The Harrowing of Gwynedd (70 page)

“He's guilty as sin, Ranger,” one of Ferris's captors volunteered, taking advantage of the taut silence. “We caught him with the knife in his hand.”

“That's right,” another agreed. “She was on the ground by the time we got here. There was nothing we could do.”

His captors spoke far too fast for Ferris to catch most of what they said after that, but he did not have to understand every word to know that he was in serious trouble. He tried several times to argue his innocence, but he was not fluent enough to think of what to say until the moment was already past to say it—and his head was still spinning from the combined effect of drink and the blows he had taken.

The situation was a classic setup: the stranger in town framed for the crimes of the locals. And a stranger who was a foreigner as well, and who spoke the language badly, would find it nearly impossible to prove his innocence, especially when he appeared to have been taken literally red-handed.

“Well, I don't think we need to waste any more time arguing in the street,” the watch sergeant finally said, stepping closer to the ranger. “It's pretty clear what happened.”

“Aye, sir,” another man of the watch chimed in. “Fresh fruit for the gallows tree, eh, lads?”

The men laughed; and Ferris stiffened, for he understood
those
words all too well. He had seen the rotting bodies gibbeted outside the town gates. For an instant he wondered whether they meant to hang him now, without a trial.

Not that a trial would necessarily help. Kiltuin town belonged to the Bishop of Corwyn, who had the meting of High as well as Low Justice within its bounds—and Kiltuin, rowdy port town and near to the border with hostile Torenth, was a place where the High Justice must often be invoked. The right to impose capital punishment went with the meting of High Justice, and murder was second only to treason in the list of crimes meriting the death penalty.

Nor might murder be the only crime of which Ferris was accused. Bishop Ralf Tolliver was said to be a fair, and honest judge, but he was also a Christian bishop; and while Ferris respected the faith practiced in Gwynedd, he embraced another religion. Just
what
religion might become all too clear during trial before a man like Tolliver. In times not too far past, even in parts of Ferris's own homeland, those who followed the path of the All-Father had suffered nearly the same kinds of terrible persecutions as the Deryni, whose magic was said to damn them to the Christians' version of the Seven Hells Ferris feared. Ferris had heard it rumored that Corwyn's Duke, Tolliver's temporal overlord, was half Deryni, but he did not know whether to believe that or not. He had never personally met a Deryni.

“Sergeant, take him before I do something we may all regret,” the ranger said finally, the temperate words obviously uttered only with the greatest of difficulty as he averted his eyes from Ferris and the body stretched motionless beside them. “Only the bishop may determine what fruit the gallows tree shall bear. His Excellency will see justice done.”

The sergeant of the watch let out a sigh of relief and motioned his men forward with a jut of his chin.

“Right. Let's bind him securely, then, lads. He looks like a scrapper. What's your name, man?” he demanded, as they looped the leather around Ferris's wrists and drew them roughly behind him.

That, at least, Ferris understood perfectly well. It was the first time they had bothered to ask him anything. If only he could get them to listen.

“My name is Ferris.” He winced as the thongs tightened on his wrists and another was looped around his neck like a halter. “I make swords. I did not kill the girl.”

“Sure you didn't,” the sergeant said. “That's what they all say. Take him away, lads. The bishop will try him in the morning.”

To Ferris's surprise, he suffered no further physical abuse once the watch had him in their charge and led him away. The dungeons beneath the bishop's hall were clean enough and occupied by only a handful of other wretches awaiting justice the next morning, so Ferris was given a cell of his own—though not an opportunity to wash off the blood of the girl he had not slain.

He spent what was left of the night nursing his bruised ribs and throbbing head, the latter made doubly agonizing by his hangover and a tender knot behind one ear. Lying there on the straw, pain dulling his ability to reason, his hand itched for even one of the many blades he had forged over the years, and a chance to use it—if not to fight his way out of here, then at least to cheat the hangman of his prey and die in a manner of his own choosing, for he had little hope that his word would be taken over that of the four toughs who had framed him. In fact, it was probably they who had killed the girl and had seized on his vulnerability—drunk and a stranger in town—to pin the blame on him. Ah, gods, it was hopeless!

It got worse, too. The guards who came to get him shortly after dawn had been well trained, and he never had a chance to even try to escape. All too efficiently, they cuffed his hands in front of him with fine, key­locked manacles, the workmanship worthy of his own skills, and virtually escape-proof. Then they laced a stout wooden bar through his bent elbows and behind the small of his back.

He had expected the restraints, but he had
not
expected the leather gag they buckled tightly around his head, with its wooden mouthpiece like a horse's bit thrust between his teeth and partway down his throat. He retched and gagged almost uncontrollably as they fitted it on him, and found that any attempt to make a sound produced a similar gagging reflex.

“Keep quiet and it isn't all that bad,” one of the guards said, as Ferris caught his breath and straightened cautiously to stare at them in shock. The man was a different guard from any of the night before. “You'll get your chance to speak. The witnesses said you'd a foul mouth on you. His Excellency doesn't like to be interrupted when he's hearing a case.”

Well, there was little likelihood of that, Ferris thought bitterly, as they took him, staggering a little, up the steep stone stairs and into the bishop's hall, steering him by the ends of the bar through his arms. Had they troubled to ask, he would have given them his word of his silence, but why should they bother? As far as they were concerned, his guilt was a foregone conclusion. All that remained was the bishop's confirmation. As they led him down the length of the hall toward the dais and Bishop Tolliver's chair of state, Ferris made himself study the man who held his life and death in his hands.

The bishop was younger than Ferris had expected: fortyish and fit—no paunchy churchman, he. The tonsured brown hair was scarcely touched with grey, and his clean-shaven face glowed with the healthy tan of one who enjoyed regular outings in the open air. His waist probably had gained no more than a few finger-widths since adolescence.

Polished riding boots with spurs protruded beneath the hem of his purple cassock, and he wore the purple mantle of his office like the prince he was. The hand adorned with a bishop's amethyst was quick and graceful as it made some signal to a clark reading back the transcript of the trial just completed, and Ferris thought it might have wielded a sword or a crozier with equal facility.

The steely-eyed appraisal of the trained warrior was in Tolliver's eyes as he flicked his gaze briefly toward the approaching Ferris, and the swordsmith found himself automatically measuring the man for one of his finer blades—until the bishop's glance shifted to the four well-dressed men lounging on a bench opposite the prisoner's dock. With a start that almost made him choke on his gag, Ferris realized that the men were the same who had accused him the night before—clearly men of substance and some standing in the town!

The shock of that discovery, and the resulting futility of his own position, kept Ferris from paying very much attention to what happened next. He had enough presence of mind to incline his head in respect as his guards paused to salute the bishop—an act that clearly startled more than one person in the hall, not the least of whom was the ranger seated with the clarks to the bishop's right—but mounting the prisoner's dock was an indignity he had hoped never to face. He might be a foreign devil in their eyes, but, by the gods, he was an honest man!

His guards remained with him once he was in place, each with a hand resting on an end of his controlling bar, as if they expected him to try to bolt for freedom. The three men of the previous night's watch sat on a bench between the dock and the bishop. Other people were in the hall as well, but Ferris had no idea whether they had business with the court or were merely curiosity seekers. Far at the back of the hall, on a black-draped catafalque, lay a coffin covered with a black pall. He guessed, with a sickish feeling in his guts, that it was the girl's. Lillas, the ranger had called her.

Ferris tried to follow what his accusers said, but the language barrier and the frustration and discomfort of his own physical situation served to run most of what was said into a vague blur of mounting evidence against him—circumstantial, to be sure, but weighted by the stature of the men who accused him. Each new testimony embellished on the previous one and damned him further.

An unexpected development came with the statement of one of the two black-habited nuns who had prepared the girl's body for burial. Ferris gathered, from what he could catch of the woman's soft, self-conscious testimony, that the girl had been of good family and reputation, convent-educated, and betrothed to the royal ranger seated with the clarks—admirable traits, but hardly pertinent to whether or not Ferris had killed her, so far as he could tell.

But as the bishop pursued his questioning of the woman, the reason suddenly became all too clear. For suddenly she burst into tears and babbled out a short but impassioned accusation, the most prominent word of which was rape.

“I'll kill him!” the ranger screamed, launching himself across the hall at Ferris as the four accusers leaped to their feet and added their own verbal abuse.

Until the ranger actually had his hands around Ferris's throat, Ferris could not believe what he had heard. His vision was going grey by the time the guards could prise the ranger's hands loose and drag him, cursing and weeping, to the foot of the dock to hold him. Ferris's guards hoisted him back to his feet by the bar across his back, checking his gag to make certain he could breathe again, but Ferris hardly cared as he gasped for air. He had caught the sense of the new accusation, if not the exact terms, and it was even more outrageous than the first—and doubly damning.

But while the bailiffs were restoring order to the court, and before the bishop could admonish those responsible for the outburst, two newcomers appeared in the doorway whose presence produced an instant hush and cessation of activity. People on either side of the center aisle rose as the two came forward, the women bobbing self-conscious curtsies and the men tugging at forelocks in respect.

No one told Ferris who they were, of course. The younger one in the bright blue cloak appeared to be a squire or aide—a fresh-faced lad probably still in his teens, moving with the grace of good training, merry blue eyes peering from beneath a mane of untamed brown curls. But the other—

It was
he
who had brought the proceedings so abruptly to a halt, though he was hardly more than a lad himself. No accouterment of rank or feature of attire had caused the deference he received as he strode toward the dais with the boy at his side. His travel­stained black riding leathers were quite unremarkable for a man whose appearance has just elicited so dramatic a response, the sword at his belt no more than serviceable, so far as Ferris could tell from his own vantage point, though certainly a constant and accustomed part of his life.

Nor was the man particularly physically imposing or menacing, though there was that about him, which spoke of unmistakable power come of authority that is not questioned. He was a bit above average height, with the lean, graceful physique of a man accustomed to rigorous physical activity—he was probably a master of the weapon at his side—but he had none of that hardness one often saw in mercenaries or other professional soldiers. On the contrary, his features declared gentle breeding: grey eyes in a handsome, clean-shaven face; firm jaw; a close-cropped cap of pale gold hair, straight and fine.

What was there about him, then, that elicited the respect and subtle apprehension Ferris was noting in the rest of the observers? It was more than mere command presence or even rank. Even the bishop rose as the man reached the foot of the dais steps and continued right up them, his companion pausing to bow before following after. And the bishop bowed to the man before the man bent to kiss his bishop's ring.

“Your Grace, you are most welcome,” the bishop said, gesturing for one of the bailiffs to bring another chair. “Pray, what brings you to Kiltuin? I thought you were in Rhemuth.”

The man passed a parchment packet to the bishop as he glanced casually around the hall.

“I was. Business recalled me to Coroth, however, so His Majesty asked me to deliver these deeds into your keeping. But, I'm surprised, Ralf. Do you often permit such outbursts in your court?”

Tolliver proffered a grim and tight-lipped smile as he glanced briefly at the documents and then passed them to a clark as the bailiff placed another chair at his right.

“Now, you know better than that. The case has aroused local anger, however. Would you care to assist me in hearing it?”

“Certainly. But as an observer only.” The man declined Tolliver's gesture toward the high chair and took the lesser one instead, leather-gloved hands laying a riding crop across leather-clad knees. “What's the fellow done?”

And as he turned his gaze on Ferris, standing dumbfounded in the prisoner's box, Ferris had the fleeting sensation that the man saw into his very soul. He could not look away so long as the grey eyes held him, but as soon as the man's glance shifted back to the bishop, following the low-voiced summary the bishop gave, Ferris desperately turned his face toward the nearer of his two guards in question.