Mastiff: The Legend of Beka Cooper #3, page 13
Tunstall and I bowed. Behind us we heard the door close as Sergeant Axman left. I took the packet of documents from Lord Gershom and set them before Sir Tullus with another bow, then gave him my own orders. Tunstall passed me his to set before Sir Tullus.
“Very good,” Sir Tullus said, taking the seat behind his desk. “Sit down, both of you. From the look of this, I may need a little time.” He went over our orders first and set them aside. Then he sliced the seal clean off the packet and cut the ties with a small, sharp dagger. Sir Tullus opened the wrapping and selected the first document.
He hadn’t read the entire page before he said, “Mithros and Goddess save us!” He turned and yanked at a bellpull behind him so hard that it snapped. “Parrot pox,” he grumbled. “I do that once a month at least. You’d think they’d make the sarden things tougher.”
The door opened. A lass of fourteen, a message runner, stuck her head into the room. “Sir Knight?” She frowned as Sir Tullus held up the rope pull. “You broke it again, sir.” I don’t believe she was close enough to see that Tullus’s hand was trembling with vexation.
“When will you trade for chain, like I keep asking?” Sir Tullus demanded. “Wine, three cups, some pasties. At the run, lass!”
“Aye, Sir Knight.” The runner left us, closing the door.
Sir Tullus looked at Tunstall and me. “You were there?”
“Not when it happened, Sir Knight,” Tunstall replied. “Lord Gershom in Corus got word that something was amiss and collected Cooper and me for the early Hunt. And a mage, Farmer Cape.”
Sir Tullus grunted and returned to reading his document. As he read, he swore under his breath and made the Sign twice before the wine and food arrived. The runner came back then, setting the pitcher and plates at the front of Sir Tullus’s desk so we might serve ourselves. It seemed the Deputy Provost preferred such informality. Once she’d poured the wine, the lass left us alone together in the room once more.
Tunstall and I tried not to gobble the pasties as Sir Tullus read the first document three times over. It was hard. Until Sir Tullus had mentioned food, I had forgotten that I’d had scant food all day. The pasties sat well on my belly. From the way Achoo gulped the one I passed along, it sat fine with her, too. Pounce was apparently uninterested, since he had curled up in a patch of sunlight and gone to sleep.
Sir Tullus put the document down at last and knocked back the contents of his wine cup, which he had not yet touched. He went to the door and opened it. “Good idea, to stay there,” he said to someone outside.
We heard his runner say pertly, “You did break the bellpull again, Sir Knight.”
“None of your sauce. Another round of those pasties, and the fritters I like,” he told her.
“Sir Knight, might she also bring twilsey or barley water?” Tunstall called. “Cooper’s not what you would call one for spirits.”
“Thank you,” I told my partner quietly. I’d never have had the sack to ask for myself.
“And some nice cold twilsey or barley water,” Sir Tullus said. “Off you go.” He closed the door.
We turned in our chairs to look at him. All of his normal ruddiness was gone. He’d spoken cheerfully enough to his runner, but the look on his face now was that of a cove who’d taken a hard shock. He came back to his desk and poured himself another cup of wine.
“Gershom’s orders are for me to send a number of messages out and wait on replies,” he told us, staring at the cup. “I’ll need to keep the two of you at hand for a couple of days. There’s a lodging house we use for out-of-town Dogs, Ladyshearth Lodgings.”
“I know it, Sir Knight,” I said. “Goodwin and I stayed there when we had our Hunt in ’47.” I glanced at Tunstall. “We didn’t have time when we were here the last couple of times, but you’ll like the place.”
“Good,” Sir Tullus said. He opened a drawer in the side of his desk. “You’ll need coin for a change of clothes.” I heard metal clink. At last Sir Tullus held up a small leather bag and tossed it to Tunstall. My partner weighed it in his hand, nodding with approval. “Account for every coin, remember,” Tullus said. “I’ll try to get you back to Corus for a day at least, to pack.” He sighed, rubbing his face with his hands. “I knew certain factions at court were getting restless, but I never thought they would be such idiots. Folk will lose their heads for this, and families their titles.”
“They should, if they had a hand in what we saw,” Tunstall replied, his eyes hard. “More than a hundred and thirty dead, with the King’s Own, the guard on the main gate, and the servants. That’s not counting their own people that they drowned or melted. They deserve not a whit of mercy.”
Sir Tullus nodded. “I don’t see why Gershom picked you two. Was there no one else?” I was starting to feel vexed and hurt when he looked at me and said, “It’s because of your loss, Guardswoman Cooper. Surely you would be happier at home.”
Here again was sympathy for my grief, grief I didn’t feel for a man I didn’t love anymore. I looked down, unable to bear the kindness in Sir Tullus’s eyes. I felt like a liar before him.
“She will not be happier at home,” Tunstall told him. “She has been good, Hunting with me, haven’t you, Cooper?” I nodded, and Tunstall continued, “And Jewel and Yoav are too old for this.”
“Jewel is, at any road,” I made myself remark. It was better to speak than to listen to them talk about me. To Sir Tullus I said, “I thank you for your condolences, but truly, I am easier at work. I will not say that I am the best Provost’s Guard for this, but Tunstall is, and Achoo is. Even Nyler Jewel does not come with my hound.”
Achoo, hearing her name, sat up and whuffed softly. She seldom talks loudly if she doesn’t have to. She is the quietest hound in all Corus, as far as I have been able to tell. Sir Tullus got up and came around his desk to greet her. As I told her to treat him as a friend, he saw Pounce in his patch of sunlight. Pounce blinked at him.
“Master Pounce, good day to you,” he said gravely, scratching Achoo behind the ears. “I apologize for not greeting you earlier, but you did not go to any effort to make yourself seen.”
You had other things on your mind, Sir Tullus, Pounce replied. We have all been thrown into a storm of fate. We can forgive old friends if the amenities are let slip.
“A storm of fate?” Tullus asked with a crooked smile. “I would have called it an unholy mess. Though it’s been coming, with all the loose talk that’s been going around. I just never expected the attack to take this form, the craven swine! To threaten a child for their ends—Mithros’s spear, that takes gems the size of the palace.”
“You’ll get no arguments here, Sir Knight,” Tunstall replied.
“Pardon, Sir Tullus,” I said, rubbing my temples. My head was beginning to ache. “You expected this?” I felt as if everyone had done so except me.
There was a tap on the door. It opened and the runner entered, a big tray laden with food and a pitcher in her hands. Sir Tullus lifted away pitcher and cup and poured, handing the cup to me. As his runner placed the tray on a table, he frowned. “Chopped meat?”
“Sergeant Axman sent it for the creatures,” the runner said, placing the plates on the floor. “Beef and egg for the hound, and chicken and egg for the cat. And we apologize for those not being ready earlier, the cook not understanding that Sergeant Axman meant Cook was to make them up right off.” She grinned at Sir Tullus, picked up the tray with the empty plates, and left the room.
Sir Tullus sat by the table instead of behind the desk. I gulped down the raspberry twilsey, a boon to my parched throat, and poured myself another cup while Sir Tullus selected a couple of fritters and Tunstall a cheese pasty.
“Anyone with eyes and ears on the Council of Lords has expected some trouble for the last two years, Cooper,” Sir Tullus said, once he’d chewed and swallowed his first mouthful. “Mages, particularly great ones, are a haughty crew, the nobles are feeling ill-treated, and His Majesty is no longer prepared to let things pass. He has grown up and the treasury is very low.” He noted our alarmed faces and smiled. “I have this place spelled against eavesdropping once a week. That was yesterday. My young friend there can’t hear me bellow with the door open.”
I whistled in spite of being a bit uncomfortable around him still. I’d been in his courtroom when he bellowed. That was a very good sound-stopping spell.
“I wouldn’t work in here without such magic,” Sir Tullus said. “That was part of my predecessor’s difficulty. People who did not have his best interests at heart spied on him.”
I swallowed a snort. That was the mildest way of putting the last Deputy Provost’s troubles.
“I don’t see how His Majesty can be growing up at the age of forty-three,” Tunstall remarked. “Isn’t it a bit late?”
“It gives the rest of us old fools hope,” Sir Tullus replied. “It’s been going on since his marriage to Queen Jessamine. That mother of hers raised her to take an interest in the running of the realm. Once Jessamine and Roger were married, she began to ask questions. Well, no man likes to look a fool to an adoring young woman. He asked his ministers to tell him what they’ve been up to. He started reading his reports to her. They talk about the kingdom’s affairs.”
“I begin to see the problem,” Tunstall said quietly, polishing off a third pasty. I was picking at one, having eaten enough for a time with the first plate. I think Tunstall’s legs are hollow.
“You do indeed. For years Prince Baird and the rest of the Council of Lords handled the realm as they liked.” Sir Tullus dunked a fritter in his wine and ate it. “Then His Majesty wanted to know what they did. Next he started to change things. Some of the nobles don’t like that. Remember the winter of 247—the Bread Riots in Corus until Midwinter. His Majesty overruled his councillors and opened the royal smokehouses and granaries. He even let commoners hunt in parts of the Crown forest lands.”
“Why was that a problem?” I asked. Living in the city, I have little experience of life on noble estates.
Sir Tullus rubbed his chin. “Nobles are a proud lot, Cooper. They feel that if the king grants permission to hunt the Crown lands, it must be to nobles only.”
“And in years gone by, the king allowed only nobles to buy from the royal granaries and smokehouses in hard times. The nobles sell the goods to their people for much more than they paid,” Tunstall added. “Or they trade for a promise of labor on the nobles’ lands, or for someone’s children as slaves. You know what folk will do when they are hungry.”
I do know.
“You heard of none of this about the council uproar in ’47, Cooper?” Sir Tullus asked.
“That winter wasn’t a time for us to sit and collect the gossip, Sir Knight,” Tunstall explained. “We were busier than fleas on a hot griddle, with folk rioting and stealing food. Mithros bless the king, he made certain the Dogs were fed in the kennels, that we might keep working.”
And Rosto shared what the Court of the Rogue had with his friends, I thought.
Sir Tullus, done with the fritters, stood and went back to his desk. He wiped his fingers on a cloth that lay there, and began to look at the other sealed documents that had been in the packet. “Well, with luck there will be no hard winter this year,” he said, almost to himself. “The seers are predicting a good harvest, if the trouble they see in our future does not interfere with it. I’d wager the attack and kidnapping is the trouble they’ve been seeing.” He looked at us. “I need to get to work on this. Why don’t you two—you four,” he said with a nod to Pounce and Achoo, “go on to Ladyshearth Lodgings and settle in. I doubt I’ll have anything to tell you at least until tomorrow noon.”
We stood and bowed, then left him. His runner bowed to us, then entered his office while we headed on down the hall. In the main waiting room, Sergeant Axman was seated behind his desk once more, perched on his tall chair. He pointed to a pair of bulging packs that lay on a bench.
“I guessed at your sizes, but I’ve a good eye for such things,” he said. “I’d a feeling those packs of yours don’t have extra uniforms, stockin’s, and the like. There’s combs and other useful things, too.”
Tunstall grinned and offered Axman his arm to clasp. “Mithros loves a good sergeant, Lord Gershom always says. My thanks, Sergeant Axman.”
I smiled up at him. “Thanks,” I said. “I know I’ll feel like a new mot in a fresh uniform.”
“I’ve had my night calls, too,” Axman replied. “And not from a bordel, either! Get on with the two of you. I sent word ahead to Serenity. She’ll have your rooms and supper waitin’.”
He was as good as his word. Not only did Serenity have rooms prepared for us, but there were tubs of hot water inside them. She even had food bowls waiting outside her kitchen door for Pounce and Achoo. They couldn’t say they ever starved, working with me.
When Tunstall and I were clean and dressed in fresh uniforms, we found a good supper put on the dining room table. We spoke little, mostly because five other Dogs who were staying at the house at the same time had come off watch and were there to eat with us. They were closemouthed, too, doubtless being weary after their day’s work. I thought back on all I had learned about the current mess and how it might have led to a royal kidnapping.
“I said, Cooper, mayhap you should go to bed.” I looked up. Tunstall was leaning over the table to stare at my face. None of the other diners remained with us. Even their dishes had been cleared away. Only Tunstall and Serenity were left.
Achoo was curled up at my feet, Pounce on the chair beside me. He’s right, Pounce said. Only this morning you slid down a cliff and burned yourself trying to search magicked ships. He looked at Tunstall. Sleep wouldn’t hurt you either.
I got to my feet. “I think you’re both right,” I admitted. “We should get rest while we can.” I knew that once we had our own orders, chances for a good night’s sleep might come rarely.
In my room, I tried to work on my journal more, but I am tired. I’ll catch up in the morning. Who knows how long we will be here, after all?
Sunday, June 10, 249
Ladyshearth Lodgings
Coates Lane
Port Caynn
One of the afternoon.
being an account of the events of Saturday, June 9,
beginning at dawn on that day
Achoo woke me at dawn yesterday, of course. We went out, nodding to the busy cook and cook maid, and returned, to go to bed once more. I roused again as the city’s clocks struck nine and cleaned myself up, then visited the kitchen to beg breakfast for my two friends. The crosspatch maid who had been here during my last Port Caynn visit was having her morning meal in the kitchen. She remembered us.
“Don’t you go feedin’ them nasty pigeons on your windowsill, like you done last time!” she said, pointing a finger at me. “This is a decent house, and why Serenity lets you in with all your livestock—”
“Enough,” the cook snapped. “You cross old mud turtle, leave the Dog alone. These two creatures are as neat and well trained as them that live here. Neater than some I could name. So just stop yer gob.” She grinned down at Pounce, who was bumping against her shins. “Some folk just don’t appreciate a gentleman like you, Master Pounce.” She looked at me. “Now, Guardswoman Cooper, what will you have for your breakfast?”
My belly happily full, I returned to my room. There I opened my shutters to a bright, sunny day and a soft breeze. It was a pleasure to set my soggy laundry outside for the maids to wash. I hoped the crosspatch maid got the task. Then I sat down to my table and this journal. First I recorded what had taken place beginning on Thursday the seventh. I finished that and began the other report that Lord Gershom had requested, the one which did not mention Tunstall, Achoo, or me, all in official Dog cipher. I was just finishing when Tunstall hammered on my door at the end of the noon hour.
“Cooper, it’s a beautiful day, and I’m cursed if I’ll waste much more of it!” he bellowed. “Come out of there!”
I opened my door, rubbing my cramped writing hand. “You’re a cracked lad with the manners of a Cesspool bum-washer, you know that?” I asked him.
Tunstall leaned on the doorframe, taking no offense at all. He never did. Goodwin once told me I might bash him with an oaken club, to see if that might make a dent, but it seemed to be hardly worth the trouble.
“Is the report done?” Tunstall asked. When I nodded, he said, “Then you’ve no excuse. Pounce and me are bored.” He wasn’t storying me. Pounce sat at his feet, yawning at us. “Send it to Tullus and let’s amble,” Tunstall ordered. “You know I can’t stay put, not while awaiting orders. Mistress Serenity says she can use her Gift to find us if aught happens—that’s why they keep folk like us here.”
He had a point. Neither of us waits well. I wasn’t sure what would occupy his restless mind until I bethought myself of his flowers. He has a name for himself in Corus for the miniature blooms he grows. Doubtless he’d like to see the flowers in Port Caynn, if I could learn where fine ones were.
Serenity was in the dining room, going over her accounts. “That’s easy,” she said when I asked her. “You’ve been there, Cooper, though it was in the fall. Ridge Gardens. The lower levels on the north side, they’ve got the best flowers.” She looked at me, raising a brow. “Strange. I never took you for the flower sort.”
“Oh, that would be me,” Tunstall said. “I grow them at home.”
Serenity dropped her pen. “You’re that Tunstall! But nobody ever said you were a man! Or a Dog! You’re not pulling my skirts, are you? The same Tunstall that grows the Goddess Glory, the rose that’s no bigger than my thumbnail?”
