Maze of Moonlight (22 page)

Yvonnet stared at the unshuttered window, his expression that of a man who had just had a handful of ants dumped into his tunic. “I . . . don't believe I could care less about the Free Towns,” he said. “I certainly haven't heard of them paying any taxes to
me
!”

He laughed. Behind him, Lengram covered a smile with his hand. The old cleric giggled.

Christopher was undeterred. “But you have to admit that they're quite valuable to Adria as a whole. The best artisans work there, and a substantial amount of taxes and fees from the Free Towns do wind up in your coffers, Yvonnet. Your yearly market fairs, for example.”

“Well, yes.”

“And what would Adria do if we lost the Free Towns?”

Yvonnet's mouth was set. “Well, I'm sure we could find another baron mad enough to let himself be overthrown by his own towns. Wasn't David a'Freux related to the delAurvre line somehow?”

Lengram snickered audibly.

“We're
all
related to one another,” Christopher snapped. It had been a direct insult, but anger would do no good, and he struggled to soften his voice. “Well . . . then what about the people of the Free Towns? People like . . . Martin Osmore . . .”

Yvonnet stiffened. “You're a fine one to talk about the Free Towns, Christopher. Your grandfather tried to overthrow them.”

“That was my grandfather. This is me.” Christopher felt relived at his own words. Yes, this was Christopher delAurvre, defending the Free Towns, bonding with Shrinerock, attempting to unite the barons of Adria against an outside threat. He was decidedly not his grandfather.

But he saw the flicker in Yvonnet's eyes. The baron of Hypprux was frightened, and therefore dangerous. Christopher had pushed too hard.

“I don't think I'm at all concerned about commoners,” said Yvonnet. “Not concerned at all. I might as well be concerned with . . .” He groped for something unlikely enough. “. . . with Elves, for example.”

He laughed loudly at his own joke, and the old scribe looked up from his tablets with a toothless smile. “Old Roger believed in Elves, my lord,” he said. He fingered his deformed nose. “And in beating his clerks.”

“Well said, Amos!” Yvonnet continued to laugh. “And it looks to me like his fist was the more substantial of the two!” Still chortling, he turned to Christopher. “You know, I've always thought the delAurvres prey to occasional fits of . . . ah . . .”

“Whimsy,” suggested Lengram from his place behind Yvonnet's chair.

“Whimsy, yes! I hope, cousin, that when you leave Hypprux you won't be telling everyone that Elves sabotaged your efforts here.” Yvonnet giggled.

Elves. Children's stories and the tales of doddering old men. It was an insult.

But Christopher was staring at the scribe. Roger had been chamberlain of Hypprux at the time of his sudden reformation, and despite his love of forestry and hunting—deer, boar, and peasants, too—had spent most of his time in the city with his co-conspirator, Bishop Aloysius Cranby. If Roger had struck Amos, then the scribe had surely known the baron before his change. And, more important, it was quite possible that Amos had known Roger
during
it.

Something had happened to Roger. Christopher found himself seemingly possessed of an opportunity to find out what.

“We're done here,” Yvonnet was saying. “It's time for a feast.” He grabbed Christopher's hand and stood up. “And pledges of friendship between Hypprux and Aurverelle! God and Rome know, we've had our differences, but we'll settle them tonight in the Château!”

Christopher caught a hint of dissemblance in Yvonnet's voice, but while he recalled that there were many ways of settling differences, he was still staring at the old man. Feast or no, settlements or no, he was going to talk with Amos.

Christopher suffered through the banquet, picking at the dainties and richly sauced dishes that were put before him. Good God, he had actually made a habit of eating this way? Black bread had a wholesome way about it, and watered wine was a good enough drink for any meal. He had actually grown to like both of them, and he found it difficult to reconcile his stomach to the task with which it was now confronted.

But he smiled and joked and improvised rhymes with the best of Yvonnet's courtiers and councilors. He laughed at the right times, applauded at the right times—how quickly the properly noble idiot came back!—and, as far as he could tell, gave the lie to the rumors of his madness and deranged behavior. Even Yvonnet's wife, a mousy little woman with prematurely graying hair, perked up at his flattery, and when Christopher danced with her, he actually managed to bring a smile to her face.

Her husband, though, seemed worried, and Christopher was reminded of nothing so much as a caged cat. Something was afoot, and he wished repeatedly that Natil were at his elbow, but the Château staff had classified the harper as a servant, and she had been given a plate at the table in the kitchen and a place toward the end of the night's entertainments. At present, she was probably off somewhere in the maze of corridors that made up the Château complex, tuning her instrument or combing her hair and arranging her costume.

Christopher looked in vain for Amos, too. The old scribe was obviously not needed at the festivities, and in fact, Christopher suspected that his presence at the meeting that afternoon had been solely for appearance's sake: Yvonnet no more wanted a written record of Christopher's proposal than he wanted his liaison with Martin Osmore carved on the west tympanum of the Cathedral of Our Lady of Mercy.

It was late when the feast quieted down enough for Natil to play. She was, as always, radiant, her blue eyes flashing and her long hair unbound and cascading down her back like a river of jet and silver. Clad simply—she needed no ornament to draw every eye—she settled herself just far enough away from the hearth so that the heat would not throw her strings out of tune, and after a quick, introductory arpeggio, began the story of Blondel's search for Richard of the Lion's Heart.

Christopher listened appreciatively as the harper's sweet voice rose up, and he wondered if any of the jaded courtiers in this hall could feel even a tenth of what she offered through her music. No, probably not. And Yvonnet himself continued to look like a caged cat, alternately eager and close to tears. Lengram, the chamberlain, leaned frequently over his shoulder and whispered to him, but whatever he said seemed not to help.

And, in Natil's song, Blondel continued his search.

Christopher was proud of his musician, proud of Pytor for hiring her. And then he noticed that Natil's eyes—gleaming, earnest, as worried as he had ever seen them—were fastened upon him.

And Blondel continued his . . . search.

After a moment, Christopher understood, nodded, and rose. Yvonnet grabbed his arm. “Dear cousin,” he said, “away so soon?”

“I have to piss,” said Christopher with a smile, “and I'm not going to do it in my wine cup. I'll be back.”

Laughing at his cousin's roguish humor, Yvonnet let him go. But Christopher did not need the privy. With Natil's voice fading slowly in the distance, he followed one corridor, then another, got turned around first, then hopelessly lost, and finally was directed by a serving girl to the wing of the Château where Amos, who turned out to be the master of the scribes and secretaries, had a small bedroom to himself.

Christopher's first knock brought no response, but his second elicited a muffled reply, and the old man appeared at the door a minute later, wrapped in a thin robe. His pale eyes widened at the sight of his noble visitor, but he swung the door fully open and bowed Christopher in.

Christopher sat down and came directly to the point. Amos knew his grandfather, did he not? Was there anything to tell about Roger's sudden . . . change?

Amos was a genial man, and was obviously flattered that anyone of Christopher's rank found it necessary to ask him anything. “Oh, it was a few days after he broke my nose,” he said. “Did a right good job of it, too. You can still see that it isn't what it used to be!” He flicked the end of his lopsided nose with a finger and laughed when it wiggled like a dead fish.

“Why did he strike you?”

“Oh, he was angry. Baron Roger was chamberlain of the city then, just like Lengram is now . . .”

Christopher winced. Not just like Lengram, he hoped.

“. . . and he'd just gotten word that Paul delMari—that's the present Baron Paul's grandfather—was milk brother of the mayor of the Free Towns. Now your grandfather—saving your grace, my lord—had just killed Paul, and a few days before he'd lost his friend Aloysius Cranby and found out that Clarence a'Freux had his own plots . . . and somewhere in there—I don't quite recall anymore, it's been so long—someone managed to break into the Château and free a prisoner who was a witch, so Baron Roger was in a terrible fierce mood, and I was the one unlucky enough to have read him Paul's will.” Amos laughed again and waggled what was left of his nose.

Christopher had followed the account with some difficulty, but that did not matter: Amos had not yet touched upon the real question. “When did Roger change?”

“A few days after that, my lord.”

“How did it happen?”

“No one knows, really, my lord. He went off with a girl and two servants—went off hunting, you know—up in Beldon Forest.”

Christopher knew about Beldon Forest, but if a girl had been involved, hunting would not have been on Roger's mind at the time.

“And when he came back,” Amos continued, “he was as different a man as you could have seen. Oh, he still had a terrible fierce temper, and he was the very devil in a battle, but he was . . . like . . . well . . . courteous.”

“Courteous?”

“Something like you, my lord. You talk to people as though you really see them, you know.”

“Well . . . yes . . .” Christopher was not sure that he appreciated the compliment, but Roger's change was still a mystery. “Did he ever say anything about what happened in the forest?”

“Oh . . . well, you know . . .” Amos shrugged uncomfortably. “Men say odd things sometimes when they've had a little too much to drink.”

“Odd?” Christopher felt a chill. Of course it was odd. It had to be odd. What was odder than the sudden renunciation of a life's habits? “Tell me.”

Amos squirmed some more. “Oh, my lord, it's embarrassing.”

Christopher summoned up the delAurvre glare and hoped that it would work on one of Yvonnet's people.

It did. Amos squirmed again, then bobbed his nearly hairless head. “Well, I think it had to do with the plan that Bishop Cranby and Roger had put together about the Free Towns. It was heresy they wanted to prove. Heresy . . . and Elves.”

Christopher's chill deepened. He had heard about the plot. Everyone had. But the reasons and foundation for it had grown hazy over the years. Heresy was an obvious ploy. But why Elves? It did not make sense.

“Now, whether folk believed in Elves back then, I don't know,” Amos continued. His toothless mouth was drooling, and he murmured an apology and dabbed at his moist lips with a cloth. “I never did, though. And I don't know if Roger did, either. But toward the end, he was certainly going on about them. He even claimed that the people who broke into the Château and freed the witch were Elves! Think of that! And then when he came back from his hunting . . .”

The old man hesitated, coughed, shrugged with embarrassment. Christopher glared again, and he went on.

“Well, he said once that Elves sometimes knew a little more than humans.” Amos was deeply embarrassed. “His very words, my lord. Please excuse me.”

It was something Christopher had learned to live with. Roger had believed in Elves, and had once claimed to have actually met one. Even Pytor, loyal though he was, had blushed at that, but Roger had been old, and that was, perhaps, some excuse. But Roger had not been old when he had talked to Amos, and hearing someone like the scribe go on about his grandfather's weakness (was it just simple insanity, then?) with such embarrassed familiarity gave Christopher a queasiness that had nothing to do with the indigestible meal he had eaten that night. “Excused,” he said with difficulty.

“I'm sorry, my lord.”

Christopher forced a smile. “No need to be sorry, my man. My deepest thanks to you for your help.”

“May I say, my lord . . .” Amos mumbled another apology, dabbed again at his mouth. “. . . that Aurverelle has had no finer master in my memory than yourself. Roger went home a few weeks later, and he was a credit to his lineage. And you're certainly a worthy, worthy grandson.”

Christopher acknowledged the clumsy compliment with a short nod, for he had spent altogether too many years attempting to live down both halves of his grandfather's life. But he shook the old man's hand, handed him a bag of coins for his trouble, and left the room as he had come: unannounced, worried.

Had Amos told him that Roger had experienced a religious vision in Beldon Forest, it perhaps would have been more acceptable to Christopher, but to be confronted with reasonless, irrational conversion when what he had wanted was . . . was . . .

Retracing his steps, pausing and frowning at the numerous crossings of hallways and corridors, he realized that he had not known what he had wanted. A reason, perhaps. An explanation.

Well, perhaps he had it, unpalatable though it was. And maybe his own madness—capering and fruit throwing—was yet another piece of delAurvre tradition that had been passed down to him courtesy of Roger. Unpalatable indeed!

He heard the cathedral bell tolling and realized that he had spent more time than he had thought trying to find Amos. The banquet would be over by now, and he would be missed. Well, he could always tell them that he had gotten lost. Given the complexity of the Château's hallways, it would be a believable story.

But when he found his way at last to the empty hall, he heard the tread of numerous thick boots and the clink of mail. Lengram's voice echoed faintly down the stairwell: “He's not? Then find him! The baron wants him confined before dawn!”

Yvonnet's agitation, Natil's worry. Everything was becoming clear to Christopher. The baron of Hypprux had indeed been a cat in a cage, but now the cat was loose.