Later that night, as the castle bustled with preparations for a departure the following noon, Alyce and Zoë conferred together in low tones while they waited for Marie to come in.
«You know she's with Sé», Alyce whispered, slightly scandalized. «Please God she doesn't do anything stupid».
«She loves him», Zoë said simply. «I gather that he loves her, too. He's going off to battle. Sometimes common sense goes out the window».
«Well, it mustn't, if you're the sister of a future duke», Alyce muttered.
A fumbling at the door announced the arrival of said sister, looking flushed and happy, giggling as she closed the door behind her.
«And where have you been?» Alyce demanded, though she kept her voice low.
«Well, I might have been in Paradise with Sé, if Lady Jessamy hadn't come along when she did», Marie said pertly, flouncing onto the bed with them.
«Mares, you didn't!» Alyce gasped.
«We didn't do what we both wanted to do, but it wasn't for want of — well, wanting to», Marie replied. She hugged her arms across her breasts and sighed.
«Oh, Alyce, it's so unfair! Sometimes I want him so badly, I think I'll die if I can't have him. We were only kissing at first. We'd found a quiet corner out in the cloister walk, well away from prying eyes. But then he started touching me, ever so gently, and I got all quivery inside. It felt… wonderful! My knees started to go all wobbly, and…»
«Tell me that's when Lady Jessamy came along!» Alyce begged, hanging on her every word.
Laughing aloud, Marie shook her head and threw an arm around both of them.
«No, he started fumbling with the laces on his breeches then, and that's when Lady Jessamy came along!»
«No!» Zoë breathed, as Alyce rolled her eyes heavenward.
«Sadly, yes», Marie said. «Had she not come when she did, I'm not sure what might have happened — though I have heard it said that there are many ways that a man and a maid may pleasure one another…»
Both her companions smothered groans at that, in a mixture of sympathy and envy, but the telling had exhausted all three of them. Only a little longer did they talk, before Zoë betook herself to her own bed and the sisters settled down to try to sleep.
Next morning saw many a tearful good-bye as the king's expedition assembled in the castle yard, with wives and children and sweethearts gathered to bid them Godspeed. Sir Sé Trelawney, sitting his horse beside the king, restrained himself from too effusive a farewell to the demoiselles de Corwyn or their friend Zoë Morgan, whose father also would ride with the expedition, merely bending to salute each proffered hand with a chaste kiss.
But more than one sharp-eyed lady of the queen's household noted that his lips lingered on the hand of the younger sister of his lord, and several cast calculating glances after Marie as she and Alyce left the yard with Zoë, noting how the three then scurried to a vantage point on one of the west-facing battlements, where they might watch the column's progress southward along the river road.
The king's party took ship in Desse, as hoped, sailing uneventfully down the River Eirian and thence around the head of Carthmoor, arriving in Coroth harbor in mid-August.
Young Ahern met them at the door to Coroth Castle's great hall, walking with the aid of a stick, but on his feet to welcome his king. Nor had he been idle in the fortnight since the raid on Kiltuin.
Immediately upon hearing the news, he had directed his Lendour regents to echo the complaint already lodged with the court of Torenth by his regents in Coroth — the decision of a mature and astute young man, and one that had been heartily endorsed by his council. He then had taken horse with Sir Jovett Chandos and some thirty men and ridden directly to Kiltuin, to inspect the damage there and speak with some of the survivors. He had found half a dozen of his Corwyn captains and fifty men there before him, doing their best to ascertain just what had happened.
By the time the king arrived in Coroth, Ahern had assumed decisive leadership with both his councils of regents and had begun orchestrating a diplomatic exchange on which Donal himself could not have improved. In fact, his respective regents had become sufficiently confident of their young lord's judgment that they were beginning to function as advisors rather than regents: a state of affairs not at all to the liking of the Bishop of Corwyn, who pointed out at the first opportunity that Ahern was yet a full eight years from achieving the age at which a Deryni might lawfully exercise the full authority of a ducal title.
In light of Ahern's undoubted ability and loyalty, Donal found himself mostly unconcerned over this technical breach of the law, but he did promise the bishop that he would somewhat rein back his fledgling duke, for he did not want to precipitate an incident with the religious authorities. Shortly after his arrival, Donal met privately with young Ahern for nearly an hour, then invited the Corwyn council to join them.
Not that his reaction was all the bishop could have hoped for. Assuring them that he could find no fault with anything that had been done, the king confessed himself obliged to make it dear that proprieties must be maintained, and that their young lord must not presume to present himself as duke in fact. Later, however, he observed to Lord Hambert that Ahern, at seventeen, seemed easily capable of exercising the full authority of his ducal rank… were he not Deryni.
Meanwhile, the flurry of exchanges between Corwyn and Torenth was yielding interesting results. In noting the protestations of outrage on the part of Corwyn, the chancery of Nimur of Torenth, in turn, had acknowledged (in view of the numerous affidavits of witness from Kiltuin) that yes, it appeared that subjects of Torenth might possibly have strayed across the border area adjoining Kiltuin, and perhaps had been guilty of over-exuberance regarding insults offered by the inhabitants of said town.
But it was flatly denied that King Nimur's sons might have been among the culprits; and certainly, no reparations would be forthcoming. The correspondence on this matter was already voluminous.
«It appears that King Nimur means to smother the matter in paperwork», Donal remarked, when he had gone over the exchanges with Ahern and his council. «I don't suppose it's possible that the witnesses might have been mistaken — that it wasn't the Torenthi princes after all?»
«Not unless someone was impersonating them», Lord Hambert said with a snort. «The local priest in Kiltuin is something of an armorist; he knows what he saw. Most of the men wore Torenthi livery — they made no attempt to conceal who they were. But he was quite clear that two of them wore variations on the Torenthi royal arms. He's convinced they were two of Nimur's sons».
«And you trust his judgment?» Donal asked.
«I do, Sire. Furthermore, one of the ravaged women drew out the device worn by the man who defiled her. She got rather a better look at it than she would have wished. The drawing is there on the bottom of the stack».
Nodding, Donal leafed through the sheaf of parchment depositions and cast an eye over the last one in the stack, noting the somewhat shaky sketch of the Furstán hart on a roundel, differenced with a bordure. In a somewhat more confident hand, someone had tricked in the colors: the tawny field, the leaping black hart against a white roundel, the white border denoting cadency, though the king could not recall which particular Furstán owned the bordure charged with five black crowns.
«Well, he certainly appears to have been presenting himself as a Furstán», Donal observed. «That alone should get him dealt with by his own folk — unless, of course, that's exactly what he was».