“Your Grace! Your Grace, please, another measure,” cried Lord Gerbod’s wife, pouting. “The hour is not so late and no man here prances a roundelay to rival you!”
Harald, Duke of Clemen, waved his hand in refusal then collapsed breathless into his high-backed, intricately carved wooden chair. Sweat trickled down his face, his spine, soaked the hair in his armpits and slithered over his ribs. But none here would notice, surely, and if they did–what matter? Though the night was cold he didn’t sweat alone. Dancing was a sweaty business. No reason for any man here to glance at his sweating duke and wonder.
In his iron-banded chest, his heart beat hard and too fast.
“Wine!” he said, snapping his fingers, and wine came in a jewelled silver goblet. Scarwid playing servant this time, bowing and scraping. A tiresome tick, he was, his welcome worn out. The petty lordling would’ve been dismissed from this dull northern court long since, had his wife not been such a good fuck.
Harald drank deep, thinking of Gisla. He’d grown weary of her, too. There was nothing new there, he’d ridden all the tricks out of her. And of late he’d spied a possessive glint in her fine brown eyes. Her fingers, taking his arm, clutched him tight as though she owned him. Like all women she was a fool, thinking she held more worth than a pair of honey tits and the hot, wet hole between her legs.
But there was no need to worry. Roric would rid him of Gisla and cuckolded Scarwid when he returned from his errands. Neatly, discreetly, with a sweet smile and a gentle touch to belie the sting of dismissal. Good at that, was dependable cousin Roric. Harald smothered sly pleasure, thinking of it.
Perhaps I’ll make him a baron, one of these days.
Or perhaps he wouldn’t. Bastard-born, barred from ducal inheritance and lawful marriage, Roric relied on his duke for the clothes on his back–and everything else. As a baron he’d be granted property, have the means to provide for himself, and therein lay the key. Dangled prizes kept a man keen. A promise unfulfilled was a promise fat with power to guarantee loyalty.
Still sweating, Harald willed his thumping heart to ease. Tucked safely out of sight in his chamber was a cordial to aid him, and a thrice-incanted charm on a thin gold chain. But he could dare neither, not even in this lightly lorded court’s glare. No stink of weakness could taint Harald of Clemen, with his two dead wives and five dead sons and the future of his bloodline yet in whispered doubt.
Tipping the goblet of wine to his lips once more, he stared over its beaten rim at his duchess, Argante. She claimed she was breeding again. She should be, the times he’d had her on her back since Liam’s birth. Relief at the news of a second pregnancy hollowed him. For Liam was not enough. One ill breath and his infant heir was meat for maggots. Though this son was strong, not a sickly babe like the others, he wouldn’t be at ease until the succession was made doubly safe. Fate was a fickle bitch. She’d toyed with him all his life.
She toyed with him now, her cruellest trick yet.
The leech he’d summoned in secret from distant Lepetto, trained in ordinary medicine–and certain arts more arcane–had left him the foul cordial and the charm and a stern-faced warning against every manner of gluttony.
“Duke, not even you with your sharp sword can defeat death,” he’d said, a thick foreign accent mangling his seldom-spoken Cassinian. “It comes. You must accept it. But if it comes creeping or flying, that is your choice.”
A fortune in furs and precious stones, the leech had cost him. That meant another tax. Clemen’s lords would groan at it, but let them. He was Harald, their duke. Their lives belonged to him, and their treasure chests. That was the order of things. Dukes ruled. Lords asked what they could give and then gave it, smiling.
Well. If they knew what was good for them, they did.
Masking temper with a smile, he drained the goblet of wine and held it out, upside down. Enough. Obedient hands took it from him. He sat back, breathing more easily, the iron bands clamping his ribs loosened now to mere discomfort. Because he was always watched, he rested a benevolent gaze upon Lord Udo, taking his turn at dancing with Argante. Ah, but she was a hot little bitch. His cock stirred in his hose at the sight of her tits swelling above her low-cut velvet gown. He could fuck her now, before his court in this Great Hall, creeping death be cursed, and not a man would gainsay him. Even had one of the Exarch’s sour grey celibates attended him here, he could fuck her. Rulers did that, if they wished to. Rulers were not ruled. The Potent of Khafur, he had as many concubines as shone stars in the night sky and he fucked them where and when he liked and any man who raised his right eyebrow lost his head before ever he could raise his left to comment more.
Harald and the Potent of Khafur, rulers and cock-brothers.
The thought made him laugh.
“Your Grace? Might I trouble you?”
And here was Lord Bartrem. Amusement fading, Harald looked at the man, an unimportant local noble recently widowed of a rich Eaglerock merchant’s only daughter. He knew already what Bartrem was after. Some four desperate letters had paved the man’s road to Heartsong Castle. He’d been tempted to deny the nagging fool an audience, but prudence outweighed irritation. Bartrem’s cause was lost when his wife drew her last breath, but there was no need to needlessly inflame the man, or his fellow northern lords. Not when the court must soon return to Eaglerock, at the other end of the duchy.
“Be brief, my lord,” he said, courteously enough. “We dance and make merry tonight. Serious matters belong to the morning.”
“Yes, Your Grace,” said Bartrem, spindle-shanked and chinless, with watering eyes and bulbous nose. Lucky for him he had a proper bloodline. Without it he’d never have caught the merchant’s daughter. “Your Grace, I must speak on the question of Thania’s wardship.”
“It’s not yet decided into whose care your child will be placed.”
“Your Grace—” Bartrem took an impetuous step closer to the ducal dais, then stopped himself. He was trembling. “She is too young for wardship. My child is not yet three.”
“Infant wardships are commonplace, Bartrem.”
“Your Grace, they are cruel!”
Harald stared until the man took a step back. “Not as cruel as a household in want of a wife. Or do you tell me you’ve wed again? Strange. I don’t recall granting you permission.”
“No, Your Grace,” said Bartrem, losing colour. “Of course not. I know what’s right and proper.”
“So you say.” He inspected the emerald ring on his thumb. “And yet you’d leave your precious daughter without womanly guidance?”
“No, Your Grace. My late wife’s mother dotes on the child. With my parents dead, she would gladly—”
“You expect I’d allow a child of noble birth to be raised by common hands?”
Bartrem swallowed. “Your Grace, after me my goodmother is Thania’s closest kin.”
“And common.” He let his voice chill. “As Clemen’s duke I have a duty to protect noble blood. I would no more hand your child to a trinket-trader for raising than I would gift a staghound puppy in my kennel to a passing peddler.”
“Perhaps Your Grace is misinformed,” said Bartrem, fingers clenched nearly to fists. “My late wife’s father, Master Blane, is a merchant of high standing. His purse could buy half the lords beneath your roof this night and scarce show its loss of coin.”
That was true. Harald looked again to his ring. The question to be answered was this: did Bartrem’s goodfather Blane hanker after the girl because she was his dead daughter’s child, or did he see her as a thing of value to be traded? It was possible. The man was a wealthy merchant, after all.
If his care is genuine and I gift the girl’s wardship to a lord other than Bartrem, then I might well be strewing stones in my own path. But if I gift the girl to myself…
It was a tempting thought. Liam would need a wife one day. Or if not Liam, then the next son Argante gave him. Surely Master Blane wouldn’t cry foul to see his daughter’s daughter in the care of Clemen’s duke. Such an alliance would sate any crude ambition–or deafen him to Bartrem’s cries, if family matters were his only care.
And a rich merchant made family by advantageous marriage would surely be most convenient.
“Your Grace.” Bartrem’s voice was dropped to a pleading whisper, almost lost in the minstrels’ music and the dancers’ merriment. “Thania is all I have left of my dear Mathilde. I beg you, be merciful.”
The man was a fool. Harald flicked his fingers. “Very good, Bartrem. I shall think on what you’ve said. For now you should forget your sorrows and join us in a dance.”
Defeated, Bartrem bowed. “Alas, Your Grace, my heart is too heavy for dancing.”
“Then find a more smiling face in a cup of wine. We are merry here. Would you spoil that?”
“Never, Your Grace.”
As Bartrem withdrew, Harald looked for his wife. Tired of Udo, and who wouldn’t be, Argante was dancing with Scarwid. Feeling his gaze upon her, she dropped Scarwid’s hand. Smiled and trod the minstrels’ spritely music towards her husband.
Harald felt his body stir anew. Young enough to be his daughter, Argante, but what did that matter? It was her youth that gave him Liam, and would give him Liam’s brothers. Youth gave her firm tits and silken skin and lust enough to ride him to a bull’s roar. His heart, which yet beat too fast, beat faster still as her youth and her tits and her lust danced her to him, hands reaching, eyes dark with sweaty promise.
“Your Grace,” she said sweetly. “You’ve not yet danced with me. For shame. What will the court say? That I am wilted, and you are tiring?”
He cursed his heart, unreliable, and the stern-faced Lepetto leech. He wouldn’t fuck her now, but he would dance with her… and in the dancing every man and woman here would see the fucking to come later. They’d see their duke virile, the father of many living sons. The whispers would fall silent, the wondering gazes shift to someone else. Abandoning his chair, Harald caught Argante in his arms, held her in the proper way of the jaunty craka, away from his chest so she couldn’t feel his cursed, stuttering heart.
She was laughing, her long honey-brown hair beneath the gold wire-and-pearl headdress bound tight to the fine bones of her skull, shimmering in the light of one hundred burning candles. Her almond eyes, tip-tilted and dappled hazel, shone brilliant in her fashionably pale face.
“Come!” she cried, dropped-pearl earrings swaying as her be-ringed fingers beckoned to the near-score unimportant northern lords and their ladies who ate his food and drank his wine, who owed him whatever he decided to take. “We haven’t yet danced our joy for the duke’s son, and we must, else we anger whatever mischievous spirits yet dwell here. Those who’ve not been chased away!”
Their obedient laughter answered her, and soon after the soft sound of heels kissing the Great Hall’s red-and-white tiled floor. Harald laughed too, because he was watched, because–despite the cordial and the dangerous charm–his chest pounded with a dull pain that never quite ceased. He danced for his heir and wished that Roric danced with them. He could pass Argante to his scrupulous, agreeable cousin and not a man in the hall would blink.
High above them in his nursery, in his charm-covered cradle, little Liam slept. Heart thudding with pain, with love as keen and sharp as a curved Sassanine dagger, Harald danced and dreamed days of glory for his son.
Night. Star-pricked, meagrely moonlit, and crackling with frost. Hiding in a copse of saplings and shadows, Roric pulled his rabbit-lined cloak closer about his ribs and listened to the distant, derisive barking of foxes. Winter might be on the turn but there was life still in the stubborn old man, one cold, miserly fist clutching fast to Harald’s duchy. Waiting for the arranged signal from the castle, shivering, he breathed in ice and breathed out smoke.
It’ll come. It must. Belden’s with us. Save a handful, everyone in Clemen will stand with us. Love for Harald is dried up like a sun-scorched puddle.
Where he stood, at the copse’s fringe, the deer-rutted, rain-pooled ground before him ran away in a long, lazy slope towards the castle’s bright green lawns. Harald owned twelve such strongholds, scattered across Clemen like thrown knucklebones. This one, fancied Heartsong by some long-dead duke’s lady, curtsied prettily to the surrounding countryside. No raised hackles here, no growling threats uttered in counterpoint to the singing of a naked sword. Heartsong was a fretworked white stone jewel. A woman’s castle, more manor house than fortress, lacking high, wide curtain walls and treacherous moat and impassable drawbridge. Argante’s castle, where she held court over wellborn ladies twice her age and older, and in triumph wielded Harald’s infant son as though the babe were a blade made of soft, swaddled flesh.
And so he was, in a way. Poor noble brat. Poor Liam.
Thinking himself safe here, safe everywhere, his monstrous arrogance a helm with its visor hammered shut, Harald debauched himself within Heartsong and without, never noticing, never dreaming, that—
The damp crack of a twig breaking underfoot heralded someone’s approach. A familiar tread. A trusted friend, who’d taken a trembling, owl-eyed boy of seven as a page and guided his journey from childish tears to knighted manhood.
“My lord Humbert,” Roric said, not turning, his voice pitched low. “You should remind Vidar that patience is an admirable virtue.”
For all Humbert possessed his own castle and a wealth of land, and armour scratched and dented in scores of confrontations since the day he won his spurs, Harald’s most leaned-upon councillor had of late become yawn by yawn more fond of a close ceiling than an open sky. Not weak, never weak, but attached to his comforts, there was no denying. Padded beneath his heavy mail with fat these days; more than a linen-stuffed jambon. Even so, despite his changes, he still boiled with courage. Offended, as most were, by Harald’s greedy, vindictive ravagings, he was prepared to be called traitor, to risk his life that those ravagings might be ended for good and the duchy’s happiness restored.
“Oh ho. So I’m Vidar’s squire, am I?” Humbert retorted, his own voice conspirator soft and teasing. “Come to bend my knee with querulous demand?”
Turning briefly from Harald’s moonlit Heartsong, Roric clasped the older man’s shoulder with leather-gloved fingers. “No, my lord. If there’s knee-bending wanted it will be me in the mud, not you.”
Humbert’s untamed, black-and-grey beard trembled as his jaw worked against emotion. “Don’t be a fool, Roric. Knee-bending? You? Never. You’re Berold’s grandson.”
He couldn’t long look away from the castle, for fear he’d miss the signal. “So is Harald,” he said, turning back. “More truly than I am.”
“Harald.” Humbert spat at their feet. “That for Harald. Your grandsire would never know him. I could believe yon Harald was a cradle-snatched changeling, so far from the great Berold has your cousin run his course. Bastard or not, Roric, you are Berold’s true heir. Not that bloat who wears the ducal coronet, breaking the heart of every man who should love him.”
“So you’ve said, many times. But—”
“Give me none of your buts!” Humbert said, fierce. “It’s the truth, boy, and so I’ll remind you till the maggot doubt stops its gnawing of your guts.”
The barking foxes fell silent. Roric pressed the heel of his hand against the aching scar across his left thigh, where once a swinging blade had caught him. Not even his heavy cloak could keep out the cold and its torment of old, healed hurts. In the deeper gloom behind him, the muffled thump of horses’ shifting hooves and a clinking of bits and stirrups.
“Roric…” Humbert stepped closer. “You stand a stone’s throw from your heart-rotten cousin, sword ready to defend Berold’s duchy. At your back stand Clemen’s best nobles and their men, pledged to fight in your name. Would you shame them? Shame me? Shame the lord Guimar?”
As ever, the mention of his dead father was salt rubbed in an open wound. “Humbert, do not—”
“He was friend to me like none other, Roric. A count of such renown, the minstrels still write songs of him. And that brave man died full of fear, knowing his brother for a craven lumpet and his brother’s child for much worse.”
“Even so.” Roric swallowed a sigh. “It was my uncle Baderon born Berold’s heir, not my father, and Harald born his heir with no taint of bastardry on him.”
Humbert growled his displeasure. “Boy—”
The fisted blow, when it came, rattled Roric’s teeth and left a burning pain in his arm, even through the charcoal-hardened links of his mail. In the moon-silvered darkness Humbert’s glare showed fear and fury.
“I see the maggot’s in your brain, not your guts! You say this rumption now, as we stand ankled in mud with our sharpened swords thirsty for blood? You–you gormless bull-pizzle! You tribbit! What ill faery flapped its dust in your dreams that you’d spill—”
Roric raised a calming hand. “First changelings, now faeries? I hope you don’t speak of such things where an exarchite can hear you. Our pagan days are behind us, or so the Exarch holds.”
“I’ll spit on the Exarch, and I’ll spit on you after,” said Humbert, his barrel chest heaving. “But first you tell me truly, Roric. Are you wishing you’d not started this?”
“Did I start it? Or did you? I scarce remember.”
Humbert snorted. “What does it matter? The end is all. Harald’s end, and his vileness with him. Are you feared, Roric? I’ll not believe it. You’ve served your time in the Marches, your sword is blooded a dozen times over. Don’t ask me to believe your courage fails you.”
“It doesn’t. But Humbert, don’t you feel the weight of this? No duke of Clemen has ever been deposed.” He shivered. “Making history gives a man pause. So I’ve paused, my lord. I’m thinking.”
“Thinking?”
He loved Humbert almost as much as he’d loved Guimar, but love didn’t kill less kindly feelings. “You’ve known me seventeen years, my lord. Tell me when I didn’t chew over my choices like a hound chews gristle.”
Another blow, fist to his back this time. “Your chewing time is done, Roric! It’s weeks you’ve had to chew this bone. What’s changed? Are you telling me this whoreson Harald sings a sweet tune now, and you’re the only man who hears it?”
If only he could say that. If only Harald had come to his senses. Instead, he looked at Humbert and shook his head. “No. My cousin’s voice is as ugly as ever.”
“And his deeds so foul they’d shame a soul-eater,” said Humbert, giving no ground. “Let history tend itself. It’s right we do here. Stiffen your sinews, boy. You swore to me, you swore to them—” His thumb jerked at the shadows behind them, at the men who’d pledged themselves to this night’s dark task. “—and all those lords waiting down south in Eaglerock, that your heart was in this. Are you Guimar’s son, Roric, or are you the cursed changeling?”
“Don’t plague me with Guimar,” he said, teeth gritted. “It’s because I honour my father that I think on this task, even as I stand here prepared to shed his blood from Harald’s body, if I must!”
When it came, Humbert’s released breath was like a groan. “It might not come to slaughter.”
“Might not, no. But Humbert, it might, and that will be a heavy thing to live with. And explaining it to Liam, when he’s old enough to understand?”
Just the thought could make him heave.
“You want to turn tail, then?” Humbert demanded.
“I want to save Clemen!”
Humbert stepped so close that his sigh felt like a warm, ale-scented breeze. “And if we could save it without riding roughshod over Harald, don’t you think it would’ve been saved before tonight?”
Roric looked away, weary before he’d struck a single blow. “Yes, my lord.”
“Yes, my lord,” Humbert echoed, close to pleading. “And I’d call you my lord, Roric. I’d call you my duke.” His finger stabbed at Heartsong, where Harald caroused unawares. “But I can’t call you either until that piece of offal is done with. And the only man who can see him done is you. The only head fit for Clemen’s coronet is yours. No more of Berold’s blood remains.”
“That’s not true.”
“Infants die every day, boy! Who’s to say Harald’s brat will live to see another winter?”
A fair question. Humbert had buried his two sons untimely, and both of Guimar’s true-born sons had died in their youth. Clemen’s grass grew green over the bones of young men and dead babes.
But even so…
“Liam’s not dead yet, Humbert. And by rights, Clemen is his.”
“This duchy has no need of a milk-suck,” said Humbert. “Even if the brat does survive, what use is it to us? We need a man who knows how to wield a sword. I promise you this, Roric. Grant Harald’s babe the coronet, trammel it with regents, as they’ve done in Cassinia, and the wolves of Harcia will be at our throats before summer’s end.”
“Aimery has never—”
“It’s not Aimery I fear! It’s his curs’t heir wants to spill our blood in the mire–and Balfre is mongrel enough to try!”
He wished he could deny it. But Balfre had long made it plain he saw Clemen as stolen land. With one whiff of weakness, Aimery’s heir and his friends would ride the Marches flat in their haste to reclaim Clemen for Harcia. And whispers from Harcia cast doubt on Aimery’s ability to stop him. Balfre was a hot-head, full of temper and bile. Fresh gossip held he now had innocent blood on his hands, an enemy killed under cover of rough play. That was the stamp of Aimery’s heir.
“Roric,” said Humbert. There was iron in his voice. “I want an answer. Do you honour your oath and wield your sword in defence of this plundered duchy, or do you forswear yourself and toss Clemen in the midden?”
His sword, belted close by his side. A knight-gift from Guimar, costly and much loved. Heavy with promises and oaths newly sworn, in secret. Harald’s doom… or his own.
Doubt was pointless. In this, he had no choice. Closing his fingers around the sword’s hilt, Roric drew breath to reply and end the untimely, unwelcome dispute.
“He’ll fight, of course,” said Vidar, joining them. Cat-footed as ever, despite the halt in his stride. “He loves Clemen as some men love their wives. And a pox on you for doubting it, my lord.”
Any other man speaking so to Humbert would find himself clubbed to his knees. Vidar, being Vidar, earned nothing more violent than a glare. “We’re not here to henhouse,” Humbert muttered. “If you’ve a mind to be useful, keep an eye open for the signal.”
Vidar’s scarred face twitched, the closest he mostly came to a smile. In the moonlight, the eye that hadn’t been stitched shut glinted. “My lord, I’ll do my best.” Ignoring Humbert’s angry chagrin, he jerked his chin at the castle. “But since you mention it… the night wears thin, Roric, and there’s still no sign we’re welcome. Are you certain Harald’s knave is to be trusted?
He frowned. “Are you certain he’s not?”
“How can I say?” Vidar’s shrug was elegant. “I must defer to your superior judgement, since I’ve little cause to cross paths with knaves.”
And that was Vidar in a nutshell. His insults, if they were insults, were always so agreeably couched in courtesy.
“I’ve no reason to doubt him, Vidar. I told you. Belden’s uncle to a trusted squire, and vouched for.”
Another elegant shrug. “If you say so, Roric. Though I must confess I save my trust for lords, not knaves.”
“Then you can breathe easy, Vidar,” Humbert said flatly. “For it’s Roric you’re trusting.”
A brief bow, this time. “Of course, my lord.” Then Vidar smiled. “Good Roric, are we quarrelling? Let’s not. We should save our temper for Harald.”
And that was Vidar, too, effortlessly shifting from veiled insult to open, easy accord. Sometimes it was hard to know the real reason he’d joined their cause. Did he truly believe it was just? Or was he simply seeking revenge for his father, and the chance to reclaim what Harald had stolen?
And in the end, did it matter? So long as Harald fell…
“Look!” said Humbert, pointing. “There.”
A plunging star of light from the top of Heartsong’s single tower keep. A flaming arrow. The signal.
Blood pounding, Roric turned. “And that would be my knave, ready to unbar the castle’s sally port to us. It’s time. Vidar–”
Caught by the arm, Vidar swung about. His scarred face darkened with anger, swift as a wind-chased cloud crossing the sun. “Roric?”
“Remember I want little Liam untouched,” he said, loosening his hold. “Remind everyone, in my name. Harald’s son is innocent of his father’s sins, as all sons are innocent.”
Vidar, landless and tainted because of his own foolish father, bared his teeth in a grim smile. “At least until they make their own choices,” he said, his single green eye unclouded with doubt or fear. “And then they’re men, Roric, who must answer as men.”
“Perhaps. But any man who spills a single drop of Liam’s blood, be he noble or base, shall shed his own in a river. We haven’t come to make war on infants. My lord—” He looked to Humbert. “Go with Vidar to fetch the others, and our men-at-arms. We don’t want to keep Belden waiting. He might lose heart and think we’ve mislaid our purpose.”
“A knave lose heart?” said Vidar. “Shame on you for saying so, Roric. I’ve heard on the best authority that knaves are as noble as any lord in the land.”
“That’s enough mischief from you, Vidar,” Humbert growled. “Save your strife-making for Harald.”
Humbert and Vidar retreated into the copse’s shadowed gloom. Grateful for the solitude, however brief, Roric stared at the castle and felt his gloved fingers cramp until his hands were made fists.
See reason, Harald. Find shame. For all our sakes, I beg you. Do not contest me, so all of us might live.
Liam was fussing.
“Oh, baby, baby, my wicked lamb! Waking so soon? Naughty!”
Swooping, Ellyn snatched up her beloved charge from his gilded cradle, hung with faery-charms no matter what the Exarch’s mimbly priests said, and pressed him close to her milk-plump breast. Was he hungry? No, that wasn’t his empty belly cry. She’d be leaking like a sieve if it was. No, he was just fussing, frit by a baby-dream and ripe for cuddling.
“There, my baby,” she crooned, as Liam grizzled and folded his fingers into her hair. His tiny nails scratched her neck. They needed paring again, growing as fast as he was. Nearly three full moons old now, and such a big boy. His wispy hair tickled her chin, chestnut-red like his handsome father’s. And his slate-grey eyes would turn the duke’s lovely amber-brown, she knew it. Such a beautiful boy, so fine she could scarce remember her own babe, strangled in its cord, blue and wrinkled and ugly. A mercy to lose the little bastard, her mother said, and it was true. That dead unwanted babe had brought her Liam.
Wriggle, wriggle, fuss. Would he never settle down?
“Hush-a-bye, hush,” she whispered, breathing him in, sweeter than summer roses. “You’ll wake the old cow, lamb. We don’t want her mooing at us, do we?”
The old cow, Lady Morda, who only looked at Liam and made him cry. Nasty old woman had no business being in the nursery with her pinching, poking fingers, but what use a fifteen-year-old wet nurse saying so? The lady Argante would be deaf to that. At seventeen and shockingly fair, the duke’s triumphant third wife knew everything already. Besides, the lady Morda was her kinswoman, so she could do no wrong.
“Come, baby,” Ellyn said, her cheek pressed to Liam’s restless head. “Shall we walk a bit? Take a little tit-tup? You’ll sleep like a noddy one, won’t you, once we’ve had ourselves a roundabout.”
Of course he would. She knew him front to back, knew his ten toes and his ten fingers and the reason for every tear on his rose petal cheeks. He was her baby, her Liam. What was Argante, Duchess of Clemen? Nothing but the vain, spoiled young woman who’d pushed him out between her legs.
“But you’re my wee man, Liam, aren’t you?” she whispered, walking him round and round the fine castle nursery, with its tapestries and velvets, stained-glass in the window, gilded shutters fastened tight against sly drafts, a brazier glowing with heat and candles enough to outshine the sun, as well as rushlights for the small hours. Nothing too fine for Duke Harald’s heir. “Liam is his Ellyn’s wee man.”
Her wee man blew a sticky bubble, then started to wail.
“No, Liam,” she implored, jigging him. “Don’t you start that. You’ll have me in such trouble. The old cow, she’ll blame my milk.”
And then the lady Argante would hiss like a cat and tell the duke to find another wet nurse for Liam. If that happened, she’d die.
Walking as she jigged him, she crossed them to the narrow, gilded door opposite Liam’s cradle. It was the lady Morda’s chamber behind there, the privy closet she had claim to because the nursery was in her charge. No straw-stuffed pallet on the flagstones beside the cradle for that old cow. Holding her breath, Ellyn pressed one ear against the painted wood, but heard nothing save the lady’s snores, rough as a hacksaw in a log.
“All mousey, lamb,” she whispered, backing away. “So hush now, hush.”
Liam’s wail stuttered into hiccups, but that was only the lull before the storm. There’d be more wails soon enough if she didn’t keep him sweet. A longer walk, then. But it was night-time, the stone corridors chilly. Let Liam catch an ague and she’d kiss farewell to those kindly looks from the duke. He’d kill her with his bare hands, instead. His son was worth more to him than all the gold and jewels in Clemen.
Ellyn bundled her little lambkin into a fine scarlet-dyed blanket, the wool to make it brought over land and sea all the way from duchy Ardenn, in Cassinia. They grew the best wool there, everyone knew that. But even so, ten gold marks for three hanks of sheep’s wool! Still, not even ten gold marks was o’erspending. Not for precious Liam. After he was safely snugged and gummy smiling, she wrapped them both in her coarse brown woollen cloak then slipped out of the nursery to wander Heartsong for a while.
The castle stood but three storeys high, not counting the kitchens and cellars below or the tower keep at one corner, and Liam’s nursery was an eagle’s eyrie on the uppermost floor. Expecting to find at least one of the duke’s men-at-arms nearby, she was surprised to discover the corridor empty and echoing. She hesitated, uncertain. But then faint strains of music drew her towards the stone spiral staircase leading down to the four-sided minstrel gallery above the Great Hall, where Duke Harald and his duchess and the court amused themselves of a night.
Warm beneath the plain cloak as they took the tight-turning stone stairs one careful step at a time, Liam wriggled and cooed. Ellyn smiled, feeling the damp on her linen undershirt where her little man had drooled. Reaching the gallery at last, she stopped.
There was the missing man-at-arms, snatching a few moments of music to brighten a dull watch. Emun, his name. A bit rough, like all men-at-arms, and older than her by a tenyear, but not a bad sod. She’d known worse. Emun spun about, hearing her laced leather slippers on the flagstones, his knee-length mail coat rattling its own rough music. The fat candles set into the stone wall beside him betrayed his surprise and sudden, red-faced guilt.
Ellyn pressed a finger to her lips, giving him her best saucy dimples. Let the twinkle in her eye tell him she’d not tattle if he didn’t, so he should stay and enjoy the music a bit longer. But Emun frowned, his thieved moment spoilt, his fear of the castle’s serjeant too great. Because he had a ready, slapping hand, she stepped aside from the arching stone doorway so he could stomp past her and Liam and take the spiral staircase back to where he belonged.
She wasn’t sorry to hear his footsteps fade away. She liked it best when she and Liam were alone.
“There, my lamb,” she murmured. “Let’s bide a while and listen, shall we? And watch your fine, handsome Dadda dance.”
“My lord Roric.”
“Serjeant Belden.” Roric, answering whisper with whisper, examined the man’s rough-hewn face in the torchlight falling through Heartsong’s narrowly opened sally port. Resignation there, a touch of fear, but no treachery. The man was standing firm. “Is all ready?”
The castle’s senior man-at-arms nodded. “His Grace is at his pleasure, keeping company with his lords and ladies in the Great Hall. They’re well-plied with wine, and mellow.”
“Your men? How many in all?”
“Fifteen.”
Still only a handful, then, even this close to the Marches. Harald’s overconfident arrogance was serving them well.
“Where will we find them?”
“There are none in the hall itself, my lord. Two stand at its doors. Four have the roaming of the castle, roof to cellars. The rest I’ve posted where they’ll do you least harm.”
“We crossed paths with no one outside.”
“No, my lord. I’ve kept every last man within doors. I didn’t want to risk them seeing the arrow.”
Roric nodded. “A clever thought.”
“My lord.” The serjeant chewed at his lip. “My lord, about my men. I’d not—”
“I make no promises I’m not sure to keep, Belden. But I’ll do my best to see they’re not slaughtered.”
The serjeant sighed gustily. “Yes, my lord.”
At his back, Humbert cursed. “Roric! What’s the hold?”
“No hold,” he said, turning. “I’m making sure of our welcome.”
A burning torch was set in the stonework above the sally port. In its guttering light he saw Humbert’s frown. Vidar’s almost-concealed tension. Open tension in the shadowed faces of the lords who stood with him: Aistan, Farland, Hankin and Morholt. Disciplined behind them stood the two score of men-at-arms sworn to follow their lords. Not a one of them belonged to him, yet to a man he commanded them. If they died this night, their blood would wet his head.
“Roric.”
He looked again at Heartsong’s guardian. “Serjeant of the Guard, do you grant us entry?”
Belden’s knuckles whitened on the edge of the sally port door, then he nodded. “I do, my lord Roric. The castle is yours.”