He must have slept, for he jerked in surprise when the cell door opened and a guard threw in another miserable loaf. He still had some left from the last one. They weren’t trying to starve him, anyway. Was that any favor to him? Again, he wasn’t so sure.
He listened for Ulric Skakki’s sly tones and Trasamund’s bellow outside the door. It wasn’t that he wanted them mewed up in here with him. But he did expect them to come after him. When they didn’t, he wondered what had happened to them – what had gone wrong with them, in other words.
He’d been there for seventeen loaves – another way to count the time – when a guard looked in through the grate and said, “C’mere, Thyssen. You’ve got a visitor.”
“A visitor?” Hamnet’s voice sounded rusty even to himself. He hadn’t used it much lately. He also sounded astonished – and he was. He had trouble imagining any of the travelers talking their way down here without ending up prisoners themselves.
“That’s right,” the guard said. “You want to talk or not?”
“I’m coming.” Count Hamnet hurried to the door. Somebody thought enough of him to come down here. That had to be good news, didn’t it? He eagerly peered out.
Gudrid looked back through the grate at him.
She wore attar of roses, the same scent she’d brought with her when she traveled beyond the Glacier the year before. The flowery sweetness seemed even more incongruous against the stenches in the dungeon than it had up on the frozen steppe.
“Hello, Hamnet,” his former wife said. Her red-painted mouth stretched into a broad, happy smile. “So good to see you where you belong at last.”
“I don’t know what I did to deserve you,” he answered. “Whatever it is, by God, I’m paying for it now.”
“I thought the very same thing when we were together,” Gudrid said.
He’d thought she loved him. He’d always known he loved her. Part of him still did, and always would. That only made her betrayal more bitter. He tried to show she couldn’t wound him – a lying, and a losing, battle. “Are you enjoying yourself? Stare all you please,” he said.
“I should throw peanuts, the way I would at monkeys in cages,” she said, smiling wider yet. “What would you do for a peanut, Hamnet?”
He told her where she could put a peanut. He told her where she could put a year’s worth of peanuts, and how well they would fit there, and why. She only laughed. Why not? She was on the outside looking in. He was on the inside looking out. It made all the difference in the world.
“Did Eyvind Torfinn tell you I was here?” he asked.
That only made Gudrid laugh again. “Don’t be sillier than you can help, darling. Dear Eyvind knows, yes, because I told him. But Sigvat told me.”
She sounded smug as a cat in a creamery. She no doubt had the right to sound that way, too. Hamnet Thyssen used a shrug for a shield. “He can say what he wants. He can do what he wants. He’s the Emperor, after all.”
“Oh, you do know that!” Gudrid exclaimed in mock surprise. “He didn’t seem to think you did.”
“Well, there is one thing,” Hamnet said. “If the Rulers overrun Raumsdalia, he won’t stay Emperor for long.”
Gudrid sneered. “How likely do you think that is?”
“You were up there. You saw the Rulers last year. You saw more of some of them than I did, by God.” Count Hamnet wasn’t quite sure Gudrid had slept with their chief; he hadn’t watched them in the act, for which he was duly grateful. But he was sure enough, and that was the kind of thing Gudrid did. For good measure, he added, “They’ve spent the time since last winter smashing up the Bizogots.”
His former wife didn’t bother denying anything. She did ask, “Is Trasamund all right?”
“He’s not hurt, but his clan’s wrecked. He’s down here in Nidaros, too.” Hamnet Thyssen didn’t think he was giving anything away with that news.
All Gudrid said was, “Ah.” Then she asked, “And your new barbarous beloved?”
“Liv is here, too.”
Count Hamnet didn’t think he revealed anything by how he said that. He must have been wrong, though, for Gudrid pounced – or rather, burst out laughing. “So she’s gone and left you, has she? Well, that didn’t take long.”
How did she know? How could she tell? Whatever the answer was, her instincts were unfailing. “Yes, she’s left me,” Hamnet said. “She doesn’t torment me for the fun of it, anyhow.”
“Don’t worry about it, sweetheart. Sooner or later, she will.” With that casual reassurance, Gudrid blew him a kiss and swept out of the dungeon. A guard followed her. Hamnet watched them as far as the grate allowed, which wasn’t very. Then, shaking his head, he went back to the pallet and lay down again.
The guard spoke to him: “You were married to that gal?”
“Afraid so,” Hamnet said.
“I was married to her, I’d be afraid, too,” the guard said. “She’s nothing but trouble.”
“I found that out. A little late, but I did,” Hamnet Thyssen said.
“She why you’re shut up here?”
“No.” Hamnet shook his head. “I found out about the Emperor a little late, too.”
“Here, now. You can’t talk like that,” the guard said. “You do, and -”
“I know. I know. It’ll be even worse than it is already,” Hamnet said wearily. “But you asked. I tried to tell you the truth.”
“That’s what they all say.” The guard didn’t want to listen. And he didn’t have to listen, either. He walked away instead.
What will they do to me now? Hamnet wondered. He knew how it could get worse, all right. They could stop feeding him. They could stop giving him water. Or they could just grab him and haul him off to the torturer. If enough of them came in, he hadn’t a prayer of fighting them off.
They didn’t do any of those things. The loaves and the water kept coming. He stayed in the cell. . and stayed, and stayed. That might not have been worse, but it was bad enough and then some.
“You! Thyssen!” A guard with a raspy voice barked at him through the grate.
“What now?” Count Hamnet asked. Any change in routine worried him. Silence, being ignored, was routine. Getting noticed? He didn’t expect good news.
“Somebody here wants to talk to you,” the guard said.
Do I want to talk to Gudrid again? Hamnet wondered. After what had to be days of doing nothing, even a quarrel with his former wife might seem entertaining. If that wasn’t madness, he didn’t know what would be. All the same, it was so. He got to his feet and walked up to the door.
Seeing him approach, the guard nodded. “Here’s the bum,” the man said, and stepped to one side.
Hamnet braced himself to start snarling at Gudrid again. But those were not her aging but still attractive – still beautiful – features on the other side of the grate. Instead, Hamnet Thyssen found himself face-to-face with Earl Eyvind Torfinn.
Gudrid’s husband. Gudrid’s husband who hadn’t, or acted as if he hadn’t, the slightest idea how many times she’d put horns on him.
“I grieve to see you like this, Your Grace,” the scholarly noble said.
“I’m not too happy about it myself, Your Splendor,” Count Hamnet answered. “Did Gudrid finally tell you I was here?”
Earl Eyvind didn’t notice that finally. He shook his head. His jowls wobbled. He’d regained the comfortable plumpness he’d enjoyed before his journey to the north the year before. Scratching at the edge of his whiskers, he said, “No. I don’t think she knows you’re here.”
That only proved the right hand didn’t know what the left was doing – nothing new where Gudrid was concerned. “Well, how the demon did you find out I was stuck here, then?” Hamnet demanded.