Summers at Castle Auburn

by Sharon Shinn

  With every hurried step, I was remembering an incident from a year ago, when I had returned to my room to find my satchel ransacked. At the time, I had assumed some lovesick young girl had stolen pansy pat or jerron weed to use on a reluctant swain. Had I been wrong? Had the intruder stolen halen root instead—and waited all this time to use it?

  Once in my room, I did not bother to sort through my satchel, just grabbed it by the handle and went careening back out the door. The stone floors of the castle seemed slippery under my feet, and I skidded around more than one corner. Ridiculous, pointless, stupid to rush so; nothing in my satchel, nothing in Giselda’s herbal store, would be sufficient to save Bryan.

  I was half a corridor from the bridal suite when I turned a corner and slammed into Kent. He grabbed me by my arms to steady me, and it took me a moment to catch my breath.

  “What are you doing? What do you know?” he demanded.

  I had to suck in a few lungfuls of air before I could answer him. “Bryan’s been poisoned,” I gasped at last. “All the symptoms point to it.”

  “Poisoned!” he exclaimed. “But—that’s not possible.”

  I nodded. “I know. I can’t figure it out, either. If it was something in his food, Damien would be sick, too. But Angela said he’s fine.”

  “He is. A little stomach trouble in the night, but nothing like—” His voice trailed off and he shrugged expressively.

  “A dozen other people got sick last night,” I said. “They must all have eaten whatever Bryan ate that had the poison in it. But everyone else seems to be recovering.”

  “We all ate what Bryan ate. And anyway, why would he be so sick if everyone else is fine?”

  “Something he ate more of than anyone else?” I hazarded. “Maybe something in his wine?”

  “Damien tastes Bryan’s wine as well.”

  “I know. He tastes everything.”

  Kent shook his head. “You have to be wrong, Corie. It’s a germ, a disease, just like Giselda says. Otherwise, we’d all be as sick as Bryan. At least Damien would be.”

  “I’m not wrong. He had something the rest of us did not. Although I can’t think—unless—was Bryan taking any medications? Anything that someone could have slipped poison into?”

  “Not that I know of. We can ask Elisandra.”

  “Discreetly,” I said. “We don’t want to start a panic.”

  “I think we do!” he said indignantly. “If someone has come here to celebrate the prince’s wedding and poisoned him instead—that’s something that better be shouted out from the castle roof—”

  “If I were you, I’d first make sure I knew who the poisoner was,” I said softly.

  He stared at me. Finally he dropped his hands. “What do you mean?” he asked at last, his voice much quieter than I expected.

  I shrugged. “Who has the most to gain from Bryan’s death?”

  Now his head reared back and there was a flare of anger in his eyes. “Me, I suppose—next in line for the throne—”

  I shook my head. “You’d be the last person I’d suspect.”

  “Then—a lot of the lords hated Bryan, but to murder him—that is—” He stopped and seemed, for the first time, to understand what I had said a minute ago. “Who has the most to gain from Bryan’s death. But—is it fatal—I mean, this poison, if you’ve seen it—then you must know—what—”

  I had never seen Kent so shaken. “It will kill him,” I said quietly.

  He pointed to the bag in my hands. “And—whatever it is—that drug you went running off to find—won’t it help him?”

  “No.”

  He did not seem to be able to take that in. He just kept staring at me, his face growing thinner and more bleak as I watched. “Bryan will die?” he asked in a child’s voice. “How soon?”

  “I don’t know. Two days at the most. Possibly not that long.”

  “But—”

  I nodded. “I know,” I said.

  “But he can’t die,” Kent said. “He’s to be king.”

  “I know,” I said again. “There’s nothing you can do.”

  And, apparently, no answer he could make. I waited a moment longer, just to see if he’d come up with one, but he did not. I walked around him and finished the short trip to Elisandra’s room.

  The suite was still overfull of people, but Giselda had been watching for my reappearance. She hurried up to me and, standing in the middle of the room, we opened the satchel and sorted through its contents.

  “Dissolve five or six grains in water twice a day, and make him drink all of it. For Goff, only one or two grains, I think, unless he seems to be getting no better.”

  She nodded once rapidly, then took the packet of herbs from my hand and rushed away. She disappeared behind the door that led, I presumed, into the bedroom of the dying prince. I snapped shut the clips on my satchel and looked around for Elisandra.

  But before I could take one step from where I stood, the door was flung open and Lord Matthew strode in.

  I did not even have time to wonder who had roused the look of fury on his face before he stormed across the room and grabbed me by the arm. “You traitorous, baseborn filth,” he said in a murderous but deadly calm voice. “I want you out of here within the hour.”

  “Father!”

  “Lord Matthew!”

  “My Lord Regent!”

  I distinguished a few of the individual cries of disbelief, heard a loud background mutter of stupefaction, and felt the other occupants of the room surge and regroup around us. But I really had attention for no one but Lord Matthew. His grip on my arm was bruising, but I actually felt fortunate. By the look on his face, he would have preferred to have his fingers wrapped around my throat.

  “What have I done?” I asked in a low voice.

  He shook me so hard my vision blurred. I heard shocked protests coming from Kent, Elisandra, others in the room. Someone stepped forward, but Matthew pushed him unceremoniously back with his free hand.

  “You know what you have done,” he growled fiercely. “You have freed the aliora.” Fresh gasps at this news. “Freed them! Loosed them from their chains and led them from the castle—”

  “What’s your proof?” I asked coolly.

  He thrust his hand into his breeches pocket and pulled out the gleaming gold key that had for so long hung outside the door to the aliora quarters. “This was found this morning in a pocket of your dress. The laundress brought it to me fifteen minutes ago, as soon as she discovered it. She knew what it was, well enough. She knew what it meant—”

  The key. Yes, that had been clumsy. While I vividly remembered unlocking every single one of the metal shackles, I had no memory at all of what I had done with the key afterward. Obviously I had stuck it in my pocket and forgotten about it.

  Kent had had the courage to approach his father a second time, though he did not come close enough to be shoved aside again. “You have no way of knowing if Corie put that key there, or if someone else slipped it in her pocket—precisely so you would ascribe this crime to her,” Kent said.

  Matthew spared a moment to glare at his son, and then turned his ferocious gaze back to me. “The guards saw her. Late last night.”

  “They did not see me with any aliora at my back,” I said.

  “You’re a witch—a foul, sorcerous witch—you cast a spell over them to turn their eyes away.”

  “Father!”

  “I don’t know those kinds of spells,” I said.

  “Lord Matthew.” Elisandra’s voice, soft and appealing. She must have been standing behind me, because I could not see her. “Corie would not have done such a thing.”

  “She has not denied it!” he thundered.

  “You have not asked her. You have only accused,” Kent said.

  Matthew shook me again, his menacing eyes blazing down at me. “Did you, Coriel Halsing, free the aliora last night using this gold key?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  Another burst of amazement
from the crowd, this one louder and more sustained. Someone went running from the room, presumably to spread the news elsewhere. A small part of my brain hoped Angela was the first to get the gossip. The rest of my mind was engaged in hoping Matthew did not strike me dead with the hand that was not clamped around my arm.

  “You thieving bastard,” he said in heavy, bitter accents. “You have cost me—my lords—half the noble families in the kingdom fabulous sums of money. You have stolen from us, we who took you in and raised you as our own—”

  “I did not want to be one of your own,” I said, my voice raised to be clear over the murmur of the crowd. “Not the way you treat your own sons and daughters.”

  At that he did slap me, backhanding me across the face with so much force that I staggered. Elisandra shrieked, and Kent leaped forward, trying to wrestle his father aside. Matthew shook him off, but he did not strike me again. He was breathing heavily and his whole body was bulging with hatred. I think if I had not been in a room of witnesses, he might have killed me on the spot.

  “Get her out of here,” he flung at someone behind him, and four guardsmen moved forward from the doorway. I had not even noticed they were there; I had been too intent on watching Matthew’s face. “Take her to her room, let her pack. Have her down in the courtyard in thirty minutes. She is gone from here. She is banished, and she is not to return.”

  There was a long wail of grief, I assumed from Elisandra, and a flurry of arguing from Kent, but I did not stay even to trade glances with my allies in the room. I gave Matthew one swift, smart nod, then turned on my heel and marched out the door. The guards formed a phalanx around me.

  And so went my last, ignominious trip through Castle Auburn.

  We were in and out of my room in less than twenty minutes. There was very little I wanted to take back with me to Southey Village—one or two of my fancy dresses, a few shoes, and, of course, the small gifts Elisandra had showered upon me in the past few weeks. I already had my satchel in my hand. In a few short minutes, I was done, and we were parading down the stairs and out to the castle courtyard.

  Where a huge crowd had already gathered. I was reminded of the time Tiatza—long since murdered by the dying prince—had left under similarly ignoble circumstances, and how so many of the guards and servants had turned out to watch her departure. I could not tell if I should be mortified or gratified that my reception was so much augmented from hers, for it seemed like every single soul in residence was present to watch my ejection. There were the visiting gentlefolk gathered for the wedding (I was tempted to wave at the astonished Ordinal, but I did not); they were jostled together next to the lords and ladies who lived at the castle and served the prince. In addition, there were the servants and the guards, some of the maids actually weeping and several of the guards looking exceedingly grim. I swear I saw Shorro blow me a kiss, though I was attempting to stare straight ahead and look at no one. One or two people called out my name—“Corie!” “Lady Coriel!” “Goodbye, Corie!”—which I did not remember occurring when Tiatza made her abrupt exit. But I did not look around to identify my well-wishers.

  I headed straight for the plain black coach that had been drawn up outside the castle door. There was a driver and two guards, neither of them my particular friends, but I was glad to see them anyway. That meant Matthew was not sending me wholly unprotected across four provinces to my grandmother’s. I would not have been completely surprised if he had set me out penniless and on foot.

  But Matthew, I learned a scant moment later, had not ordered the coach: Kent had. For Kent was standing at the door, waiting to help me inside. I did not look at him, either, but tossed my small bags onto the floor and accepted his hand for assistance.

  “Corie,” he said in a low insistent voice, and pulled down on my arm so I could not step into the coach.

  I looked up at him, my face completely expressionless. For the first time I was understanding how Elisandra had been able, for all these years, to appear so serene. There was nothing to fret about, nothing that could be altered by worrying or trying. Calm was easy to achieve when despair was so complete. “I can’t think of anything you could possibly say to me,” I said.

  His hand tightened. I expected to have a series of bruises down my arm tomorrow morning from where everyone had clutched at me. “I will make my father reverse his decision,” he said.

  I almost laughed. “I doubt it.”

  “Elisandra cannot get by without you. She will need you more than ever during this tragedy.”

  “Elisandra,” I said, “will not need me at all now.”

  “I need you,” he said.

  That did bring the surprise to my face, but I did not reply.

  “When I am named king,” he added. “I will need your advice. Your common sense.”

  “My peasant’s perspective,” I said, recovering a little.

  “Your good heart.”

  “You will have your father. You will have countless other advisors. You will not need any words of mine.”

  “I will need you for more than words,” he said.

  Behind us, as if a herd of stampeding horses was thundering down the great stairwell, we heard a great rushing commotion of feet. “Kentley!” Lord Matthew’s voice boomed behind us. “Put her in that carriage now!”

  “Say goodbye,” I said, “before he kills us both.”

  “Goodbye,” Kent said, and bent down and kissed me on the mouth.

  That was a shock like no other I had received in my life. My body stung with amazement, every inch of my skin exposed to the eyes of the watching crowd. My blood ran through its heated corridors and painted red banners on my face. The kiss was as brief as a chuckle and as long as a sleepless night. When he straightened again, he was smiling.

  “When I am named king, we will have more to talk about,” he said, handing me into the coach. He folded my fingers over a small, bulky package, nodded at me once in the coolest manner imaginable, and slammed the door while I was still staring at him. I heard his father’s furious questioning mingle with the driver’s cry and the single sharp crack of the whip. The coach lurched forward, and we were on our way.

  Out past the formal gate. Down the first few miles of paved road. Through the lazy green countryside of Auburn. On my way back home.

  For good.

  I was not sure I would ever be able to stop crying.

  It was a good ten miles before I had the strength to unclench my hand and see what Kent had given me in those final seconds. Whatever it was had been wrapped in a fine lawn handkerchief embroidered with the initial K and the twining arms of the House of Ouvrelet. I unrolled the object slowly until, finally free of the cloth, it dropped into my open palm.

  A heavy gold ring set with a sapphire and bearing on either side of the gem the carved patterns of the House of Ouvrelet and the royal stamp of Auburn. It was a ring I had seen Kent wear every day of his life.

  I felt the heat flood back along my cheekbones and skitter through every vein in my body. I tried to come up with reasons he would have honored me with such a gift. It was a gesture of friendship, a token of faith. A reparation for his father’s harshness, a replacement for the wealth and gaiety I was leaving behind, forever, at the court. Nothing more significant than that. Nothing more personal.

  I leaned my head back against the thin padding of the seat. I was tired, tearful, hungry, alone, and just a little afraid. My skin felt scratchy and dirty, since I had not had a chance to truly clean up that morning, and I knew my unwashed hair would make me crazy before the day was half over. I hoped Matthew or Kent had made provisions for us to stop for the night at a decent inn. I hoped that the trip would not seem as long and tedious as it usually did. I hoped that my grandmother would be pleased—or at least, willing—to see me again.

  I hoped that, despite everything, my heart did not truly break.

  17

  Fall came late that year as though summer, idle intransigent girl that she was, could not summon th
e golden strength to rise from her bed along our hills and meadows and go sauntering off to some more southern site. When it did come, autumn was glorious, a fiery riot of colors spilling down over every hillside with a wanton display of fervor. The harvest was spectacular, and spirits in the village were high. Good profits tucked inside hidden purses, good seeds stored up for next spring, good ales brewed right in one’s back room, good meals served up on every table. And good weather to bolster everyone’s mood still more.

  I had taken a room in the village with the seamstress and her daughter, and hired on as a barmaid at the largest tavern. The rent was not high and the work was not hard—and besides, I was able to make a little money on the side selling cures and potions. I had bought a fairly comprehensive supply of herbs from my grandmother, who was always delighted to sell anything to anyone; and I had discreetly told a few acquaintances in town that I could help them out if they ever had certain problems. I thought Milette might be a little miffed at losing the business I diverted, but my grandmother did not seem to mind. There were plenty of old-timers who would still insist on making the trek out to the cottage to see the real wise woman, the herbalist who had practiced her craft for decades. Those who came to me wanted only small favors, simple tonics, something they would trust to an amateur. This suited me just fine.

  It had been clear to me that I could have made my home with my grandmother for as long as I chose, though it would have been an unpleasant home since Milette had grown sulky and self-assured during my most recent absence. My grandmother, I was happy to see, was not willing to choose her apprentice over me—but then again, she was not willing to choose me over Milette, and the house almost immediately began to seem too small. But my tiny room in the village, barely large enough to contain a bed and a small chest of drawers, seemed just right. I liked my landlady and I liked my job, and I thought I could settle in here for a good long while.

  Or until I decided what I wanted to do with my life. Suddenly that was less clear than ever. But I would work for a year, think about it for a year, and then move forward on the strength of my savings and my intuition.