Guardians Of The Keep tbod-2

by Carol Berg

  The physician tapped the unlit pipe in his large hand. “Many children throw tantrums, especially children who are wealthy and indulged and permitted to be willful. But what’s so worrisome is that the boy is not at all prone to such behavior. Your brother was a good father, and unless I attempt to examine him, Gerick is invariably polite and respectful to me, just as he was to Duke Tomas. He is very much in control of himself. Too much so for a child of ten.”

  “I noted the same. That’s why I was so surprised at his outburst.” I told the physician about the boy’s terror when I revealed my identity. “I assumed that the tales he’s been told of sorcery and my connections with it were just too frightening for one so young.”

  “For any other child you might be correct, but Gerick is not subject to foolish frights. No. The boy has built a wall about himself and will let no one beyond it. When anyone attempts to breach his defenses, he throws himself into this morbid frenzy. It’s not healthy. He needs someone to take him in hand, someone who cares for him.”

  I sat on a cushioned stool beside the standing harp and began brushing cobwebs off the tarnished strings. “Why are you telling me this? I’ve just met the child. Though I grieve to hear of his trouble, surely there are better ears to hear of them.” Someone who did not begrudge the boy’s life. “His mother-”

  Ren Wesley harrumphed like a volcano belching fire before its eruption. “I wouldn’t trust his mother with the training of my dogs. But the woman isn’t stupid, either. Where it comes to her abiding interests, she’s been known to listen to reason. When I spoke with her just now, I took a great liberty. The duchess was complaining of a problem with the tenants and the rents…”

  “I heard it. I hope she can be made to understand the importance of the Comigor Covenant.”

  “What she understands, madam, is how painful is her lack of silver and how her own position depends on the security and prosperity of her son’s inheritance. I told her that it was important to her health to ease these worries… certainly true. And I told her that I could see only one solution to her problems.”

  “What was that?” A blindly innocent question.

  “I told her that you must collect the rents.” His great eyebrows leaped skyward.

  “You’re mad! Philomena would never consent to such a thing.”

  “On the contrary, my lady; once her eyes were opened, she began to think it her own idea.”

  “Then she’s mad.”

  “Not at all. Consider. The boy is not of age. The traditions of this house require that an adult, a member of the family or a guardian appointed by the king, carry out this covenant. His mother sees dealing with the rents as tedious and common and would as soon hang the tenants as shake their hands. But by persuading you to stay, she can have money in her pocket at the turn of the year without putting herself out in the least. I told her that your familiarity with the castle could perhaps relieve her of a number of burdens and allow her to concentrate on her health.”

  I was not sure whether to laugh hysterically or throw the harp at the monstrous eyebrows that waggled in delight at my discomfiture.

  “I apologize for failing to take into account whatever it is that currently occupies your days, but the opportunity presented itself. I cannot but think the boy would flourish in your care.”

  The only thing that kept me from laughing at his foolish presumption was the way my heart warmed, even as I accused him of madness. I fingered the rose-colored, thumb-sized stone that hung around my neck. At some time in the coming months, so I’d been told, the stone would glow of its own light, and its unnatural chill grow warm. The next morning Dassine would bring Karon to visit me in hopes I might provide some small help as the sorcerer restored Karon’s memory.

  I had no good plan for what to do with myself while I waited. I could not bear to return to the primitive life I had lived for ten years in Dunfarrie, nor, even if I had the means, could I resume the life of aristocratic dabbling that had been interrupted by Karon’s arrest. For the past few months I had been caught up in events that shaped the universe, and now neither sphere felt like home. I hadn’t believed that I belonged at Comigor either. But if I could do some good with the time, shore up Comigor’s neglected future, then staying here might be a decent way to spend my time. As for the boy…

  “If I allow myself be talked into this foolishness, whatever would I do about my nephew?” I said. “He was trembling at the sight of me.” And to think that I, of all people, could break down the boy’s unnatural reticence… I could scarcely endure looking at him.

  The furrows in the physician’s broad forehead deepened. “A gamble, to be sure. If he cannot come to tolerate you, we’ll have to reconsider. I told the duchess that I would speak to him.” His last words were phrased as a question. He cocked his massive head, waiting for my answer.

  I couldn’t seem to think of another argument. “You’re a wicked man, Ren Wesley. You remind me of another I met just recently, a healer, too, who with his conceits sets himself up to order the fate of men and women and worlds. I don’t think either Philomena or her son will thank you for this. Nor will I.”

  The physician burst into thunderous laughter. “It should be a match of historic proportions. I might have to set myself a regular schedule of visits just to make sure you’ve not murdered each other.”

  So it was that the Duchess of Comigor sent me an urgent message, requesting me to delay my departure so she could set me a proposition. While I stood in the window of a second floor sitting room, waiting for my interview and wondering at the change a few hours could make, I watched Ren Wesley stroll about the inner ward. Hands clasped at his back, he examined the crumbling sundial that marked the exact center of the castle. He was just moving toward the curved border of the well when he spun on his heel. My nephew hurried across the courtyard, bowed politely to the physician, and joined him on his walk. Gerick stopped after a moment and seemed to be making a point, shaking his head vigorously. But he displayed no hysteria, no screaming or other irrational behavior, and soon the two resumed their stroll, disappearing through the arched gate into the fencing yard. A short time later, a maid brought the physician to me.

  “Your nephew is greatly disturbed by your presence, my lady,” said a bemused Ren Wesley, “and he repeated his accusations that you are-pardon my frankness-condemned and wicked. He says that his father banished you, and that you have no right to be at Comigor.”

  “That’s that, then. He’s absolutely correct. I’ll go at-”

  “But when I told him that your stay was in the best interests of Comigor and his mother’s health, he accepted the decision quite reasonably. Unquestionably something about you disturbs him, but I don’t believe he is half so terrified as he acts.”

  A bit later, when I was invited to Philomena’s room, my sister-in-law sweetly begged my pardon, claiming that her lack of welcome earlier was due to her anxieties over her health. Her husband had obviously trusted and forgiven me, for she had received word of the royal pardon granted at Tomas’s behest. Truthfully, said the duchess, in blushing humility, she had been quite taken by my words to Gerick about the honor and responsibilities of the family. When the physician had given her the dire news that she must abandon all serious thoughts and occupations such as the running of the household, the only thing that prevented abject despair was the realization that the Holy Twins had sent me to be the salvation of the family’s honor and my nephew’s heritage. After an hour of Philomena’s wheedling and an hour of serious negotiations touching on my rights, duties, and privileges while in her house-the woman indeed knew her business where it came to matters of inheritance and ambition-we agreed that I would stay.

  By nightfall Ren Wesley had departed, and my driver had been dispatched with letters to my friends in Dunfarrie, informing them of my change in plans. I had no need to send for my things. The few articles of clothing that I had acquired on my return to city life had traveled with me. By midnight, I lay again in the little room
in the north wing where I had slept from the day I left the nursery until the day my brother had forbidden me ever to come home again.

  CHAPTER 3

  The autumn days quickly fell into a routine. I breakfasted with Nellia in the housekeeper’s room, and then spent the morning either with the steward, going over the accounts or inspecting those parts of the castle in need of repair, or with Nellia, poking into the storerooms, guest rooms, linen rooms, or pantries. I had agreed with Philomena that in exchange for my help in collecting the rents, I would be allowed to put right what was needed with the house and estate, setting it in good order for my nephew.

  Though the servants were universally shy of me-the infamous, corrupted conspirator of sorcerers, allowed to live only by the king’s grace-my respectful manner to Giorge and his clerks quickly soothed the anxious steward. After a few awkward sessions in which I demonstrated both my understanding of the estate’s complex finances and my regard for the unique arrangements between the lord’s family and the tenants, the steward became my most ardent defender save for Nellia. With delight he dispatched his assistants to every tenant, notifying them that the world was in order once again. Covenant Day was set for the first day of the new year.

  Afternoons I reserved for myself, walking out every day to enjoy the northern autumn, a luxury I had sorely missed in my impoverished exile, when autumn labors might be the only thing to stave off starvation in a hard winter. I returned from my walks to write letters on estate business or work on some household project: taking inventory of the linen, or showing the maids how my father’s maps and books should be cared for.

  I had agreed to spend an hour with my sister-in-law every evening after dinner. At first, Philomena required me to expound upon the most minute details of my activities and investigations, from how many napkins I had found in the dining-room cupboards to the state of the hay supplies in the stables. After a few days of verifying every item with Giorge or Lady Verally, her sour aunt, she must have satisfied herself that I was dealing with her honestly. I never again got beyond, “Here is what transpired today…” without her saying, “Good enough, good enough. Let’s talk of more interesting matters.”

  As I knew no court gossip and had no insight into current fashion, her “more interesting matters” seemed to be the private details of my life with a sorcerer. She wheedled and teased, calling me boorish, stupid, and cruel for refusing to amuse a poor bedridden woman, but I was not at all inclined to provide anecdotes to titillate Philomena’s friends when the duchess returned to society. One night, in exasperation at our abortive attempts at conversation, I asked Philomena if she would like me to read to her.

  “Anything that will pass this interminable time,” she said. I suppose she thought that to dismiss me early would grant me some mysterious advantage in our contract.

  After rejecting the first ten titles I brought as too serious or complicated, she allowed me to begin one of the books of romantic adventure that had been my mother’s. Soon she was wheedling me to read beyond our hour’s time. I always shut the book firmly; one hour of my life a day was all I was going to give her. But reading made these interludes more than tolerable and set our relationship on a reasonable, if not intimate, course.

  Which left me to the matter of my nephew. An uncomfortable and unclear responsibility. My love for my brother was built in large part on our common history. We had been two very different people connected by the people, things, and experiences we had shared as children in this house. Yet our attachment had been much stronger than I had ever imagined, surfacing at the last after so many horrors seemed to have destroyed it. But I could see no way to stretch my affection for Tomas to encompass this strange boy. Someone needed to discover what was troubling the child, but I didn’t even know how to begin and was little inclined to try.

  Any presumption that casual interaction might break down Gerick’s barriers was quickly dismissed. My nephew seemed to have abandoned all the public rooms of the house. Except for an occasional glimpse in the library, I saw him only at dinner. Formal and genuinely polite to the servants, he spoke not a word to either Lady Verally or me.

  “Has Gerick a tutor?” I asked Nellia over breakfast one morning. I had never lived around children. A tutor might serve as a source of advice or insights.

  “He’s had a number of them,” she said, “but none for long. He tells them how stupid they are, how he can’t abide them as they’re no better than beggars. If they’re stubborn and put up with that, he’ll start with the mischief, putting tar in their ink pots or lamp oil in their tea. Or he’ll put on screaming fits with the duchess to make her send them away. Out of all the poor gentleman, only one ever stuck at his post for more than a week. But didn’t the boy carry a tale to his mother that the man was getting overly friendly… in a nasty sort of way, if you take my meaning? So, of course, the man was dismissed right off. That was almost a year ago, and none has taken up the position since then.”

  And this was the boy that Ren Wesley claimed was polite and well behaved! “He doesn’t seem to treat the servants so wickedly.”

  “Oh, no! He’s as sweet a body as one could wish. Always polite and so grateful when you do him a service. James- the young master’s manservant-he’s never had a cross word from the boy, and spends more than half his time sitting idle because the child takes care of himself and his own things. He’s ever so proper. Just not friendly as you and your brother always were.”

  Strange. “Does he have any friends that visit?”

  “A few times children have come to stay with their parents-even the king’s own daughter has been brought here-but the young master might as well not live here for all he shows his face. From what I hear, when the family goes to Montevial it’s much the same. It don’t seem right.”

  “So there’s no one close to him, no one who could tell me anything that might help me understand him better?”

  Nellia shook her head and poured more tea in our cups. “The only one ever got on with him was Lucy, his old nurse, but she’s been off her head for nigh on five years now. Of course, she couldn’t tell you ought anyhow as she don’t speak. Then there’s the fencing master. The young master does dearly love his sword fighting. I always thought it a sorry thing that he never let Duke Tomas teach him. The lad would only work at it-and right fiercely too- when his lordship was away. He-the duke that is-heard about the boy’s practicing. He hired the finest fencing master he could find to come and teach the lad.”

  “And has Gerick allowed the fencing master to stay?”

  “Indeed so. Swordmaster Fenotte. But he’ll be of no help to you. He’s Kerotean. Speaks not a word of decent Leiran. I just never understood why the boy wouldn’t learn sword fighting of his father who was the finest in the kingdom.”

  “Actually, I think that’s the most understandable thing you’ve told me.”

  Nellia looked puzzled.

  “Tomas would have had no patience with a beginner. If the boy admired his father, wanted to be like him…”

  The old woman nodded her head. “I’d not thought of it in that light. It’s true the duke, grace his memory, was not humble about his skills.”

  I laughed, with no little sadness. “Perhaps he had the wisdom to see it and spare the boy his impatience.” My brother had loved his son very much.

  One of my first duties in the house was to make some ceremony of Tomas’s death. King Evard would likely mount an elaborate rite for his sword champion, but with Philomena confined to her bed and Gerick so uncomfortable with me, I could not see us traveling to Montevial for such an event. Yet I felt the need of some ritual of closure for the family.

  Most Leirans had long lost interest in the only gods sanctioned by our priests and king-the Holy Twins, Annadis the Swordsman, god of fire and earth and sunlight, and Jerrat the Navigator, god of sea and storm, stars and moon. History, most particularly fear of sorcery, had wiped out any public acknowledgement of other deities. And the cruelties of life had convinced m
ost everyone that the Twins must be more concerned with controlling the legendary beasts of earth and sky and monsters of the deep than with the trials of mortals. But warriors like my brother and my father had found some solace in thinking that Annadis and his brother would write the history of their deeds in the Book of Heroes and tell their stories around their mythical campfires.

  I had grown past blind acceptance of myth when I learned to think and explore for myself, and I had lost all faith in supernatural benevolence when I saw the slit throat of my newborn son. Yet experience had taught me the comfort of ritual, and it was not my place to refuse Tomas or his son the rite my brother would have chosen for himself.

  So I brought in a priest of Annadis, and Gerick and Philomena and I, along with representatives of the servants and the household guard, sat in Philomena’s room and listened to the stories of the Beginnings and the First God Arot’s battle with chaos and how, after his victory, Arot had given dominion over the world to his twin sons. Rather than have the priest recite the entirety of my brother’s military history-some of which I could not stomach hearing- I had the aging cleric list the matches Tomas had fought to defend the honor of his king in his fourteen years as Evard’s sword champion. That evening, Gerick and I stood on the hill of Desfiere outside the castle walls and watched as a stone was raised to Tomas beside my father’s stone and my grandfather’s and the hundreds of others that stood on the treeless hillside like a forest of granite. My nephew remained sober and proper throughout the day, so I didn’t know if the rite meant anything to him or not. But I felt better after.

  * * *

  It was nearing four weeks of my stay when I began to sense I was being watched. At first I told myself I was just unused to living with other people. Seventy-three house servants worked at Comigor: clerks and maids, cooks and footmen, boot boys and sewing women and Philomena’s gaggle of personal attendants. There were about half that number of outside servants, grooms and pot boys, a smith and an armorer, carters and gardeners. Tomas’s personal guard numbered some ninety men; they lived in the barracks across the inner bailey from the keep. And hundreds of other people lived on the estate and in the villages close by. So plenty of eyes were on me every day. But a day came when I became convinced that the creeping sensation was not just my imagination.