Princess Annie (31 page)

“But, Annie, the risks—”

She sighed. “What would you have me do?” she asked patiently. “Sit in the solarium and play the harp all day? Rafael, I have to be
doing
things—it’s not in my nature to be idle.”

A muscle twitched in Rafael’s jaw; Annie knew she had made her point, and that he did not like conceding it. “At least be careful,” he said, lowering his voice, “I have enough on my conscience where you’re concerned, and if anything happened to you, I would never forgive myself.”

Annie clasped his hand. “I want to help you, Rafael, not add to your worries. I promise I won’t take any unnecessary chances.”

Rafael squeezed her fingers and made an attempt at a smile. “I guess I will have to be satisfied with that,” he said. He bent and placed a gentle kiss on the top of her head. “I’d better go back to my guests. Good night, Annie.”

She nodded, and he went out.

Kathleen asked no questions, but kept busy turning back the covers on Annie’s bed, fluffing the pillows, banking the fire. Annie was grateful for her silence. Her encounter with Rafael was a momentous one for her, and she needed a few minutes to quiet herself.

Over the next several days, more wedding guests arrived, their mud-splattered carriages clattering merrily over the drawbridge, while the process of choosing jurors continued in the great hall. Annie stayed busy in the village and the chapel, and tried not to think too much about the immediate future, when she would be called upon to testify against Lieutenant Covington and the other soldiers. No sooner would that ordeal be over when it would be time for Phaedra’s wedding, and once the princess was married, Annie would be sent home to her family.

Most likely, she would never see Rafael again.

In the meantime, Annie was determined not to add to the prince’s worries. She took regular meals, although she never tasted the food and could not have said what she’d eaten five minutes after leaving the table, and made a point of sitting quietly in her room for an hour every afternoon. Each night, after eating supper by the fire, she tumbled into bed at precisely eight o’clock and was immersed in slumber within moments.

After four days, the trial began, and Annie was forced to leave her tasks to Kathleen and the few other women who weren’t crowded into the great hall to view the spectacle. Lieutenant Covington and fourteen other men were brought up from the dungeons in shackles and seated on a row of benches that had been set end to end. The jurors sat opposite them, while spectators occupied the space in between. The villagers had selected a magistrate from among themselves, and he sat at a small table on an improvised dais, overlooking everyone else. Rafael and Mr. Barrett stood watching from a distance, their arms folded, faces impassive.

Annie forced herself to look directly at Lieutenant Covington, since she knew she would have to face him sooner or later. He looked pale, and his clothes were rumpled, but it was plain that neither he nor any of the others had been starved or abused. As if he’d felt Annie’s gaze, he turned to meet it, and she saw such coldness in his eyes, and such fury, that she shivered.

She was the first witness called to testify, and it was with both relief and trepidation that she made her way forward to stand next to the magistrate’s desk. Because she’d been working, she was wearing a simple brown dress Kathleen had found in a storage closet. Her hair was pulled back into a loose braid. She wasn’t an aristocrat, and felt a sincere kinship with the villagers.

Lieutenant Covington’s stare held a silent threat, and Annie felt it like a slap, but she was also aware of Rafael’s nearness, and his support. She drew a deep breath, clasped her hands together and waited.

Mr. Barrett came forward, holding a Bible, and asked Annie to swear an oath of truth. She did so, in a tremulous but clear voice, then sank into the chair provided, hoping no one had noticed that her knees had failed her.

Mr. Barrett’s voice was even and deep, and Annie clung to it, like a ribbon strung through a dark wood. All she had to do, she told herself, was hang on tightly and tell the truth.

He asked her to give an account of the events in the marketplace and she did so, unflinchingly, though she felt sick at her stomach all the while. The jury, the spectators and the prisoners all became part of a pulsing blur. She wished she could see Rafael.

After she’d given her testimony Mr. Barrett asked her a few brief questions for the sake of clarification and then dismissed her. Annie rose, holding her head high, and shook her head when Lucian stepped out of the void to offer his arm. The experience had been a difficult one, but Annie was determined to see it through without leaning on anyone else.

She walked slowly and steadily out of the great hall, having no wish to stay and hear Phaedra’s testimony. In the courtyard, she sat on the bench next to the fountain and raised her face to the dazzling sunlight.

Only a few minutes had passed when Kathleen arrived, carrying a cup of cold water. Annie accepted it with gratitude and drank deeply. The drink restored her, settling her stomach and easing her trembling.

“You’d best go in and lie down for a while, miss,” Kathleen said gently. “It’s taken a lot out of you, speaking up like that, and having to recollect those horrible things.” When she saw that Annie was about to refuse, she hurried to make her case. “Remember, now, you promised His Highness that you wouldn’t add to his troubles by pushing yourself too hard.”

A breeze blew a tendril of hair across Annie’s forehead, and she pushed it aside. “All right,” she agreed reluctantly. “But it isn’t as if I’m sick or anything.”

Kathleen smiled, somewhat mysteriously. “I know, miss,” she said. “An hour’s rest and you’ll be back at your post, all the stronger for taking time to collect yourself.”

They entered the castle by a roundabout way, avoiding the great hall. Since going to her room in the middle of the day and lying down would have made her feel like an invalid, Annie went to the solarium instead. There was an old rocking chair near one of the windows, and she curled up in that.

“Would you like some tea, miss, or something to eat?” Kathleen asked, in the kind of quiet, indulgent voice one might use with a child.

Annie shook her head. The chair was large and its velvet cushions, though worn smooth with age, were comfortable. “No, thank you, Kathleen,” she said, with a yawn. “And don’t you dare go back to the village or the chapel without me. You work twice as hard as I do and you need to rest, too.”

Kathleen smiled. “I’ll be fine, miss,” she said, and then she turned and walked away, and Annie was alone in the vast, ancient solarium with all its sweettempered ghosts.

She closed her eyes and settled deeper into the chair, dozing but not really sleeping. She thought she heard faint, poignant notes, played on a harp or a lyre, and the soft murmur of feminine voices exchanging confidences.

After both Annie and Phaedra had given their versions of the story, the defendants were offered an opportunity to address the court, one at a time. Rafael stayed to listen, but what he really wanted to do was find Annie, hold her in his arms, tell her how proud he was of her, and how much he loved her.

The testimony seemed to go on forever. One after another, the accused men stood and spoke up for themselves. Most seemed genuinely remorseful, but a few were sullen, casting defiant glances at the crowd in general and Rafael in particular. The worst of these was Jeremy Covington, who evidently believed that coming from a good family gave him the right to run roughshod over anyone who got in his way. He made it clear that he saw the proceedings as a travesty of justice and considered himself the true victim of the case.

It was hot in the great hall, and the smell of too many sweaty bodies confined to too small an area was almost overpowering. Underlying it all was Rafael’s primal urge to shoulder his way through the crowd and throttle Covington with his bare hands.

The lieutenant finished his oration by spitting at the feet of the magistrate, a man all the villagers admired, according to what Rafael had been able to learn, for fairness and wisdom. How ironic it seemed that, after all that had been done to them and to their loved ones in the name of arrogance and power, these people had still tried to elect a judge who would serve the cause of justice.

Barrett signaled two of his men to remove Covington from the great hall, and even though the lieutenant’s hands were manacled, it still took both of them to drag the prisoner away. Privately, Rafael thought Jeremy ought to be grateful that he’d ended up in the dungeons of St. James Keep during a fairly enlightened time. Many of those who had gone before him had not been quite so comfortable.

After a conference with the magistrate, Barrett announced that the trial was over for the day, and the jurors and spectators alike were dismissed. Other soldiers escorted the remaining prisoners back to their cells.

“I need a drink,” Barrett said, as he and Rafael crossed the great hall in the direction of a passageway that led to a small, private stairway.

Out of the corner of his eye, Rafael caught a fleeting glimpse of a woman in peasant’s clothes. She was familiar in some way, although he didn’t see her face. When he turned his head, she had already gone.

Rafael felt a flicker of uneasiness, but the incident was minor, after all, and he pushed it to the back of his mind. “We still don’t know who killed that university student,” he reminded Barrett, leading the way up the rear stairs.

Barrett sighed behind him. “No,” he agreed ruefully. “We don’t.”

CHAPTER 16
 

A
nnie stood at the back of the great hall all through the following morning, listening as more droning testimony was given. For practical reasons, she wore the same plain dress she’d donned the day before, and her hair was pinned into a loose bun at the back of her head. She felt somewhat listless but, like Kathleen, she seemed impervious to the fever raging among the villagers. The malaise had felled a number of peasant women and some of the servants who had been helping when they could, but so far no one had died.

That was a blessing, and not just for the obvious reasons. The village’s sewage system had been primitive in the first place, but now, between the influx of new people and the nature of the fever itself, sanitation was becoming a real problem. There could be an outbreak of typhoid or cholera at any time.

Being preoccupied with these dilemmas, Annie was startled when Jeremy Covington, still manacled, bolted to his feet, shouting incoherently and struggling within his bonds. His eyes were glazed, like those of a wild beast in a snare; his shirt was soaked with sweat, and his face and neck glistened with it.

The young soldier who had been stating his case, as was his right, stared at his commander, open-mouthed.

Reluctantly, two of Barrett’s guards moved to restrain Covington, but he was powerful in his rage and fear. He fought so hard that it took four more men to finally subdue him.

He was sobbing wretchedly by then, and Annie felt pity for him. Plainly, Lieutenant Covington’s imprisonment and trial had broken him.

The men would have dragged him back to the dungeons if Rafael hadn’t stepped forward.

“Let him speak,” the prince commanded in a quiet, even voice that carried, nonetheless, to every part of the great hall.

Covington stood trembling. “I don’t want to die,” he said. “I won’t hang for what someone else”—he turned his head and fixed his gaze on one of the other soldiers—“for what
he
did.”

The soldier went crimson, and then white. He shot to his feet and would have lunged at Covington, manacles and hobbles not withstanding, if Mr. Barrett and one of the villagers hadn’t restrained him.

“Damn you to hell, Covington!” the accused shrieked.

Rafael turned calmly to face the man. “What is your name, Soldier?”

Even from a distance, Annie saw the man’s throat work as he swallowed. “Peter Maitland, Your Highness.”

“Did you shoot that student, Peter Maitland?”

A visible shudder moved through Maitland’s small frame. He looked wildly from Covington to the other men lining the prisoners’bench and finally met Rafael’s gaze again. “Yes, sir,” he said.

“Why?” Rafael asked reasonably.

The great hall was silent for a few moments while everyone, peasant and visiting aristocrat alike, awaited the answer. When it came, it caused a furor.

“I was defending you, sir. He was speaking treason!”

Rafael looked sick, as well as exasperated and weary, and Annie barely restrained herself from rushing forward to stand at his side. Instead, she sent a silent message from her heart and he seemed to feel the contact, because his gaze sought and found her in the crowd. For a moment, they were linked, alone in the great hall.

When at last Rafael spoke, it was with disgust and utter despair. “Take him away,” he said. “Take them all away.”

There followed such an uproar that the very walls of the hall seemed to tremble with the force of it. The man appointed to serve as judge hammered at the table before him with the gavel provided for the purpose. “Silence!” he bellowed, and everyone obeyed him, from the lowliest peasant to the visiting nobles who had come to St. James Keep for Phaedra’s wedding.