by SL Figuhr
“No! You can’t! I won’t! I’m a grown woman! How dare you! Get your hands off me!” Her shrieks of outrage could be heard long after the men had dragged her away from the room. The sound of a slamming door shut off her voice.
Martin was sitting in wide-eyed startlement; he had never dreamed, during his talk with his father, that his parent was in earnest. The countess was trembling from the effort of remaining quiet, and her eyes flashed in rage as her lips thinned even further.
“Sally, I am deeply disappointed you thought following your sister’s path a good way to catch a husband. You have damaged your worth to any noble of importance. It is best you forget about Lord Nicky and marriage to him.”
“What?! No! That’s not fair! If that duchess!”
“Is a duchess, with wealth and power; men of Lord Nicky’s standing marry this sort of woman, no matter what they do in their personal lives. I have sent inquiries to suitable lesser noblemen. Over the next few weeks, each one will meet you, and you will be informed which one has selected you.”
“My daughter...”
“Be quiet, wife. I’m not finished. The marriage will be delayed only long enough to determine whether your foolish liaison will result in a child. If there is one, it is to be adopted by another family; you will be married after you have recovered from the birth sufficiently to stand for the length of the marriage ceremony. Until such time as we have determined whether you are with child, and if you are, until you bear it, you are confined to the house and its grounds; you will not leave except as a wife to your husband’s house.”
“You can’t, I won’t! Mother!” Sally shrieked as fat tears filled her eyes and rolled down her cheeks.
“This has gone too far, Chadrick,” the countess spat at her husband as a second set of guards came to stand by the youngest daughter.
“Compared to what?” the earl asked in the same icy tone. “To what you planned? I am showing them a mercy they would not have got from you.”
Sally was crying and screaming as she too had to be forcibly removed from the room. Martin sat frozen; there was still a set of guards and slaves next to his father’s steward. Were they for himself or for his mother? He could not think of what he had done which might have angered his father, unless it was the conversation they had earlier. Whatever happened, he would meet it with more dignity than his sisters had shown.
“As for you and I, countess, we are finished.”
“The hell we are!” she snapped at him, to her son’s astonishment. “You promised your father, you signed the papers...”
“And I have kept it to the best of my ability. My father is dead; what he wanted no longer matters. I care not if the king grants us a divorce or refuses it, but I will not continue to live this way.”
“You will regret this, when I speak with His Majesty.”
“The only thing I regret is letting my father, and then you, dictate how I should live my life. You will remove yourself and your things to the dowager’s cottage. You will no longer have the running of this household.”
“If you think the slaves will obey a weak man like you...”
“I expect nothing of the kind from them. I will, however, expect them to obey Martin, as he will take over the Earldom. Those who refuse to accept him as the master of the house will be sold and replaced by ones who will. My steward will see these last wishes of mine are carried out.”
Martin spluttered. “I’m, I’m sorry, father, did you? But how? I mean, you can’t, why?”
“How dare you have those slaves drag me off as they did our daughters? I am your countess, and they have to obey me.”
“No,” Sydney corrected, “you were the countess.” He held up an aged scroll.
Elizabeth gasped in terror when she realized what he held. Chadrick threw it into the fire, where it flared into ash. “When Martin chooses to marry, his wife will be the new countess; I will not have her life overtaken and directed by you.”
The earl turned to his son, who had been sitting in astonished silence after the outburst.
“I have arranged with His Majesty for you to legally take over the earldom. I will retain the title during my lifetime, but all the rest—lands, money, livestock, slaves—will be yours. I hope the wait, however long it may be, will not disappoint you overly much; nor will using my steward until you have inherited the title itself. At which point, you can choose to continue employing him as your steward, or fire him and find another more to your liking.”
“I... I would be the most ungrateful son ever if I should allow it. But, but, what will you do if I am in charge of the family affairs? Where will you live?”
“You think you’re going to live with your whore? You think the two of you will be accepted in polite society?”
“I have re-enlisted in His Majesty’s army as a special liaison between the court and the sheriff’s office. I will live at the barracks, with my men.”
Chapter Twelve
Priester Joseph tended his small garden and chickens. He had to be more vigilant now; food was getting scarce with half the town burned away. The townspeople paid little attention to him when he preached in the street—only a scant few joined his congregation, but the vast majority continued their sinful ways. He had once been a wanderer some called crazy. He had been driven across the land by his visions, beautiful and disturbing things which whispered of people and places which held darkness inside them. The world was in ruins because of all the sin and nothing could truly flourish until it was blotted out, the Great One whispered in his mind. As he harvested the last of the offerings, his mind wandered back to how he came to the kingdom of Macina, where his visions told him the entrance to the death-lands lay.
* * *
Joseph walked along the dirt track, praying and looking for edible berries and nuts. He had a following of four or five people who believed his visions and traveled from town to town with him. When he decided upon a place to settle and minister, they joined him. They did their best to see he had food and drink and hosted him each week in turn at their small huts. Still, they were poor and he had to supplement what they gave him. Joseph saw a hollow tree up ahead, and heard humming: a honey cache. Still praying, he managed to get enough of the sweet comb to last for several days.
As he continued down the track, Joseph knew it would lead to a sheltered pond where berry bushes grew. Loud laughter, along with a child’s voice raised in terror and fear, interrupted his thoughts.
Joseph stepped off the track, silently creeping through the bushes toward the commotion. Near the pond, a ring of men from the town stood. Joseph frowned sourly. All bullies who took delight in harassing him. As they shifted, he saw they were tormenting a small dirty boy of about twelve. One of the men had the boy pinioned and another was going through his meager belongings as the others laughed and drank.
Stepping from the bushes, Joseph approached, calling out their names, “Daniel, Samosa, Jethro, and Amos, a curse upon your head for your bullying, evil ways. You will be struck down for your wickedness!”
The men turned in surprise and seeing who it was, let out nasty laughs and gave off teasing the boy to advance on him. What they planned to do he wasn’t sure, for The Great One struck. Joseph felt the air stir around him for a moment. Daniel and Jethro fell with rotting holes in their chests where their hearts used to be. Somosa fled gibbering from the grove while Amos dropped to the ground, holding his head and screaming in pain before passing out.
The little boy had a sly, satisfied expression on his face which did not sit well with Joseph. “Young man, you should give thanks to the Great One for your deliverance!”
The boy looked at him, coldly contemptuous for a minute before his face crumbled into tears, leaving Joseph doubting what he had seen. “I was so f...frr...frightened. I...I lost the last of my family two days ago and didn’t know what to do, or where to go. Then...then those men found me. Thank...thank you for saving me.”
“The Great One looks after his faithful, y
ou must be one of them child, though you may not know it. What is your name?”
“N... Nicky.”
“I’m surprised your departed family did not teach you to stay away from men of their ilk.”
“Oh, oh they did. That, that was my fault, sir. I was so hungry I didn’t pay attention to what was going on as I ate some berries. I heard them coming through the trees, planning on killing someone and they spotted me. I was so tired I couldn’t run from them.”
Joseph narrowed his eyes. The Great One was speaking to him, telling him he needed to help the boy, so he set his basket down, “You need something to eat and drink and then you can tell me about what the men said. I am Joseph.” As he talked, he filled a wooden cup from his basket with water for the boy.
“Thank you, Joseph, sir.”
The two sat cross-legged on the grass and Joseph blessed them both. He shared a hard crust of bread, dipped in the honey he’d found that day, and a moldy bit of cheese washed down by the cool pond water. “Now, what is this about those men killing someone?”
Nicky looked around to be really sure they were alone and lowered his voice to a whisper. “They said they were tired of some king. He was always spoiling their fun and fining them or imprisoning them. One of them said he knew of a Lord who coveted the throne and wished the king and his family dead. This Lord would pay a lot of money to whoever killed the royal family if they did it before the spring festival.”
Normally, Joseph would ignore the boastings of those men, but something about the way the boy told the story made him think it might be true for once. “You shall come with me and I will see if I can’t get the King to listen to what you’ve heard. Perhaps he will find a family for you to stay with, or adopt you. If not, you can live with me.”
“Oh thank you, Joseph, Sir!”
Joseph had gotten the boy in to talk to the king, but he just laughed and waved off the tale. No noble was willing to adopt the boy, but the king gave Joseph some money and clothes for the boy, and often had him up to the castle to play with his ten-year-old son, Maecenas. Out of gratitude for taking him in, Nicky brought Joseph small game. During the winter months, after collecting deadfall for firewood, the boy would sometimes talk of his family.
“My father taught me how to read, Sir. He prayed a lot like you do, and said there used to be great cities filled with unexplainable things all over the land. But the people who lived in them let the Dark Spirits from the Death Lands in. They ruined the world with their greed and sin. He said his father was taught the tales from his father, like all our ancestors had been.”
“Did he now?”
“Uh huh, and my father said no one would make it to the Un-dying Lands as long as one person harbored a Dark Spirit. He was teaching me how to tell when evil had entered a person, and how to cleanse them again. My father said he was a pr...priest and the people he prayed with called him Priester.” After a pause Nicky said, “Would it be all right if I called you Priester Joseph?”
Joseph was touched, and from then on the townspeople called him by his new nomenclature. As for the King and his family, Nicky had heard true and before the Spring Festival, the family was murdered except for the king’s ten-year-old son. The son remembered Nicky had tried to warn him. In gratitude, he had the little boy come live with him.
The orphan seemed to have wisdom and knowledge beyond his years, and many of the nobles were leery of Nicky for this reason. The boy would have been apprenticed outside the palace but he once again uncovered a plot. This one was to get rid of the old King’s son, as some found him weak and lazy. Out of gratitude, King Maecenas made Nicky an Earl and King’s Advisor. Everything was fine in the years following. But now whispers had been reaching him for some time. An agent of the Dark Spirits was walking in human form and threatening the peace.
Priester Joseph thought, “This duchess who is whispered about. The Great One tells me she is a bad person. Of course, I will see to it she does not work any of her evil ways here. I will keep an eye on her for my little boy who is now a lord, Nicky.”
He finished his chores, gathered what eggs he could find, and went back inside his cottage. Everyone knew Lord Nicky harbored a fondness for the man who had helped him when he was a boy. Until recently, not even the most daring riff-raff dared assault him, or steal from him, lest they face the advisor’s wrath, though the most intrepid had of late been encroaching upon him. Now those ungrateful, evil, lazy townspeople dared take what was his.
Joseph heard the rumors which flew about the town; clacking tongues would be better off providing for themselves instead of looking for handouts from His Majesty. It was all the fault of the foreign woman. The whore who dared call herself a duchess. Nicky complained to him about how she bewitched the king. How she stole honest folks’ slaves and children. How she seduced good and faithful men into forgetting their sacred vows to wives and family. He left the cottage, after telling his acolyte to keep a watch on the hen house.
The mud had frozen overnight, encasing the garbage strewn over the streets. A bitter cold wind knifed through the remaining buildings, and flakes of snow drifted down to create a sheet of purest untrammeled white where feet and animals had yet to trample. The man knew by next morning several inches would coat everything. He trudged onward, ignoring the groups of shivering men and women who worked to tear down buildings too unstable from the fire to be used. He passed what was left of the Bloody Knuckles, noting a new face behind the bar.
He entered, thinking that mayhap he could get something hot to eat from the sin peddler’s new bartender without being chased out. Joseph weaved past tables, and greeted the man.
“Good day, brother. What fare have you?”
The man kept up his polishing of a dented pewter mug. “Rabbit stew and bread. Shall I bring you a bowl?”
Joseph stood a moment, trying to make out the man’s words through his thick accent. Another foreigner come to feast off the town’s carcass. “Aye, thank you, brother. And a mug of something to drink.” He walked over to a table and sat.
It was early enough in the day that not too many patrons were around, nor the usual assortment of sluts. After a moment, the man came out and placed the fare before his customer, then went back to cleaning. The meat was gamey, the vegetables undercooked, the broth bland. The bread was over-baked; the ale, watery. All in all, a disappointing meal. When he was finished, he took the dishes up to the bar.
“Is the tavern mistress in, brother? I wish to speak with her.”
“Problem with the food?”
“No, no. Personal business.”
The man nodded and took the dirties to the kitchen. Jenfry followed him out.
“You stupid clod!” she bellowed at sight of the priest and clouted the bartender on the back of his head. “His kind ain’t welcome here! And I don’t waste good food on him neither! That bastard never pays, claiming he shouldn’t ‘cause he’s a ‘holy man’.”
Joseph puffed himself up indignantly. “A pig eats better slop than what you serve.”
The bartender was rubbing the back of his head resentfully. “No one tole me. How’s I supposed to know?” He retreated behind the bar and picked back up with what he was doing before.
“You git outta here! And stay out!”
“My patron would be displeased to learn how you treat me.”
She glared at him, fists planted on her ample hips.
“I heard the foreign whore will not let your daughter come visit you.”
Jenfry sneered and spat, “What’s it to you?”
“I am here to do a favor for your sin-filled soul in exchange for being fed once a day.”
“The only favor you can do is get your ugly mug outta my tavern before you scare away my patrons with your crazy babble.”
“Stupid cow,” he muttered under his breath, then louder, “One meal a day will go far toward redeeming your soul and keeping it from the death-lands. I will bring you to your daughter. The foreign whore will not dare forbid me e
ntrance to her home. Not if she hopes to keep her own eternal soul free from sin.” He could see the interest in her eyes.
“I need access to her more than one measly time.”
He tugged at his greasy beard. “Naturally, a mother should be able to see her child when she wishes. But I have other souls to whom I must attend. Once a month is the best I can do. But, if you don’t love her...” He turned to leave.
“Damn crazy. Give me a moment.”
He contemplated the foreign man before him, enjoying the way his scrutiny made the foreigner uncomfortable. Jenfry came out, wooden clogs clacking on the floor, wrapped in a thin, dirty cloak. They walked in silence to the bridge. Before the attacks, it had only had two guards, but now that had changed. Four guards warmed themselves at braziers. They searched the man and woman for weapons.
“How dare you question the motives of a holy man! I am Lord Nicky’s spiritual advisor, and the woman with me a sister in faith.”
The guards shifted uneasily at the advisor’s name. “It’s just, sir. We have our orders. From the king.”
“Bugger the king. If he wasn’t a degenerate, the Great One would have protected him from attacks. His lack of faith is his problem. Now let us through, for I assure you, Lord Nicky will hear how you’ve treated us.”
The four men shifted again, looking toward each other helplessly, before shifting enough to let the two people through. Joseph stomped across the bridge, muttering imprecations under his breath as the fat tavern keep’s wife huffed, trying to keep up. The gates to the whore’s house stood open; her guards watched as the newcomers walked through. They could see people working on re-thatching the roofs of the outbuildings, while a steady clack and occasional shouts came from one side of the mansion. A lone goat grazed on the cold blighted foliage of overgrown gardens.