The Path to Power

by Karen Miller

  Her son and Alys’s brother exchanged conspiratorial looks, then plunged their spoons into the fragrant, carrot-plumped stew. They could chatter like magpies, these two, and then say as much to each other without sharing a word. Uncanny, it was. When she wasn’t laughing, it made her wonder. She’d wanted a brother for Benedikt, and was glad chance had given him one. But she never thought a stranger’s child could be as like to her own as flesh and blood… which Willem was, though in looks the boys were chalk and cheese.

  The kitchen’s leather curtain slapped heavily as Iddo stamped in from the public room. “That ale barrel’s unbunged so ye can get to counting the ale pots, Alys,” he said, with a jerk of his chin. “And see the benches wiped. There be thirsty folk coming along the road a ways.”

  Wary, for in all these years Iddo still hadn’t softened to her, the girl bobbed a curtsey. “Yes, Iddo.”

  “Moll…” Taking hold of her elbow, he tugged her back to the window, out of the boys’ earshot. “What’s this about Marcher lords’ men coming? And why do them boys get told of it before me?”

  She didn’t snap his nose off, for he’d had a long hard day. Instead she pulled the window’s shutters closed and dropped their iron bar in place. “I was going to tell ye,” she said, soothing. “In a quiet moment. While ye were walking yer rabbit snares in the wood, Izusa stopped back in, on her way to runcing Nonny’s new babe. There be fresh trouble brewing between Wido and Bayard.”

  Iddo scowled. “How bad?”

  “Bad enough, Izusa says. The lords’ men came to blows over some mischief with a woman. Blood be spilled and threats made. There be not so much as a copper nib’s worth of good will to be found in the matter. She says there be talk of a Crown Court to settle it. And in the meantime, we’re like to see scores of Marcher men riding at all hours to keep the peace.”

  “Or break it to kindling.” Iddo dragged a hand down his stubbled face, rasping. “A Crown Court, Molly? With all that muck and upset? Curse the feggit bastards. Why don’t them lords teach their men to keep cock in britches?”

  She patted his arm. “I know.”

  “And us barely sorted after them ructions over Bayard’s loose horses.”

  Which Bayard had blamed on Wido’s men. And before that, the clash between Egbert and Jacott over rights of way through the stretch of Stoke Woods as was called common ground. Every time they blinked, it seemed, the Marcher lords were finding reasons to brandish their swords. No wonder Marcher folk had started pinning charms to their undershirts and rousing the old blood ways from sleep.

  Iddo huffed out a breath. “So these Marcher men as are coming. Which lord do they belong to?”

  “Wido, Izusa says.” She pulled a face. “Best we cross fingers Lord Bayard b’aint of the same mind, for with tempers sore and blood running steamy…”

  “Bastards,” said Iddo, thumping a fist to the wall. “I’ll see m’cudgel be good to hand.”

  “And bring the dog in,” she suggested. “Could be they’ll mind their manners with that brute chained to the bar.”

  “I will. But Moll—” Iddo touched his finger to her forehead. “What other sour news did that young herb-witch bring ye? For she did, I can see it. There be shadows in yer eyes.”

  She slid her gaze past him to Benedikt and Willem, who were busy spitting apple seeds at each other. As a rule she’d cuff the pair of them for roistering at table, but this once she was grateful they were distracted. Even so…

  “Later,” she muttered. “In bed. I’ll not speak of it now.” Then she poked him. “And don’t ye be calling Izusa a herb-witch. She b’aint no Phemie, but for all she’s foreign and peculiar she knows her leechcraft. And we do be right fortunate to have her, all in all.”

  Eyes wide, Iddo fastened his fingers on her wrist. “It b’aint spotted tongue again, Moll?”

  The last outbreak had reached their stretch of the Marches two months after the night Alys and her brother fetched up on the Whistle’s doorstep. Close to four months, it scourged them, more virulent than the oldest Marcher man or woman could remember. The filthy pestilence took eleven of their regular customers, including both Bevver brothers and forester Lugo and Hamelen, Lord Jacott’s farm steward. Worst of all, it took Phemie. Sad, sad days. Iddo, her man of iron, had been plague-skittish ever since.

  “No,” she said, softening. “Something else, Izusa says, and far away yet. She only told me what to look for ’cause we get traders from all parts passing through. And there be an end to it, Iddo. Now see to that dog and—”

  They both turned at the sound of the leather curtain, slapping. “Molly,” said Alys, flustered. “Lord Wido’s Marcher men are come. There be a dozen of them claiming a bed each, hungry and thirsty and banging fist to bench.”

  A bed each? She’d be putting folk to sleep in the hen coop. But the lords’ men had to be kept happy. So while Iddo and Alys plied them with food and ale, she hustled Benedikt and Willem upstairs, promising both boys a cracky whipping if they dared set foot downstairs again. And then it was rush, rush, rush, for alongside Lord Wido’s rowdy men there were her half-score of regulars, a clutch of wool traders from Clemen, three quarrelsome Zeidican merchants–no sign of plague on them, thank the spirits–two Harcian messengers and six travelling exarchites. The Pig Whistle’s public room fell silent when they walked in, long grey wool robes swishing round their ankles. Even Wido’s men stared, ale pots and pie spoons stuck halfway to their mouths. But the exarchites were fasting and only wanted somewhere to lay their heads. So she settled them in the dormer, because not even the Marcher lords dared offend the Exarch, no matter how far away he was. Then she rushed back to her kitchen to rescue mutton pies from burning and slop fresh stew on the hob to heat.

  She was so fretted she almost didn’t hear the banging on her kitchen’s back door. Cursing, she wiped her hands on her apron.

  “What?” she demanded, wrenching the door open. “D’ye think I b’aint so busy I can—”

  “Mollykins. M’sweet Molly,” said the battered man swaying before her. “Be a honey posset, would ye, and let me come in?”

  It was the trader, Denno Culpyn, beaten black and blue.

  He moaned as she shouldered him to Benedikt’s seat at the table. Coughed in pain as she pushed him down, and snatched hold of her apron as she turned away.

  “Moll–Moll–don’t leave me!”

  “I got t’leave, ye half-plucked goose! B’aint that a full roaring public room ye can hear, demanding of its pies and stew? Just sit there and rest yer aches and dribbles till I can find a moment to slap a poultice or three where they might do ye some good.”

  He stared at her woefully. “I be in a right muck, Moll.”

  “Never ye mind,” she said, patting his shoulder. “I’ll see ye set to rights in a trickle.”

  But it was a good while longer than that before she could heave a deep breath and haul out her physicking box to tend him. With Iddo and Alys warned to stay on the other side of the leather curtain, she put fresh water to boil, fetched some soft cotton rags, and lined up her bottles and jars.

  Denno didn’t want to strip to his linen drawers so she could inspect every inch of marked skin, but weren’t most men no more than overgrown boys? And didn’t she know how to handle their fussing? Shivering, though the kitchen was warm enough, the trader suffered her poking and prodding, the stinging poultices and burning ointments that, thanks to poor Phemie’s teaching of her, would put him on the slow road to healing.

  “Ye be a fortunate feggit, Denno Culpyn,” she said at last, holding up his shirt to him so he could re-dress. “Though a blind man on a dark night could see all them bruises, ye’ve suffered no brokit bones, no split flesh what b’aint on yer face, and even if ye do be pissing blood there don’t be a bit of ye so squashed inside it won’t mend.”

  “How can y’be certain?” he said, doubtful. “Y’be a fine woman, Moll, but no fulsome leech. Where be Izusa? I tell ye, I weren’t in no way sure of that odd wench, but she
sorted the boil on my arse a treat the other day, iss, and made the difference when that bloody flux came on.”

  “Denno Culpyn, may ye hang for an ungrateful wretch,” she snapped. “I ought to black yer other eye!”

  He sniffed. “But m’nose, Moll. It feels brokit.”

  “It be flattened a bit,” she admitted. “But since ye can snuffle wind, I say ye’ll mend that too. Now—” She tugged his shirt over his head, helped him slide his green-and-purple mottled arms into the sleeves, then started lacing it up. “For payment, ye’ll tell me who put ye in this muck state. Don’t tell me ye’ve fallen foul of a Marcher lord?”

  “No, Moll,” he said, and shuddered. “It were Count Balfre did this.”

  “Balfre?” she said, staring. “Aimery’s eldest? Harcia’s heir? Denno Culpyn, what did ye—”

  “Don’t ye scold me deaf, Moll,” he entreated. “I did nothing, I swear it. He took agin me, is all, for coming in on m’lonesome, late to Pikebank. One look and ye’d think I rode a mule over his mother. He ruined m’travelling papers. Banished me. Can’t never cross into Harcia agin, or trade the Harcian Marches. His men trampled m’pretty wares and beat me, all on his say-so.”

  Stunned, feeling sick, she bent to pick up his leather trews. “And the letters?”

  “I be sorry, Moll,” he said, sounding more humble than ever she’d heard him. “He took them.”

  Her heart clutched tight. “Every one?”

  “Iss,” he whispered. “I tried to hide ’em, but yon Balfre…” Another shudder. “Mollykins, I be a man as have stood toe-to-toe with the curs’t pirate Baldassare. And hand on m’heart, I’d face that barnacle agin, gladly, before ever I looked a second time in Count Balfre’s eyes. That feggit man’s got ice where his heart ought to be.”

  Because Denno was helpless, she helped him pull on the leather trews. Kept herself fussing, so he’d not notice her face. All the letters taken… even the one she was paid two silver ducats to see safely to Pikebank horse fair. That she’d slipped to Denno along with some harmless tittle-tattle, and the trader no wiser. So, a calamity. She’d already spent the ducats and there was no getting them back. Should she confess all to Tybost, the farm steward who took dead Hamelen’s place? No. How could she? Tybost might tell Clemen’s Lord Jacott she’d played him false… and that would put the Pig Whistle at risk. Put Benedikt at risk.

  Just the thought of that made her dizzy.

  So she’d say not a word. Let Jacott think what he liked, he’d never think to accuse her. And besides, what happened wasn’t her fault. She’d done what she was paid for. After that? Faery business.

  “Moll?” said Denno, plucking at her sleeve. “Can I have a bed? I’ll ride on come the morning. Won’t stay underfoot.”

  He was a rogue and a rascal, but she did like him. And he was useful. “Dormer be full to the rafters, Denno. Ye can sleep in the stables, and I’ll not ask for a copper nib.”

  “Ah, Moll.” His smile was sad. “Y’be in m’heart like a queen. What a sorrow that when I ride out, I won’t never ride back.”

  “Never? But—”

  “Risk trading the Clemen Marches, and Harcia’s men-at-arms riding me down?” Wincing, he shook his head. “Can’t do that, Mollykins. B’aint I a canny man, as knows when he be knocked to his knees?”

  She believed him. He was broken. Which meant one less useful man in her life, curse it. But she’d make good despite his leaving. In the end, she always did.

  “I be sorry to hear it, Denno,” she said. “Maybe one day ye’ll change yer mind. Now be off to the stables with ye. I got customers as want m’pies.”

  The outer bailey of Tamwell castle flew so many bright pennants it was a wonder the walls and battlements didn’t fly away altogether. The colourful emblems of every noble Harcian house flapped and snapped in the brisk breeze; badger and ram and boar and kestrel, hound and horse, cup and sword. A vivid, martial display. A reminder of Harcia’s long heritage, stretching back in time to the dimmest past… when the emblems of Clemen’s nobles proudly flew with them side by side, in friendship. The dim past. The dead past. A past that might yet come back to life.

  Seated on a great dais, honoured by the day’s flowery joust, Aimery stifled a frown. I only hope I live to see it. For here he was, a duke turned sixty. Sixty. Most of his life behind him and nothing but uncertainty ahead. He could count on one hand’s fingers, the dukes of Harcia who’d seen sixty. Thumbs would tally the dukes who’d lived longer than that. He could pray to the Exarch’s god, or to a passing sprite or faery, that he might become a big toe. A duke famed for dying bald and old. But he doubted prayer would save him. Ruling a duchy aged a man. And a duke with a troublesome heir aged faster again.

  There was a man who had three sons. Lost one. Kept one. Threw the third away. The fool.

  Six years on, and even though he tried hard to dismiss them, the old soothsayer’s cryptic words still had the power to chill. But so did he have power. He was nobody’s fool. With Grefin beside him, he would defy even a long-tailed comet. Balfre would not have his way.

  A raucous bellowing of applause and acclaim rose from the attending noblemen and their families as the jousting knights came to the end of their third pass, untouched. Their fabulously decorated armour, made for show, not proper killing, flashed silver and gold and painted colours in the afternoon sun. Their stallions sidled, heads tossing, as though disappointed to be held back in the joust. For on pain of dire consequence, they had been. This was his birthday celebration, for everyone else a happy occasion.

  Aimery of Harcia would have no Black Hughes today.

  Their horses standing flank-to-flank, facing the dais, each mounted knight uplifted his visor. Revealed, his unsmiling nephew Joben and young Lord Brandt, lately stepped into his inherited estates at Gosfyth. Given a choice, proud Joben would never tilt against such a minor lord. But saving one, the day’s jousts were drawn at random. And it would do Joben good to climb down off his pride–if only for an hour.

  Aimery stood, masking unsteadiness, and accepted his knights’ fist-on-heart homage with a raised hand. More cheering and applause from the nobles ranked on their bench seats below and to either side of him. It followed the knights out of the bailey.

  As he resumed his gilded ducal throne, and Master Ambrose’s squires rushed in to set the tilt-run aright before the highly anticipated final joust, Mazelina touched her hand to his arm, laughing. Down in the bailey, Tamwell’s minstrels re-started their cheerful piping to entertain the crowd.

  “And now it’s Grefin’s turn! Oh, Your Grace, I can’t envy you. Your heir and your Steward to joust each other. Perhaps they could both fall off, and satisfy honour without causing you to take sides!” She leaned forward, looking across him. “What d’you think, Jancis?”

  Aimery shifted his gaze. Balfre’s colourless wife sat at his right hand, and though she was coloured head-to-toe in crimson damask, and gold, and rubies, still she looked as pale as a moon maiden from pagan lore. Her face, so unexpressive, seemed a chalk mask.

  Stirred to pity, as every day she stirred him, though he couldn’t much like her, he forced a cheerful smile. “Indeed, Mazelina. You might have hit upon the answer. But I dare say our dear Jancis would prefer to see her husband the victor. Jancis?”

  She might choose not to answer Grefin’s wife, but to ignore Harcia’s duke was unthinkable. “Your Grace, I confess to having no opinion,” Jancis murmured. “I’ve no fondness for the joust. It’s very loud, and I worry the horses will be hurt.”

  By the Exarch’s balls, even her voice was colourless. No surprise she was only delivered of one daughter. She was a mimbly woman, the wrong choice for Balfre entirely. That was his mistake. But for good or ill the two of them were bound and only death could part them. Were Jancis to be released, and marry again, and bear a son, the damage done to Balfre would be impossible to mend.

  But if he remains without a son, at least Harcia won’t be ruined. It has Grefin and his sons. The f
uture is secure.

  And that was the only reason he could sleep at night. Especially these days, with his health so much a trial.

  Bright and beautiful Mazelina, his beloved Grefin’s beloved, was trying to dance over Jancis’s blunder.

  “—is a worry a horse will be hurt, yes, but I think they love jousting as much as the men do, Jancis, truly. You know they’re dreadfully stubborn creatures. Almost as bad as a husband. I doubt you could make a one of them run the tilt if it didn’t want to. Isn’t that so, Your Grace?”

  He patted her knee. Her gown was cloth-of-silver, embroidered blue, but she dimmed even that radiance. “My dear Mazelina,” he said, his smile entirely unforced, “I cannot fault you.”

  “Here they come,” said Jancis, as the crowd of nobles stirred to excitement. “I pray no one is hurt.”

  And so did he pray it, to whoever was listening. If he could have, he’d have kept his sons from this joust. Though Balfre had been volubly contrite for his lateness in returning to Cater’s Tamwell, had begged his father’s forgiveness so meekly, and in public–but mercifully not dressed in homespun and cast face-down on the floor–still a maggot of doubt was in him. From the time Balfre had burst into the world, furiously squalling, he’d never once forgiven a slight. And though he tried to hide it, there remained rancour over the Green Isle’s Stewardship.

  But he’ll not hurt Grefin for that. Not here. Not like this. He might be a hot-head. The wrong stamp of man to make a duke. But worse? I’ll not accept it. For all his faults, he is my son.

  He watched Balfre and Grefin ride their glorious stallions into the bailey on a storm of acclaim. Balfre’s gilded armour was part-painted crimson, Grefin’s steel polished eye-searing silver and flourished in sky blue. They each wore their ladies’ colours in scarves tied to their breastplates. The silk fluttered gaily, danced by the same breeze dancing the house pennants over their heads. Visors raised, they halted before the dais. Balfre said something. Grefin looked at him, and laughed. Balfre said something else, his grin so wicked it must have been ribald. Both laughing, they lifted their gazes, crashed gauntleted fists to their hearts. Aimery stood, his own heart pounding, and raised his hand in salute. The lance-squires ran forward, armed the combatants, then withdrew.