He nodded.
‘When we meet again,’ she said even more gently, ‘I’ll make up for everything, Geralt. The silence, too. There’s been too much silence, too much silence between us. And now, instead of nodding, hug me and kiss me.’
He did as he was asked. He loved her, when all was said and done.
*
‘Where to now?’ Ciri asked dryly, a short while after Yennefer had vanished in the flash of the oval teleporter.
‘The river . . .’ Geralt cleared his throat, fighting the pain behind his breastbone that was taking his breath away. ‘The river we’re riding up is the Sansretour. It leads to a country I must show you. For it’s a fairy-tale country.’
Ciri turned gloomy. He saw her clench her fists.
‘Every fairy tale ends badly,’ she drawled. ‘And there aren’t any fairy-tale lands.’
‘Yes there are. You’ll see.’
*
It was the day after the full moon when they saw Toussaint bathed in greenery and sunshine. When they saw the hills, the slopes and the vineyards. The roofs of the castles’ towers glistening after a morning shower.
The view didn’t disappoint. It was stunning. It always was.
‘How beautiful it is,’ said Ciri, enraptured. ‘Oh my! Those castles are like children’s toys . . . Like icing decorations on a birthday cake. It makes me want to lick them!’
‘Architecture by Faramond himself,’ Geralt informed her knowledgeably. ‘Wait till you see the palace and grounds of Beauclair close up.’
‘Palace? We’re going to a palace? Do you know the king here?’
‘Duchess.’
‘Does the duchess,’ she asked sourly, observing him intently under her fringe, ‘have green eyes, perhaps? And short, black hair—?’
‘No.’ He cut her off, looking away. ‘She looks completely different. I don’t know where you got that from—’
‘Leave it, Geralt, will you? What is it about this duchess, then?’
‘As I said, I know her. A little. Not too well and . . . not too close, if you want to know. But I do know the duchess’s consort, or rather a candidate for the duchess’s consort. You do too, Ciri.’
Ciri jabbed Kelpie with a spur, making her dance around the highway.
‘Don’t torment me any longer!’
‘Dandelion.’
‘Dandelion? And the duchess? How come?’
‘It’s a long story. We left him here, at the side of his beloved. We promised to visit him, returning after—’
He fell silent and turned gloomy.
‘You can’t do anything about it,’ Ciri said softly. ‘Don’t torment yourself, Geralt. It’s not your fault.’
Yes it is, he thought. It’s mine. Dandelion’s going to ask. And I’ll have to answer.
Milva. Cahir. Regis. Angoulême.
A sword is a double—edged weapon.
Oh, by the Gods, I’ve had enough of this. Enough. Time I was done with this!
‘Let’s go, Ciri.’
‘In these clothes?’ she croaked. ‘To a palace—?’
‘I don’t see anything wrong with our clothes,’ he cut her off. ‘We aren’t going there to present our credentials. Or to a ball. We can even meet Dandelion in the stables.
‘Anyhow,’ he added, seeing her looking sulky, ‘I’m going to the bank in the town first. I’ll take a little cash out, and there are countless tailors and milliners in the cloth halls in the town square. You can buy what you want and dress as you wish.’
‘Have you got so much cash?’ she tilted her head mischievously.
‘You can buy what you want,’ he repeated. ‘Even ermine. And basilisk-leather slippers. I know a shoemaker who ought to have some of it left in stock.’
‘How did you make so much money?’
‘By killing. Let’s ride, Ciri, and not waste time.’
*
Geralt made a transfer and prepared a letter of credit, received a cheque and some cash in the branch of the Cianfanellis’ bank. He wrote some letters that were to be taken by the express courier service heading over the Yaruga. He politely excused himself from the luncheon the attentive and hospitable banker wanted to entertain him with.
Ciri was waiting in the street, watching the horses. The street, empty a moment earlier, now teemed with people.
‘We must have happened on some feast or other.’ Ciri gestured with her head towards a crowd heading for the town square. ‘A fair, perhaps . . .’
Geralt looked keenly ahead.
‘It’s not a fair.’
‘Ah . . .’ she also looked, standing up in the stirrups. ‘It’s not another—’
‘Execution,’ he confirmed. ‘The most popular amusement since the war. What have we seen so far, Ciri?’
‘Desertion, treason, cowardice in the face of the enemy,’ she quickly recited. ‘And financial cases.’
‘For supplying mouldy hardtack to the army.’ The Witcher nodded. ‘The life of an enterprising merchant is tough in wartime.’
‘They aren’t going to execute a tradesman here.’ Ciri reined back Kelpie, who was already submerged in the crowd as though in a rippling field of corn. ‘Just look, the scaffold’s covered in a cloth, and the executioner has a fresh new hood on. They’ll be executing somebody important, at least a baron. So it probably is cowardice in the face of the enemy.’
‘Toussaint didn’t have an army in the face of any foe.’ Geralt shook his head, ‘No, Ciri, I think it’s economics again. They’re executing somebody for swindles in the trade of their famous wine, the basis of the economy here. Let’s ride on, Ciri. We won’t watch.’
‘Ride on? How exactly?’
Indeed, riding on was impossible. In no time at all they had become stuck in the crowd gathered in the square, and were mired in the throng. There was no chance of their getting to the other side of the square. Geralt swore foully and looked back. Unfortunately, retreat was also impossible, for the wave of people pouring into the square had totally clogged up the street behind them. For a moment the crowd carried them like a river, but the movement stopped when the common folk came up against the serried wall of halberdiers surrounding the scaffold.
‘They’re coming!’ somebody shouted, and the crowd buzzed, swayed and took up the cry. ‘They’re coming!’
The clatter of hooves and the rattle of a wagon faded and was lost amidst the throng’s beelike humming. So they were astonished when a rack wagon pulled by two horses trundled out of a side street. And on it, having difficulty keeping his balance, stood . . .
‘Dandelion . . .’ groaned Ciri.
Geralt suddenly felt bad. Very bad.
‘That’s Dandelion,’ Ciri repeated in an unfamiliar voice. ‘Yes, it’s him.’
It’s unfair, thought the Witcher. It’s one big, bloody injustice. It can’t be like this. It shouldn’t be like this. I know it was stupid and naive to think that anything ever depended on me, that I somehow influenced the fate of this world, or that this world owes me something. I know it was a naive, arrogant opinion . . . But I know it! There’s no need to convince me about it! It doesn’t have to be proved to me! Particularly like this . . .
It’s unfair!
‘It can’t be Dandelion,’ he said hollowly, looking down at Roach’s mane.
‘It is Dandelion,’ Ciri said again. ‘Geralt, we have to do something.’
‘What?’ he asked bitterly. ‘Tell me what.’
Some soldiers pulled Dandelion from the wagon, treating him, however, with astonishing courtesy, without brutality, with positive reverence, the most they were capable of. They untied his hands before the steps leading to the scaffold. Then he nonchalantly scratched his behind and climbed the steps without being urged.
One of the steps suddenly creaked and the railing, made of a rough pole, cracked. Dandelion almost lost his balance.
‘That needs fixing, dammit!’ he yelled. ‘You’ll see, one day somebody will kill themselves on these steps. And that wouldn�
��t be funny.’
Dandelion was intercepted on the scaffolding by two hangman’s assistants in sleeveless leather jerkins. The executioner, as broad in the shoulders as a castle keep, looked at the condemned man through slits in his hood. Beside him stood a character in a sumptuous, though funereally black outfit. He also wore a funereal expression.
‘Good gentlemen and burghers of Beauclair and the surroundings!’ he read thunderously and funereally from an unrolled parchment. ‘It is known that Julian Alfred Pankratz, Viscount de Lettenhove, alias Dandelion—’
‘Pancratts what?’ Ciri whispered a question.
‘—by sentence of the Ducal High Court has been found guilty of all the crimes, misdeeds and offences of which he is accused, namely: lèse-majesté, treason, and furthermore sullying the dignity of the noble estate through perjury, lampooning, calumny and slander, also roistering and indecency as well as debauchery, in other words harlotry. Thus the tribunal has adjudged to punish Viscount Julian et cetera, primo: by defacing his coat of arms, by painting diagonal black lines on his escutcheon. Secundo: by the confiscation of his property, lands, estates, copses, forests and castles . . .’
‘Castles,’ groaned the Witcher. ‘What castles?’
Dandelion snorted insolently. The expression on his face demonstrated emphatically that he was heartily amused by the confiscation announced by the tribunal.
‘Tertio: the chief penalty. Anna Henrietta, reigning over us as Her Enlightenment the Duchess of Toussaint and Lady of Beauclair, has deigned to commute the punishment provided for the above-mentioned crimes of being dragged behind horses, broken on the wheel and quartered, to beheading by axe. May justice be done!’
The crowd raised several incoherent shouts. The women standing in the front row began to hypocritically wail and falsely lament. Children were lifted up or carried on shoulders so as not to miss any of the spectacle. The executioner’s assistants rolled a stump into the centre of the scaffold and covered it with a napkin. There was something of a commotion, since it turned out someone had swiped the wicker basket for the severed head, but another one was quickly found.
Four ragged street urchins had spread out a kerchief beneath the scaffold to catch blood on it. There was great demand for that kind of souvenir, you could earn good money from them.
‘Geralt.’ Ciri didn’t raise her lowered head. ‘We have to do something . . .’
He didn’t answer.
‘I wish to address the townspeople,’ Dandelion proudly declared.
‘Make it short, Viscount.’
The poet stood on the edge of the scaffold and raised his hands. The crowd murmured and fell silent.
‘Hey, people,’ called Dandelion. ‘What cheer? How go you?’
‘Ah, muddling along,’ muttered someone, after a long silence, in a row towards the back.
‘That’s good,’ the poet nodded. ‘I’m greatly content. Well, now we may begin.’
‘Master executioner,’ the funereal one said with artificial emphasis. ‘Do your duty!’
The executioner went closer, kneeled down before the condemned man in keeping with the ancient custom, and lowered his hooded head.
‘Forgive me, good fellow,’ he requested gravely.
‘Me?’ asked Dandelion in astonishment. ‘Forgive you?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Not a chance.’
‘Eh?’
‘I’ll never forgive you. Why should I? Have you heard him, the prankster! He’s about to cut my head off, and I’m supposed to forgive him? Are you mocking me or what? At a time like this?’
‘How can you, sir?’ asked the executioner, saddened. ‘For there’s a law . . . And a custom . . . The condemned man must forgive the executioner in advance. Good sir! Expunge my guilt, absolve my sin . . .’
‘No.’
‘No?’
‘No!’
‘I won’t behead him,’ the executioner declared gloomily, getting up from his knees. ‘He must forgive me, otherwise there’s nothing doing.’
‘Lord Viscount.’ The funereal clerk caught Dandelion by the elbow. ‘Don’t make things difficult. People have gathered, they’re waiting . . . Forgive him. He’s asking politely, isn’t he?’
‘I won’t forgive him, and that’s that!’
‘Master executioner!’ The funereal man approached the executioner. ‘Chop off his head without being forgiven, eh? I’ll see you right . . .’
Without a word, the executioner held out a hand a large as a frying pan. The funereal man sighed, reached into a pouch and tipped some coins out into his hand. The executioner looked at them for a while, then clenched his fist. The eyes in the slits of his hood flashed malevolently.
‘Very well,’ he said, putting the money away and turning towards the poet. ‘Kneel down then, Mr Stubborn. Put your head on the block, Mr Spiteful. I can also be spiteful, if I want to. I’ll take two blows to behead you. Three, if I’m lucky.’
‘I absolve you!’ howled Dandelion. ‘I forgive you!’
‘Thank you.’
‘Since he’s forgiven you,’ said the funereal clerk gloomily, ‘give me back my money.’
The executioner turned around and raised the axe.
‘Step aside, noble sir,’ he said forebodingly in a dull voice. ‘Don’t get in the way of the tool. For where heads are being chopped off, if you get too close you might lose an ear.’
The clerk stepped back suddenly and almost fell off the scaffold.
‘Like this?’ Dandelion kneeled down and stretched his neck on the block. ‘Master? Hey, master?’
‘What?’
‘You were joking, weren’t you? You’ll behead me with one blow? With one swing? Well?’
The executioner’s eyes flashed.
‘Let it be a surprise,’ he snapped portentously.
The crowd suddenly swayed, yielding before a rider bursting into the square on a foaming horse.
‘Stop!’ yelled the rider, waving a large roll of parchment hung with red seals. ‘Stop the execution! By ducal order! Out of my way! Stop the execution! I bear a pardon for the condemned man.’
‘Not again?’ the executioner snarled, lowering the already raised axe. ‘Another reprieve? It’s starting to get boring.’
‘Mercy! Mercy!’ bellowed the crowd. The matrons in the front row began to lament even louder. A lot of people, mainly youngsters, whistled and moaned in disapproval.
‘Quieten down, good gentlemen and burghers!’ yelled the funereal man, unrolling the parchment. ‘This is the will of Her Grace Anna Henrietta! In her boundless goodness, in celebration of the peace treaty, which, as rumour has it, was signed in the city of Cintra, Her Grace pardons Viscount Julian Alfred Pankratz de Lettenhove, alias Dandelion, and his misdeeds, and waives his execution—’
‘Darling Little Weasel,’ said Dandelion, smiling broadly.
‘—ordering at the same time that the above-mentioned Viscount Julian Pankratz et cetera without delay doth leave the capital and borders of the Duchy of Toussaint and never return, since he offends Her Grace, and Her Grace can no longer countenance him! You are free to go, Viscount.’
‘And my property?’ yelled Dandelion. ‘Eh? You can keep my chattels, copses, forests and castles, but give me back, sod the lot of you, my lute, my horse Pegasus, a hundred and forty talars and eighty halers, my raccoon-lined cloak, my ring—’
‘Shut up!’ shouted Geralt, jostling the fulminating and reluctantly parting crowd with his horse. ‘Shut up, get down and come here, you blockhead! Ciri, clear the way! Dandelion! Do you hear me?’
‘Geralt? Is that you?’
‘Don’t ask, just get down! Over here! Leap onto my horse!’
They forced their way through the throng and galloped down the narrow street. Ciri first and Geralt and Dandelion on Roach behind her.
‘Why the hurry?’ said the bard behind the Witcher’s back. ‘No one’s following us.’
‘For now. Your duchess likes to change her mind and
suddenly cancel what she’s already decided. Come clean; did you know about the pardon?’
‘No, no I didn’t,’ murmured Dandelion. ‘But, I confess I was counting on it. Little Weasel is a darling and has a very kind heart.’
‘Enough of that bloody “Little Weasel”, dammit. You’ve only just wriggled out of lèse-majesté, do you want to fall back into recidivism?’
The troubadour fell silent. Ciri reined back Kelpie and waited for them. When they caught up she looked at Dandelion and wiped away a tear.
‘Oh, you . . .’ she said. ‘You . . . Pancratts . . .’
‘Let’s go,’ urged the Witcher. ‘Let’s leave this town and the borders of this enchanting duchy. While we still can.’
*
A ducal messenger caught up with them almost at the very border of Toussaint, from where one could already see Gorgon Mountain. He was pulling behind him a saddled Pegasus and was carrying Dandelion’s lute, cloak and ring. He ignored the question about the one hundred and forty talars and eighty halers. He listened stony-faced to the bard’s request to give the duchess a kiss.
They rode up the Sansretour, which was now a tiny, fast-flowing stream. They bypassed Belhaven and camped in the Newi valley. In a place the Witcher and the bard remembered.
Dandelion held out for a very long time. He didn’t ask any questions.
But he finally had to be told everything.
And be accompanied in his silence. In the dreadful, pregnant silence that fell after the telling, and festered like a sore.
*
At noon the next day they were at the Slopes, outside Riedbrune. Peace and order reigned all around. The people were sanguine and helpful. It felt safe.
Gibbets, heavy with hanging corpses, stood everywhere.
They steered clear of the town, heading towards Dol Angra.
‘Dandelion!’ Geralt had only just noticed what he should have noticed much earlier. ‘Your priceless tube! Your centuries of poetry! The messenger didn’t have them. They were left in Toussaint!’
‘They were.’ The bard nodded indifferently. ‘In Little Weasel’s wardrobe, under a pile of dresses, knickers and corsets. And may they lie there forever.’
The Saga of the Witcher Page 202