness that lie in wait for
the woman who gives her life into the keeping of a mere mortal man.
How much better to give yourself to God.”
    “Yet I am but a mortal, too,” Danise said.
Impulsively, she put an arm across the nun’s back, hugging her.
Sister Gertrude was usually too rigid to accept such an
affectionate, gesture, but this time she not only accepted it, she
returned it, clinging to Danise as if she could by sheer physical
strength save her young charge from all the dangers and pitfalls of
a woman’s life.
    “I do promise you,” Danise said, “that I will
consider your warning carefully before I finally decide what to do.
Whether I wed or become a nun, I will not do either without much
thought and prayer. Now, dear Sister Gertrude, I must speak to
Hildegarde. Come with me, for you know she is fond of you.”
    Hildegarde was also fond of Danise. But,
except for a brief greeting the day after Danise’s arrival at
Duren, the two had not had a chance to talk together since the
previous autumn, shortly after Hildegarde’s twin sons had been born
at Agen. The smaller of those babies had since died, and now
Hildegarde was large with the burden of another pregnancy. In