Dangerous Waters (16 page)

Rather than head for the main gatehouse, she turned towards the narrow entrance cut through the manor’s encircling wall, tucked behind the great hall. That was how Starrid escaped. Licanin’s men had discovered the gate swinging open as they routed the last of his hirelings.

Their path cut through the herb garden that separated the baronial tower from the kitchen and any risk of a spreading fire. Beside the kitchen, the laundry, brewery and bake house chimneys smoked steadily. Zurenne could hear the water that served them rushing through the stone-lined conduit that ran from the brook outside the walls.

A cloud of steam billowing from the laundry’s latticed window told her that the maids had opened the sluice to let their suds wash along the channels to the stream a suitably discreet distance away. Snowy linen flapped in the breeze in the drying ground behind the household buildings, in front of the storehouses whose garrets accommodated those servants who didn’t live in the village beyond the brook.

‘Mistress Rauffe has the household well in hand,’ Jilseth observed.

‘Indeed.’ Zurenne reminded herself to be grateful. She had her keys back, their reassuring weight swinging from the chain fastened around her waist. As long as she held those, she was content to leave hiring scullery maids and lackeys to Mistress Rauffe, a shrewd judge of character for all her appearance of rotund amiability.

Under Starrid’s rule, most of the manor’s maidservants had fled his henchmen’s lustful attentions. Those few that remained were so self-evidently traitorous sluts that Zurenne had them thrashed from the gates with birch twigs, letting them take nothing but the clothes on their backs. That had left the manor inconveniently ill-attended until Master Rauffe had arrived.

‘My lady.’ The portly guard at the rear gate tugged his forelock and opened it for her.

Zurenne nodded to the guardsman at the sally gate. Jilseth followed her through to the top of the sloping bank supporting the wall on this side of the compound.

The grazing land that lay beyond was neatly divided with sturdy hedges. Spring grass was dotted with ewes and frolicking lambs. Dairy cows stood aloof, chewing their cud. Birdsong floated on the balmy breeze.

‘Your demesne reeve tells me the herds are flourishing,’ Jilseth remarked.

‘Indeed.’ Zurenne nodded.

The demesne reeve had also told her that the lady wizard knew nothing of animal husbandry, however learned she might be. That’s how Zurenne had learned that Jilseth had been asking what the man knew of Master Minelas’s intentions when he left Halferan. Anxiously twisting his homespun hood in his hands, the reeve swore he meant Zurenne’s honoured guest no insult but he truly had nothing to tell her.

Zurenne studied Jilseth thorough her eyelashes as they rounded the curve of the roughly plastered brick wall. Why were a minor coastal barony’s affairs of such interest to Hadrumal’s Archmage?

Jilseth halted. ‘You know I went to the marshes yesterday.’

‘Indeed.’ Zurenne shivered despite the warm sun. Ten leagues to the edge of the saltings and the lady wizard had gone and come back within the afternoon. A man on a fast horse would have been hard pressed to do that without ruining the beast for days.

‘Would you like to know what I learned?’ Jilseth offered.

‘Of my husband’s death? No,’ Zurenne said tightly. ‘You told Lord Licanin and that will suffice. He will lay the facts before parliament. I have no standing as a widow.’

That’s what Licanin had said, when Jilseth had made the same offer the evening before. Zurenne had debated with herself long into the night, staring up at her bed’s canopy, before deciding there was nothing to be gained by revisiting the grief that had so nearly destroyed her. Licanin was right. Now she must be strong for her daughters and look to their future. All her sisters said so.

Their letters bolstered Zurenne’s resolve during the day, if she ever found herself unoccupied and that was seldom enough. It was at night in her lonely bed that she quaked with fear, lest Minelas reappear to challenge Licanin’s guardianship. There were still sixty five days to go before the barons gathered at Solstice. Zurenne was crossing them out in her almanac. Even thinking of it now, she had to lace her fingers together to stop her hands from trembling.

‘As you wish.’

As Jilseth replied Zurenne saw a shadow cross her brow. Had the lady wizard discovered something dire out there in the marsh? What could be more dreadful than Halferan’s death?

‘I should return to my daughters,’ Zurenne said abruptly.

‘May I join you?’ Jilseth asked politely.

Zurenne narrowed her eyes at the lady wizard. ‘To ask them more about Master Minelas?’ Lysha had said that the woman wanted to know every word which had passed between her and the vile usurper.

Zurenne certainly didn’t believe that Jilseth had any other interest in her children. She was as irritated as Licanin by Neeny’s prattle. While she deigned to approve Lysha’s copybook, she’d barely glanced at the embroidery which the girl had shyly shown her.

What of your needlework, my lady mage? Zurenne longed to ask. Who sews your seams so that you have the leisure to disparage such womanly virtues? Or is such honest toil done by magic amid Hadrumal’s mists? What little Licanin had said of his visit to that unearthly isle sounded most unsettling.

Jilseth declined Zurenne’s challenge. ‘I hoped that Ilysh might play the clavichord,’ she said.

That was as good as an outright lie as far as Zurenne was concerned. The lady wizard was as deaf to music as the stable cat. When Ilysh had shown Lord Licanin her proficiency on the expensive instrument, Jilseth’s tapping foot had constantly stumbled over the beat.

Zurenne shook her head. ‘We will be attending to the shrine.’

Since Starrid had gone, Ilysh insisted on helping her mother. A baron always served as the demesne priest, she argued and if she was the heiress to Halferan, this was her duty to her father’s memory. Zurenne could no more deny her than she could stop Esnina trailing after them, to rumple the shrine table linen and dabble in the bowls of flowers.

‘As you wish.’ Jilseth inclined her head, apparently submissive.

Zurenne wasn’t at all convinced, so made no reply. Walking onwards around the wall, she contemplated the reassuring vista of the horses grazing in the pasture on this side of the brook and the peaceful bustle of the village beyond, by the high road. They followed the curve of the sturdy wall and turned to see the manor’s gatehouse.

As soon as they came into view, someone shouted high up in the gatehouse’s turret. The gusting wind snatched away his words.

Zurenne looked through the open gate to see who the man sought to alert. The ragged guard troop in the courtyard looked uncertainly at each other. She realised with a cold shock that these men she must now rely on had no captain to guide them.

‘My lady, the sentry is calling you.’ Jilseth snapped her fingers and the man’s panic sounded in Zurenne’s ear as clearly as if he stood beside her.

‘Riders, my lady, an armoured troop, coming through the woods on the north road.’

Zurenne’s knees almost gave way. Minelas and his henchmen were returning.

‘They must have been keeping watch from the cover of the woodland,’ Jilseth observed with mild interest, ‘until Lord Licanin was well clear. Very well, my lady Halferan, will you meet them on the steps of your hall or welcome them inside?’

Zurenne couldn’t answer. Her mouth was dry as dust.

‘That depends who they are, of course.’ Firm yet unobtrusive, Jilseth’s hand on her elbow propelled Zurenne through the shadowed entrance.

‘My lady!’ The sentry hurried to lean over the turret’s inner parapet. ‘They’ve unfurled gold lattice on a crimson ground!’

‘Baron Karpis’s standard.’ Zurenne cleared her throat. ‘We’ll wait on the hall steps.’

She could not face Lord Karpis alone. Halferan had always said that he was a bully. He’d told Zurenne of debates among the barons when he’d been forced to shout their arrogant neighbour down, to make him acknowledge objections to whatever plan he had in mind.

‘Shall we ask him how much Minelas paid, to purchase his testimony before the parliament?’ Jilseth clapped her hands at a dithering boy in overlarge livery. ‘Summon all the household to support your lady!’

Hurrying across the cobbles on nerveless feet, for the first time Zurenne was glad of the lady wizard’s presence. Nevertheless she doubted she’d have the nerve to challenge Baron Karpis over his treachery. How were they to be rid of him without Lord Licanin’s authority?

The fringe of the woods wasn’t very far along the high road. The women had barely reached the top of the great hall’s steps when their unwelcome visitors arrived.

Lord Karpis glared at the Halferan guards. ‘Who will take charge of my horse?’ The beast was lathered from the gallop, a blush of blood amid the sweat betraying cruel whip strokes.

No one moved. Every man looked to Zurenne for her order. She managed a curt shake of her head as their loyalty warmed her.

Red-faced with indignation, Lord Karpis kicked his horse towards the great hall’s steps. ‘This is no welcome, my lady!’ Still in his prime though now tending to fat, he was as fussily dressed as Zurenne remembered, both gold fringe and embroidery decorating his costly riding cloak. The pomade in his hair was so thick that not even riding headlong had stirred his mouse-brown locks.

‘I sent you no invitation.’ Sudden anger lent a welcome edge to Zurenne’s words.

‘I need no invitation to do my duty.’ Karpis dismissed her with a haughty gesture and turned in his saddle to beckon to his assembled men.

To Zurenne’s utter astonishment, Starrid emerged from the knot of horsemen. With a repellent smirk, the man rode towards the steward’s dwelling beside the stable.

‘Where does he think he is going?’ Zurenne demanded, outraged.

‘You have no authority to dismiss Halferan’s steward,’ Karpis declared, as much to the assembled household as to Zurenne herself. ‘He will resume his former duties.’

‘He will not!’ Zurenne almost started down the steps to bar Starrid’s way herself.

Jilseth’s unseen hand held her back. Her voice breathed in Zurenne’s ear. ‘Stay up here and he can’t look down on you.’

As Zurenne froze, the lady wizard addressed Baron Karpis.

‘You have only recently returned from the parliament in Duryea, I believe. How did you find the roads, my lord?’

‘What?’ The conventional courtesy distracted him. ‘The journey was easy enough.’ His belligerence returned. ‘Who are you to ask?’

‘She is my guest,’ Zurenne snapped, ‘which you are not. Kindly explain your presence and your impertinence!’

As she glared back at him, she was pleased to see a pensioned-off sergeant-at-arms plant himself between Starrid and the steward’s house. Mistress Rauffe stood on the threshold with a birch broom. Her husband approached from the path by the brew house, tall and wiry and with a copper stick in his hand.

‘What poisonous nonsense has this scoundrel poured into your ear?’ Zurenne didn’t hide her contempt for Starrid.

Baron Karpis ignored her, addressing the assembled household once again. ‘Lord Licanin has no authority to dismiss Halferan’s steward. There has been no new grant of guardianship approved by the barons’ parliament.’

Jilseth stepped forward. ‘On whose authority do you presume to reinstate him? On Master Minelas’s behalf?’

The anger warming Zurenne deserted her. Did Karpis herald her tormentor’s return? How soon could she get word to Lord Licanin? What might Minelas to do her and her daughters in the meantime?

Then she realised that Baron Karpis was glaring at Jilseth. He hadn’t liked that question. However the pompous bully swiftly rallied. ‘Master Minelas has been absent from the last three parliaments. When I learned he was no longer resident here, I realised my duty to settle Halferan’s affairs.’

Zurenne found her voice. ‘The barony’s affairs are settled. Lord Licanin stands as my guardian.’

‘In good conscience, I cannot approve that.’ Karpis shook his head, his confidence returning. ‘I will make my own case to the Summer Parliament. Until then, I will manage Halferan’s affairs as the closest neighbouring baron and don’t presume to gainsay me, woman,’ he said with sudden venom. ‘You will do as you’re bidden. Begin by yielding to your husband’s steward. Don’t imagine Lord Licanin’s guardianship will be approved,’ he promised ominously. ‘He lives far too far away to defend unprotected women in such uncertain times.’

Zurenne retaliated as best she could. ‘Since you talk of neighbours, my lord, what does Baron Tallatt think of your proposals?’

Karpis smiled, malicious. ‘Lord Tallatt and I discussed our concerns in Duryea. He and I will propose our mutual management of Halferan’s lands.’

It was as she’d feared. They sought to divide her daughters’ inheritance between them. Zurenne raised her chin, defiant. ‘You will not.’

‘As you make your case to parliament,’ Jilseth enquired, ‘will you explain why you supported Master Minelas? I fear the noble barons won’t think much of your judgement,’ she continued thoughtfully, ‘when our witnesses give their testimony. How Minelas and his creature there—’ she nodded towards Starrid ‘—dismissed the demesne’s honest servants in favour of wharf rats and footpads with license to insult any maiden who came within reach.’

Zurenne saw that Karpis hadn’t known that verse of this ballad. He narrowed his eyes at Starrid who was now hesitating between the baron’s retinue and a line of Halferan men barring his way.

‘If you give that thief houseroom, count your silver nightly,’ Zurenne advised the baron. ‘All he’ll get here is a bed in the midden by the road.’

‘Shall we chuck him in the muck heap?’ The old sergeant stepped forward, several men eagerly following.

A handful of the Karpis men slid from their saddles, ready for a fight. It would be an unequal one. The newcomers wore chainmail hauberks and coifs. Barely half the Halferans even had a sword.

Starrid smirked while Karpis shook his head with insincere dismay. ‘A master’s hand is sorely needed, if Halferan offers violence to its neighbours.’