Joram sighed, the sound telling Rhys all he needed to know of Joram’s assessment, and the physician let his hand fall away. They could expect no help from Cathan. Rhys rose as Joram also stood.
“I’m sorry, Cathan,” Joram murmured, clasping his brother’s shoulders in sympathy. “But at least you seem to be looking at the situation realistically. I don’t have to tell you to be wary of the caprices of kings.”
Cathan shook his head, and Joram nodded.
“Aye. Well, I wish we could stay longer, but Rhys has patients to see, and I have a lot to accomplish before I head back to Saint Liam’s. Take care.”
Cathan stood, feeling suddenly alien and alone. “When will I see you again?”
“For Christmas, I suspect. Imre will let you come home, won’t he?”
“I suppose so, once he’s opened the Yule Court. He likes to have everyone at the formal ceremonies, but after that I have no particular reason to stay. Elinor and the boys will be there, at any rate.”
He clasped the hands that were offered and exchanged good-byes, then raised hesitant fingers in farewell as the two, suddenly strangers to him now, made their way back into the solar and out the door. He sat alone on the roof for a long time, until the chiller wind of approaching evening reminded him that it was time to go inside.
The two who descended the stairs at Tal Traeth had planned their next move even before letting themselves out through the courtyard gate. They had discussed with Camber the possibility that Cathan would be incapable of assisting them, so confirmation of that eventuality did not delay their plans. Making arrangements to meet at Rhys’s house by dusk, they mounted up and went their separate ways. They did not notice the men-at-arms who watched from across the square, nor were they aware that they were followed, each by a single rider.
The man following Joram had a short ride, for the priest went only as far as the parish church of Saint John’s, not far from Fullers’ Alley and the former abode of a deceased textile merchant—though the man could not know of the latter. There he watched the priest dismount and enter the parish house, emerging nearly an hour later with a new briskness to his stride.
Joram saw the guardsman across the way, fiddling with a harness buckle and checking his horse’s hooves, but he did not make a connection: he had not seen the man across the square from Cathan’s. Nor did he note that the man followed, at a discreet distance, all the way back to Rhys’s house. It simply had not occurred to him that he might be watched so soon.
The other man had a more difficult time of it. He was able to follow Rhys to the castle without mishap, and observed the Healer enter the royal archives there. But from his hastily gained vantage point outside the window, he could not see what his subject did with the several bound volumes which he pulled from the shelves after the attendant had left the room. Mentally, he marked the places of the volumes on the shelves and, when Rhys returned them and left a while later, he went into the room and took the books down again to flip through their pages, another guardsman being sent to follow the subject from the archives.
But the volumes were very old, and the man’s limited schooling did not enable him to read them. Furrowing his brow in annoyance, he returned the books to their places and left to report to his master. He found his colleague already there, and the master waiting.
The priest had gone to Saint John’s Church in the textile district, the first man reported, where he had entered the parish house and then left a short while later. He had then been followed to the house of one Lord Rhys Thuryn, a Healer. No, he had no idea what the priest had been doing at Saint John’s. There had been no one with him, so he had not dared linger to investigate, for fear of losing his quarry.
The second man told his story, then, and added that he had discovered his subject to be that same Rhys Thuryn to whose house his colleague had trailed the priest; he had asked the attendant in the archives. Yes, he could identify the volumes which the young lord had consulted. No, he had no idea what the man had been looking for. A second pair of men were now guarding the house where the two were holed up. Did his lordship wish the two brought in?
His lordship did not.
Turning the information over in his mind, Coel Howell considered what his agents had told him, then gestured for one of them to bring his cloak. This was working out just fine. He had no idea what Rhys Thuryn and Joram MacRorie were up to; but it certainly looked suspicious, and it might well fit in with what he was already planning. He picked up his riding gloves and began pulling them on.
“Bors, I want you to go back to Saint John’s and find out what your man wanted there. From your description and the fact that he ended up at Rhys Thuryn’s he has to be Lord Cathan’s brother, Father Joram—a Michaeline, I might add, so be careful.”
“Aye, m’lord. I’ll see to it right away.”
“Do that. It would be interesting to learn whether Father Joram also asked to see written records at Saint John’s. Fulk?”
The second agent, who was adjusting his master’s cloak around his shoulders, inclined his head as he closed the clasp.
“Aye, m’lord?”
“I want you to come with me and show me the books that Thuryn took off the shelves. I want to know what they were looking for.”
And in another part of the city, unaware that their afternoon’s actions were even then being pondered and analyzed, Rhys and Joram were spreading the results of their labors upon a small table in Rhys’s chamber, the room warded against hostile influence, the high windows sealed from light.
Rhys unrolled his discovery, a painting of a man crowned with gold, a coat of arms embroidered on the arras behind him. The man was slender and dark, black hair and beard and mustache silvered with middle age, gray eyes direct, clear, but unable to foresee the fate which had awaited him but a few years after he sat for the portrait. The shield on the arras showed the royal arms of the Haldanes of Gwynedd: gules, a lion rampant guardant or. The name inscribed at the bottom of the painting read: Iforus, Rex Gwyneddis.
“The blood does run true,” Rhys whispered, holding the painting closer to the light and appraising it with a critical eye. “Camber will be pleased. Put a beard and mustache on our Cinhil, grow out his tonsure, take him out of that monk’s robe, and it could almost be the same man. It’s amazing that no one has ever noticed the resemblance before.”
“Not really,” Joram replied. “Who would make the connection? Everyone thinks all the Haldanes died in the coup, and most of the people who could remember what Ifor looked like, first-hand, are long dead. Besides, who looks closely beyond a monk’s habit and tonsure, or would have reason to?”
“You’re right. I hadn’t thought of that.”
“You’re not a priest.” Joram grinned. “Are there any other paintings?”
“A few. I tried to take the one least likely to be missed. How did you do?”
“Pretty well.”
Joram pulled a packet of parchment from his cassock and began unfolding it into two separate pieces. He spread the first one on the table.
“Here we are: the third entry for December 28, Anno Domini 843, being 5 Festilus II, under baptisms. ‘On the Feast of the Holy Innocents was baptized one Royston John, son of Daniel the Draper and Avis his wife.’ Which makes our prince’s father legitimately born.
“And here”—he spread the other page—“under baptisms for the 27th of April, Anno Domini 860, being 10 Festilus III, the Feast of Saint Maccul: ‘Father Edward did baptize one Nicholas Gabriel, son of Royston the Draper and Nellwyn his wife, who died in his birth.’
“And with those, our prince is legitimate, his descent unbroken, and we have written proof to show to Father and my vicar general. I wanted to pull the pages registering the marriages of both sets of parents as well, but one of them must have taken place in another parish—at least it wasn’t in Saint John’s records—and the other spread onto a second page. These are sufficient, though. And I doubt they’ll be missed, unless someone is looki
ng for a specific entry that got pulled with these.”
“That should do it, then.” Rhys nodded, stifling a yawn as he scanned the two pages and handed them back to Joram. “By the way, I’ve left word for Gifford to wake us just after Lauds, so we can be away by first light. Wat will have the horses saddled and ready.”
Joram, with the contented smile of a man with a job well done, nodded and indulged in a luxurious stretch, then refolded the two pages and slipped them into the medical pouch which Rhys brought, next to the rolled portrait. Unless total disaster befell them, the documents would be safe there, for the medical pouch of a Healer was nearly as sacrosanct as a priest’s person, and arcanely guarded as well.
As Joram spread his hands to neutralize the wards and Rhys leaned to blow out the candle on the table, however, they could not know that their abode was being watched. Nor would they guess that they would be followed the next morning when they rode out of Valoret.
CHAPTER NINE
When he speaketh fair, believe him not: for there are seven abominations in his heart.
—Proverbs 26:25
True to their plan, Joram and Rhys were among the first travellers to ride out of Valoret when the Watch opened the city gates the next morning.
There was not yet any snow on the ground. Valoret, lying in the lowlands at the foot of the Lendour range, was usually among the last to feel the brunt of winter. But a heavy frost had silvered everything during the night, banishing the previous day’s warmth with portents of colder weather to come. That, plus the copious amounts of rain they had already had in the weeks before, had left the road muddy, slick, and sometimes partially submerged. Hidden holes and stones were a constant hazard to the horses, and once, after a particularly nasty near-spill, Rhys even had to dismount to check his horse’s legs for injuries. The animal had been favoring one foot for several minutes.
It was after this stop, when he and Joram were starting off again, that Joram first noticed the three men following them. They had been aware, for several hours, that there were other travellers on the road behind them. That was to be expected, for this was a major track into the Lendours. The men wore livery; they were probably in the service of one of the local barons. It was probably coincidence—and the basic paranoia of the two conspirators, now that incriminating evidence was secreted in their belongings.
But when the three men dropped back after the stop, Joram’s suspicions were kindled. There was no benign reason for anyone to be following them; and for whatever reason, the men represented a potential threat to their mission. Joram had gotten a good look at the men when they had come their closest, and one of them was familiar from somewhere. When the connection came, the priest swore softly under his breath, drew his horse alongside Rhys’s with an annoyed tug on the reins.
“We are being followed!” he said in a low voice. “One of those men was outside Saint John’s yesterday when I left. He probably picked us up at Cathan’s.”
“At Cathan’s?” Rhys forced himself to keep his eyes straight ahead, resisting the impulse to look over his shoulder. “My God, do you suppose I was followed, too? What if they’ve found out we took the pages?”
Joram shook his head. “I don’t think they have. And if they have, they can’t have discovered why yet. Imre’s not that astute.”
“Don’t underestimate him,” Rhys said doubtfully.
He took several deep breaths to steady himself, swallowed with a throat that was suddenly dry. Joram controlled a smile.
“Relax, Rhys. If they’d wanted to take us, they could have done it last night at your house, or this morning when we left, or just now when we stopped and they almost caught up with us.”
“Then why are they following us?”
Joram shrugged. “To find out where we’re going, I suppose. Imre may be keeping track of everyone who contacts Cathan these days. Or he may be watching Michaelines this week, and it’s just coincidence. We have to assume that someone is asking questions at Saint John’s and the archives, too, though. I wonder …”
“You wonder what?”
“I wonder if we should force their hands, let them know that we know they’re following us, and confront them.” He glanced sidelong at Rhys, noting the other’s growing discomfort. “Or, we could try to lose them.”
“And risk confirming that we have something to hide?” Rhys retorted, almost without thinking. “Innocent people don’t generally have any reason to suspect that someone is following them.”
Joram laughed out loud. “Very good. You’re learning.” He glanced over his shoulder, but their pursuers were out of sight behind a bend.
Rhys breathed a mental sigh of relief. “Then, we’re not going to do anything?”
“Just ride on to Caerrorie, as we’d planned,” Joram said. He touched spurs to his horse and speeded up the pace, then laughed again as the mud flew up behind them. “And if they want to sit and watch Caerrorie all through Yuletide, they’re certainly welcome. They’ll do it in the snow, though, if I’m any judge.” He glanced at the sky. “I’ll bet one of them will be riding back to report to Imre as soon as we’ve arrived.”
Joram was not far wrong in his last surmise, though it was to Coel Howell, not Imre, that the man reported.
The man arrived at noon the next day to relate that Joram and Rhys were apparently planning to stay at Caerrorie for some time. Questioning of the peasants in the adjoining village had revealed that it was the custom of Clan MacRorie to spend most of the Yule season at the castle, though Father Joram would probably split his time between his family and his duties at Saint Liam’s. Lord Cathan and his family were expected to arrive within the week.
Coel received the news with thoughtful interest, adding it to the rest of the storehouse of knowledge he was accumulating about the MacRories and their associates. He had not yet been able to ascertain what part Joram and Rhys had in all of this. In attempting to oust his rival, Cathan, he had not dared to hope that Cathan’s own kin might supply corroborative evidence for his ruin; nor was this in any way certain even now.
But he did know that Joram MacRorie had apparently taken several pages from the parish register at Saint John’s—perhaps as many as four or five—though it was possible that some of the missing pages had been removed before Joram came. The priest at Saint John’s had been able to recall which volumes Father Joram had asked to see, and had, for a price, been quite cooperative about furnishing an index by which the missing pages might be reconstructed. Coel had several clerks working on that already.
He further suspected that more pages would be found missing from the volumes which Rhys Thuryn had inspected in the archives—and more of his men were checking on that. So far, however, Coel could see no real connection with Cathan—not that that meant there was none, or that he could not make it appear that there was.
Thanking the messenger for the information, Coel gave orders for him to continue the surveillance at Caerrorie, then dismissed the man and returned to his immediate plans.
Tonight, if all went well, he would set into motion the wheels which would destroy his rival once and for all. As for the information on Joram and Rhys, it was not necessary for his other plan at all—though it might be added fuel for the fire by morning. He would see how Imre reacted after tonight. That would tell him a great deal about what he would do next.…
Early evening found Coel hunched over a pint of good dark ale with Earl Maldred, whose men had been assisting in the investigation.
The inn where they had met was not far from Cathan’s Tal Traeth, which was ostensibly why Coel had asked Maldred to join him here this evening—to discuss what he had learned of Cathan’s alleged actions so far, and to inspect the area for themselves. Maldred, who did not often have the opportunity to indulge in personal investigations anymore, had leaped at the chance to get involved again. For the past hour, he and Coel had been trading tales of their younger days. Maldred even had stories told him by his grandfather, who had fought at the side
of the first Festillic king some eighty years before.
Coel drained off the rest of his ale with a hearty swallow as the Watch cried the second hour of the night, then slapped the tabletop lightly and pushed back his chair.
“We’d best take our positions, my lord,” he said, standing and tugging his swordbelt in place. “My informant said that a man came shortly after Curfew last night. If he comes again, we ought to be there.”
Maldred grunted and tossed off the rest of his tankard as well, then wiped his beard across his sleeve and lurched to his feet. With Maldred’s height and build, it would have been foolish to think that Maldred was drunk, or even a touch fuddled. An old military man like himself would have learned to hold his drink long ago in order to have reached his present station. Nonetheless, Coel suspected that the ale had taken the edge off Maldred’s alertness—and that was precisely what Coel intended. Controlling a self-indulgent smile, he led the way out of the inn.
It was dark and cold outside—it would likely snow before midnight—and the grooms waiting beside the horses were huddled around a torch stuck in the ground, hunched down in their warm winter cloaks. They snapped to attention as Maldred approached and gave them some low-voiced orders, then melted into the black beyond the circle of torchlight.
Maldred took up the torch and strode back to Coel, his manner quite matter-of-fact.
“I’ve sent Carle and Joseph around the side to join your men. Where do we go from here?”
“This way,” Coel murmured, leading down a dark, narrow side street.
Coel’s shadow was harsh before him as he walked; Maldred’s footsteps echoed close behind. A few turns, and they were moving along an ever darker alleyway, the glow of other torches at the far end making a beckoning haven a few hundred yards away. Senses attuned, Coel forced himself to move briskly, confidently, with Maldred unsuspecting at his heels—for who would attack two armed men?
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