The Dread Wyrm (Traitor Son Cycle) (70 page)

The great knight was dead.

Gabriel Muriens sat back on his knees, his weight on de Vrailly’s breastplate. He heard hoof beats. He dropped his dagger, having to shake it from his sticky fingers, and scrabbled with the buckle of his chin strap until he could pull his own helmet off his head, and then he drank in the air. He drank it in, again and again, blind to the men gathering around him.

He finally raised his head, and there was the herald, and Du Corse. And Michael. He thought of Gavin, whose fight this ought to have been. Many, many thoughts came into him then, as if he’d been an empty vessel and now he was again filled.

He wept.

And Ser Michael put an arm under his and raised him to his feet. “Come, my captain,” he said. “These worthy gentlemen want to take the body of their friend, and go.”

The words passed over Gabriel, and left no mark. But other men shouted orders, and other men made plans and, in an hour, the Galles were headed
south in a dejected company, with Jean de Vrailly borne on a litter between four horses.

Ser Gerald Random followed them at a discreet distance with a tithe of the Harndon militia.

The rest of the Red Knight’s little army turned on their heels and marched north. The day was not so old, and the men had not fought a battle. There was a great deal of grumbling, and Michael halted them, lectured them in a voice reminiscent of the old captain, and then promised double pay for the next month.

All the company cheered, and even Master Pye’s armourers set up three hearty huzzahs.

And two leagues further on, at their third halt, the Queen rode down the column with the Red Knight at her side, clad in an arming doublet, bare-headed, and with his left arm in a sling, but with his sword at his side. As they rode, the army cheered, so that the cheers welled up at the front and carried all the way to the back, rippling along, and then the militia marched faster, and the men changed horses with more will.

Back at the front of the column, the Red Knight reined in.

“I confess that I feared you dead,” said the Queen.

“Me, too,” Gabriel admitted. It was the first sign of the return of humour. As he said later to his brother, he had been somewhere else.

“You proved the better knight,” the Queen said.

Gabriel looked at her, in all her earthly beauty. He frowned. “Really?” he asked. He shook his head.

Silence returned. The queen found she could not speak, because, as she later told Blanche, there was something greater than human in his face, and he was so clearly somewhere else.

He broke the spell. “Now that we have broken the—rebellion? Were they rebels?” He looked out over the fields of the Brogat, brown and green, like a counterpane of linen in squares and rectangles and occasional crazy rhomboids to the edge of the horizon. Nearer at hand, spring flowers glowed at the verge of the dusty road, white and brilliant red poppies.

“They won’t rally. Du Corse is a professional. He wants to return to Galle and we want him to return to Galle. I think your grace should rest a few days in Lorica and then ride south to your capital. Ser Gerald will have all in hand.”

“Yes, Ser Gerald is like to be my chancellor,” the Queen said. She frowned in her turn. “You know, we are not yet a government. I cannot rule of my own right. There must be a regency council.” She glanced back, where the Earl of Towbray rode silently next to his son, having elected to change sides once more. “I should include all of the great magnates of my realm.”

“Yes,” said Gabriel, who was not as interested in this as he might have been.

“You are the Earl of Westwall. You were my husband’s only other child. Let us mince no words, Ser Gabriel. Will you be regent?” She smiled.

“Oh, Desiderata,” he said, and she smiled at her name. “I cannot see being the Earl of Westwall. I think that must be for Gavin.”

“You are a strange man,” she said. “Why?”

The Red Knight frowned and made a face. “A long story. But if you know that the King was my father, you must know all you need to know. I will not pretend to be the Earl of Westwall. Gavin will be a better earl than I—he loves the people and the place and all the monsters there. I will be happy in Thrake.” He smiled a wan smile. “I think—that it is a little premature to think of all this, when the battles we have just fought are merely the prelude. The musicians are only warming up, and the dancers stretch their legs.”

Desiderata rocked her head from side to side. “Perhaps. But I think that ruling is always like this—it is always a terrible crisis of one sort or another. Bad rulers use these crises as excuses not to handle routine, and things decay. Under my hand, there will be no decay. I will build a rose garden that men will remember until the sun fails and the moon falls.”

“Madame, sometimes I fear that you sound like my mother,” he said. He winced, because in the change in his reins he’d just managed to hurt his hand. But then he smiled. “But in truth, she would have been a great queen—as you will be. I think you should be your own Regent, your grace.”

This was, perhaps, too much truth for the Queen of Alba, and she narrowed her eyes until she saw the blood dripping from his bandages and remembered that he had just given her back her kingdom.

In fact, he had two broken fingers and a deep cut across his hand that would probably maim him to some extent for the rest of his life, unless Amicia could work her miracles.

I put Jean de Vrailly in the dust.

My mother is dead.

Gabriel rode into the sunset, towards Lorica.

They made camp, having ridden forty miles in two days and fought a battle and lined up for a second. At the news that the Galles had dispersed, and that Gerald Random was marching on Harndon, Lorica opened its gates to the Queen with many an embarrassed flourish.

Blanche had the Queen’s new lodgings—the abbot’s guest chambers in the magnificent abbey of Saint Katherine of Tartary—swept and clean. She had a cradle for the babe and coverlets from Lorica’s many ladies and great bourgeois who were suddenly all too willing to play host to the Queen and her son, the King.

Blanche went about her duties with a correct deference and a somewhat distant manner, as if her thoughts were elsewhere, because they were. News of the Red Knight’s victory came in the late evening, before sunset;
she had just two hours to move the Queen from the captain’s pavilion into the city, and that left her little time to consider—anything.

He was alive, and victorious.

He probably wouldn’t even remember that she was alive. A kiss in moonlight—he no doubt had one a day. And bad cess to him.

And yet…

I could be—someone. I think he would be easy to love. I could work with Sukey and help Nell.

Through the whole move, she was supported with ruthless efficiency by Lady Almspend. Blanche had always disliked the cold, scholarly woman more than a little; Lady Almspend could rattle off orders without a care for the chaos she caused below stairs. But in the midst of the fast-moving events of the evening, she was a rock of strength, and Blanche was shocked to find herself treated as an equal, a partner, consulted and debated with and never ordered.

Lady Almspend, knowing her lover safe, was a very kind, gentle, and considerate woman. And she had a superb memory for the locations of things, from hairbrushes to diaper cloth. Moreover, she seemed to know everyone, from her time as royal chancellor and, with the Queen triumphant, Lady Rebecca suddenly seemed to have many, many friends in Lorica.

She produced a wet nurse as if out of the air, a fine, large girl, newly married, with a baby just barely born within the sacred banns and a fine jolly manner and lots of milk. The young King took to her left breast immediately and with relish. Her name was Rowan, and her baby son’s name was Diccon.

“An’ what will we call the li’l King?” Rowan asked, settling into a chair with a babe on each breast.

Lady Almspend turned to Blanche and gave a theatrical shrug. “We haven’t named him or baptized him,” she admitted.

“Oh, they die like flies at this age, don’t they just,” Rowan said. “Oh, my pardon, ladies. But they do. But I have good milk, and I’ll keep him alive, by the rood and all the saints.”

Blanche was not, ordinarily, a political thinker. But just for a moment she froze and wondered what would happen if the little King were to die. Children died.

She fell to her knees, crossed herself, and prayed.

For the first time in her life, but not the last, she wished that she did not know so much. So much of what was at stake, of what people could do, would do, might do.

When she rose, the Queen was arriving at the gates. Blanche watched her reception from the tower balcony, with Lady Almspend.

“Will we go north, my lady?” Blanche asked.

“Call me Becca,” Lady Almspend said.

Again, the breath was stolen out of Blanche’s lungs. “I’m a laundress, my lady,” she said.

Rebecca Almspend had always dressed very plainly—to the amusement of the maids and laundresses. She wore dark, shapeless woollen hose under ill-fitted kirtles and large, practical, warm gowns in winter.

All the palace knew when she fell in love first with Ranald of the Royal Guard, because her shoes grew more pointed, her hose began to fit and even be of silk, and her kirtles seemed to shrink to fit her slight figure. But even today, a day of triumph, she wore a simple, dark blue overgown over a matching kirtle of no great distinction and with plain buttons and not so very many of them, while Blanche wore the magnificent brown wool kirtle that Sukey had given her, which fit her so well as to turn men’s heads wherever she walked. It was not quite indecorous, but the bust and the hips lay on the edge of
too tight
and the long line of buttons of fine gilt silver on the sleeves were worth her laundry wages for a year and more.

Becca looked at her, head to toe, brown slipper to coiffed head, and laughed. “Well, if anyone entered and wanted to know which of us was a great lady and which a laundress, I’ll wager I’d be the laundress. Fie, girl—you saved the Queen’s life and you’ve been her constant companion—you birthed her son. You can be anything you wish. You have only to ask. Desiderata is the most generous creature in the world, and wouldn’t hesitate to raise you. Lady? Duchess? My sweet, if we survive this war, it will be a new world. I am
determined
that women will be born anew in this new world. So I say—be a lady.”

“Who’ll do the laundry?” Blanche asked. “The Queen is
that
particular.”

They both laughed.

“Becca?” Blanche asked very quietly, as if afraid to be caught out.

“Yes, my dear Blanche,” Lady Almspend replied a little too brightly.

“Do you know the Red Knight?” she asked.

“Not at all,” Almspend replied. They could both hear hooves in the flagged courtyard, and night was falling and the babe was blessedly asleep. “But Ranald loves him. He knighted Ranald and sent him back to me. I don’t need to know much more.” As she spoke, she bustled about the Queen’s chamber, laying a few of the Queen’s surviving possessions in their accustomed places. Ranald had rescued what he could from her rooms in the palace.

Blanche realized that she was blushing.

Lady Almspend was too well-bred to notice.

And then the Queen swept in, tired, nay, exhausted, and yet in tearing spirits, with another victory behind her.

“That Red Knight is the very paragon of chivalry,” she said. “So—odd, considering. I knew he could beat de Vrailly. God willed it.” Desiderata
paused. There was her old familiar hairbrush, and there was Rebecca Almspend to wield it.

She looked at her friend, and suddenly, without volition, tears filled her eyes and she sat rather suddenly. “Oh, Becca,” she said.

Rebecca shot a glance at Blanche and went and cradled her friend’s head on her chest. “Your grace—”

“They killed Diota,” the Queen said suddenly. “They killed her. They killed all my friends but you and Mary—all the knights. Oh, Mary, Mother of God.” She choked, almost gagged on her tears, and then wept.

They were her first tears in many days.

Becca held her head and rocked her.

Her eyes met Blanche’s. Blanche was frozen, but Becca blinked, and Blanche understood. She came and took one of the Queen’s hands, very hesitantly, and squeezed it.

“We’re here, your grace,” she said.

“I hate the dark,” Desiderata cried. She clung to Blanche as if Blanche was a floating plank and she was drowning.

“Shush, your grace. It’s all over now,” Almspend said as if she were holding a baby.

The Queen raised her face, and it was ugly with tears, the muscles of it moving as if her face were full of worms, and she gave voice to a wordless cry of anguish.

“Annnnghhh,” she cried. “I loved him, even if he—Even when he—Sweet Christ, they are all dead. All my friends, and my love. Dead, dead, dead. They cut her head from her body and put it on a spike—I saw it.”

Blanche was chilled—horrified.

Lady Almspend merely held her friend. Blanche slipped out and went to the prince, her brother, who came immediately, dropping his cervelleur into the hands of a squire without a word.

He nodded to Blanche. “You are the Queen’s tire-woman? Your hair is like the silk of the east and your eyes are like the sky of early evening.” He smiled. It was a beautiful smile. “I have waited days to say that.” He was still in his arming clothes, sweat-soaked and smelling strongly of man and horse.

Blanche had met Occitans before, and she moved briskly along the corridor.

“I know my suit is hopeless, fair maiden, but give me a lock of your hair and I’ll—”

“Your sister the Queen is in a bad way, your grace,” Blanche said stiffly.

He bowed to her—still moving. He was as graceful as an irk, and there were those that said that there was irkish blood in the south. “I stink—I know it. But I promise you, I am a prince, and well able to—”

Blanche blushed. “
Your grace
,” she barked. She bowled him through the door into Desiderata’s outer chamber.

He looked back. “I am a fool, of course. You do not want reward for your love, but only—”