“You left out the reason why Stayne has taken so against you.”
“Because,” said I, “a great lord needs reason in nothing he does.”
This they found amusing. “Is Stayne still after your life?” asked Ruthven.
“I have no knowledge one way or another, but I am sure he does not wish me well.”
“Your bodyguard here is being disbanded,” Ruthven pointed out. “You might wish to take care.”
Lipton clapped me on the shoulder. “The Cannoneers will look after him!” he said. “Whoever wants him will have to face the great guns!”
After bidding my friends farewell, I went out into the square where the soldiers waited, and I shook many by the hand, and spoke with all those who desired to talk to me. I wished them all a safe journey home, or to their next posting, and afterward went back to the baron’s house, and gazing out the windows at the pretty houses glowing gold in the noon sun, tried to decide where next my life would take me. For it seemed that since I had left Ethlebight, I had been blown from one course to the other as if by a perverse wind, and if there was any sense to it, I could not find it. Yet neither could I find a course I strongly wished to take, and so I dealt with whatever business came to hand.
The next few weeks, I spent with the documents I’d acquired when I had looted the homes of the proscribed. I had deeds to properties, and I surveyed as many as were within a few hours’ ride, and decided to keep some of them. I hired a man to manage them for me, and a lawyer to help me sell those properties in which I had no interest. I also held mortgages and documents relating to loans, and these I investigated through the lawyer, kept some, and sold others to bankers. There was a branch of the Oberlin Fraters Bank in the city, and I arranged for any income to be deposited there, and investigated the means by which I might transfer the money, by note, to another branch.
While I thus occupied myself, it was announced that Priscus, Loretto’s heir, was on his way to Howel to claim his bride. The marriage contract had been made with the promise that Priscus would lead an army against Clayborne, a promise that Priscus had failed in every way to fill. Even though he had done nothing, apparently Berlauda was obliged to marry him anyway.
The city was soon bustling with preparations for welcoming Priscus and his entourage, and Lipton and his artillery were sent out to practice their royal salutes. I decided I might as well stay for the celebration, as a great festival seemed a fine antidote to the great miseries of war.
Yet there were reminders of the war almost daily, for following Berlauda came her new Attorney General, Lord Thistlegorm, with a company of judges to sit on special treason courts. Anyone who had sworn allegiance to Clayborne, or to the infant Emelin VI, was found guilty, as were a number of those for whom the evidence was far less direct. Informers haunted the courts, and rumor had it they were paid by the conviction. Even Clayborne’s childhood nurse was brought before the bench, and found guilty of inciting treason on the part of her infant charge.
As an apprentice lawyer, I knew that the treason laws were severe, and that guilty verdicts were all but inevitable in many cases, but that such verdicts were intended to be mitigated by the monarch’s prerogative of mercy. Berlauda had the authority to pardon any of those convicted, or to alter the sentence to one less severe; but she almost never intervened in these cases, and the result was executions nearly every day. A forest of pikes sprouted around Clayborne, each with its grisly fruit.
The remains of Clayborne’s army were tried by a military court headed by the Knight Marshal. As they had all been found in arms against the Queen, the verdict was never in doubt. One in ten, chosen by lot, was to be executed, and the survivors branded on the cheek with a T for Treason, after which they would be enslaved for ten years, to work in the Queen’s silver mines in the Minnith Peaks, to maintain harbors, erect buildings, and harvest timber from the royal forests. Few, I guessed, would survive this hard labor.
Berlauda was beginning her reign with a massacre. I wondered what Priscus would think, strolling up to the Hall of Justice to find himself face-to-face with the decaying, eyeless evidence of his bride’s implacable will.
If he had any sense, he would jump back on his boat and row for home as fast as he could.
Priscus was sailing in a galley along the Dordelle from Bretlynton Head, but ahead of him came the Duke and Duchess of Roundsilver across the Cordillerie from Longfirth, and bringing with them Roundsilver’s Players to declaim the patriotic pageant of The Red Horse in the old Aekoi theater. I paid a call on their graces when I saw they’d arrived, and was invited one afternoon to what is called a banquet. A banquet is not a meal, for no meat is served, but instead nuts and sweets and cakes were laid on a board for our pleasure, and wine was served by the steward at the cup-board. Blackwell was present, but he had come down with a quinsy on the journey, and he now wrapped his throat with flannel and could barely speak. He ate nothing, drank only tisanes, and was as great a picture of misery as you could imagine. The duchess fluttered about him to make sure he was comfortable, the kindest nurse in all the world.
The duke at one point took me aside, and said, “You wrote that you were leaving Selford, but we were greatly surprised to hear that you had joined the army.”
“I surprised myself in that very choice,” said I. “But the army and I have now parted, and I stand before you an ordinary subject of the Crown, one who no longer rises early to the sound of trumpets, and can sleep as late as he pleases.”
“You will want to hear news of Lord Stayne,” said the duke. “The Chancellor and I contrived to send him a warning, that any further pursuit of vengeance by him would not be viewed favorably by her majesty. I know not whether he heeded the warning, but perhaps in the last months he has had time to reflect, and come to a more civil attitude in the matter.”
“I thank your grace for your kind intervention,” said I.
“You may also wish to know that Lady Stayne is delivered of a son,” said the duke, with rather more care than usual, for he actually pronounced the r in “delivered.” “Stayne has an heir, and perhaps he will refrain from any action that might tend to place his son’s rights in jeopardy. Certainly, if Stayne were attainted for violence, his son would lose all property and titles.”
I considered that this was as likely a settlement as I was ever to receive, and I said so. “And how is Lady Stayne?” I asked. “For she is blameless in all of this, so far as I can tell.”
“Her ladyship survived the birth,” said the duke. “More than that I cannot say, but she is in the bloom of youth, and I’m sure cannot help but thrive.”
“I cannot help but be glad,” I said. I thought that perhaps we were speaking in a kind of code, the duke to reassure me of Amalie’s health without acknowledging in speech the interest that I might have in her well-being. I was grateful for the knowledge, yet I hoped there was no great speculation abroad concerning my connection with Amalie, for Stayne’s feud had no doubt caused enough interest on the part of the court.
Priscus arrived two days later, his grand galley sweeping up the Dordelle to the ponderous beat of kettledrums. The population thronged the green river-lawns to see him, but I did rather better, for I went to the boat-house of the Baron of Havre-le-Creag, fitted out the baron’s galley, and crewed it with some of the Cannoneers drawn from those who would not be firing salutes on that day. So, we swept out very grandly onto the lake in a boat of bright blue, trimmed with white and accented with gold leaf, and followed the prince as he approached the water-gardens around the palace. The prince himself I viewed through my spyglass, and I found him swarthy and dark-haired, with both hair and beard cropped shorter than was the current fashion in Duisland. He had a vast, beaky nose, like the prow of a ship. He wore a glittering doublet of royal purple, slashed to allow the white satin of his shirt to gleam through the openings, and a conical hat with two feathers, the red and gold of Duisland, as a compliment to his bride. He wore a short cape of white samite trimmed with purple.