The Fall of The Kings (Riverside) (42 page)

He endured his friends’ jocular comments on his hair and his choice of companions with a reasonably good grace. “My grandmother,” he explained, “was from the North—well, her father was. It makes a difference.” But that was all, so soon the talk turned to the ever-absorbing topic of their researches. They’d been spending hours in the Archives every day, going through boxes and document cases, unrolling scrolls, deciphering unfamiliar handwriting, breathing ancient dust. So far, they’d found very little of obvious value, but Doctor St Cloud was pleased with them, and they were not discouraged. Lindley was just describing a book on Northern customs he’d found, illustrated with woodcuts, when a street urchin of indeterminate sex inquired shrilly for scholar Anthony Lindley.

Henry Fremont, who’d been remarkably subdued recently, beckoned the child closer. “You Lindley?” the child inquired. “Scholar says Lindley’ll give me a copper.”

“Why,” asked Fremont mildly, “should Lindley give you a copper?”

The urchin held up a twist of paper, very dirty and mangled at the ends. Fremont held out his hand for it. “Not without you be Lindley, and not without you give me a copper,” said the urchin. “Scholar promised.”

From the other end of the table, Lindley said, “I’m the man you’re looking for. Bring it here.”

The child squeezed between the benches. “Where’s my copper?”

Lindley put the coin into the urchin’s hand, accepted the paper, untwisted it, and began to read. “Be damned if I do,” he said aloud. “Where’s that child?”

But the urchin had disappeared. “What is it?” asked Blake. “Finn,” Lindley answered shortly. “He wants me to meet him in the oak grove outside the North Gate at dawn tomorrow. I don’t know which is worse: if he thinks I don’t know he betrayed Greenleaf and Smith, or if he imagines that I’ll forgive him for it.”

“Will you go?” Godwin asked.

“I’ve no desire to set eyes on him again. And you may spare me the lecture on tolerance, Blake, because you don’t really know what’s at stake here.”

Blake shrugged. Lindley’s self-identification with the Northern cause, whatever it was, was beginning to get up his nose.

“Don’t be such a little prig, Lindley,” said Vandeleur, disgusted. “It’s hardly fair to condemn a man unheard.”

“I agree with Vandeleur,” said Henry Fremont unexpectedly. “People can do very stupid things for what seem, at the time, to be very sound reasons. Look at the Union, for instance. It was hardly a good thing for the North, in the long run.”

“Don’t try to change the subject,” Lindley said. “I don’t care what Finn’s reasons were. What he did was unforgivable. He is less than a beast, for a beast has no choice in what it does, but acts from instinct only.”

Vandeleur made one last try. “If the choice is between torture and betrayal, I think most of us here—yes, and most of your Northern friends, too—would choose to keep their limbs intact, even at the expense of their honor.”

“I wouldn’t have told them anything, no matter what they did to me.”

Blake lost his temper. “But they didn’t do anything to you, did they?” he inquired savagely. “When they heard your Southern accent and your Southern name, they put you in a cell to think over your poor taste in lovers, patted you on the head, and let you go. You loved this man, Tony, or at least you led us to believe you did. The
honorable
thing for you to do is hear what he has to say.”

Everyone stared at Blake, who glared back. What was it about scholarship and learning, he wondered, that seemed to wither the hearts of University men, leaving them incapable of loving anything as imperfect and fallible as an actual human being? Now they were going to laugh at him for getting so heated about the feelings of a man none of them particularly liked, and he was going to have to thump them.

But Godwin turned to Lindley and said, “Blake’s right.”

“Couldn’t have said it better myself,” Vandeleur agreed.

“In fact,” Fremont pointed out, “Finn’s behaving very honorably. He could have just slunk off down the river without telling anyone.”

“Oh, very well,” Lindley said. “I’ll go. But I won’t go alone.”

Blake stood up. “If what you’re trying to say is that you’re going to turn Alaric Finn over to your Northern friends, I swear I’ll tie you up and keep watch over you all night. Revenge and kings and such are very romantic, but we live
now
, in the modern age, when men settle their differences in a civilized manner.”

“You’re a damn do-gooding busybody,” said Lindley hotly. “A sanctimonious, preaching, clod-hopping—”

“Watch it, Lindley,” Godwin said, alarmed at the look on Blake’s face.

“—mama’s boy,” Lindley finished.

It was enough. “You’re lucky I’m a damn do-gooding mama’s boy,” Blake said, as steadily as his pounding heart would let him, “or I might forget that you’re smaller than I am, and still weak from prison fever, and feed you your teeth, one by one.” He turned on his heel and, with considerable dignity, left the Blackbird’s Nest.

“You’re an ass, Lindley,” said Vandeleur, and followed him.

Lindley looked after them with a strange expression, half-frightened, half-triumphant. “So the ox has a temper after all.”

Fremont cast his eyes to the smoky ceiling. “You’d try the patience of a stone, Lindley. You’re right, though. Blake is a do-gooding busybody, and I’m grateful for someone other than me pointing it out. I tell you what. You don’t snap my head off, and I come with you to meet Finn tomorrow, just in case he gets melodramatic and tries to persuade you to fly with him or some such nonsense. That’s what you’re afraid of, isn’t it?”

“I’m not afraid,” Lindley began, then: “Yes. I guess so.”

“I’ll come too,” said Godwin, all agog with the romance of it all. “I’d like to hear what Finn has to say for himself. However”—with a level look that would have made his grandfather proud—“you have to swear you won’t tell your Northern friends about this.”

Lindley looked from one stern face to the other and nodded.

“Swear,” said Fremont, not to be outdone by a noble’s whelp.

“By oak and holly, by blood and bone, I swear I’ll tell no living man of our meeting. Will that do?”

It would, and the three friends drank to it and parted.

IT WAS STILL DARK WHEN THEY MET AT THE NORTH GATE next morning, and as cold as the Ice Maiden’s breath. Godwin and Fremont were heavy-eyed and sullen, Lindley haggard and grim-faced.

Once, the oak grove had been visible from the North Gate, and the path had lain through wide meadows grazed by cattle and ponds noisy with water fowl. But the city, like a fountain with the wind behind it, had spattered inns and smithies for the convenience of travelers among the farm-steads, which were followed in time by city-folk hungry for a bit of green. Now the grove was at the city’s edge: in another generation, it would be within city bounds, if not swallowed altogether.

Snow had fallen in the night, although it was hard to tell until the little band came past the outermost houses and saw it spread like a featherbed between them and the grove. Remembering MidWinter, Fremont shivered and opened his mouth to suggest a retreat to the nearest inn and let Finn and his confession go hang. But Lindley stepped out into the feathery snow with Godwin beside him. What could Fremont do, but step out after them, or admit that he was afraid of a stand of trees?

A half-hour’s hard slogging brought them to the eaves of the grove, where the going grew rougher still. Snow hid stones and logs and uneven ground; to brush against a branch was to bring a numbing avalanche upon their heads. Soon all three were soaked to the skin and chilled to the bone.

Through chattering teeth, Godwin said, “Let’s go back. He’s not here.”

“He is,” said Lindley.

“He is not,” snapped Godwin. “We were fools to come so far. No man has come here this morning—ours are the only tracks in.”

Henry cursed and turned to retrace his steps, but Lindley said, “He’s here. I know it. Come and see. It’s only a little further,” and pressed on without a backward glance.

Undecided, Fremont and Godwin hung fire, then turned again to follow the beacon of Lindley’s hair through the black maze of branches. He was right—it was only a little further. Another two or three minutes brought them to the edge of the glade, where they saw Alaric Finn.

Henry knew at once that he was dead. Live men do not have blue lips and bluish-white skin like fine marble, nor do they lie unshivering, naked, and half-covered with snow. It was a little longer before he took in the wide scarlet stains that haloed Finn’s outstretched hands.

A retching noise told him that one of his companions was reacting badly. Godwin, it must be, since Lindley was kneeling by the body.

“Is he alive?” Fremont croaked hopefully as Lindley laid his hand upon the snow-covered chest.

“No.” The single syllable hung in the air like a bird. “He has poured his blood upon the land, and the land has drunk of it.”

“Ah,” said Fremont, and turned away from the macabre tableau to help Godwin, who was almost as pale as poor Finn, but trying very hard to act the man.

“We should tell someone, shouldn’t we?” he said, his hazel eyes round with the effort of not looking at the glade, his voice pinched. “There’s an inn, not a hundred paces west, right on the Northern Road. The coaches stop there; they’ll know what to do.”

Fremont risked a glance over his shoulder. Lindley’s fiery head was bowed to his lover’s chest. “You go,” he told Godwin, his lips stiff. “I don’t want to leave him alone.”

Godwin nodded and fled. Fremont squared his shoulders, stalked into the glade, touched Lindley’s back. The fabric of his gown was stiff with frost. “Godwin’s gone for help,” he said. “There’s a log over there we can sit on while we wait. I’ve got some lucifers. We might try to make a fire.”

Lindley didn’t even look up. He took Finn’s hand, gloved with blood, and tried to raise it, but the arm was locked with death or cold. He bent his head to the hand and kissed it.

Henry swallowed. “We should leave him as he is, don’t you think? In case there should be an inquiry?”

“There will be no inquiry,” said Lindley. “It was a lawful sacrifice. See? Here is the knife.” He opened his hand to display a penknife—Finn’s penknife—unpleasantly stained from blade to haft. Lindley’s palm was smeared scarlet where he’d clutched it.

“Where did you find that?” Fremont demanded.

“Just here.” Lindley dropped the knife by Finn’s right leg, then wiped his hand across his own cheek, leaving an untidy smear. He bent once more, to press his lips against the slack, blue mouth, and then he rose and followed Fremont to the log and watched quietly while he fussed with damp tinder and leaves and his lucifers until a distant crashing heralded Godwin’s return with the ostler and two barmen from the Nag’s Head and a plank to tie the body on. Then it was all large men trampling the snow and exclaiming and asking questions that Henry was shivering too hard to answer, and a parlor in the Nag’s Head with hot wine punch and their coats and gowns steaming in front of the fire.

The host of the Nag’s Head was not best pleased to be saddled with a corpse, naked as a frog and a suicide to boot, as likely a haunt as the host could imagine. If it had just been Lindley and Fremont who brought it to his attention, he’d have left them to drag the body away as best they could. But young Godwin was a noble’s son. So the host set up a trestle for the corpse in the woodshed and sacrificed a horse-blanket to cover its nakedness and provided young Lord Peter and his friends with a parlor, a fire, bread and meat, and blankets to wrap themselves in while their clothes dried. He gave them an hour to recover themselves, and then he tapped at the parlor door to inquire what they intended to do with the poor young man’s body.

This was just what had been puzzling Henry Fremont while he toasted and rubbed some feeling back into his numbed hands and feet. He’d asked Godwin and Lindley, of course, but they were of no help. Godwin wanted to leave it all in the hands of the host, along with a gold piece for Finn’s burial. Fremont thought the host likely to keep the gold for himself and tip Finn behind a rock in the grove for the foxes and rats to gnaw.

This conjecture drove the blood from Godwin’s cheeks and tears to his eyes, and he refused to take further part in the conversation. Lindley, on the other hand, thought the grove a very good resting-place for Finn’s body, and the foxes and rats his natural mourners. “Flowers will grow where he lies, fair as he was fair, and his flesh will hallow the grove.”

“That’s very poetic, Lindley,” Fremont said. “But he’s not going to hallow the grove, so you can just shut up. Be sensible for a moment. Did he have family? Friends? Anyone who might claim his body for burial?”

“A Companion of the King has no family, save his brothers to whom he is sworn,” said Lindley.

“What in the Seven Hells is a Companion of the . . .” Henry interrupted himself hastily. “No, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know. Can you get word to them, tell them he’s dead and wants burying?”

“He is forsworn,” said Lindley. “He is without honor, without brothers.” His dense blue eyes were flat as buttons. “Without life.”

So it was all up to Fremont, who’d never organized anything more practical than a formal argument in his life, to answer the host’s questions and decide what must be done. The host, with one eye on Peter Godwin, was moderately helpful. He provided a chaise to convey the young gentlemen to their homes in the city, and agreed to keep their poor friend in the woodshed until they might make provision for his burial.