The Baron's Ring

by Mary C. Findley

  Tristan knew himself beaten again. “Gladring, how long has the king has been ill?”

  “Abed, perhaps a week, my Prince,” Gladring replied. “But this is no common illness. Before this he had strange fits, almost waking nightmares, as if he were going mad. It was not like the madness when he first searched for you.”

  “I think I know what it was like,” Tristan said. He related what had happened to Gregor.

  “Just so, my Prince,” Gladring confirmed. “So you already know he is bewitched in some fashion.”

  “There are proofs of it somewhere,” Tristan said.

  “Mayra, show them what Dunstan gave us.”

  “Tristan, if only we could get these documents described here into our hands, we could put them before the Council of Justices,” Jonathan exclaimed. “So the king is finally beginning to see reason. I wish there were some way we could help the poor devil.”

  “Do you think it’s too late?” Gladring asked. “She has had her way with him a long time.”

  “Gregor was much older,” Tristan said. “I pray we can help the king, both for his own sake, and because for as long as he lives she can’t make another plan or do much of anything about me. And we have to find these proofs Gregor had.”

  “My wife’s head housekeeper,” Gladring said. “Nylda has a sweeter tongue than I, so she’s kept her place. But she will help you just as surely. If these papers are in the castle, we will find them.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  There is no king saved by the multitude of an host: a mighty man is not delivered by much strength.

  Psalm 33:16

  Tristan soon found that he could pass through the great stone halls and rooms with confidence, thanks to his memories and the artful contrivances of his mute helper. Mayra had again made ways to aid Tristan’s deception of sightedness, and used many of Brinarra’s ideas as well. Tristan made Alex accompany her when she went out. No one could resist the impish page’s gifts and decorating touches all over the castle. The pine boughs went up at the doorways, and even the castle’s regular inhabitants took the trouble to keep them fresh. A gift of bells with prettily-tied ribbons or sweet perfume to the maids meant Tristan was never surprised by the sudden appearance of one of the women of the household. Apparently Mayra had stuffed her garments with things from home and she also had Nylda, Gladring’s wife, get other things she needed in town. Odd, whimsical woodcarvings in corners and passageways were secret guides to her husband, his sensitive fingers able to discern the pots and pans that meant he approached the kitchen, the books meaning the study was near. A swipe of camphor, crushed cinnamon or other pungent scent warned him when furniture had been moved out of its usual place. Some of the men thought it odd that their shoes seemed to make more noise on the stone floors than before, but none noticed the strips of thin wood or bits of flat metal the tireless page glued to their shoes after volunteering to clean and mend the castle’s footwear. Thus Tristan heard approaching footsteps and knew when there was danger of being overheard or of simply running into someone.

  Tristan prepared to leave his room the morning of his first full day in the castle. As soon as he opened the door he smelled something five years absence had never made him forget. It was a cinnamony, yeasty scent, and he knew at once whose heavy tread he had heard outside the door.

  “Yenscha,” he said.

  “My Prince,” the gruff voice responded. Tristan hesitated. He knew there had to be a tray, a choice to be made, but all he had was a nose filled with delectable scent. How he was to choose or even get a hand on the tray he couldn’t imagine.

  “Hey,” Yenscha said sharply, and Tristan heard a swish of fabric. “For my prince, not for you.” He felt Mayra come up beside him, heard her ridiculous noises, and imagined her playfully grabbing at the sweets to choose one for him. And he imagined the steel spoon bruising her precious little fingers.

  “Yenscha, no!” he cried. “I’ve told him all about your sweets, and he understands how wonderful they are, but he can’t speak to thank you. He wants to choose one for me, all right?”

  Yenscha humpfed but permitted the sacrilege. Tristan wondered how he had thought Brinarra’s pastries were enough. “It’s perfect, Yenscha,” Tristan sighed.

  “One for the boy, also,” Yenscha said. “He know how to choose the best.” She drew very close, and whispered harshly, “Yenscha know, my poor Prince, that sight is gone from your eyes. Nylda tells me. Anything, anything I will do to help. The queen and her brother, they are devils.”

  Tristan awkwardly planted a kiss on her cheek. “God bless you, Yenscha,” he whispered back.

  Mayra and Alex prepared their rations in the kitchen, helped by Nylda and Yenscha. They lured the other cooks out for a back-garden gossip afternoons and gave Mayra stores from the town market so nothing would be missed. Food and drink sent up from the queen went into the chamber pot, which Alex always emptied. Tristan chided his wife about how she must be tiring herself but she simply laughed at him. They passed in and out of the secret door into Dunstan’s room and tried to plot a way to end the reign of the queen and her brother.

  With good food and fresh water Dunstan was growing stronger, but Tristan urged him not to let his wife know, to remain in his bed and feign sickness if she came to see him. Dunstan played his part to perfection. He always managed to drive his unwelcome visitors away with a spill in a lap or raucous, asthmatic snoring.

  “I’ve been trying to learn to read, Tris,” Dunstan said to Tristan. “You’ll help me, won’t you?”

  Tristan sighed and sank down on the bed. “Dunstan, I’m long past helping you do the kingdom’s business. I’m blind.”

  “What?” Dunstan shuddered. “Shneea did this to you? God’s mercy, I’ll make her sorry.”

  “I can help you read, King Dunstan,” Mayra said softly. “I’m the prince’s wife.”

  “God be thanked,” Dunstan breathed. “There was that paper I showed you at the first. When I found that it terrified me. When you told me Shneea was poisoning me, it was what I already suspected. I also began to think that Catarain wasn’t doing all he should to take care of the kingdom, and I tried to look at some of the papers he had. He’s been taking money he shouldn’t, and hiding it somewhere.

  “My poor people,” Dunstan groaned. “I just wanted to look for you, and the kingdom was being destroyed. I thought if I found you it would make up for all the wrong I did, that you could fix my waste and my neglecting things. I was crazy with guilt and I couldn’t stop looking for you. I stopped drinking, and gambling, and fighting, and all the things I wasted my time at. I even got rid of the river god things and prayed to the real God, but I was only trying to make a deal with God to get you back, not repent.

  “Shneea and Catarain came to Kenborana and set up a shop to tell fortunes and sell potions. I was always a superstitious idiot, as you well know. I couldn’t see the true God right before my face, in my brother’s life.

  “Anyway, I thought maybe they could help me find you. Shneea just entranced me the first time I saw her. Those perfumes, the incense she burned in her shop, those little bells she wore – I couldn’t resist her. And Catarain talked as if he cared about the kingdom and could help me do all the things I wanted you to do. I was besotted with Shneea, and I married her less than a year later. I – I still have a hard time resisting her when she comes here.”

  Mayra and Tristan together schooled Dunstan in his letters and Mayra declared him not so utterly ignorant as Tristan had left him. He could both read and write more than Tristan had imagined possible. Dunstan loved Mayra like a besotted puppy and she treated him with great gentleness. Yet Tristan began to discern that though Dunstan now had wholesome food and freedom from his wife’s poisons he only rallied a little. Once when they had left Dunstan asleep and returned to Tristan’s room he pulled his wife close.

  “I believe Dunstan’s going to die, my love,” he said in her ear.

  “I’ve feared as much, too, my Prince,”
Mayra responded. “The poisoning went on too long. If he’d been able to grow strong in body, he might also have found the strength to drive out his wife and her brother.”

  “That was my hope, and his as well,” Tristan nodded. “Mayra, how would you like to be queen of Parangor?”

  “Oh, my Prince,” Mayra breathed. “I’m still getting used to being wife to a prince. Back in Larcondale you wouldn’t even let them call you Prince Tristan. Everyone just called you Baron. And I thought she who is queen now intended to make you her husband, so as to remain queen herself,” she added impishly.

  “Don’t joke about that,” Tristan muttered. “I’ve been thinking of a way to use poor Dunstan’s death to get us a foothold. You know how people are about blood and birth. I believe it’s the real reason I wasn’t killed in Larcondale. Catarain might really have been sent to bring my head back to his sister, Alex, just as you thought. He became afraid when he learned that I was the king’s brother. And I believe even Shneea feared to lay a hand on me, so she had to plan to secure the throne through me. The succession would pass to me, not to her, upon Dunstan’s death and she would lose all if it were even thought that she or her brother had done away with me.

  “That I’m here and that Dunstan’s very ill is known to everyone now. I think I’m going to have to seize the throne by declaring that Dunstan’s past recovery. It might force them to show their hand. We still haven’t found evidence that they’re Dunstan’s murderers, or that they abused power to steal, or have any designs against me.”

  He had sent some of the food and drink the queen had provided out with Gladring to be checked for poison and Gladring had reported that nothing was found but a sleeping draught, and of insufficient quantity to kill anyone. Shneea could hardly be executed for trying to put her husband and his brother to sleep.

  The next morning poor Dunstan lay curled up in the bed, still alive, but nothing could rouse him. Tristan found by his bedside a little burnt-out stub of candle, and Mayra removed sheets of paper from his clutching hand and a quill from beneath his ink-stained cheek. He had waked and slept at odd times lately, and it was impossible for Tristan and Alex and Mayra to live by his fast-expiring clock.

  “Has he written something for us, then?” Tristan asked softly. “Perhaps he puzzled out a solution to all this.”

  “I’ll read you what he says,” Mayra said. “He must have labored over this all this week, all the times we thought he slept, my Prince. It is written so perfectly. No one could mistake the words.

  “I, Dunstan, King of Parangor, swear this be my dying oath. Act on it as my final decree, and carry it out immediately, regardless of whether I am actually dead.

  “Catarain of Kolt’Kutan has stolen from the people of Parangor. Examination of all the documents in the royal household is to be made by the Council of Justices.

  “Lord Catarain sought to kill my brother, Prince Tristan. He crossed the boundaries of Tarraskida secretly and spied on Larcondale to try to capture the prince or take his life, justifying this with a false charge put forward by my wife, Queen Shneea. Many people in Larcondale can testify to what truly happened. Their testimony must be sought, and Prince Tristan’s innocence proved. At the first opportunity Prince Tristan made himself known and sought to answer the charge against him. He came peacefully to Kenborana.

  “Let these two answer for these crimes against the person of the Crown Prince and against Parangor before the Council of Justices. I bow to their authority. May they accept this my solemn testimony, written as my life steals away from me. Do not let them escape.

  “My brother, Prince Tristan, shall rule in my stead, as the law of succession commands. May he may see that what is right is done. I am Dunstan, King of Parangor, and I die.”

  “Can we truly use this, then, while he still lives?” Tristan breathed.

  “It must be as you said,” Mayra replied. “He’s so near death they’ll have to let you take the throne.”

  “We must go straight to the Hall of Justice of Kenborana and give this into the hands of the Council,” Tristan said. “Alex, get Gladring to watch over Dunstan and he and Nylda can begin to prepare him for his rest.” Alex vanished.

  “The queen will never submit to this,” Mayra exclaimed. “We will still have a battle before she is overcome.”

  “If we can get to the Hall of Justice before she knows Dunstan has written this, and get them to act quickly, perhaps the ax will fall before the goose knows to pull in her neck,” Tristan said grimly. He slipped the pages into his breast and grabbed Mayra’s arm. They left Dunstan’s room and quickly locked the door. Abruptly Mayra set up a peculiar hooting and spastic series of movements, poking Tristan, grunting, honking, and trying to disappear behind him. Then he smelled the heavy perfume and heard the tinkle of ornaments which signaled that Shneea stood before them.

  “Gracious queen,” Tristan said evenly, dipping his head, and ruffling Mayra’s hair while making sure her head was low enough that Shneea could not possibly see her face.

  “Ah, Prince, here you are with your little page who has charmed the castle with so many odd gifts. Ugh! What is that smell?”

  Tristan had never encountered this particularly unpleasant stench, which suddenly filled the air and surely came from his “page.” But Mayra had become a master at finding things that smelled pleasant or merely potent to guide him to a favorite chair or keep him from colliding with a low doorway. Mayra pounded on Dunstan’s chamber door and seemed to scratch with her fingers.

  “Oh, your pardon, majesty, it is your husband’s linen. Get back in there and put it to soak at once, lad,” Tristan ordered, unlocking the door, thrusting Mayra inside, and locking it again. “Thank goodness you noticed it. It would have filled the whole castle before long.”

  “So many mysteries surround you, Prince Tristan,” Shneea said. “Your disappearing servants who never seem to want to be seen by me. Every maid and cook and cat rings with bells or reeks of perfume. Chairs and tables scented with spices or herbs. Even my menservants can no longer enter or leave a room quietly. They clatter like shoed horses. Why, my poor Prince, I have guessed one of your secrets. I hurt you far more than you would have had me know. This boy makes a world full of raised pictures and sounds and smells so that you may hide from us the fact that you cannot see.”

  “Why would I hide such a thing, if it were true?” Tristan scoffed. “The boy pleases himself and others with his crafts. If I were indeed blind, I would beg the help of everyone I met.”

  “A man does strange things because of pride, a fear of seeming weak,” Shneea suggested. “Or perhaps you do not trust me, and still think I wish revenge. If I took your sight from you, how could I hope for a better punishment for your wrongs against me? I see you have adjusted very well to your dark world, yet you can hardly fail to suffer terribly, every day, from this affliction.” She sounded far too satisfied for Tristan’s taste.

  “I have no doubt I would, if it were so,” Tristan agreed. “I must hide the signs of suffering wonderfully well, too. Or perhaps there is no suffering, because you are mistaken.”

  “It is easily proved or disproved,” Shneea said. “Tell me the color of my gown.”

  “I shall not fall into that trap,” bantered Tristan. “Should I say it was pink, you would say, ‘Aha, it is peach.’ Were I to venture that it is red, you would say, ‘Fool, it is maroon.’ Blue to a man is sea-green to a woman. Indeed, as to a woman’s idea of color, I confess to stone blindness.”

  Shneea’s serving-women had been reduced to helpless giggling. Shneea did not seem to be amused, however. “You are a clever man with words, brother-in-law,” she gritted. “But surely there can be no question about how many fingers I hold up before you.”

  Her ornaments tinkled and silks rustled. Tristan leaned against the door and prayed. All at once a flood of water burst out from beneath the door. It stank horribly, worse than the smell that had allowed Mayra to escape. Tristan danced out of the deluge. Shneea shrieked
and cursed and her maids added a chorus of horrified cries.

  “What is this filth?” She howled. “It has ruined my slippers, my gown!”

  “Please do not let me keep you from going to change, gracious queen,” Tristan said with a gesture of helplessness. “And accept my apologies.”

  She cursed again, a spewing of foreign words but unmistakable in their intent. The words trailed off into the air. Tristan listened to the trickling and dribbling of the end of the noxious-smelling flood until Mayra rattled the door latch and he remembered to let her out. He squeezed her shoulder in thanks and she gibbered happily. They fled the castle together.

  Nylda met them in the lower hall and Tristan surrendered the key of Dunstan’s room to her. Gladring produced Alex with a light trap and a fast mare. Mayra huddled close to Tristan, because the trap was very narrow, of course. Tristan threw an arm around her shoulders, because the trap was very narrow, of course. Finding his way into and through the Hall of Justice was simple. He got Alex to drive the trap as close to the door as he could get and called out, “Prince Tristan desires audience with the Chief of the Justices!” In two minutes they were ushered into the justice’s chamber. Tristan walked forward with his hand resting on Mayra’s shoulder.

  “My Lord Prince,” a pleasant, elderly man’s voice greeted him. “Welcome home. We had heard rumors that you had died. It’s gratifying to know that they are false.”

  “Mischnal!” Tristan exclaimed, startled to recognize a voice he knew very well. “I beg your pardon, my Lord Chief Justice. But it’s good to find a friend in this place. “

  “It’s good to meet again one who occasionally listened to my advice, unlike your father and brother, my Prince,” Justice Mischnal replied with rue in his voice. “You have business for me, urgent, I was told?”