Knights Magi (Book 4) (64 page)

“Are you sure?” demanded Rondal, his heart sinking.

“Absolutely,” assured Tyndal.  “He described the fight.  He’s not stupid, but he’s not smart enough to lie convincingly about something like that.  Not if you know what to ask him.”

“Still, anyone can be fooled,” Rondal pointed out, lamely.

“I know.  Just to be sure . . . while he wasn’t paying attention I cast a truthtelling on him.  I could have asked him about his first tumble, and he would have told me all about it.  He didn’t collaborate.”

“Then why in seven hells would she
lie
about that?” Rondal asked, mystified.

“There’s only one person who can answer that,” Tyndal pronounced.  “Let’s get
washed up and have a drink . . . and then we’ll go see just why Lady Arsella was so anxious to put this man’s neck in a noose.”

Rondal asked Tyndal to request that Alwer take his meal in the stables, and gave him some instruction and explanation while he saw to the men’s evening meal in the abandoned great hall.  They would sleep in the tower, but until night fell there was little reason not to use the more comfortable great hall to sup.

Lady Arsella was sullen and silent throughout the meal, answering questions with one-word responses or nods of her head.  She barely looked up from her food, and only long days between meals compelled her to do more than pick at the traveler’s stew they’d made.  When Sir Tyndal came in, Rondal watched her carefully.

She looked longingly at him at first, but then her expression changed to guilt.  Then fear.  Then anxiety.  Then hopelessness.  Then desperation.  Then contemplation.  Then despair. 

Ishi’s tits,
Rondal remarked to himself,
how can one girl’s head contain so many emotions in such a short time?
  Her eyes darted between he and Sir Tyndal several times, and Rondal could swear he could hear the mill gears of her mind grinding away at some idea.

“I’m going to go stroke the luck tree,” Rondal said, stretching and yawning.  “We can get secured when we’re done eating.  Everyone take a dump before we close up the tower, unless you want to smell your own chamberpot all night.”  He gave Arsella a crude grin.  She didn’t make a face, as he would have expected at his boyish behavior.  Instead she looked away.

Rondal relieved himself in the yard and then went to the stables, where Alwer was dining with the horses.

“I’m sorry I deprived you of the comfort of the hall,” Rondal began, “but under the circumstances . . .”

“This is the best hall I’ve supped in in weeks, milord,” the hayward assured him, leaping to his feet.  “No apologies necessary.  I owe you, after how you saved us from those scrugs!”

“My pleasure,” Rondal said automatically.  “And if you truly feel indebted to me, then do me this boon: when we retire to the tower for the evening, I want you to come speak with Sir Tyndal and I about Lady Arsella.  But I bid you not to discuss the matter with anyone, before or after, save as I bid.  Sir Tyndal assures me of your character and your innocence, but the accusation before me is severe
enough that I feel obligated to see it spoken of openly.  Can you do this for me?”

“Aye, milord, anything to clear my name,” the man assured him, earnestly.  “I’ve no truck with the scrugs, and I’ll fight any man who says otherwise!”  There was no mistaking the sincerity of his tone.  This man hated goblins.  He was not a collaborator.

As dusk fell, Tyndal secured the stables with additional spells to confound the olfactory senses – if the goblins had not discovered a canine’s facility with tracking by smell, they were sure to do so soon – before sealing the tower from the inside for the night.

“Even if they do get passed the walls and the spells on the gate,” he announced to the six men in the snug room at the base of the tower, “they’ll spend hours running around this place trying to find the door.  There’s an enchantment on it that makes it always seem to be on the other side.”  That made them all laugh.  Rondal grabbed a bottle of wine from the cellar and left Tyndal to see to ordering the men for the night.  The men were to stay in the base of the tower near to the door.  Rondal and Tyndal would keep watch – mostly by magic – allowing everyone to get a much-needed night’s sleep.

In the third-story room above Lady Arsella was curled up under her mantle, her crossbow at hand, when Rondal came in.  She started, then settled back into her make-shift bed.

“My lady, please tell me again, from the beginning, what happened on the night of the attack on Maramor.”

“Why?  I’ve
told
you—”

“Humor me,” he ordered, flatly.  She sighed in frustration, then began speaking in a very deliberate voice, as if she had practiced it.

“We had snuck away from Sir Hagun’s party, my maid and I, and gone back to Maramor to hold it in his absence.  Foolish, perhaps, but . . . well, the manor was filled with the village folk.  For a week things were . . . fine.  A little chaotic, with the yard filled with villeins camping out, hiding from the goblins, but nothing bad.  Folk went out to the village or the fields by day and came home to the safety of Maramor at night. 

“Then one night someone knocked on the gate and begged permission to come in.  The steward let them in, curse him.  I
swear
it was Alwer the Hayward.  An hour later the gate was attacked.  That . . .
thing
tore it right apart, and then there were goblins everywhere. My maid rushed me to the hiding place Sir Hagun had prepared and pushed me inside just as the goblins were coming up the stairs.  I can still hear her screaming,” she said, her face locked in horror and regret, as tears fell down it.  “And if it hadn’t been for Alwer . . .”

“But what did Alwer
do?
” asked Rondal, his arms crossed.  “What exactly did he do that was treacherous?”

“He . . . he must have sabotaged the gate!” Arsella insisted.  “Gotten word to his damnable confederates that . . . that . . .”

“That there were people barricaded inside?” finished Rondal.  “I doubt they needed his help for that.  He didn’t even let them in, if there was a troll breaking down the gate,” he said, accusingly.

“But he was
there!
” she insisted, tearfully.   “He came in, then they attacked, and everyone got led away in chains!  Everyone they didn’t kill on the spot!  He sabotaged the gate, he must have, he betrayed the guards, he . . . he . . .”

“If he had sabotaged the gate, milady,” Rondal said, quietly, “then the goblins would not have had recourse to a troll.  But your gates were decidedly removed by a troll.  Yet you still insist on Alwer’s treachery . . .”

“I do!” she pleaded.  “You
must
kill him!”

“Thank you, milady,” Rondal said, bowing.  “Sir Tyndal, did you hear all of that?”

“Every word,” Tyndal said, as he mounted the narrow stairs, a magelight floating ahead of him.  “The Long Ears spell.  And . . . so did Goodman Alwer,” he continued, as the hayward followed behind him.

“So what do you have to say to the accusations of your treachery made by Lady Arsella, Alwer of Maramor?”

The peasant looked troubled as he stared at Rondal, then Tyndal, and then at the girl. 

“Well, milords, as far as treachery goes, I will swear on Trygg’s holy womb that I have never betrayed anyone, ever, as I am an honest man.  Not even if my own life was at risk.”  He sounded indignant and angry, but still cautious.  “And as far as Lady Arsella is concerned, I know not what she says, if she still breathes at all.  For that girl is
not
Lady Arsella.”

Rondal and Tyndal stared at him, mouths agape.  When they both looked back at the weeping woman, she had her face buried in her hands, sobbing.

“What do you mean, Goodman?” asked Tyndal, slowly.  Rondal was afraid to breathe.

“I mean that girl is not Lady Arsella.  Lady Arsella is younger, has truly blonde hair, and is more shapely about the face.  Favors her mother, she does.  This woman here is Maid Belsi.  She’s Lady Arsella’s lady’s maid.  Or at least she was.”

“What?”
Rondal and Tyndal asked, in shocked unison.

“Do you want to tell the tale, lass, or should I?” Alwer asked, accusingly.  When she didn’t answer, he shrugged and continued.  “Tale was that old Sir Hagun’s older brother, Sir Hagbel, sired a bastard on a common village maiden in his youth, then got himself killed at tournament.  Sir Hagun took the child in when she were old enough to foster, as a kindness and in honor of his brother.  He had his own daughter, Arsella, just a year younger so it was a good fit.

“’Tis true enough the girls slipped back to Maramor, and it’s true as well that the attack happened.  Even that I came late to the gate.  But I had tarried in the village to avoid a patrol, not collaborate with them.  When they attacked it had nothing to do with me, that I swear.  The girls ran into the manor when the attack came.  We fought – by Duin’s sack, we fought, milords.  Killed a few of them, too, but there wasn’t no getting around that troll.  Then the evil men came and tied us up.  All twenty-odd of us. 
Including
Lady Arsella.”

“So she was taken captive with you,” repeated Tyndal.  “She didn’t escape into some hiding place.”

“No,” Alwer agreed, slowly.  “And that first night they had us, she said that her maid Belsi got to the hiding place first.  That she had locked her out from inside.  That she had screamed and cried for her to open it and let her in, but she did not.”  His voice was filled with condemnation. 

“So what happened to Lady Arsella?” asked Rondal in a hushed voice.

“I know not, milord.  After that first night, we were separated out, men from women.  So the . . . the evil men could have some sport before they took us north.  I heard them.  We all heard them.  They screamed all night long, poor girls, but we were tied and could do naught.  We were marched out at dawn the next day, but the women were still in camp.  We got rescued that day but none of the womenfolk were ever seen again.”

Belsi broke down in sobs anew at this news.  Tyndal thanked the peasant man.  “Go on down and have a cup or two . . . but do not speak of this to anyone, yet,
Alwer.  For now, she is still ‘Lady Arsella,’ is that clear?”

“Aye, milord,” the peasant said, his eyes hard against the girl.  “For now.”

When he had gone, and Tyndal had shut the door behind him, Rondal took a seat on a stool near the window.  “So . . . do you deny anything that Alwer said?”

She would not look up or speak to them.  Rondal repeated the question, but she still would not speak.

Tyndal finally boomed, “Belsi of Maramor, you now stand accused of bearing false witness in a capital crime in a time of war.  Will you not speak in your own defense?”

The commanding tone brought the girl upright almost against her will . . . but soon she was kneeling in front of them both, her hands clasped, tears streaming down her face.

“I . . . I . . .”

“Do you deny the truth of what Alwer said?” repeated Rondal.  He waited again for her to speak, and was about to accuse her again when she finally found words.

“Do you have any idea what it was like, growing up here?” she spat, angrily, instead.  “Do you have any idea what it was like knowing that but for a few words said in temple all of that . . . all of Maramor should have been mine?  I was the
older
brother’s daughter!” she bellowed.  “
I was the older daughter!”

“It all makes sense now,” Rondal said, almost to himself.  “The way you knew your way around a kitchen better than most noble girls.  How your clothes – her clothes – never quite fit.  How you rarely referred to Sir Hagun as ‘father,’ he was always ‘Sir Hagun’.”

“Why waste good coin on finery for a bastard servant girl?” she asked angrily.  “They put
her
in silks while I was in cotton rags!  When
she
wanted to slip away and come back to Maramor, she was trying to come back for
more clothes
, the stupid snot!  Oh, I was the loyal little maid, doing everything she asked, everything she demanded, knowing all the time it should have been me giving the orders.  You have no idea, you damned knights, knowing what it’s like to grow up a bastard and a commoner!”

“Actually,” Rondal said, quietly, “Tyndal and I are both.  We didn’t let it spoil our aspirations.”

“What did you hope to gain from this deception, anyway?” asked Tyndal. 

“My birthright,” she said, hotly.  “My legacy.  But mostly my life.  That day when they came, I was the faster one.  I was the one who thought about the refuge first.  I was the faster one up the stairs.  She was always a little dim, a little slow, Arsella was.  But bossy.  But I got there first, and there was only room for one.  Why should I yield my security and doom us both?  Damn right I shut her out.  I saw her, I heard her.  Then I closed it and hid, and
I’d do it again!”

“All of which might be forgiven.  But then you misrepresented yourself,” Tyndal continued, relentlessly.  “You told yourself off as a noblewoman to our company, claiming by deceit what was not yours by birth.”

“I was fearful of the soldiers invading my home,” she said, indignantly.  “Would your men have been as deferent to a servant girl as they were Lady Arsella of Maramor?” she accused.