“Come in,” the bishop said as soon as he saw Oliver. He took Oliver’s arm and pulled him into the cottage.
The bishop locked the door before he ushered Oliver into a small study. The windows faced the palace, and the bishop quickly closed the curtains. Then he breathed a large sigh and sat down behind his desk.
“Please have a seat,” he said, indicating a comfortable chair across from his desk. “I would offer you something … but my house keeper is in the kitchen just now, and I don’t think she should see you.”
“That’s all right,” Oliver croaked, sinking down into the chair.
He’d been walking for three days without stopping for more than a few minutes, and he was exhausted. Almost too exhausted to eat, though he wouldn’t turn down a drink. His throat was so dry his thanks had come out as a croak. He’d thought about stealing a horse, but the only horses to be stolen in the forest had been the grand duchess’s, and the risk of being captured was too great. What food he’d had had run out that morning, and once he’d reached the gates of Bruch, he’d rushed straight to the bishop’s house without even stopping at a public well to drink.
The bishop noticed his dusty-sounding voice and poured him a glass of water from a decanter on the desk. “That I can help with,” he said with a small smile. “It’s what else you need that worries me.”
Oliver downed the water before answering. “Well, Your Grace,” he said when he could speak clearly. “I can assure you that I’m not here on my own behalf, to beg you to petition the king for my release.”
Bishop Schelker looked at him with amusement. “The question of your release is rather moot, since you can come and go as you please with that particular item.” His gaze sharpened on the dull purple cloak, which Oliver had laid over the arm of his chair. “Which belongs to Crown Prince Galen, if I’m not mistaken.”
“Yes, Your Grace,” Oliver said. “I wear it at his insistence, I promise.”
The bishop relaxed. “I’m inclined to believe you. It’s the sort of thing Galen would do. I suppose you were instructed to stay out of harm’s way while Kelling and I soothed the king?”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
“And yet you are here.”
“Yes, Your Grace,” Oliver said again. “Prince Galen sent me. He needs help.”
The bishop sat forward. “What sort of help?”
Oliver rolled the glass between his hands, not sure why he was ner vous. The bishop hadn’t been surprised by his sudden appearance. He had readily believed Galen would loan Oliver the invisibility cloak. This seemed like one thing too many to ask a man of the Church to believe, however.
But it was for Petunia …
“Galen said that it’s time, and that you were to come with me. He also needs all the silver bullets you have. Also daggers. And there is a list of herbs.…” Oliver trailed off.
The bishop was looking at him with his face completely blank. Not confused, not alarmed, just blank. Oliver wondered if the bishop had any idea what he was saying. Oliver didn’t know where to find the herbs, let alone bullets made from silver, so he’d been hoping that the bishop would understand everything that the crown prince had asked for. But the way the bishop was looking at Oliver made him wonder if he was about to ring for help in restraining a madman.
“Anything else?” Bishop Schelker’s voice was as carefully blank as his face.
“He said that you were to … summon … the others.”
“The others?”
“The others,” Oliver said firmly.
“Why are you doing this?” The bishop folded his hands on the desk blotter and looked at Oliver. “The palace is right there. His Majesty has just returned from the fortress, which calmed him only slightly. If I choose to raise the alarm, you will be executed tomorrow morning. Why did you come all this way to carry this very cryptic message? One which, might I add, Galen could have sent in a letter.”
“I—I— Well, you see—” Oliver stammered for a moment. He looked at the bishop’s earnest face. He remembered that the bishop had been the one to take his side that day in the council room. Oliver’s heart tried to pound its way out of his ribcage, but he ignored it. “I’m in love with Petunia,” he announced. “And I want to help her.”
Bishop Schelker got to his feet. Oliver scrambled to follow, and his tired legs nearly buckled and dumped him on the floor. He steadied himself on the edge of the bishop’s desk, but Schelker didn’t seem to notice.
The bishop took a key from his pocket and opened a cabinet behind his desk. Oliver wondered if he was going to pull out a weapon or perhaps restraints. Instead the older man took out several small knitted bags on long cords, some dried herbs, and a stack of pasteboard boxes and laid them carefully on the desk.
Schelker leaned his hands on either side of the strange pile he had made and looked sternly at Oliver for a long time. Oliver sank back down in his seat, tired and uncomfortable and not sure which was worse.
“I have known Petunia a long time,” the bishop said. “All her life, in fact. I have known all the princesses since birth. They are as close to me as my own daughters would have been, had I married.
“I was a young priest when Queen Maude came from Breton with her bevy of attendants, of which your mother was one.” He merely nodded at Oliver’s surprise. “Lady Emily Ellsworth, a lovely girl. They were beautiful, and rather silly, and everyone loved them, myself included. We Westfalians can be a grim people, but they brought life and joy to the court. I was there when your father and mother defied their parents and eloped.
“I would have helped your mother after your father’s death, if she had only come to me. We were all devastated by the loss of Maude, and by the effects of the war. But still, if she had come to me I would have tried.”
“I’m … sorry,” Oliver said.
He didn’t really know what he was. Confused, mostly. But anger and anxiety warred inside him as well. What was the bishop getting at?
“It isn’t your fault,” said Bishop Schelker, as though surprised that Oliver would feel the need to apologize. “We each make our own choices. That’s what I’m trying to say. Your parents chose their path, and Gregor has chosen his. And you, born an earl, trapped by the choices of others, chose not to flee, not to give up, but to take care of your people the only way you could. But now you are making new choices, to confess of your crimes, though apparently not to take the punishment for them—”
Oliver started to protest, but the bishop held up a hand to stop him.
“I understand why,” Schelker said. “Of course I do! What man can say he wants to be executed? And you wish to protect a beautiful princess, with whom you have fallen in love. But do you understand how dire the situation is? Her life and the lives of her sisters are hanging in the balance. You yourself risk death if you choose this path.”
“I don’t care,” Oliver said. He stood up and faced the bishop. “I don’t care! I love Petunia, and this is what I’m choosing, right here and now.”
“I like this boy, Michael,” said a voice from behind Oliver. “He knows when to hold his tongue and when to speak. A valuable quality in the young.”
Oliver lurched to his feet and spun around. The bishop’s house keeper was standing in the doorway of the study. She was dressed in a ragged blue gown with a blue shawl around her thin shoulders and looked like she was nearly a hundred years old. She smiled toothlessly at Oliver, but then her sharp eyes saw the purple cape on the chair.
“My cloak!” She stepped around Oliver with much greater speed than he would have given her credit for and snatched up the cloak, inspecting it with narrow eyes. “Still in good condition, I see, despite having been who-knows-where.”
Oliver’s fingers itched to snatch the cloak back from the old woman, but he didn’t want to antagonize her. If she sent word to the palace, Oliver would be dead by noon.