Morning's Journey (28 page)

Ygraine questioned both men on the size and health of their herds, and the condition of the border wall. According to Owen, the wall needed repair, but the rubble made it too difficult to pass from one side to the other, especially when burdened with a dead cow. Liam claimed a wide enough gap existed to commit the deed.

Ygraine leaned toward Morghe, lowering her voice. “What say you, daughter? How would you resolve this dilemma?”

Morghe eyed the farmers. Both men appeared equally sincere; both stories equally plausible. Confidently pitching her voice for the farmers to hear, she told Ygraine, “I would inspect the wall. The men’s stories are at odds on this point, and it’s easy to verify.”

“Perhaps too easy.” Ygraine’s gaze hardened upon the farmers. “Don’t you agree, Owen?”

A startled look crossed the farmer’s face. He began fidgeting with the cap in his hands, turning it like a wheel. “Begging your pardon, Chieftainess, I do not understand your meaning.”

“Do you not?” Ygraine rose, and so did her voice. “Which of you,” she asked the assembly, “journeyed here with this man, Owen, to hear my judgment and then act upon it?”

The people looked around, murmuring. When no one confessed, Morghe’s doubts increased, but she’d seen her mother use this tactic often enough to prevent her skepticism from taking over quite yet.

She noticed a man at the back of the hall, edging toward the doors. Ygraine ordered the guards to bring him forward. Owen blanched as his accomplice blurted out that he had agreed to return to the wall’s gap with a cartload of rubble to make it appear as Owen had described.

“Mercy, my lady!” Owen cried. “Your wisdom stopped me.”

“True enough. Your intent, however, was clear. You swore false testimony. That is a crime against your neighbor, your chieftainess, and your God. You must make peace with God however you might, but you shall make restitution to Liam of the best cow of your herd. As for your chieftainess”—she tapped a finger on her chin—“add one-fourth again as much to your next tax levy.” Ygraine waited while the scribes completed their notations. Later, this would be calculated and entered into the rolls, and the district’s tax collector would verify that Liam had received the cow. “I pray this will help you resist such temptations in the future.”

Owen bowed. “My lady is most gracious.” Oddly, he sounded relieved. Morghe had expected him to be resentful.

She turned to her mother as Owen, trailed by Liam, threaded through the crowd. “You were within your rights to imprison him. Why didn’t you?”

“He has a farm to manage and a family to feed. They’d have been sore-pressed to do it without him.” Ygraine inclined her head at a group huddled near one of the firepits, the widows and orphans being sheltered at Caerlaverock. “I don’t need to increase their numbers.”

That Morghe understood. “But how did you know Owen was lying?”

Her mother chuckled as she sat and arranged the folds of her gown and clan mantle. “Experience. Knowing my people in a way that comes only by being out among them as often as I can. No,” she said as Morghe drew a breath to speak. “I didn’t know about that section of wall, but I know Liam is a tidy farmer. He must have cleared the rubble, perhaps intending to mend the gap later that day.” She patted Morghe’s hand. “The best thing you can do for yourself and your people, daughter, is to get to know them.”

Morghe nodded thoughtfully. “No wonder your popularity waxes by the year, Mother.” She meant it.

Ygraine uttered a rueful laugh. “Fate robbed me of the chance to teach Arthur about life. I’m thankful this didn’t happen with you.”

As Ygraine prepared to call for the next case, the doors burst open, and a Picti-garbed messenger strode into the hall. He thumped fist to breast in a legion salute. The Brytoni crowd shrank from him, exhibiting emotions ranging from dislike to revulsion. The courier ignored them.

Ygraine bade him approach, and he obeyed.

Rather than presenting a scroll, the messenger said in good Brytonic, “Chieftainess Ygraine, your son, the Pendragon, requests the presence of his sister, Lady Morghe”—he gave a respectful nod in her direction—“at Arbroch, Seat of Argyll, until June.”

“Arbroch? Until June! But why—”

Ygraine waved Morghe into silence. “Did Arthur state a reason?”

“Nay, my lady.” He said to Morghe, “The Pendragon did instruct me to tell you that all will be made clear when you arrive.”

Not
if
she arrived, but
when
. Resentment reared. She gazed imploringly at Ygraine. “Please, Mother, don’t—”

Don’t
—what? Don’t let Arthur order her about? Don’t let him take her from Ygraine’s tutoring, as when she had been Merlin’s pupil? Don’t let him keep using her as a political pawn? She sighed.

Ygraine gave her a reassuring smile. “June isn’t even six months off. Is that so bad? You can spend time getting to know your sister-by-marriage and resume your wedding preparations when you return. In fact, I will look forward to it.”

Six months! Not now! Not when she was learning so much, with more yet to learn. Then the reason for Arthur’s summons and its secrecy smote her.

She abolished her resentment with a slow smile. “No, Mother. It shan’t be bad at all.”

FINGERS GRIPPING the cold pewter tray, Niniane sighted her destination, wishing she could keep as tight a grip on her emotions.

Any soldier or servant in the praetorium could have delivered the message and the uisge, his favorite beverage. She wondered why she’d volunteered. A simple desire to help, yes, nothing more.

She chided her foolishness and quickened her step.

From down the hall came a series of clicks, each followed by a muted exclamation; whether of triumph or defeat, she couldn’t tell. The sounds originated from the chamber she sought. Its door faced her as she tried to face how she felt about the man inside.

After balancing the tray, bearing a carved pewter pitcher and a pair of matching cups, on the palm of her left hand, she took a deep breath and knocked.

“Ave,” said a voice from within.

As bidden, she pushed open the door and stepped across the threshold, glancing around with a physician’s eye for detail.

Upon initial inspection, a visitor to the spacious workroom might offer a reasonable guess regarding its occupant’s vocation. A jet crucifix as long as a man’s arm gleamed starkly against one lime-washed stone wall. Before the glazed, unshuttered window stood a scribe’s easel and vacant stool. The easel displayed a scroll opened to a section Niniane recognized as a half-finished Latin prayer. The untutored might admire its illustration: monks scything a wheat field. Dust motes swam in the stream of late-afternoon sunlight as it splashed against the manuscript. An orderly array of goose quills and inkpots covered the small table nearby.

The much larger table in the room’s center hosted several damp clay tablets and iron styli of varying lengths and thicknesses, as well as stacks of parchment, a knife, and more quills and ink. A brass platter of bread crusts, cheese rinds, an apple core, and an empty amber-colored glass goblet crowded into one corner. The goblet’s color announced its nobility, for the vast majority of glassware to be found in Brydein was green—so much so that the Brytoni words for “green” and “glass” differed by the addition of a single letter. A cluster of unlit bronze lamps hung on a chain from the beam overhead.

The workroom of a high-ranking clergyman, indeed, but that assessment represented only the partial truth.

Scrolls peered from tall willow baskets and competed for space on shelves lining the walls. While many contained treatises of Christian doctrine, others described architecture, astronomy, history, mathematics, medicine, philosophy.

And warfare. On the worktable, a tiny, wheeled catapult stood atop a sketch of its counterpart, its finger-size firing arm erect. Pebbles littered the tiles at Niniane’s feet.

The siege engine’s designer hunched over the drawing, tapping quill to chin. Softly, she cleared her throat.

Bishop Dubricius favored her with a warm smile. No lust, no passion, not even a hint of desire, exactly the sort of smile she found attractive…and terrifying. Thank God he couldn’t hear the stuttering of her pulse.

“Come in, come in. And please mind the stones.” He waved his quill at the floor and, mercifully, returned to his notations.

Upbraiding herself for acting like a moonstruck maiden, she picked her way around the stones. She set the tray on the table and poured two rounds of uisge. One she gave to Bishop Dubricius, along with the sealed parchment. His fingertips brushed hers, and she felt warmth rush to her cheeks. She left the other cup beside the pitcher.

“Cai will arrive soon, Your Grace. He’s seeing to his horse.” She hugged the tray to her chest. “I thought you and he might like something to warm the blood.”

“Ah, Niniane, many thanks.” He opened the message. After studying it briefly, he set it on top of a stack of parchment leaves and drained the cup. “You’re a blessing to this household.”

“You are most kind, Your Grace.” Lowering her eyes, she couldn’t stop her smile. “As always.”

MERLIN HEARTILY wished she’d quit acting so bloody formal. Bad enough to use his ecclesiastical honorific in public, but even in private…why, he knew for a fact Arthur didn’t get that sort of treatment from her.

Such incomprehensible creatures, women.

Perhaps a different approach might relax her manner.

He fingered the rim of his cup, trying not to dwell upon the fetching way in which a few chestnut curls had escaped her wimple to frame her angelic face. “How are your studies progressing?”

“Very well, thank you. Especially the writings of Hippocrates and Galen.” Sadness stole the wistful yearning from her expression.

“But?”

She sighed. “A touch of homesickness. It’s nothing, Your Grace.”

“I understand, Niniane.”

She had journeyed to Caer Lugubalion to nurse Gyanhumara’s head wound and stayed to help treat men—even prisoners—recovering from injuries received during the Scotti invasion. Early winter storms had trapped her at headquarters until spring.

Merlin had offered her lodgings and access to his personal library in exchange for her healing skills, which she’d accepted readily enough. For him, the arrangement couldn’t have been better. Niniane’s herbal teas could cure everything from a bellyache to a hangnail, and her salves worked blessed marvels upon overworked muscles.

How he’d survive after she returned to Maun and her priory, he didn’t care to contemplate.

The door flew open and hit the wall with a resounding thump. In paced a stocky man, crunching heedlessly across the pebbles, trailed by a Scotti slave carrying an oil ewer.

“What’s this all about, Merlin?” Cai glared at him. “Dragging a man from his hearth in the dead of winter—bloody indecent, it is!”

Merlin chuckled. “Good evening to you, too, Cai. Please forgive my insensitivity. In addition to the original reason for asking you here”—he lifted the parchment Niniane had brought him from atop a pile of scouting reports—“I have word from Arthur.”

Cai’s face brightened. “Well? When does he return?”

“I should leave.” Tray in hand, Niniane started for the door.

“No, stay, Prioress. Please.” Merlin gestured to a chair. “This may interest you too.” As she perched on the chair with the tray in her lap, he said, “Arthur plans to winter with Gyanhumara.”

“
What?
” Cai roared. Standing on tiptoe to reach the hanging lamps, the slave shuddered. The ewer almost slipped from his three-fingered right hand. A few drops splattered the documents beneath. “Watch what you’re doing, you stupid oaf!”

Cai cuffed the man’s ear. Stammering an apology, the slave clutched the ewer to his chest and lurched from the room.

Merlin frowned.

“Cai, the man’s hand is not whole!” Niniane protested.

Camboglanna’s garrison commander shook his sandy mane. “If he can hold a jug, Prioress, he can do it carefully.”

“Still,” she said, “it hurts nothing to show compassion.”

“Did he and his companions show any compassion when they attacked Maun?” Cai retorted. “When they slaughtered more than half the Tanroc garrison soldiers and civilians? And flogged all the rest of the surviving soldiers, including the wounded? Is that your idea of compassion?”