18. Chapter 18
Chapter 18
“ I t had been quite some time since you visited me here, my lord,” Father Telmen observed, moving to light more candles immediately. His modest quarters were already illuminated well enough to read and write in, but he presumably thought the nobleman he served needed a greater opulence of light for comfort.
“I admit it. The business of the estate had detained me.”
“That alone?” The older man asked pointedly.
It was astonishing, how a mentor of one’s childhood could reduce one to fumbling however many summers one had seen.
“There was also the matter of defenses”, Athelstan admitted. “There is a… certain danger I wanted to talk to you about.”
“The northmen and their raids?”
“Who told you?”
“My very own brain, Your Lordship, if you pardon me. I am too young to have seen the worst of what they used to be, but my father told me stories. I would have had an aunt, had she not been taken in one.”
“You should have told father. He was a man of honor, and…”
“Your lord father had made inquiries on my behalf, soon after I entered his service. But these bore no fruit; the trail had gone cold after so many years. I imagine she ended up at some slave-market beyond the Glittering Sea. Not all wrongs can be put right, my lord”. The last phrase sounded pointed, as though meant to be a lesson for one’s charge.
Athelstan quite resented being treated like someone’s charge.
“No, not all”, he replied curtly, thinking of a flower-drunk spring day a long time ago. “But some can be prevented”. He quickly told the chaplain about the matter of the Undying Fire, and the fact that there was no help coming from the royal fleet.
“Your brother has always been a somewhat short-sighted youth,” Father Telmen evidently tried to avoid speaking frankly of the man who now sat the throne. “Even those ancient philosophers who were dedicated to pleasure as though it were the highest deity looked at further consequences and long-lasting contentment.”
“I doubt Orwyn turned to philosophical treatises to justify his follies,” Athelstan grumbled. “The likelihood that he’s ever read one is about as small as that of a pirate becoming a holy brother. But that matters not. What matters is that we have a small chance at beating our enemies, and we need your help in this.”
“Has it been your lady wife’s idea?”
“No, her idea had been to find a scholar from the Academy. But you are a scholar from the Academy, are you not?”
“I have been one a long time ago, but that was before I found my vocation.”
“That makes you a more learned man in these matters than any of us.”
“I have forgotten a lot.”
“It’s easier to remember than to learn anew”.
“Rediscovering the secret of the Undying Fire would have been a miracle. I am not the man to bring miracles to life.”
“A miracle is only a marriage of skill and chance.”
“As your spiritual advisor, I would pretend I did not hear this.”
“Actually, having a sample is all the chance we would need, and I believe in your skill”.
“If it had been that easy, the secret would have long since revealed. There had been great commanders innumerable in Craerenth since the elder days, and ambitious rulers aplenty.”
“There have. But how many of them had domain over sea coast, and subjects skilled at diving? Not to mention…” Flattery felt like oil in his mouth, but there was more at stake. Besides, it was not as hard to flatter a man one genuinely admired. “Not to mention a spiritual advisor as proficient at alchemy as he is at theology.”
“That would be overstating the case”.
“Your humility would be the death of us all, Father. Quite literally, too.”
“It’s not humility alone, my lord. This weapon is a terrible thing. They say it used to burn on the very water…”
“It does”, Athelstan confirmed bluntly.
“It can be a horror in the wrong hands.”
“I need it to defend my home. No one in their right mind would call it wrong.”
“Yourself, yes. But the realm is not starved of great commanders now. Or - of ambitious rulers.”
“We have but one ruler now.”
That was nothing but a gruff riposte, and Athelstan sensed it before he even finished the phrase. One ruler - one who was hungry for quick pleasures and easy victories, glory won, his name written in illuminated letters across the manuscripts of the future.
“One who would greatly welcome such a gift,” Father Telmen said quietly.
“I would never -”
“Won’t you?”
Athelstan imagined it for a second. Bringing the powerful ancient secret to his brother like a sworn knight returning with a relic. Orwyn’s eyes shining as if he beheld his dour, plodding younger sibling for the first time. Orwyn slapping him on the back, I didn’t know you had it in you, Athelstan! We are going to do great things together.
And it would all be like in a song, won’t it? Finally, the world righting itself to the heroic realm it seemed to be in his childhood. The golden king in a golden crown and his valiant brother by his side, loved and respected and cheered.
Then he imagined Julia’s words on the subject; about the havoc unleashed.
She fell in love with that dour, plodding man; the hero of the Redstone Pass, as she called him. One who put duty above everything, however boring it seemed to his brother.
And it was his duty not to let the fire that could burn water fall into the wrong hands.
“Yes,” he said, his voice firmer now.
“If you use the fire, there would be little chance of rumours not making their way back to the capital. People are going to ask questions.”
They both knew whom he meant by people.
“Then I am going to conceal the secret of the making of it well, and pretend ignorance to my brother’s face. It’s a good time Orwyn learned that he cannot have everything he wants”.
“It is not going to endear you to His Majesty,” the chaplain warned.
His Majesty; like a door closing in the face of everything else Orwyn had ever been to him.
He had already burned their boat with that over-bright fire; he might as well burn the rest.
“I have other things to worry about. Besides there would be no secret to protect unless you were to discover it.”
“I suppose the Undying Fire is crucial to the effort. Especially if you won’t be able to get additional vessels from the Fishmongers’ Guild…”
“They can hardly refuse. These are their lands, too”.
“They care little about the lands,” Father Telmen pointed out. “Their livelihood is the sea. They might have little to lose, even should the worst come to worst and the northmen clutch onto these holdings like they had centuries ago. A castle can be pillaged and a field can be burned, but they would hardly take the trouble to hurt trade. The worst they could do, in the long run, is tax the merchants harsher than the king does. The fishmongers with their herring-fleets won’t be dispossessed. It’s you and your tenants who stand more to lose, my lord”.
“Still, they are my tenants, too. It’s their duty -”
“Do all men always do their duty?” The chaplain smiled ruefully. “Do all women?”
Athelstan thought of the spring afternoon years ago, and what he saw then, and what he had heard after.
“Triad knows, no.”
“Then you have your answer, my lord. I would do my best to parse that unholy pitch for its parts, and to find out how to put it back together. But there are some battles where I can be no help to you.”
***
Another person might have thought that designation overdramatic, for who on earth would think a simple conversation to be a battle?
However, now, sitting at the head of the dinner table and looking at the assembled men from the guild, Athelstan felt he would have rather faced down an enemy army.
The merchants were soft-spoken and amiable and clad in fine summer linen. There was very little resemblance to the crass newly-rich of popular satires.
That did not make the situation less uncomfortable.
“I must tell you the true reason for my invitation”, Athelstan started grimly. “I have reasons to suppose that there is a major raid, or else an invasion, by the northmen being planned.”
No exclamations at that. Nerves likely honed by decades of negotiations.
“The royal fleet is not coming,” he added bluntly. “The sea-levies likely won’t be enough. We would need the war-galleys you have accompany your caravans.”
“I doubt you do, Your Lordship,” the chairman of the guild said quietly.
Athelstan could remember him, resplendent in a scarlet coat, on the evening of the midsummer ball. The one with the awkward son.
“Would you care to explain, Master Heneage?”
“Their state is not as brilliant as you are hoping for. They hadn’t been especially mighty to start with. You must understand, these are old ships to guard minor trading ventures, not the greats of the royal fleet.”
Athelstan looked at him silently for a moment. On one hand, he needed these ships. On the other, he was extremely reluctant to reveal the true extent of that need, the actual hopelessness of the situation.
“You are unfair to your own bounty, Master Heneage. I have heard of the mastery of your craftsmen and the prowess of your ships, and I have to say, I am impressed.”
“Not the mastery of our craftsmen, surely. That of the Shipwrights” Guild. I am glad that a man of your experience in the matter thinks our vessels so fine, but I am afraid we cannot simply hand them over.”
“I am not asking you to do so. Only to lend them in a dire situation.”
“A situation that can prove dire to the ships themselves,” the chairman pointed out. “They were not cheap to construct, and our members do that with their own money. There is no great treasury where we can find resources should we need them for some project, Your Lordship. Everything we have comes out of our own coffers, and everything we have in our own coffers, we have earned.”
“I have never said otherwise.”
“Then you must understand - now is the trading season, and soon the herring-season would begin, too. Our main vessels need protection.”
“Greyharbor needs protection, too,” Athelstan snapped. “Mearnt as a whole needs protection. You have a duty to contribute to that, just as every other man has.”
“We do, and we fulfill that duty. We have paid the taxes that His Majesty needed for the war, then those he needed for the relief of the hunger in the capital. Combat is an expensive thing, Your Lordship - ask any mercenary commander. Provisions, gunpowder, every single bolt for every single crossbow - these things do not appear out of thin air. It had cost us dearly.”
“It is hardly my fault that the new Chancellor of the Treasury is a creature of great rapacity.”
“It had cost us dearly,” Master Heneage repeated. “Some of us had barely recovered. Some had not recovered at all.”
“It will cost us all even more dearly if the northmen win.”
“Could we talk on our own, Your Lordship?”
Athelstan could guess what it meant. Some outrageous demand, most likely. Some demand he would have to meet.
It would have unprecedented even a generation ago, Athelstan thought distantly. A guild chairman bartering with the lord of his land thus.
Athelstan supposed grimly that it was the budding order of the day. The men who paid for the provisions and the gunpowder and the bolts for the crossbow have done very well out of the civil war, whatever taxes they had to pay afterwards.
What was there left to do? He got up and followed Master Heneage into one of the rooms to the side.
Upon the walls, tapestries were hanging, somewhat pallid, but still retaining their color.
“I would have you know,” the chairman started, not waiting for an invitation, “I would dearly like to help you. But these are uncertain times. There are certain guarantees of one’s family’s future one dearly likes to have.”
“How much?”
“You are insulting me, Your Lordship. I am sure it is unintentional. It is not silver I am looking for; as I’ve said, it is guarantees of my family’s good and safe future. I have a son - a sweet boy, brought up as a gentleman. So much so, in fact, that I’m not entirely sure he would thrive if he follows me in business. He would be the star of the lists, though.”
“Would a man of his birth be admitted to the lists?”
“He would, if he has the right sort of wife.”
The full meaning of the chairman’s words did not register at first - so outrageous it was, so out of anything ordinary or acceptable.
“I am not going to trade my sister in for ships and cannons.”
“My son has a kind heart.”
“And Roxane has very few summers behind her.”
“I thought most noble brides were betrothed young,” Master Heneage put it bluntly.
My sister is not most brides.
“Not all. Besides,” he seized upon the argument with relief, “His Majesty would never permit such a marriage.”
“His Majesty regards his lady sister as an embarrassment. Which is a shame. There used to be a rule about men with marred health or missing limbs not being allowed on the throne, I think? I wonder if it left some vestiges.”
“His Majesty has been...” The words kind to her stuck in his throat. “Reasonably caring.”
Athelstan knew that his argument was, in truth, something of an excuse.
“Everyone knows you are her true guardian,” the merchant pressed. “It is your consent that I seek.”
“You are not going to get it.”
“Think of it, Your Lordship. We both have something the other needs.”
“I can see your line of thought. But, unfortunately for you, my sister is not for sale.”
***
“I can already guess that the meeting did not go well,” Master Telmen observed as Athelstan stumbled into the castle chapel. The old man had been arranging the sacred flowers: lilies dear to the Virgin, full-blooded roses of the Lady, and the foxglove of the Fate.
The garland was bright across the usually stern stone of the place. Athelstan wondered for a second if there would be such flowers next year, or will their gardens turn to ash by then. Or, if not, who would be looking at them by then.
“Their demands were unacceptable.”
“I would have thought they would not be in a position to make any sort of demands.”
“I thought so, too. Apparently, they were. Perhaps, they simply knew our desperation.”
“How much did they ask for?”
“My flesh and blood in return.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Master Heneage, their chairman, demanded my sister’s hand in marriage for his son.”
“Ah.” The priest fell silent for a moment. “That is outrageous, of course. Is the son much older than her?”
“Three years or so, from what I’ve seen.”
“Does he have a reputation for cruelty?”
“His father swears by his kind heart. But then, all fathers do that.”
“Well. The demand is presumptuous, of course. But...”
“But?” Athelstan raised his head. “There is a but ?”
“There almost always is a but ,” the priest replied mildly. “Tell me, Your Lordship, what do you think lies in Roxane’s future?”
“Lessons with my wife, hopefully. A presentation at court, when she is older...”
“My lord Athelstan,” Father Telmen said quietly. He did not call him Lord Waite. “You know as well as I do that, if His Majesty had wanted her at court, he would have summoned her months ago. I am not familiar with its dealings, but I doubt there is a dearth of gentlewomen to act as her governess and a guardian of her chastity.”
“Something might change,” Athelstan replied vaguely.
“The weavings of the Fate can be intricate, of course. But the Triad gave humans sense. I know you have decided that Their path is not for her, and refused the Elder Sister.”
“As was my right. They would have stifled her.”
“I don’t know. The Sisters are sometimes women of great learning. But, of course, you are my noble master; let us suppose you are right in all things. Do you think it would be possible for Lady Roxane to live all her life under your roof?”
“I hope you don’t think I am going to get tired of her and leave her in the streets”, Athelstan replied tensely.
“No, you never would. People might think it unnatural, that a lively young woman of good birth is left to grow old in her brother’s distant castle.”
“She will be well-cared for.”
“This world is not at its kindest when it comes to the treatment of spinsters.”
“I would never allow anyone to hurt her. Not even so much as with a word.”
“There is more than one kind of hurt. What kind of life do you suppose she is going to enjoy: a mistress of no household, a royal sister with not an ounce of power? There is a reason most women abhor depending on the kindness of their relatives, and it is not because they are so eager for husbands.”
“What if her husband will hurt her?”
“Then she has at least one brother to whom she can always appeal”.
“I suppose there are cases when a marriage can be dissolved without a damage to the bride’s reputation”, Athelstan thought aloud. “Consanguinity is unlikely, but I could prove that I had been pushed into agreeing to this match under duress.”
“As your spiritual advisor, I really should not be condoning your thoughts on dissolving marriages and twisting the truth under oath.”
“Blame Julia’s pernicious influence as to the latter”. His wife would have doubtlessly called it just so - her own pernicious influence - and laughed afterwards. “I sense another but , however.”
“But if it is the only way for you to see sense...”
“I still see little sense in that. I swore to keep Roxane safe.”
“After the siege?”
Athelstan nodded, not trusting his tongue.
“You didn’t fail her then. You had no choice.”
“I did, and my choices mean nothing to a scared, starving child I should have been protecting.”
“You cannot protect her by hiding her from the world.”
“I won’t crawl to Master Heneage on my front to beg for another offer”.
“I doubt it would be needed. If he truly is the social climber you think him to be, he won’t ask it of you”.