C. Dale Brittain, page 2
servants, more obsequious than anything I had ever received in my life. The bouteillier, dressed like a nobleman and with a nobleman’s manners and bearing
but the most deferential of all, brought me wine and a slab of cold meat, which
I ate and went straight to bed.
The hearth, as I had feared, was built in the old-fashioned way in the middle of
the hall, but while it made the room very smoky it also kept it warm. My entire
adult life I had preferred fire safely housed in a fireplace, but I thought tiredly that I could deal with this—at least until next week when I would order
the masons in.
The great curtained bed, at one end of the great hall in which everyone in the
castle ate and slept, was doubtless the same one, I thought, that the former countess had died in. At least she seemed to have insisted on a goose-feather mattress on the rope-strung frame and warm wool stuffing in the brocade coverlets. I just hoped someone had thought to change the sheets after her death.
But I awoke with my mood much improved as dawn broke over the ridge, lighting up
the greased parchment stretched over the windows. I threw on my clothes and stepped over still snoring men to go out and survey my county by daylight.
Bruno
was among the sleepers, his face in repose showing the lines of age and exhaustion he tried to deny during the day. Him I smiled at indulgently, but a
little discipline, I could see, would be needed among the rest.
Yet faint clanking and rattling sounds elsewhere in the castle indicated that I
was not the only one awake. I could recall seeing no priest among the staff last
night, but I would have to get one and start them all off right with the divine
office every morning. I went out into the courtyard adjoining the great hall, where the cold morning air carried the scent of distant snow as well as of mud,
then followed an unroofed passage to the base of the great tower I had seen from
below and began to climb.
Stairs winding upwards within the walls led me to the top. From there, as I had
hoped, I could survey the whole region of the mountains. The view was spectacular and the drop stunning. On all sides were further peaks. To the south, I must be looking miles into the next kingdom. Perhaps the duke had heard
I was a good fighting man, I thought, able to defend Peyrefixade against the political ambitions of enemies not far away.
As I gazed downward through oceans of air I realized it would be a sheer fall from a dozen different points on this castle to the valleys on either side of the ridge, and the people living in those valleys would never forget the presence of the castle above them.
Fields that had appeared desolate the night before now had a faint green cast,
of early grass breaking through, and far below I spotted what were doubtless flocks of sheep. On one hillside I could see a large vineyard, still in winter
dormancy, though nothing I could recognize as olive trees. So far below it could
have been a toy, such as I had sometimes made for little Gertrude, was a tile-roofed village, smoke rising lazily from the rooftops in the still air.
I
leaned on the battlements, well wrapped in my cloak, letting it sink in that this was really mine, and trying to remember all the words of one of the bawdier
songs.
A little terrace opened out a storey below me, and as I looked around two of the
servants came out onto it, beer mugs and pieces of bread in their hands.
Neither
looked up. “So,” said one, “what do you think of our new master?”
An accent like the duke’s messengers’ but perfectly intelligible. I leaned forward, intensely interested and scarcely breathing.
“It’s a southern name, Caloran, for all that he talks like a northerner,”
commented the other around a mouthful of breakfast. “I understand he’s a cousin
or something of our late Countess Aenor.”
“I gather he’s not married. Maybe he’s holy or something.”
This “or something” seemed to give the other pause, because he was silent for a
moment before saying, a bit too loudly, “They don’t have heretics up in the north.”
“Or maybe he’s one who likes the boys better,” the first servant suggested.
“Or
maybe no lady would have him.”
The second laughed. “Once they learn he’s Count of Peyrefixade they’ll come flocking around. He’ll have plenty to choose from then, will our Count Scar.”
Count Scar. My own servants were calling me Count Scar.
I had scarcely gotten used to the sound of Count Caloran, to the image of the wise, severe but just lord from the north, and already it was being altered out
of recognition. I waited in silence until my servants—I didn’t even know their
names, but I marked them as best I could from above—had finished eating and gone
back inside, then went in search of breakfast of my own.
At least they had seemed to think that I would have plenty of ladies to choose
from.
The first order of business when I finished my beer and barley bread was to start acquainting myself with my castle. It had clearly been built and rebuilt
over several generations, with an effort in manpower getting the stones up here
which I couldn’t even imagine. Maybe their efforts had been assisted by magic,
which I understood was much more widely used in the south. But I dismissed the
thought.
The castle was smaller than my brother the archduke’s, but to me it felt like a
kingdom. It had a formidable keep, many unexpected passages and rooms, a gracefully proportioned chapel leaning far out over the precipice, and plenty of
places where the unwary foot could have slid with fatal results. My initial exploration revealed no secret tunnels, but if they had been easy to find they
would not have been secret.
“I heard one of the stable boys refer to you as Count Scar,” Bruno shuffled up
to tell me triumphantly. “But after a good thumping he agreed to use your rightful name from now on.”
Though I now felt that everyone in the castle was looking at and wondering at the dark red disfigurement of my face, the feeling did little to dampen my good
mood. After all, I was long accustomed to that. No matter what they said behind
my back, they were still mine to command— as soon as I knew what commands to give them.
By now all the men were busy about their day’s tasks, the knights tending their
gear or practicing their swordwork, the staff cooking, cleaning, making barrels,
attending to the horses, renewing the slates on a bit of roof line, hammering away in the forge, and a dozen other chores. It was somewhat disconcerting to realize how well the castle was already functioning without me and my discipline. There were no women at all in sight; the few ladies who had lived there had doubtless left at once when the countess died.
But I missed them almost immediately. The chief cook spotted me when I looked into the kitchens around noon to check on dinner’s progress. He hurried over, full of deep bows and apologies, to acquaint me with the state of the spice chest, “For you see, my lord, these two months gone I have not been able to buy,
and this time of year the prices are always scandalous, yet we are shockingly low on pepper and dangerously low on cinnamon,” I wondered briefly if irrelevantly on the dangers the lack of cinnamon posed to Peyrefixade, then realized with a cold thud what he was asking: he wanted money, and all I had was
the pitiful sum left in the bottom of the pouch my brother had given me. This county must produce an income for its count, but how was I to gain access to it?
Surely there was a bailiff or stewart somewhere who saw to the rents and tolls
coming in, but I could not recall meeting any such person last night. The seneschal must not have the money himself or he would have been able to supply
it to the cook.
And why was the cook bothering me about the spices anyway? I knew nothing of these things. At home first my mother and then my sister-in-law had always supervised the kitchen provisions. The ladies who flocked around Count Scar had
better be well trained in castle management.
We were interrupted before I could ask how many peppercorns he could get for the
few solidi I still had. A clear note of a horn sounded through the castle, then
again and a third time.
“That’s the signal that someone’s coming up the road, my lord,” said the cook helpfully. “It was blown last evening when you were spotted, though of course we
didn’t realize at first it was you.”
“Of course,” I said briskly. With a castle like this, someone could roll out of
bed with nothing on but his shirt and still defend it, but it was good to know
that a certain discipline was already established even without me. Soldiers I could always talk to; I should start with the guards once I had dealt with whoever was now making the climb up my mountain.
Bruno met me outside the kitchen, and the castle seneschal silently fell into step at my shoulder as I hurried toward the front gate. The latter looked just
as gaunt this morning as he had last night, but lugubrious rather than ill, I judged. He had murmured something then about the great sorrow of the countess’s
death: an old family retainer, I thought, but he was not really so old.
The duke’s messengers who had brought me south joined us at the gate. “It is Duke Argave,” one informed me. “We sent a message from that inn three days ago,
and it is good to see he received it.”
A small group of horsemen labored up the last climb, led by one carrying an enormous black banner. Behind him on a powerful stallion rode a man who could only be the duke, clean-shaven, with dark eyes that seemed even at a distance to
be looking into mine. Dangerous, my brother had termed him. He was tall and heavily built, graying but still graceful in the saddle, wearing a red silk tabard over his armor.
“He said in the letter he sent me,” I muttered to Bruno, “that he wanted me to
start south at once, and he is certainly wasting no time making my acquaintance.”
“Halt, in the name of Caloran, Count of Peyrefixade!” shouted my guards to my surprised delight, as they leaped out in front of the gate and stood with crossed halberds. The duke stopped twenty yards below them, before the final loop of the road. “Tell your master that Duke Argave requests permission to enter the castle which he has vouchsafed him.” He must know who I was but was not looking at me now.
I stepped forward. “Enter my castle, esteemed lord, for I would gladly greet you
and bow the knee to you.” They might pride themselves on their dancing-master manners here in the south, but I was sure that none of them had experienced anything like the ceremony of the imperial court on a high holy day.
Argave gave a sudden smile and kicked his lathered horse for the final assent.
It was quite clear that I would never have inherited this castle were it not for
the duke, so there was no use in holding back. When he reached the gates I was
already down on one knee, reaching for his stirrup to hold it as he descended.
He nodded in satisfaction but said, “Rise, Caloran. You will come to my court at
Ferignan for formal investment next week, and until then you need not bend the
knee to me.” He gave only the slightest flick of his eyelids at the sight of my
scarred face. I came to my feet slowly but maintained my grip on his stirrup until he had dismounted. He took a heavy, linen-wrapped box from the back of his
saddle, then the grooms appeared to lead the horse away.
His messengers immediately burst into a flow of words that I could not understand. The duke looked at me over their heads and smiled as though enjoying
my discomfort. But he said in a friendly enough tone, “You do not understand our
region’s language? Come, lads, let us not appear to be discussing secrets before
Count Caloran. You can tell me all these things later if they have any import.”
“I speak the Royal Tongue,” I said stiffly, “and Allemann of course, from my years in the imperial court.” Let him learn about that from me and not from his
messengers.
“Auccitan, our region’s language, is in your blood,” he replied good-naturedly.
“You should quickly pick it up, as it is not so different from the Royal Tongue.”
And if they persisted in speaking a language I did not understand, I thought, then Bruno and I would converse before them in Allemann.
“I knew, of course, of your service to the emperor,” the duke continued, just when I thought he would not deign to mention it at all. “And how you left that
service two years ago.” Duke Argave, I thought, had good information—perhaps from my brother, perhaps from other sources—but did not always care to share that information with those under him.
“Here in your own court,” he added thoughtfully, “you may hear nothing but your
own Royal Tongue. After Countess Aenor came back from offering her obeiance to
the king, she ordered that none but his language be spoken here, and she was obeyed. Of course,” he put in almost as an aside, “she did not live a year after
that, so the lesson may not have taken thoroughly.”
The countess had died within a year of taking office herself? Clearly there was
a great deal that the messengers had deliberately kept from me. I led Duke Argave into the great hall, though he doubtless knew the way better than I did.
Here, with a flourish, he whipped the linen away from the box and handed it to
me. It was even heavier than I had expected from the way he carried it, and I came close to dropping it. It was made of age-darkened chestnut, bound with bands of iron, and locked with a massive lock. But the duke produced a key, and
under his gaze I slowly opened it.
It was, as I suspected, the treasury of the county of Peyrefixade. The cook would be able to buy more peppercorns after all, I thought, hefting the leather
bags within. I didn’t want to count my money with Duke Argave looking on, but then I suspected he had long since counted it himself. The bags seemed somehow
less full than I had hoped, though I tried to reassure myself that most of the
money would be in gold. There was no use whatsoever in suspecting the duke of having improved the condition of his own spice chests while guarding my treasury
for me.
The bouteillier hurried in with flagons of wine. He said something in rapid Auccitan to Duke Argave as he served us, but the duke did not answer. This southern wine was better than anything my brother had in his castle, I thought
as we sipped.
“The spring rents come due next month,” said the duke. Everything he said had a
slightly amused, ironic undertone, but that seemed only his way of speaking, not
a comment on my rents—I hoped. “Your seneschal can inform you about your rent collectors. He’s a good man, devoted to your family.”
I nodded, noticing a sheaf of parchment in the bottom of the treasury box. A quick glance showed that a few were property deeds or judicial records, but most
were chirographic records of transfers of property away from the county patrimony. The ones I leafed through all represented gifts to a religious house
dedicated to the Three Kings.
“How did the countess come to die so suddenly,” I asked without looking up,
“having held the office such a short time? Was it the perils of childbirth?”
Duke Argave chuckled, and then I did meet his eyes. They were dark and piercing,
with very little real humor in them. “You should know better than that, Caloran.
If she had had a child, there would have been no need to summon you all the way
from the north!” He wore a large emerald ring, doubtless worth many times the contents of my treasury box, and he turned it thoughtfully as he spoke. “Her grandfather, old Count Bernhard, had outlived his son by many years and died beloved and venerable last winter. His granddaughter, the heiress, would doubtless have been loved just as much—eventually—if it had not been for her accident.”
So there had been some sort of trouble during her short reign. “Accident?” I repeated.
“Late fall, the time of fogs and mists. She must have decided to walk on the ramparts by herself in the evening. No one knew she had even left her chamber until they heard the scream… It was not until the next morning that they found
her body.”
“So she fell to her death.” I stirred uneasily in the great carved chair in which I sat. She had presumably known the castle all her life; I would have to
watch my own step very carefully.
“Or was pushed.”
The duke’s words seemed to echo through the empty hall. “But who would have pushed her?” I asked, horrified.
“Not her husband,” he answered with assurance, “as he was never out of the sight
of at least a dozen witnesses that evening, at least one of whom I trust completely. And there was scant reason for him to want her dead just yet, even
had he despised her, which he did not. For without a child of his body to inherit, he had no further legal claim to be Count of Peyrefixade. He tried to
argue it with me, of course, even hired some men of law to make his case, but I
could tell his heart was never in it. Without his wife Lord Thierri is just one
more dependent at my court again. That’s the real reason I haven’t brought him
to the ordeal.”
This was what the duke had hinted at in his letter to me. I felt a cold suspicion that there was still much more to this than he had said. He could certainly have accepted the countess’s consort as the new count if he had wanted, without fearing anyone would dare oppose him. But for some reason, without even having met me, he had decided he wanted me instead.
