“My grandfather taught me this,” said Radele, straightening the man’s tangled clothes and nudging him toward the stable door. “It’s designed especially for those who have dangerous mouths.”
Without so much as a word or a glance, the man stumbled away, straw sticking up from his rumpled hair and clothes as if he were a scarecrow come to life. Paulo and I followed as far as the stable door, watching as the man walked into the busy lane and halted uncertainly. A woman bumped into him. He staggered, but stayed upright. And then a wagon narrowly missed knocking him flat. Soon he was being brushed from one place to another like a splinter of driftwood floating on the tide.
“What have you done, Radele?” I said, uneasy. “We should have questioned him, found out what he heard, what he was after… ”
Radele stood at my shoulder, arms crossed, his face sober. “It would have taken us three days to sort out his lies. This is much better. Your secrets will be quite safe. Unless he can recite a list of names he has no possible reason to know, he’ll be able to tell no one anything about what he’s heard. And you needn’t trouble yourself about him. He’ll remember how to eat and drink, just not much beyond that. My family is very good at these things.”
“Shit,” said Paulo, quietly.
In slightly less earthy terms, I echoed his sentiments.
“We must leave this city, madam,” said Radele. “You’ve seen the risk.”
“We’ll set out for Verdillon the moment my meeting with King Evard is done. And, Radele, I thank you again for protecting us, but what you did here… I can’t think the Prince would approve.”
“Your safety is imperative. The Prince was most emphatic.”
“But in this world some things are not permissible for even the best of reasons. Some things are not right in any world.”
Radele dropped his hands to his sides with an exasperated sigh.
Leaving Montevial and its poisonous atmosphere behind us felt like walking out of prison. We abandoned our disguises. Paulo had sold the pony trap and his extra horses, and we rode our own mounts through the southern gates of the city in early afternoon. Only after a wide detour did we circle northward toward Windham. The shadows were long when we first caught sight of the towers rising above the leafy sea of its vast parkland. A host of chittering blackbirds heralded our approach from the spreading beech and lime trees that lined the road.
Windham’s graceful towers symbolized everything joyous in my girlhood. For a girl of seventeen, they had represented the stimulating company and unending entertainment so at odds with sober Comigor. For a naive young woman of one and twenty, romantic encounters with Martin’s mysterious and charming protégé. For a worldly matron of five and twenty, a haven of friendship, the one place Karon and I could go where there need be no secrecy, no deceit, and no fear. Windham had been the most beautiful place I knew, welcoming the wide vistas of the world through its tall windows, just as its master welcomed the vast landscape of ideas into his great heart. How my cousin would have relished our strange adventures.
A little way into the park, just beyond iron gates that hung bent and broken from rusted hinges, sat a brick gatehouse where the housekeeper and head grounds-keeper had once lived. Though its windows and doors gaped, its wood trim had splintered and peeled bare of paint, and vines had overgrown the front stoop and garden wall, the shell of the gatehouse remained intact. We halted at the weedy semicircle of the carriage park just in front of it.
“If everything looks safe enough when Radele returns from his reconnoiter, he and Gerick will remain hidden here,” I told the three of them. “I want Paulo patrolling outside the walls. The king will have attendants and bodyguards, but I would expect them to be a small number and remain in the courtyard in front of the main house when he enters the garden. Anything beyond that, and I want to know about it.”
“There’s fresh tracks all over,” said Paulo. “A number of people have been here today.”
“I’d expect nothing less,” I said. “And very likely ten spies along the road watched us ride in. But if he brings in a large party, or if they move to surround the house and gardens, or do anything that looks remotely suspicious, before, during, or after the king’s arrival, Paulo, you’re to warn Radele. And, Radele, you will get Gerick away, using whatever means necessary.”
“But, madam - ”
“You have no other duty.”
Radele jerked his head irritably and rode away.
“One of us should be with you,” said Gerick, the first speech beyond single-word responses he’d offered us all day. “You’ve said again and again that the king is a treacherous villain. Tennice has told me - ”
“Yes, Evard is a despicable bastard, but he’ll not touch me. I know this seems illogical. He’s had a thousand opportunities to do so over all these years, but he promised Tomas he wouldn’t, and, whatever else he may be, Evard keeps to his word. He loved Tomas like a brother; I witnessed his grief when he heard Tomas was dead. Truly I’d not have been afraid to confront him in his own palace today. But on no other matter do I trust him. It’s you must stay out of sight.”
Gerick looked very young in that moment, too much worry creasing his slender face. What kind of mother was I to bring him into such risk? I brushed his smooth cheek. “Be alert, dear one. Stay safe, and we’ll see our road more clearly.”
Half an hour later, Radele returned from his survey of the gardens. Having reassured me that no one lurked anywhere on the grounds, Radele tethered our horses behind the gatehouse and took up a position in a tree where he could watch both the gates and the gatehouse.
The sun dropped behind the forested hills. Gerick watched from the hollow doorway of the gatehouse as Paulo waved and rode back through the gate the way we’d come, and I walked up the carriage road through the tunnel of trees. Shorter footpaths led from the gatehouse to the main house and gardens, but I was still a bit early, and I wanted to approach the house from the front.
At the point where the road emerged from the trees and skirted a wide, open lawn gone to weeds, I got my first look at the ruin of the main house. Every window was broken. The south wing, all the guest bedrooms and the great ballroom, lay in charred rubble. The north wing, including the drawing room where Karon and I had wed in the light of five hundred candles, looked as if a ram had been used to cave in one wall.
Astonishing that Evard would pick his murdered rival’s house for us to meet. Did he think I would feel safe in a place so familiar? More likely it was a pointed reminder of his power. Whatever his motive, the ruined house only served to remind me of everything I despised about Evard, a shallow, arrogant, ambitious man who had destroyed Martin and his friends because he was not fit to be one of them.
As the last glow of red dulled to gray in the west, I circled the skeletal house and strolled into the back gardens. The plantings had gone wild, of course, only the hardiest left to compete with thistles, brambles, and encroaching forest. I could find no remnant of the rose garden, and all the ponds and streams were dry. Surprisingly, the arched bridge remained intact, overlooking a choked oval of knee-high weeds where a reflecting pond should have been. Only a few birds and a lonely frog mourning the loss of his lily pads disturbed the quiet dusk.
A warm breeze riffled my hair as I waited. Not a long wait. My every sense was on the alert, so I heard the muffled hoofbeats long before the solitary rider reached the edge of the gardens. A horse nickered softly. Light steps crunched on the gravel, only to hesitate next to a wild mass of honeysuckle that had overgrown the path. Through the tangled shrubbery glimmered the faint beams of a lantern.