“What a tragedy,” said Queen Richeldis, hugging the infant Nigel to her heart when she heard the news.
“Was she even sixteen?” one of the other ladies asked, shocked.
Alyce shook her head sadly. “No.”
“Her husband is to blame!” another muttered.
“No, she was unfortunate,” the queen replied, for both she and Jessamy had borne their first child younger than Elaine.
“Indeed,” Jessamy said quietly. “Sadly, such is often the fate of our sex.”
Chapter 17
“So they oppress a man and his house, even a man and his heritage.”
—MICAH 2:2
THE peace looked likely to hold in Meara that summer, perhaps partially because Duke Richard made a progress into Kierney and Cassan, to show the royal presence at the courts of Earl Jared and Duke Andrew. In May, he had ridden up to the red walls of Jared’s seat at Castel Dearg only hours before the birth of the McLain heir—and had mourned with Jared when pretty Elaine slipped away soon after. He would stay on patrol along their Mearan borders for several months.
The king took advantage of the respite to spend time with his young family—fortunately, as it happened, for trouble flared unexpectedly toward the end of summer: not in Meara, as one might have expected, but in Corwyn, on the opposite side of kingdom.
“Torenthi raiders crossed the river at Fathane and harried as far south as Kiltuin,” Sir Sé Trelawney reported, addressing king and council in emergency session on a steamy August evening. “Scores were killed or injured, and Kiltuin town was looted and burned. It—ah—has even been suggested that some of the raiders were princes of the blood, and that rogue magic was employed. Ahern will be investigating those claims,” he added, with a speaking glance at Alyce and Marie, who had been asked to sit in on the session. “The bishop is said to be livid.”
As his council muttered among themselves, Donal cast another glance over the report Sé had brought from Lord Hambert, the seneschal of Coroth. It was the same that Hambert had sent to Ahern to inform him of the raid, and was stark in its assessment of the situation.
My lord, your father would not have allowed this to go unpunished, Hambert had written. The raiders destroyed most of the town, looting and burning with abandon, and even violated many of the women. In some cases, women and children were ridden down in the streets. I chanced to be traveling in the region soon after it happened, and was told by the town’s headman that those responsible were definitely of Torenth, and had boasted that none could bring them to task for their actions, since the king is an old man and his brother is occupied with affairs in Meara. They also believed that, with Earl Keryell dead, you would not be able to take up Corwyn’s defense, being young and unfit. . . .
“Lord Hambert and the Corwyn regency council have already sent stiff letters of protest to the court of Torenth, deploring the incident,” Sir Sé was saying, “and Ahern will be in Kiltuin by now, carrying out further investigation. But this is not the first such border violation, as we all know. One would think that the Torenthi would have learnt their lesson in the Great War.”
“’Twas clearly a blatant venture of opportunity,” said the Archbishop of Rhemuth, forging directly into the discussion. “They know that the king’s attention has been focused on Meara, and that Corwyn is in the hands of regents for its duke, who is a minor and a cripple to boot!”
“More agile a cripple than many a man with all his faculties intact,” Sé said pointedly. “And crippled he was in the king’s service.”
“Let be, Sir Sé,” Donal said mildly. “What concerns us at this time is a fitting response in Corwyn—which Lord Ahern and his regents seem to have begun quite nicely. Kenneth, how many ships have we at Desse?”
“I don’t know, Sire, though I can have that information for you by morning.”
“Fair enough,” the king agreed. “Jiri, how quickly can we raise sufficient troops to take a policing force into Corwyn?”
“That depends on how many men you have in mind, Sire—which, in turn depends on what ships are available.”
“Let’s plan for about forty. We’ll ride down to Nyford for ships, if we must.”
Jiri Redfearn nodded. “In that case, perhaps a day or two, then.”
“Which?” Donal demanded. “One day or two?”
The king’s sharp tone elicited a whispered conference.
“Tomorrow?” said Jiri.
Donal nodded. “By noon.”
“Yes, Sire.”
“See to it, then. Sir Tiarnán, you’ll leave at once for Kierney, to find my brother and inform him what’s occurred. He may well be in Cassan by now, but it would probably be wise for him to return to Rhemuth. It’s late for any serious trouble in Meara this season. Seisyll, I’ll ask you and the archbishop to form an interim council of regency with the queen, pending Richard’s return.” He slapped his hand flat against the table in annoyance. “Damn! I did not want to campaign this season. Why couldn’t those misbegotten Torenthi stay on their side of the river?”
LATER that night, as the castle bustled with preparations for a departure the following noon, Alyce and Zoë conferred together in low tones while they waited for Marie to come in.
“You know she’s with Sé,” Alyce whispered, slightly scandalized. “Please God she doesn’t do anything stupid.”
“She loves him,” Zoë said simply. “I gather that he loves her, too. He’s going off to battle. Sometimes common sense goes out the window.”
“Well, it mustn’t, if you’re the sister of a future duke,” Alyce muttered.
A fumbling at the door announced the arrival of said sister, looking flushed and happy, giggling as she closed the door behind her.
“And where have you been?” Alyce demanded, though she kept her voice low.
“Well, I might have been in Paradise with Sé, if Lady Jessamy hadn’t come along when she did,” Marie said pertly, flouncing onto the bed with them.
“Mares, you didn’t!” Alyce gasped.
“We didn’t do what we both wanted to do, but it wasn’t for want of—well, wanting to,” Marie replied. She hugged her arms across her breasts and sighed.
“Oh, Alyce, it’s so unfair! Sometimes I want him so badly, I think I’ll die if I can’t have him. We were only kissing at first. We’d found a quiet corner out in the cloister walk, well away from prying eyes. But then he started touching me, ever so gently, and I got all quivery inside. It felt . . . wonderful! My knees started to go all wobbly, and—”
“Tell me that’s when Lady Jessamy came along!” Alyce begged, hanging on her every word.
Laughing aloud, Marie shook her head and threw an arm around both of them.
“No, he started fumbling with the laces on his breeches then, and that’s when Lady Jessamy came along!”
“No!” Zoë breathed, as Alyce rolled her eyes heavenward.
“Sadly, yes,” Marie said. “Had she not come when she did, I’m not sure what might have happened—though I have heard it said that there are many ways that a man and a maid may pleasure one another. . . .”
Both her companions smothered groans at that, in a mixture of sympathy and envy, but the telling had exhausted all three of them. Only a little longer did they talk, before Zoë betook herself to her own bed and the sisters settled down to try to sleep.
Next morning saw many a tearful good-bye as the king’s expedition assembled in the castle yard, with wives and children and sweethearts gathered to bid them Godspeed. Sir Sé Trelawney, sitting his horse beside the king, restrained himself from too effusive a farewell to the demoiselles de Corwyn or their friend Zoë Morgan, whose father also would ride with the expedition, merely bending to salute each proffered hand with a chaste kiss.
But more than one sharp-eyed lady of the queen’s household noted that his lips lingered on the hand of the younger sister of his lord, and several cast calculating glances after Marie as she and Alyce left the yard with Zoë, noting how the three then s
curried to a vantage point on one of the west-facing battlements, where they might watch the column’s progress southward along the river road.
THE king’s party took ship in Desse, as hoped, sailing uneventfully down the River Eirian and thence around the head of Carthmoor, arriving in Coroth harbor in mid-August.
Young Ahern met them at the door to Coroth Castle’s great hall, walking with the aid of a stick, but on his feet to welcome his king. Nor had he been idle in the fortnight since the raid on Kiltuin.
Immediately upon hearing the news, he had directed his Lendour regents to echo the complaint already lodged with the court of Torenth by his regents in Coroth—the decision of a mature and astute young man, and one that had been heartily endorsed by his council. He then had taken horse with Sir Jovett Chandos and some thirty men and ridden directly to Kiltuin, to inspect the damage there and speak with some of the survivors. He had found half a dozen of his Corwyn captains and fifty men there before him, doing their best to ascertain just what had happened.
By the time the king arrived in Coroth, Ahern had assumed decisive leadership with both his councils of regents and had begun orchestrating a diplomatic exchange on which Donal himself could not have improved. In fact, his respective regents had become sufficiently confident of their young lord’s judgment that they were beginning to function as advisors rather than regents: a state of affairs not at all to the liking of the Bishop of Corwyn, who pointed out at the first opportunity that Ahern was yet a full eight years from achieving the age at which a Deryni might lawfully exercise the full authority of a ducal title.
In light of Ahern’s undoubted ability and loyalty, Donal found himself mostly unconcerned over this technical breach of the law, but he did promise the bishop that he would somewhat rein back his fledgling duke, for he did not want to precipitate an incident with the religious authorities. Shortly after his arrival, Donal met privately with young Ahern for nearly an hour, then invited the Corwyn council to join them.
Not that his reaction was all the bishop could have hoped for. Assuring them that he could find no fault with anything that had been done, the king confessed himself obliged to make it clear that proprieties must be maintained, and that their young lord must not presume to present himself as duke in fact. Later, however, he observed to Lord Hambert that Ahern, at seventeen, seemed easily capable of exercising the full authority of his ducal rank . . . were he not Deryni.
Meanwhile, the flurry of exchanges between Corwyn and Torenth was yielding interesting results. In noting the protestations of outrage on the part of Corwyn, the chancery of Nimur of Torenth, in turn, had acknowledged (in view of the numerous affidavits of witness from Kiltuin) that yes, it appeared that subjects of Torenth might possibly have strayed across the border area adjoining Kiltuin, and perhaps had been guilty of over-exuberance regarding insults offered by the inhabitants of said town.
But it was flatly denied that King Nimur’s sons might have been among the culprits; and certainly, no reparations would be forthcoming. The correspondence on this matter was already voluminous.
“It appears that King Nimur means to smother the matter in paperwork,” Donal remarked, when he had gone over the exchanges with Ahern and his council. “I don’t suppose it’s possible that the witnesses might have been mistaken—that it wasn’t the Torenthi princes after all?”
“Not unless someone was impersonating them,” Lord Hambert said with a snort. “The local priest in Kiltuin is something of an armorist; he knows what he saw. Most of the men wore Torenthi livery—they made no attempt to conceal who they were. But he was quite clear that two of them wore variations on the Torenthi royal arms. He’s convinced they were two of Nimur’s sons.”
“And you trust his judgment?” Donal asked.
“I do, Sire. Furthermore, one of the ravaged women drew out the device worn by the man who defiled her. She got rather a better look at it than she would have wished. The drawing is there on the bottom of the stack.”
Nodding, Donal leafed through the sheaf of parchment depositions and cast an eye over the last one in the stack, noting the somewhat shaky sketch of the Furstán hart on a roundel, differenced with a bordure. In a somewhat more confident hand, someone had tricked in the colors: the tawny field, the leaping black hart against a white roundel, the white border denoting cadency, though the king could not recall which particular Furstán owned the bordure charged with five black crowns.
“Well, he certainly appears to have been presenting himself as a Furstán,” Donal observed. “That alone should get him dealt with by his own folk—unless, of course, that’s exactly what he was.”
“He was a Furstán, Sire,” Ahern said confidently. “Believe me, I know this.” The look he gave the king as Donal glanced up at this very positive declaration made it quite clear that the boy had confirmed the information by Deryni means.
“Indeed,” the king said softly.
Ahern merely inclined his head slightly, his eyes never leaving Donal’s.
“Well, then,” Donal said. “We shall have to ensure that King Nimur is not allowed to argue this point. Reparations are required.” He pushed back from the table and rose, and the others likewise came to their feet. “Perhaps Lord Hambert would be so good as to assemble a suitable foray party, to ride with my own troops. I am minded to make an incursion of my own into Torenth—to discover more facts, of course. And if my men should find opportunity to seize goods in recompense for what happened at Kiltuin—so much the better. I will, however, require that they conduct themselves in a more seemly fashion than our Torenthi raiders. Is that clear?”
As Lord Hambert made a bow, Ahern merely smiled and said, “Abundantly, Sire. And might I request that I may be permitted to ride at your side?” He tapped his stiff leg with his stick and cocked his head at the king. “I think you will discover that this has not slowed me down.”
“That has already been my observation,” the king replied. “And I am proud to have you in my service.”
AHERN ’S service proved itself more than once in the days that followed. His daring strategies, worked out with the king, enabled Gwyneddan raiding parties to harry Torenthi border towns with sufficient regularity that, by early September, King Nimur’s ministers were seriously discussing the payment of reparations. Donal had hoped to call Nimur’s sons to account, at least tendering an acknowledgement of their offenses and an offer of official apology, but it gradually became clear that, on this point, Nimur remained unbending.
But in all, the course of this late campaign—far different from any prospect in Meara—was going satisfactorily. Periodically Donal sent progress reports back to Rhemuth, both to his queen and council and to Ahern’s sisters. Whenever these official missives were dispatched, additional letters went along under Ahern’s seal. Though, officially, these came from Ahern, Donal was well aware that the courier’s pouch always included at least one letter from Sir Sé Trelawney to Marie de Corwyn. In the course of the sea voyage to Coroth, Donal had become well aware of Sé’s affection, from childhood, for the Corwyn sisters, and for Marie in particular, and wondered how long it would take Sé to approach him about asking for her hand.
Which permission he was inclined to grant, since he liked young Sé Trelawney, and suspected that the young man might even be Deryni—though he had never been able to confirm this, for Sé religiously avoided any circumstance in which it might be possible for the king to determine this by casual means.
Donal knew of Sé’s longstanding friendship with Ahern, and trusted Se’s loyalty because he trusted Ahern’s; but actually calling the question might put Sé into danger that was not necessary. Donal, unlike his bishops and clergy, was disinclined to enforce the rigorous exclusion of Deryni that had been the official policy of Gwyneddan law for more than a century—perhaps because he suspected that his own odd powers might be somehow related to those wielded by the Deryni. He had once asked Jessamy about it, but she did not know. She did know of his suspicions about Sé, an
d saw no harm if it were true.
BUTthe letters themselves were gradually building on a resentment that very much generated harm, though none could have predicted it save for one affronted damsel of the royal court, increasingly bitter as the summer waned and letters continued to arrive for the Corwyn sisters. The Lady Muriella saw how the face of Marie de Corwyn lit with excitement whenever letters arrived from Corwyn, and how she always drew aside for a private moment in the garden to read the ones addressed to her, and how she then added each new missive to the growing stack secreted under her pillow, tied with a grass-green ribbon.
One day, when the sisters were safely away for the afternoon, riding with the young princes in the castle’s lower ward, Muriella even dared to slip into the pair’s room and lift the pillow, carefully sliding out the most recent of the letters to quickly scan its content. To her surprise, there was nothing overt, but that did not lessen her resentment of the attention Sé was lavishing on the pair, and on Marie in particular.
Her resentment grew and festered as the summer wore on, only intensified by her awareness that her rivals were Deryni. And in the daydreams of many a long, sultry summer afternoon, she found herself idly envisioning all manner of dire fates for the pair.
In truth, she could scarcely imagine that the dashing Sir Sé would truly prefer the pallid good looks of the sisters de Corwyn over her own, more voluptuous dark-haired beauty. She wondered whether they might be using their accursed Deryni magic to ensnare his affection—a scandalous offense, since the church held all use of the dread powers of the Deryni to be anathema.
She didn’t know whether a Deryni could be burned for using his or her powers to secure another’s affections, but it was immensely satisfying to imagine the pair dragged to stakes in the city square below, shorn of their bright locks and trembling with terror as the executioners bound them with chains amid the piles of faggots stacked high, and brought the fiery brands, thrusting the fire deep into the kindling so that the hungry flames soon rose to devour them.
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