Count Scar - SA (13 page)

"Doubtless that dates from Richildis's entry into the convent as a girl," suggested Melchior.

"Well, the seneschal didn't explain why, or even tell me the nuns were headed by my own aunt. There are no records of an entry gift for the Holy Family that I've seen, but then the old count
doesn't seem to have kept the records from before he moved here to Peyrefixade. And the seneschal doesn't say a lot about anything. At first I thought he was ill, because he always looks so terrible,
but I think it must instead be sorrow for the death of the countess. I said something about her one day when we were going over the accounts, and he was so overcome he had to excuse himself. He
certainly seems to miss her more than that husband of hers does."

I watched Melchior for a reaction as I spoke. Since his excellent work tracking the assassin to a literal dead end at that disreputable inn in the duke's city, I had gained a new respect for his
abilities. It was disconcerting to have a priest who could learn by magic those things which everyone else thought hidden, but a good captain should be able to put to use any ability of the men in
his service. Even if the priest was spying on me for the duke or plotting against my best interests for the benefit of his Order, he was an intelligent man, and I liked trying out ideas on him, some
that I would not even have tried on Bruno.

"I have not pressed Seneschal Guilhem to open his heart to me," Melchior said contritely. "Perhaps I should—he would learn that God will wipe away the tears even of the most sorrowful."

Well, I should have expected that reaction from a priest, but it wasn't my concern. "Ill or mournful," I grumbled, "I'm worried that if he dies or retires he'll leave us no record whatsoever of what
my rents ought to be. That's part of the reason I need to go around to all the villages now, before the rents come due: both to make a display with my knights to discourage any peasant who might
have been planning to use the succession as an excuse to 'forget' what he owes, and also to get proper rent rolls down on parchment. God knows what a mess it would be if the seneschal really did
take ill, leaving me to deal with incompetent and probably corrupt mayors in sorting out what I'm owed."

The cold weight of the medallion shifted again against my chest. Sometimes I had the feeling that while I was wearing it my thoughts were more focused and concentrated, but not at the moment.

I drained the last of my beer. "I'm going to go see how those masons are coming on my fireplace."

I had not let the masons sleep in the castle. Their foreman grumbled about it at some length until Bruno stopped him—doubtless using persuasions that it was good I didn't know about—but if
someone was trying to assassinate me I didn't want strangers in the castle after dark. The guards who spent the night in turns watching at the gates would keep out external enemies but would
never have a chance against enemies within. And I certainly wasn't going to be like the emperor and have a trusted guardsman stand watch, awake by his master's bed, all night—I myself had
been that guardsman several times too many. My knights and servants here in Peyrefixade I thought I could trust, because the attack had come at the duke's court, not in the castle where an
attacker would have had much more opportunity, but the masons I considered suspect. The seneschal had found tents for them in the storeroom, which they pitched below the gates, but they ate
well enough with the staff and certainly worked hard for the money I was paying them.

The fireplace was now virtually completed. They had also put in a hearth in the chamber one storey up, and when finished it should all be very warm and cozy. The seneschal, supposedly
supervising, leaned against a wall, his mouth drawn down and his eyes looking far away. It would be good, I thought, for him to get out of the castle on my tour of my property—a tour, it now
seemed, that would include a visit to my Great-aunt Richildis.

Chilly as it was in the hall, the masons had already peeled off their blue smocks, and sweat stood out on their muscular backs as they heaved cut stone into place: red sandstone newly quarried,
dragged up to the gates by oxen and then inside by the men themselves, and costing me a larger proportion of the amount left in the treasure chest than I liked to recall. Trained fighter though I
was, none of the masons would have needed a weapon beyond his powerful hands if he wanted to kill me.

"Prince Alfonso wanting me dead I think I can understand," I muttered to Melchior as we watched the masons work. The prince's lands, according to the duke, lay just south of mine, and if
Peyrefkade was long without a count it would be an excellent opportunity for him to claim the county for his own. "But if any of these lads were in Prince Alfonso's pay, they would have struck
by now." I didn't have nearly the ear yet to distinguish between an Auccitan and a Nabarrese accent, especially since I wasn't sure I had ever heard the latter—the grunts from the assailant while
he and I were trying to strangle each other hardly counted. A number of people had tried to kill me over the years, but it had always been in battle or else, twice, in a drunken brawl, never by
stealth. Most of the time I tried not to dwell on my present danger, but sometimes, unaccountably, I felt my ears begin to tingle and the hair stand up on my neck, though when I turned there
was never anyone there.

I didn't tell Melchior that my imagination kept providing me other alternatives I liked even less: the duke, the priests of the Order of the Three Kings, or Lord Thierri. Since Thierri had killed the
would-be assassin, it was much more difficult to suspect him than I preferred, and even harder to suspect Duke Argave, who might be capable of a subtle and complex game, but hardly one that
involved sending for someone from the distant north just to assassinate him. A priest-assassin I would have dismissed—even if a suspicious mind might have suggested that Melchior had had
excellent first-hand information to help him follow the trail of dead men—except for what Thierri had told me, of a spell that so confused the countess she fell from her own ramparts.

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We passed the spot where they had found her body as we rode out a few days later, the priest, the seneschal, Bruno, half a dozen knights, and me. We followed a track down the opposite side of the
ridge from the road where people normally came and went, toward a village tucked into a fold of the mountain, only a few miles from the castle but almost into the next kingdom—Alfonso's
territory. Melchior pulled up at the fatal spot, directly below the ramparts though the ride to reach there had been well over a mile. He seemed for a moment lost in thought, but produced none of
his powders and mistletoe. The rest of us continued, and in a moment his horse came hurrying up behind.

I wanted to know if his powers of divination had discovered anything, but that could wait for a more private conversation. He had already told me that he had written to the priest who had served
in Peyrefixade before the countess's death, but had been able to get no information beyond what we already knew. "So tell me what they owe us in this next village," I said instead to Seneschal
Guilhem.

The seneschal came back abruptly from a reverie of his own and began running down lists of payments in coin and produce. No labor dues, as I had already learned: all had long since been
commuted into monetary payments. Perched high on its knife-edge of rock, the castle didn't even try to have fields of its own. Some lords, I had heard, were so determined that their peasant
tenants work for them that they created tasks: dragging building stone into place or grinding wheat into flour in handmills. I myself preferred to have my grain ground efficiently at a watermill
and my stonework done by professionals.

"It's a good fireplace," I said to Bruno. "I heard a few of the men grumbling last night that they weren't as warm as they had been with the blaze in the middle of the room, but they'll soon grow
accustomed to it."

"Now we just have to hope," he said darkly, "that none of those masons were spying out the castle for whoever hired the footpads in Ferignan."

I didn't answer. We were now at the village—walled, though the gates were open—and everyone turned out to stare at us. The fields surrounding the village were small and stony; I guessed the
villagers lived mostly from their flocks. The women, as I expected, were the most frightened, the men the most sulky, the little children the most interested.

"As I'm sure you've all heard," I said loudly, "I am your new lord, Count Caloran." The horse shifted under me and I stilled it with a hand on the reins, turning my head so they could all get a
good look at the scar if they wanted one. "I am here surveying my property, so that we are all agreed on what is owed when the March rents come due, thus avoiding any unpleasantness."

There was a voice beside me, and I realized in surprise that Melchior was translating what I said into Auccitan. This close to the castle, I thought—if I had turned around I would have seen it
looming behind us—and they couldn't be counted on to understand me. Well, better a translation than having them all double up with laughter over my mispronunciations.

We started through the village. The mayor, who appeared somewhat tardily wearing a black velvet cape that looked like something old Count Bernhard might have discarded years ago, led the
way. At each cottage he, the seneschal, and the householder had a short but complicated discussion, and Brother Melchior finished by writing something down. The knights sat their horses
ostentatiously, looking around haughtily and playing with their knives, but I dismounted to listen and to frown when frowning seemed called for.

Last year my brother had had to go around to several of his villages to sort out the rents, and I had been one of the knights conveying an unspoken threat. Tedious as this whole process was, it was
still vastly improved by having it my rents under discussion.

At the third cottage a little boy crept up beside me. He was younger than my nephews and had dark eyes and a disarming smile. "Are you the great and terrible count?" he asked in Auccitan.

Two weeks of practice with Melchior wasn't a lot, but it would get me started. "Yes," I said with a grin to match his own, "I terrible. Eat boys."

He clearly didn't believe a word of this, but as he laughed he gave a quick look around—perhaps for the mother or older sister who did. I picked him up to have him at eye-level and bared my teeth
at him, which set him laughing again. Enough of this, I thought, preparing to set him down, or the villagers would all decide that the great and terrible Count Caloran was harmless and try to
persuade the seneschal that they owed me no more than a single chicken a year. And I really didn't want to have to set the knights on them.

And then the boy touched the left side of my face, no longer laughing. "How did you get this___?"

I didn't recognize the word, but the meaning was clear enough. "Fire," I said simply. "Long ago."

During the next week we proceeded through all the villages and hamlets of my county, until Brother Melchior's parchment rolls were dense with figures and annotations.

It was still too early in the year for the men to have taken the flocks to the high pastures, so almost everyone was home—and in the few cases where the householder was unaccountably missing,
and I barked out an order doubling his rents, he always fortuitously reappeared before we left the village.

Sometimes the sun shone, promising that green and bursting spring must arrive very soon, but more often fast-flying clouds came up over the mountains, dragging curtains of rain to drench us
and turn everything around us a cold gray. At night we lay under the tents, which still smelled a little of the masons' sweat, listening to rain on the canvas. Here I did have a knight awake all
night to guard me, though if an assassin was trying to track us stealthily through these mountains and this weather I had to admire his resolution.

Not everyone in the county, of course, owed me rent. Probably in most of the villages, especially those furthest from the castle, fewer than half the inhabitants did, and that didn't even count the
entire villages where no one paid rent to Peyrefkade at all. These included the ones which old Count Bernhard had given to the house of the Three Kings, some others that owed their rents to other
landlords, even to the duke, but also a large number that had apparently—or so the villagers claimed—always been free of dues, since their intrepid and resourceful ancestors had come with their
families and their sheep to settle in high valleys that nobody else wanted, centuries ago. At every village, including these, we stopped long enough at least for a chat with the mayor, to remind
him that even if I was not everyone's landlord I was everyone's judicial lord, and that justice and law came ultimately from me.

One thing surprised me a little: no sign of heretics. If Melchior was right, and they were able to pass as followers of the True Faith, I might have talked to many of them and not even known it,
but I would have expected someone at least to mention it. But most of these villages were too small and isolated to have a church or priest of any land; maybe no one had ever bothered to check into
their religious beliefs.

But as we approached the final village down at the base of the mountains, the village where half the rents went to the Holy Family, we saw some sort of commotion before the gates and heard
shouting and screaming.