by Karen Miller
“Your Grace,” Grefin murmured, and did as he was told.
Aimery waited until the chamber door shut before he let the tears fall.
“Well, leech? Will Lord Waymon be spared?”
“Count Balfre!” The startled castle leech dropped his bone needle and length of boiled horsehair. “His lordship’s life is not in peril. The wound is more a long gash than deeply penetrating. Most fortunate.”
No, not really. Waymon had taken great care not to kill himself by accident. Inspecting the unstitched and freshly bloodied dagger-wound in Waymon’s side, Balfre raised an eyebrow.
“Were you not satisfied with the herb-woman’s stitchery?”
The leech sniffed. “There were gaps, my lord. Ill humours were gathering.”
“She had worse wounds than mine to mend,” said Waymon, grinning despite the pain. Bloodied linen cloths were scattered at his feet. “Count Balfre used his dagger on those Clemen filth with lordly skill.”
He frowned Waymon to silence. “A few proper stitches is all Waymon requires, leech?”
“Yes, my lord,” the leech said, cautious. “With a good daubing of speedwell ointment after, and a linen bandage to finish. I’ve one here, soaking in a tincture of cockleburr, comfrey and goldenseal.”
“Then go seek a patient elsewhere,” he said. “I know my way around a needle.”
Not pleased, but no fool either, Tamwell’s leech withdrew from the stone-walled infirmary. Balfre latched the door behind him.
“My lord?” Waymon was eyeing him like a skittish horse. “Are you sure you—”
“You wound me, Waymon,” he said, crossing to a bench where the leech’s tools were neatly displayed. “I could slit your throat and stitch it shut again well enough.”
Waymon laughed, uneasily. “I’m encouraged to hear it. I think. Have you seen the duke?”
Ah, Waymon. A little murder and mayhem and he thought they were almost equals. But this wasn’t the time to put the upstart in his place. Waymon was yet useful… and knew more than enough to be dangerous. He must be kept close.
“I’ve just come from him.”
“How went it?”
With his back turned he didn’t have to school his face. But he made sure to keep the aggravation out of his voice. “Sadly,” he said, choosing a fresh bone needle. “Aimery’s grieved by the loss of good Harcian men, and his grief grieves me. I did what had to be done but it gives me scant pleasure.”
“Better a little pain now than a great pain later. Clemen is a festering sore.”
Indeed. He fished a horsehair from its jar of spirits, and threaded the needle. “Though one good thing has come of this shambles. I’m named Harcia’s new Marcher lord.”
“Truly? ’Tis excellent news, Balfre!”
Waymon sounded astonished, but pleased. Just what he wanted to hear. “It’s a solemn duty.”
“You’ll perform it well. When do you leave?”
“Soon.” He crossed back to Waymon, who immediately looked skittish again. “Clemen must remain cowed. Now, my friend, hold your arm out of the way and grit your teeth. This will pinch.”
Womanish, Waymon yelped at each popping bite of the needle and closing tug of horsehair. Yelped louder as ointment was slathered across the wound, then groaned as the herb-soaked bandage was wound around his ribs.
“Thank you,” he said, when the task was done. “But don’t take it amiss if I say you were born to be a duke, not a leech.”
“I won’t. Waymon…” He settled his hand on the man’s shoulder. Showed him nothing but the duke’s loving son, a good friend. “You must think me monstrous ungrateful, that I’ve not yet spoken of what you did for me in the Marches.”
Waymon flushed. “My lord, I failed you in the Marches. I didn’t stop Humbert from claiming the trader’s body.”
True. But while the mistake still rankled, he was prepared, this once, to forgive. Humbert might have the body, but bodies rotted. He, on the other hand, had retrieved the forged letter. And it was the letter that gave him the leverage he needed over Aimery and Grefin. Which meant he had the power. All Humbert had was putrid flesh.
He gave Waymon’s shoulder a light squeeze. “No, my friend. Everything I asked, you did, even when what I asked was difficult. And I know it was difficult. Not killing that lone trader and dressing him in Roric’s livery, but wounding yourself. Killing Bayard. And maiming our own Marcher men so they’d not survive.”
“You killed Egbert, and some of our men,” Waymon said, shrugging. “How could I flinch, when you didn’t? Besides, they failed Harcia. They failed you. What could any of them expect for that but death?”
He sighed, as though impossibly burdened. “I’m glad you feel that way. There are many who’d think my judgement too harsh.”
“Not I,” said Waymon, fiercely. “Can a meek lamb rule Harcia?”
The man’s unswerving loyalty was a balm to his scorched spirit, which hadn’t healed from Aimery and Grefin’s betrayal. Might never heal. Some wounds were too deep. Some betrayals beyond forgiveness.
“Many would say yes.”
“Then they’re fools, my lord. I’d rather be dead in a ditch than suffer the lordship of a lamb.”
Well. That was one thing they had in common, at least. Balfre wandered idly back to the bench, where he’d left the jar of speedwell ointment unsealed. Pushing the cork plug into its neck, he glanced over.
“The letter from Roric I gave you to put with the Clemen man’s body. I know you must have questions.”
“Well—” Waymon hesitated. “Balfre, I don’t need—”
“No, but I’ll explain,” he said, smiling. “I owe you that much. How the letter came to me, it’s best you don’t know. I’d keep you safe whenever I can. But how I came by it meant I couldn’t easily reveal its existence to Aimery. And so… a small deception. Dishonesty in service of a greater truth. If that disturbs you, then—”
“I told you, Balfre,” Waymon said, sombre. “Whatever you need. Ask me, and it’s done.”
Returning to him, Balfre slid his hand to the back of Waymon’s neck, pulled him close so he could press their foreheads together. “Such loyalty is a rare gift. Worth more to me than a lake of molten gold. I’d reward it. Come to the Marches, Waymon. Be my strong right arm.”
Waymon jerked back. “Balfre! Me? But what—”
“My cousins are our friends and are good men, and I love them,” he said. “And I’ll have need of them, in time. But they lack your heart, Waymon. They would’ve stayed their hands in the Marches. Doubted what they were asked to do. Doubted me.”
“Then they’re fools too,” said Waymon. “Because what you did saved Harcia from Clemen’s treachery.”
“No, Waymon. We saved it.”
Struck dumb, Waymon swallowed.
“Now, my friend, you should eat a hearty meal, then rest,” he said. “As I intend to do. For the task before us is daunting and we shall need all our strength.”
The next morning, after a poor night’s sleep, disheartened by Roric’s duplicity and fretting for Aimery, Grefin found that not even Mazelina’s gentle company or his children’s laughter could soothe him. So he took refuge in childhood memory, and sought out the place where he used to hide as a boy: the crooked branches of an old apple tree, in a far corner of the bailey. There he sat, knees pulled close to his chest, and brooded.
Balfre found him there an hour later.
“We should talk,” his brother said, fisted hands on his hips. “Just the two of us.”
He pulled a face. “I’m not in the mood, Balfre.”
“Too bad. I am.”
There was no point protesting, so he climbed out of the tree and walked across Tamwell castle’s outer bridge with his brother, thinking they’d wander along the cliff or maybe through the township. Find a quiet tavern and hide themselves in a corner. But no. Instead, Balfre led him down to the river and threw coins at a wherryman for the use of his sturdy little boat.
With a comfortable sigh, Balfre settled himself on a bench seat, his back to the stern. “You’re the youngest. You can row.”
Bastard. Grefin hunched onto the wherryman’s seat, took hold of the oars and wrangled the wherry away from the dock and into the lazily flowing river. The wherryman stared after them, shading his bemused face with his hand.
“Mind, now,” said Balfre. “The river’s well-travelled and this doublet’s not for swimming.”
He was right. The river Tam was Harcia’s highway, thronged daily with wherries and barges unless it was a hard winter and the water froze. Then horse-and-carts used it like a regular road, and children tied shingles to their shoes and slid about in riots of laughter, and older boys held archery contests under the sparkling, ice-blue sky. Two hundred and sixty-odd years ago the Tam’s waters had flowed through the Marches and into Clemen. But Harcia’s duke in that time, Gorvenal, he’d put an end to that. Summoned every able-bodied man and boy in the duchy to the slow, narrow river bend beyond Cater’s Tamwell and turned them into an army of spadesmen. Upon his command they’d diverted the river back into Harcia. And though Clemen had howled and pleaded and threatened, Gorvenal stood firm… and Clemen didn’t fight. That was something to remember, in these uncertain times.
Glancing over his shoulder, then left and right at the wherries gliding beside them, making sure he was in no danger of a collision, Grefin heaved a sigh. “Balfre, where are we going?”
Balfre waved a vague hand. “Does it matter? Surely even you can’t get lost on a fucking river. Now put your back into it. It’s past time you worked up an honest sweat.”
If he’d not needed both oars, he’d have smacked his brother with one.
Feeling his muscles loosen as he worked into the rhythm of the task, feeling the impersonal tug of the flowing water and the strength it cost him to keep the wherry driving straight, he deepened his breathing. The air smelled of the midden, and open fields, and damp ploughed soil, and cattle.
“I’m wondering,” he said, watching Balfre watch the cottages and countryside glide by. “When you leave, will you take Jancis with you?”
Balfre grimaced. “No.”
“So you’d not object if she spent a little time on the Green Isle with me and Mazelina?”
“I would. Aimery needs her to tend him.”
“Balfre, she’s nursed Aimery since he fell ill. She’s tired. A respite will restore her spirits.”
“What the fuck do you care for my wife and her spirits?” said Balfre, staring. “Besides, surely Mazelina is trouble enough on her own.”
Grefin thought a moment before replying. If only Balfre weren’t so prickly when it came to talk of marriage. It touched too near the question of children, of sons. His disappointment, and how he blamed that on his wife.
“It’s Mazelina who’s asked me to ask you. She’s fond of Jancis. She says the wives of men like us must love each other like sisters.”
“Men like us? I suppose that’s an insult, is it? Men like us.”
“Balfre…” He shook his head, amused by his brother’s outrage. “Can you call us easy? Were you a woman, would you wish to be married to you?”
“Instead of you? Fuck! What do you think?”
“I think that when it comes to my wife, I know which battles to fight and when I shouldn’t even bother unsheathing my sword.”
“Fuck.” Disgruntled, Balfre worried at the ruby ring on his thumb. Then he shrugged, an irritable twitch of one shoulder. “Fine. Take Jancis back with you. Keep her for all I care.”
A double-sailed flat barge wallowed by them, laden with slabs of blood granite quarried in Danstun, three days’ ride to the north. Breathing hard, Grefin struggled to hold the wherry against the barge’s heavy wash. He could hear shouts and curses as the river’s wherryman fought to keep their own boats steady.
Balfre was laughing as he swayed in time with their boat’s plunging. “What did I say, Grefin? An honest sweat. But I warn you–tip me into the Tam and I’ll wring your fucking neck!”
A great deal of honest sweat saved him. Danger past, and the river settling, Grefin blotted his face on his sleeve. “You lazy shite, Balfre. You could’ve lent me a hand. I swear, one of these days I’ll kill you.”
Balfre grinned. “Not if I kill you first.”
That deserved an eye roll, and got one. Rowing again, he considered his brother. Wondered if he should risk speaking further about Jancis. Probably not. But when would he have another chance? They mightn’t see each other for a year. Perhaps longer. And Balfre was hurting, though he did his best never to show it.
“You shouldn’t fret over Jancis. When Aimery—” No, he still couldn’t say it aloud. “When you’re duke, you can put her aside. Choose a wife more to your liking and breed a son on her instead.”
“You astonish me,” Balfre said, after a staring silence. “Truly.”
“Why? I’m not Mazelina. A duke’s wife–the heir’s wife–owes him a son. Jancis is no bad woman, but she’s failed you.”
“Our father’s made it plain, Grefin. I must keep Jancis to wife.”
A mistake on Aimery’s part, but no amount of argument would change his mind. “And so you will. While he’s duke.”
Frowning, Balfre slid the ruby ring from his right thumb and fiddled it over the scarred joint on his left. “But if I keep her to wife after his death, as Aimery wants, and as Harcia’s duke die without a son, you’d follow me.” He inspected the ring again, then pulled it off his left thumb. As though the fate of the world rested upon which thumb wore a ruby. “Fuck, Grefin. If Clemen kills me in the Marches you’ll be Aimery’s heir. I’ll wager that thought gives you a thrill.”
His turn to stare. “D’you think that’s my ambition? That having tasted power in the Green Isle I now covet all of Harcia?”
The ruby ring was back on his brother’s right thumb. One arm resting along the wherry’s side, Balfre shrugged. “Don’t you?”
“No! Is this what you wanted to talk about? Because if it is—”
“Keep your voice down, Grefin. We’ve got wherrymen on either side of us and sound carries across water.”
Maybe so, but it was still hard not to shout. “I’ve no desire to be duke of Harcia. And fuck you for thinking I’d rejoice at your death.”
Balfre smoothed his breeze-blown hair. “It seems I’ve offended you.”
“And hurt me. When did I ever give you cause to doubt?”
“Never,” said Balfre. “I’m sorry, Grefin. My mind’s wandering to dark places. Blame Roric for that.”
For that, and so much more. “Then what did you want to talk about?”
“Aimery. I must go to the Marches and you must return to the Green Isle–with my wife, or without her. But losing both of us will weigh on him. You know it.”
Shifting on the bench, Grefin eased his rowing and looked back to see how far they’d come. A goodly distance. Tamwell castle appeared not quite so forbidding. Looking again to Balfre, he set the oars to holding them steady.
“What are you saying? Has the leech confided more in you than he’ll tell me?”
“The fucking leech hardly gives me the time of day. But I’m not so green I can’t hear what isn’t said. Aimery will never again be the man he was. And the next fit might—”
“Must there be another one?” he said, his mouth dry. “Does the leech suggest there will be?”
“Grefin…” Now Balfre was impatiently pitying. “You’re not so green either.”
No, he wasn’t. But the thought of his father’s death was as cruel a hurt as thinking of Mazelina taken from him, or one of his children.
“Then if you must go, and I must, what’s to be done?”
“I think…” Falling silent, Balfre searched the distant riverbank, as though he might find there the answer to a problem that was already answered. “Grefin, if we can keep him from worrying,” he said eventually, his voice low and unsteady, “then there’s hope we’ll keep him with us the longe
r. So while I pick up the pieces in the Marches, you need to bind the lords of the Green Isle ever closer. They heed you now for Aimery’s sake. Make them heed you for your own. If I can tame the Marches, keep Clemen penned safe behind them, and you can keep the Green Isle sweet, what will there be in Harcia to fret him? And without fret…” He sighed. “There’s hope.”
“Perhaps that is the best we can do for him. Only…”
“It seems too little,” Balfre said. “I know.”
They fell silent. Another barge blundered past, this one carrying sheep. Penned on the flat deck, their anxious bleating floated over the water.
“Life is strange,” Grefin murmured, turning to watch the barge. Mutton-sheep, he guessed, bound for slaughter. Even at this distance he could see their fleeces were good only for mattress stuffing and the stripping of lanolin. “Who’d believe we’d be brought close again by Aimery’s faltering health, and Clemen’s treachery.”
“Who said we’re close?” said Balfre, then laughed. “Grefin, Grefin… you’re as gullible as those fucking sheep, I swear.”
And here was the Balfre of his childhood: wicked, mischievous, absent for too long.
“Cockshite. You’re the only man I know who’d see a trusting nature as something to disparage.”
“Then you know the wrong men,” said Balfre. “Which explains why you’re such a fucking soap with those oars. Shift over, brother, and let me take one. Or it’ll be the middle of next week before we’re home.”
Aimery hosted a feast to honour Harcia’s new Marcher lord. A quiet affair, no acrobats or jonglers. Minstrels, of course, but they were instructed to keep the recent deaths of Bayard and Egbert in mind.
Just before the sweetmeats were brought into the hall, Balfre joined Waymon, Joben, Paithan and Lowis at the trestle he’d set aside for their privy use. He didn’t have to look back to know his father was watching.
“My friends,” he said, signalling a servant to bring them a fresh flagon of wine. “I know you wish you were all coming with me, but I’d ask you to be patient. I have important plans for each and every one of you. Wait to hear from me and know that you’re as much a part of Harcia’s future as I am.”
