Valour and Victory (4 page)

I was not
wrong. Life here as part of the Sisterhood is more wonderful than I
could ever have imagined.

Are you keeping
up with your studies? I only ask because you used to enjoy them so
much. We spend at least a candle-mark each day studying, trying to
increase our understanding of God’s place in our life and in the
world. As well as the Scriptures and Theology we also study more
earthly and mundane subjects, to better prepare us for the other
part of our vocation, that of teaching the young. I have already
presided over three classes in the schoolroom and I enjoyed it very
much.

Young Jill,
your sister-in-law’s little sister was a member of the class to
which I was assigned. She is a bright little thing, eager to please
and to learn and I hope that I will be teaching her and her
form-mates more in the future. You can tell, Katia, isn’t it that
she is doing well and appears to have settled in with us fine.

Sister
Earcongota is still in charge of the school annex. Remember how we
all used to love her when we were younger? She is as kind and as
gentle as ever though she admitted to me the other day that she is
beginning to feel her years and complains of the joint-ache when
the weather is cold and wet. Sister Hereswald has prescribed a mild
painkiller for when the aches are very bad which seems to help.

Your friend
Mary is in retreat at the moment, preparing to make her initial
vows. She talks about you often during our recreational time.
Although she will not ask you herself, I think she would as I do,
like to see you before she dons the habit so there is another
reason for you to visit before your marriage and future position
make travel difficult.

Think about it
Isobel, we would all love it if you could persuade Aunt Anne to let
you come and I’m sure Katia would like to come to see Jill. If you
make it soon, perhaps Tamsin would be able to come with you, she
lives so very far away, but I am asking her myself. I am very much
aware, who isn’t, about what a royal marriage entails and no doubt
you will be expected to provide an heir before long. After that
event, visits to your old friends will be impossible. Please ask
Aunt Anne and Uncle Pierre if you can come.

Now I’d better
end this now, it’s nearly time for Sext and then I have duties to
attend to in the library. You and Estelle are always in my thoughts
and my prayers, now and always.

Cynwise.’

Letter from
Jill, a schoolgirl who is attending to her education whilst in the
care of the Sisters of the Order of Grey Nuns, to her sister
Katia.

‘
Dear
Katia,

I hope this
finds you well and in good health. Sister Earcongota says that we
must always begin our letters like this. I am well and happy.

I am writing
this in the school room, we are all writing our letters home, this
is the candle-mark for it. There is a candle-mark for everything
here and I quite like it, although some of the candle-marks are
nicer than others.

Arithmetic is
not so nice. Sister Earcongota says it is to teach us how to reason
but I do not see it. I don’t like learning about numbers and my
answers are rarely the same as what Sister Earcongota says they
must be. Reading and writing are much more fun and history, I love
history although the names and dates of the kings and the other
ducal families are sometimes confusing. No, not sometimes, always,
if I say sometimes I’d be telling a lie and Sister Earcongota says
that telling a lie, however small and well-intentioned, is a sin. I
wish people wouldn’t keep calling their children after themselves
and their aunts and uncles. We are at the moment studying what
Sister Earcongota calls the Great Civil War, which is exciting but
difficult to understand. Did you know that Queen Petra the First
was educated here at the convent? It was a very long time ago of
course and none of the sisters here knew her.

Our day begins
with prayers then we have breakfast. After a walk we begin lessons
which continue until Sext. Then we partake of luncheon (to partake
is an interesting word is it not? We have just learned it). After
luncheon we do sewing and embroidery. I am doing the smocking on
the pinafore I had started last time I wrote. The older girls are
doing gorgeous embroidery on an altar cloth. Sister Eanfled says
that when I am older I will be able to help make one too but I’m
not nearly good enough yet. At Noce we stop doing embroidery.

Then we have
our recreation time. When the weather is nice we play in the
gardens and when it is not we have to spend the time in the common
room, reading, playing board games and talking. Then we have more
prayers, then supper then bed.

I was so happy
when Mother Breguswið told me that Duchess Anne Cocteau has invited
me to stay at the manor for the summer vacation. I have written to
her accepting. Sister Earcongota checked all my spelling. It was
most kind of her to think of me. Most of us here stay all the year
round and do not go home and it was a wonderful surprise to hear
that I would be visiting you for three whole tendays! Sister
Earcongota is helping me prepare suitable clothes for my visit as I
have grown out of all the ones I brought with me and we wear
uniform here. Quite indecent she cried when I tried on that red
dress, you know the one and it was one of my favourites too. Even
with the hem taken down to its fullest extent it barely covered my
ankles!

Please send my
love to Mother and Father when you next write (I am writing to you
this time) and to our brother. Is the baby born yet? Father’s last
letter by the way, apart from telling me to be a good and obedient
daughter and to apply myself to my studies, asked me to begin
thinking about my future. I’m beginning to wonder if he intends
that I remain here and join the Sisterhood. I don’t think I do. I’d
like to marry and get a nice handsome husband like you’ve got. Can
we talk about it when I am visiting? Some of the other girls in the
schoolroom are going to become nuns, they say that’s why they have
been sent here but I pray that Father does not intend it for me. I
don’t think I’d like it though I know that it is Father’s decision
in the end.

You are always
in my thoughts and my prayers, now and always.

Your devoted
sister, Jill

xxx’

“That’s it
then,” said Isobel to Katia once she had read the letter. “There’ll
be no going to the convent for a visit now that Aunt Anne has
invited Jill here. It’s a pity, not that I’m not pleased for you
both but I’d have liked to go and see them one last time before the
wedding.”

“Perhaps there
will be time later in the summer,” comforted Katia.

“Perhaps,” said
Isobel.

* * * * *

The
Prince-Duke

Xavier,
Prince-Duke of the Duchy of South Baker knew changes were in the
air. He would have to tread carefully but there had to be some way
that he could take advantage of the situation.

It was so
unfair; his previous plots had come to nothing. Three assassination
attempts had failed. Luckily for Xavier, assassination was not the
only weapon in his arsenal and it had never been his preferred
choice of method. There would always have been suspicion amongst
the dukes and other nobility that Xavier had had a part to play in
the deaths of his older brother and his family.

The abdication
of the senior royal line had always been his preferred goal and if
that was impossible then Xavier had a back-up plan which would at
least give him part of what he wanted and in the long term, perhaps
more.

* * * * *

The Convent

With a sigh
Mother Breguswið took a letter out of her desk drawer and looked at
it again. She began to read, trying to read between the lines to
ascertain what the words
meant
rather than what they
said.

It looked as if
there was trouble afoot. This letter was from Baron Martin
Taviston, a distant relative of hers and who at present held the
position of Head of Protocols at Court.

She read the
carefully worded letter a third time but she still couldn’t
understand what he was trying to tell her.

It’s almost
time for Vespers
, she thought with a perplexed frown, placing
the letter back in its drawer.
I’ll read it again when I’m not
so tired.

She glided out
of her office and made her way to chapel.

As she led
evening prayers, for once Mother Breguswið’s mind was not
concentrating on the words of the liturgy. She was uneasy.

As the days
passed and no further word came from the palace, her sense of
unease grew.

* * * * *

Julia and
Niaill

Julia, Susa of
the Vada and Susyc of the Armies of the North held Gsendei’s gaze
with a firm stare of her own.

“Now,” she
began, “you will tell me of the
full
extent of the
telepathic abilities of you and your kind. When Niaill here told me
what you have being doing, how you have been manipulating us over
the last six hundred years I was shocked. Don’t hold anything back.
If we are to have any chance at all against the Dglai we have to
use every means at our disposal. Niaill told me that you have been
using your abilities to, shall we say, discourage any signs of
human inventiveness that you, the Lai and the Avuzdel considered
might threaten the status quo. Is that right?”

“True,”
admitted Gsendei, “with the best intentions. The Lai believed that
if you humans were permitted to learn of the technology that would
let you make weapons of power and that you would use them. At that
time Murdoch was a place full of dangerous men who were in alliance
with the Larg. They
would
have used weapons such as the Lai
envisaged to destroy Lind and colonists. They, we, could not permit
that to happen.”

“That has not
been the case for years yet you still continued to manipulate us
without our knowledge and consent.”

“Murdoch is
still what you might describe a tad unstable even now wouldn’t you
say?” Niaill entered into the conversation.

“And I’d be
interested to know,” added Julia, “just why the Lai, who you are
telling us are committed to peace allowed the Lind and the Larg to
fight each other for so long. Surely they could have done something
to stop it?”

“It is not the
Lai way,” Niaill answered. “They wanted to all right but their
primary objective has always been the protection of the planet as a
whole. They have long pursued a policy of non-interference in
internal matters.”

“Non-interference,” scoffed Julia, “is that what you call it? I’d
say that there has been quite a considerable amount of most
definite
interference!”

Niaill had had
the advantage of recent, profound and long talks about this very
subject with Haru and Chizu, two of the three Lai who had revealed
themselves at the domta of the Gtrathlin and he felt he understood
better than anyone else present just why the Lai had insisted on
this over the centuries.

Julia turned an
angry face in his and Taraya’s direction.

Niaill took a
deep breath. “ I know that it’s been a shock to learn what they’ve
been doing all these years, but don’t just feel but I
know
we should put it behind us.”

“A breach of
trust,” insisted Julia.

“But, as
Gsendei says, with the best of intentions. From day one, in
Murdoch, the Dukes have been fighting amongst each other. If they
had had access to weaponry like the Lai are talking about they
would have used it.”

“In Murdoch,”
said a stubborn Julia.

“It wouldn’t
have stayed there,” Niaill continued as if she hadn’t interrupted,
“the knowledge would have spread. If the Dukes of Murdoch had had
such weapons then the Garda would have insisted they have them too.
No Julia, I’ve had longer than you to think about this and I have
to agree that what the Lai and the Avuzdel did was right and that
it should probably continue, with certain safeguards once all this
is over. I certainly cannot condone all of their methods. I think I
must be at the wrong meeting. I appear to be attending one whose
aim is settling old scores and sowing discord.”

Julia looked
taken aback and had the grace to acknowledge Niaill’s
admonishment.

“I am sorry,”
she said to Gsendei.

“Susyc, there
is no need.”

“Thank you. I
am interested to learn just how far the telepathic abilities of
your kind can be extended to help us. Can you for instance
influence the minds of the soldiers in our army, to make them less
afraid perhaps? Can you influence the Larg kohorts?

Gsendei shook
his shaggy brown head with regret.

“No we cannot.
Some of us can influence, even control an individual’s mind but
this is only on a one to one basis and even this requires much
concentration and effort. In war it is impossible; it makes those
of us who can do this vulnerable to physical attack if
concentrating on mind issues. We will do what we can, perhaps some
few individual Larg could be influenced but it is of limited use in
battle.”

“So we have to
fall back on the old, tried methods. Well, at least we know where
we stand. What of the Dglai?”

“They, like the
Lai, have no telepathic abilities whatsoever,” answered Niaill.

“We should be
grateful for that small mercy,” said Weaponsmaster Jilmis, entering
the tent. “Now, we shall be at Settlement tomorrow. Your
plans?”

She frowned,
thinking, “neap tide is in eleven days.”

“Aye, it is,”
agreed Ryzcka Davin, the Vada second in command who had entered the
tent with Jilmis.

“I want as many
as can begin to cross over the Island Chain in nine. The First and
the Fourteenth Ryzck can lead the way and then you Davin, you and
Razdya can lead the first of the Lindars across with the
cadets.”