"You made him that."
Again Galbert shrugged. "If he could not deal with me he could not have dealt with kingship. You seemed to have found a way to do both. After I managed to drive you away with the Treaty of Iersen Bridge."
Blaise felt himself losing colour. "You are now going to tell me—"
"That I had a number of reasons for that treaty. Yes, I am. I did. Think, Blaise. Money for this war and a dagger at Ademar's back among the dispossessed of the north. And I finally made you leave Gorhaut, to go where you could become a focus for those who might oppose Ademar. And me," he added as an afterthought.
"Incidentally," Galbert went on, still in that same flat, calm manner, "you are going to need a great deal of money to retake the northern marches, especially after our losses today. Fortunately Lucianna d'Andoria is a widow again. I was planning to have Borsiard killed here if no one in your army managed to do it. I saw her as a possible bride for Ranald if events fell out that way. You'll have to marry her now, which I know will make you almost as happy as it makes her father. With his daughter a queen he might even forego bringing her home to his own bed at intervals." Galbert smiled; Blaise felt slightly faint. "Watch him though, watch Massena Delonghi closely. Between the Correze and Delonghi banks, however, you should be able to deal with Valensa withholding the rest of the payments they owe by the terms of the treaty."
Blaise felt his head beginning to ache, as if he were absorbing blows.
"You are lying, aren't you? Tell me why? What does it gain you now, at this point, to try to make me believe you planned all of this?"
"I didn't plan it all, Blaise, don't be a fool. I am a mortal servant of Corannos, not a god. After you left home for Gotzland and Portezza I thought Fulk de Savaric and some of the other northern barons would send men after you with an offer of kingship. I didn't expect you to step forward yourself the way you did. I didn't know you had so much… rashness in you. I did consider that you might end up in Arbonne at some point, if only because you knew I would be coming here, but I didn't know how much… influence they would have on you. That, I will admit, has been a surprise."
"Ademar," said Blaise, still struggling. "You did everything for him. You even tried to give him Rosala."
His father's expression was contemptuous. "I did nothing for Ademar but offer him rope for his hanging. He was never worth more than that. He was an instrument that would let me take Arbonne for the god. That is all." He shrugged again. "We seem to have failed in that. It is my grief as I die. I really thought we could not lose. In which case I expected the Correze boy would take you away from here-back to Portezza, and in time I might yet achieve both halves of my dream. Ademar would never have been able to hold Arbonne—not after what I intended to do here." His beautiful voice, thought Blaise, was so seductively lucid. "As for Rosala, really Blaise—that was to goad the barons further against him—and you, if you needed a further spur, and it was only to be after she'd borne her Garsenc child. Tell me, the boy, Cadar, he is yours isn't he?"
Blaise felt his hands beginning to shake. "Will you soil everything you touch in your life, even at the end? Can nothing be clean?"
"My death, or so I have been promised," said Galbert drily. His mouth quirked. "Come, Blaise, if it isn't yours I will die wondering whose it is. I did some investigating after Ranald had been married some time without an heir. I discovered that in all the years he was King's Champion, with women clawing each other in their lust for his bed, he never fathered a single child that I could trace. You will remember that my brother failed to produce an heir either. There may be a flaw in our seed, though I seem to have escaped it. Did you?"
Blaise looked down at his shaking hands. He said, "Nothing ever mattered except the goals, did it? Nothing had meaning in itself. We were all tools, every one of us, Ademar, Rosala, Ranald and I, even when we were boys."
His father made a flicking gesture of dismissal. "What did you want, Blaise? Lullabies? A pat on the back? A doting father's grip on the shoulder when you did well?"
"Yes," said Blaise then, as evenly as he could. "Yes, that is what I suppose I wanted."
For the first time Galbert seemed to hesitate. "You have managed all right without them."
"Yes," said Blaise again, taking a breath and letting it out slowly. "I managed." He looked at his father. "Had we leisure to discuss it I might tell you something of my own sense of things, but I don't think I want to." He paused. He felt very calm now. "Is there more, father?"
A silence, then slowly Galbert shook his head. For another moment they looked at each other, then Blaise turned and went from the ring. The soldiers parted to make way for him. He saw that a company of archers in the crimson colours of Carenzu had come up to join the others now. Beyond them he saw his horse, with Hirnan holding the reins. He walked over and mounted up and began riding away. He didn't look back.
Behind him he heard Rudel's voice asking a question, and Thierry responding, very clearly, then he heard an order spoken and he heard the arrows sing.
CHAPTER 19
Blaise was unaware for the first part of his ride that he was following the same path Bertran had taken leaving the field. Heading west towards the reddening disc of the sun, he came to the avenue of elms that led to the arch. He stopped and looked back then at the fires dotting the battlefield. He felt very strange. It came to him, almost as an incidental fact, that he was alone in the world now.
It was then, glancing down, that he saw the fresh tracks of a single horse and realized that Bertran had come this way before him. The duke would be alone now, too, he thought, in a different way and yet the same. Ariane had said something about that a long time ago: Bertran had lost, with Urté's death, the passion of hatred that had ordered and shaped his life for more than twenty years. Hatred, Blaise thought, could be as powerful as love, though the singers might try to tell you otherwise.
He twitched the reins of his horse and started forward again. He passed under the dwarfing curve of the arch, briefly chilled, even with his cloak, as he entered its shade, then he came out on the other side again into the fading light of the sun. Overhead another flock of birds was flying south on the wind. His father was dead. His brother was dead. He was likely to be crowned king of Gorhaut very soon. Cadar Ranald de Savaric was probably his son. He had been struggling with that thought since autumn. It was not a thing to be told. He knew Rosala well enough to know she never would.
And that, predictably, carried his thoughts to Aelis de Miraval who had died so long ago, and for love of whom two strong men had twisted and ruined their lives. He rode on through the silence, following the survivor of those two men through the bare winter vineyards with the autumn grapes long harvested and the first buds a long way off. The vines gave way to grass eventually and a forest rose up before him as he rode and in time Blaise came to a small charcoal-burner's cabin at the edge of that wood and saw a horse he knew tethered outside.
Sitting in the doorway, where a woman might sit at needle and thread at day's ending to catch the last of the good light, was Bertran de Talair.
The duke looked up as Blaise dismounted. His expression registered surprise but was not unwelcoming. Blaise had not been sure about that. He saw the flask of seguignac clasped in Bertran's hands. Memory came with that, too, clear as a temple bell. A stairway in Castle Baude. The moons passing from the narrow window. That flask passing back and forth between the two of them. Blaise brooding upon Lucianna Delonghi in bitterness, Bertran speaking of a woman dead more than twenty years and not of the one whose bed he had just left.