Authors: R.A. Salvatore
“That’s the point, after all,” Roger deadpanned. “Wouldn’t be much of a disguise otherwise.”
The monks looked at each other and grinned, then turned as one back to Roger.
“Ah, the white bass, ye say?” Roger said loudly as a couple of other Palmaris citizens wandered by. He reached into his cart and brought up a sad-looking specimen. “Fine choice, lads! Fine choice!”
Brother Hoyet took the smelly fish.
“What of Bishop Braumin, then?” Roger asked. “I had feared that De’Unnero, if not Aydrian, would have him killed as soon as Palmaris had fallen, but it is my understanding that he has made appearances since the conquest.”
“He has spoken on behalf of King Aydrian several times since,” Hoyet confirmed.
“To calm the city’s populace and prevent wholesale slaughter, no doubt,” said Roger.
“He has spoken on behalf of Marcalo De’Unnero, as well,” Brother Destou added, and Roger couldn’t help but wince. Never, under any threat or even for the good of the community he served, would Bishop Braumin Herde willingly stand beside Marcalo De’Unnero—unless they two were standing on a gallows and the noose was firmly about De’Unnero’s neck!
“He has asked the city to embrace King Aydrian for the glory and good of Honce-the-Bear, and to dismiss their errant notions of Brother … of
Abbot
De’Unnero, to accept him as the rightful leader of St. Precious at this time, and as the likely Father Abbot of the Abellican Church in due and short order.”
“Bishop Braumin would not say such a thing,” Hoyet added.
“Not if they held a poisoned dagger to his back,” Roger agreed. “Were you close to him when he spoke those words?”
“Three in line to the side,” answered Hoyet. “It was no imposter, but Bishop Braumin.”
“Or was it an imposter within Bishop Braumin?” asked Roger, who understood gemstone possession well enough to make the connection.
Both monks, who had obviously been thinking the same thing, nodded.
“De’Unnero?” Roger asked.
“It is rumored that the son of Jilseponie is mighty with the gemstones—greater even than his mother,” Brother Destou explained.
“That he would do this marks him as no son of Jilseponie, whatever his physical heritage,” Roger was quick to reply. “Know you where they keep Bishop Braumin? Is he well?”
“Beneath the abbey, perhaps,” answered Hoyet. “Many new prisoners have been brought to the dungeons since the arrival of the new king. We are not allowed anywhere near to the entry rooms, of course. Only those brothers who arrived with our new abbot can get close to the dungeon stairwell.”
“They hold him in chains—he is not well,” Brother Destou added. “They drag him out and clean him when they need to use him for their purposes.”
“Then you know where he is being held?” Roger asked Destou.
The monk shrugged. “I have seen the shackle marks about his wrists, and he is thinner by far. But I have not seen him taken from the dungeons of St. Precious.”
Roger gripped the fish cart—he needed the support or he might have fallen over. He had suspected that all along, of course. As soon as he had learned that Braumin had not gotten out of the city, and had not been killed, but rather, was being used as a puppet for Aydrian and De’Unnero, he had suspected that his friend was probably not in a good and healthy situation, and likely in the dungeons of St. Precious or Chasewind Manor.
“Where has he spoken?” Roger asked.
“In the square, as is customary for an abbot of St. Precious,” Destou answered.
“And has he traveled with the group of brothers from St. Precious to that customary spot?” Roger pressed. “Has he spoken after or during a rain? And if so, were his shoes wet before the entourage emerged from St. Precious?”
“They were,” Brother Hoyet answered suddenly, his face lighting with the revelation. He looked at Destou, who merely shrugged again, apparently having not noticed.
“De’Unnero stays at St. Precious?” Roger asked.
Hoyet nodded.
“And Aydrian in Chasewind Manor?”
Another nod. “Though he is leaving any day now, marching west, by all reports,” Brother Hoyet put in.
Roger’s head similarly bobbed as he sorted it all out. He knew the dungeons of Chasewind Manor well. Many of his friends had been held there when Markwart had come to the city to battle the disciples of Avelyn, including Braumin Herde and Jilseponie. And of course, living in the manor over the last few years had given the ever-inquisitive Roger the opportunity to scout out the place top to bottom, all the catacombs, dungeons, and many of its secret passages.
“You will go to him?” Brother Destou asked.
“I would not be a friend if I did not,” said Roger, and both monks bowed their heads, as if stung by the remark.
Roger appreciated their looks. The two had denounced Braumin to De’Unnero, he understood, else they, too, would have been thrown in chains. No doubt each was carrying substantial guilt upon his shoulders. A younger Roger would have scolded them for their cowardice, surely, but the man, who had learned so much under the tutelage of Elbryan and Jilseponie, appreciated their torment.
“You did not betray Bishop Braumin,” the generous Roger said. “You have risked so much in meeting with me this day.” He ended with a wink and began pushing the fish cart on past the pair. “Keep the white bass,” he offered.
The two young brothers nodded, Hoyet lifting the fish in a bit of a salute, and then they hiked their robes more tightly about them against the cold wind and headed back toward St. Precious Abbey.
Had they been more perceptive, they might have seen the shadowy figure peering out at them with too much interest from a small window on the great structure’s second floor.
M
arcalo De’Unnero stood with a large gathering at the city’s northern gate as Aydrian led the procession of four hundred Kingsmen out of Palmaris and off to the west. Bereft of his escaped stallion, the young king seemed little diminished. He rode a sturdy To-gai-ru pony, one of the many extras in the Palmaris stables since a group of Allhearts had sailed with Earl DePaunch into the Gulf of Corona.
Wagons rumbled out of the gate behind Aydrian; the disciplined soldiers marched in perfect cadence, and half the city, it seemed, had gathered to watch the departure.
De’Unnero fast turned his attention from Aydrian to the clustered citizens, some of whom, he knew, were looking at him with great trepidation. Though a dozen years and more had passed, many in Palmaris remembered well the rule of Bishop Marcalo De’Unnero, short though it had been.
This time would be different, the monk told himself. He and Aydrian had set out a proper course for him within the city, one that would keep the people of Palmaris satisfied at least, if not enamored of their young king and his primary advisor. There would be no public executions. There would be no mass imprisonments,
nor any edicts slashing the rights of the folk to go about their daily routines much as they had done through the last ten years.
Furthermore, there would be no formal declaration of De’Unnero as bishop, or even as abbot of St. Precious. As far as the folk of Palmaris were concerned, he was just an abbot from another abbey, serving as Aydrian’s representative advisor to Bishop Braumin Herde.
Of course, Marcalo De’Unnero was much more than that. With Aydrian gone and Kalas involved in the control and complete subjugation of the southland, the monk was, in effect, the absolute ruler of Palmaris. Bishop Braumin was a name, and nothing more; with Aydrian gone, De’Unnero had no intention of even letting the bishop out of his dungeon cell. De’Unnero would use one of the converted masters of St. Precious to speak the edicts—proclamations said to have come from Bishop Braumin—but those speeches would be written by none other than Marcalo De’Unnero.
His charge was an easy one. He was to sit out the winter in peace and in control, to rest and be ready for the greater battles that would surely come in the spring.
Well, that was almost Marcalo De’Unnero’s edict. He had forced one concession from Aydrian, something that he and Father Abbot Markwart had tried before, to results that proved rather disastrous to De’Unnero. His policy of reclaiming all magic gemstones had angered the Palmaris populace greatly against him, though Markwart and then Bishop Francis had used his fall from grace to further their cause of collection and to further the popularity of Francis. Many of the stones had been retrieved, and were still in Church coffers, but getting the rest of them was something that Marcalo De’Unnero believed to be the most important task he would ever undertake.
For the stones were the province of the Abellican Church, as far as De’Unnero was concerned, and the thought that so many were outside the Church, sold by the former abbots of St.-Mere-Abelle and often converted into easily used magical items by heretical craftsmen and alchemists, made him tremble with rage.
This time, De’Unnero meant to go about collecting the stones in a more diplomatic manner, though, much as Francis had used after De’Unnero’s removal from Palmaris. Instead of threats, the monk would use payment to regain sacred and magical items. He had brought bags and bags of unenchanted, though valuable, gemstones with him for just that purpose.
Yes, De’Unnero meant to become a friend to the people of Palmaris, and of all the towns along the Masur Delaval all the way back to Ursal. Or at least, he would become the friend of the important and powerful people. Wealth could buy back many of the gemstones, or could buy information concerning which merchants and noblemen might be holding a stone or an enchanted item. Once he identified each criminal, De’Unnero would approach the man personally and offer payment.
If that was refused, De’Unnero would quietly return the same night and take the Church’s rightful property.
The monk had consciously to remind himself to smile, standing there in the
open at the northern gate. He knew that many eyes were upon him and so he fought his more instinctual urges to scowl and tried very hard to soften his visage. It was not an easy thing for Marcalo De’Unnero to do.
R
oger couldn’t help but feel a few pangs of guilt as he nodded back to Brother Hoyet, the first in the line of nearly a dozen young monks set in place to escort Bishop Braumin through dark paths all across the city to the river, and then across the river to a waiting coach fast bound for St.-Mere-Abelle. It encouraged Roger to find that so many of the brothers of St. Precious would rally to help Bishop Braumin, knowing full well that, in doing so, they were putting their lives at a great risk. Marcalo De’Unnero was not a forgiving man!
But Roger had prompted them, had coerced them, had met secretly with Hoyet and Destou on many occasions, egging them on. He recounted to them Braumin’s own humble beginnings as a revolutionary, along with Viscenti and Brother Castinagis and others who had secretly gathered with Master Jojonah those years ago, in the very bowels of St.-Mere-Abelle—then Father Abbot Markwart’s stronghold—to keep alive the flame of hope that was Avelyn Desbris. Those brothers had faced similar penalties, but had followed their hearts and held true to their precepts. Some like Jojonah, who had been burned at the stake, had paid a heavy price. But all of them had accepted that potential cost for the sake of their conscience.
So it was now with Hoyet and Destou, and the nine others who had helped to organize this attempted escape, Roger knew. They were doing it out of love for Braumin and in trust of Roger.
“I’ll not let them down,” the man whispered quietly as he moved along the hedgerow that ringed Chasewind Manor. It was an easy enough scramble for him to get over the wall, touching down in the darkened yard behind the manor house.
He saw the silhouette of a man not so far away, as he had anticipated, as Brother Hoyet had arranged.
Elbryan would not have done it this way
, Roger couldn’t help but tell himself, as he considered yet another man in on the conspiracy.
Elbryan would have come in alone to rescue Braumin Herde, and would have left a trail of scattered enemies in his wake, if need be
. Roger knew it to be true, and knew that in asking for the help of these dozen men, he had put them in dire straights.
He saw no way around it. He was a decent fighter, but certainly no match for a trained soldier twenty years his junior! And certainly no match for an Allheart Knight!
And this place was crawling with both. Even from his perch back here in the shadows behind the house, Roger could hear the men inside, mostly soldiers. And he had seen the guards at the gate, and others marching in formation about the wall, despite the late hour.
“Here now, ye don’t be coming in after the sun’s gone down,” came a cackling old voice, and the thin silhouette ambled toward Roger. “And ye don’t come in at all over the wall. But through the gate, properly introduced.”
The words were correct, as were the quiet tone and delivery. “Illthin?” Roger asked, and then he ducked low as the sound of marching soldiers echoed nearby.
“Come along then, ye lazy snoozer,” the silhouette, who was indeed old Illthin, said to Roger, and he tossed a shovel at the man’s feet. “I telled Allheart Desenz that I’d have that tree upturned afore the dawn, and I’m not for getting a beating because a man half me age can’t keep his eyes open long enough to dig a few roots!”
“Is there trouble here?” came a call, and the man leading the patrol moved over to Roger and Illthin, eyeing them suspiciously.
“Only because me worker here ain’t worth the coins I’m payin’ him!” Illthin grumbled. “Ye think ye might give him a few lashes for me, me good Kingsman?”
The soldier eyed Roger wickedly and reached for a club set on his belt.
“Wait! Wait!” Roger pleaded, holding up his hands defensively. “I wasn’t napping. No, I … I had to …” He glanced about to the base of the wall and gave the front of his pants a tug to straighten them.
“All this trouble over a piss?” the soldier snapped at Illthin.
Illthin played his role perfectly, eyeing Roger with an edge of true suspicion. “Long piss, then,” he muttered, and he waved the soldier away. “Get yer shovel, then, ye lazy dog, and if ye got any more in ye needing to come out, ye best do it in yer pants!”