“Set her on a pedestal and never touch her, you mean! Let her pine and waste away! I’ll save her from such a fate by marrying her to John!”
“To John?” Petronille screeched. “To yourself, you mean, for if she is betrothed to John, she will live with you, and you’ll be quick to take advantage of her!”
“So that’s why you want her for Brion!” Drustan’s eyes glittered with malice. “You wish to keep her by you out of sheer jealousy!”
“Out of duty, you great ninny! My duty to protect the child from such libertines as you! That I shall do in any case—but I wish her for Brion solely because he is now heir, and she was betrothed to the heir of Bretanglia!”
“John, too, is the heir!”
“Aye, after Brion! Will you slay your second son, too, only to steal Rosamund for yourself?”
“I, slay my own son?” Drustan turned purple. “I would never so much as dream of such a thing! How corrupted and base your mind must be, that you think of it!”
“Corrupted by learning what a king may be!”
“Corrupted by years of marriage to a southern prince who taught you all manner of nasty games!”
“Louis? There was nothing he could teach me but the Bible! If he’d known any manner of games, I’d surely never have divorced him for you!”
“But you did, and liked my games well enough,” Drustan said, with a vindictive grin.
“Aye, so long as you played them only with me! But it is a dance for partners, sir, not a crowd of maidens ‘round a maypole, and little Rosamund shall not dance attendance upon you!”
“And how shall you prevent it?” Drustan challenged. “By betrothing her to Brion? Little fool, whether to Brion or John, she will still live in the same castle with me!”
Petronille narrowed her eyes. “Not if I do not.”
“What choice have you?” Drustan countered. “If I say John shall be king, he shall, youngest or not! You may remove yourself from me, but Rosamund shall stay!”
“You would dare!” Petronille hissed.
“Of course I would.” Drustan grinned. “I shall do it now!” He strode to the door, threw it open, and stepped out to the rail that overlooked the Great Hall. “Hearken one and all! Hear the word of your sovereign! Prince John shall succeed me! Prince John is heir apparent! Prince John shall be your new king!”
“Brion shall be king, by right of law!” Petronille shouted. She whirled out of the room to face Drustan, glaring up at him. “Will you or nil you, Brion shall rule! It is his right!”
Doors opened; John and Rosamund stepped out, eyes sleep-blurred, staring in fear. But Brion’s door opened, too, and though his face was flushed with sleep, his eyes were bright and clear, ready for anything that might come, and there was no fear in his face.
“Away!” Somehow, Petronille had found a cloak, and swung it about her shoulders as she pivoted to Brion. “He seeks to disinherit you! You must fight for your right, and the welfare of your people!” She caught Rosamund’s hand and pulled her away toward the stairs.
Drustan roared and came after her, but brought himself up short to avoid the point of Brion’s sword. “Well, now we know with what mistress you sleep!”
“As always, my father, you are correct,” Brion said. “Not right, but accurate.”
“So you would stab your own father, would you?”
“Never,” Brion assured him, “but if he chose to throw himself upon my sword, how could I interfere with his will?”
“Then obey my will indeed, and put up your sword! It is your sovereign who commands!”
“Your sovereign seeks to break the law of the land by displacing the legitimate heir!” Petronille cried from the stairwell. “In Bretanglia, no king is above the law! He has defied it, he is rightful king no longer! Hail Brion, true King of Bretanglia!”
There was a startling lack of response from the crowd of servants and soldiers.
“Stop them!” Drustan shouted at the guards.
Two dozen men moved forward on the instant.
“To me, men of mine!” Petronille cried. “Protect me, all men of Pykta! Guard your princess, all men of Toulenge!”
Thirty men leaped to surround the two women.
“Beware, woman!” Drustan bellowed. “Walk out down that stair and across that drawbridge, and this means war!”
“Then let it be war!” Petronille cried. “Let it be war for virtue and right, and the true king come to replace the false! Down with the disgraced king! Let the right prevail!”
“And you?” Drustan fixed his middle son with a vengeful glare. “Do you cleave to your true king, or to this rebel woman?”
“I am a knight,” Brion said simply. “I must defend women in distress.”
“A pox upon your chivalry!” Drustan roared. “I knew I should never have let your mother fill your head with that troubadour nonsense!”
“It is no nonsense, but the only possible salvation of the world.” Brion backed away, down the stairs, sword still level. “It allies the might of the knight with the mercy of Christ, alloying the strength of arms with Christian charity.”
“Yet the dauntless knight dares not turn his back on his unarmed father,” Drustan sneered.
“I would never turn my back upon my sovereign,” Brion rejoined.
“Guard him!” Petronille commanded, and half a dozen men broke away to meet Brion at the foot of the stairs. Armed and wary, they retreated to join her men at the door.
“Take one more step at your peril!” Drustan warned them all. “Leave this hall, and you are traitors one and all, rebels to king and country, who deserve only the noose or the headsman’s block!”
“So speaks the man who seeks to break the common law and custom of Bretanglia!” Petronille cried. The words sounded strange in the accent of Merovence. “So speaks the traitor to his land, the tyrant who breaks his covenant with his people and his God! We shall remember your words, O Traitor, when you kneel before us on the day of your defeat and our triumph.”
“I shall never kneel to you!” Drustan roared.
“You did once,” Petronille reminded him, then stepped backward out of the Great Hall, pulling Rosamund with her. Her son and her men followed.
Out they went into the courtyard, where horses waited for them all, held by a score of Pyktish soldiers, the rest of Queen Petronille’s private guard, save for the few who had already secured the gatehouse. They rode through it, under the portcullis and out across the drawbridge, the rearguard leaving the barbican and riding flat out to join them.
Inside, Drustan roared, and all his knights and men ran to saddle their horses, mount, and ride out into the night to catch the queen and her party.
They rode and searched till dawn, but the queen and her entourage had disappeared. Superstitious rumors began in the army and ran through the country in a week—that the queen had spoken truly, that Drustan had indeed violated the old law of Bretanglia, the bond between people and soil, and that the land itself had hidden the rightful king and his mother from the false king.
By that time a dozen discontented barons had rallied to Petronille’s banner and Brion’s command, while Drustan had called down his nobles all, and the armies had begun to march.
It wasn’t a hard rain, only a gentle drizzle, but it was constant, and the boots and cloaks of the companions were almost soaked through, so they threw back their hoods with a sigh of relief as they stepped into the wayside inn.
“This will be far more agreeable than sleeping in an open field,” Sir Orizhan observed, “or even that ruined cottage where we slept last week.”
“It sure will.” But Matt couldn’t help glancing over his shoulder. He wasn’t at all sure that Buckeye was going to stay gone. The “adoption” had sounded like pretty strong magic, after all, especially since he had been so careless as to give the creature a nickname. True, he hadn’t seen the bauchan in days, but constantly had the feeling they were being watched. Also, he kept finding things—the stack of wood that appeared while they were setting up camp, the dazed rabbits that hopped into the campsite fairly asking to become dinner, the fourth shadow that joined theirs under the morning sun though there was no one to cast it. All in all, Matt was glad to have a lot of people around.