Chapter 5 – The Crimes of Lady Pavot #7
“I don’t think pincers will be necessary,” he said, without the slightest alteration of expression. Ophele huffed, but Azelma just smiled.
“If I remembered the color of her nightrobe, I’d tell you that, too.
But I listened, because she was a scared girl, and I liked her.
And things happened fast, after that. They kept it secret, but your mother said the Divinity was over the moon, planning the nursery with her, already picking out names.
She was sure he meant to acknowledge it.
And you know, normally a girl in such a place would be off for a visit to the country, and that would be the last anyone heard of her. ”
“Bastards can’t inherit,” Remin said slowly, his black brows knotting. “It’s in the Imperial Code. They can be acknowledged, and they can be granted property, but they can’t inherit titles.”
This was true. Ophele could have recited the relevant articles.
“Well, you would know better than I, Your Grace,” Azelma spread her hands.
“The last time I spoke to her in that kitchen, Lady Pavot talked about her family, her father and mother and brother, and did I think they would be dreadfully disappointed in her. She knew she had done wrong. But she thought…well. She said, the Emperor needs an heir. It would be bad for the Empire if he didn’t have one, wouldn’t it? ”
There was a weighty silence. Even a cook would have known what that meant.
“But that would…” Ophele began faintly, after a rapid mental review of the Imperial Code. “The only way…”
“That would mean deposing the Empress,” finished Remin.
“I don’t know if she thought that far. I don’t know what the Emperor might have promised her, or what plans they made,” Azelma said, nodding.
“But to me…that didn’t sound like something she would have thought up on her own.
Lady Pavot was never…scheming. That was part of her trouble, I don’t believe she ever thought of him as the Emperor at all. ”
Azelma sighed and picked up her tea, but did not drink.
“And I know this next bit is what you most want to know, my lord, but there’s little I can tell you.
That was the year the Empress had her miscarriage, and all of Starfall was up in arms about it.
The whole Empire, I guess. Everyone was afraid to stir a step while it was investigated, and there were some that said it was Lady Pavot that had caused it, that she had given the Empress poison.
I will never believe it. But a carriage came for her, and she was gone for a while, at least a week.
And when she came back, she was scared out of her wits.
She gathered everyone together and said the household was to be closed.
She thanked us, and said she had been happy, and wished us well.
And I…well, if there was ever a time the lower house shouldn’t mix with the upper, that was it, but those fool maids made me so blazing mad.
They were all in the kitchen saying how the Divinity had had his fun, and that was that, and oh, my lady, it wasn’t like that.
I don’t say that for his sake, but your mother wasn’t. ..”
She exhaled sharply through her nostrils.
“Well, I went upstairs. And your mother was crying, of course. I talked to her a bit, but barring that night she told me she was with child, she did know how to keep a secret. She never told me what happened. She just cried and cried and kept saying, he’s letting me go, he said my family won’t be hurt, so it’s not that bad, is it? ”
“I didn’t ask,” Azelma confessed, with a guilty air.
“I swear, Your Grace, I didn’t want to know.
You see a pregnant girl carrying the Emperor’s bastard, you hear her say that…
well, that’s killing business, that is, and you don’t need to know the Imperial Code to see it.
When I left her, I said good-bye, and wished her the best, and I never meant to speak to her again.
But everyone else left. One by one, over the next couple weeks, all of them scarpered, the maids and the footmen and the butler and even the boot boy.
But you can ask anyone who was in the city back then, there wasn’t a whisper of anything, before it happened. ”
“What happened?” Ophele’s mouth was dry. Because she knew. Of course, she knew. Everyone knew how this story ended.
“I didn’t choose to stay.” The old woman looked down at her hands.
“I just…didn’t leave. Right up to the moment the carriage drew up in front of the manse, I was there, and it was loaded up, and wherever Lady Pavot was going, it wasn’t home.
She was shaking, she was so scared. So I thought, I’ll just ride along for a bit.
Just to the Starfall bridge, and then I’ll hop down and that will be that.
But I was there all the way into the city, and onto Crescent Street, and then we went past the Court of Rule, and then… ”
“The Place of White Stones,” Remin said quietly.
“Yes, Your Grace. We never actually got near it. The crowds were everywhere.”
“What’s…what’s the Place of White Stones?” Ophele asked, looking between them.
“That’s the place where they execute criminals, child,” Azelma said gently.
“We were caught up there for so long, even Lady Pavot roused enough to take notice. She asked the coachman what was the matter, and he went to check, and when he came back he told us they were executing House…that House.” She glanced at Remin, her light blue eyes shining with unshed tears.
“They had been executing them since dawn. Your Grace, I can stop if you want me to.”
“No. Go on.” His face was dead white.
“Yes. Well. Well, when she heard that, Lady Pavot gave a little scream and fainted dead away, but we were delayed so long, there was time for the coachman to run and fetch some smelling salts from an alchemist to bring her back around. We sat for hours before they finally started diverting traffic. She was…sick. We could hear it, every time the crowd cheered…”
Ophele covered her mouth with her hand, feeling as if she might be sick herself.
She wanted Azelma to stop. She didn’t want to hear anymore.
No, she didn’t want Remin to hear anymore.
She wanted to cover his ears and tell Azelma to be quiet, but his face was so hard and cold and still, she didn’t dare to move, and his eyes were like two open wounds.
“I could guess it had something to do with her.” Azelma pulled a handkerchief from her pocket and blotted her eyes. “She kept saying, but they promised they wouldn’t, I said I did it, they said if I just signed…she kept saying that, over and over again.”
“Did she say what she did?” Ophele asked wretchedly.
“She confessed to poisoning the Empress.” Azelma’s hands knotted in her handkerchief. “Poison to keep her from conceiving, poison that would abort the Emperor’s divine heir. She signed a confession that she had done it on the orders of Duke Benetot of…that House.”
Ophele was frozen with horror.
“But—but she didn’t,” she whispered. “She didn’t really—”
“No. I don’t believe there was ever any such plot.
Until the day she died, she said His Grace was innocent.
And she was sorry for it,” Azelma said quietly.
“I know that doesn’t help. Even when she began to get sick, she said it must be a curse from the stars, for what she had done.
Mercy, child, I thought the same,” she confessed, tears streaking her soft, seamed cheeks.
“I will never forget that day. She was a good girl, but she was afraid, and she did a terrible, terrible thing. She was so afraid that you would pay for it, when she was gone.”
The silence drifted down, soft and cold and complete, like a blanket of covering snow.
Ophele’s throat was so tight it hurt, as if all the words and thoughts and feelings were knotted and strangling her, and when Remin finally stirred and rose, she rose with him, terrified, horrified, and wanting more than anything else to somehow blot the last hour from his memory.
But he caught her arms before she could wrap them around him, holding her gently away.
“Thank—thank you for telling me that,” he said stiffly to Azelma. “I might ask you more questions later. I am—going out, for a little bit. Wife, I am not angry. You did nothing wrong. I am glad you were born. I will be back.”
“Remin,” she whispered, but she did not try to follow him. He did not even pause. He almost stumbled over Miche, who was hovering in the hallway right outside the door, and kept going, his heavy boots thudding toward the stairs.
“I’ll go with him,” Miche said quickly, and his face blurred in her vision as Ophele’s tears overflowed, and she covered her face with her hands and sobbed wretchedly.
“Oh, child,” said Azelma, just as she must have done all those years ago with Ophele’s mother, and pulled her beside the fire to let her cry.