“Poor creature,” he said, “I ask your pardon. Now your children in the hole will starve for lack of the food you went in search of.”
Rodvard was astounded to see a tear glitter at the edge of the swordsman’s eye. “Ah, bah!” said Mathurin. “Will you defend vermin, Slair? You’ll have use enough for your steel when the new decrees are passed.”
Rodvard stirred. “What decrees?”
Mathurin turned (with his back carefully to the candles, Rodvard noted, so that his face was dark). “There’s to be a new court, to try special cases; it was what I was about to mention when interrupted. Treason against the people and nation. You will be writer to it; more important than the sessions of the assembly.” He turned to Lalette. “There is also a part for you; you are one of the keys now.”
Lalette said unhappily; “In what way?”
“As versus these Episcopals. They spread venom; represent the greatest danger we now have to face. Pavinius? I give him a snap of the fingers; he is too nice, with his Mayern foreigners and western herdsmen. The Tritulaccans? Nothing by themselves, they had never beaten Dossola in the former war but for the revolt of Mancherei, Mayern help and the treason of the Kjermanash chieftains. The court? Now sold to Tritulacca, and destitute by its own action. But the Episcopals are still not out of credit with the people, who have been lulled by their solemn mummery. We drove them from the assembly of the nation this morning, good. But now they may join Tritulacca in the name of what they call true religion.”
“But what have I to do with the Episcopals?” asked the girl.
“Child, fool, use your Art. Not to the death; they’d only fill the office with another man, but paralyze, cripple, drive idiot. The Arch-Episcopal Groadon, notably. His loss would hurt them most.”
Lalette sat up. “Ser Mathurin, you do not by any means understand this matter of the Art. Groadon is protected by the holy oils, and nothing I can do will bite on him.”
“It is you that do not understand. I do assure you that if Groadon be taken in a moment of anger, as today, or other violent passion, neither his oils nor any other thing can protect him from your ministrations. Be assured, we will provide the occasion.”
Lalette’s mouth twitched. (She wanted to cry; “Not for any reward or punishment you can give!” but) it was a moment before she said; “Am I the only—witch in Dossola?”
Mathurin made a grating sound. “No. I’ll be open; we are pressing the search. Have found three others—aside from those who claimed the Art, but could witch nothing more consequential than a frog or chicken. One is an old beldame who has nearly lost her wits, and can be made to understand nothing. One’s a young girl—witch enough, but never taught, did not know the patterns, and beside, she ran away. One we caught, not found—she was in Chancellor Florestan’s pay.” He drew a finger across his throat. “None of them heiress to a Blue Star.”
“I am not sure I can follow all the patterns myself,” said Lalette. “I have used the Art—so little.”
Mathurin looked at her sharply. “Hark!” he said. “I see your slowness, but you more than another should be on our side; as witch and woman. The Art has almost died out; driven down by priest and Episcopal. There are likely many with the right inheritance who do not know it. Never taught. Yet it’s a woman’s defence. We have the butler Tuolén’s Blue Star, for instance. But where’s the girl can bring it to life? We do not even know her name.”
He whirled suddenly and flung out an arm toward Rodvard in an oratorical gesture. “Bergelin! I remember; that was the other matter. You were in the Office of Pedigree; know its secrets. Forget the great assembly for the time; that’s under control. Until the new court’s set up your task is seeking out Tuolén’s heiress. I’ll give you an authority.”
“It may be somewhat harder than you think,” said Rodvard.
“I did not say it would be easy; I said it would be done,” said Mathurin. “Slair, let us go.”
When they were out, he turned to look at Lalette. She had sagged down, with her face in the pillow, and now without moving, she said as before; “Rodvard.”
He went across the room and put an arm around her. “What is it?”
“My mother. She is with the court, and she knows the patterns. If that man takes her, he will have her throat cut.”
(The fate of many thousands, and the guarantee of the future, with the Art not in the hands of ignorant peasants, but women of intelligence and good will—balanced against one lie. But how to say it?) He said; “Has she shown so much concern for you?”
Lalette twisted under his arm. “If she had, would I know it? You hold me a prisoner—you and your Dr. Remigorius, who does not deliver letters, and your Mme. Kaja, who will sell me, and your Mathurin, who wants to cut my mother’s throat. I never knew what dirt was till I knew you.”
(Rodvard felt the blood beat at his temples; he wanted to strike her, to make a fiery retort.) He released her, stood up, and began to walk the floor. (No: no. A quarrel so entered could never be composed. Look beyond it, Rodvard; see how the world would be without her. Somewhere perhaps there was another who would have more response for an interior fidelity deeper than any single act; would not drive him from her side with bitter words when . . . He thought of Maritzl of Stojenrosek; and by this route came again to the high purpose. No. It was mere selfishness to let his own thought, his own problem, stand first; the very thing he had wished to bring her to see. Keep the peace.)
A small sound made him turn. She was just settling into place among the covers, and her face turned toward him. “Oh, Rodvard,” she said, “help me. I can’t do it. The Episcopal.”
Nothing more was said on the subject, but that night they slept in each other’s arms.
Punctual to the hour, as Rodvard and Lalette sat at breakfast with the woman who cared for the kitchen and a Green Islands buyer of northern wools, there arrived a messenger bearing the authority signed by Mathurin to consult all documents and registers in the Office of Pedigree, even those hitherto held under ecclesiastical seal. For Lalette also, a note; the Arch-Episcopal had declared himself in seclusion for prayer, and she would be notified further. Between them that morning there was a truce to contention; they walked for a while in the gardens among dead rustling leaves, and she kissed him sweetly when he left.
On the way to the Office of Pedigree, Rodvard thought of Asper Poltén and the rest when he walked in with an authority to examine the sealed registers, but this small triumph was denied him. Poltén was nowhere to be seen, and in the distributing office was only an old, dry, dusty man Rodvard remembered as having seen once or twice with some document close to his nose. He held Rodvard’s paper in the same manner, sniffed as though it had an unpleasant odor, and shufflingly led the way to the sealed strong-room, which he unlocked with a creaking key. There seemed fewer people than usual in the halls.
The sealed files themselves showed the search likely to be a long one; mostly old, written in crabbed hands, and largely concerned with the illegitimacies of persons now forgotten, or convictions of witchery in cases that now had no meaning. Of the specific line of Tuolén there was no trace that morning, and the older records of families having Kjermanash blood were so badly kept as to indicate a long search.
At noon, Rodvard went to a tavern and lingered over his mug to savor the gossip of the town, but that was something of a failure, too, for there was none of the high excitement over the doings of the great assembly he had expected. The only group he overheard specifically were three or four merchants at a table, rather gloomily discussing the rise in the price of wool caused by the troubles in the west, and the fall in the price of southern wine, which kept coming in from oversea and could not be dispatched to the disturbed seignories. Nobody said a word about the Episcopals; the only time the court was mentioned, there was a little growling over the name of Florestan.
In the afternoon, Rodvard began by setting aside the registers that had to do with the three northernmost seignories, Bregatz, Vivensteg and Oltrug; but the task was so wearisome and his mind so occupied with other topics that he put them away early. It seemed to him, as he summoned the caretaker to lock the room, that there was nothing in the world as dear or desirable as Lalette, if he could only somehow reach an agreement with her, all troubles would vanish away. As he walked back toward the Ulutz palace, he thought that if they could only sit down in the clear winter air after last night’s storm all coils would be unwoven.
But she was not in the room when he arrived, and when he found her, it was on a bench among the garden alleys, wrapped in a cloak and laughing as she talked to Demadé Slair. The swordsman leaped up at his coming. “Hail dauntless dompter of the written page!” he said, in a tone which was that of banter between friends, but with something in it that made Rodvard look sharply at the eyes. (Clear as speech, the thought came through; “And this long-legged booby who has never handled a weapon in his life will lie with her tonight while I’m alone.”)
Rodvard said, a little unevenly; “I have made a beginning. Are there any tidings?”
“Not in the assembly,” said Slair. “Much discussion of how to raise troops for the people’s army, and a report by General Stegaller. The decree for your court.”
“My court?” said Rodvard (thinking of the Queen).
“That of judgment in special cases.” (The eyes had gone blank.) “You’ll be writer to it, as Mathurin to the assembly. If there’s anyone you have a grudge against, name him for trial.”
He laughed; so did Lalette (and as Rodvard caught her eye, he saw in it a color of regret that he could not be as gay as the swordsman, and a wave of dislike for the man who had rescued him from Charalkis prison contracted his veins). “I think I saw in the library a book by Momoroso that I have never read,” he said. “I will see you before table, Lalette.”
“The session will recess,” said the kronzlar Escholl. He rose and swept the courtroom with his curious lacklustre eye, that never seemed to be settled on anything. “I will go over the evidence with you, Bergelin.”
The legist on his right, the Zigraner, frowned; he on the left leaned his chin on his hand and his elbow on the table. The accused, a man with a coronet badge, iron-grey hair and heavy dewlaps, looked disconcerted. Rodvard gathered his papers and followed the president of the court to the little room in rear.
When they were there; “What have you found?” asked the legist.
“I think he tells the truth,” said Rodvard, “when he says he has given no help to the Queen’s party or Pavinius. When you asked him that, however, there was something like fear—perhaps for his brother. It was not clear.”
“Ah.” The legist placed his fingers together and studied them. “Bergelin,” he said, after a moment, “you are to remember that this is a special court of inquiry. We are empowered to handle not only direct treasons, but matters which the ordinary law holds criminal. Such acts dissipate the resources that of right belong to the nation. You tend to be narrow. Let us return.”
As they came in, one of the guards nudged the prisoner forward again. The jurist president frowned on him portentously. “Kettersel,” he said, “a brief examination of the record shows no evidence of your giving aid to either of the two destituted persons who claim to rule the realm of Dossola. Unless my fellow-jurists disagree, of that you are acquitted.” He glanced at one and the other; the Zigraner gave a somewhat unwilling nod, the third legist had only an absent expression. “But in pleading innocence of giving such aid, you are answering a charge that has never been brought. If you say you are not guilty of garroting people by night in King Crotinianus’ Square, we will find you innocent of that also, and so through a list of possible crimes, did it not waste this court’s time to agree with you that you have committed none of them. But you are charged with treason to the nation, which in its essence consists not of any specific act, but of a point of view, which may be proved by a number of actions, in themselves bearing an innocent appearance until they are assembled with each other. I take it my fellow-jurists agree.”
He looked again, and again those in the lower seats nodded.
“Kettersel,” he said, “answer me. You have a brother with the court?”
The man cleared his throat. “I have answered that. He is a capellan in the Eagle Shar of Her Majesty’s lancers.” (The shadow of worry was behind the man’s eye; now deepened, and very surprising in such a person, whom one would have expected to be concerned about gold scudi or the fidelity of his mistress.)
“The nation’s lancers,” corrected Escholl. “Kettersel, are both you and your brother married?”
“Only him; the Baron.”
“Has he daughters?”
“No. Only a son.”
“If your brother should fall in the fighting, where would the inheritance lie?” (Now the fear was at the front and perfectly sharp; it was a fear of being left penniless.) Kettersel said slowly (and lying); “I am not sure; would have to consult the Office of Pedigree. There is a cousin, I think, to whom the income would fall. The title and the estate would pass to the son, of course.”
“How old is the son.”
“Twenty-four.”
“I see.” The jurist president moved his lips (and Rodvard observed that the man before him was perspiring with the effort to keep some thought down; a thought which came to the watcher dark as sin and midnight). “Is your nephew married?”
“To one of the Blenau family.”
Rodvard signed; without appearing to see him the jurist president said; “Kettersel, you are engaged in concealments. It is useless. What is the trouble between you and your nephew?”
The man’s self-control split apart suddenly. He flung at Rodvard a glance of purest venom and burst out; “The damned young puppy is trying to have his own father killed so he may have the title for his whore of a wife. There is no reason, none at all, why he should take a command in the Eagle Shar. He is an old man, taking the task of that young bastard in the lancers, where all the fighting is.”
There was a little murmur in the courtroom. The jurist president said; “Why did he accept the charge?”
(It was the wrong line; Kettersel’s eyes were perfectly clear.) “To spare his son, I suppose. My nephew was appointed earlier.”
Rodvard coughed. Kronzlar Escholl said; “Where are your nephew and his wife now?”
The man paused (and in that pause the thing came through; it took Rodvard a minute or two to realize what it was). “I heard of them last at Landensenza.”
Rodvard stepped up to the jurist’s seat, with one finger on the paper to maintain the fiction, and whispered; “His true concern is not his brother, but because he wishes to lie with his nephew’s wife. I think she may have refused him, but he still believes it may be done somehow if the nephew can be killed before his brother.”
Escholl put a finger beside Rodvard’s. “That is correct, after all,” and turned to the prisoner. “Kettersel, your concern for your brother does you the greatest credit. It is evident that you have been in correspondence with him, but I think my brother jurists will agree when I pronounce you guiltless of true treason and order your release.”
The two jurists wagged their heads silently and in unison, like those toys with flexible necks which children play with during the winter festival.
“We will hear the next case.”
As Rodvard left the courtroom, Demadé Slair fell into step beside him. (The man was determinedly, if coldly, friendly; how to shake him off? instead of leading him home to Lalette and another of those conversations in three, where Rodvard felt himself so much hearing a language he did not understand that he always ultimately fled them for a book or the outer air.)
“Escholl is one of our best,” said the swordsman, kicking at the skin of a fruit, “but there’s a judgment I failed to understand.”
“Which one? The merchant who was confiscated for bringing wool-carts past the Mayern camp?”
“Ah, bah, no. He had money, the nation needs it; that’s crime enough. I spoke of the Baron’s brother, the noble Kettersel.”
“No more did I understand it,” said Rodvard. “As dirty a character as I ever saw, but the kronzlar let him go and praised him.”
“Oho!” said Slair. “It begins to come clear. What’s the tale?”
“Why, he was after his nephew’s wife—whether for her money or her body the most, I am not sure, but he wants both.” (He could not resist adding); “And it’s a poor task to break up a couple at any time, for it destroys two people’s chance of happiness for the temporary pleasure of one.”
“Not always,” said Slair, avoiding his eyes. “But I am interrupting. Is there more?”
“His only fear is that the Baron will die before the son, and so the right of remarrying the girl will pass to another family. I did not tell the kronzlar because it was not clear enough, but I think he was planning murder. Yet Escholl let him go.”
Slair laughed. “Bergelin,” he said, “do not lose your innocence; it may save your life some day, for no one will ever believe you are subtle enough to be dangerous. I said Escholl was one of our best; depend upon it, he thought more deeply than you, and without any witch-stone to help him. Why, it is precisely because Kettersel has murder and rape at the back of his mind that he was let go. For exactly the opposite reason, the court will condemn Palm as soon as there’s a pretext for a trial. Mathurin has arranged it so.”
“I am innocent again and do not quite understand the reason.”
“Yet you will dabble in high politic! Hark, now: are not all of the noble order enemies to the New Day by constitution, by existence? Are not all their private virtues overwhelmed by this public fault? The true villains among them will sooner or later dig their own graves and save us the trouble, bringing discredit on the whole in the process. But when you have one like Palm or the late Baron Brunivar, he’s dangerous; sets people to loving the institution because they cannot hate the man, and so must be pulled down by force. . . . For that matter, we need something to stir the people, make them fight for their liberty.”
“This seems a hard way,” said Rodvard, (trying to resolve the torsion in his mind).
“It is a hard life, and hardest for those who avoid battle,” said Demadé Slair; and Rodvard not replying, they walked in silence. (Would this new system somehow produce men of better heart and purpose? For he did not see how the hardness could be justified else. And now his mind fell to wagging between man-system, system-man, and he decided that the justification of the system would be that it produced better men generally, and not merely a few of the best. No, not that either, for that was to confuse politic with ethic, and each was itself a system; for the one would make men good without regard to their happiness, and the other make them happy without regard to their good. . . . Or what was good? Where was the standard? By the system of Mancherei—)
“Will you go on to the quays?” said Slair’s voice, suddenly, and Rodvard found himself three steps beyond the entrance to the Palace Ulutz.
“I am weary tonight,” said Rodvard. “Perhaps because I am so innocent that this affair of spying upon the minds of my fellows is somewhat unpleasant.”
He extended his hand to bid goodnight.
“Oh, I am going with you,” said the swordsman, and as he caught Rodvard’s glance of aversion. “I cannot bear to be without your company.” His face went sober as he quick-stepped beside Rodvard’s dragging feet up the entrance-walk. “This is Mathurin’s arrangement, also, in case it troubles you. Did you not notice those two men who followed us from the court at half a square’s distance? There will be another outside tonight. People’s guards.”
(A tremor of peril.) “But I have—”
“Done nothing but your duty to the nation. True; and for that reason precisely it is needful to guard you like an egg sought after by weasels. Do you think that the fact you bear a Blue Star is a secret? There are not a few persons who may be brought before the court that would rather conceal an assassination than what they have in their minds. You and I may have a fight on our hands.” His face lighted with pleasure at the prospect.
They paced slowly through the dead garden, along a walk so narrow that shoulders sometimes touched. Lalette could hear the tiny tinkle of the chain that bound Slair’s sword to his hip when that touch came; she knew he was stirred, and the rousing of emotion was not unpleasant to her. Beyond the slate roofs of the town the sun was sinking redly through striations of cloud; all things lay in a peace that was the peace of the end of the world. He turned his head.
“Demoiselle,” he said, “what will you give for news?”
“Oh, hush,” said she. “You spoil it. For a moment I was immortal.”
“I ask your grace. But truly I have news for you, and it should please you.”
“Sit here and tell me.” She took her place on a marble bench beneath the skeleton of an espaliered peach against the wall.
“You will not have to use your Art against the arch-priest Groadon. Does that not please you?”
“More than you know. What is the reason?”
“He has fled; slipped through the watch set on his palace and gone—whether to hell, the court or Tritulacca, no one knows.”
“I am glad.” She looked straight before her for a moment. “Ah, if things were better ordered.”
“You are not as pleased as you might be.”
“Oh, I am. But Rodvard—”
“What has he done? I’ll—”
“Oh, it’s no fault of his. You will tell no one?” She laid a cold hand on his warm one. “He has found who the heiress of Tuolén is, but does not know whether to tell Mathurin or not.”
“Who is she?”
“A child, thirteen years old. She lives at Dyolana, up in Oltrug seignory. But I do not know how long Rodvard will keep the secret. He feels a sense of duty.”
“Why should he not? What withholds him from telling?”
“I would have to teach her the patterns and everything. I do not wish it.” She shivered slightly. “And to be a witch—”
The rising shades had drowned the sun. A silence came on the garden, so utter that Lalette felt she could hear her own heart beat, and Demadé Slair’s beside her. The trees stood straight; the ruins of the flowers did not stir. In that enchanted stillness she seemed to float without power of motion. He leaned toward her, his arm close against her back, his other hand crept over her two.
“Demoiselle—Lalette,” he said in a voice so low it did not break the quiet. “I love you. Come away with me.”
Her down-bent head shook slowly; tears gathered behind the almost-closed eyes.
The arm around her back slid slowly beneath her own arm, the hand groped to close slowly around one soft breast; as though it were by no volition of her own, her head came back to meet the kiss. The tears ran down her cheek to touch his; he drew from her and began to speak rapidly in a voice low and urgent:
“Come with me. I will take you away from every unhappiness. We can go beyond finding. I am a fighting man, can find a need for my service anywhere. It does not matter; we can forget all this entanglement and make our own world. I have money enough. We can go to the Green Islands, and you will never have to use the Art again. Oh, Lalette, I would even take you to the court and join your mother. Do you wish it?”
Her lips barely moving, she said; “And Rodvard?”
He kissed her again. “Bergelin? You owe him nothing. What has he done for you? And now he will tell Mathurin about the heiress of Tuolén, and there will be no more place for you—except with me. I will always have a place for you, Lalette, now or a thousand years from now. Or do you fear him? I am the better man.”
Now her eyes opened wide on the first star, low in the darkening sky, and with one hand she gently disengaged his clasp from her breast. “No,” she said in a voice clearer than before. “No, Demadé, I cannot. Perhaps for that reason, but I cannot. We had better go in now.”
“Friend Ber-ge-lin! Friend Ber-ge-lin!” The voice from below-stairs brought back to a consciousness of unhappiness the mind that had lost itself in the sweet cadences and imagined worlds of Momoroso. Rodvard sprang up and threw open the door.
“What will you have?”
“Someone to see you.”
Down the hall another door closed. It would be the little old man who asked so many questions and went almost a-tiptoe, as though always prepared to look through a keyhole. From the stairhead, Rodvard could see in the evening’s first shades a figure covered with a long cloak, somehow familiar, but the face hooded over.
“Beg her to come up,” he called. The figure mounted with one hand on the bannister, in the slow manner of the old. Near the last step his mind clicked; he was not surprised when in the room the hood fell back to show Mme. Kaja. Face cold as ice, he remained standing. She came across the room in a whirl of skirts, with both hands out.
“My de-ear boy,” she said.
With the hangings at the windows, it was too dim to tell how far her sincerity went. “I am more than honored to have one of the regents—,” he said, and let it hang.
“Oh, you are the most necessary of all,” she said, and frou-froued to the best chair. “I hope you have forgiven me. It was so-o-o necessary; someone had filed an information with the provosts that I was part of the New Day, and it was such a help. Isn’t it to-o bad about the Episcopals not cooperating? But there are so many of the priests on our side.”
She had seated herself where her face was in the shadow.
“Madame, why have you come?” he asked brutally.
There was a silence in the darkening room. Then: “To help you,” said the voice that, though it might no longer sing, had not lost its silver in speech.
“I will make a light.”
She stirred. “Do not. It is better so . . . I know—you are thinking of the Blue Star. Do you imagine that I fear your using it? No.”
He sat quietly (noting with the back of his mind how the dubious nicety had dropped from her voice, and thinking that this was the woman who had been taken into the High Center). Once more she seemed to gather her forces. “Rodvard Bergelin,” she said, “do you know why I am in the High Center?”
“I . . . think so.”
“I will tell you. It may be that in my ancestry there is a strain from one of the witch-families. It may be because I sincerely serve God. I do not know. But it has been given to me to be able to trace certain secrets of the heart.” Her multitudinous bracelets jingled as she lifted a hand to her breast. “Not as you do with the Blue Star.”
She was silent again, and he (unable to restrain an impulse toward malice) said; “Your success in understanding Dr. Remigorius was—as great as my own.”
“Rodvard, you are so-o unfair.” She dropped for a moment into the old manner, then seemed to shake herself. “I know. Your—witch will never forgive me. Not that I brought the provosts, but that I came in that day when you were on the bed. I do not care; she brings an evil Art into our New Day.”
“Do you think so?”
“Rodvard, hear me. This witch, to whom you are affected, will one day be the end of you. I have seen her but little, yet I know—it is your nature to give offense, and hers to take it. Sooner or later it will happen that she will find something not to be borne and put a witchery on you that will strike like lightning.”
(This clipped him close; with a certain convulsion round the heart, he remembered Lalette’s occasional sudden rages.) “Well,” he said, “what would you have me do?”
“Bid her farewell. Both of you can find partners better suited.”
Rodvard came to his feet and walked across the room slowly (thinking in little flashes of sweet Leece and Maritzl of Stojenrosek). Mme. Kaja sat immobile.
“No,” he said. “Better or worse, I will not give her up for anything.”
Mme. Kaja also stood. “Forgive an old woman,” she said, and gathering her cloak around her, slipped out the door.
“We will hear the next case,” said the kronzlar Escholl.
The people’s guard opened the door to the room of the accused and called, “Bring her in,” while a sharp-faced countryman stepped forward from the rear of the court, two more guards behind him. The countryman had a merchant’s badge and so quick an eye that Rodvard gazed at him, fascinated to see what it would tell, and was therefore unprepared when he turned his head to see the accused.
It was Maritzl of Stojenrosek.
A Maritzl pale behind her red lips, still even when she moved, and much changed. (How? Rodvard asked himself and could find no answer but in a certain lessening of fibre that was expressed around the mouth, though the breathtaking thrill of her presence was still so much there that he swallowed.) The craggy-faced prosecutor stepped forward. “I present an accusation of treason against the nation on the part of the Demoiselle Maritzl of Stojenrosek, mistress of Count Cleudi, the foreign traitor. I call the innkeeper of Drog.”
(“Mistress of Count Cleudi?” and Drog?) The sharp-faced man stood forth. Maritzl turned to look at him, and as her eyes turned back, they fell on Rodvard. She started (and before she looked down again he caught from them an arrow of purest and most astounding hatred). “Tell us your story,” said the jurist president.
“I keep a good house,” said the man, twisting his cap in his hands, “and I have to be careful to preserve its reputation, because—”
The prosecutor touched his arm. “Give your condition first.”
Head bobbed. “Thank you, friend. I am keeper of the inn Star of Dossola at Drog, on the road through the Pass of Pikes in the Ragged Mountains, and mine is the largest inn there, with three upper rooms beside the general chamber.” (Maritzl was looking at him again, not now with hatred, but weariness of the world, and the thought that he, Rodvard, was as dreary as any part of it.) “It has never been necessary for the provosts to come to my place except when I called them. Now when this woman came into my inn, I knew right away that something was wrong. Late at night it was, and she in a three-horse coach with a driver, and that seemed strange—”
The prosecutor halted him again. “Explain why you thought something was wrong.”
“Look at her; she comes evidently from the court and bears the marks of it.” He jabbed a finger at the girl, but it was Rodvard she looked at (a long slow glance, in which was some decision to make a desperate appeal). “When I saw her, I think to myself, as a man often will, that this is not the place for a court woman to be, not with the court in Zenss. So I think this is a good one to watch and perhaps I will learn something, and while she is supping—she sat apart from the coachmaster in the high dining room, she did—while she was supping, I served her myself and marked how there was a little casket she kept beside herself and touched her hand to, even while she was eating.”
(Her face now outwardly held the appeal, but a plan was building in her mind; he could see it grow stone by stone, but not clearly what it was, because little hate-flashes kept jagging across the picture.)
“So I said to her that if her casket was that precious, I ought to hold it in the strongbox of the inn, there being so many wandering soldiers about. When I said this, her ladyship—” he grinned a vulpine grin to show this was intended for a joke “—said no, she would as soon lose her life as the casket, which being so small, I think it must have in it something beside jewels. So I said to myself, here is some mystery, but if anyone can unlock it, it is my friend Khlab, that was a provost of the court at Sedad Vix till it was broken up. So while her ladyship was at the dessert, I slipped out to find my friend Khlab, and let him walk past the door to look at her. The minute he saw her—”
“One moment,” said the prosecutor, and addressed the court. “I present the former provost Khlab, now a people’s guard.” He motioned to a man behind, who took the innkeeper’s place. “Tell your story.”
“Yes, your—friend. I saw her through the door as I went past and I knew her at once for Maritzl of Stojenrosek because I had seen her before. She is the one Count Cleudi brought to Sedad Vix to be his mistress after the spring festival. I told this to friend Brezel, and he said if she was as close as that to Cleudi, she had no business in Drog. So we went in and under pain of the sword, made her give up the casket. It had some jewels in it, but underneath the lining was the letter.”
“The letter is here,” said the prosecutor, handing up a parchment, partly torn, but bearing the unmistakable blue star seal. “It is a document already famous, in which Cleudi beseeches the aid of the Tritulaccans in return for cessions of territory. Most treasonable matter.”
“Hm—hm,” said kronzlar Escholl, looking at it as though he had never seen it before. The Zigraner jurist craned his neck. (Her plan was complete now;) she took one step forward and in a low urgent whisper said; “Rodvard, help me.”
(It was an entreaty, and as though she knew of the use of the jewel, she was projecting a promise behind the entreaty; and the plan was behind the promise. But it was as though that “Help me” laid a compulsion on him.) Rodvard turned round, as Escholl was handing the parchment to the third jurist. “Your pardon, kronzlar.”
A frown. “Very well, I will see it.”
Rodvard stepped to the bench and whispered; “She is thinking of some sort of plan, I do not know for what. I think I could find out, if I could question her alone. I knew her in the old days.”
“I see.”
Escholl addressed the court. “This is perhaps the foulest piece of treason in the history of Dossola; and we have proof that the message is no forgery in the recent march of the Tritulaccan shars over the southern border, and the delivery to them without a battle of the castle of Falsteg. It is evident that the accused had full knowledge of the contents of this letter, and is therefore guilty of taking part in a vile conspiracy against the nation. But this court is required to follow every treason to its source, not merely to establish individual guilts. We will postpone this matter for inquiry, and pass to the next case.”
Rodvard sprang up as she was led into the room, hurrying to get her one of the comfortless chairs from the row against the wall. The guard leered at him (with a thought so nasty that) Rodvard’s tongue stumbled as he said; “She wants to—tell me something in private.” The guard laughed, glanced at the barred window and slammed the door.
Maritzl said; “Rodvard, I do not want to go to the throat-cutter.”
“What can I do?” said he.
Her hands clenched, fingers entwined in fingers. “Take me away. You are the writer to this court. Can you not make an order or something for my release to be transported elsewhere?”
(This was the plan, but it was not the whole plan; and yet under the magic of her presence, the words seemed to count more than what lay behind them.) “It—it would be very difficult,” he said. “The order would have to be countersigned, and—”
“And you are a writer!” A note of scorn in her voice.
“You mean—I should forge the signature?”
“Why not? This regency of yours is hopeless. I have been confined, but even I know that. How many shar of soldiers do you order? Enough to fight the court and all Tritulacca?”
(Now it was Rodvard’s turn to be uneasy, for he had asked himself these questions.) “The people will rise,” he said.
“Have they risen yet? Where are their weapons? How many leaders do you have who can set a battle in order? Pavinius will never fight with the Tritulaccans; they’ll compose.” (Now genuine black anger jutted from her eyes.) “All you can do, here in this little dream-world, is lay the ground for vengeance on yourselves.” She was near enough to reach out a hand and touch him. “Take me away. I do not want to go to the throat-cutter, and I do not want you to, either.”
“And you would have me betray . . .?”
(Her eyes flashed a resolve;) before he could say more, she was out of her chair, arms around his shoulders, cheek caressing his head. “Ah, Rodvard, I will make it up to you.”
He stood up in the circle of her arms; her head tilted back, the long lashes lying on her cheek over veiled eyes. (Mistake, he thought, a sudden rivulet of cold running down his spine. It cannot be true, you were hating me a moment ago; I think I see your plan now.)
He held her off with rough hands on her shoulders. “You are Cleudi’s mistress,” he said.
The liquid flesh changed to brass, the eyes snapped open as she shook herself free. “Yes, I am Cleudi’s mistress,” she cried. “And whose fault is it? I was a good girl once; I would have given you everything and remained good, no matter what I did for you. You did not want me.”
She was down in the chair again, crying through her fingers. “You are too much like him,” she said, and he (wrung by the thought of that fair neck delivered to the executioner) laid a hand on her shoulder and said; “I will do what I can.” Now kronzlar Escholl must be persuaded, if possible, that though there had been treason, it was treason done for love and could be passed over.
Rodvard came in late, and had had no supper save some bread and cheese caught at an inn with the two people’s guards who accompanied him, Demadé Slair having left long before. Lalette was arranging her hair before the mirror, with a candle on either side, and did not turn round. (At the sight of her lifted graceful arms, a wave of tenderness swept over him.) “Lalette,” he said, almost lilting the word.
“Good evening.” She still did not turn, and the voice was formal.
He hurried across the room in long steps and turned her around. “What has happened?”
There was an impatient movement. “Don’t. You will spoil my hair. Nothing.”
“Lalette, there is something. Tell me.”
She kept her eyes away from him. “Nothing,” and then, as he merely stood, waiting in burning intensity; “A small thing, truly. You need not be troubled. Only I know now who it was you were unfaithful to me with.”
(He was hot and cold together.) “Who says I was unfaithful?”
“‘Will you come with me now?’” she quoted. “Rodvard, you may be able to read some of my thoughts, but do not forget why. Is she a witch, too? She must be, or my Blue Star that I lent you would be dead. Or did she give you another before you shared her with Count Cleudi?” (She wanted to hurt him as she had been hurt, to make him regret and feel that no regret in any fashion could replace what had been lost.)
“Shared her with Count Cleudi?” (He could feel honest indignation now.) “Lalette, who are you talking about?”
“I am glad you saved her life,” said she, still not looking at him. “It is a pity my hair is dark and my skin muddy. When these troubles are over, you can have a good time with her on the estate. It is in ’Zada, isn’t it?”
(The indignation no longer needed to be pushed; all he could think of was how he had rejected the shell of that Maritzl once desired.) He said; “Lalette, I swear to you that I have never been with Maritzl of Stojenrosek, if that is the one you mean. I swear that I never will, I don’t even want her.”
(The accent of sincerity was making her doubt, but the bitterness persisted beneath, she had only lost the line somewhere, and was not yet ready to release him.) “If you are really in love with her, you may go. Only I’ll not be one of your—casual contacts.”
(He was invaded by despair of making her understand, with or without the fullest tale of the maid Damaris and the witch of Kazmerga.) “Why,” he cried, “it would seem to me that it is asked of any pair who live together to protect each other from casual contacts by one means or another. But this is merely not true. Will you listen to every talebearer who tries to split us apart for reasons of his own?”
She lowered her head (melting a little, knowing he knew of Demadé Slair’s desire, if not of her own temptation). “There are some tales you might have borne to me yourself instead of letting me learn them by hazard. Why did you betray me by telling Mathurin of the child of Dyolana, Tuolén’s heiress?”
Now he took her strongly by the shoulders. “Lalette,” he said; “I never told him. You accuse me of being liar and betrayer, do you think I am a fool as well? If Mathurin knows of her, he has learned it through some other source; you are the only one I told.”
(Suddenly and dreadfully, she knew where that other source was—that night in the garden, when she herself told Demadé Slair, Mathurin’s voice and sword.) She moved close, putting both arms around him in a convulsive gesture. “Oh, Rodvard,” she said, “I am afraid. He is having her brought here, and will make her a witch himself—that little girl.”
She began to cry then. That night, as they sought and received from each other whatever comfort passion could give, she touched him and said; “It is true. I am a witch and your partner. The great marriage.”
“You helped me so much before,” said Lalette.
The widow Domijaiek contemplated her tranquilly from among the husks of characters who never lived. “Yet you are again in need of help.”
“The Myonessae. I could not—”