Count Scar - SA (2 page)

"What is this Duke Argave himself like?" I asked.

"Dangerous." Guibert let the word hang for a moment. I had never credited my brother with much imagination, but perhaps I had underestimated him. "Watch yourself around him, Caloran. There are always rumors of intrigue from the south, and at least one new count riding up every year to swear fidelity to the king long after unfortunate accidents to their predecessors, but Argave has so far survived them all, for far longer than either you or I have lived."

I would have to become the kings man as well as Duke Argave's, then. Someone, I hoped, would understand all my new responsibilities and deign to share the information with me. But any trips back to the north, I resolved, could wait until summer.

"Argave," added Guibert slowly, "has, how shall I express this, the manners of a dancing master, including both the elegance of style and the love of intrigue, but the soul of an assassin."

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The trip south took close to a month, over roads either deep in snow or, as we began approaching my new county, thick with mud. The inns were crowded and fetid; the monastery guesthouses were cleaner but the food there worse. Once among sullen gray hills we fought off an ambush, and another time we outran a pack of twenty bandits. Bruno's horse broke a leg, and we were outbargained on the price in buying a new one. Four times we became seriously lost, and once we had to swim the horses across an icy river when the duke's messengers could not find the ford they insisted had been there when they came north.

Although I tried questioning them about my county, they resisted both open and subtle questions. The closest I got to interesting information was one beginning to tell me that my new castle had long been rumored to have hidden passages, maybe even lost treasures, but the other silenced him. They did, however, know a number of delightful southern songs, some bawdy, some sweetly sentimental, which they were happy to teach Bruno and me. We sang the bawdier ones in the evening at the inns and the more sentimental ones at the monastery guesthouses.

As we continued south, even through treacherous countryside, I could feel dropping away behind me all the oppressive weight of living on the charity of my brother. It was as though the scar itself was peeling away from my face, though I could still see it there in the polished metal of my mirror. And if the thought of leaving Guibert's castle further behind with every step was not always enough to push me forward, then I could always imagine the county waiting for me.

The vision of the sun dappling the soft grass through the olive branches kept me going as we left the snows behind for sleet and cold rain and started at last into the southern mountains, with their steep uphill climbs and jaw-dropping descents. The vision lasted until, after a long day's ride up an increasingly rocky incline through barren fields, the messengers pulled up their horses to point.

"There's your castle. There's Peyrefixade."

My mouth fell open. Bruno at my shoulder muttered, "It's like somebody wanted to stick a thumb in the eye of God."

Thrust up from a knife-ridge of rock far above us, the dark red castle was the best positioned for defense I had ever seen. The faint track of the road before us twisted back and forth, back and forth, in its slow ascent. As we watched, a dark rain cloud came down the ridge and obscured the castle from sight. Night reached us at the
same time. I sighed, knowing in my
thoroughly chilled bones that while dragging all the stones for the castle up to that peak no one had thought to install a modern fireplace.

That evening I was too tired to inspect my new castle properly. The castle seneschal greeted me and formally passed the huge iron key of the front gate into my keeping. He appeared gaunt, the
skin on his neck and arms slack as though he had recently lost weight rapidly, but I was too exhausted to wonder about his troubles. I received the bows and murmured welcomes of the knights
and servants, more obsequious than anything I had ever received in my life. The bouteillier, dressed like a nobleman and with a nobleman's manners and bearing but the most deferential of all,
brought me wine and a slab of cold meat, which I ate and went straight to bed.

The hearth, as I had feared, was built in the old-fashioned way in the middle of the hall, but while it made the room very smoky it also kept it warm. My entire adult life I had preferred fire safely
housed in a fireplace, but I thought tiredly that I could deal with this—at least until next week when I would order the masons in.

The great curtained bed, at one end of the great hall in which everyone in the castle ate and slept, was doubtless the same one, I thought, that the former countess had died in. At least she seemed
to have insisted on a goose-feather mattress on the rope-strung frame and warm wool stuffing in the brocade coverlets. I just hoped someone had thought to change the sheets after her death.

But I awoke with my mood much improved as dawn broke over the ridge, lighting up the greased parchment stretched over the windows. I threw on my clothes and stepped over still snoring men
to go out and survey my county by daylight. Bruno was among the sleepers, his face in repose showing the lines of age and exhaustion he tried to deny during the day. Him I smiled at
indulgently, but a little discipline, I could see, would be needed among the rest.

Yet faint clanking and rattling sounds elsewhere in the castle indicated that I was not the only one awake. I could recall seeing no priest among the staff last night, but I would have to get one
and start them all off right with the divine office every morning. I went out into the courtyard adjoining the great hall, where the cold morning air carried the scent of distant snow as well as of
mud, then followed an unroofed passage to the base of the great tower I had seen from below and began to climb.

Stairs winding upwards within the walls led me to the top. From there, as I had hoped, I could survey the whole region of the mountains. The view was spectacular and the drop stunning. On all
sides were further peaks. To the south, I must be looking miles into the next kingdom. Perhaps the duke had heard I was a good fighting man, I thought, able to defend Peyrefixade against the
political ambitions of enemies not far away.

As I gazed downward through oceans of air I realized it would be a sheer fall from a dozen different points on this castle to the valleys on either side of the ridge, and the people living in those
valleys would never forget the presence of the castle above them.

Fields that had appeared desolate the night before now had a faint green cast, of early grass breaking through, and far below I spotted what were doubtless flocks of sheep. On one hillside I could see
a large vineyard, still in winter dormancy, though nothing I could recognize as olive trees. So far below it could have been a toy, such as I had sometimes made for little Gertrude, was a tile-roofed
village, smoke rising lazily from the rooftops in the still air. I leaned on the battlements, well wrapped in my cloak, letting it sink in that this was really mine, and trying to remember all the
words of one of the bawdier songs.

A little terrace opened out a storey below me, and as I looked around two of the servants came out onto it, beer mugs and pieces of bread in their hands. Neither looked up. "So," said one, "what do
you think of our new master?"

An accent like the duke's messengers' but perfectly intelligible. I leaned forward, intensely interested and scarcely breathing.

"It's a southern name, Caloran, for all that he talks like a northerner," commented the other around a mouthful of breakfast. "I understand he's a cousin or something of our late Countess
Aenor."

"I gather he's not married. Maybe he's holy or something."

This "or something" seemed to give the other pause, because he was silent for a moment before saying, a bit too loudly, "They don't have heretics up in the north."

"Or maybe he's one who likes the boys better," the first servant suggested. "Or maybe no lady would have him."

The second laughed. "Once they learn he's Count of Peyrefixade they'll come flocking around. He'll have plenty to choose from then, will our Count Scar."

Count Scar. My own servants were calling me Count Scar.

I had scarcely gotten used to the sound of Count Caloran, to the image of the wise, severe but just lord from the north, and already it was being altered out of recognition. I waited in silence until
my servants—I didn't even know their names, but I marked them as best I could from above—had finished eating and gone back inside, then went in search of breakfast of my own.

At least they had seemed to think that I would have plenty of ladies to choose from.

The first order of business when I finished my beer and barley bread was to start acquainting myself with my castle. It had clearly been built and rebuilt over several generations, with an effort in
manpower getting the stones up here which I couldn't even imagine. Maybe their efforts had been assisted by magic, which I understood was much more widely used in the south. But I dismissed
the thought.

The castle was smaller than my brother the archduke's, but to me it felt like a kingdom. It had a formidable keep, many unexpected passages and rooms, a gracefully proportioned chapel leaning
far out over the precipice, and plenty of places where the unwary foot could have slid with fatal results. My initial exploration revealed no secret tunnels, but if they had been easy to find they
would not have been secret.

"I heard one of the stable boys refer to you as Count Scar," Bruno shuffled up to tell me triumphantly. "But after a good thumping he agreed to use your rightful name from now on."

Though I now felt that everyone in the castle was looking at and wondering at the dark red disfigurement of my face, the feeling did little to dampen my good mood. After all, I was long
accustomed to that. No matter what they said behind my back, they were still mine to command— as soon as I knew what commands to give them.

By now all the men were busy about their day's tasks, the knights tending their gear or practicing their swordwork, the staff cooking, cleaning, making barrels, attending to the horses, renewing
the slates on a bit of roof line, hammering away in the forge, and a dozen other chores. It was somewhat disconcerting to realize how well the castle was already functioning without me and my
discipline. There were no women at all in sight; the few ladies who had lived there had doubtless left at once when the countess died.

But I missed them almost immediately. The chief cook spotted me when I looked into the kitchens around noon to check on dinner's progress. He hurried over, full of deep bows and apologies, to
acquaint me with the state of the spice chest, "For you see, my lord, these two months gone I have not been able to buy, and this time of year the prices are always scandalous, yet we are shockingly
low on pepper and dangerously low on cinnamon," I wondered briefly if irrelevantly on the dangers the lack of cinnamon posed to Peyrefixade, then realized with a cold thud what he was asking:
he wanted money, and all I had was the pitiful sum left in the bottom of the pouch my brother had given me. This county must produce an income for its count, but how was I to gain access to it?

Surely there was a bailiff or stewart somewhere who saw to the rents and tolls coming in, but I could not recall meeting any such person last night. The seneschal must not have the money
himself or he would have been able to supply it to the cook.

And why was the cook bothering me about the spices anyway? I knew nothing of these things. At home first my mother and then my sister-in-law had always supervised the kitchen provisions.

The ladies who flocked around Count Scar had better be well trained in castle management.

We were interrupted before I could ask how many peppercorns he could get for the few solidi I still had. A clear note of a horn sounded through the castle, then again and a third time.

"That's the signal that someone's coming up the road, my lord," said the cook helpfully. "It was blown last evening when you were spotted, though of course we didn't realize at first it was you."

"Of course," I said briskly. With a castle like this, someone could roll out of bed with nothing on but his shirt and still defend it, but it was good to know that a certain discipline was already
established even without me. Soldiers I could always talk to; I should start with the guards once I had dealt with whoever was now making the climb up my mountain.

Bruno met me outside the kitchen, and the castle seneschal silently fell into step at my shoulder as I hurried toward the front gate. The latter looked just as gaunt this morning as he had last
night, but lugubrious rather than ill, I judged. He had murmured something then about the great sorrow of the countess's death: an old family retainer, I thought, but he was not really so old.

The duke's messengers who had brought me south joined us at the gate. "It is Duke Argave," one informed me. "We sent a message from that inn three days ago, and it is good to see he received
it."

A small group of horsemen labored up the last climb, led by one carrying an enormous black banner. Behind him on a powerful stallion rode a man who could only be the duke, clean-shaven, with
dark eyes that seemed even at a distance to be looking into mine. Dangerous, my brother had termed him. He was tall and heavily built, graying but still graceful in the saddle, wearing a red silk
tabard over his armor.

"He said in the letter he sent me," I muttered to Bruno, "that he wanted me to start south at once, and he is certainly wasting no time making my acquaintance."