Count Scar - SA (20 page)

"Nothing broken here, either," I said, my voice coming out too high. "But I'd better get some cold compresses on this as soon as I can." Bruno would know the best way to treat a strained ankle—

but Bruno was dead. "I'm sorry I've ruined your hawking."

I tried to pull myself to a standing position, but black spots came before my eyes and I had to sit down again abruptly. "This is nothing for an old soldier," I tried to tell Arsendis, head between
my knees.

"I shall ride back at once," she said in resolution, "and have a cart brought to fetch you. Try not to move while I'm gone."

But I grabbed her hand, then dropped it immediately. "A duke's daughter should not ride through the countryside alone," I said, appalled at the image of being brought back to the ducal court in a
cart like some peasant—or a feeble old knight whose failing body no longer allowed him to mount a horse. "I'll be able to ride just fine, in just a minute."

I tried to put my boot back on, but the ankle had already swollen too much. With Arsendis's hand under my elbow and her breath on my cheek—it would have been a very pleasant sensation if it
were not also so mortifying—I managed to stand up this time, and hobbled and hopped in my stockinged foot over to my horse.

Here another difficulty presented itself. I could put the left foot in the stirrup, but when I tried to put enough weight on it to mount the black spots returned and threatened to overwhelm me.

"See if mounting from this rock is easier," Arsendis suggested. She led my horse over to it, then again assisted me as I scrambled up one-footed. For an elegant lady she was surprisingly strong. I
looked at her out of the corner of my eye and realized I had not heard her laugh once since I had fallen—probably saving it all up for when she related this to the other ladies back at court.

From the top of the rock I was able to throw myself across the saddle, then used my good leg to lever myself into position while Arsendis held the startled horse's head as capably as any groom.

"This will be fine," I said through my teeth, trying not to sway. "Could you hand me my boot?"

It was now midday, the first really warm weather we had had this year. Rivulets of sweat ran down my face. "Would you like me to sing to distract you from the pain?" Arsendis asked
solicitously as we started slowly back toward town.

"An old soldier like me doesn't mind pain," I tried again, feeling sure she would despise me for the slightest sign of weakness. The worst pain I had ever experienced was not from war but from
fire. The physical pain from that had long ago dulled—leaving fully intact the horror and the failure. "But I would very much appreciate it if you could talk to me. I would like that even better
than your singing."

"And what should I say?"

Not only did I want distraction from the pain, I wanted distraction from thoughts of my coming conversation with the bishop. I had been trying all morning, even before my fall, not to think
about it. What could I say to him to persuade him that I was a follower of the True Faith, an obedient son of the Church, when I was also going to tell him that no one was ever going to be burned
at the stake in my county again for any reason?

"Anything you like," I said. "Tell me about growing up at a ducal court. Tell me about your family."

Too late I realized that it sounded as though I were trying to learn more about her brother, a topic her father had clearly forbidden her to discuss with anyone. But trying to apologize at this point
would only make things worse.

Arsendis gave me a quick, amused glance from her uptilted dark eyes. "I must say you are the first galant ever to inquire about my family. I would have thought everything was only too
evident!"

"You don't need to tell me that you are the duke's younger daughter," I persisted. At this point I had to say something quickly. "But what was it like to be a child here? What games did you
play? Did you have a tutor?"

She wrinkled her brows in a becoming frown as though giving the inane question serious thought. "I understand you were an archduke's son, Count Caloran, but life in your court in the
barbarous north must have been very different. Of course I had a tutor. He taught all three of us, my sister and brother and me, while we were all young together." I let the mention of her brother
pass, hoping she would not notice herself that she had let it slip. "So I had a tutor to teach me letters and figuring each morning, and a music teacher to teach me the lyre and flute in the
afternoon, and a dancing master when I grew a little older, and my mother taught me sewing and spinning and embroidery whenever she had a few minutes. This was, I should say, whenever she
was not running through the halls with my sister and me at her heels, supervising all the life and business of the palace. That was before she died, of course."

"Then you've been trained well to be the lady of a great castle," I said, trying to make it into a graceful compliment and not having it come out right. Did she think I was commenting on her
suitability to take up a position at Peyrefixade? I stared straight ahead, feeling myself grow red and hoping she would attribute it to pain.

But she laughed, for the first time in a long while. "It might have worked for my sister, but it didn't work for me. She was always my mother's favorite. When she married her count, she was
ready to have the castle keys at her belt. But I never wanted to waste my time learning how many loaves of bread can be made from a bag of flour, or how many tunics from a bolt of cloth." A
smile dimpled her cheek. "Whoever marries me had better hire good servants!"

So much for having my kitchen problems at Peyrefixade solved by marriage. I smiled at my own thoughts—little likelihood of having the Lady Arsendis there under any conditions.

Arsendis caught the smile. "You mock me, Count," she said, pouting, but not as though she meant it. "Do you think me nothing but a pretty ornament, a woman without brains or abilities
beyond flying a hawk or dancing well? If I seem so," and suddenly she sounded more serious, "it is at least in part intentional."

I turned toward her, surprised, and because of my surprise spoke more directly than I intended. "Intentional? But why would anyone not wish to be prepared to have the governance of something
of one's own?"

"Is Peyrefixade what you've always wanted, Count?" she asked, still serious.

"Of course!"

"Then you and I differ," she said decisively. "If they are breeding and training me—as though I were a blood mare or a fine gyrfalcon—then they have found me somewhat unruly. They can never
be sure that I will not slip my jesses and fly away. When Mother died, I told my father I was too young to take over management of the court, and insisted that I need not have a tutor or learn
spinning anymore." Her manner became teasing once again. "I already said I liked my fathers mistress. Maybe I'll become some prince's mistress someday."

"Perhaps Prince Alfonso's?" I said without thinking. Immediately I bit my tongue. The midday sun, the pain, and the awkwardness of being alone for so long with a lovely young woman seemed
to have destroyed whatever wit I might once have had.

But she laughed again. "You mock me still, Count! Do you misunderstand me so badly? Or are your women in the frozen northern wastes so different? I shall agree that he has a handsome form,
curling hair, and a lively step in the dance, but he is too much in love with his own fine face and high position for ever a lady to need to love him."

"Then where will you find your prince?" I asked, trying to adopt her own teasing tone. It was hard with my ankle hurting steadily worse, and the sight of the town spires slowly approaching,
with the reminder that I would have to tell the duke I had lost his hawk.

"I'll keep on looking," she said and hummed a little. "Do not the men in the songs keep on looking until they find the perfect woman? Well, then, a woman can keep looking, too. So far my father
has not forced me to marry someone I did not like." There was a brief pause. "So far."

The throbbing in my ankle and my whirling thoughts competed to keep me restless all night.

The duke's personal physician-surgeon had felt the ankle with long, cool fingers, pronounced it only strained, which I had already determined for myself, wrapped it in bandages and ice from the
ducal ice house, and given me a musty smelling powder to swallow, which I surreptitiously scattered on the floor as soon as he turned his back.

Arsendis insisted on attending me—as would the lady of the castle, I thought, the lady that she did not want to be—but her manner combined such ostentatious concern for my well-being with so
many teasing half smiles that I was sure she only wanted to humiliate me for cutting her hawking short.

The only person in this court, in this entire city, that I felt I could trust was Brother Melchior, and he was not even here, having gone again to stay at the Magian priory outside the duke's walls.

Duke Argave had said casually that no more assassins would bother me in his court, and I had seen him talking not at all casually to members of his guard, but I still fidgeted at every creak or
murmur of the wind or mournful call of a nightbird. After freeing the heretics I had boasted to Bruno—Bruno who was now dead—that I would be able to resolve all my problems with the
Inquisition with a few letters or conversations with the bishop. I now wished I remembered what I had been going to tell him.

Archbishop Amalric of Haulbe arrived in the ducal city at noon three days later, accompanied by several priests and three dozen knights and men-at-arms. I had hobbled up to the ramparts, with
Arsendis's assistance, my disposition not improved by having learned this morning the duke had had to buy back his goshawk, for a stiff price, from the peasants who had finally found it.

Arsendis and I spotted the archbishop's party coming through the streets at a rapid trot, a white banner with the emblem of crossed shepherd's croziers flying above them. People dived for the sides
of the street to get out of the way. Despite the Paschal season, no one was scattering palm branches before the procession of this holy man.

From our vantage point I could see the duke going out into the courtyard to greet his brother-in-law, as the archbishop's knights put up a perfunctory quarrel before agreeing to yield their
weapons. Archbishop Amalric's voice floated up to where we stood. "Where is that count who thinks he is more powerful than the Church?"

A bad beginning for a rational conversation, I thought. Arsendis patted my arm and gave what was probably supposed to be an encouraging smile before assisting me back down the spiral stairs.

The duke motioned me into a little parlor off the great hall where his brother-in-law was already waiting. The room looked out into the spring garden through tall windows and was decorated
with hanging tapestries and a silver candelabra: far more elegant, I thought, than the parlor where I had spoken with my aunt the abbess at the nunnery of the Holy Family. But I dragged my
attention from contemplation of the room to the man I had come to face.

He sat in the duke's carved wooden armchair like a field captain in his headquarters, his riding boots planted solidly on the floor, white mantle thrown back from his shoulders, sharp eyes
watching me from either side of a long hooked nose. I could see absolutely no resemblance to his niece anywhere. If he noticed my scar he gave no sign—from his point of view, there was much
worse with me than that. Archbishop Amalric had missed his calling, an irreverent voice commented in the back of my brain. He would be more at home commanding the emperor's armies than
overseeing the spiritual well-being of people like my Aunt Richildis or Father Melchior.

But he was in essence both a military and a spiritual commander, I reminded myself, going down on my knees like an obedient son of the Church. A war had been fought here with the heretics
within my aunt and the duke's memory and doubtless his as well. He wore a big onyx episcopal ring on his thumb, which I kissed reverently.

"Rise, my son," he said, in exactly the same tone of voice as if he had said, "Get up, soldier." I had become used to Argave and Arsendis's soft Auccitan accents, but the archbishop's was very
pronounced. He pushed back his wind-tousled mane of white hair and glared at me as I rose, awkwardly because of the ankle, and seated myself across from him. "So what do you mean by ordering
the Inquisition out of your county?"

"No disrespect to either you or the Church, Reverend Father," I said, as meekly and obediently as if I were receiving a dressing-down from the emperor himself. Having him get straight to the
point certainly made it easier. "But the priest on the spot seemed to have temporarily forgotten that he could not himself order anyone executed, particularly when they had not been examined or
allowed a chance to repent. Not wishing the common people to be led astray or to forget the loving kindness of God's ministers, I thought it best to stop all executions, even of despicable heretics,
until you and I had come to a full understanding on this important issue. But of course the March rents came due just then, which have unavoidably kept me occupied—as I am sure Your
Reverence has been busy as well."

The archbishop gave a snort, certainly not as though he believed me, but not entirely as though he rejected my explanation. I wished I could tell Bruno all the details of this conversation later.

Bruno would have enjoyed it. "You had your men set the heretics free," Archbishop Amalric said with a scowl. "You'll soon have people saying you're a heretic yourself, Count."