In the Ruins

  She nodded, dumbstruck. The captain coughed and looked around to mark the position of his soldiers, but only five or six were in view, loitering by the stables or at the corner of the hall.

  “Keep watch on this child for me, if you will. She is the daughter of a man I called brother.”

  Cook regarded him, nodded, and extended a hand.

  “Go on, Blanche. Do as I say.”

  She bit her lip, she looked up at him with a frown, but she placed her grimy hand in Cook’s aged one without protest.

  “I pray you, Lord Alain,” said Dhuoda, coming up behind him. “We must not stand here in the courtyard like supplicants, else he’ll take action.” She indicated the restless captain.

  “I’ll wait in the church.”

  “Nay, my lord! You’ll wait in the lord’s audience chamber. It would be fitting!”

  “I pray you, Mistress Dhuoda,” he said in a softer voice. “Make no trouble for the innocent souls standing here around. I prefer to wait in the church, if you don’t mind it. I wish to pray beside the count’s bier.”

  “Of course!” She flushed red. “Of course, my lord!”

  “Who is this man?” demanded the captain, stepping off the porch that fronted the hall. “He’s not welcome here!”

  Somehow or other the servants got moving right away and impeded his path, leaving Alain and Dhuoda to walk in solitude out to the stone church set apart from the other buildings beyond the palisade.

  “What does Lord Geoffrey fear?” asked Alain, indicating the new earthworks.

  “He fears justice, my lord. He fears Lady Sabella.”

  “Why should he fear her? Is she not in the custody of Biscop Constance in Autun?”

  “Not for many years, my lord. Lady Sabella usurped her old seat. She holds Biscop Constance prisoner and rules Arconia again. Lord Geoffrey offered his allegiance to Biscop Constance, but it’s likely the noble biscop cannot help us. There are bandits roaming the lands. Have you not heard of our troubles?”

  “What particular injuries has Lavas Holding sustained?”

  “Ravnholt Manor was burned to the ground last autumn a few weeks after the great storm. Eight people were murdered, and perhaps more, because it was hard to discover remains within the ruins of the hall. A dozen or more we found later hiding in the woods, but four girls were never accounted for although witnesses had seen them alive and running from the conflagration. They were not little ones but youths, and one recently wed. You will have no doubt about what the bandits wanted with them, poor things.”

  “Did no one seek them out? What happened to the bandits?”

  “There was a single skirmish, my lord, two days later. Then the bandits vanished, or so Lord Geoffrey’s scouts said. I don’t know the truth of it.”

  “Do you not believe them?”

  She shrugged, reluctant to say more. After the silence grew thick, she went on. “The girls who were taken were only servants’ daughters. Two were slaves—their parents had sold them into service to discharge the debts they owed Ravnholt’s steward.”

  “Did Ravnholt’s steward not seek to recover those lost souls?”

  “The steward was killed in the raid.”

  “Who is in charge there now?”

  Her dark look matched the dreary day and the ominous swell of wind in distant trees. “Lord Geoffrey left the land fallow. Said he’d see to it later. Yet we’ve desperate need of planting. Surely you know … it’s hard to think of planting with frosts still coming hard every night. There is a blight in the apple trees here and eastward. There may be no apple crop at all this year. In the south a black rot has gotten into the rye …” She looked sideways at him, blushing again. “Yet you must know, for that’s where you were found, wasn’t it? In the south, by a mill.”

  “Mad, so they tell me,” he said as they came up to the church and its narrow porch. He stepped into the shadow and turned to look at her, who stood yet in the muted daylight.

  “Not mad,” she said, but she didn’t mean it. “You had the dancing sickness, my lord.”

  “And much else besides, I am thinking. I sustained an injury to my head. For a long while I wandered without my faithful hounds. I was lost and blind.” He snapped his fingers, and the hounds waggled up to him and licked his hands. He patted them affectionately and rubbed his knuckles into their great heads, just how they liked it, and scratched them behind their ears.

  She wrung her hands together, gaze fixed on the dirt. “Now you are come back to us, my lord.”

  “No,” he said kindly. “I am only passing through. I will not stay.”

  She wept silently, nothing more than tears running down her cheeks.

  “Do not despair,” he said. “The one you seek will come.”

  He went inside into the gloomy nave, so shadowed that he had to stop four steps in and stand there for a while to let his eyes adjust. The hounds panted beside him.

  “Come,” he said at last.

  They walked forward to the bier set halfway along the nave, flanked by benches. Rage and Sorrow sat at the foot of the bier, below Terror, and Alain knelt at Lavastine’s right hand. The statue had been “dressed” in a long white linen shift overlaid with a wool tunic dyed to the blue that had always been Lavastine’s preferred color. The cloth looked well brushed, though a little dusty. An embroidered border of leaping black hounds encircled half the hem, the kind of painstaking work that revealed the hand of an experienced needleworker. He wondered if the embroidery was work begun recently and as yet unfinished or if some woman’s heartfelt task had been interrupted. Lavastine’s feet were vulnerably bare, and his sharp features were as familiar as ever, with his beard neat and trim and eyes shut. No doubt folk new to the holding believed this a masterful piece of stone carving. Who would believe this was the man himself?

  Bowing his head, Alain rested his brow against that cool cheek.

  “I pray you,” he whispered, “forgive me for the lie. I gave it up in order to enter the land of the meadow flowers, but now I am come home to this Earth and I must confess it to you. I said Tallia was pregnant only to spare you heartbreak, knowing you were slipping away. I do not regret sparing you pain on your deathbed. I regret only that I failed in the one task you set me. Still, it was not to be. God made it so. They knew I was not your rightful heir. If Tallia had gotten pregnant, then the threads would have tangled even more. No good rule can be based on a lie. And, God help me, Father, had Tallia not betrayed me, I would never have met Adica. I’m sorry I could not be the son you desired, but that does not change the love I cherish for you.”

  When he ceased speaking, a quiet so profound settled into the church that he thought he could hear the earth’s slow respiration, the breath of stone. Pale daylight gleamed on the altar and the golden vessel and the Book of Verses, left lying open as if the deacon had been interrupted in the midst of her prayers. Behind him lay the side chapel dedicated to St. Lavrentius, who had died before the time of the Emperor Taillefer while bringing the Circle of Unity to the Varrish tribes.

  It is here, he thought, that it began. He had met the Lady of Battles on the Dragonback Ridge, but he wondered now whether that was coincidence or fate or free will? Was it in her nature to ride that path when a storm blew in off the sea? Had it only been accident that they had converged there? Or had she ridden that way on purpose, knowing she would meet him and in such an hour when he would have no choice but to save those he loved by pledging himself to her cause?

  It was here, in this shadowed nave, that the answer lay. Beneath him lay the crypt where the counts of Lavas slumbered in death, although their souls had surely ascended to the Chamber of Light. Here in the aisle of the nave rested the last of the line of the elder Charles.

  What had he been hiding?

  Sorrow whoofed softly, and in answer Alain heard the skittering of mice near St. Lavrentius’ altar as they scattered into their hidey-holes. Once he and Lackling had knelt in that chapel at this very same time of year; Lackling had
wept when one trusting little creature had crept into his hand and let him stroke its soft coat. Now, all rustling and scratching ceased.

  The door opened, and a man—face shadowed by the daylight behind him—entered alone.

  “You are come,” the man said, more in sadness than in anger, yet there was anger as well, throttled by the stink of fear. The door closed behind him, and he halted. “Take it! Take it! It has rotted in my hands!”

  “I pray you, Lord Geoffrey. Sit, if you will. I have not come here to take anything from you that is yours by right.”

  Geoffrey choked down a sob of fury, but he did not move. “You have outwitted me at every turn! Was it nothing but a dumb show that you turned up here babbling and dancing? Did you mean to tempt me to do what I did, and thus discredit myself by making me seem a cruel and bitter man? By making me seem afraid of you?”

  “Are you afraid?”

  “I am always afraid!” he roared. The hounds barked, first Sorrow and then Rage, and he took a step back. “They still guard you, then, those beasts.”

  “Sorrow and Rage are my faithful companions.”

  “What do you want? Why have you come back?”

  “I came because Chatelaine Dhuoda asked me to return to Lavas Holding with her. Before that, I lived quietly over the winter by Osna Sound, recovering from the injuries that plagued me and the wound in my heart.”

  “Dhuoda is a traitor!”

  “Is she?”

  “No! No!” He began to pace along the entryway, falling out of sight behind a square pillar only to reappear at the wall, where he spun and strode back the other way. The walls trapped him. He could only turn, and turn again. “She told me straight out she meant to go. She is my kinswoman. She has the right to question me.”

  He halted, facing the aisle. His face was pale and anguished, his hands clenched.

  “Was Lavastine your father?” His voice scraped out the question. He bowed his head an instant, then raised it defiantly.

  Rage turned to face him but did not otherwise move. Sorrow remained seated, snuffling at Terror’s stone hindquarters as if seeking a scent.

  Alain rose as well. He kept one hand on Lavastine’s quiet hand, feeling the swell and hollow of knuckles and the intricate ridge of a petrified ring caught forever on the right forefinger. The gem, too, had gone to stone. He could not recall what color it had been.

  Geoffrey went on in an enraged, triumphant rush. “Cook said your mother traded her body for food. They called her ‘Rose’ for her beauty. She was beautiful enough that every man desired her. Cook said any man who lived here and was old enough to thrust his bucket into her well could have been your father, for many did. She turned no one away. All but Lavastine. He wouldn’t take what other men had used. He never slept with her, not for want of her trying. That’s what Cook told me. She kept silence when my cousin raised you up for fear of offending him. For fear he’d have her silenced!”

  He was panting like a man who had been running.

  “What do you say to that?” he finished.

  “In truth,” Alain said, “I believe that the halfwit boy Lackling was Lavastine’s bastard son.”

  Geoffrey hissed out his breath but made no retort.

  “I do not believe I was Lavastine’s son by the laws that rule succession, those of blood. Yet I called him ‘Father’ and he called me ‘Son.’ I cannot tell you now that those words meant nothing.”

  “They mean nothing legal!”

  “What they mean matters only to me, and mattered to him. That is all.”

  “What do you want, damn you?”

  “Let me see you,” said Alain.

  After a hesitation, Geoffrey came forward. In the filtering of light that illuminated the Hearth, Alain could see the other man’s features. Geoffrey was changed. He had once looked far younger and more carefree, a good enough looking man, but now his face was scored with lines and fear haunted his gaze. His mouth furrowed his face in a frown that seemed set there, as in stone. Despair marked his forehead in a dozen deep wrinkles.

  “You are troubled, Lord Geoffrey.”

  “This county is troubled! One thing after the next! I even rode east—but there was no help for it! Laws are silent in the presence of arms, so the church mothers say. Those who ought to rule are set aside, and those who rule turn their gaze away from the plagues that beset us, seeking only their own advancement and enrichment and pleasure.”

  He shook a fist although not, it seemed, at Alain, but rather at Fate, or at God, or at some unknown individual whom Alain could not see and did not know. Rage growled, and Geoffrey lowered his hand quickly to his side but did not unclench it.

  “So I am served, a taste of the supper I served to you! Have you come to gloat?”

  “I am here for another reason,” Alain said, smiling faintly, because he knew pain lifted that smile as well as an appreciation of its irony. “Strange that it took me so long and over such a road to see it. I pray you, Lord Geoffrey, sit down.”

  “I will not!”

  Alain sighed. Where his hand lay on Lavastine’s, he had a wild and momentary illusion that the dead count’s stone skin warmed; he breathed, in that instant, the pulse of another, as slow as the pulse of the earth but no less steady. Down, deep in the earth, the rivers of fire that burn in the heart of the mortal world flow on their mighty course, and behind them, so distant that it is like reaching to touch the stars, dwells an old intelligence, weighty but not dim. Down he fell, remembering the touch of those ancient minds on that day when the bandits had brought him to Father Benignus’ foul camp. That day Alain had killed Father Benignus by revealing to his followers that he was nothing but a shell that sustained its own life by feeding on the souls of those he had murdered.

  Only his skeleton remained, darkening where sunlight soaked, into bone The stench of putrefaction faded as anger boiled up and men snarled and shouted, closing in. Rage leaped, growling furiously. A sharp blow cracked into the side of his head.

  Gasping, he came up for air and found himself after all in the silence of the church, with Geoffrey standing stiff and arrogant before him and the hounds quiescent, not moving at all, ears down.

  He steadied himself on Lavastine’s cold arm. “One boon I ask you, Lord Geoffrey.”

  “What is that?”

  “I have brought a child with me, a girl seven or eight years of age. She is the eldest child of one I once called ‘brother,’ a good man who has now a wife and child. Although he was betrothed to the girl’s mother, they never wed. Let her serve, I pray you, in your retinue. Honor her as the granddaughter of one of your faithful householders in Osna Sound. Treat her well. Let her serve Chatelaine Dhuoda. If she has the wit to learn to mark accounts and learn to write and read, let her do so. If she has not such wit, let her serve in the kitchens under Cook’s tutelage.”

  For a while Geoffrey said nothing. At last, as if puzzled, he scratched his beard. “What means this girl to you? Why do you bring her here?”

  “Nothing good will come of leaving her where she was. Best she make a new start, if she can.”

  “That’s all? Is she pretty? Is she meant to tempt me, or some other man? Is she your by-blow, meant to twist my daughter’s heart and loyalty if she grows up beside her?”

  “None of these things. A tree will grow twisted if the wind rakes it incessantly. Better she grow true, if she can. I hope it may be possible for her to do so here at Lavas, away from an otherwise good family that does not like her. That is all.”

  “You always had a care for the unfortunate!”

  “Do not mock the unfortunate, Lord Geoffrey. They suffer more than the rest of us do.”

  “For their sins!”

  “Do you think so? Rather they suffer for our sins. Is it not a sin to look the other way when you might extend a hand to one who is drowning? Is it not a sin to eat two loaves of bread when you might share one with those who are starving? Suffering is the task God set us. We choose whether to take action or tu
rn away. Thus are we judged.”

  Geoffrey broke down and wept. “It is all gone wrong! My daughter—lamed in a fall from her pony! My dear wife dead in childbirth days after the terrible storm. Our sons held as hostages in Autun. Bandits afflict the forest and prey on the farmers. Plague eats at our borders. Hoof rot strikes down our sheep and cattle. All the birds are fled as if we live in a desert. And more besides. Far more! Too much to tell! How have I offended God?”

  “You know that answer better than I do, Lord Geoffrey. Better to ask what you can do to set things right. Do you believe that your daughter is the rightful heir to Lavas County?”

  “There is no other that I know of.”

  “If one such should appear, would you offer your loyalty to that one?”

  “There cannot be another claimant! Count Lavastina had but two sons, Charles and, eighteen years later, my grandfather, the first Geoffrey. There my cousin lies.” He pointed at the bier. “He is the last of the elder lineage. I am the only surviving descendant of the younger. Who else could there be?”

  “Have you never wondered how the elder Charles acquired his fearsome hounds?”

  Geoffrey shrugged.

  “I do not know the answer,” continued Alain, “but I wonder. Fear left me to seek another. And there was one person the hounds feared. Is there a connection between them?”

  “You speak in riddles to torment me!”

  “I pray you, forgive me. Something was set wrong long ago, in Lavas County. If we set it right, then it may be like a rock thrown into a still pool. Its ripples may spread to wash over the entire pond.”

  “These are mysteries! Conjecture! If you do not claim Lavas County, then what matters it to you who does?”

  “Justice matters.”

  Geoffrey shrugged impatiently. “There is something more to this! Who is your father?”

  Alain shook his head, distracted from his thoughts and, in truth, a little annoyed, but he let the irritation go. “My father? Henri of Osna is my father. As is Count Lavastine. As might be the shade of the lost prince in the ruins up on the hill. As might be the man who was also my grandfather, if he shared his own daughter. Or another man never named and never known. This is the truth.” He lifted his hand from Lavastine’s arm and stepped forward to stand between the hounds, so close to Geoffrey that he might reach out to touch him. “My path was marked the day the Lady of Battles challenged me. I know to whom I owe a son’s love. Beyond that, I care not because it matters not.”