For my part, I was already crying and too drunk to care. “That shounds jusht like him!” I exclaimed, in a voice now thick with both tears and drink. She still didn’t continue immediately, waiting instead for me to recover my own equilibrium.
Once both our eyes were dry, she resumed her story, “After that, he refused my aid until I confessed my love to him, which I did, crying and babbling in a way that I had thought forgotten with my childhood. That was the day I rediscovered my heart. It was the first and greatest gift that he ever gave me.”
“What happened then?” I asked blearily.
“I put my fingers down his throat until he had vomited up everything in that bottomless pit he used for a stomach,” she said bluntly. “Then he took me away. There was no discussion, he told me to gather my things, and that was that. While I did, he went downstairs and arranged to purchase my contract from the mistress of the house. I didn’t get to see that conversation, but I discovered later that she did not react kindly to his offer. It was only after he threatened to kill her and burn the entire establishment to the ground that she reconsidered.”
That surprised me a bit. “They jusht let you go… ash easy ash that?”
“Officially, yes, she signed away their rights to me and I was free to go. In reality though, it was never that simple. Because of my knowledge and training, the church could never release me, and because of the circumstances, I had the potential to create a terrible political problem for two of the most powerful houses in the land, as well as the church itself,” she said with a sigh, “But Gram would listen to none of it. He asked for my hand, and I agreed to his proposal. I determined that if he would not listen to sense then we would be happy for as long as we could, until they ‘removed’ the problem.”
The further her tale went, the more amazed I was at the complexity and tragedy of her life. My old notions of Dorian’s mother were completely incompatible with the scarred, flawed, strong, and beautiful woman I was learning about now. At the same time, I was a little sad that he had never been given the chance to hear this story as well. If anyone deserved to know, it was him.
“You were waiting for their assassins to kill you?” I asked, to clarify her statement.
“Both of us,” she corrected. “They could not afford to leave either of us alive. I waited, fearful of every shadow until Father Tonnsdale arrived and took the position at Cameron Castle. He soon visited the Lancasters, and I knew that he would seek me out. When he did, he surprised me with an offer that allowed everyone to have what they wanted most.”
I felt an inner tension building when she mentioned the name of the priest that had poisoned my parents. Her posture had changed subtly too, stiffening as if she were remembering something unpleasant. “And that was…?”
“I remained in the service of the church, acting as a spy and an informant for them from within the Lancaster household. In return, I and my husband were allowed to live peacefully, free from interference or threat. The church really didn’t want to kill us both, for it would have created other problems for them. They knew that Duke Lancaster would blame them, and the political cost might have been severe,” she explained.
I was shocked, “You betrayed them?”
Elise Thornbear frowned sharply at me, “Watch your tongue, Mordecai. I have committed many sins, and you may well hate me for some of them, but my story is not done yet. When I have finished, you may decide whether to brand me a traitor or not.”
“I’m shorry,” I said quickly. It was already apparent that the strong drink had gone to my head and my emotions were shifting rapidly from one extreme to another.
“Don’t be too quick to apologize either,” she added sadly. “Just wait until I am done. After the priest and I made our arrangement, I went to Gram and confessed to him. I expected him to punish me, or have me put aside, but instead he took me before his lord, James, the Duke of Lancaster. He explained what I had told him, and together they hatched a plot to use me to Lancaster’s advantage. Well, I say ‘they’, but in reality it was James’ idea,” she stopped and looked directly at me. “When you decided to play kingmaker you made a good choice in him. If there was any man in this kingdom able to step into Edward Carenval’s shoes and hold our country together, it was him.”
“In any case, I digress,” she said, before returning to her story. “From that point on, my life changed dramatically. I was free from fear, and the shadow of the church hanging over me, no longer seemed so dreadful. I sent occasional reports to Father Tonnsdale regarding the doings at Lancaster Castle, after letting Genevieve review them first. She would discuss them with her husband, and if they felt anything shouldn’t be told, I would remove it from my report, or alter it to suit them. Ironically, it was this interaction that initially drew her and me together as fast friends over the years.”
“I was also called upon occasionally to share my knowledge of poisons. I did this in various ways, mostly benign. I helped heal the sick and treat the wounded on occasion at Lancaster. I also shared my knowledge with Father Tonnsdale. His interest seemed primarily to be about healing herbs, but I was also asked to teach him the recipes for several of the church’s more deadly poisons. This didn’t concern me overmuch at the time, and Genevieve felt that if I refused to share the knowledge with him, it might send a signal to the church authorities that I was no longer a loyal servant. In any case, he would have been able to learn the information he sought from other sources within the church headquarters at Albamarl. I was merely much more accessible.” Lady Thornbear stopped and looked down.
My mind had gone numb. She taught Father Tonnsdale. My tongue seemed to cleave to the roof of my mouth, while I struggled to formulate the question in my heart; but I already knew the answer. Elise looked up and our eyes met, and in them I could see her guilt, her sorrow, and her final shame.
“Yes, Mordecai,” she said simply, to answer my unspoken question. “I taught him the poison he used to kill everyone at Castle Cameron, the same poison he tried to use against the Lancasters. Penny did the world a great favor when she stove in that evil man’s skull.”
Even in the midst of my emotional shock, I was surprised at that revelation. As far as I knew, no one beyond Penny and myself knew she had murdered the priest. My eyebrows went up for a moment, “You knew aboutsh that?”
She nodded, “Genevieve figured it out quickly enough. She also hid the knowledge that she had seen Penny that day.”
Somehow I managed to focus my sluggish thoughts. I had already suffered a series of shocks during her story, but there was one matter that cried for my attention, one thing that I needed to know. “You had to know he was the poisoner,” I said, referring to Father Tonnsdale, “Why didn’t you reveal his crime?”
“I have only excuses, Mordecai, and none of them are sufficient to expunge my guilt. None of them will bring your parents back,” answered Elise Thornbear. “It had been years since I taught him the recipe. I was pregnant and almost ready to deliver Dorian at the time of the fire, and I wasn’t able to examine the bodies of the dead, so I couldn’t be sure at first what poison had killed them. Naturally I did suspect Father Tonnsdale, but I had no certain proof. I shared my thoughts with Genevieve, and they had him watched, but nothing incriminating was ever discovered. In the end, I did nothing to avenge them, and I was helpless to prove his guilt.”
A fire was building in my gut, a ball of futile anger, but I had no good place to direct it. Could I really blame this woman before me, my best friend’s mother? For most of my life I had loved her as a kindly authority figure and sometimes as a surrogate for my own mother. Even through my drunken haze, I felt my jaw clenching.