Mama and Papa exchanged a glance; then Papa turned to the innkeeper. “Under the circumstances, I think we will accept your kind offer, mine host—but we were glad we could help.”
A few hours later they finally managed to close the door of a private room on their grateful hosts. Papa poured them each a glass of wine and said, “A most interesting afternoon, my dear.”
“It was indeed,” Mama agreed. “At least the brutes still respect the clergy.”
” ‘Still’ is the word,” Papa cautioned. “I have difficulty believing the knights of this land have always been such oafs.”
“Not in this universe,” Mama agreed. “Not if Bretanglia has been a godly kingdom for centuries, as we have been told.”
“Ah, but you are speaking of the past,” Papa pointed out. “King Drustan has, wittingly or not, unleashed the forces of cruelty and oppression upon his people.”
“He has,” Mama agreed, “but they are not very far gone in decadence yet. Friars can still defend the weak from the mighty but corrupt.”
“Yes, but only because the knights and their men still have enough respect for the clergy to heed their words,” Papa said. “How long can that last, my love?”
“How thickly can the ravens flock to this land?” she returned.
“Up, lazybones!” the voice shouted in Matt’s dream. “Why do you lie here sleeping when you should be seeking my murderer?”
Even in his dream Matt came up fighting. “You dare to wake me up! You dare to deprive me of sleep when I’ve been hiking all day and seeking whatever scraps of information I can to—”
“How dare you talk so to a prince!”
“We’ve been through that already,” Matt said through his teeth. “Do I have to recite an exorcism verse and kick you out of my head so I can get some sleep?”
“No, no!” Gaheris’ ghost said quickly. “Not that!”
“Sure, because once I kick you out, you can’t get in again.” It didn’t take much figuring. “So far I’m leaving the mental door open because you might be able to give me information about the crime. No, I don’t have anything to tell you yet— but I do have a job for you.”
“A job?” the prince cried, highly insulted. “For a prince?”
“Any ghost would do, but you’re most likely to know the party in question. Tell me, has Prince Brion showed up on the other side?”
“Brion?” Gaheris pounced on the name. “Has he been slain, then?”
“That’s what I’m trying to figure out,” Matt told him, “and the reports aren’t exactly conclusive. It would help a lot if you could tell me you’ve seen his ghost roaming around looking for that tunnel of light you told me about.”
“It would seek out him, not he it,” Gaheris said quickly, “but he would be no quicker to go into it than I, if he’d been murdered. No, I have not seen him here…”
“Sure you might not have missed him in the crowd?”
“There are not so many who can or wish to resist that last journey, wizard! Besides, those of us related to one of the newly slain are drawn toward his ghost—several here have told me that! I assure you, if Brion were here, I would know it!”
“That helps.” Of course, Matt suspected Brion might have been more likely to seek out that tunnel of light, and its exit to the afterworld, than Gaheris was, especially since for him it would probably be the express route to Heaven, or at least to a short stay in Purgatory. Still, Brion was worldly enough to want justice for his own murder. “Yes, that helps. Okay. Thanks. Check in now and then, and I’ll let you know if I learn anything solid.”
“If! You had confounded well best learn something or I’ll—”
“Be kicked out of my head,” Matt said, cutting him off. “Now get out of here, before I do my daily exorcises.”
“But I—“
“Out!” Matt dream-shouted. “Go ‘way and let me sleep!”
“Gone?” Petronille stared, her face ashen. “From a moated grange with a dozen guards and jailers? How could she be gone?”
“I know not, Majesty.” Lady Ashmund spoke with tears in her eyes; she too had been fond of the princess. “I know only the news I have been given—that the king went to bring her the news of his victory himself…”
“And I am sure how he meant to celebrate it!” Petronille snapped.
“Perhaps, Majesty, but he found only a wooden statue. Of the real princess, there was no sign.”
“No sign, is it? No sign of which he dares tell the world!” The queen turned away to the tall, multipaned windows and stared out at the courtyard, unseeing. “He has spirited her away to some secret bower where he can have her at his mercy for as long as he wishes! Oh, a pox upon this gilded prison!”
She turned to catch up a porcelain vase and hurl it into the fireplace. The crash echoed hugely in the stonewalled room, in spite of all the tapestries and thick carpets; Lady Ashmund suppressed a start of shock.
The queen strode the length of the solar and back, raving, “I have silks and satins, I have grandeur and silver and servants, but I cannot go to find the poor child who needs me! Curse the day that ever I met that snake Drustan! Curse the day that I sought a southern princess for my son! How could I ever have believed that she could alloy his spirit with some gentleness, some courtesy, some grace? All that has happened is that Gaheris taught her his roughness and hardness, and that my husband has set his lecherous course toward her! Alas, the poor lady! How shall I ever save her now?”
Lady Ashmund sought for a word of hope to give her. “Might it not be that the Lord Wizard of Merovence has rescued her by his magic?”
The queen turned to give her a stony, contemptuous glance. “You know nothing of the old, old sorcery with which this land is imbued, my lady. Even I, who have learned some magic, can only guess at the weight and mass of this cold northern runimancy! It is heavy enough to drown any magic I seek to work, I know that, and I cannot believe that the Lord Wizard could fare better than I! Oh, a pox upon this false husband of mine! A murrain upon him, for the cruel ox he is!”
Lady Ashmund blanched at hearing the curse.
The queen raised her fists before her, calling out, “O elves and sprites of Bretanglia! O pouks and ghasts and night-walkers all! If you hear me and can do it, strike down this false king who has foisted himself upon your land! Pouks, smite him! Ghasts, fill his sleep with nightmares! Elves, aim your bolts at his temples! One and all, hear this foreign queen he has brought to misery! Save the southern princess, save the land, and lay him low!”
The king was at dinner the next night, with Prince John at his right hand and Earl Marshal at his left. Two dukes and their duchesses sat at the head table with him, the lower table filled with lesser aristocrats. Drustan was in high good spirits in spite of the nasty surprise Rosamund had left him—he was, after all, the victor, and knew that the queen who had caused him so much frustration and pain with her deprecating remarks and encouragement of his enemies was now eating her heart out in isolation.
The Duke of Boromel, sensing His Majesty’s mood and its reasons, rose and lifted his cup, crying, “A toast!”
“A toast!” the others cried, and rose, then fell silent with their cups on high.
“To our sovereign liege, who dines upon the rich fare of victory in glittering company—and to our queen, who drinks the bitter wine of defeat in solitude!”
There was a moment’s shocked silence, and Earl Marshal frowned—it was a most ungallant toast. Then the king crowed with delight, surging to his feet and lifting his cup. “To the queen!”
The other aristocrats took up the cry with relief. “To the queen!” they cried, and laughed and drank.
The king set his goblet to his lips, tilted its base high—then turned rigid, eyes bulging, and let out a single hoarse cry as he fell, the goblet slipping from his fingers and dashing wine all over Prince John.