Chapter Twenty-Six The Unknighting of Benedict Castor the Third
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
THE UNKNIGHTING OF BENEDICT CASTOR THE THIRD
Petula Hall, that great house that belonged to Maude’s mother and grandmother and all the Bauers before her, kept its doors wide open. Folk displaced by the fires came like lost sheep, seeking refuge.
Tory Bassett’s and Samuel Eichel’s bodies were found in the Wood, held together by their armor.
Samuel, like Dedrick and Hamelin before him, was placed in his family tomb, and Tory’s remains were brought along with foresters and knights and Edora Eichel, all of whom journeyed from the Chiming Wood to the Cliffs of Bellidine. As for Benji—
He rode with them, not resplendent but downcast, his head low, his blue eyes bleary, his fist locked around the Artful Brigand’s coin as he held tightly to what might very well be his final vestige of power.
He’d failed to deliver on his promises and return tournament gold to the nobles who’d spent it. He’d lost the inkwell, the oar, the chime—killed his own knights. In a kingdom of superstitions and portents, Benedict Castor the Third had become a bad omen.
Once, Benji and I had run past birches and brambles, wielding blunted swords, laughing and dueling, heeding Maude’s threatening calls only when the sun had fallen over the trees.
Now, those trees were ashes. And for what he had done to Sybil, trying to martyr her in the Wood two days ago—any remaining faith I had for him was in ashes, too. His time was at hand.
And I knew, just as I’d known with his grandfather, what came next.
“They await him in the Cliffs,” Maude said.
She, Sybil, and I peered out a window on the top floor of Petula Hall.
With so many trees burned down, we could see for miles.
We watched together as the king’s caravan made its way west out of the Chiming Wood.
“Edora and I have arranged it. Regius Ormsby and Otto Lange and Avice Fisher will meet us there.”
“You’ve done it, Maude,” Sybil murmured. “You took down the king of Traum.”
“There is work left to do, my girl.” Maude tapped the hammer in Sybil’s hand. “There’s the coin left.” Her face hardened. “And the nobles will want to replace him with a king that is most useful to each of them. The work is not over, I fear.”
She left to get Bartholomew, and Sybil and I began to put on armor. “How’s the pain?” I asked her.
“I’m sore all over.”
My face went hot, and she laughed. “Not from that.” Her hand ghosted over her abdomen. “The pain isn’t sharp like before. More like… heavy and stiff and aching.”
Sybil saw the concern on my face. “Help me with my armor, Rory.” Then she smiled, her face entirely without strain, hefting my apprehension away. “I want to wear all of it.”
An old habit, naming the pieces of armor. I dressed Sybil with slow, steadfast veneration. “Pauldron, rerebrace, vambrace, gauntlet, greave…”
Sybil’s veil and crown lay with her other belongings. “What about those?” I asked.
She glanced down. Bent low and retrieved the crown. Slowly, Sybil placed it on her own head. “One final spectacle,” she murmured.
I couldn’t help it. I always needed to kiss her. “And after?” I asked, pressing my lips against hers.
“Whatever you wish, Rory. The world is yours.” Color bloomed in Sybil’s cheeks, and my heart stuttered. “Ours.”
Ten minutes later, we were both armor-clad. Maude had failed to coax a snoring Bartholomew out of bed, and Sybil had taken up the task.
Maude and I bade farewell to Victor, who grunted, then suffocated us both in a crushing hug, and went to ready the horses. I ran a hand through Fig’s mane, and the old glutton lifted her head from the marigolds she’d been devouring and gave me a wet kiss, pressing her muzzle over my cheek.
Maude retrieved her own horse, and we moved onto the drive where a cart waited. She glanced once, then twice back at the house as if she’d forgotten something.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Listen,” she said.
I heard the voices of the visitors echoing in the house, the irregular heartbeat of dozens of footsteps thumping through the corridors. Someone was laughing near an open window, and the gargoyle’s craggy voice echoed. “Mind your lecturing tone, Bartholomew! I am not to be truffled with.”
Maude smiled. “I don’t think anyone ever laughed behind those walls until you and Benji came.
It was always such a quiet house.” Her grip on her axe was easy, a soft contentedness no one besides we few who had spent our lives looking into Maude Bauer’s face would recognize. “I like it better like this.”
We rode a mile behind the king’s caravan with layfolk and other such travelers.
The minstrel had hitched a ride in the wagon behind us and strummed his lute, his song echoing down the road.
Actors and audience were gone; this time, he seemed to play for himself.
“A colorful dream, the bright land of Traum, where the wind on the moors hums a tune. Where the holloways lead you awry and along, and the gowans are always in bloom.” He sighed.
“But what use are knights when the fish are all gone? What help are weapons to flame? No chime, ink, or oar ever swept my damn floor, and no dream gave a poor man his claim.”
One note, then another, he kept to his craft. “So wherever you ramble, if you ramble at all, take care to lend out your hand. No coin the king paid e’er lent me much aid, but a kindness is gold in this land.”
We rolled down the road, all of us bearing a heaviness that was not the crushing weight of resignation. Maude looked out on the gaps in the trees where the fire had blazed. “The Wood was so full of life barely a month ago,” she said. “Now death has come.”
The gargoyle, whom Sybil had wrapped in an obscene amount of bandages, then blankets, sat propped up in the cart. There were cracks in his eyes now, and still he, too, looked out over the decimated Wood. “And who, I wonder,” he asked, “visits after death?”
I put my arm around Sybil, and she sighed against my neck. “Those of us who keep living, I imagine,” she murmured.
We reached the Cliffs of Bellidine at sunset, and it stopped my heart how beautiful the sun looked as it set over the Sighing Sea, painting the hamlet a far softer orange than the fires that had raged behind us.
But the pink thrift flowers that grew along the cliffs were not so vibrant as they should have been. They had faded, and the grass around them was dead. I did not see any speckled sheep, and none of the windows in the crofts along the road where lit.
Maude’s brow tightened. We carried on, turning down the road and into the humble town where the inn and several other stone buildings sat.
No one was there.
“Do you think they all went on holiday?” the gargoyle asked.
“There.” Sybil stood in the cart and pointed south. “Smoke, coming from the beach.”
We found folk of the Cliffs of Bellidine gathered around a pyre.
The earthquake had not spared a single hamlet—the bluff above the beach was uneven, pieces of the cliffside broken, roots dangling.
There were giant fissures in the rocks. Some were so wide I could see the dark mouth of the cavern system within the caves where the Heartsore Weaver had once dwelled.
Every time a wave came, knocking against rock, pieces fell into the sea.
We had to leave the cart and horses and travel down on foot.
Sybil and Maude and I lifted the gargoyle from the cart, supporting almost the entirety of his weight. He began to wiggle. “I am capable of walking, Bartholomew—”
He fell along a dune and ate a mouthful of sand. Maude hid her smile behind her arm, I choked on a laugh, and Sybil put her hands on her hips. The gargoyle pouted, then sneezed, and we carried him down to the beach together.
The king’s caravan had already arrived. Benji stood, boots buried in the sand, near the pyre with his knights. The king had reached the final hamlet, but it wasn’t a tournament that awaited him. There were no purple banners or songs or jubilant calls. There were no adornments at all, save the pyre.
Benji seemed so small, pale and wretched, there upon the beach.
I looked away.
Next to the king, Edora Eichel held the hands of foresters.
Nobles from the other hamlets had gathered as well.
Regius Ormsby was there, wearing a vibrant orange robe and standing with five other noble merchants.
Otto Lange was with a handful of scribes, and Avice Fischer with four accompanying oarsmen.
Nearest to the flames, holding a singed breastplate and weeping, was Tory’s mother, Brenna Bassett.
One by one, the nobles put a piece of armor onto the pyre. Breastplate for Tory, pauldron for Samuel, gauntlet for Hamelin, and helmet for Dedrick. I realized then what it was.
A funeral pyre.
Maude hurried through the sand toward Brenna Bassett. “I’m so sorry, Brenna.”
The older woman reached out and clutched Maude’s hands tightly. “Thank you.”
“How does your hamlet fare?”
“We’ve retreated to the beaches until we can assess how deep the damage goes into the caves beneath the Cliffs.
Several crofts were destroyed in the quake.
The roots of our thrift flowers were disturbed, severed, and all our sheep have scattered.
” Brenna Bassett sighed. “It will take more than our hardiest tapestries to weave this hamlet back together.”
“Tell us, Diviner,” a weaver called, wringing her hands together. She searched Sybil’s eyes. “What say the Omens of this disaster? What portents does the Heartsore Weaver lend?”
Folk of the Cliffs came forth to listen, and the nobles on the beach held Sybil so tightly in their gazes I worried she might begin to miss her veil.