Peaks of Grace (The Colplatschki Chronicles Book 5)

by Alma Boykin

  “Well, my lady, he’s made a right mess, but I don’t think he’s torn or ruined anything, besides the mattress, and that’s soon enough mended,” another lady soothed.

  Esmé poked the sturdy twill cover and nodded. “We need to change the straw anyway, and there’s plenty of fresh for the moment, so I’ll call some of the men to take it outside and we’ll empty, mend, and refill it before the sun goes down, my lady.”

  “Do that, please.”

  Marta ate alone that night.

  The next day she found Greg directing people to arrange decorations in the great hall, and having tapestries rearranged. She waited for a calm moment before asking, “my lord, is there anything I can do?”

  “You?” Contempt oozed from his words and he looked her over as Lady Francis once had eight years before. “No. Just finish making that red dress so you will look decent when his majesty arrives.”

  “I had planned to meet him at the end of the valley.”

  Greg snorted. “You? Absolutely not. You’re a woman. You stay here, in a woman’s place, and keep out of my way. Your task is to decorate my hall and be a good hostess, to keep his majesty comfortable and satisfied while he’s your guest. Shoo.” He turned his back to her, walking over to fuss at the men re-hanging a large banner with the deSarm star and mountain on it.

  Marta shooed. In fact, she shooed all the way to Master LaPlace’s office. She found him supervising weapons’ work, watching archers in the long, narrow back route into the Hall from the mountain, between the walls. “Cease fire,” the sergeant-at-arms called when she walked up. “Welcome, Lady deSarm.”

  The men stopped and bowed. “Thank you, gentlemen. Please continue as you were. Master Laplace, a brief word.” He followed her just far enough to be out of the way. “Master Laplace, I do not wish for Phillip of Frankonia to pass the western gate.”

  “No, my lady?”

  “No. And the man who is, for the moment, my husband will not be returning to the Hall after Phillip leaves.”

  A wary expression crossed Laplace’s thick features. “No, my lady?”

  “No. He will be locked out, since he will no longer be my husband.”

  “Ah. Very well, my lady. I will see to it.” Laplace relaxed and Marta wondered what he’d thought she meant. I don’t want him dead, at least not at the moment. I want him gone away, back to Louvat for all I care.

  “Thank you.”

  She left the men to their work and returned to her office. There she took out her finest paper and ink, her seals and wax, and penned a careful letter to Bishop Martín in her best handwriting. She reread it, nodded with satisfaction, signed and sealed it, and hunted up Matteo in the storage room that also served as his office. He’d gone into semi-retirement, but still served her and her alone. “Matteo, I hate to disturb you, but the cook and I have a great favor to ask.”

  The old man struggled to his feet. “How may I be of service, my lady?”

  “I need you to go to Sarmvale. Leave this letter with Fr. Thomas, and purchase bread for the household, whatever the baker has for today.” She pressed a coin into his palm. “For the bread.”

  He bowed again. “I am honored to serve.”

  Marta retreated to the chapel and prayed for strength and for her men’s safety, for a good harvest and for Godown to give her wisdom. Then she went to her chamber to work on her re-dyed dress, a lovely, restful light green gown with cream and brown trim, embroidered with chains of tiny flowers.

  Now that she’d done it, Marta began to wonder at herself. I started it. I ordered the soldiers to keep Phillip out of the valley. I sent a letter requesting that the marriage be nullified and erased. But what if it fails? What if Phillip gets in? I will have thrown lives away for nothing. And what happens to me? If we win, I have the Sarm Valley and nothing. If we lose, do I flee? Or do I stay and keep fighting? Either way, Gregory Berlin will not set foot in Sarm Hall so long as I live here. She finished her thread and shifted a little for better light before choosing a light blue thread from her bundle. We need to see if we can start selling the green dye. I’ve heard stories that it is hard to find elsewhere. And I will have Gregory’s things packed and sent back to Louvat, even if he does hate his cousin the Count. I’d better send a letter in advance, so Greg has a prayer of getting his clothes back. Maybe I should stomp all over them first?

  All at once she began laughing, giggles, then snickers, then the first true laughter she’d enjoyed in months. Tears streamed down her face, and as her ladies stared, Marta gasped, then laughed again. “No, no,” she wheezed. “I’ve not lost my mind. I just realized, that is,” she wiped her eye with her hem. “That Lord Gregory solved a very large problem without meaning to.” She couldn’t trust them all, not just yet, not until she cleared the Hall of Greg’s people. Oh dear sweet St. Gimple, Greg gave us everything we need to withstand a siege. We have food, animal fodder, clothes, spices for medicine, water, fabric for bandages if we have to fight, and plenty of wood. Oh Godown, You always have the last word, don’t You?

  The next few days both sped and crawled. They crawled as Marta longed for Greg to leave, be gone, vanish from her sight never to return. They sped as her men tried to prepare for the Frankonians. And she learned a tiny, vital secret.

  Marta, Andrea trailing behind, walked around the little herb garden within the keep’s wall, one of the few places as yet untouched by the frantic preparations. A few late roses struggled to bloom, tired from the long summer and not-yet reenergized by fall’s cool air. It lacked a week to the equinox, and Marta wondered when the first hard storms would come. They always did, sometimes bringing snow. The last storm had dusted the peaks to the east, touching the blue and dark grey with warning white. Harvest seemed well in hand, for the moment, and she’d heard nothing about any serious accidents yet. There will be one, she sighed. People get tired and rush, get careless, a horse goes wild, an overloaded wagon breaks. Always, as if the land wants something in exchange for giving us fruit and grain and milk and meat. She waved away a little fly and looked up, to the east and the mountains that loomed like a blue wall.

  She’d be safe within the walls. That’s what her father had always said. That’s what Master Laplace had said when they met before he rode out. “My lady, you’ll be safe in the walls. Those damn Frankonian beasts can’t break in. They don’t have the machines and men with them. And it’s winter soon, my lady. No one, not even the fool who calls himself Phillip the Majestic, begins a siege in the mountains in winter.”

  “You do not care for him, I take it,” Marta observed. I’ve never heard you call him anything like that before.

  “No.” He looked over her head, into the distance. “His first act of majesty was to drive my family out of our holdings. We’d been there since the Great Fires, a sea-coast property with fishing rights. Freehold, my lady, owing nothing to anyone. But that bastard took it from us, drove us out, burned our homes to the ground, because we refused to pay him coin. Lord Geoff, Godown be with him, took my sister and I in. I’d worked as a hire sword before, on the trading ships, and learned to read. I came home and found ashes, my parents dead, and my sister almost mad with fear.”

  “Not again, I promise,” Marta vowed to him. “With everything in me, I promise.”

  “Aye, my lady. You’re like your father that way. You’ll take care of your people.”

  And I will, she promised again. The deSarm lands will not be part of Frankonia so long as I have breath in my body. She heard a bird scream and jumped, glancing up to see one of the huge mountain h’owls sailing overhead. It screamed again, like the battle cries she’d read about, then soared out of sight beyond the wall.

  Laplace had encouraged her to keep reading. In the back of a shelf, tucked away behind a treatise on farming and another on metallurgy, Marta had found a book, almost impossible to read, about siege warfare. It was a Lander-era copy of a much older work, and the place names meant nothing to her, or to Master Laplace when she asked him. “Take what
you can use, my lady, and skim the rest.” Now she studied the wall to her left and the wall of the keep to her right, thinking about walls and safety. The book warned that one never left allies of one’s enemy within the walls unless they were in prison cells. Marta agreed—she’d only be safe once her not-husband left.

  The next morning Greg rode out, taking several servants and Lady Francis with him. She’d been reluctant, protesting that Marta needed her help to finish preparing for their august visitor, but Marta and Greg both insisted. Marta and the servants saw Greg off. Once he’d descended the hill, she climbed up, onto the wall, to watch. The moment the last rider passed from sight, she’d rushed down to the courtyard. “Close the gate and bar it.”

  The man blinked at her. “My lady?”

  “I said bar the gate. Martin Gregory Berlin is not returning to Sarm Hall and King Phillip will not set foot here, either.”

  “Do as she says,” a man echoed from over her shoulder. She turned to see Edmund Roy, one of the newcomers, behind her. “Master Laplace’s orders.”

  “Yes, my lady.” She watched as the grey-weathered gates, their hinges screaming, swung shut for the first time in many years. The bar fell with a dull “thump” that echoed around the courtyard.

  And now we wait. And clear out Berlin’s belongings. “And now we trust in Godown and Master Laplace.”

  “Indeed, my lady,” the redheaded man agreed. “Indeed.”

  “What is going on?” Odile demanded as a gaggle of novices swept into the storeroom.

  “Oh! Your pardon sister,” one of them squeaked, apparently surprised. “Lord Gregory and a troop of men just rode past. King Phillip is here!”

  If Lord Gregory has just passed by, then who rode by yesterday after meeting with Reverend Mother Alice? I thought those were Lord Gregory’s soldiers. Odile shrugged. “Are you here to work or to gossip?”

  “To work, Sister Odile,” a younger voice assured her.

  Odile pointed to the jar-laden table. The novices began sorting and stacking the jars and pottery crocks on the shelves. Someone long before had put little plaques with carved images on each shelf, so Odile (and those who did not read well) could tell what went where. A little triangle with rounded corners and half-circles inside it meant a beehive, so that’s where honey and candles fit. The fruit, sorted by kind, reposed nearby, and herbs in the corner stayed farthest from the door and the light. A bin with a sheaf of grain held wheat flour, while the next one, decorated with a very hairy stalk of grain, held quinley. The metal-lined bins kept rodents out once the grain had been ground. Odile returned to her task, counting the grain sacks on the shelves. They’d been washed, folded, and stored for reuse as each one emptied. Most of the shelves stood empty, their sacks now holding grain, but these last few needed inspection. She took all of them out, unfolded each one and tugged lightly on the seams, testing for strain, then felt the material for holes. Odile rejected two, and shook her head when she found one that was more hole than sack. “What were they thinking?” she wondered, wadding the reject and tossing it behind her.

  “Eeee, mice!”

  Odile turned. “Where?” No one answered. “Don’t point, tell me.”

  “I’ll get them, Sister,” the older novice said. Odile heard quick steps, the sound of cloth on wood, a few faint squeaks, and silence. “I’ll take care of these while you finish stocking the shelf.” Firm footsteps faded at a brisk pace. Odile did not ask. Godown made all things and they had their place in His world. But the place for mice was not in the convent’s food storage rooms.

  “Sister Odile?”

  She turned toward the door. “Yes?”

  “I apologize, Sister, but Novice Mistress Martina says you are needed in the guest parlor.”

  Odile finished marking her tally on the wax board and followed. She stopped at the door to the guest parlor, hearing voices discussing something.

  “We will not aid in any fighting,” Reverend Mother Alice declared.

  A man rumbled, “I am not asking for help during a fight, I am warning you that if the Frankonians get this far, the convent may be damaged. Will be damaged, Reverend Mother, because we’ll be firing down on the Frankonians and rolling rocks from the shoulder of the mountain.”

  “We need prayers and medical assistance after the fighting ends, Reverend Mother,” a smoother man’s voice assured her. “Nothing more.”

  Odile tapped on the half-open door. “Come,” Reverend Mother called.

  Odile bowed as she entered. “Good. Sister Odile Kiara, these men have come to warn us of a coming battle.” Skepticism colored the woman’s voice. “It seems some men have decided to oppose Lord Gregory’s invitation to his majesty.”

  “Ah. Lady deSarm has chosen,” Odile said, thinking aloud.

  “Yes, Sister,” the first man said. “Lady deSarm told us what her man did, selling us to Frankonia.”

  That must be what she meant, that her husband had given away her and her household’s sustenance. Odile nodded, fingering her beads.

  “And we’ll keep them out, Godown willing.”

  “Godown wills,” Odile assured him.

  The novice mistress gasped. “Sister Odile, what do you mean?”

  “Reverend Mother’s Word gave me a vision. At the time I did not understand, but perhaps this is the answer. A small light, white and steady, shone over a battlefield. Just as things looked the darkest, the light shone even brighter and men in light green swept the battlefield, driving the darkness before them.” Godown, giver of vision, please show us Your will and meaning.

  “Praised be Godown,” one of the men whispered, half-choking as if speaking around a crumb in his throat. “Lady deSarm’s colors are pale green and cream.”

  “Sister Odile, do you know the meaning of your vision?”

  “No, Reverend Mother, Sister Martina. I saw only the vision, in a dream from which I woke refreshed and safe. The meaning remains Godown’s to give.”

  Reverend Mother Alice let out a long breath. “We will provide medical assistance to all who need it,” she warned. “The Frankonians are Godown’s children just as we are, just as the men of the Freistaadter are.”

  “And we will pray for all, that peace will remain in place and that none are lost, that pride yields to humility and to Godown’s will,” Sister Martina added.

  The men rustled and shifted in their chairs. She heard metal, or something equally hard, bang against the wood and Odile blinked. Had they worn weapons into the convent? Surely not. The smooth voiced man sighed. “Very well, sisters. That is all we can ask.”

  “You will fight?” Sister Martina sounded incredulous.

  “Yes, Sister. We gave our oaths to Lady deSarm to serve and protect her. She orders that Phillip of Frankonia not take her lands. Her husband, Gregory, gave our earnings to Frankonia. Lady deSarm only takes what she needs to protect the valley, she pays coin for what she buys, and she gives good words when she sits in judgment, even though she’s young and a woman and all.”

  I hope she doesn’t hear you say that. Although, she’d probably agree, from what I understand, Odile mused. Reverend Mother Alice made a funny sound in her throat. I suppose she disagrees.

  Odile did her best to ignore the commotion after that. Her duties lay in prayer and service, after all, and Godown had most emphatically not called her to be a warrior. She went back to her assigned tasks. But the news had swept the convent and distracted many, irritating Odile. At one point she chided one of the novices, “Godown demands that we do what we can, not that we fret for what we cannot affect, Basilia. Winter will be here soon, that we know. A battle might never come, Godown willing.” She made St. Kiara’s flame. “So, with that in mind, go finish assisting Sr. Donn with the hay.” Not that Sr. Donn needed much help, Odile had to admit—the woman stood two meters tall in her sandals, with hands that could almost bend iron into horseshoes, she was so strong. She’d been assisting the smith’s men in moving the boiler out of the washhouse and into the court
yard so it could be mended, and Odile heard the story.

  A very different story caught her ear the next afternoon. “What is she thinking?” Novice Mistress Martina sighed. She’d joined Odile in the infirmary, watching Sr. Amalthea and making fresh bandages. No one could hook-knit bandages as evenly as Sr. Odile Kiara, and Sr. Martina had come into the infirmary to sort the washed bandages and to reroll those that could be used again. Odile’s hands worked steadily. Each row of stitches had to be even but not too loose, and she’d found that one row equaled two beads in the litany of St. François. Even if he was the patron of the Frankonian court, or perhaps especially since he was the patron of that court, Odile decided that asking him to intercede with Godown to bring sense to all parties might work.

  “What is who thinking, Sister? Amalthea?” St. Misha, I hope she’s not thinking anything, given the amount of sleep-leaf tisane Sr. Sabina dosed her with.

  Sr. Martina lifted the end of Odile’s work. “Let me measure, please.” Odile stopped and held it up so the other sister could lay the piece along the stick. “You are three-quarters done. And Lady deSarm. She rode past this morning at dawn, headed for the mouth of the valley.”

  “Thank you, and may St. François and St. Kiara be with her.” Odile finished her row, made St. Kiara’s flame, and returned to work. She heard the sound of cloth being hooked onto a peg, and the soft scuffing of bandages going into the proper spaces in the storage cubby. Each length and width went into a separate section, and the oiled cloth protected them from splatters and stray dirt, but could be quickly moved without needing more than an elbow or one’s head. “Where am I now, Sister?”

  The end of the work lifted and the flat end of the stick tapped her hand. “Four rows?” Odile used a spare finger to find the exact point on the stick.