She used the royal pronoun, a sign that the business was very, very official. Jehane’s pen scratched and scritched steadily on the paper. She wrote quickly and neatly in shorthand, a little silver clip holding her sleeve back from the ink.
“-are not sitting in Star-Chamber.”
Yseult’s eyes went up involuntarily. Star-Chamber did have stars on its arched ceiling, or so rumor said. Sessions of that court were strictly secret. Sometimes even the sentence was never announced, just carried out.
“Let Huon Liu and Yseult Liu be sworn.”
A smooth-faced priest in a black robe brought out a great Bible in a tooled-leather cover, and a silver-gilt reliquary. Yseult put her hands on them and swore:
“… by my hope of salvation and in the sight of God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.”
Everyone crossed themselves; she kissed her crucifix as well. And I mean to tell the truth!
The Lady Regent joined in the gesture. She was a petite woman in her fifties; a gray cote-hardie showed beneath the ermine robe, buttoned by steel-gray Madras pearls and silver.
All these powerful lords, Yseult thought. And Lady Death, whose name is fear, and the Regent dominates the room as if she were a giant made of fire.
She had wielded unquestioned power from the Willamette to the Yukon and inland to the Rockies for twenty-three years; fourteen of them all by herself, this little woman in silver and gray. The Lady Regent didn’t blink for a long count of five.
Then: “We are gathered here to hear and ponder the matter of the children of the House of Liu. These are Yseult and Huon Liu, children of the late Eddie Liu, well loved by my late husband, and Mary Liu.. . not so well loved by myself.”
Yseult swallowed. The brown eyes studied hers, moved to her brother, and a very small smile showed.
“I suspect that despite natural piety, you are not well pleased with her right now yourselves, children. She has been so stupid. Ambition can be dealt with; it’s even useful. Against folly and self-deception, even gods contend in vain at times.”
The very slight tinge of playfulness leached out of Sandra Arminger’s voice. Something like the metal on the edge of a razor replaced it.
“Your mother is guilty of high treason. This is not in doubt. Her actions, her letters, the testimony of Castle Gervais staff; the actions of Guelf Mortimer, her brother, and Alex Vinton, who she made privy servant to your elder brother, all speak unambiguously for themselves. She intrigued with our enemy, the Church Universal and Triumphant and its Prophet Sethaz. She intrigued with them long before we became aware of their focus on our lands and people. She could have warned us; and we would have been much better prepared in September-but she didn’t. Many good and loyal vassals have died because she didn’t.”
Yseult made herself breathe and forced her eyes to stay open. She wouldn’t have done all this just to kill us. We’d simply be dead.
“Thus, the one hand. On the other”-one small, beautifully tended hand reached out and tapped a stack of letters on the desk, bound with a purple ribbon-“if these are to be believed, your brother is the pattern of a gallant and loyal knight. And they are from the Princess Mathilda, and Rudi Mackenzie, and Father Ignatius of the Order of the Shield of St. Benedict. My daughter is naturally of a more kindly nature than I, but she is nobody’s fool and neither is Rudi Mackenzie or the knight-brother, and they all sing the praises of Sir Odard’s courage, his skill at arms, his steadfastness, and his cleverness. Yes?”
Yseult took a deep breath. The praise for her brother and through him for her family and House made the blood rush back to her face and gave her strength; she could feel it curling up from her stomach into her heart and mind.
She blurted: “Odard… Odard is a true knight. And he truly loves the Princess Mathilda, my lady Regent. He would die for her.”
“Absolutely true,” Huon said with respectful firmness. She suspected he was also praying hard that his voice not break in midsentence. “He’s deeply in love with her.”
“Or in love with his expectations should he marry her,” the Regent said. “That would provide a strong motive for his heroics, if true. Many men are brave in their own service. But more to the point, Rudi Mackenzie says quite bluntly that he and all the rest would have died if Odard had betrayed them, which he had opportunity to do… and had opportunity to do in ways which would have been undetectable, and which would have furthered any ambitions he may have had with respect to my daughter. I have great respect for the Mackenzie tanist’s judgment and long close experience with it. Nor is he such a friend of Odard’s that he would shade the truth in such a matter.”
Silence fell for a long time; the room grew a little darker, and she could hear rain beating down on the windows. The Black Months were at hand here in the Willamette, drizzle and slate-colored skies and short fugitive days. The Lady Regent moved one finger slightly, and the gaslights were turned on by the guards, each with a small pop. The mantels began to glow behind the frosted-glass fronts, and the mirrors behind cast the light.
Yseult struggled to read the Regent’s smooth face and opaque eyes, and swallowed. Anything she said could kill her and Huon; but to stay silent was a hideous risk as well.
She’s always been so closed. It’s part of why she’s so dangerous.
Yseult fought for balance. Huon’s hand on her shoulder helped. What does the Regent want? she wondered. Shall I grovel? Will it help? Or retire to a convent and make a vow of chastity?
Then: No. It wouldn’t help. I can’t guess what she’s thinking but I can think clearly and use logic myself. And she’ll respect that, respect boldness and clear thought.
She nerved herself to speak evenly and quietly, her fear drying her mouth. “Lady; may we follow the pattern of our brother in courage and honesty. But also, not in the matter of frankness. Odard always played his cards close to his chest. I ask you openly, why are we a risk, two minor children?”
Another of those slight chilly smiles rewarded her, and a very small nod.
At least if we’re killed, it will be after we’ve gotten a little respect!
Sandra gestured, turning her hand palm-down and then palm-up. “It is my policy always to punish treachery, and likewise always to reward good service. Which leaves me with something of a dilemma with respect to you twain; I can scarcely reward Lord Odard and then wipe out his family. Accordingly I will take no hasty or irrevocable actions; but neither will I take unnecessary risks. Ultimately this matter may well have to be settled by the Princess when she returns. I am, after all, Regent for her.”
Yseult swallowed against the sudden tears. “Yes?” she heard the Lady Regent ask.
“Why are we a risk?” Huon said; it was the question she’d have asked again if she had dared.
The Regent turned both hands up. “At the very least, minor children may grow up into dangerous adults who have been secretly resentful for a very long time. Love for a mother is strong, even if she’s an idiot. And there is more than politics at work here. Lord Betancourt, your report, please.”
“My lady Regent.”
The hard young captain she remembered in a suit of plate was dressed as a court dandy today, in shades of green and silver. His dark skin glowed against the silver rolled brim hat with the silver scarf trailing down. He came forward and made an elaborate leg to the Regent.
He was pretty scary that day at Gervais. He scared me, anyway. But, thought Yseult, I don’t know if I like him looking so dandified. Odard dressed like that, but it distracted people from what he was really doing. Garrick is handsome, but, I think, too direct for the clothes to be a smoke screen. And his hair is wavy, but not as curly as Lord Chaka’s.
Yseult focused on his words, hearing his side of the day of her arrest. “Sir Guelf came out of the stables just as we arrived. He clearly knew what was forward and charged me with drawn blade and made no attempt to parley. It was suicide; and he was dead, very quickly.”
Yseult controlled a shudder, rememb
ering the body and the pool of blood among the straw and cobbles and horse dung.
“Around vespers, we finally ran the fox to his earth and Alex Vinton was arrested. He was sent to the Interlachen prison immediately.”
“Thank you, Sir Garrick. How does the demesne under your stewardship?”
“Quietly, Lady, quietly. The people were not happy to hear of the arrest of the children. It is my sorrow to inform you that Lady Layella did die two days ago. The coroner’s findings are attached to my written report.”
Yseult gasped, a sad exhalation of woe escaping her. She fingered the beads on her rosary and promised to dedicate one hundred Hail Marys to her soul. Sir Garrick turned and bowed, a regretful expression on his face.
“I had sent for a midwife doctor from the Sisters of the Angels in Mount Angel. She cared for the lady, but her fate was written in the stars. She had a massive stroke; I understand a known, if not so common, risk of a difficult childbirth with a prolonged laying in afterward. Her sister, Theresa, was taken to McKee house to be with her surviving brother, Odo, under the guardianship of Sir Czarnecki’s mother. She has been helping to nurse the man.”
He turned to the dais again. “The people of Gervais have taken heart from hearing that their Lord Odard protects the princess. And enjoys your full confidence. May I at this point request that I be returned to field duty?”
This time Sandra looked amused, though not in any way Yseult could have described. “No, my lord, you may not. Men combining competence and complete honesty in a situation where sticky fingers would be so easily deployed are not as common as one would like. Request denied.”
Sandra looked at Yseult and Huon. “The ‘full confidence’ is in fact, very true. He was injured, quite seriously, when the prisoners were liberated, protecting Mathilda.”
Yseult curtsied again, trying to control her relief. She wants us to be scared-and I am, at least!-but she’s really not going to kill us or attaint the land. I will dedicate a candle the length of my arm to St. Bernadette and Huon will do likewise!
“Now, Sir Stratson, how does it go with my prisoners?”
“My lady Regent,” said a grizzled man, standing.
Yseult thought he looked like a tired old horse, with his long face and long yellow teeth and bulging dark eyes. His dark brown court clothes fostered the impression of an ancient, weary bay. He bounced slightly on his toes and chewed his drooping mustache, like a horse cribbing his bit.
“Prisoner, I fear, my lady.”
Sandra’s face hardened. “Not an escape, I presume.”
“No, my lady. I’ll explain. Lady Mary had recovered from the laudanum by the time she arrived. The instructions were quite explicit. We escorted her to her cell in the maximum security block. I left the interrogation to the Baroness d’Ath who arrived a few days later.”
Maximum security block? I thought Mama was under house arrest at Fen House!
Huon pressed her shoulder and Yseult snapped her mouth shut before she could blurt anything; once again she caught that indefinable sense of amusement. It was said the Regent doted on her Persian cats. Apparently they had something in common with her besides wearing long silky white fur coats.
Sir Stratson went on: “Vinton, however, I was instructed to break and given a series of questions to ask. This we did in the main block. We could not cross-check his answers later in the process. Vinton bit out his tongue about forty-five minutes into the questioning and aspirated his blood while his head was underwater, so that we didn’t detect it until too late. He was dead in less than twenty minutes; we couldn’t control the bleeding even with a cautery.”
Yseult winced slightly, though the treatment was perfectly legal for a commoner in a treason investigation. Stratson bounced thoughtfully, and rocked a time or two on the balls of his feet in a gesture that was probably utterly unconscious.
“According to my chirurgeon, actually biting one’s tongue out completely is an impossible deed.”
“It is, unless the man is drugged,” Tiphaine d’Ath said, in an interested tone. “I’ve seen it tried several times, and it never succeeds. Marvelous are the works of God. My lady,” she concluded, bowing to the dais.
Stratson cleared his throat and continued:
“What answers Vinton gave us suggested that he was recruited by the Lady Mary or Lord Guelf sometime in the last two years and was their intermediary from the beginning of that recruitment. He gave us no information on who recruited them. However, his answers were not consistent with the evidence that was sent to me. Some of the letters were dated as much as five years ago and mentioned him as our well-loved and trusted Alex. We have the names of five Associate holders of fiefs-in-sergeantry in Gervais, Mollala, Hood River, Boring, and several farmers in Bend he claims constituted the chain of contacts. Rigobert Gironda de Stafford, Lord Forest Grove, is in charge of that part of the investigation. He told me that he felt nothing would turn up; that they were red herrings.”
Sandra’s eyes went to the Grand Constable. She nodded thoughtfully.
“Probably, my lady. A man determined enough to bite out his tongue would undoubtedly be coherent enough to lie under the water treatment, at least initially. You need to continue it for days or even weeks with these hard cases, and use very skillful interrogations to catch contradictions so that you can gradually break them down. I’m afraid much of what was gotten from this man will be worthless, and it will be very difficult to separate the pearls from the pig… dung quickly.”
Sir Stratson rocked a few more times and then sat at the Regent’s nod.
He must be a very stolid man, Yseult thought. He just confessed failure in an important case to the Lady Regent. She thought for a moment. Though trying to fudge would be even worse, I think. You’d have to be very stupid to do that and I don’t think she puts stupid men in important positions.
D’Ath spoke from her spot by the window. Yseult frowned at the shiver that ran down her back. What is it I sense? She’s not an evil person; just odd and rare; but…
“Lady d’Ath?” the Regent said.
“I got very little information from Lady Mary. She was her usual irritating self; complained about the accommodations, the food, the constant watching.
“She refused to say much about her work with the CUT. She did insist that she was only trying to improve the fortunes of House Liu. She was very clear that what she did was not, in her mind, treasonous.”
“What passes for her mind,” Sandra Arminger said dryly. “A world of its own, where every action of Mary Liu is wise and righteous.”
Tiphaine inclined her head and continued. “She named her initial recruiter as Guelf and stated that Alex Vinton had recruited… she used the word ‘converted’ them; Guelf first and then herself. Vinton, she claimed, came to the castle some two or three years after the death of the late Baron Liu, with passwords Lady Mary recognized. He’d been one of Eddie’s embedded spies in the lands where Eddie had tried to set up Duke Iron Rod for us, years ago. Out in northern Idaho.”
“There’s nothing in the records, but there wouldn’t be, if he was running the operation personally,” Sandra said. “We were a little scattershot in those days, scrambling to seize fleeting opportunities while things were fluid. Go on, Lady d’Ath.”
“Lady Mary said that gave him the position of valet to Odard who was just coming of an age to need a manservant. For his consequence, I suppose, and because this Vinton was a competent bodyguard. Odard would have been ten at the time.”
Sandra’s eyes went to the young Lius. Yseult nodded and confirmed it:
“I remember him first coming to Gervais. He became our dancing master, too.”
Huon bowed. “I don’t remember it, I’m afraid, my lady Regent. I was very young, he was a fixture as far back as I can think.”
“Dancing master? What an odd profession for a spy,” Lady Death said coolly. “Of particular interest to me was her stated ultimate reason for treachery. She blamed both the Lady Regent and mys
elf personally for not rescuing her brother, Sir Jason, in Corvallis just before the Protector’s War, and for the shaming Theresa Reddings received being pregnant at the time and betrothed to Jason, who was assassinated by parties unknown.”
Yseult cringed slightly as d’Ath turned to look at her, and then forced herself to stand firmly erect.
“Is that true?” the Grand Constable asked.
“Yes. They were betrothed, but Theresa was very young and Sir Richart had imposed a long betrothal. Theresa delivered of a son that May. He died less than a month later of jaundice. She was ruined and could never marry.”
D’Ath shook her head. “The things one learns. Beyond that, I am fairly sure Mary was lying; but about what and how is harder to determine and, as per your instructions, my lady, I did not use rigorous methods. Much of her motivation appears to have been an effort to balance the books as she saw fit.”
“Spite is a luxury,” the Regent said thoughtfully. “Like sweets, one should control one’s indulgence for the sake of health.”
The Grand Constable nodded. “I wish that Alex Vinton had not died under interrogation. I suspect he is… was the key to our twined two conundrums. Is this a religious conversion or an opportunistic using of tools to hand, and did they seek the CUT or did the CUT seek them?”
“It might well have started as opportunism and segued into something else,” Sandra said. “That often happens; we wear a mask, and the mask becomes our face.”
The Grand Constable fell silent and relaxed against the wall.
The Regent tapped her foot thoughtfully. A waiting silence fell over the chilly room. Yseult shifted her balance minutely and felt Huon’s hand come to hold hers, hidden by the voluminous folds of her wool sideless surcoat.
“The problem,” the Regent said suddenly, “is, as the Grand Constable says, twofold. While we have nominal freedom of religion in the land of the Association… since the Protector’s War and the peace treaty… the Church is very much part of our identity and we tolerate the other religions not least because they remain inconspicuous and do not openly proselytize. What the CUT seems to have in mind here is invasion by conversion, followed by conversion after a successful invasion. It is possible. It has happened. Even if it fails of its main object, it is a formula for civil war, and that I will not tolerate.”
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