by Robin Hardy
“Get it on the table!” he ordered, slamming something down beside him. Numbly, Effie ladled out a bowlful and put it in front of him. She lit a candle from the fire and placed that on the table too. That was when she saw the fine leather money bag beside his bowl.
“What is that?” she pointed to it.
He startled up and slapped her hand away. “Greedy snip! Leave that alone!” He jerked it off the table and it fell open, spilling a shower of gold coins to the floor.
“Pax!” she gasped in disbelief. “Where—where did you get all the money?”
He fell on the floor to gather them back into the money pouch, which carried an imprint. “I work, don’t I?” he spat. “And if you touch any of this, I’ll kill you.”
“Oh no, I won’t,” she murmured, then stood back against the hearth as he sullenly ate.
It was dark now, but for the fire in the grate and the candle on the table. Pax finished his supper and took the pouch with him to a cot against the wall. Then Effie ladled out some stew from the kettle for herself. As she sat to eat, he watched her warily, tying the money pouch around his middle. Then he lay down carefully on top of it.
Effie cleaned her bowl and put a cover on the kettle. Saying, “Goodnight, Pax,” she picked up the candle and turned toward the lean-to.
“Oh, no!” He sat up suddenly. “No, you don’t! I know what you’re scheming!” The candle quivered in her hand. “You think to wait till I’m asleep, then slit my throat for this money!”
“No, Pax!” she protested.
“You sleep right down here on the floor beside me, where I can keep an eye on you,” he demanded.
“Pax—” she whined.
“Lie down! Here!” he shouted.
She spread a blanket on the dirt floor beside his cot and snuffed the candle. When he heard her lie on the floor, he grunted and settled down.
Although Effie soon heard him snoring, she did not dare get up from the floor. But in her mind’s eye she saw the blood trickling stubbornly from the wound. She rolled over and pressed her face into the blanket to muffle her weeping.
After a tormented night, Effie awoke when Pax kicked her as he rolled out of the cot. “Get up and get my breakfast,” he growled.
She leaped up and grabbed a bucket. Rubbing her swollen eyes, she stumbled to the well outside while hints of morning streaked the sky. When she brought the water in, she almost dropped it upon seeing him step toward the lean-to. “Pax!” she screamed. He jerked around.
“Pax—that—that water is dirty. I brought you clean water.”
He grunted and took the bucket she tremulously held out to him. As he washed, she mixed the lard and wheat flour into dough, then patted out cakes. She tested the walls of the fireplace oven, finding it warm enough from the overnight coals, and slapped the cakes against the walls of the oven to cook.
Then she poured him ale from a jug while he counted out the money pieces at the table. Effie watched him sidewise, but could not see how much gold he had. It looked to her like more than fifty royals.
She brought him the cakes and he ate. Watching him, Effie thought he looked rather like a turtle with his head scrunched down between his shoulders. A snapping turtle, she thought. Then he stood, swallowing the last bite as he gathered the gold into the pouch. “I’m leaving for a few days, Effie. You keep yourself out of trouble, or when I come back I’ll whip you good.”
“Yes, Pax,” she whispered.
He turned to go, then paused. She watched his feet, fearing he needed something from the other room. But he reached into the pouch and tossed two coins on the floor. “Here.”
“Thank you, Pax!” she exclaimed, more in relief than gratitude. She scurried to pick them up, but once his back was turned she let them drop again. Effie watched while he walked away into the forest, as he had no horse. She waited, looking after him, fearful that the moment she left the door he would return. But he didn’t.
With a quietly pounding heart, Effie approached her secret in the lean-to. At the doorway she stopped and closed her eyes.
He was dead. She knew it. Before even looking, she knew he had bled to death during the night. All she could do for him now was bury him. Her eyes began to water, but she scolded herself, “Stop that now!” and went in.
He was so pale, almost grey. The wound was no longer bleeding. Of course not—dead men don’t bleed.
She reached out to his neck and felt his flesh warm yet. Then her fingers felt the weak, rapid throb of his pulse. Unwilling to believe it, she sat for minutes with her fingers on his neck. Each heartbeat surely must be his last. But they stubbornly persisted.
He was alive. Not only that, but he was alive because of her. Worthless Effie had saved a stranger’s life. She leaned her head weakly down on his right shoulder and wept.
After a little while she stilled, continuing to rest her head on his back. She listened to the faint puh-pomb, puh-pomb of his heartbeat, drawing a kind of strength from it.
Effie lifted her head with a little shake. Why should she care so? She did not even know his name. But she could not be rid of the persistent sense of excitement over what she had done. Timidly, feeling watched, she lifted the bucket of bloody water to empty it. As she carried it outside, she might have sworn someone followed her, speaking strange, voiceless encouragement in her ear: Things will never be the same for you again.
Deirdre awoke that morning from despondent, lonely dreams. She reached over to Roman’s side of the bed, and its cold emptiness stung her. She rolled onto her face, moaning, “Oh my God, why have you done this to me? What has become of him?”
She lay in bed, unwilling to pray and unable to sleep, until a serving girl brought a tray of breakfast to her. As the maid set the tray down to open the draperies, Deirdre hid her eyes from the wash of light. “Please go away,” Deirdre murmured.
“Surchataine,” the maid bowed, her soft voice communicating depths of sympathy. But she had a message to deliver: “Counselor Basil asked to meet with you after you have had breakfast.”
Deirdre lay unmoved a moment, then slowly pushed up on her elbow. “I will meet him in the library in half an hour,” she said. The maid bowed and glided out, leaving the tray.
Deirdre bowed her head on her arms. “I cannot do this, unless you help me. I am so weak, and scared, and lonely. . . . How can I stand unless you hold me up?” Sighing, she reached for the tray.
In exactly half an hour the door to the library opened. The Surchataine entered and nodded as the Counselor and Commander, who had both been awaiting her, rose. The first thing she said was, “Did the scouts find anything along the road last night?”
“No, Surchataine,” answered Nihl. His brown Polonti face, impassive and rugged, gave no hint of what he felt at losing a ruler who called him “brother.” “We have just now sent teams to the nearest villages to search and question the people. Someone must have seen something, or know something.”
“Should we let it be known that Roman is missing?” she asked dubiously.
“That information has already spread far and wide,” said Basil. “What we must do now is put you on the throne at open audience this morning and leave no doubt that you are ruling.”
As she sat weakly, Nihl and Basil sat also. “I simply cannot understand what might have happened to him. Roman just does not fall off horses,” she muttered.
Basil’s thin shoulders drooped, and he ran a hand over his smooth grey hair. “It appears he should have heeded the weaver’s warning.”
Deirdre’s face came up. “What warning?”
Basil and Nihl looked at each other. “You did not know of it?” Nihl asked.
“I should have realized Roman would not tell her,” Basil said. “Surchataine, the night you miscarried, before you came to the table, a weaver from town requested an audience with the Surchatain. He reported that he had overheard an assassin being hired to kill Roman.”
Deirdre paled. “You think that is what happened?”
&
nbsp; Basil did not answer, so Nihl said dispassionately, “It seems likely. If so, it was a very clean kill.”
“You think . . .” Deirdre struggled, “you think he is dead?”
“We must assume it,” answered Nihl, gently now. “To protect ourselves, we must act on the assumption that he is dead, and hope privately that he is not.”
Deirdre put her head in her hands, overcome. Nihl and Basil sat by quietly, empathizing with her in her grief, but also anxious for the state of Lystra. At this time, of all times, they must have strength on the throne, for the smell of weakness would bring out predators from every corner of the Continent.
Nihl knelt beside her chair. “Deirdre,” he said sternly. She looked at him with surprised, teary eyes. “We must have your word to send an army to Corona. Bruc must be prevented from attacking it. What is your word on this?”
Floundering in sorrow and ignorance, she gazed at him. But from habit she sent up a weak impulse of prayer in this most severe trial.
The tears stopped flowing. She still gazed at Nihl, but her look had changed to one of concentration. “No,” she said. “You will not send an army; you will go. Take with you a unit of Polonti volunteers—only Polonti. Go stand at the gates of Corona and tell Bruc he cannot attack the city. Tell him to go home.”
Still on his knees, Nihl eyed her without changing expression. Then he rose and said, “We will leave immediately.”
When he had gone out, Deirdre stood, smoothing her dress. She set her shoulders and reached a hand to the Counselor. “We will hold audience now. Come—I need you to stand beside me.”
As they walked the corridor en route to the audience hall, Deirdre felt as though she were walking back in time to that day eleven years ago at open audience when her father Karel had gestured, and Roman had stepped out from the crowd. I am appointing a guardian for you. His name is Roman. . . . She remembered him then exactly as she had seen him yesterday morning—strong and brown, his face lined even then.
And she remembered the horror of the day that Karel had dragged Roman bound before everyone in the hall, to pronounce a sentence of death for “indecency with the Chataine Deirdre,” when all he had been guilty of was faithfulness—her face still burned with indignity at the memory.
But he had escaped. And they had been together as husband and wife for one sweet night before her cousin Jason had taken her away. Still they had been reunited, after the villager’s disease had devastated the invading armies at Outpost One. And their son Ariel had been born. . . .
Rounding a corner in the corridor, Deirdre encountered other ghosts of events past. When she was kidnapped and enslaved at Diamond’s Head, Roman’s love had driven him to search in vain for her until Galapos, her real father, found her and freed her with his life. Then in the supernatural dangers of facing Tremelaine, they had seen a higher Power demonstrated in increasingly vivid displays.
A line began to connect in her reminiscences . . . in all the things she had experienced, even in all the apparent defeats and hopeless situations, hadn’t she seen the Lord resolve every crisis in a manner unforeseen? That line began to glimmer as she saw it move from instance to instance, picking happenings and persons at will, to form a design of purpose and convergence. Years after the fact, she could see the good that resulted from those things which before had been incomprehensible.
What it meant now was that the Hand which controlled those events was still in power. When even the unthinkable happened, she could still know that the Lord of heaven and earth was fashioning that glimmering line into something of eternal significance.
That was how Deirdre could walk into the audience hall in the midst of a milling, curious crowd, and sit with an air of authority on the throne.
“Surchatain Roman is dead,” she announced to the crowd, which stilled to near lifelessness. “As he intended, I am ruling in his stead. I will enforce his decrees and carry out his commands. But I warn you that I am angry and will not show the tolerance he showed. My husband’s assassin has gained you a tyrant in his stead. So go away—I will not hear anything from you today.”
She rose from the throne and paced through the crowd, not looking to the right or the left. After some confused hesitation, the people went down on their knees as she passed, Basil beside her.
In the corridor, she saw Captain Olynn running toward her and Basil, his face full of suppressed excitement. “Surchataine! By accident, the men have found—”
“Roman?” she exclaimed in a spasm of hope. “Roman?”
“No, Surchataine.” His face fell. “They have found the chief emissary from Qarqar still in Westford.”
Deirdre’s brows contracted in puzzlement, but Basil practically shouted, “Bring him to the library! And Orenthal the weaver, as well!”
Olynn raced out and Deirdre spun almost angrily to the flushed Counselor. “What are you doing?”
“Forgive me, my lady,” he urged, taking her arm. “I am acting on facts I forget you don’t know. Come.” He steered her toward the library, saying, “I never finished telling you—Orenthal is the weaver who told the Surchatain of hearing an assassin being hired. Orenthal’s description of the man who did the hiring seemed to fit the Qarqarian emissary. We wish to make sure of that now.”
“I see,” Deirdre murmured, coloring at her imperial manner toward an old friend. “Why would Qarqar wish Roman dead?” she asked pathetically.
“For more reasons than I have time to recount. I suspect it may hinge on Troyce’s discovery of their horde of gold. They may have decided to ensure that Roman would not demand it at some point in the future.”
“Ah,” Deirdre said, nodding serenely while receiving all this as new in-formation. She began to wish she had paid more attention to what was going on around her.
They entered the library. Basil did not seat himself, but waited for her to sit first. Deirdre, unaware of this, walked to the great double windows and placed her hands on the diamond panes of greenish glass. Roman . . . an intense longing for him passed through her with a shudder.
Before she could sink into self-pity, the library door opened and Olynn entered with the emissary. They bowed to Deirdre and Basil. “My lady,” said the emissary, “may I ask what prompts you to arrest me like a criminal?”
“You may ask nothing of me, and it is presumptuous of you to address me,” Deirdre said coolly, turning back to the window.
The emissary’s high forehead wrinkled at the rebuke. He did not look chastened, only irritated. He began to sit but Olynn restrained him and Basil narrowed his eyes forbiddingly. They all stood, as Deirdre stood.
They waited in ominous silence, Deirdre still at the window. Then she turned expectantly, and within minutes a guard arrived with a bushy-headed tradesman. He glanced all around, taking particular note of the emissary.
“Are you Orenthal the weaver?” Deirdre asked.
“Yes, my lady—er, Surchataine,” he said, a little off-balance in his bow.
“Do you know this man? Or have you seen him before?” she asked, pointing to the emissary.
“Yes, Surchataine; he’s the one,” Orenthal answered firmly. “He’s the one I heard hiring to get Surchatain Roman killed. I wish he’d ’a’ listened to me.” The emissary went pale and slack-jawed.
“I wish so, too,” Deirdre said, sternly preventing her eyes from watering. “But you did your part, and that deserves reward. Guard, take Orenthal to Sevter and see that he is paid one hundred royals for his service to the Surchatain.”
“Thank you, my lady!” exclaimed the weaver, and he slapped the guard on the back as he was escorted out.
Like a crouching lioness, Deirdre turned on the emissary. He huffed, “That man is a demented liar—” but the Surchataine interrupted him with a command uttered through gritted teeth: “Go back to Qarqar,” she said. “Go back to your Surchatain, and tell him to prepare for an assault such as he has never seen. When we leave Hornbound, there will not be a grain of your precious gold anywhere, nor
even a corner of a building left to hide it in.”
She finished but he remained, gaping at her. “Go!” she screamed. Thus impelled, he fled.
Deirdre raised blank, weary eyes to the gentle Counselor, who smiled wryly. “A just retribution,” he murmured, “and maddening at that. Roman could not have done better.”
“Oh Basil!” She fell on him, too enervated to express the ache within but by weeping.
Chapter 23
Effie sat by the cot on which her visitor lay, methodically stroking his hair. She would get up and pace the room, then sit again abruptly to check him. In an instant, it seemed, his face had gone from pale grey to hot red. He was burning with fever, and she was unable to do anything but bathe him with wet rags. Now and then he would groan for water, though he never seemed to come fully awake when he drank from the ladle she held to his mouth.
After he had settled down somewhat, she pulled back the oiled window covering for air and went outside to work restlessly. She tossed a handful of grain to the geese, then with only half a mind weeded her garden of leeks, carrots, cabbage and beans. She stopped by the lean-to window to look in on him on her way to the well, and stopped there again on her way back to the garden with a full bucket. She watered the vegetables, then headed back to the well. On each trip back and forth, she kept glancing through the window at him until she grew irritated with herself for being so solicitous.
On her last return trip she saw him stirring again, so she ran with sloshing water through the hut and into the lean-to. He was raising himself up on his right forearm to face the window, eyes closed. He uttered, “—thirsty,” before his head dropped back down again.
Effie brought the ladle and bucket to him. Shifting toward her, he started to raise himself up on his left arm, but when he put weight on the arm, it buckled underneath him. She steadied his head and brought the ladle to his mouth, despite the fact that he was struggling to drink for himself. In so doing, he managed to soak the cot but not get one drop in his mouth.