He glared toward Nimrod. “Are you sure that huntsman didn’t ask your predecessor for a monster? He was camping out unafraid, yet it showed no signs of attacking him.”
“Quite sure,” I said.
The three priests from the church of Saint Eusebius had begun an anxious conference while all this was happening. I glanced toward the hermit, who stood before his grove as though his thin body and smile of benediction could protect it from all physical violence. In a minute, I thought, the priests would announce loudly that a grove with such activities in it was no place for a saint’s relics, snatch the golden reliquary, and bolt for their horses
I excused myself from Dominic, who now looked only weary, and hurried toward the shrine on a collision course with the priests. The presence of a wizard might slow them down, I hoped, even if they seemed to have little respect for hermits.
Nimrod calmly watched the priests’ approach, then flicked his eyes toward me. “I hope you don’t think me a coward, Wizard,” he said in a voice designed to carry. “But if I hadn’t fled from Prince Dominic I would have had to kill him, and I do not want to kill the royal regent of Yurt.” He stepped out from the shelter of the trees to meet the priests, and the sun shone with golden light on his hair.
Dominic turned around with a scowl. The duchess, who had started down the track by the falls, froze for a second, then kept on walking. But Nimrod’s words and appearance had their greatest impact on the three priests. They shook their heads and stared at him as though not believing what they saw.
“When we saw you last night, I didn’t think it could be true,” said the round priest, then paused as though feeling his words were inadequate.
“The Lord moves in mysterious ways,” supplied the thin priest.
“Do you know Nimrod?” asked Joachim politely.
“Nimrod?” demanded the round priest. “Is that what he calls himself? We certainly do know this ‘mighty hunter.’”
“We had thought him an obedient son of the Church, but his appearance here, an accused sinner under a false name, shows him to have been but a whited sepulcher,” said the thin priest.
“Then who is he?” asked Joachim, when Nimrod said nothing.
“He is—or was—” said the thin priest witheringly, “the prince of our city.”
PART SIX - PRINCE ASCELIN
I
Somehow, Joachim managed to get rid of the priests. They retreated a little way down the valley, highly indignant but still unwilling to say anything openly against the chaplain, and still not in possession of the Holy Toe. The shouting and barking had died down, and it again seemed possible that, at some point, the valley’s dreamy quiet might be restored.
Dominic, with the knights and the still excited dogs, settled down near the base of the waterfall, built a fire, and started making a late breakfast. Diana sat twenty yards away, combing her hair and pinning it up again, her back turned carefully to them.
This must be, I thought, very difficult for her. Nimrod, the man she might have loved in her own way, now appeared a coward, and she had been thoroughly and publicly shamed before the knights of Yurt. Even for the duchess, this had gone beyond outrageous.
Joachim, Evrard, and I went into the grove with Nimrod. The old hermit had retreated to his hermitage. I should be, right now, trying to find the old wizard’s monster. But even with my best magic I feared I would not be able to track it unless I had the tall huntsman with me—I hadn’t even been able to find Evrard’s stick-man when I saw its footprint—and for the moment he couldn’t leave the grove’s sanctuary.
In the meantime, magical or not, I had a problem here that would thoroughly disrupt the kingdom if something wasn’t done, and soon.
“So are you indeed a prince?” I asked Nimrod.
“It won’t be much of a surprise to hear that I am,” he said with a slow smile. “My true name is Ascelin. I know you realized all along that I was not simply a huntsman.”
“And the duchess knew who you were?”
“Of course she did,” he said, seeming much more amused than anyone should be when his life was in peril. “I won’t try to pretend that part of my reason for coming into Yurt wasn’t to see her again.” He glanced in her direction. All that was visible was her hair and firmly set shoulders. “Although I’m afraid that’s turned out very badly.”
His next words showed how very precarious was his apparent calm. “Would she rather have me kill the regent and half the knights of Yurt than to run?” he demanded. It was quite clear he was not addressing any of us. “I could certainly outwrestle Dominic, and I’ve got stag-arrows in my quiver. I could have picked off all of them one by one. Would her honor have been satisfied then?”
“I don’t understand,” said Evrard abruptly into the ensuing silence. “Why does Dominic want to kill you?”
“I thought that was fairly clear,” said Nimrod—or rather Prince Ascelin. “We’d camped on the plateau last night, and were finishing breakfast outside our tent this morning, when Dominic and the knights came into view. Apparently the regent didn’t think my behavior toward my lady the Duchess Diana was the sort of behavior appropriate toward someone he’d planned to marry.” He smiled briefly and bitterly. “If I didn’t intend to kill a lot of men, running seemed my best option.”
I could see Joachim make a conscious decision not to lecture the prince on sin and virtue. “What do you know about Saint Eusebius?” he asked instead. “You said that seeing the duchess was only part of your reason for coming here.”
At this question, Nimrod—as I couldn’t help but think of him—became oddly flustered. I couldn’t tell at first if it was just the abrupt change of subject, or if the mention of the saint was disturbing. He would not meet Joachim’s eyes but looked off instead toward the shrine and reliquary there. “The major church of my city is dedicated to Saint Eusebius,” he answered slowly after a minute. “I’ve been devoted to the saint since boyhood.”
Several things suddenly became clear to me. “Saint Eusebius appeared to you in a vision,” I said. Joachim and Evrard stared at me, but I knew I was right. “He knew you for a remarkable huntsman, and he wanted to get the great horned rabbits out of Yurt.”
Nimrod looked at me almost with relief. “Yes, he did.” He paused, then went on in a much lower voice. “But he’d never appeared to me before. It was— It was not what I’d expected.” His face became distant and almost expressionless. A very short time ago, I had thought the forces of good were always gentle and pleasant, but it appeared I was wrong. Since seeing a saint seemed to be such a soul-searing experience, I was rather glad that saints did not appear to wizards.
“Eusebius has appeared to several people,” said Joachim quietly.
“The Cranky Saint has said something different to every single person he’s appeared to,” I said. “When is he going to make his will clear?” But Joachim did not answer.
I tried to calculate when the saint might have appeared in a vision to Nimrod, counting from when Evrard’s horned rabbits had escaped. “But how did you get here so fast?”
“I set out, I think,” said Nimrod, “within twenty-four hours of when the first horned rabbit reached this valley. I was here four days later.” He managed a smile. “Fifty miles a day on foot was a push, even for me. I must say,” he added after a brief pause, “that when I was asked to come defend the Holy Grove from magical creatures, I had expected something a little more—well, intimidating, than great horned rabbits.”
Whether the saint had told him or not, there was indeed something more intimidating in the kingdom now.
“What,” put in Evrard, “do you have to do, Prince, with the entrepreneurs up on top of the cliff?”
“I don’t know anything about them,” said Nimrod.
For a moment I sat thinking rapidly. If the huntsman had come to Yurt in direct response to the horned rabbits, then many of the series of strange and coincidental events that had begun immediately upon the king’s departure were linked. And Diana—even
if in part unintentionally—was behind them all.
But I still didn’t know what any of this had to do with lowering pilgrims in a basket to see the Holy Toe, and I recalled I had already worked out that the horned rabbits had appeared too late to be behind the priests’ vision, even if they had brought about Nimrod’s. I wondered briefly if the “pilgrims” I had seen before had been the real priests of the church of Saint Eusebius, and if these three were some other people in disguise.
I dismissed this thought as too elaborate. Besides, I doubted false priests could fool Joachim. But Evrard’s horned rabbits—and the inhuman stick-man with which he had next tried to impress Diana—had also led to the monster. And I didn’t have the slightest idea how I was going to catch it.
Too many other people, from the duchess to the hermit to the priests to Dominic to Evrard, had had too many conflicting plans. And now everyone must be formulating new plans, to get Prince Ascelin out of the grove. For all I knew, I might even be caught myself in some complicated scheme put together by the Cranky Saint. If I wanted to leave this perfectly charming valley within my lifetime, it was time to stop being a playing-piece in other people’s games and to have a plan of my own.
And the first priority was to end this deadly standoff, before either Dominic and Nimrod killed each other, so that I could marshal my forces to go after the old wizard’s creature. “Evrard,” I said, rising resolutely to my feet, “we’re going to find the monster as soon as I settle this impasse. I want you to start working on spells with which to bind it.”
To my surprise, his face went white, making his freckles stand out sharply. “It’s all my fault,” he said as though he had just made a desperate decision.
“What do you mean?” I demanded.
“I made the stick-creature at the heart of the monster!”
I shook my head. “Whatever creature you made is long gone. It’s all the old wizard’s now. You’re not a competent enough wizard to create a monster like that single-handed.”
His face went, if possible, even whiter. “The duchess doesn’t think I’m competent?” He turned desperately from me to Nimrod. “She doesn’t think I’ll make a good wizard?”
“I’m afraid she hasn’t been very impressed so far,” said Nimrod reluctantly.
“Then I’ll have to catch the monster,” said Evrard in tragic tones, “or die in the attempt.”
“I think,” I said witheringly, “the duchess has other things to worry about now than whether her ducal wizard meets her expectations.” And I certainly did myself. “Joachim,” I continued, “I’ll leave the Cranky Saint to you with pleasure, but first I need you to back me up.”
“Of course,” he said. The chaplain clearly trusted me to know what I was doing. I wondered if I actually did.
“We’ve got to make it safe for you to leave the sanctuary of the grove,” I said to Nimrod. “I’ll need your help to catch the monster. Joachim, come with me.”
We walked to the top of the waterfall. The track had become churned and muddy from the many feet that had hurried up and down, but the water still gurgled icy and clear.
There was a spell I had learned in school, to make one’s voice carry. After a moment’s concentration, I thought I remembered it. “Listen to me,” I said loudly, too worried to be as pleased as I normally would have been that the spell had indeed worked. “The royal chaplain and I speak to you as King Haimeric’s representatives.”
I certainly had everyone’s attention. Even the duchess turned around. The dogs sat up expectantly, their tongues lolling.
Dominic heaved himself to his feet. The mud on his face and tunic had dried, and he had made some ineffectual attempts to scrape it off, but the effect was still quite horrifying. “You can’t act as the king’s representative, Wizard,” he said, frowning and crossing his massive arms. “I am the regent.”
“But the king said he wanted us to help you while he was gone. And since this is a case that involves you personally, you cannot possibly act as judge.
“It is clear to everyone here,” I continued, turning from Dominic to the knights and priests, “that a serious quarrel has taken place, disturbing the king’s peace, a quarrel that requires a judicial decision.” If I was not a particularly competent substitute for a king, I would be an even less competent justice-giver, but I had no choice. “In the name of King Haimeric of Yurt, I declare this court in session!”
Joachim looked at me sideways and lifted his eyebrows fractionally. I hoped that meant he approved.
My audience stirred and whispered, and the priests moved closer. Behind me, I almost thought I heard a soft laugh that could have come from the wood nymph. But no one else was laughing.
Under a sun far higher in the sky than I had hoped it would be by the time I finally got out of the valley, the knights of Yurt rose to their feet. They arranged themselves almost automatically into the relaxed but watchful stance they took when the king was dispensing justice. The regent gave me a black scowl but said nothing.
“Prince Dominic,” I said formally, “step forward and state your case as complaintant.”
II
To my relief, the regent seemed willing to accept my highly irregular calling of a royal judicial court. This might even work. Dominic climbed up to stand before Joachim and me, then turned around to speak. Without a magic spell, his voice did not carry as well as mine, but no one had any trouble hearing him.
“I accuse Prince Ascelin, the man who has gone by the false name of Nimrod, of gross insult to the royal court of Yurt. He came to the court under false pretenses, disguised as a huntsman but secretly intending to woo my lady the duchess. For an aristocrat to hide his real identity, to take advantage of a court’s hospitality while lying at every turn, is to show himself no worthy prince!
“Then, even though I had asked the Duchess Diana to be my wife, and he knew that she would most likely agree, he lured her out of the castle. Here his behavior proved to be all that his earlier duplicity suggested, for last night he passed the entire night with her, in defiance of all laws of decency.”
Diana became bright red, but I credited it more to fury than to maidenly modesty.
“When confronted with his shameful deeds, he fled to this grove like a coward. I demand that this court sentence him to death!”
“You can’t ‘demand’ any particular sentence from a court,” put in Joachim quietly. “You know that. And we have not yet heard evidence of any capital offense that would require the death penalty.”
This stopped Dominic for a few seconds, and in the pause the duchess marched determinedly up to stand beside him. She was still bright red.
But her voice was firm. “May I address the court?”
“Please do.”
“Prince Dominic has made some accusations against me which I must deny at once,” she said clearly. Those watching were completely silent, listening. “Prince Ascelin and I did indeed pass last night in the same tent together.”
At this there was a faint murmur from the knights, which she ignored. “But our conduct was completely chaste! I am a duchess and the queen’s own cousin, and my standards of conduct are exactly the same whether camped rough during a hunt or entertaining elegantly in my own castle. For Prince Dominic to accuse me of acting in another way, in any way that would impugn my honor, is for me the grossest insult. Let me reassure him, and all the court, that if he had spent the night lying between us our relationship could not have been any purer.”
Dominic winced at this. “He still came into Yurt in disguise,” he said to her, “hoping to overcome your virtue, even if he hasn’t yet succeeded.”
Diana’s eyes were almost wild, in spite of the formality of her denial. It must be difficult being caught between fury toward Dominic and fury toward Nimrod. But her forthright nature did not fail her. “Concealing his true identity may have been a slight prevarication, but he did not come under completely false pretenses. I always knew perfectly well who he was.”
; This caused a sudden stir, silenced at once when she continued. “He came as a hunter because he wanted to help me as a hunter. If he’d come as himself, he would have had to come as a recognized suitor for my hand.”
This certainly got everyone’s attention.
“And what’s wrong with that?” cried Dominic. “Do you discredit the possibility that anyone honorable could ask for your hand?”
“Not at all!” she replied haughtily. “But it was not a role he could play well. After all, I had rejected him five years ago.”
This actually silenced Dominic. It took me a few seconds to recover my own voice. “I would like summon the accused to testify for himself,” I then said.
Nimrod had been following my improvised legal hearings from just inside the Holy Grove. He looked toward Dominic, then back at me, but he made no move to emerge.
“Come, Prince Ascelin,” I said, still in my magically amplified voice. “The royal court is its own sanctuary.” I tried to remember the exact words I had once heard the king use. “I guarantee your safe-conduct. The knights of Yurt are under orders to kill on the spot anyone who tries to harm you while under the court’s summons.”
The knights all slapped their sword hilts ritually. Dominic had about five seconds in which to overrule my offer of safe-conduct. The knights would never have killed him, but once he let my statement stand, he would be bound by it.
He let the five seconds stand, and the following thirty. Nimrod came out of the grove.
He walked forward slowly, as though consciously controlling his strength, his head held high. “Let me confirm,” he said when standing before Joachim and me, “the purity of my relations with my lady the duchess.”
I was delighted to see with how much dignity the contestants stated their cases. Dominic, the duchess, and Prince Ascelin were all well used to court hearings. If I had had a group before me like the villagers King Haimeric had heard before his trip, there was no way I could have persuaded them that this muddy patch of ground under a sunny sky was a place for formality.
The Wood Nymph & the Cranky Saint Page 19