The Burning Stone

by Kate Elliott

  Henry lifted a hand, and a steward called forward the next witness, a heavyset older woman who, by the evidence of her stained apron, had evidently been called in from the kitchens. The nobleman in front of Hanna kept shifting as she tried to press forward, and she just couldn’t get past him and by now was wedged between him, a bench, and a table. The atmosphere in the hall was so tense and focused that she hadn’t the courage to shout out, as Hathui would have, “Make way for the King’s Eagle,” even though she had the right to do so.

  She shoved her way up on the bench beside a trio of finely-dressed boys and was able to hear as the cook told her story with remarkable self-possession.

  “Yes, Your Majesty, that would have been Cecily. She’s the girl we all knew was Count Lavastine’s mistress, may she rest in peace, but she wasn’t the one who gave birth to Count Alain. She gave birth to a misshapen lad, our Lackling. Alas, he died two years ago, poor child. Fell in the river and drowned, we think, for his body was never recovered.”

  “You don’t think he might have run off, that he might still be alive?” asked Hathui.

  “Nay, Eagle, he’d never have left here. That’s how we know he died. He vanished one day and never come back.”

  “Did Count Lavastine know that this boy Lackling was his mistress’ child?” asked Henry.

  She looked nervous then, wringing her hands in her apron. “Nay, Your Majesty. A poor beggar woman was brought in that same night, and both she and her child died, so we said that Lackling was hers and Cecily’s babe was the one who’ died. I don’t suppose more than three of us knew the truth, and we all swore never to speak of it, for the young count had just gotten betrothed and his bride was a jealous woman, all full of her own hurt feelings, may God grant her peace. We wanted to protect him.”

  “So you lied.”

  “So we did, Your Majesty. I’m sorry for the sin, but I suppose I’d do the same thing again. It’s for God to judge the matter, not me.”

  “Who knew the truth?”

  “Well, then, I knew, and Deacon Marian knew, and old Agnes knew. Deacon and old Agnes attended every birth here, and I helped Agnes when she needed helping, bringing her clothes and water and ale for the laboring women, and so on. They’re both gone, now, may God bless them. I’m the only one living who attended those births, for there was four babes born in the space of three nights. One was the poor dead beggar child, may God rest him and his mother. One was Lackling. One was Count Alain. And the last was a tiny little thing, a girl I never saw again because her mother and father fled with her the next morning though the poor woman was still weak. I think they were afraid, for the other three mothers died. They thought it an ill omen, They were afraid she would die, too, if they stayed.”

  At these words, Geoffrey made to speak.

  “Hold, hold,” said Henry, lifting a hand. “If you knew that this child Lackling was the baby borne by Lavastine’s mistress, and that the child Alain was borne by a different woman, then why did you say nothing when Count Lavastine named this young man as his heir?”

  The old cook looked troubled. “What was I to say, Your Majesty? Was I to tell the count his own business? Was I to rule for him?”

  “You could have told him what you knew.”

  She gestured toward Alain. “There was the hounds, Your Majesty.”

  Of course everyone looked. A hound sat on either side of Alain. He had a hand buried in each one’s neck, as if holding them back—or as if they were all that was holding him up. Yet she could read nothing in his expression except perhaps a kind of resigned calm. His black hair had been recently cropped; his clothes were neat and handsomely fitted. But except for the hounds he sat unattended even by a servant while Lord Geoffrey was flanked by noble kinsmen who, with empty sword belts and arms crossed menacingly, looked ready to solve the problem with their fists. Lord Geoffrey had the kind of red face that comes of too much choler seeping from the blood into the mind. He looked as if he were about to burst into wrathful speech at any moment.

  “The hounds?” asked Henry.

  “He has the gift with the hounds, Your Majesty. Just as Count Lavastine did, and his father before him and his father before him, may their souls rest in peace in the Chamber of Light.” She frowned at a sight unseen by the rest of them, glanced over her shoulder as if looking at someone in the crowd, then rubbed her bulbous nose self-consciously. “Poor Rose. That’s the girl who was Count Alain’s mother, for I know she bore him truly enough. I saw him come from her body, just as I saw poor Lackling born out of Cecily, No mixing those two boys up, because Lackling come out of Cecily with his face all bent and legs funny and Alain was as perfectly-formed a baby as I ever saw. Yet Cecily was the good girl, obedient and quiet. She never went to any man but the count, and I’m not sure that wasn’t more his choice than hers, begging your pardon, Your Majesty. She always said there was a young man in her village she meant to marry, when she returned home. Rose, now, alas, she was a whore, there’s no kinder word for it. Pretty as a rose, that girl. That’s where she got the name, for she never claimed to have one of her own. She and her people come up from Salia a year or two before to find harvest work and she hadn’t anything of her own, as poor as the mice in the church. They was even too poor to have a lord take them in. The man who called himself her father just called her ‘girl,’ and we all suspected that he was doing that to her that goes against nature, if you take my meaning, Your Majesty.”

  People chuckled and whispered around Hanna, finding amusement in this salacious tidbit. Henry frowned and rapped his scepter once, hard, on the floor. Everyone quieted.

  “Pray give this woman silence in which to testify.”

  She rubbed her nose again, which had gotten quite red from the heat of the hall, or of the king’s regard. “She were so poor and so poorly treated by her father who was always slapping her and calling her indecent names right out where everyone could hear that it’s no wonder she went looking for what she could get wherever she could get it. Everyone knew she made her assignations up in the old ruins. She were always going on about meeting the Lost Ones there, and how a prince of the old people was coming in to her and was going to make her a queen. Who’s to say she didn’t meet the young count up in the ruins one night? Every man in this holding looked at her with lust in his eyes, she was that pretty and had that kind of way with her that made you know that if you just gave her the right thing she’d, well, begging your pardon, she’d make it worth your while. It’s as likely that Count Alain was Count Lavastine’s son as any other man’s, Your Majesty,”

  Lord Geoffrey looked ready to burst, and he burst now. “He might have been the get of any man in this holding! He might have been the lowest stable boy’s by-blow! Ai, Lord! He’s as likely to be the ill-begotten product of an incestuous union between the girl and her father!”

  “Begging your pardon, my lord,” the cook retorted with astonishing asperity, “but what about the testimony of the hounds, then? Not any man but the counts of Lavas can touch them hounds. They obey Count Alain just as they obeyed Count Lavastine. That was good enough for Count Lavastine, and he was a careful man and a good lord to us. We trusted him and never saw reason to question his judgment. He only did one foolish thing in his life, when his poor daughter was killed, and he repented that the rest of his days.”

  “Strong words,” said Henry. His niece Tallia shifted in her seat as if his voice had startled her, but she did not look up from her study of her knees. She had a pale face, pale hair, and pale hands, was almost colorless, quite in contrast to the plump young noblewoman who stood in attendance on her with her hands folded quietly before her and her serious gaze flicking now and again toward Alain.

  “What about this boy, Lackling?” asked Henry. “You seem sure he was Count Lavastine’s bastard. Could he touch the hounds?”

  “Why, bless you, Your Majesty,” she said with a chuckle, “he hadn’t enough wits to try, nor would anyone let him. He was misshapen in the body, poor lad, as s
weet a soul as you might wish, but he was simple in the head.”

  “I pray you, Your Majesty, have I your permission to speak?” said Alain. His voice warmed Hanna; she had never heard him speak before, but there was nothing nasty or irate in his tone, nothing to trouble one’s heart or scrape raw one’s soul. Henry nodded. “The hounds never troubled Lackling.”

  It was an astounding observation to make in the face of the really awful accusations just thrown at him by his rival. The young noblewoman sitting at Geoffrey’s side—most likely his wife because she held a young child on her lap—leaned over to whisper in Geoffrey’s ear, and he sat back, looking irritated, but keeping his mouth shut.

  “What are you saying? I don’t understand your meaning.” Henry sat back in his chair, hands curling over the dragon armrests. Their carved tongues licked out between his fingers, and he rubbed them absently as he listened.

  “They never troubled him,” repeated Alain. “They never lunged at him or tried to bite him, as they would everyone else.” He pointedly did not look at Geoffrey.

  “Everyone but you,” retorted Geoffrey. His face went from red to white in an instant, the complexion of a sinning man, or a fearful one. “Because you’re an agent of the Enemy. You used sorcery to enslave them, just as you used sorcery to bind my cousin to your will. We’ve all heard the story that the elder Count Charles Lavastine was accused of having made a pact with the Enemy to get those hounds. Why would any man want them? We’ve all seen and heard how vicious they are. They can only be creatures of the Enemy, and if they obey you, it must be because you are a servant of the Enemy as well!”

  “Hold!” cried Henry, raising a hand for silence as the crowd began to mutter and stir. The hounds growled softly, but Alain merely touched them on their muzzles and they lay down, resting their great heads on their forelegs. The king paused while Hathui bent to whisper in his ear. He nodded, and she gave an order to a steward, who hurried away. Hanna edged forward on the bench, got stuck again, jammed between a noble lady and her companion. She thought of crawling under the table, but the noble lady’s whippets had hunkered down in a pack under the table and not only did they growl at her as she bent over to survey her chances, but they had made a stinking mess of the rushes underneath. She shoved her way back up on the bench as the king began again to speak.

  “This is a grave accusation, Lord Geoffrey, not only against Alain but against Count Lavastine, his father the younger Charles, and his grandfather Charles Lavastine as well. Do you mean to imply that all of them were in league with the Enemy?”

  At once the young noblewoman and an older man who resembled her leaned over to whisper furiously to Geoffrey while he by turns looked irate and mortified. The child on the woman’s lap fussed and was given a fig to chew on to keep it quiet.

  The crowd had begun talking and there was a buzz of anger below it, like bees smoked out of their hive, but Hanna couldn’t tell who the anger was directed against. Alain did not move except to pat the head of one of the hounds. Tallia glanced at her uncle. She seemed to have eyes for no one but Henry, and even so her gaze was more like that of a rabbit eyeing the hawk that would like to eat it than that of a trusting niece. Hadn’t she married Lord Alain last summer? Of course she had! Why wasn’t she sitting beside him, then?

  “Nay, Your Majesty,” said Geoffrey finally. “It is evident that Count Lavastine and his father Charles were innocent.”

  “Then do you lay a claim against the elder Charles Lavastine and his conduct?”

  “No one knows what he got in return for the hounds, but it brought ill luck into his house. The story goes that his own mother died in childbed the day he got the hounds. He himself never had but one child although he married four different women, and his son had only the one living child although his wife was brought to bed ten or twelve times. My cousin Lavastine had only the one child, and not only were she and her mother murdered by these same hounds, but it was rumored that the girl wasn’t his get at all, that his wife had committed adultery. Two times more he made ready to marry, and both those women died under unnatural circumstances. And last, that same ill luck brought this liar to Lavas Holding, this man who tempted my cousin and bewitched him. And killed him, too, so I hear. Everyone agrees it was sorcery that killed him, some foul creature of the Enemy. Even those who will speak no ill of this bastard acknowledge that my cousin died in an unnatural way. It’s true, isn’t it?” he demanded at last, for the first time glaring belligerently at Alain.

  “That sorcery killed Count Lavastine?” answered Alain. “Certainly I believe it is true, and I was the first to say so.” This calm remark caused so much stir, people bending and talking and gesticulating to their neighbors, that Hanna was able to skip across from one bench to another and thereby move herself so far forward in the crowd that she was finally halfway to the front. “He was killed by a curse set on him by Bloodheart, the Eika chieftain he defeated at Gent.”

  Lady Tallia flushed, color creeping into her cheeks. Her attendant touched her on the shoulder, as if to signal her, but Tallia made no attempt to speak.

  “A clever ploy,” said the noblewoman sitting beside Geoffrey. Her voice was as sweet as honey and only somewhat more cloying. “But you have no proof.”

  “Prince Sanglant would testify that there was a curse. When he was Bloodheart’s captive, he saw an unnatural creature brought to life to fulfill that curse. That creature, that curse, is what killed my father.”

  Hanna winced, and it wasn’t until then that she realized that she had fallen, heart and soul, in favor of Lord Alain over Lord Geoffrey, simply by reason of their demeanor here in this hall. Yet what was the mood of the crowd? She was only a common-born girl. The nobles would, no doubt, rally around their own.

  Henry looked angry at the mention of Sanglant. “Then there is no doubt in your mind that you are Lavastine’s son?”

  Alain answered without hesitation. “Perhaps it’s true that I am not Count Lavastine’s son. I can’t know and I don’t know, for I never knew my mother. I was raised by free-born merchant folk in Osna village, a sister and a brother called Bella and Henri after the children of King Arnulf the Younger after you and your sister, Your Majesty. They told me only that I’d been born in Lavas Holding to an unmarried woman and that they’d agreed to foster me. It’s only when I came to serve for a year here at Lavas Holding that Count Lavastine noticed me. I never asked to be named as his heir. But he acknowledged me as his son, and he honored me with his trust. I will obey his wishes and act as rightly as he tried to all his life, because that is the trust he handed to me on his deathbed. I swore an oath to him there to uphold this county and the title of count, as he wished for me to do. Any woman and man in this holding will testify that is true. Many of them witnessed.” Around the hall, isolated people nodded, but Henry’s noble followers merely looked on. “I know my duty,” he finished. “It is up to you, Your Majesty, to judge otherwise if you see fit.”

  “You admit you might not be his bastard?” demanded Henry, clearly amazed.

  “God enjoins us to tell the truth, Your Majesty, and the truth is that I don’t know.”

  Geoffrey’s kinfolk stirred and smirked; some looked outraged, and some looked gleeful. Their expressions were mirrored here and there in the hall by courtiers, who surely must now be wondering if a common boy had shown them up and embarrassed them by pretending to be one of them. He had the same fine proud line in his posture, only his expression was tempered by a gravity and modesty that was more truly noble than any wellborn man or woman there except for the king. And they would hate him for that.

  But Alain had already gone on. Perhaps he was oblivious. Perhaps he, didn’t care. Or perhaps he was really that honest, a miracle in itself. “My fa— Count Lavastine named me as his son and treated me as his son. That his wishes should be dishonored in this shameful way is disgraceful, but I am well aware on my own account that we are all tempted by pride and envy and greed and lust to act in ways that God cannot ap
prove. But I ask you to consider this, Your Majesty. It is Lavastine’s judgment that is being questioned here, not my worthiness.”

  Geoffrey looked furious. His kinfolk muttered among themselves, annoyed and angry at being lectured, and Geoffrey’s wife sat the little child straighter on her lap, as if it were on display at a market and she wanted to fetch the highest price for it. Henry looked thoughtful, leaning over to make a private comment to Helmut Villam. His niece sat as stiff as a statue, looking desperate. Had she been forbidden to speak? What did she wish for?

  Hathui was looking around the hall trying to gauge the reaction of the court, and Hanna, seeing her chance, lifted a hand to catch her attention. It took a few moments, but Hathui finally saw her and at once brought Hanna to the king’s notice. Stewards moved forward into the crowd, paths were made, and Hanna was able to come forward and kneel before him.

  “Where is my daughter?” asked Henry. “How does she fare?”

  “She is well, Your Majesty. She is married—” A general cheer rang out at this statement, and Hanna had to wait for it to die down before she could go on. “She and Prince Bayan have won a victory over the Quman.” As there came further rejoicing, she edged forward enough that she could speak to Henry in a low voice. “There is more, Your Majesty, but I am charged by your daughter to relate it to you in a more private setting, if it pleases you.”

  Henry sat back, and when the crowd had settled down, waiting for his response, he lifted a hand. “I want my dinner, and I have heard enough for today.” He rose, and the assembly was thereby dismissed.