The Falcon Throne (The Tarnished Crown Series) (28 page)

“And nor will I forget it,” he whispered. “For you’re all the same, you great men of power. You see the rest of us as puppets and play with us as you will.”

Harald had called him a traitor. And in Harald’s eyes, he was. But nothing he’d done had been a betrayal of Clemen. Ridding the duchy of Harald had been an act of loyal love. But to cuckold Roric, trick him into naming another man’s son as his heir…

Then he would be a traitor.

But how could he forsake Lindara? So wounded. So used. Her father’s pawn. Roric’s convenience. No one to think of her, protect her,
love
her, but him. And what was he? A disinherited, landless fool who’d put off making his declaration until it was too late, leaving the woman he loved
vulnerable. A fool who’d risked everything for Roric, who’d arranged the murder of an infant, only to be kicked aside like a cur dog, his feelings counting for naught. For that he was owed his own revenge.

If I am traitor, what of it? He betrayed me first.

Eaglerock castle contained the finest library in the duchy. Late that night, Vidar ran Aistan to ground there, amidst the leather-bound books and hand-painted manuscripts and industrious silence. Aistan looked deeply weary, his lean face pale in the library’s generous lamplight. Scattered books lay open before him, and on a sheet of ink-smudged paper much untidy writing.

“Vidar,” he said, looking up, “did you want something?”

“A little of your time, if you can spare it.”

“I can.” Aistan set down his quill. “Join me.”

Vidar pulled out one of the heavy oak chairs on his side of the long, broad library table and sat. “Thank you, my lord.”

A glimmer in Aistan’s dark, deepset eyes. “As a rule such formality isn’t held between fellow councillors.”

“Ah. So you know.”

“Roric announced your appointment this afternoon.”

And here was a chance to nip speculation in the bud. “He made me the offer this morning, after the hunt. That’s why he sent you and Humbert ahead. Do you mislike it?”

“You’ve earned the honour.” Aistan tapped his calloused fingertips to the table. “He also announced his plan to wed with Humbert’s daughter.”

He feigned surprise. “Lindara?”

“The same.”

“And do you mislike that?”

Aistan shrugged. “’Tis a better notion than he marry with Berardine of Ardenn’s heir.”

No need for feigning this time. “
What?
Whose brain-rotted idea was that?”

“It was the widow’s doing. She came here in secret and threw her brat at Roric’s feet. Fortunately, he rejected them both.”

“Fortunate for Clemen but not for him. Lindara would still be his, had Roric agreed. Curse the bastard for loyalty.”

“Mind you,” said Aistan, after a moment. “If you’d have the truth I suspect he was tempted. Tell me, Vidar. D’you like our new duke?”

An odd question, without warning. Vidar felt instinct stir. “I like him
well enough,” he said, meeting Aistan’s hooded stare. “We’re too different to be close, but there’s much to admire in him.”

“There is. Though he’s young and still unseasoned when it comes to murky political waters.”

“He has Humbert to guide him.”

A muscle twitched in Aistan’s cheek. “Humbert’s not infallible.”

Something was brewing here. Not regret, nothing so dire. But a seasoned caution that might well be useful, in time. With Roric now his enemy he needed Aistan’s good will… and more.

“Does something concern you?” he prompted. “I’m not a babble-monger, Aistan. We speak in confidence.”

Silence, as Aistan weighed him. Then the deepest lines carved into his careworn face eased. “Berardine of Ardenn is a proud woman, and stubborn. If she has ambitions in Clemen one rebuff won’t kill them. She’ll seek another way to pluck the plums from our pie.”

“And you fear Roric won’t see her for what she is till it’s too late?”

“I fear he looks for the good in people and is swift to give them the benefit of the doubt,” said Aistan, heavily. “Long after such benefits should be exhausted. You remember how much persuasion he needed to stand against Harald.”

Indeed he did. “I agree he’s unseasoned and sometimes too trusting. But what can we do, my lord? Roric is our duke.”

“And we are his councillors. Whose first duty must lie with Clemen. It’s why we threw down Harald.” Aistan’s fingers tapped again, restless. “I’m doing what I can to keep Berardine constrained, but should the widow prove wily, Vidar, will I have your support to stand more fiercely against her?”

“Against her or anyone who threatens Clemen’s peace,” he said promptly. “I’ll risk Roric’s anger before our duchy’s future.”

Aistan smiled. “It heartens me to know I wasn’t mistaken in you, Vidar.”

And here was the opening he’d sought, the chance to pursue his reason for seeking Aistan out so late.

“You weren’t. My lord, if I might touch upon a personal matter? You’ll recall the offer you made me in Heartsong. Your daughter’s hand? I’ve kept silent till now because my position remained uncertain. But with all doubt removed, I wanted to—”

“I’m sorry,” said Aistan. “But it seems I spoke too soon. Kennise…” His eyes glittered. “She’s not well.”

“She rejects marriage?”

“She fears it.” Aistan sighed. “And after Harald’s cruelty, how can I rage? You know there’s talk of the Exarch wishing to establish one of those women’s contemplative houses in Clemen?”

“I’d heard mention.”

“What do you think?”

He thought he was spirit-cursed. First Lindara lost to him, and now Kennise? Marriage with Aistan’s daughter would’ve done him much good–and helped disguise what he and Lindara planned to do.

“Aistan,” he said slowly, “I think it would be a mistake. I’m wary of the Exarch, just as I’m wary of Berardine and Harcia. Of all those who’d seek to undermine Clemen’s sovereign authority. And anyone who denies the Exarch’s love of power is a fool.”

“True,” said Aistan. “But Kennise has her heart set on it. She finds the world burdensome.” Another sigh. “And my heart breaks, knowing that for Clemen’s sake I must deny her.”

“So there’s no hope she might soften?”

“Vidar, I’m sure she will. Be patient. Every girl desires marriage. In time Kennise will find her courage.”

“I don’t doubt it,” he said, accepting his temporary defeat. “For she’s your daughter, my lord. And you are a great man.”

Aistan grimaced. “That’s not for me to say. What I can say is that I’m a busy man.” He picked up his discarded quill. “So if you’ll forgive me…”

Swallowing a grunt of pain, Vidar pushed his heavy chair back from the table. “Of course, Aistan. My thanks for your time.”

Making his uneven, circuitous way out of the castle, Vidar fought the urge to curse out loud. It was likely that now, with his new position and new estate of Coldspring glossing over his physical deficiencies, the maidens that might’ve been shown to Roric would be shown to him instead. And not a father among them would be as useful an ally as Aistan. Perhaps he should ask Lindara to procure him a love charm to sway Kennise.

Because while he could put off his own marriage a little while… it wasn’t something he could put off for ever.

B
erardine sailed into Carillon harbour on a rising tide and a swelling of hope. It was late. The night sky was dimmed with cloud, the city’s joyful bells silent. Once her galley was docked in the Royal Pool she bundled herself and a drowsy Catrain into the closed litter she’d left handy for her purposes, and chewed at her lower lip as four panting sailors hurried them home to the palace.

Come to me, Izusa. I need to know what I must do now.

Perhaps there was some gentle sorcery, a kindly love charm, to nudge Roric of Clemen where Ardenn needed him to go. Nothing malicious. Nothing harmful. She’d not endanger his soul… or her own. And especially not Catrain’s. But there had to be
something
Izusa could do. Or why else was the woman a witch?

She’d confided in Howkin, Baldwin’s trusted majordomo, her purposed journey to Clemen, and left him to divert attention from her absence. But since she was returned so soon it was doubtful he’d needed to exercise his imagination.

“Madam!” he said, startled, answering her swift summons once she and Catrain were neatly and secretly slipped back into the palace. “I did not expect to see you again before next Chapel Day.”

Seated on a velvet-covered chair in her official dayroom, deliberately unattended by her ladies, Berardine smoothed a fold in her pearl-grey damask skirts. “My purpose was somewhat diverted, Howkin.”

More than once Baldwin had declared that the majordomo would tear his own heart from his breast with his teeth before ever he’d betray their house. Watching him closely, she saw a fierce disappointment leap behind his well-schooled servant’s face, and was comforted.

“It pains me to hear you say so, Madam,” he said. “I know you had high hopes for your gracious daughter’s settlement.”

“I still have them, Howkin. Diverted is not the same as defeated.”

He brightened. “No, Madam. That’s surely true.”

“It’s possible I was o’erhasty in my eagerness to settle Catrain. Clemen yet remains in turmoil following Harald’s hasty despatch.”

“If true, ’tis a pity,” said Howkin, downcast again. “You at least met with its new duke? This bastard, Roric?”

He was bordering on insolence, but she was prepared to disregard it. Lacking Baldwin, missing him so hurtfully, Howkin’s solid loyalty was an echo of her beloved’s steadfast support.

“Roric and I did meet, Howkin,” she said, toying with her favourite ruby ring. “And it went well. Catrain impressed him. But now that I’ve assuaged your curiosity you’ll promptly forget you ever heard me mention his name.”

“Madam,” Howkin murmured, pricked into remembering his rightful place. Candlelight gleamed on his grey hair and doubled itself in his blue tunic’s bright brass buttons. “Not a whisper of him shall pass my lips.”

“Very good.” Bone-weary, she fought the urge to slump. “Was I missed, Howkin?”

“Exarchite Lamesh requested an audience, Madam, but did not press the matter once I explained you were slightly indisposed.”

Lamesh. The Exarch’s most trusted priest in Ardenn. A good enough man, but persistent. “What did he want?”

“Madam, he declined to enlighten me.”

She smothered brief amusement. “Best you send to him come morning. Invite him to attend me here.”

“Yes, Madam.”

“There’s nothing else I should know?”

“I don’t believe so, Madam.”

“Then you’re dismissed, Howkin. And thank you.”

He bowed with infinite correctness, then left her. For some time she sat in her extravagant chair, relieved to be neither aboard a wave-lurched galley nor trapped within a swaying litter. Through the closed door that led to her inner apartments she could hear the whisperings of her ladies, those twittery hens, roused to excitement by her return. They thought she and Catrain had travelled into the countryside for a mother-and-daughter retreat. They’d been told to sew their lips on it, and she had no
reason to think them disobedient. It was the height of accomplishment to be named one of Berardine’s ladies. There wasn’t a hen among them who’d risk her place or her family’s wrath by speaking out of turn.

Because she’d stir alarm if she kept them waiting any longer, she abandoned the rare pleasure of solitude and suffered herself to be curtsied and smiled at, exclaimed over, disrobed and bathed and scented and lotioned and encased in demure embroidered linen. Not a man’s hand upon her anywhere. No more a wife but a widow, a living doll, excised of passion. Her ladies’ possession. Ardenn’s bride.

When she could bear no more of their fussing she sent them away, pleading a megrim. At least that wasn’t a lie.

Alone in her dark chamber, in the desolate bed she’d shared with Baldwin, she sought in vain for sleep. All her treacherous fears, unbridled, stampeded inside her painful skull. What if Roric failed to understand the great honour she’d offered to bestow on him? What if he rejected Catrain or–worse–allowed his personal desires to be over-ruled by his council? For all he was a man comfortable at court and blooded in the Marches he was still a child when it came to his authority. Did the maggoty worm of his bastardy gnaw at the heart of him? It was a greater taint in Clemen than in many other realms. Why that should be, she had no idea. Noble bastards abounded elsewhere, to little ill-effect. Well, save the Danetto Peninsula of course. But they were mostly mad in Danetto. Everyone knew that.

He spoke of Catrain kindly. I did not mistake the look in his eye, the hunger. He’d happily play the bold ram to her sweet ewe. And for all his protestations I saw that other hunger. Ambition. Isn’t he Harald’s cousin? Berold’s grandson? He springs from a lusty bloodline, never mind he’s not bred true.

And then there was Izusa. How could she doubt Baldwin’s choice? Doubt the proofs the witch had given? She might as well doubt the sun… or the memory of her husband.

Izusa said Catrain and Roric would marry. I must hold on to that, no matter who’d dissuade me. Izusa, Izusa. You promised to be my guide. Come to me, I beg you, and set my mind at ease.

Exhausted, her head pounding, at last she slid into sleep. She dreamed of Baldwin’s kisses… and when she woke, her cheeks were wet.

Though the waiting was worse than frostbite, Catrain showed nothing of her growing impatience to those in Carillon who liked to watch her. If
she’d learned one thing from her mother it was the importance of patience. Cats who splashed too soon in a fishpond caught nothing but duckweed in their claws.

As Baldwin’s heir she had her own small court, confined within the larger orbit of Ardenn’s duchess. She was far from independent, sadly, but at least her position was recognised. She no longer had to share the palace nursery with her annoying little sisters. That was important. For if Ardenn couldn’t take her seriously, how could she expect the prince’s regents and Cassinia’s dukes to see her as anything but a wayward girl-child in need of supervision and male guidance? How could she hope to keep Roric in his place as her consort? Because no matter how much she liked Clemen’s new duke, that was all he could ever be. The notion that Baldwin’s heir would allow the man she married to rule her or her duchy was nonsense.

Since no ruler could afford to be ignorant, much of her time was taken up with learning. Each day a procession of tutors put their prize pupil through her paces, like an expensive minstrel’s palfrey. Resigning herself to the familiar humdrum after the excitement of Eaglerock, she danced for them, and pranced for them, sang sweet songs in four different tongues and calloused her fingers on lute-strings for them. She embroidered exquisite tapestries and cushion covers, recited the lineages of every royal house in Cassinia unto the fifteenth generation, tried to care about the wool trade, shamed the palace horsemaster with her knowledge of colic, stumbled somehow through the complications of Ardabenian mathematics… and through it all daydreamed of that surprising man, Roric. Her husband-to-be.

But then, to her dismay, she realised she was beginning to forget his face.

On the morning of the sixth day since she’d sailed home from Clemen unbetrothed, she dismissed her language tutor, ordered her matronly attendants to lose themselves in a convenient garden maze, and went in search of her mother. They’d scarcely laid eyes upon each other since returning to the palace. First it was the Exarchite Lamesh, then a delegation from Maletti, then the monthly royal Court of Assizes, followed soon after by another delegation, this time from Duchy Grayne, and on its heels a trading envoy from Harcia. The demands upon Duchess Berardine never ended. And she understood that, of course she did. Wasn’t she Baldwin’s daughter? The heir to Ardenn?

But surely the least Mama can do is tell me when Roric and I are to wed. I hardly think that’s too much to ask
.

The southern tower of the palace was devoted to the cogs and wheels of governance, both seen and unseen. The grand throne room and its succession of antechambers occupied the entire top floor, loftily floating above Carillon’s general population. The rest of the tower was a rabbit warren of closets and offices and storerooms and libraries, where the sweaty machinations of the minions whose task it was to transform Berardine’s decrees into deeds were performed, day in and day out, without respite.

Knowing that one day those decrees would be hers, the minions answerable to her, Catrain had for some time made sure her face was familiar there, and that she knew who did what for Ardenn, and why, and how. When she did become duchess she’d not be taken by surprise.

But that was the future. Until the day she claimed her birthright she was as constrained by proper protocols as any subject in the duchy.

“My lady Catrain,” said Howkin, bowing. “How may I serve you?”

If her mother were a house then Majordomo Howkin would be its door. Neatly painted, hinges well-oiled, and most usually locked. Knowing better than to try charming him, Catrain offered him a regal nod.

“Howkin. Please tell my mother I’d beg a few moments of her time.”

“Certainly, my lady. If you’d care to wait here?”

As Howkin withdrew from his antechamber into her mother’s–formerly her father’s–official ducal study, she swept a deceptively disinterested gaze across his parchment-covered desk. But the majordomo’s spiky handwriting was hard enough to read rightside up. Upside down it was impossible. She could make out a few names she recognised: nobles from other duchies, Exarchite Lamesh, the duke of Pruges, even the fearsome Baldassare. She felt her skin prickle. What was that wicked pirate up to now? And did anyone expect her mother to stop him?

Surely not. Surely nobody could think Ardenn could or should—

“My lady,” said Howkin, reappearing. “Duchess Berardine invites you to sit with her.”

The last time she and her mother had spoken at length, in Eaglerock, things hadn’t gone at all well. She could still feel that dreadful stinging slap across her face. How completely the blow had killed her lingering excitement over Roric, and the fire, and the way she’d helped save most of Harcia’s trapped and burning horses. Berardine’s apology, afterwards, had done little to soothe the pain. Words. Just words. They couldn’t undo what was done.

Remembering that moment, Catrain hesitated. Howkin closed the study door behind her, but she remained a few steps over the threshold. As always her gaze went first to Baldwin’s portrait, hung on the wall behind his elaborately carved mahogany desk. For all her turmoil, she smiled to see him. Dark gold hair, deep-blue eyes, a determined chin rescued from stubborness by that thumbprint of a dimple. His lips too thin for beauty, but for ever hiding some amusement. Lingering on his dear face she felt the ever-present ache deep in her heart and didn’t resent it, because he was her father and she loved him. She missed him every day.

Of course she loved her mother too… but it was different for mothers and daughters. Everyone knew that.

Berardine stood at the window with her back to the room. Stood very still, staring out over her glorious, sunlit city of Carillon. Waiting for her mother to acknowledge her presence, Catrain gave herself over to thought.

As always, these days, Berardine looked magnificent. While Baldwin lived of course she’d dressed as the wife of a great duke ought, in softly flowing fine wools and velvets, and wore glistening ropes of pearls and gold beads around her neck. But she never appeared more grand than her husband, never garbed herself so richly that next to her he’d seem poor. Baldwin had been the brilliant sun, she the moon content to shine less brightly by his side.

But with his death that, along with everything else, had changed. Lusciously plump Berardine lost her spare flesh to grief. Lean as a Lepetto hunting dog now, she encased herself in heavy, whalebone-stiffened silk brocades sewn all over with seed pearls and gold nuggets and jet beads and jewels. This morning she wore a midnight-blue gown, stitched intricate with gold thread flowers whose every heart was a glossy, faceted sapphire.

Before Eaglerock, her first adventure into the wider world, Catrain had never paid her mother’s attire much attention. Berardine was Ardenn’s duchess, of course her clothing was the most opulent of any woman in the duchy. Since returning from Clemen, though, she’d realised there was more to her mother’s astonishing dresses than mere show. In Eaglerock, for the first time, she’d seen her mother uncertain. Seen her at the mercy of someone else. A man. And seeing that she understood a profound and sobering truth. Like a knight, Berardine daily dressed for battle, and within her costly carapace did all that she could to rule her inherited duchy invulnerable, like a man.

It was a stern lesson for a daughter to learn. That even her mother, the most powerful woman in Ardenn, in Cassinia, could be afraid. Could find herself in danger, like every other woman.

She never told me. Why didn’t she tell me? How am I old enough to marry but too young to know that?

Staring at her silent mother, who stood statue-like before the chamber’s window, Catrain felt a fresh stirring of unease. It was improper for anyone, even a daughter, to speak to Ardenn’s duchess before being spoken to by her first, but…