"Let us hope not."
"You have never struck anyone as a man for hope, Mer lin. It's almost comical—the great man of reason, hoping for the best amid all this intrigue."
Nimue was listening carefully; she decided she didn't want the two of them bickering. "So what do we know? Who might have killed the king?"
"I think Lancelot and Guenevere are still the likeliest suspects. But there is Petronilla, hoping to pin the murder on her lover, Lancelot. There are all the other delegates. We have no certain way of knowing what plots they might be involved in. I must question the squires who are attached to them. And there are of course the Byzantines and that bloody man from Lithuania or . . . or wherever."
"What motive could they have?"
"They are Byzantines. Wheels within wheels, boxes within boxes. They never do what they do for clear, obvi ous reasons. If they thought killing Leodegrance would in some way help to topple another petty ruler at the far end of the empire, they would not hesitate. Look at the game they have been playing with us, with that Lithuanian fraud pretending not to understand any known language. It is so improbable, yet they expected us to believe it without question. Thank goodness young Andrew found that knife."
He paused and looked from one of them to the other. "And of course there are other, less expected suspects."
"Who?"
"Leonilla. And that absurd young lover of hers."
Nimue said, "It doesn't seem like he could be involved."
"What makes you say so?"
"I know him. I mean, not well, but we have struck up a kind of friendship. I mean, even the servants have noticed us together. They talk about him. Nothing substantial, only gossip. He seems genuine to me. At least, I think he is genuinely distressed by what happened to his king, not to mention Leonilla apparently coming unhinged."
Merlin raised an eyebrow. "Leodegrance and Leonilla had disagreed, I gather rather bitterly, about Guenevere's new marriage. Leonilla has a long record of disposing of her opponents. And it is difficult to imagine her stabbing the king herself. She would entrust that duty to someone younger and stronger. For that matter, no one has ever precisely accounted for all the deaths of her other rivals. Jean-Pierre could easily be her pet assassin as well as her pet."
"Jean-Michel. He's a nice young man." Nimue said it so forcefully it was almost shocking. "Or at least, he seems like it. It's hard to believe him capable of murder."
"A man may smile and smile and be a villain. But I am only speculating, you understand. There are twenty diplo mats here, with their entourages, any one of whom is capa ble of devious plotting. It is what they do for a living, after all. We must not lose sight of any of the possibilities."
"Petronilla." Merlin smiled broadly. "Good afternoon."
She sat in her room doing needlework. "So you are be hind this detention. I should have guessed. Every time I've tried to leave my room, I've been kept here on some pretext or other."
"My apologies for any inconvenience."
"It is more than inconvenience. It is insulting, Why am I being treated like a prisoner?"
"No such thing, Petronilla. The guards have perhaps been overzealous, that is all." He tried to make the lie sound as convincing as possible.
"Why do I have guards at all?"
"Why, Petronilla, you sound downright imperious. You have perhaps been with Guenevere too long."
She looked up from her needle. "Don't be funny with me, Merlin. I've been as forthright with you as I could be."
"There is a murderer on the loose. Do you really mind being protected from him?"
She glared. "You have the murderer. And I don't deserve to be treated like this."
He had had enough of trying to be pleasant. "What you deserve is for the king to decide. Besides, we are not at all certain Lancelot did the murder."
Her eyes widened but she said nothing, which pleased him. After a long pause he told her, "There have been ru mors. Mildly disturbing ones. I have been trying to estab lish what truth there is to them—if any. That is all."
"About me? What rumors could there possibly be about me? I am the queen's secretary, no more. It is the dullest, least impressive job imaginable."
"I am afraid I even had to have your rooms searched." He made a vague gesture around the room they were in.
She paused, glared, pretended to return her attention back to her needlework. "Oh? And was that a valuable use of time?"
He decided to be direct. But he smiled a gentle smile as he said, "You and Lancelot were lovers."
She paused for a moment, then went on sewing. "What could have given you that idea?"
Slowly he produced the miniature portrait of him. "Mon cher does mean my sweet, does it not?"
She reached out and tried to take it from him, but he pulled back.
"Please, Merlin, that is personal. It isn't Lancelot. It is a portrait of a man I . . . fell in love with before I came here from France."
"The one you lied about to incriminate?"
"Give me that picture!"
She lunged for it but he moved it behind his back. The sound of her raised voice brought one of the guards into the room. Merlin handed him the portrait. "Everything is all right here," he said, "but I would appreciate it if you would stay close by awhile and hold this for me."
Petronilla's eyes flashed with anger.
"Why, Petronilla, this is a side of you we have not seen before."
"You haven't stolen my personal property before."
"I was told you have a vindictive nature. I am not certain I believed it till now."
She worked to compose herself, and the work showed. "I'm sorry, Merlin. It's just that . . . I love him, that's all."
"So it really does represent a French paramour?"
"Of course." She was trembling with anger and tried to hide it.
"That is interesting. When I first saw it I thought it might be Lancelot."
"No!"
"Well, you know how imprecise artists can be. Most of their work could represent almost anyone."
"Yes. But it is—"
"I am afraid your meals will be served to you here from now on." He smiled benevolently. "For your own protec tion, The king does not want you exposed to any danger."
"And will my meals consist of bread and water?"
"Now, now, Petronilla. You are a valuable witness. We
can hardly afford to have anything happen to you. If Lance lot should come to trial, we shall certainly require your testimony."
Finally she managed to compose herself. "You said you're not certain he is the killer. I told you what I saw. How could there be any doubt?"
"This is England, Petronilla. Arthur's England. You know the reputation we have for fairness and justice. If a man is accused of a crime, we go to every length to make absolutely positive he is guilty before we punish him. With a capital crime like this one . . ."
"I suppose that makes sense."
"It does. You know it. We are making a new kind of na tion here. If we were not—if what we have built is arbitrary and can be set aside at the will of the monarch or on the word of a secretary—then it counts for nothing at all."
She pouted slightly. "Leonilla would have had his head by now."
"Leonilla is not Arthur. Her France, though it is only across the Channel, is a million miles from Arthur's En gland. Please, you must be patient. This confinement will end soon enough. I will have books brought. Or music. What ever you want. I hardly want this to be unpleasant for you."
"He did it. He killed the king." She said it with perfect conviction.
"Of course he did. We will have proof of that— incontrovertible proof—soon enough."
"What? What proof?"
"In good time. More than just the world of one witness."
When he left her she seemed reassured. He hoped it was not another act of hers.
"So what have you discovered? And what do you suspect?" Arthur hooked a leg over the arm of his throne and drank wine,
deeply.
"Frankly, Arthur, it is a tangle. There are several reasons to think Lancelot might not be guilty, and heaven knows there are enough other suspects. But . . ."
"Yes?"
"I want him to be the killer. Executing him would solve so many of our problems. Who knows—it might even tame Guenevere."
"My loving wife will not be broken so easily. She thrives on treachery the way mosquitoes thrive on blood."
"Apt metaphor."
"How could it not be? I'm married to the bitch."
"I believe," Merlin said slowly, "that is what is known as a diplomatic miscalculation. Not to mention a sexual one. There was actually a time when I thought her beautiful myself. That was before I saw the evil in her eyes. Can I have some of that wine?"
Surprise registered in the king's face. "You? You want a drink? Have you forgotten all your temperance lectures?"
"The last two days have been . . . tense. How is Colin coping with all the delegates?"
Arthur took up the skin and poured a cup for Merlin. "I feel a bit guilty putting all the burden on him. But he's do ing a bang-up job. Keeping them all happy, or as happy as they are capable of being, making them feel important. I've had private audiences with most of them by now. They've even stopped complaining about the bloody rain."
"Good. Now if only the rain itself would stop. Half the country is flooded. We're getting reports from farther and farther north and west."
"Of course, that is not to say they are all happy, or even content." Arthur took a deep drink. "They never seem to stop squabbling, like a pack of old widows."
"You wanted England to be a player in Europe, not me. Left alone on our tight little island with its dreadful weather, we could have finished building the society we want."
"Don't start."
Merlin told him about Guenevere's attempt to meet with Podarthes. "She says they're old friends from Constantin ople. She wants to catch up on his life, nothing more. She says."
"Good God, and she expected you to believe that?" Ar thur put his cup down loudly, eyed it, then picked it up again. "She hasn't been there since she was sixteen, two or three thousand years ago. And even then, she was as unim portant as any of Justinian's 'guests.' Did you know, by the way, he's just issued an edict officially closing all the Athe nian schools of philosophy?"
Merlin fell silent for a moment; distress showed in his face. "I hadn't heard, no. He is remaking the world as he wants it, and that is not good for the world. As long as sur faces are gilded, why worry that the wood underneath is rotting? But the Byzantines have always preferred style to substance. Court ceremonial matters to them more than political philosophy ever could. But suppose she was not?"
Arthur blinked. "Suppose who was not what?"
"Guenevere. Unimportant."
"What do you mean? A pubescent girl from a backward French province? It must have taken them months to get the mud off her, Merlin."
"No wonder you fell in love with her."
"If you have a point, Merlin, make it."
He took a deep draft of his wine. "Listen, we know well enough how the Byzantines operate. They spin webs—the more elaborate the better—and they wait. Like venomous spiders, they wait. Suppose they have always had their eye on France, or England. When this green princess fell into their lap, it was too good to be true. They nurtured her, coddled her, planned ways to use her. It occurs to me that your marriage may even have been their idea."
"No, alas, that was my own work."
"But you see what I am suggesting. Perhaps all these
years she has been their agent, waiting, plotting, hoping to deliver France or England—or both—into their hands. It would explain her secret correspondence with them, and their eagerness to recognize her as ruler of England, and if she knew or believed she had their backing, it would ex plain all the treasonous plots she has hatched."
Arthur leaned forward and peered at him. "And would it explain why she killed her father? You saw what he was like, Merlin. He would have been dead soon enough any way."
"That is a problem for the theory, granted. We have other suspects, but none of them seems as likely as Guenevere. I want her to be the culprit—along with her pet knight."
Arthur slouched back and closed his eyes. "The webs are all around us. Keep working, keep untangling them. It would be nice to have something to announce to the delegates at the plenary meeting tonight. And you know tomorrow is the final session of our little diplomatic gathering. I don't suppose you could promise me to have the killer by then?"
"I wish it were possible."
"It is. It must be."
"You know I will do my best, Arthur."
"Of course. But try to do a little better than that, will you?"
Late afternoon. Nimue, in her guise as Colin, had just fin ished pouring water on another minor diplomatic fire. As she walked past the entrance to the refectory, she decided something sweet would make a nice little reward.
She caught the eye of a serving girl. "Are there any of those honey cakes Arthur always has you make for him?"
"Yes, sir. Shall I fetch some?"
"Please."
Waiting for the girl to return from the kitchen, she spot
ted Jean-Michel sitting alone in a corner, eating a bowl of soup. She put on a wide smile and crossed to him. "Hello. It's a bit early for dinner, isn't it?"
He looked up; the expression on his face and his body language both said he was tired. "Oh. It's—Colin, isn't it?"
She nodded. "You look like you haven't been getting much sleep. You could almost be one of my staff."
He yawned. "Sorry. I'm afraid the queen has been keep ing me busy."
She narrowed her eyes. "So what they say about you and your . . . duties . . . is all true?"
"Leonilla is a queen. Rulers have favorites. I am hers."
"There are times I wish the world I move in was not quite so devoted to euphemism."
Jean-Michel laughed at this. Nimue found it odd; she hadn't meant it as a joke. "At least you only have one per son to keep happy," Nimue said. "I've spent the last hour mediating a dispute between Morgan le Fay and Bishop Gildas. Neither of them is exactly filled with the milk of human kindness."
"They are rivals. If I were more cynical I would say business rivals."
"For the moment, Morgan holds the franchise. But the thought of a new religion taking root here clearly has her worried."
"As well she might be. But really, you would all be so much better off under the Christian Church. Have you looked into it?"
"I'm afraid I haven't." She resisted the temptation to make a wisecrack. "It hardly seems to have improved the morals of Guenevere."
"Love is love, Colin. She loves Lancelot."
"And an oath is an oath. She swore to love and obey Ar thur. But her damned schemes never end. Even now, under heavy guard, she is trying to nurture her plots. Frankly I'm surprised she hasn't tried to meet with Leonilla."
He blinked. "You think she would do that?"
"If it were to her advantage, I think she would cut off her own leg."
"No, but I mean . . . You don't know about her and her mother? They are not exactly close."
"What do you mean? Leonilla has been behind most of her treachery since she came to England and married the king."
Jean-Michel sipped his soup. "They are rival queens, Colin. There is no love lost between them, none at all."
"They are rival French queens. It has never been much of a secret that they wanted to extend France's territory across the Channel, into the British Isles."
"That was the original plan, yes. But ever since Leonilla realized that would make her daughter more powerful than she is herself . . ." Suddenly he stammered and blushed. "I mean . . . I imagine . . . I mean . . . I'm sorry . . . I'm tired."
"I understand perfectly what you mean." She bit into her honey cake. "They're not making these as sweet as they used to. Honey is scarce this season."
"Nothing is
as sweet as it used to be."
She laughed. "You sound like Merlin."
"I don't mean to. He was questioning me today and trying to sound like he wasn't. I hope I never become so obvious."
She refrained from commenting on this. "Merlin is quite a brilliant man in many ways. He has found some old plans drawn up by Hero of Alexandria. He thinks he may actually be able to build working models of his steam engines."
The Lancelot Murders Page 21