Priest of Gallows

by Peter McLean

  At the front of the courtroom was a small desk and an ornate oak throne on a raised dais, with two armoured guards waiting behind it. A clerk sat at the desk, a quill already in his hand and an open book on the surface in front of him. There was a bottle of ink and jar of sand set neatly to one side. In the middle of the room between the throne and the rows of seats we occupied was a plain wooden chair.

  A liveried attendant stepped into the space between the dais and the empty chair, and she thumped the floor with the end of the long staff she carried.

  ‘Come to order,’ she said, her voice loud in the already silent room. ‘All rise for the Lord Chief Judiciar.’

  We stood, and a door behind the dais opened.

  Lord Vogel strode into the room. He wore a long black robe, and a curious little black hat that rested on his white hair. The attendant’s staff struck the floor again, and everyone bowed while Vogel took his seat on his throne of office.

  ‘Be seated,’ he said, his voice quiet but carrying well in the enclosed space.

  I sat with the others, and my eyes found Ailsa’s across the room. Her face was expressionless, the face of the lioness, and I made myself keep mine the same way. I wasn’t sure exactly what to expect here, but I had a suspicion it wasn’t going to be pleasant.

  I was right about that.

  Chapter 7

  ‘Bring in the accused,’ Lord Vogel ordered.

  Ailsa had said that the Lady Lan Delanov was young and pretty, but neither of those things were evident now. The woman that was led into the court between two guards was bent like a crone, her bare, scabbed feet shuffling painfully on the smooth boards. She wore a rough grey shift, and a stained bandage was wrapped around the shortened stump of her left hand.

  She had no eyelids.

  ‘In Our Lady’s name,’ Fat Luka whispered beside me, and I could only agree with him about that.

  Ilse had done the gods only knew what to her hand and taken her eyelids. Lady Lan Delanov bore the marks of harsh questioning indeed. Very harsh. I wondered how brightly lit her cell had been kept, and how many days it had been since the poor woman last slept.

  It’s always easier to break their minds than their bodies, Tomas.

  The guards led her to the chair and helped her to sit, and then stepped away and took up position against the walls.

  I swallowed sour spit and looked away.

  Lord Vogel’s face was completely impassive, and his soulless gaze held no hint of emotion when he spoke.

  ‘Introduce yourself to the court.’

  The woman’s voice was cracked and faint, but audible in the utter silence of the courtroom.

  ‘The Lady Olena Lan Delanov, my Lord Chief Judiciar. Lady-in-Waiting to Her Majesty the Queen.’

  The clerk’s pen scratched across the page as he recorded every word that was spoken. He kept his eyes down on his book, I noticed, and avoided looking at Lady Lan Delanov.

  ‘Do you swear upon the names of the almighty gods of the temple to speak only the truth, and the whole truth, and to hold nothing back?’

  ‘I do so swear.’

  She’s been coached in every word, I thought, but by then I supposed it no longer mattered. Whether or not she was truly guilty or just so broken by torture that she would have said anything to make it stop no longer mattered. The outcome of this trial was a foregone conclusion. There could only be one reason we were there at all.

  ‘Are you, Lady Lan Delanov, complicit in the murder of Her Majesty the Queen?’

  ‘I am, my lord.’

  I heard someone gasp, and a mutter of condemnation from someone else.

  ‘Traitor,’ someone whispered.

  ‘Silence!’ barked the attendant with the staff.

  Vogel continued as though she had not spoken.

  ‘Did you, Lady Lan Delanov, Lady-in-Waiting to Her Majesty, act alone in this grievous and shameful matter of assassination and regicide? Did you with your own hand murder our noble queen?’

  ‘No, my lord.’

  Here it comes, I thought.

  ‘And will you now name for the court those accomplices with whom you worked? Will you name those who opened the gates and unlocked the doors, and those who were paid to look the other way?’

  ‘I will, my lord.’

  Here come the death warrants.

  She named fifteen people in all.

  Six of the Palace Guard, three footmen, four maids, the Prince Consort’s personal secretary, and the head of the royal bodyguard. The clerk of the court dutifully recorded the names in his book. Those last two were interesting, I thought, being so much higher placed than the others.

  ‘And what of the royal family themselves?’ Vogel asked. ‘Were the Prince Consort or the Princess Crown Royal involved in this matter in any way?’

  ‘Absolutely not, my lord. Their hands are clean.’

  And thus so simply was order restored, and the direct line of the succession preserved. This was also, I thought, a fucking good way of getting rid of difficult but important people.

  ‘And on whose behalf did you act, Lady Lan Delanov? Whose hand held the blade?’

  ‘I . . . I do not know his name, my lord,’ she said. ‘A foreign man. A northerner.’

  ‘And from which country did this foreign assassin come?’

  Her voice dropped almost to a whisper.

  ‘From Skania.’

  Aye, well, that at least made sense enough. I had known that ridiculous fucking palace would be impossible to defend, and it seemed I had been right about that. All it had taken was an assassin with a big bag of gold, and the brains to work out which of the queen’s household could be moved by coin. I could have done that myself.

  ‘This court has heard the confession of Lady Lan Delanov, and recorded the names of her accomplices. The matter is now concluded,’ Vogel said. ‘Take her away.’

  We do not have executions here, not for traitors, Ailsa had told me once. There are no heroic ends, no ritual or grandeur to it. We make no martyrs and we leave nothing for others to aspire to, nothing to be emulated. They just disappear, and are forgotten.

  I didn’t think anyone would ever see Lady Lan Delanov again. Given what Ilse had done to her, perhaps that was almost a kindness.

  The woman was led away between the same two guards who had brought her in, and the attendant once more banged on the floor with her staff. We all rose and bowed as Lord Vogel left the room, and that was it.

  I thought of the second houseman of the royal privy chamber, his arm filleted and filled with shit to make his blood run black with rot. He must surely have died screaming and raving by now, in the hellish depths of the house of law.

  It seemed he had been innocent.

  *

  By the time we were summoned to Vogel’s office later that morning, Ailsa and Iagin and me, the death warrants had already been signed.

  Ailsa received those for the Prince Consort’s personal secretary and the head of the royal bodyguard, as I supposed was only wise. She was the aristocrat who was placed highly within the palace, after all. Iagin, the man of the people, took the warrants for the footmen and the maids, and I, the soldier, got the six guardsmen. There was always a reason behind Lord Vogel’s actions, even in such a small matter as this. That much was plain to see.

  ‘Get it done quickly,’ he said, and with that we were dismissed.

  I followed Iagin back down the corridor to his office and cleared my throat.

  ‘You want something, Tomas?’ he asked.

  ‘Can I have a word?’

  He nodded and waved me in.

  ‘You ain’t done this before, have you?’ he said, as I closed the door behind me.

  ‘Not exactly this, no,’ I had to admit. ‘What’s the form of it?’

  ‘They need to die. You make them dead. It’s not complicated.’

  ‘We don’t have to arrest them first?’

  He snorted and spat into the cold fireplace.

  ‘What the fuck for? On
ce that paper’s signed they’re dead folk walking. You stop them walking, that’s all that matters now. Use who you like, that’s why you’ve got people. Just try not to make a big fucking fuss about it. Nice and quiet, that’s how the Old Man likes things done.’

  I thought about Messia, and about the things we had done there during the sack. That had been a place for knives in the dark, and I couldn’t think this would be any different.

  Knife work was Bloody Anne’s bread and beer.

  In case you need people killed when we get there, she had said.

  Exactly that, Anne.

  Exactly that.

  Chapter 8

  Anne took it better than I had expected, and that was good.

  ‘I fucking knew it,’ was all she had said when I told her, and I’d never had any doubt about that.

  We understood each other, Bloody Anne and me. We always had, and she knew how business was done. That night we both wore leather and mail, and we carried our weapons concealed under our cloaks. I had the Queen’s Warrant in my pouch.

  ‘Go careful, love,’ Rosie said, and she stood on tiptoe to kiss Anne on the scarred corner of her mouth. ‘I’ll be waiting up for you, like always. Meantime I’ll organise the cart like you wanted, Mr Piety, and some boys who can be quiet.’

  Anne gave her a nod and the ghost of a smile, and she followed me out of the inn and into the darkness.

  ‘How do we get into the barracks?’ she asked me as we walked away down the street, leaving the comforting warmth of the Bountiful Harvest behind us.

  I patted the pouch at my belt.

  ‘Easy enough,’ I said. ‘I’ve got the key to every fucking door in Dannsburg right here. It’s there to be used when needed, Ailsa told me, and this is official business. Our boys are all off duty and together, that’s already been seen to. Rosie had a word with the captain of the watch for me too, and she passed him some silver. They’ve got an extra brandy ration to keep them busy tonight. A very generous one.’

  ‘Oh, did she now?’ Anne said, and I could feel her eyes on me as we walked.

  I still didn’t think Anne had truly grasped the part that Rosie played in my operation, just like she had when she worked for Ailsa before me. Rosie was subtle, when she wanted to be, and very adaptable. When she tied the bawd’s knot on her shoulder and put on her working smile and wiggled her hips in that way she had, she could go virtually anywhere unchallenged.

  Licensed whores don’t grow on trees, after all, and few question their comings and goings. Especially not in the officers’ quarters of a guard barracks they don’t, not if they’re wise. It was the perfect false face for an agent, but I didn’t think Anne saw it for quite as false as it was.

  I knew all too well how that felt.

  ‘Can I say something?’ I asked her after a moment.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Rosie,’ I started, picking my words very carefully. ‘I know she’s your woman, Anne, and I respect that, but you need to remember that isn’t all she is.’

  ‘I know that,’ Anne growled. ‘Soldier I may be, but I’m not some shithead man who thinks he can own his woman. She’s her own person.’

  ‘She works for the family,’ I said, keeping my voice very low. Dannsburg was full of eyes and ears, and it wouldn’t be wise to name the Queen’s Men in public. ‘She did that for a long time before she met you, and if the dice ever fall bad I wouldn’t like to say which she’d put first.’

  ‘She isn’t Ailsa,’ Anne said. ‘I know she chose her work over you, Tomas, and for what it’s worth I think that’s made you bitter. Doesn’t mean my Rosie would do the same.’

  ‘No, it doesn’t,’ I said. ‘But it doesn’t mean that she wouldn’t, either. You keep that in mind, Bloody Anne. That’s all I’m asking. I don’t want to see you hurt, you understand?’

  Anne was silent for the length of the street, then she turned her head and spat into the gutter.

  ‘Aye,’ she said. ‘I mark you, Tomas Piety.’

  We were quiet for a while after that, and I couldn’t help but wonder if Bloody Anne had taken my words ill. I hoped not; I hadn’t meant them that way. I was only trying to watch out for my friend, but it’s a hard thing to bring up with someone as obviously in love as Anne was. Rosie was a good woman to Anne, I had no doubt about that, and she was a good agent to me too. I wished I knew which she valued the most.

  I wondered which I did.

  *

  At last we reached the wide mall that led up to the palace gates, and there we turned off into a side street that served the barracks.

  The palace itself was a ridiculous iced cake of a building, with too many windows and banners, and a proliferation of pointless ornamental balconies and colonnades that served no apparent purpose. Beside it, the barracks of the Palace Guard was the sort of solid, ugly slab of stone that made a soldier feel quite comfortably at home. No wonder it was hidden away on one side of the palace, out of sight from the formal approach. I knew which one I would have felt safer in, but that was beside the point.

  The Queen’s Men were coming, and no one was safe that night.

  Do what your father says or the Queen’s Men will come and take you away.

  I remembered Ma saying that to frighten me into doing what I was told, when I was very little. A shiver worked its way down my back as I fingered the Queen’s Warrant through the leather of my pouch. The Queen’s Men were to be feared indeed. The Queen’s Men were listeners and spies, and they were licensed, professional murderers who made people disappear.

  Aye, I was that now.

  And I had work to do.

  I pulled the rope beside the great doors of the barracks to ring the bell. A moment later a sliding hatch in the sally port opened to show me a lad’s eyes and a portion of his nose, dark with greasy blackheads.

  ‘What d’you want?’

  I opened my pouch and took out the Queen’s Warrant, and I held it up for him to see. There was no need for words, not with that in my hand.

  The key to every door in Dannsburg.

  I heard bolts being thrown back, and a moment later the sally port opened to admit us.

  The guardsman was even uglier than he had looked through the hatch, his face a riot of livid boils under his ill-fitting helmet. He couldn’t have had more than sixteen or seventeen years to him, I thought. The war wasn’t so very long ago, and the army was still recruiting hard to fill the huge gaps in its ranks left by the carnage of Abingon. A lot of soldiers and guardsmen were young now, probably too green to be of much use if it came to war again.

  I didn’t want to think what would happen, if it came to war with Skania.

  ‘Sir?’ he asked, standing nervously to attention as I stepped into the stone hall with Anne behind me. ‘Ma’am? What . . . what do you need?’

  ‘You to shut up,’ I said. ‘I’m not here, you understand me? You never saw us.’

  ‘Sir,’ the lad said, and he had the sense to hold his peace after that.

  ‘There’s a cart coming,’ I told him. ‘Watch for it, and have the carter and his men wait. They’re with me.’

  The guard saluted and turned back to his hatch, watching the street as though his life depended on it. He probably thought it did, at that.

  I led Anne down an echoing stone hall, past two more youthful guardsmen who turned to watch us go by with confused looks on their faces. If I was the commandant of this place I’d have had the pair of them flogged for taking that little interest in strangers in their barracks, but that was a matter for another day. We were in now.

  ‘Where are we going?’ Anne whispered.

  ‘Mess hall three,’ I said, reciting what Ailsa had told me. ‘We’ve made sure they’re all together, I told you that.’

  ‘Fucking how?’

  ‘Ailsa arrested the head of the royal bodyguard this afternoon,’ I whispered. ‘It didn’t take her long to get his signature on some special orders. The family help each other out, Anne.’

  �
��Just like back home,’ she said.

  ‘Aye, it’s just like that.’

  It was, as well. From what I had seen, the Queen’s Men worked exactly like the underworld gangs of Ellinburg did, and that wasn’t lost on me. Each Queen’s Man ran his or her own crew like an independent business, but we all answered to Lord Vogel as our overboss in the end and that meant we worked together when we needed to. It wasn’t how I had ever expected to find an arm of the crown operating, much less an order of the knighthood, but it was comfortingly familiar for all that. I wondered if that familiarity was part of why I had been chosen in the first place.

  That aside, Ailsa had no doubt stuck a red-hot iron into the head of the royal bodyguard until he signed the orders that got my boys the night off and had them assigned a private mess hall all to themselves. Whatever she’d done, it had worked. Just another sweet little reward for their blind eyes and open doors on the night of the assassination, as far as they were concerned.

  That was well and good but there were still six of them and two of us, and I hadn’t wanted to involve Emil and Oliver in this. No soldier I had ever met stayed sober in the face of free booze, though, so I’d sent Rosie instead with her bawd’s knot and a bag of silver and a kiss for the captain of the watch to ensure they would be shitfaced by the time we arrived.

  Always cheat, always win.

  The captain had told me that once, during the war, and it had been true then and it was true now.

  ‘Here we are,’ I said, stopping outside a stout wooden door.