by P. J. Fox
“Indeed?” Tristan’s tone was bland. He and the priest were seated opposite each other. There was no way Isla could avoid looking at him, as much as she wanted to. His piggy eyes flickered back and forth between her and Tristan, grotesquely knowing.
“I’m needed at Strathearn Manor, to say a funeral service.”
“How are things in the capital?” This from Rudolph’s companion, a fit man of a little less than average height. He seemed pleasant enough, and had introduced himself earlier as John. He and Hart seemed to be on good enough terms, although Hart had spent most of the night talking with Tristan’s master of horse. None of them, thank the Gods, wore codpieces.
“Well. The king receives an envoy this evening from across the channel.”
“Now,” the earl interjected, “the king is how old this winter?”
Isla saw with shame that her father was deep into his cups. His hands shook and his eyes were rheumy. Peregrine Cavendish, 12th Earl of Enzie might have been a decent man once. Isla didn’t know. But this vision before her didn’t even look like the shell of a decent man. Or a man at all. He looked pathetic. Isla wondered if she was looking at Rudolph in forty winters, the life of the party that the party forgot.
“The king will have thirty-three winters,” Tristan replied.
“Now….” The earl counted on his fingers. “You had twenty-seven winters when the king took the throne, yes? Which means that you have…”
“Thirty this winter,” Tristan finished for him.
The earl smiled vacantly. “Ah, to be young again.”
Isla almost choked on her wine. If Cariad’s retelling of the tale had been correct, then Tristan had reduced his number of years by three. He’d supposedly just entered his twenty-sixth year when Piers took the throne; his host had died, however, when he’d been in his thirtieth year. Tristan Mountbatten had been turning thirty for over a century. All the women at court would be so jealous, she thought irreverently; he just must share his secret.
Tristan glanced down at her. “What?” he asked, bemused.
“Nothing,” she demurred.
“I wish I could read your mind,” he said.
“You can,” she pointed out.
“What are you two whispering about over there?” Rudolph demanded, with bluff good nature.
“I was inquiring of my betrothed whether her birth date was recorded.”
“And it wasn’t,” Isla added. The recording of actual birth dates was very rare in a society where the average citizen was illiterate. That the general year was remembered was enough, in most households. And even in those households where a boy’s birth date was recorded, a girl’s seldom was—if ever. A girl’s birth wasn’t important enough as an event to bear recording. Most of Morven celebrated their birthdays on the same day: the Solstice.
“Was yours?” Rudolph asked interestedly.
“Yes. Beltane,” Tristan added.
“An auspicious birthday!” Rudolph’s tone was hearty.
“Indeed.”
Father Justin, along with the earl, partook heartily of his repast. Both exclaimed repeatedly over how delicious it was and how the cook had outdone himself. No one else at table seemed terribly interested in the swill on their plates. Isla found the idea of eating at all stomach-turning; she doubted that if her favorite foods in the world had been presented, that she would have been able to touch them. And this…? The wine sat uneasily in her empty stomach; the effects of her lunch had long since worn off.
There had been tension in the air, for awhile, but now the conversation veered into safer channels and the general aura brightened. For everyone else. Someone told a bawdy joke, and many of the men at table laughed. Rowena sniffed, disapproving.
Isla fought the urge to run, to scream, to bury her face in Tristan’s shoulder, all of which would have been equally mortifying. He cut her some small tidbits of the less offensive items, which she ignored.
Cheese was passed, as a special treat. Isla noticed that Father Justin only partook of each course after he saw someone else eat from it first: the earl, or Tristan. His piggish eyes lingered, in particular, on the duke’s trencher. Tristan, who as always ate sparingly of the earl’s dubious repast, affected not to notice. He sipped his wine, and murmured a word to Isla. “You should eat,” he said, serving her dried apricots and some sort of finely veined cheese.
Isla glanced over at Father Justin, whose presence had haunted her all night. The great hall was cool, for all that the fires were roaring, but fat beads of perspiration stood out along his hairline. He was more nervous than he looked, then.
One of the pages moved behind him, and he startled. Hart, seated next to him, shot him an apprehensive glance. “I, ah…I apologize,” the priest said. “I was, that is, I seem to be quite jumpy at the moment.” Such an untoward reaction wasn’t his first of the evening, but Isla had attributed his behavior to the strain of sitting across from her. Or Tristan.
Father Justin produced a voluminous embroidered handkerchief from somewhere and began mopping his brow. He seemed both agitated and restless, his sanguine attitude long gone. He’d drunk quite a bit, but no more than usual—for him—and at the start of dinner had seemed in control of himself enough. Hart reached for his own cup and the priest jumped again, emitting a high shriek.
“Are you well?” Hart asked.
“Yes,” the earl echoed, “are you well?” Then, without waiting for Father Justin to respond, “fresh air! Fresh air’s the thing. Why don’t we all step outside for a moment or two and—”
Father Justin began to convulse.
The twitches were small, at first, more akin to a mild case of chorea. That particular affliction sometimes presented itself as a symptom of high fever; Isla had seen it once, in a child she was tending for one of the local women. Father Justin’s eyes grew wide, and then wider, and began to protrude from his head. He swallowed, and swallowed again. He’d been clutching his cup but now his fingers shot out, rigid, and the cup fell to the table and rolled off. He began drumming his feet on the dais, and one of the hounds growled.
At first, nobody did anything. Hart in particular watched with morbid fascination as the priest jerked like a puppet on strings. Then finally, belatedly, the earl demanded that someone call a doctor.
“We should help him to lie flat,” Rudolph volunteered, but made no effort to rise and do such a thing. They were all, Isla realized, being just as cowardly now as they’d been that morning.
It was the duke’s own retainers who helped Father Justin, easing him out of his chair and checking his throat for obstructions. In a kingdom where the formal practice of medicine was greeted with suspicion as a possible branch of the dark arts and the unlucky doctor whose patients actually survived was often tried as a witch, a competent soldier was as good an attendant as any and better than most. All of Tristan’s men, with their hard-eyed stares and their scars and their matter of fact attitudes, obviously had battlefield experience.
The earl watched, growing paler and paler, as Father Justin’s back arched upward so forcefully that the entire great hall heard his spine crack. His shouts were shut off as his jaw seized and snapped shut. Half of his tongue fell to the dais with a wet plop, and blood welled in droplets from the thin line of his lips. He began drumming his heels on the dais even harder as he flailed back and forth, holding him down requiring the efforts of four grown men.
And then he was still. He relaxed, limp in the arms of his helpers, as the pungent odor of urine filled the room. Tristan’s master of horse disengaged himself and stood up. Shrugging, he reached for his cup and helped himself to a deep draft of wine.
“Well that’s it, then,” he commented.
“What do you mean?” the earl demanded. “You can’t treat him like—like a piece of refuse!”
But that’s all he is, Isla thought. Beside her, Tristan said nothing.
“The spirit has fled,” Tristan’s man replied slowly, as though humoring an idiot. “Treating what’s
left as though it’s something more than refuse is the sacrilege.” His short bark of laughter held no mirth. “I forgot,” he said, glaring. “You’re savages in the West.”
“Enough,” Tristan said mildly. The man shut up. He had every right to be upset, he’d done his best to help Father Justin—who didn’t deserve help of any kind—and been castigated for his efforts. “My men,” Tristan continued, “will help you remove the good father in whatever manner you see fit.” He gestured, giving them leave to continue. And they did.
“He was a great believer in pain,” Tristan remarked to a stricken-looking earl. “By the man’s own lights, his place in the afterlife is assured.”
Tristan made no further comment on which place that was likely to be.
Isla looked up at him, and their eyes met. After a moment, Tristan transferred his gaze back to the earl. “How unfortunate.” He steepled his long, aristocratic fingers, his claws clicking together in the sudden quiet. “What a grievous loss for the church.” His eyes turned hard, fire flickering in their depths. “Father Justin,” he said, addressing what had happened that morning for the first time, “felt that you had dishonored your house, Lord Enzie, by hosting as guest a man who worshipped the wrong god and who backed the wrong king.”
Isla’s father swallowed, and said nothing.
“You no doubt sought to appease him.”
The entire table held its breath.
“I trust that no such…mistakes will happen again.”
The earl rushed to assure him that he’d known nothing of Father Justin’s goals or inclinations, wanted nothing but friendship between his house and House Mountbatten and looked forward to renewing their ties with the bonds of marriage. Bonds that would be joyous indeed, Apple hastened to add. They both loved the king. Father Justin had received respect as a member of the church, nothing more. Perhaps the Earl of Strathearn would like to do the honor of burying him. And bearing the cost. Father Justin’s body could be removed—in state, of course—as soon as was convenient. Tonight, even.
But Tristan ignored them. His attention had returned to Isla. Once again, pinned under that inscrutable gaze, she had the definite sensation that the person sitting next to her was not human.
His eyes held interest, and amusement, and some other emotion that she couldn’t recognize. But it wasn’t an emotion that existed for human beings, whatever it was. She broke their gaze, flustered, and noticed then that someone else was missing from the great hall. Father Justin’s catamite. She wondered if he’d gone with the body, or had left to grieve in private.
“You note the absence of our little friend?” Tristan’s voice was pitched low.
“Yes,” she confessed. The fire was too warm, baking her skin, and she felt faint. She wanted—needed—to lie down.
“He left, earlier. He’d…grown tired of his position.”
Isla started. “Oh.”
“The priest,” Tristan said inscrutably, “shared his cup with no one.”
“Oh,” she said again, her head swimming.
He slid a single finger under her chin, the gesture, for all the world, looking like that of a lover. Only Isla knew the true content of their conversation, and that he wasn’t solicitously asking after her welfare. His eyes fixed on hers. His words were half threat, half promise, and spoken with ownership rather than warmth. And yet she found them strangely comforting for all that, coming from the only person in the room whose word meant anything.
“No one will hurt you,” he said softly, menacingly. “Unless I will it.”
THIRTY-THREE
Isla watched the guests mingle from her vantage point by the hearth. She didn’t want to mingle. Wanted, indeed, to vanish entirely into the woodwork.
A day had passed since her tormentor’s death, but Isla still half expected to see him whenever she looked up. Thought she had seen him, a half a dozen times, from the corner of her eye. She shivered again.
The tables had been moved back to allow for dancing, and those not dancing held conversations in huddled clumps. Isla, herself, hated to dance: the stilted movements, the emphasis on perfection of form. Afraid that someone might ask her, for propriety’s sake if nothing else, she’d retreated into the shadows. Even though the afternoon sun still shone brightly outside, the cavernous space of the great hall was dark and smoky and smelled vaguely of hound.
Rudolph posed prettily with her sister, one leg extended to reveal his rose-colored stocking. Rowena beamed, thrilled with the attention she was receiving. More than one admiring eye had been cast in her direction this afternoon. Isla didn’t mind; she’d never resented her sister’s popularity and, indeed, blessed her for it as every particle of attention lavished on Rowena meant one more spared Isla.
The earl made a witty comment, and his friends laughed. One of Tristan’s hounds rolled over, exposing his belly and making the rushes crackle. Isla petted him with her slipper, hoping the surreptitious and unladylike movement wouldn’t be noticed. One of her father’s retainers unlaced his breeches and, nodding pleasantly in her direction, let a stream of urine loose into the fireplace.
Technically, urinating into the fireplace was only permissible in formal society during those times when the weather didn’t permit a trip to the latrines, but no one stood much on formality in the West. The Highlands were, as Tristan had often informed her, the ends of the earth. She wondered how much they’d changed, since his youth—if at all. The hound sighed in contentment. The rushes, Isla noted, needed to be changed.
A high-pitched, vaguely musical sound issued from the minstrel’s gallery, a small and poorly maintained balcony above the main door to the great hall. There was a pause, during which the volume of conversation increased, and then another dance was struck. Contrary to what the peasants thought, most of whom seemed to picture their aristocratic betters dancing until dawn, most feasts actually took place during daylight hours. Men of all ranks had only so much stamina and after a certain amount of eating and drinking most tended to fall asleep. Commencing festivities earlier greatly increased the chances of everyone reaching the end of the feast in a more or less alert state.
Moreover, Isla thought sourly, it greatly decreased the chances of having to offer drunken guests accommodation.
Rowena was a vision in gray, her cornflower blue eyes picking up the tone in the smoky air. Her hair shone like spun silk, and she laughed frequently and genuinely. To see her now, one should never have guessed at the harridan she’d been the night before. She couldn’t have gotten more than a few hours’ sleep before rousing herself to begin her extensive toilette, and yet she looked like she hadn’t a care in the world. No dark marks ringed her eyes, like they did Isla’s; no frown of worry marred her brow.
Father Justin’s death had been the end of dinner. Isla, for one, was relieved in the extreme. Her own father having forgotten about her, Tristan saw her up to her room and left her at her door. Rowena glared at him from across the hall, as though daring him to do something wicked. Isla almost hoped he’d turn into a bat, or a toad, but all he did was wish her goodnight.
And then she’d found herself alone in her room and more afraid than ever. Alice had forgotten to set a fire—was probably off with some man—and the air felt as frigid as that of a tomb. It smelled like a tomb, too, of minerals and dust from the stone walls that stretched up around her into gloom. Enclosing her. She sat down on her hearth bench, staring into the barren hole of the fireplace and wondering what to do.
Some time later—who knew how long—her door had flown open, hitting the wall with a bang as Rowena rushed in. Isla started, shocked and fearful. If Rowena noticed, she gave no sign. “Father Justin was murdered!” she’d announced, her hands balled up at her sides as she stared at Isla in wide-eyed horror. “Murdered!”
Isla spent the next few hours listening to Rowena’s thoughts on the subject: how frightened she’d been, how terrible it was that a priest had died under their roof and even worse by mischief and how surely the Gods would c
urse them. How fortunate she’d been that dear, brave, handsome Rudolph had been there to protect her, and so forth. Isla groaned, burying her face in her pillow and wishing that Rowena would leave.
She wondered if Rudolph was planning on protecting her sister with his codpiece or his rapier wit, thought of asking, and decided that Rowena might not appreciate her humor.
She’d fallen asleep to the sound of Rowena first complaining about how her night had been ruined and that they were surely all cursed, alternating between the two as being equally upsetting, and then holding forth on the subject of how much she hated the duke. She’d chosen to forget, evidently, that she’d all but hurled herself at him earlier that same evening.
Isla could have laughed. Even though she didn’t feel like laughing; she saw no humor in the situation and couldn’t remember having ever been so lonely, even on the night her mother died. At least then, she’d felt like she had other people to rely on. Rowena, meanwhile, continued her rant. Isla wondered if Rowena was oblivious to her pain, or simply didn’t care. “I’m certain that Father Justin’s death wasn’t natural and that that man is involved! I’m sure,” she’d added self-importantly, “that he naturally hates all representatives of the church as they stand for the light and he the dark. Which reminds me, did you know…
Isla, too exhausted to care what it was that Rowena knew, sank gratefully into the oblivion of sleep.
At her feet, the hound grunted and shifted to give her foot a better angle for belly rubbing.
Isla disliked feasts at the best of times, mostly because she had no one to talk to during them. No one she wished to talk to, at any rate. She mainly sat in the corner as she was doing now, until called on by her sister to act as lady’s maid. She didn’t mind, not really. She just found the whole exercise boring.
Moreover, concerning the present event, she found her father’s decision to move forward with the feast literally on the heels of Father Justin’s death distasteful in the extreme. The feast, of course, was to celebrate Rowena’s engagement. And, she supposed, her own. As an afterthought. The proper thing would have been to postpone festivities at least until Father Justin was in the ground, but as the earl pointed out feasts were expensive and the preparations had already been made. If he backed out now, he’d still have to pay his creditors.