The Witchwood Crown

  “Your visitors have all been sent away,” announced Lord Chancellor Pasevalles. “But Osric, Duke of Falshire and Wentmouth is waiting, and you will want to see him. He brings news of who shall attend you on your journey, my queen.”

  Miri shared a wordless look of resignation with Simon; neither of them loved Duke Osric, who was doggedly old-fashioned in his ideas and relentlessly humorless. He also had a tendency to hand all the most valuable plums of office to members of his own large, greedy clan. Still, compared to many of the most powerful Erkynlandish nobles, Osric was fairly sensible and hard-working, and he was also Lillia’s and Morgan’s grandfather, which made him family. “By all means,” Simon said, with a creditable appearance of cheer. “Usher him in, please.”

  Osric, in company with his clerks as well as half a dozen Erkynguardsmen, strode into the audience room. Thinking about the tangle of Nabbanai politics suddenly made Miriamele wonder which way their own Erkynguard would turn if something happened to the king. Her husband was fantastically popular with them, and they liked bluff Lord Constable Osric as well, but she doubted they felt quite the same about her.

  Could I hold this kingdom together, my own grandfather’s empire, without Simon? Or would they push Morgan onto the throne too early?

  It was not a pleasant thought.

  Osric strode to the throne and dropped to a knee, still agile and strong though he was older than Miri or Simon. The rest of his retinue did the same, eyes firmly fixed on the floor. “Majesties,” said the duke, “may God give you health.”

  “Rise, good Wentmouth,” Miri said. “It is good to see you.”

  “And you. But are you certain you must make this journey, Majesty?” Osric asked her. “I fear for your safety, I must confess. Nabban is a dangerous place just now.”

  She ignored the squeeze Simon gave her hand. “The journey must be made. But with good, strong Erkynlandish soldiers to protect me, I will feel quite safe. Are all the arrangements made?”

  “The Princess Hylissa waits, and the boat that will take you to her is ready. All else has been prepared. A long company of the Queen’s Erkynguard will accompany you—as well as the women and others of the queen’s household, of course.”

  “And who will command my guard?” she asked.

  “Chancellor Pasevalles and I have decided that the night captain, Sir Jurgen of Sturmstad, will be the best choice.”

  “I know him but only a little. Is he the dark one?”

  “He is very dark of hair and beard, yes. He is of Rimmersgard blood, but his grandfather was Perdruinese, I think,” Osric said. “Still, he was born and raised an Erkynlander and he fought with me at the Ymstrecca. A good, solid man.”

  “You will have no cause to complain of Sir Jurgen, Your Majesties,” Pasevalles said. “He is as devoted as I am to seeing the queen safely through her visit to Nabban.”

  “So it is all accomplished, then?” But as Miriamele said it, she had a sudden swipe of misgiving, a cold reluctance that she had not felt for years.

  “You leave the day after tomorrow, Majesty—St. Endrian’s Day—as you wished. Escritor Auxis and his party will accompany you on the Hylissa, so you will have no lack of company and conversation,” Pasevalles said.

  Osric bowed again. “And now, my lady, I must leave you and the king to finish the last preparations. I will see you on St. Endrian’s!”

  “May I have a few more words with Your Majesties about arrangements in Nabban?” Pasevalles asked after Osric was gone.

  “She will be well guarded, yes?” Simon asked. “And not just by the duke’s men.”

  “Absolutely, Majesty. The queen will take many of the Erkynguard with her, some of our best men. Osric has already arranged it.”

  “Then am I needed for this discussion?” he asked. “I have a prior engagement.”

  Miri could see the unhappiness in Simon’s long face. “What prior engagement could you possibly have?” she asked.

  He looked evasive. “Nothing—nothing important. Just some things to be seen to.”

  Miriamele felt sure he did not want to hear her making plans for Nabban, that it made him sad. “Go then with God’s grace, my husband, and do your ‘nothing important.’”

  When Simon had gone, Pasevalles said, “I did not wish to talk of this in front of the others—excepting the king, of course—but I wanted to give to you a name that might prove useful if you find yourself in any difficulty.”

  “Difficulty?” It came out mockingly, though she had meant it to be light and teasing. “In our beloved southern duchy? Yours and my dear ancestral home?”

  He could not manage a smile, but he nodded. “Please, Majesty. You know as well as I do that Nabban is a bear pit covered with pretty ribbons. And matters there, I suspect, are worse than anyone is letting on.”

  She was afraid of just that but did not show it in her face. “And so, Lord Pasevalles . . . ?”

  “I have already reminded you of Count Froye, our ambassador there, but should you find yourself in a truly bad situation, I want you to remember the name of a friend of mine, a very able and sensible man—Viscount Matreu.”

  “Matreu? That sounds like an island name.”

  “He is the son of old Count Millatin of Spenit. Matreu’s mother came from an old island family. But all that is of little import. Matreu is a good man who has given me much useful information over recent years and done me more than a few favors.”

  “But Spenit is such a long journey from the capital!”

  “Matreu lives most of the year in Nabban. If you need him, you have only to send a messenger and he will attend you, I promise.”

  “I will remember it, Lord Pasevalles, and my thanks.” She looked on him for a moment with real fondness. “It is always good to have a secret ally.”

  “In Nabban, Majesty, you must have as many as you can find, if only to make up for all the secret enemies.”

  She took a sharp breath. “You are usually the mildest and most cautious of courtiers, Pasevalles. Do you really think things there are so bad?”

  “I saw my family cheated of their land and name, Majesty.” A hard edge was in his voice that she had not heard before. “I saw my mother humbled and treated like a servant. I left that country with only my shoes and the clothes on my back.” His smile was twisted. “And that was in better times.”

  “Then I hear you, and I am grateful for your concern,” she said. “I know that those old days were bad ones for you, loyal Pasevalles. We are lucky that your road brought you to us.”

  He bowed. “I deserve no credit, my queen. I think only of the High Throne.” He rose, then kissed her hand. “I will pray for your safety every night, Majesty.”

  “Pray for Nabban,” she said. “If Nabban is preserved, I’m sure I will be too.”

  She was trying to play jackbones with Aedonita and Aedonita’s sister, Elyweld, but Elyweld was too young and spoiled everything by grabbing the bones when it wasn’t even her turn.

  “Stop it or I’ll tell my grandmother on you.” Lillia gave Elyweld a little shake, meant only to underline the seriousness of the threat, but Aedonita’s sister was a blower of the lowest variety and immediately began to shriek as if she’d been slapped.

  “Here, what’s this?” Countess Rhona looked up from her conversation with the queen. “Why can’t you three play nicely?”

  “Lillia hurt me!” said Elyweld.

  “She’s a blower, Auntie Rhoner—a terrible liar! I hardly touched her.” Lillia was particularly irritated by the hue and cry because she’d also been listening with interest to the two grown-up women’s conversation. “Isn’t that true, Aedonita?”

  Aedonita, daughter of a Rowson relative and one of Lillia’s most frequent playmates, nodded vigorously. “Ely’s a terrible sniveler, Countess.”

  After order was restored, Elyweld was given one of
Lillia’s dolls to play with (and probably to destroy, was Lillia’s thought). The two older girls continued with their game of jackbones and Lillia continued with her eavesdropping.

  “I dread this, I truly do,” the queen was saying. “It is hard enough, having Morgan so far from home, but now I must leave this little one behind, too.”

  Lillia knew that meant her, and although she did not like being called the “little one,” she was pleased that her grandmother was worrying about her.

  Auntie Rhoner laughed “She’s like a weed, our Lillia. She’ll be fine. And why shouldn’t she be, here in the Hayholt with me and soldiers and her grandfather the king?”

  “I just worry. The world seems such a dangerous place to me these days.”

  “Well, you know what they say, dear Miriamele—I mean Your Majesty. ‘Heaven is good, but you still shouldn’t dance in a small boat.’ And I think that it’s true. You shouldn’t call down troubles you don’t have yet. In Nad Glehs, we were raised most studiously to avoid such things.”

  “Ah. Very wise.” The queen sighed loudly, which surprised Lillia, because it seemed more like the sound she, herself, would make on a boring afternoon or during a punitive banishment to her bedchamber. “But it’s not just the little one I’m worrying for. It’s the king as well.”

  “Do you think him apt to get into mischief with you gone? Shall I keep an eye on the serving girls?”

  The queen laughed again. “Simon? No. He is more like a boy that way. Not in the marriage bed, where he is lusty enough, but his eye for a pretty woman shames him a bit—he thinks I would take it badly, so he looks away more than he looks at, if you take my meaning. God bless him, but he does not want me angry with him.”

  “So what is it you want, dear? What is it that has you worried?”

  “Oh, everything. I’m not even certain, my lovely Rhona. I suppose I fear that the king, my Simon, will be sad with me gone. That he will be lost. And this is not a time when he can afford to be a mooncalf.”

  “The king—a mooncalf?”

  Miriamele smiled. It was slightly grim. “You cannot even guess. Don’t misunderstand me—Simon is the kindest man I know. But sometimes, I swear with the Sacred Mother as my witness, I feel more like a mother than a wife. Do you know, he wanted us to go and eat supper last night on top of Holy Tree Tower?”

  “Truly? Why?”

  “He wanted to talk about things he’d done when he was a boy—which tower roofs he’d been on, where he’d gotten into different kinds of mischief. I wanted to talk with him instead about what was to come, what he must watch carefully while I’m gone, many important things. All he wanted to talk about was when we were young.”

  “Hmmmm.” Lillia saw that Auntie Rhoner was not convinced by what the queen said. “I can think of worse things, Majesty, than a husband who wants to reminisce about the days when you both were young and in love.”

  “To be honest, I don’t think I have that much to do with it, Rhona. When he was young he knew me only as somebody he saw a few times from a distance. I knew him better than he knew me.”

  “You did? How could that be?”

  Lillia, listening intently now, wanted to ask the same thing.

  “Because I watched him and the other servants. I envied them their freedom.”

  “That’s an odd word for it.”

  “Oh, I know, Rhona dear. Don’t scold me. We never understand anyone but ourselves when we’re young, and we don’t understand ourselves very well. But I watched Simon and Jeremias, and that page, what was his name . . . ? I watched them running around, and even when they were working, they laughed and they sang.” She frowned. “Izaak. That was his name. Little fellow, but he had a lovely singing voice. Not like Simon’s honking.”

  Rhona laughed. “I stand near your husband in the chapel. I have heard him sing, my lady. When you say ‘honking,’ you are very kind.”

  “Bless him. And he does love to sing, too.” She sighed again. “Oh, don’t get me wrong, Rhona. I will miss him terribly. And he is not a fool, not at all—he will do very well whenever he takes time to think carefully. But I worry that something may happen that compels a sudden choice, and that is when I fear his judgement.”

  “I will do my best to watch over all your dear ones, Majesty,” her friend said. “And don’t forget, we will miss you too—and not just the ladies of the court, either. All of Erkynland will miss you until you come back to us, my queen. I’ll pray every day for your safe journey and speedy return.”

  “Ah, you have reminded me of something else.” The queen looked over toward the children, and Lillia pretended to be studying the jackbones, which had been awaiting her next throw for some moments.

  “Aren’t you going to go again?” Aedonita demanded, sounding almost as querulous as her little sister.

  “Ssshhhh.” Lillia waggled her hand, wanting to hear what else the queen had remembered.

  “I have heard a number of alarming things lately about Hernystir,” the queen told Auntie Rhoner. “Most of them we’ve talked about already, but the latest reports suggest that things have grown very strange indeed in Hernysadharc. Please, write to your friends who are still there, and without being too obvious, see what you can learn.”

  “About Tylleth? The woman that King Hugh is marrying?”

  “About anything. About Lady Tylleth, Hugh, anything you can discover. Do not ask too specifically or too openly, but I would like some impressions of what goes on around the Hernystir throne that does not come from our envoys or other official carriers.”

  “Do you distrust your ambassadors?”

  “I trust nobody completely, dear Rhona—except you and Simon, of course. But the news that comes to me from the Taig seems too strange not to be more generally known. Did you know that the Silver Stags have arrested and imprisoned several nobles who were friends of Queen Inahwen?”

  Lillia could see that Countess Rhona looked surprised. “Truly? I have not heard it! Why?”

  “I haven’t been told yet. But I fear Hugh, especially since that woman got her claws into him.”

  “I will do my best to learn more.”

  “But discreetly, dear, as I said, and not just to keep my interest secret. Your husband still has many ties to Hernysadharc. Do not risk your family’s safety.”

  “Risk their safety? Now you truly are frightening me, Majesty.”

  “Better that I frighten you into caution than lull you into carelessness.” She smiled and raised her voice. “Now, where is my granddaughter, the one I came to see? I could have sworn she was here somewhere!”

  Lillia was pleased that her turn had finally come, although slightly miffed by how much time the queen and Auntie Rhoner had spent talking first. “I’m here, Grandmother! I mean, Your Majesty!”

  “You may certainly call me Grandmother, and especially today, when I have to say farewell to you for a while.”

  The queen beckoned to her, and Lillia got up and hurried over, then crawled into her lap. The queen always smelled of nice things. Today her dress smelled of oranges and cloves, and her hair smelled of violets. “Why do you have to go to Nabban?”

  “Because there is an important wedding there, and I want to attend it.”

  “Why isn’t King Grandfather going?”

  The queen smiled. “Because he has to stay here and take care of the kingdom.”

  “Will you be gone long?”

  “Not too long. I’ll be back before St. Granis’ Day.”

  Lillia thought. “Will you bring me back something?”

  “Would you like a doll?”

  “Yes. A Nabban doll. With a great long stola.”

  “They don’t wear stolas in Nabban anymore, dear one,” said Rhona. “Not for years and years. Centuries!”

  “I don’t care. I want one with a stola.”

  Her grandm
other stroked her hair. “Look how golden you’re becoming with all this sunshine. I’ll do my best, lamb. I’ll see what I can find.”

  “You can get one for Aedonita too,” Lillia said generously. “But not Elyweld. She’s a terrible, terrible sniveler.”

  But her grandmother was talking to Auntie Rhoner again, and Lillia could only hope the queen had heard the important part at the end about not wasting a doll on little girls who blew and cried and told tales. She snuggled deeper, smelling her grandmother’s smells, and wondered why people ever went anywhere far away.

  “And the chapterhouse at St. Ormod’s is to be rededicated on the saint’s feast day—that’s coming soon. The archbishop will remind you, I’m sure, but I’m telling you so you won’t stay up late the night before. You know how easily you fall asleep at such events.”

  “I’m not a child, Miri. And I’m not such an old man, either.”

  “No, but you don’t do well at long ceremonies. Oh, and that reminds me, Earl Gared is bringing his son for a Naming at St. Sutrin’s. You don’t have to be there, but it would be good to invite him and Lady Devona to an audience afterward. Just say a few nice things about Nordhithe and admire the baby, then send them on their way. Oh, and a gift. Jeremias should be able to find them a nice silver cup or some plate. Remember, Nordhithe is on Hugh’s border and we need to keep Gared sweet. The Hernystiri are worrying me.”

  “The Hernsytiri aren’t worrying me nearly as much as the Norns.”

  “Of course, but we’ve already talked about that. Which reminds me, have you sent out the muster orders?”

  “No. But before you start poking at me, woman, I do know what I’m doing. We already agreed it has to be done quietly. If we start crying ‘the White Foxes are coming’ up and down the countryside we’ll have a panic, not to mention another ten thousand people trying to get inside the walls of Erchester. God knows what it would mean farther north—farms abandoned, villages deserted, roads falling apart . . .”