Seri

My driver rang the bell for the third time. No doubt the castle was in mourning. Black banners flew from the squat towers alongside the duke’s pennon. And the severe facade of the keep’s entry tower, broken only by the tall, narrow glass windows near its crown, was draped with myrtle branches, wound and tied with black crepe. But for all the activity I could see, one might think the entire household dead instead of just the lord.

At last, almost a quarter of an hour after we’d driven through the unguarded outer gates, one of the massive doors was dragged open. A red-faced under-housemaid carrying a water pitcher on her shoulder gestured frantically and disappeared into the house, leaving the door ajar.

Renald hurried back across the courtyard to the carriage, scratching his head. “The girl says you’re to go right up to her mistress’ rooms. She didn’t even wait to hear my introduction.”

“How could they know I was coming today?” Not waiting for Renald’s hand, I jumped from the carriage and directed him to the kitchen wing where he might get refreshment and perhaps a bit of gossip. I ran up the broad steps. Thirteen years since I’d been banished from this house-

A blood-chilling wail from the upper floor precluded reminiscing, as well as any puzzling over the lack of proper guards at the gates of a wealthy house with a newly dead lord. Hurrying across the tiled floor of the entry tower and up the grand staircase, I followed the commotion through a set of double doors at the end of the passage and into a grand bedchamber.

The chamber, larger and airier than most of the dark rooms in the old keep, had once been my mother’s. But only the location was recognizable. The graceful, Vallorean-style furnishings had been replaced by bulky, thick-topped tables of dark wood, ornate gilt chairs, and carved benches of a lumpish design with thin velvet cushions added for “comfort.” The bedstead sat on a raised platform, bedposts reaching all the way to the plastered ceiling. Heavy red draperies hung at the windows, blocking the bright sun and soft air of the autumn morning, and a fire roared in the hearth, making the room dim, stuffy, and nauseatingly hot.

The place was in chaos. A gray-haired woman in black satin hovered near the bed, waving ineffectually at a host of chambermaids in black dresses and winged white caps. The girls ran hither and yon with basins and towels, pillows and smelling salts, while from behind the gold-tasseled bed-curtains, the screams faded into whining complaints punctuated by great snuffles.

The gray-haired woman regarded me with dismay. “Well, where is the physician, then?”

“I know nothing of any physician. I’ve come to wait upon the duchess and the young duke. What’s the difficulty here?”

Another wail rose from the bed.

“You’re not with the physician?” The woman spoke as if she were sure I was mistaken or as if somehow it were my fault that I was not the person expected.

“No. But perhaps I could be of some help.”

“Has Ren Wesley come, Auntie?” came the voice from the bed. “Truly, I cannot get a breath.”

If breathing were the problem, I thought a clever application of the damper at the hearth and a brief wrestling match with the iron casements might improve the patient’s health considerably.

“It’s a stranger, my pet. Walked in bold as a thief. Says she’s here to see you and the young duke, but she’s not with the physician.” The black-clad woman wagged a bony finger at me. “You’ve no business here, young woman. Leave or I shall call the guards.”

“I’ll die before he comes, Auntie. I shall expire with only you and the servants and this thief to attend me. I shall die here in this wretched house and what will become of Gerick, then?”

The old woman poked her head between the bed-curtains. “Now, now, child. It is quite possible you will die, but you will have me beside you every moment.”

“Where is the damnable physician? And where is that cursed Delsy who was to bring me brandy?”

I made my way through the fluttering maids to the side of the bed and peered over the old woman’s shoulder. She was dabbing a towel on the brow of a round-faced young woman, whose fluffy white bed gown made her look like a great hen, roosting in a nest of pillows so large an entire flock of geese must have sacrificed their feathers for them. Long fair hair was piled atop her head; teasing curls and wisps floated about her pink, tear-streaked cheeks. I saw nothing to explain the mortal predictions I’d heard, though the thin red coverlet couldn’t hide the fact that my sister-in-law was most assuredly with child. I doubted Tomas had even known.

I nudged the bed-curtain open a little wider. “Excuse my intruding unannounced, Philomena. When I heard your call, I came up straightaway. May I offer assistance?”

“Moon of Jerrat!” The young woman removed the handkerchief and stared at me with her great green eyes, all present agonies seemingly forgotten in shock and recognition. My brother and I had resembled each other closely. And she’d seen me often enough.

My long estrangement from my brother Tomas had never allowed me to become acquainted with his wife. Only in my ten years of exile after my husband’s execution, when I was forced to appear once each year before the king and his courtiers to renew the parole that spared my life, had I met her face to face. Each year during that ritual humiliation, my giggling sister-in-law had used the public questioning to pose the most vulgar and intimate queries.

I reminded myself that I had not come to Comigor for Philomena, only for the boy. “I sent word,” I said. “I promised Tomas I’d come. Are you ill?”

“Who is this woman, child?” asked the woman in black, scowling at me. “What kind of impudent person disturbs a poor widow so near death from her travail?”

“Well, I’m no thief and assuredly no stranger to this house,” I said. And the invalid looked nowhere near death, though I didn’t insult either of the ladies by saying so.

Philomena poked out her rosy lower lip. Her tears flowed freely, though exactly what sentiments induced them remained a question. “Tomas said he’d never lose a match, that I’d never be left alone in this vile place. Bad enough he was forever away, but at least he would take me to Montevial in the winter. And now I’m so ill, and it’s just as well I should die, for by the time this is over, it will be almost spring. I shall be fat and ugly and everyone at court will have forgotten me. Curse him forever!”

With every shuddering sob Philomena set the twittering chambermaids aflutter like a flock of birds disturbed by a prowling cat.

“Oh, my sweet girl,” said the old woman, patting Philomena’s coverlet. “You must calm yourself or the child will be disfigured, even if you should manage to bring it alive this time.”

Philomena howled. Half the maids wailed in unison with their mistress.

Neither affection nor sympathy persuaded me to take charge of the sickroom, but only purest pragmatism. If I couldn’t speak with Philomena in a rational manner, then I couldn’t discharge my obligation and get on with my life.

It was my duty-and my wish-to tell Tomas’s wife and son how he had died with the honor befitting the Duke of Comigor, the Champion of Leire, the finest swordsman in the Four Realms. No matter now that he had never been intended to survive the battle that took his life, that he had been a pawn in a much larger game than the challenge of some petty chieftain to his king. No matter that his hand was fouled with the blood of those I most loved. In the end, set free of his madness, he had asked my forgiveness, and his last thoughts had been of his son. I had promised him I would tell the boy of his regard. In some way I did not yet fully understand, the enchantments that had corrupted my brother’s life had been my responsibility, and I liked to think that fulfilling his last wish might in some measure repay him for what had been done to him.

“Look here, madam,” I said to the old woman, drawing her away from the bed, “this excitement is doing your niece no good. And you yourself look exhausted. I’m a relation of the late duke-family, just as you are-and I’d be happy to look after Her Grace while you take a rest. For her sake, you must take care of yourself, must you not? Take you to your room for an hour. I promise to call you at the slightest difficulty.”

“Why I could never- Who do you-?”

I caught the arm of a passing maid and ordered her to escort Philomena’s aunt to her chamber, seat herself outside it, and wait upon the lady’s every whim. I then commanded the hovering attendants out of the room, sending one to make broth to be brought only at my call, another to polish all the glassware in the house in case the physician was to need it, and one to count the clean linen for when it might be wanted. Only one quiet girl called Nancy did I keep with me. I asked Nancy to hang up my cloak, open a window, and keep everyone out of the room so her mistress could rest. Then I pulled up a chair to the side of the huge bed and waited.

It was not surprising that my sister-in-law was difficult. Her father was the Chancellor of Leire. A political marriage that obliged her to live in a place as removed from court as Comigor would seem like slow death for a pampered young woman reared amid the royal intrigues and scandals of Montevial.

After a brief interval of steadily decreasing moaning, Philomena took a shaking breath and looked about. “Where is everyone?” She sniffed and blinked.

“I told them that their highest duty was to serve you, and that they’d serve you best by giving you room to breathe. Now tell me what’s the matter. You’re not giving birth, nor look even close to it.”

Philomena wailed again. The serving girl jumped up from her seat by the door, but I waved her away. I folded my hands in my lap.

The wail ended with a hiccup. The duchess dabbed her eyes. “It’s dreadful. If I’d not lost the others, you see… The physician tells me I must stay abed or I’ll lose this one, too. To suffer such wicked travail and have them all dead, save for Gerick, of course, my darling… though he’s not quite as affectionate as one might want, nor at all interested in the things he should be, and such a vile temper… The physician Ren Wesley tells me to stay abed, so Aunt Verally says he must think that I will die, too. Then today I wake with such awful pain in my back that I know the end must be near.”