The Lascar's Dagger (60 page)

She did as he asked, taking care to extinguish all but one as she carried the candelabra. When she entered the retiring room, she surreptitiously kicked the door to behind her. Both men were leaning out of the window and all the birds had gone.

“No problem, lady,” one of them said. “Someone must’ve left the window open, and them chaws come in to get out of the rain. They’ve all gone, and not much damage done, barring a bit of birdshit.”

“Oh! Was that all? I was all of a panic, truly. Never heard such a to-do! You were truly brave. I’ve heard it said they’re birds of ill omen…”

“Nay, say not!” the second man interrupted. “All creatures are of Va’s making, after all. ’Twas just the storm.”

“Indeed, you must be right.” She chatted on inanely, clutching at the arm of one of the wardens until he was forced to peel her off and gently lower her into the nearest chair.

Saker watched while Sorrel did everything he’d asked of her, and more. She even managed to snuff out two of the candles when she grabbed up the candelabra, dimming the room to near darkness. Dressed in her loose, plain retiring gown that swept the floor, her thick black hair flowing free, she deliberately made the shadows dance as she ran after the two wardens. She never looked his way and gave no sign he was there. He’d had to put his life – and Mathilda’s – in her hands, and she had not wavered. He was still trusting her, trusting her with a royal child who could possibly be his.
Sweet Va, how did either of us come to this?

As he crept out of the apartment and ran up the long, empty gallery, he wondered if he would ever see her again to thank her.

He had not yet reached the door to the tower stair when it was flung open and five or six pike-wielding wardens charged in, running towards him. He stopped dead, momentarily shocked into immobility. Surreptitiously he edged his left hand with the bambu clutched in it behind him, at the same time as he gripped the pike in his right, ready to use.

“Any trouble here?” the officer of the wardens yelled at him, barely slackening pace. “There’s an intruder somewhere in the Keep and he may have come upstairs to the Regala’s rooms! One of the wardens is knocked out cold.”

“Can’t say I know aught about that,” he replied calmly. “I came to shoo out a flock of chaws. Some addlepate maid left a window open. There’re a couple of wardens attending to it now; mayhap they know something.”

“What the pox is going on with birds tonight? Those buccaneers of the air attacked the warden on the roof like they were possessed! Scared him halfway to beggary.” He was already on his way past Saker as he said this last, and his men jogged after him, exchanging apprehensive looks. One of them gave Saker a puzzled glance, obviously trying to place him.

He grinned to himself. Once the wardens were fixated on the birds, the more obvious questions they ought to ask were thrust into the background. He hurried on to the tower, before anyone wondered just who he was and why he was heading that way. The stairs were now lit with torches, so he had no problem running up to the roof. The young warden he’d left on the stairs was gone, and so was his cloak. To his dismay, the roof was well lit. The wardens, alerted to something amiss, had all emerged from the guardhouse to patrol the rooftop.

Oh, pox on them,
he thought.
Disaster
. He glanced around to see if he could spot Ardhi, but there was no sign of him.

Without another thought, he took charge, and hoped no one would question his authority. “You, over there near the tower entry – you get down to the Regal’s solar and help the guards find the intruder, if there is one. What the blistering blazes do you swag-bellied addlepates think you are doing anyway? Lighting up the roof so you can’t see a damn thing out there in the dark? And providing a lighthouse for all the birds and their grannies to home in on? The Regala had chaws in her sitting room! Snuff those torches, you pickle-brains!”

As he’d hoped, every torch was seized and extinguished.

He continued to yell. “You three, line up along the wall overlooking the inner bailey, and keep an eye out for birds or a man that ought not to be there. I’ll take the cliff side.”

“Sir,” one of the men said, agitated, “when we carried Konraad inside the guardhouse, we found he wasn’t wearing his uniform!”

“It was stolen, you daft rabbits! There’s a man in the Regal’s solar pretending to be one of us. Look lively now, and make sure you’re not taken unawares!”

The men scattered to do his bidding, and he strolled over to where he’d left Ardhi. To his relief, the lascar was huddled safely beneath the walkway. “All’s well,” he whispered. “I’m going over the side now.”

“You have them?” Ardhi asked.

“Safe in the bambu.”

Sitting astride the battlements, he reached for the rope and swung himself down. He cleared his mind of all thought of falling, or of being observed, or of having someone cut his lifeline. After all, if one was going to have an adventure, it was always best to enjoy it. Wrapping the rope over his shoulder and around his thigh, he began the long descent to the ground.

An age later, or so he felt, his feet hit the rock. He took one deep breath, then gave the agreed signal to Ardhi. In answer, his pack came tumbling down, tied to the rope. No sooner had he grabbed it than the whole length of rope followed. By the time Ardhi joined him, having happily climbed all the way down without aid, Saker had stowed the rope in his pack, and thrown the coat and hat of his stolen uniform into the river. He was shivering, and so was Ardhi.

“I know just where we can get a hot bath,” Saker said as they trudged through the mud of the gorge track at the back of the castle.

“At this hour of the night?”

“In Lowmeer, whorehouses are banned. So they have bathhouses instead.”

“I didn’t think you would ever—”

“I don’t. But I do know where to get a bath. We need to warm up in a hurry, and this is the best way I know of. And they’ll have some dry clothes, too. For a price.”

Half an hour later, soaking in a tub of warm soapy water and having his back massaged by a bathhouse bawd, Saker finally allowed himself to think of Mathilda. How had he never seen through her to the manipulating, self-serving woman beneath?

He didn’t blame her, exactly, but by the sweet oak, he’d been as blind as a hedge-born mole.

Sorrel might have murdered someone, but he was sure she was a better woman than her mistress. He shrugged. Their paths were not likely to cross again.

T
he night did not end for Sorrel after Saker was gone. The wardens left once they’d satisfied themselves no jackdaws remained hidden anywhere in the room, and once they’d made a few jokes about hysterical women who didn’t know enough to close windows on a wet and windy night. Instead of uttering a scathing reply, she smiled sweetly and ushered them out with profuse thanks for rescuing them all from vicious birds.

When she returned to Mathilda, it was to find her sitting bolt upright in bed, her eyes wild with fear. She didn’t ask about Saker. Instead, she clutched Sorrel, saying, “Oh, I am feeling pains! The babies are coming!”

Sorrel’s heart sank. It was still too early, which might give rise to rumours about the length of the Regala’s pregnancy.

“You’ve had pains before,” she pointed out, “and they came to nothing.”

“This is different! Go get Aureen!”

“Mathilda, nothing is going to happen for a while yet, I promise you. If I send for Aureen and your ladies-in-waiting find out, they’re sure to come buzzing about to see if your confinement is upon you. Best we just wait for her to return.”

“Oh! It hurts! How can you be so uncaring! You don’t know what it’s like.”

Poignant memories lanced her. The pain. The fear. Heather’s first cry, her tiny fist curling round her finger with surprising strength, the elation of the belief – later shattered – that her baby was perfect. She closed her mind to the remembrance. “Perhaps it will be better if you walk about for a while. If this is the beginning of your travail, it’s too early yet for you to take to your bed.”

Reluctantly Mathilda clambered out of the four-poster and began to pace the room, clutching at Sorrel every so often and moaning.

“Later, when the pain is more severe, you will have to muffle your cries,” Sorrel warned. “It is important that no one hears. For the second baby you can scream all you want. But for this first one, we must not alert the wardens or your ladies-in-waiting.” She smiled in encouragement. “You’ll show us all what it is to be born of a long line of brave kings and courageous queens. Today you will show us what it is to be truly of royal blood.”

After that, Mathilda’s moaning was more subdued.

Aureen returned, bone-tired, an hour before dawn, to confirm that Mathilda was indeed on the way to delivery. “Tonight,” she said. “All is well. The first twin has its head in the right place for the birth.”

“Tonight?” Mathilda asked. “But the night is almost over!”

“She doesn’t mean now,” Sorrel said. “Perhaps you should try to sleep a while?”

“You mean I’ll be in pain all
day
? Sleep? I can’t sleep like this!”

However, after sipping some warm milk sent up from the kitchens, she did indeed sleep for several hours. Sorrel dozed as well, and dreamed of Saker, an unpleasant, restless dream about a man who ignored her in preference for a flock of orange-coloured birds the size of ponies. When she woke, she lay thinking about him. Why had she been so attracted? Perhaps because his lithe, muscular frame was so at variance with the usual cleric. Or because he lacked the unctuous rectitude she had come to associate with the clerics at court, or the ones who’d frequented Ermine Manor.

Maybe it was none of those things, she thought wryly.
Maybe it’s merely because he is the exact opposite of Nikard.
Saker would never reject a child because she was born deaf. He’d be more likely to kill someone who’d sling their daughter down the stairs like unwanted garbage…

Tears pricked at her eyes, and that horrible lump returned, the one that came into her throat whenever she thought of Heather had died.

Mathilda called out to her then, and she left her pallet to see what she wanted. It was going to be a long day.

Several times people came to the outer door of the solar to see Mathilda, but Sorrel turned them away, saying the Regala was sleeping after an uncomfortable night.

The gossip up and down the gallery was that there had been at least one unauthorised person in the Keep during the evening, and the assumption by the servants was that he’d been one of the guests at the banquet. However, when the Sergeant of the Castle Wardens came to apologise for the disturbance by the jackdaws, it was clear he was more worried about a man he couldn’t identify wearing a warden’s uniform. He questioned Sorrel in detail about what had happened, but she said nothing to enlighten him.

Throughout the day, she kept waiting for the Regal to discover that the feathers in the fan were missing, but as the hours dragged by, nothing was said. Mostly, life in the castle dawdled on, as its occupants recovered from either overimbibing and overeating, or from overwork and lack of sleep.

Mathilda dozed and complained by turn. When each contraction came, she alternated between swearing that the Regal would never kill any baby of hers, and vowing that the twins she was about to deliver were devil-kin bent on ripping her innards out and she didn’t care if they were thrown into the sea at birth. It took all Aureen and Sorrel’s tact and cajoling to keep her on an even keel.

As the ferocity of the contractions increased, so did Mathilda’s bad temper. “I’ll kill him,” she said, clutching her arm so tight Sorrel winced. “He said I wouldn’t have to marry Vilmar! He promised me!”

“Hush, don’t think about that, milady. Think about the babies.” She didn’t know who Mathilda was referring to, but it didn’t seem important then.

The first baby slid into the world around midnight with a weak cry. A girl, to Sorrel’s intense relief. She’d dreaded the thought that she would be leaving the castle with a male heir to the Regality in her arms. She was terrified enough of the night ahead, without that.

Mathilda had surprised her, displaying a courage she’d not expected, refusing to cry out, biting hard into a rolled-up towel, refusing to indicate her pain by anything other than grunts of exertion when expelling the child from her body.

Afterwards, bathed in perspiration, knowing she had to do the whole thing again, she sobbed and clutched Sorrel in a tight grip. “He swore it, Sorrel,” she said between her sobs. “He did. He said everything would be all right. What if these are his children? He’s an evil man. Sweet Va, what did I do?”

Appalled, Sorrel shot a glance to where Aureen was tying off the cord and wrapping the baby. “Hush, you don’t know what you’re saying.”

“Aargh! Why am I getting pains still? Is the second one coming already?”

“It’s just the afterbirth, milady,” Aureen said. “Nothing to fret about.”

The next few minutes were busy ones, and Sorrel had no time to think of Mathilda’s words. Then Aureen was thrusting the tiny bundle of mewling baby at Mathilda, saying, “She’s a bonny one. And not too small. You must feed her, milady.”

Mathilda turned her head resolutely away. “No! I refuse! I won’t touch her!”

“Ay, you will, milady,” Aureen said, implacable. “Mistress Sorrel, you hold the babe to milady’s breast. She must sup on the first milk ’fore you go. I’ll start to clean up here.”

“Milady, what will you call her?” Sorrel asked as she held the suckling newborn.

Mathilda, her head buried under her pillow, said, voice muffled, “Call her what you will, I don’t care. She’s the devil-kin.”

You don’t know that,
Sorrel thought.
That’s just what you want to believe.
Because if she wasn’t, then the one about to be born was…

“The poor wee mite,” Aureen said, whisking away the bloodied bedclothes. “’Tis an evil land to condemn a newborn with such dreadful words. You ask me, there bain’t be such a thing as devil-kin! Va would ne’er be so cruel. And shame to the clerics who believe such things.” She bustled off to hide the evidence of the birth in their cuddy.