Authors: Miles Cameron
Muriens laughed. ‘Fucking Etruscans. Of course I have furs. Why don’t you all come out of the cold before we start dickering like a man with a whore on a cold night – beg your pardon, sister,’ he added with a smile. ‘Although, sweet Saviour, you can come and take my confession anytime.’
Amicia smiled right back at him. ‘That will be enough of that, Your Grace,’ she said.
His mouth moved in a way – a sort of self-aware wryness, an appreciation of his own failures – that she knew so well it almost melted her heart. Then his face cleared and he bowed. ‘My apologies, sister. It is just my wicked way!’
Amicia allowed herself to be steered inside, even as she felt the very edge of the
zone
that surrounded beings with great power. She cloaked herself as carefully as she could, using what she had learned from both the Red Knight and Harmodius during the siege, and she kept her eyes down and thought of mice.
This was a mistake
, she thought.
A pair of servants led her into the Great Hall and then up a winding stair and along a corridor that went up and then down.
‘
Ma soeur
, do you have a maid?’ one servant asked.
‘No,’ she answered.
The woman nodded. ‘I’ll send you a woman to help. This is the portmanteau from your horse – is there more?’
Amicia looked at the narrow bed with something close to lust. The air of the castle was cold, but not like the open marshes of the Adnacrags. And there was a stack of wool blankets waiting to serve her.
‘No more, I thank you. That’s all I have.’ She smiled. ‘I was very much a last minute addition. Goodwife, I am spent. May I lie down?’
The other woman nodded. ‘I doubt that Lady Ghause will receive you until after evensong. It is Christmas Eve.’ Despite being a senior servant, or perhaps even a lady-in-waiting, the older woman took the time to help Amicia strip.
The moment her soaked undergown was off, she was warmer, despite the frigid air. A pair of servant girls came in, and brought her a wool flannel gown – floor-length, and a lovely blue.
The younger bobbed a curtsy. ‘Lady Ghause sends this with her compliments, and says that religious women are all too rare here. She hopes that it suits you.’
The wool was soft and very fine and held a healthy charge of
potentia
like musk.
Amicia pulled it over her naked body, and the older maid pulled the covers over her, and she was asleep.
She awoke flushed and breathing hard, after the most erotic dream of her life. A dream with a very particular focus. She lay in her bed, calming her breathing.
The old Abbess had taught her to make a virtue of necessity. To meditate when only meditation could help. She imagined her knight – still very fresh in her traitorous memory, so she clothed him and armed him and placed his image, kneeling, in a nativity scene – a guard for one of the three great kings who had come to visit the newborn babe
.
The nativity played out – the kings gave their gifts, and retreated, and he went with them, his steel sabatons crunching through the snow, and she watched him mount his horse with his usual grace, his annoying, ever-present grace. And she looked back to see the Virgin take up her child from the manger.
She breathed, calm, and centred—
‘Time to wake, sister! Time for mass!’
She stretched, at peace with herself, and smelled – perceived – the musk in the real and the touch of
ops
in the
aethereal.
The gown had been ensorcelled.
Honi soit qui mal y pense
, she thought and stripped the thing off. She handed it to the maid, who was more than a little shocked at her nudity – and her tattoos.
‘Have this washed,’ Amicia said. ‘It stinks.’
After mass, she followed the housekeeper – the older woman who had led her into the castle – into the Great Hall and up a short set of steps.
Amicia could feel Ghause from across the fortress, and so she was prepared when the housekeeper opened the door.
The woman who sat on the tall chair of dark wood had no embroidery in her lap, and she held her head as few women did – up, with a direct gaze.
‘Ah – the nun. My dear sister, it is all too rare to receive a religious vocation here. Are you permitted to speak?’
Amicia thought
so this is his mother. She burns in the
aethereal
like – like—
‘I have no vow of silence,’ she said.
‘You are the most remarkably attractive nun I’ve seen in many a day,’ Ghause said. ‘Watch out for my husband. He doesn’t like to take no for an answer. And he likes to break things.’ She smiled. ‘And people.’
Amicia felt her face burn hot. ‘My lady,’ she said softly. What else could she say to such a remarkable introduction?
‘Are you a virgin, girl?’ Ghause asked.
Amicia realised – just in time – that she was in a contest as surely as if she were fighting in the snow. ‘That is a rude question, my lady.’
‘Oh, I’m a rude woman. You do not fool me,
sister.
You seek to hide your powers, and I can feel them – sweet Christ, girl, you lit the very moon with your sword of light. You are a witch – a very powerful witch. Why are you here?’
Amicia made a good straight-backed curtsy. ‘My lady, I am here to help Ser John escort his convoy. As you have apparently seen, I have some skill in working the hermetical.’
Ghause watched her.
Amicia resisted the invitation to talk further.
‘You are from Sophie’s convent? Eh?’ the older woman asked.
Amicia winced at her own foolishness. When she had volunteered to come, she had imagined herself secure. She had imagined that she might look at his father and mother and see the source of his revolt against God. Learn things to his good.
In her pious arrogance, she had assumed that she would be secure and powerful here.
Ghause Muriens wore the
aethereal
not like a cloak or a fog, but like a garment of regal splendour. It was part of her. She
lived
in
potentia.
Amicia felt naked before it. ‘I serve the Order of Saint Thomas,’ she said.
Ghause licked her lips. ‘At Lissen Carrak?’ she said softly. She was beautiful. Amicia had never seen a woman as beautiful. And what she manipulated was not as simple as air or darkness or light or fire.
Amicia nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said.
‘So – you know my son, perhaps?’ Ghause asked again. She rested a hand on Amicia’s arm, and the nun warmed to the touch. She warmed to her navel, and to the tips of her fingers.
The ring on Amicia’s finger flared. Ghause spat – like an angry cat – and started back and Amicia recovered control of her own body and mind. And was only then aware that Ghause had been overwhelming her. Seducing her.
‘Bitch,’ Ghause said. ‘That was unnecessary.’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘A mere
mind your own business
would have sufficed.’
Amicia’s mind reeled. The
ring
had saved her. She took a deep breath, and then another.
Ghause smiled. ‘You do know him!’ she said. ‘Ah – sometimes, I wonder if there is a God after all.’
Amicia had recovered her control. ‘Madam, I nursed two of your sons in my place as a novice. And both were fine knights and gentle men.’ Her voice was steady as rock, and she had her version of events prepared. She fixed it in her palace, and banished all the rest to the locked box where she kept the Red Knight.
‘I am a proud mother, and I was led by false rumour to fear that Gabriel was dead. What can you tell me of him?’ Ghause asked.
Amicia shook her head. ‘Madam, he was the Captain of a fortress under siege by the Wild, and I was a novice serving in the hospital. Twice when he was wounded, I used my powers to heal him, and I stood by your younger son – Ser Gavin – and saw him fight. Brilliantly.’
‘My housekeeper says you have tattoos. Why does a sister of the great order have tattoos?’ Ghause smiled like a cat with a bird.
‘Once, I lacked the power to stop others from imposing their will on me,’ Amicia said gently. ‘I no longer lack that power.’
‘It pleases you to think you can match me,’ Ghause said. ‘I know what you dreamed,’ she said, almost cooing. ‘I watched it.’
‘I know of no reason that I should have to match you,’ Amicia said. ‘If you know what I dreamed, then you also know what I did with it. I am not your foe, madam, but if you attempt to enter my head again, I might feel myself attacked.’
Ghause licked her lips. ‘You admired my son.’ She put a hand to her bosom. ‘This interests me profoundly, woman. Tell me!’
Amicia dropped another curtsy. ‘My lady, I am a sister of the Order of Saint Thomas and my only bridegroom is Christ. You may impose on me with your manipulations – I will only see them as torments. I admire your son as a good knight and a good man.’
‘By Lady Tar!’ Ghause hissed. ‘My son Gabriel is not a
good man
or a
good knight.
That horseshit is for the peasants. I made him to be like a god!’
I should never have come here.
The air was full of Ghause’s power, and the impulse to speak lay on Amicia like a shirt of heavy maille. But she resisted.
God has the ultimate power. Christ be with me. Virgin, stand with me, now and in the hour of my death.
‘Who gave you that ring?’ Ghause asked suddenly.
Amicia opened her mouth to speak, her own will broken by the sudden question, but a voice behind her cut her off ruthlessly.
‘Stop bothering the girl. Christ on the cross, woman, you are at her as if she’s a maid who’s stolen a silver spoon. Never mind the old hag, sister, she likes tormenting pretty women, and look, you are one.’ The Earl leaned in the door of the solar.
Trapped between them, Amicia knew a moment of true fear. It was like being a fawn caught between two giants.
‘She’s no maid. She’s a sorceress of immense power, she has more secrets than Richard Plangere, and I think she’s lying to me. I wouldn’t have let her in my wards, but now that someone else has, I mean to know her.’ Ghause stood with her hands on her hips. ‘You’re no nun.’
Amicia’s breath caught. ‘My vocation is not for you to criticise,’ she snapped.
‘Look at those breasts!’ the Earl said, slapping his booted thigh. ‘Sweet Christ, breathe harder, sweet.’
Amicia stood straight-backed, as if she was the equal of an Earl and the King’s sister. ‘May I be excused?’ she asked. ‘If this is your courtesy, I’ll stay with the servants.’
She ducked under the Earl’s arm and got down the steps to the main hall without a voice being raised.
With help from servants, she made her way to Ser John’s room, where the old knight was lying in a closed bed with heavy curtains. His colour was good and he was awake, and his squire was reading to him from a book of chivalry. He rose, but Amicia waved to the young man to sit.
‘Do you know Muriens?’ she asked.
Ser John shook his head. ‘Met the Earl in forty-nine or fifty. We was on the same side after Chevin, and I played dice with him once or twice. That’s all.’ He raised his head. ‘You, my girl, are red as a beet.’
‘Lady Ghause has been interrogating me. The Earl would like to peel me and perhaps eat me as well.’ She threw herself into a chair. ‘I’m a terrible nun. I want to burn her to ash. I need to go to confession for fifty things.’
Ser John nodded. ‘Well – you’re safe enough in here, and I don’t think I could muster an assault on your chastity, even if I was moved that way. How about I’ll just tell you my confessions, and then you can give me a nice easy penance. Jehan, go fetch us some nice hot wine.’
‘Thanks, Ser John.’
‘Think nothing of it.’ He managed a smile. ‘You save me from monsters, and I’ll save you from the Earl.’
She read to him from the gospels – he had a travelling set, writ plain and with no illuminations. After a few minutes, Jehan returned with wine, and sat on the settle near the fire and sewed his master’s ruined arming cote. Later, she reinforced all her healing work on him.
The Earl, dressed in green velvet, came to the door. ‘There you are,’ he said. He pushed in. ‘How’s your patient?’
Ser John sat up. ‘Well enough to tell you to get your teeth out of the nun before I get out of this bed and come after you with a mace.’
The Earl laughed. ‘I’ve heard you are a hot one, Ser John. May I pay her my respectful admiration?’
Ser John looked at the nun and then shook his head. ‘I’m thinking the good sister wants no admiration of that sort at all. Having, as you understand, got a bellyful of it from a company of mercenaries during a siege.’
The Earl laughed. ‘Damme, Ser John, she must have had them baying like wolves. And full of witch-power, too?’ He grinned. ‘Sister, I’m not really the spawn of Satan. I’ll keep my hands to myself – although, if you ever change your mind—’
Getting no response, he shook his head. ‘You’re better,’ he said to Ser John. ‘I gather you went after a stone troll with a dagger and won.’
Ser John laughed. Then he grabbed his ribs and wheezed. ‘Sweet Christ, Your Grace, but you can tell it that way. And while the words are true, it’d be just as true to say the evil thing tripped over me!’
The Earl laughed. ‘Well – there’s a spot at my Christmas high table for both of you. And my wife will keep her place with you, sister.’ He grinned at her, and his gaze fell from her face to her breasts, which were, she thought, buried in two layers of wool gowns. But some men—
Supper was served to the three of them without comment. Sister Amicia went to the chapel and prayed with the priest, who seemed distant. She found a clean white wool bed gown on her bed, and she wore it, and the only dreams she had were of swimming in a clear lake under stars so big that they were like berries on mistletoe.
Christmas Day dawned at Ticondaga with a long spell of snow followed by brilliant sunshine. Amicia went to mass, and spent the morning on her knees. As the whole garrison, their wives and sweethearts, processed out of the chapel and through the halls, Amicia found Ghause had left her husband’s side and joined her. As Ser John was tottering along at her side, she felt secure from immediate assault. Master Amato was close by, and smiled at her.