The Baron's Ring

by Mary C. Findley

  Mayra passed the sheaf of papers over. Tristan listened impatiently to the rustling as Justice Mischnal read. Mayra pushed him into a seat and stood behind him in proper pagely attitude. He dared not do more than touch her hand, but her light pressure in response was most pleasant.

  “But the king still lives?” Mischnal asked gravely.

  “My brother sleeps and can’t be awakened, Lord Justice,” Tristan replied. “The queen and her brother must be dealt with speedily, as my brother’s words indicate, and he has strongly urged this duty upon me. I can’t believe Dunstan will ever awaken again except in the presence of God.”

  “What more is there to this matter, Prince?” Justice Mischnal asked shrewdly. “Your brother was never one for such careful wording as this, nay, for writing so much at all, and you are strongly agitated about something, beyond what even this would call for. Tell me what goes on at the castle.”

  “My Lord Justice, there’s little I can tell certainly,” Tristan said cautiously. “What Dunstan states in his writing there is still to be judged and proved. I can only say that I pray you will speedily set into motion that which will bring his words to pass.”

  “There will be great trouble about your being taken from Larcondale in this way,” Justice Mischnal growled. “I wonder their king has not already marched an army to our gates. That Larcondale wine is like life’s blood to Tarraskida.”

  “The soldiers who are in Larcondale are not to come here but by my order, my Lord Justice,” Tristan said ruefully. “But they won’t wait forever to know if I am safe. We can best have peace with Tarraskida by settling matters here in Parangor quickly.”

  “Of course, you are right. I will put this before the other justices in an emergency session as soon as I can gather them,” Justice Mischnal promised. “By this afternoon we shall take action. But you will say nothing at the castle until then, I hope? We must have surprise or they will flee with the papers we seek.”

  Gladring met them in the stables when they returned. “My Prince, in your haste you overlooked other papers your brother has written,” Gladring said. He handed Tristan a packet. “He makes me overseer of the house, and gives me full power to place servants as I will. And he says I am to forbid soldiers inside the castle except by Jonathan’s order, which will remove the guard around the queen and her brother. I have begun to act on these orders, and there is quite an uproar. My lady the queen demands to see her husband, demands to see you, threatens to break down the door of the king’s chamber. You must try to deal with the queen somehow, for I almost fear for my Nylda, though she will defend her charge as a lioness. There are other matters in these pages I judged personal to you, which your lady can read to you later.”

  “Papers –” Tristan muttered “ – Papers we didn’t find –” Tristan grabbed Mayra by the shoulders. “No, my lady will not come back into the castle with me,” Tristan said firmly. “No arguments, Mayra. Alex, get my wife back to Larcondale as fast as you can. Mayra, go to the study and bring back the leather desk blotter. We have got to have it. Bring your mother, to testify to Gregor’s illness and the herbs and potions Shneea had, and bring Thomas to tell what happened that night with Shneea, and to certify our marriage. I shouldn’t need your help, with Glad and Nylda at my side. Catarain will be arrested before nightfall, possibly Shneea as well. She will be powerless in any case.”

  “My Prince, the witch has discovered your secret,” Mayra cried. “You’re the ruination of all her ambitions for the second time. Do you think she’ll let that pass? Don’t be so stubborn. Let me stay by your side. How can this be so important?”

  “It is so important,” Tristan snapped. “Mayra, think. Papers that were missing, papers everyone has looked everywhere for, that were never found.”

  Mayra gasped. “I understand,” she said. “But Alex can go alone.”

  “Alex doesn’t have authority to act for me without delay. You do. Gladring, Mayra must go to Larcondale. Get her away from here, and Alex with her, now. Send Jonathan with them. He will see that they get off safely.”

  “I’ll fetch him and see to it that the princess is sent off,” Gladring promised. He gave orders for horses, since the road to Larcondale was not passable by carriage yet. “But we must deal with the queen, now, since she is still queen.”

  Tristan and Gladring hurried into the castle. All was quiet. “I promise you, my Lord Prince, the queen was shrieking in a rage before the king’s bedroom door,” Gladring said.

  “I have no objection to her stopping that,” Tristan said with a wry smile. “Since all is quiet here, please try to make sure my messengers have got on their way safely. Make sure they were not followed if you can. Report to me as soon as you have news.” He mounted the stairs and entered the king’s bedroom unmolested. He sank down on his knees beside Dunstan’s bed.

  “You are exhausted, my Lord Prince,” Nylda said, laying a comforting hand on Tristan’s shoulder. “You have acted for your people, for your own safety, to try to undo all this terrible wrong done to you, and that which the king allowed to happen. Your princess has told me all about how this woman acted toward you in Larcondale. I would pluck out her eyes myself and let her feel what you have felt.”

  Nylda’s tears dropped on Tristan’s shoulder. Tristan rose slowly to his feet and clasped Nylda’s hand in his. “Thank you for your love and courage, Nylda,” Tristan said. “Thank you for what you have done to help and protect my wife. I pray God will protect her and bring her back speedily. I need her very much.”

  “Oh, my Lord, that girl is like the badger of your household crest,” Nylda replied. “She will never give up till you are safe, and happy, and your enemies trouble you no more. God gave you a champion beyond the mightiest warrior when he gave you her. She will catch that witch queen by the leg and worry her until she gets her underground, and she will never see day again when that happens. My Lord Prince, you must get some rest. I am sure you have hardly slept since you began your vigil here. Go to your room and wait for my husband. I will send him to you as soon as he returns.”

  Tristan slipped into the panel that went directly to his room. He closed it behind him and reached out a hand to open the side that let out into his room. Suddenly the floor disappeared from beneath him. He tumbled down what felt like a narrow tunnel and crashed onto a stone floor. Stunned, he felt powerful hands take hold of him. A memory, a vague thought that this had happened before swept over him. Who had seized him, held him like this? His shirt tore from his body and chains rattled. Wood scraped against his back as he was kicked over onto his face. Dimly he realized that his wrists and neck were being chained to a long pole. Finished, the hands left him and he lay in a stupor.

  “I will show you what you do not believe,” Shneea’s voice purred. “Get up, my handsome Prince. We found your secret passage, and with it a way to make you come to us. Get up.”

  Tristan was willing enough to do that, but it proved nearly impossible. He somehow managed to get his feet under him, slowly raised himself on one knee, then wobbled erect.

  “Don’t you see it?” Shneea demanded.

  “I confess, I don’t,” Catarain’s voice responded. “Anyone would have difficulty getting up from–”

  The crack of a whip panicked Tristan. He plunged away from the sound and his feet encountered a litter of large stones irregularly placed. He danced crazily and managed barely to maintain his footing. The whip sounded again and he dodged again, this time tripping over a stone and falling headlong. As he fell, however, he heard a terrible sound, a rasping, muffled cry of pain and rage from somewhere very nearby.

  “Do you see it now?” Shneea crowd triumphantly. “He knew nothing of the stones. He had no idea the lash was not for him. He had no idea his friend, our captain, lies five feet from him.”

  “Gods!” Catarain breathed. “How could we not know it?”

  “Get him up,” Shneea commanded. Rough hands seized Tristan in an iron grip and hoisted him onto his feet. Again there was
a sense that sometime someone had gripped him like this before. Other hands crept over his shoulders and sides, an unmistakable caress that sickened him. There was no pulling away from it. Catarain was more than his match for strength, apparently.

  “Look at this beautiful body,” Shneea hissed. “We have bruised it a little, but that will heal. And to think I scorned you because I thought you were only a teacher. Tell me why you went to the Hall of Justice.”

  “No,” Tristan said softly. Shneea’s hands left him and the whip struck flesh again. Jonathan could not suppress a furious, pain-wracked growl.

  “You must stop defying me,” Shneea said. “Let him go.” Catarain released Tristan and he staggered slightly. “I want to let him feel his helplessness, deprived of his seeing fingers, his fine, sensitive nose full of nothing but blood and waste and rotten straw, all of his wonderful senses telling him nothing, helping him not at all. Tell me why the two you called your servants left so suddenly.”

  “No,” Tristan repeated. Again Shneea used the whip. Tristan tried not to imagine what was happening to Jonathan, but he couldn’t shut the sound out.

  “Do not continue to oppose me, Prince,” Shneea warned. “This man you have loved since childhood will die here, and he will only be the first.”

  “I have no choice but to oppose you,” Tristan said. “You feed off innocent men’s flesh.”

  “I do,” Shneea said contentedly, using the whip on Jonathan again. “This lash is so much better than the one I had at the vineyard. It strips right down to the bone in a single stroke.”

  Tristan shuddered. “If the Captain of the Guard dies, how will you explain it?” he asked.

  “He went away with your two servants,” Shneea said. “You sent him. It will be three or four days before anyone will expect to see him. I can kill him very, very slowly, then leave the body in the woods for the animals, and none will guess how he died.”

  “I will know,” Tristan said with difficulty.

  “You will submit,” Shneea said. “You and I shall wed, or I will destroy you without touching your body. Prince Tristan will cease to exist.”

  “How can you do such a thing?” Tristan was baffled.

  “Do not tempt me to show you,” Shneea said. “Marry me, handsome Prince.” Her hands stole over him again and he shrank back.

  “It’s impossible,” Tristan gritted. “You have a husband, and I have a wife.”

  “My husband will be dead almost any moment,” Shneea laughed. “But you have got yourself a wife, have you? The marriage will be annulled. Parangor need not recognize some nonsense ritual carried out in Tarraskida. There are laws governing the marriage of the royal family.”

  “Those are only customs made for another time,” Tristan retorted. “You know that. And I have no desire to be rid of my wife, nor to wed you.”

  “Consider my proposal,” Shneea said. “We will leave you alone with your friend for you to consider.” Shneea’s voice retreated as she spoke and Tristan heard a door open and close.

  Catarain came up behind Tristan and pushed him down on his knees. Tristan went obediently, head down, an attitude of defeat written in every line of his body. He listened intently as the shackle on his neck unlocked, felt it slip loose, then the one on his right hand. Catarain twisted to reach the left-hand cuff, his body brushing up against Tristan’s right side. Tristan felt the scabbard of Catarain’s sword against his ribcage, spun, and pulled the blade from its sheath.

  Catarain grabbed hold of the pole to block Tristan’s thrust and Tristan realized he had made a mistake. His left wrist was still shackled to the pole. His arm almost tore from its socket. But he slashed again at Catarain and was rewarded with a sharp cry of unmistakable pain. Catarain swore in his native tongue and Tristan put his whole weight behind the sword thrust toward the sound. Catarain hissed and grunted, but then the pole snapped around again and Tristan was flung to the floor. In a stupor he felt the left-hand shackle unfasten. Why Catarain had been freeing him at all, and why he chose to finish after the attack Tristan had no idea. The king’s chief advisor seemed to be breathing heavily and his walk was uneven as he moved away.

  “See to the captain of the guard,” Catarain rasped. “Since it appears you can do anything, you who are as blessed of God as I am cursed, perhaps you can save him. He appears to be bleeding badly. Unless I miss my guess the queen has done something else to him beyond the flogging. You will have a little time to tend him if you can.” Tristan heard something metal clatter next to him and found a curved dagger under his hand. He heard a door clang shut very nearby.

  Tristan had never been in the dungeons. He had known they existed, but they were a relic of a time long past. Still, as children they had been frightened by tales of the King’s Hole. In ancient times a prisoner whom the king desired to secretly dispose of could be taken straight from his bedchamber and never seen by mortal man again. Now Tristan knew how it had been done. He was in the chamber of the dungeon where those enemies were dealt with. And this was Shneea’s way of dealing with him. He did not expect to leave this place alive. But Jonathan lay somewhere in front of him, and his heart made him try to go to his friend. He knew about the stones set about him as obstacles now, and got down on his knees to feel his way along the floor.

  “Jonathan,” he said gently as he tried to approach the spot where the powerful scent of blood originated. “God be merciful to you, my friend.” After some moments’ exploration he was able to tell that the young man lay stretched on his face, thick ropes binding his hands and feet to iron rings in the floor. Tristan cut them and unbound Jonathan’s mouth.

  “They are safe, my Prince,” Jonathan said thickly. “The blacksmith and Sweet Cecily. I led them to a path we made off the main trail, and then made the pursuers follow me. All hail the Baron of Larcondale! May he reign forever. No one has ever wounded Catarain. He was right. You can do anything. I know you will be king of Parangor, and defeat the queen. I wish I could be there to see it.”

  “Are you so much hurt?” Tristan asked.

  “She took a pin from her hair and ran it into my side,” Jonathan gasped. “My life goes out like it was pushed by a little pump-handle.”

  Tristan searched frantically, came across his torn shirt, then with Jonathan’s feeble help located the bleeding in Jonathan’s side. Desperately they raced to make a crude bandage and pressed where the wound was.

  “Thanks,” Jonathan said faintly, after groaning at the pressure. “Stand fast, my poor Prince. God will make all right, in heaven if not here. I die for His truth, and He knows it well. But tell me all about your Sweet Cecily, or I’ll never know her.”

  “Mayra and her parents found me after the river spit me out and I had walked two days in the bogs and briers with a broken rib,” Tristan said in an unsteady voice. “Then she was a pupil in my school. But her mistress took her away and tried to force her to be a plaything for men. She defied her, and Shneea beat her with a whip. I tried to stop her, and lost my sight. But Mayra had such courage. She gave me her heart and promised to make me see. She lights my whole world, Jonathan. Because of her I can grow grapes, and build buildings, and teach a school, and pretend to fight with a sword, and serve my God. I love her so much.”

  Jonathan was very still, and Tristan could not tell if he even breathed, fearing to move his hands and not knowing if he was even stopping the flow of blood.

  After a long time someone pulled him away, herded him into an even smaller room and left him. Soon he heard a sound like metal grating on metal, and understood that the cover on a barred window had been opened.

  “Here is the prisoner,” Shneea’s voice announced. “Let each of you, old acquaintances of the royal family and well known to the true prince, look in at the window without speaking and let him say who you are if he can.”

  Tristan was too shocked to do anything for a moment. Then he found his voice. “You know it’s impossible for me to do that,” Tristan said.

  “Why is it imposs
ible?” Shneea sneered. “Is there something you have hidden from the people of Parangor?”

  “I am blind,” Tristan said stiffly. “If I haven’t announced the fact, it’s because I came here with a man who seemed to be my enemy.”

  He heard murmurings of surprise in the hallway outside, “You came to speak to me a little while ago,” Mischnal’s voice said. “You knew me, it seemed, spoke to me as a friend. Couldn’t you trust me with this knowledge?”

  “I came here facing a grave charge of which I was innocent. I didn’t know who I could trust, Chief Justice Mischnal,” Tristan said. “I beg your pardon if it seemed deceitful.”

  “Be careful of his wiles,” Shneea hissed. “I ask you, is this truly Prince Tristan of Parangor?”

  “What?” Mischnal exploded. “Was there ever any doubt of that?”

  Shneea shrilled, “Would not the real prince come back to his people, no matter what it took? Would he not keep fast the ring of his ancestors? Would he not scorn to wed for a foreign title and land? This man has no ties to this place, this people, or this kingdom. Can he prove he is Prince Tristan, heir to the throne of Parangor?”

  “Have the justices forgotten the laws of Parangor?” Tristan asked dryly. “An accused person is to have his case heard before he is committed to prison.”

  “He speaks true,” muttered a voice. “He needs to be taken from this place at once.”

  “Lord Holden,” Tristan said quickly. “Praise God you are here. And how could an impostor be schooled to know the voices of the faithful nobles in fealty to Parangor?”

  “It is as he says,” Mischnal said. “A man may learn to recognize faces by description, be taught customs and laws, but how can he know voices he has never heard? Come, my Prince. Out of this dungeon. In the name of Parangor, I apologize for what was done here. I can see you have been mistreated. We shall have a physician look at you.”