The Tears of the Sun (40 page)

“This isn't a sack! Have a care, there! Fulk, go see that they stay under control.”

Yseult felt a glassy calm descending on her, and a huge weariness. The housekeeper brought three packed duffel bags in for her and her fleece-lined cloak. She huddled Yseult into it as she whispered, “Courage, dear heart. I'll be waiting to hear good news of you.”

For once Yseult didn't care about the strictures on her conduct. With a sob she turned and hugged her, one armed.

“Take care, take care!” she whispered. “I will pray for you.”

“And I for you, chick.”

“Will you give your oath to stay with your escort and not try to escape?” asked Sir Garrick.

Yseult looked up at the knight with swimming eyes. “Yes,” she whispered. “Parole. I will cast myself on the mercy of the Lady Regent. I swear by God the Father, God the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen.”

She crossed herself and hesitated as the armored man gestured to the door.

“But, please, can I take my Bernadette and my Immaculate Conception from the chapel? I—I was going to go there to pray this evening”—a short hysterical laugh escaped her—“but matters seem to have overtaken me! I promised.”

Sir Garrick sighed and nodded. “I'll take you there. Let me first check your bags.” He pulled everything out, shook each piece and repacked the bags. Just as neatly as Goodwife Romarec had done in the first place, she noted. Yseult sighed with relief to see her Bible, her first book on St. Bernadette,
Our Lady's Little Servant
, the Werfel novel,
Song of Bernadette
, and Trochu's serious work on her as well as the collected writings of Bernadette edited by Laurentin.

At least I'll have those,
she thought, only briefly regretting the seven novels on her bookshelf.

“Everything is in order here. Let's go to the chapel. I'll have to check everything you wish to bring.”

He stood and turned to his men. “Ranulf, Digory, take four men-at-arms. Mount the girl on her own horse; make sure you bring her other one. Get some pack mules for these; pick ones that can keep up. Each of you take a remount as well from our string. Master Johannsen will help you. It's twenty miles, give or take, to Todenangst. I expect you to arrive around midnight. You'll take care of the girl; she'll not be able to mount on her own with her arm injured. See that she's treated with the proper respect due a young Association noblewoman or I'll have someone's ears.”

He escorted her down the stairs and to the pretty chapel off the great reception room. It was late and the stained-glass window was dark, only the wavering light of the votives dancing over the nave. Garrick snapped his fingers and Yseult stifled an improper giggle as two oil lanterns appeared like genies. He placed them on the altar. She picked up her rosary from next to the saint's votive; a confirmation gift from her mother—pink quartz beads carved in the shape of roses, with an amethyst cross carved with doves dangling from it.

Suddenly timid, she pushed it into her pocket as she shot a look at the knight, and then knelt on the rose velvet cushion before her special prie-dieu. She looked up into the tapestry she had worked years before when she decided to give her devotion to the Saint and Virgin. The compassionate face of the Immaculata and her saint, kneeling below, steadied her.

“I don't know what to ask for, Lady, Saint. Help me find the strength to walk down this valley of fear, I guess.”

She stood, pillow in hand. Garrick had one of the bags opened and stuffed the pillow in. He gestured to the rest of the setup.

“All of this?” he asked, a slightly ironical note in his voice.

She sighed and shook her head. “No, just this porcelain of the Saint and the picture of the Virgin and her Basilica.”

She passed them to the knight and he carefully packed them in the duffels, muffling them in layers of cloth and padding. He finished fastening the bags and stood.

“Does all your family give their devotion to Bernadette and the Immaculata?” he asked, standing.

She looked up, startled and shook her head, thinking his eyes were a surprisingly light sage green next to his dark skin.

“Just me. Dowager Phillipa gave me the child's book. And I've been on the lookout for older books about her ever since. Years ago, Mama set up my own oratorio here so I could have all my things just so. I learned tapestry stitch making that arras.”

The man nodded. “My family has a special devotion to these two, and to the healing arts. Adolphus is my cousin. Well, time to go. Come, young Gervais, your horse awaits.”

He took her out to the courtyard. The callused hand took her chin and tilted her face up.

“I can give you no hope, daughter of Gervais. I will pray to God and do you pray to Lady Sandra as well as the Virgin. You are caught deep in this coil. Hope, faith, humility,
might
bring you free, if you are innocent. I will do my best for your people here.”

Then she was walking down the steps, glad of the warm wool riding skirt, the heavy jacket and the cloak draped over her. Torches flared in the courtyard but she didn't see her uncle's body, though the stink of sudden death lay heavy.

 

Yseult looked up as she finished the tale. There was warmth in Mathilda's brown eyes as she pressed a hand on the younger woman's shoulder.

“That was very hard,” she said.

Yseult nodded thanks, then burst out: “My mother and uncle, they were so
stupid
!”

The High King snorted. “That they were. It was stupidity and no more ambition than many another has shown before them, at first, before the . . . enemy . . . took advantage of the door they'd opened. But stupidity is often punished more heavily than mere wickedness, the world being what it is. I don't suppose it's any consolation, but many another has made the same mistake. In this war, they usually pay heavily for it.”

BOISE
PROVISIONAL CAPITAL, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
(FORMERLY BOISE, IDAHO)
AUGUST 10, CHANGE YEAR 25/2023 AD

 

 

 

 

T
he leaders of the Dúnedain sat around the table and stared glumly at the map of Boise city. John Hordle ate another bite of his roast-beef sandwich, but with a gloomy air as if he were going through the motions, his huge body hunched over and his mop of reddish-brown hair tousled from having his sausagelike fingers run through it once too often. Ritva stayed back a little, standing easily and keeping a discreet silence.

The room was fairly big and dusty-disused, set in a far corner of the Drover's Delight. With only one alcohol lantern on the table there was a puddle of light and faces in a surround of gloom. Alleyne was carefully measuring distances on the map with a pair of compass needles; he'd always been a detail man. Eilir was lying back in her chair, her arms crossed on her chest and eyes closed, either thinking very hard about the rounds of fruitless discussion or asleep.

“Sod this for a game o' soldiers,” John said, finishing his sandwich and wiping his hands on the red-and-white checked cloth it had been wrapped in. “Woburn promised us she went
out
, 'er and the kiddies. Without that, it's not just 'ard, it's bloody impossible.”

“Old information,” Charlie Gleam said, rubbing an exasperated hand over his pate. “Last three weeks, Mrs. Thurston doesn't go out except by day, and always without her daughters Shawonda and Janie.”

Charming youngsters,
Ritva remembered.
And I liked their mother Cecile too.

“
They
go out without
her
. Always heavy guards, all from the Sixth Battalion, which is not only Martin's pet but a lot of the men have become Cutters just lately.”

Eilir opened her eyes and Ritva filled her in.
Is it a leak?
she Signed when the younger Dúnedain was finished.
About us, that is.

Ritva said the words aloud; she was officially in the inner circle because she was translator between Eilir and the locals, and Ian was here because he was the Drumheller representative. The other eight Rangers were on guard in strategic places. Being inside a walled city made everyone nervous. You could lose yourself in a crowd here, but actually getting
out
would be hard.

“No,” Gleam said. “No, I don't think so. I think it's just that they've been getting less ready to put up with Martin. He's
really
antsy about anything they might say that could get spread around. So now they don't talk at all when they go out. The word from my contact in the Presidential Compound is that it's gone beyond quarrels. Now there's just this icy silence, they tell me. Even Martin's given up talking, though he insists on having dinner with them every Friday. Martin's wife Juliet is the only one who still tries and she's been drinking a lot lately. Mrs. Thurston . . . Cecile Thurston, sorry . . . talks to
her
a little, about young Lawrence Jr. Only to be expected since he's her grandson.”

“Wait,” Astrid said, holding up a finger.

She had been sitting silent with her elbows on the table and her chin on her paired fists, her silver-rimmed eyes looking at the map from under heavy lids.

“Alleyne?” she said after a long moment. “Possibilities? What can we do without getting the targets out of the compound? Is any form of direct assault possible?”

“Even if we infiltrate, there aren't enough of us to try anything resembling a face-to-face fight, even for a few moments. We could go
in
on the airship,” he said thoughtfully. “Rappel down from the gondola, and then—”

John Hordle made a sound like a hippo with a stomachache.

“Are you bloody barking mad? Rappel down into the courtyard of a bloody fortress, with the buggering blimp on a level with the towers, which will be shooting bloody flaming bolts at an 'ydrogen-filled bag, then fight our way through a couple of 'undred guards, all sodding sixteen of us, and then fight our way back and climb up the ropes? But before we try this lark we all bend over and kiss our arse good-bye, roit?”

“Sorry, old boy. Just taking a shot into the blue sky. It wouldn't do, would it?”

Astrid nodded. “I'm afraid so,
bar melindo
. If we get Mrs. Thurston and Janie and Shawonda onto the airship, they almost certainly won't shoot at it. But before then . . . very big target. If we do it at all, it has to be a lightning strike. Even so, we would need more swords than we have now. There would probably have to be a sacrificial rearguard, now that I've looked at the ground myself.”

Major Hanks was there too, still looking worn from his own swift journey south, though he'd done some of it on the rails.

“I'm afraid Lady Astrid is right. The hydrogen isn't quite as inflammable as you might think; it has to be mixed with air to burn quickly, and when it leaks it leaks
up
. But an incendiary bolt or a spray from a flamethrower . . . sorry. And it's only really dirigible, steerable, in a dead calm. But about the rearguard, ah, that might be done.”

“Let's concentrate on how we're going to get the people we want out of the compound first. And we can't take just Cecile or just her daughters,” Eilir said through Ritva. “That wouldn't do at all. Almost better to do nothing.”

“Wait,” Astrid said again. “Wait . . . what was that you said about Juliet Thurston drinking a good deal?”

Gleam nodded. “That's the rumor. Well, the complete rumor is that she and Martin had some hellacious fights. Then he beat her, and she stopped fighting and started drinking.”

“Wait a minute,” Ritva blurted. “He
beat
her?”

She obviously wasn't translating and the leaders stared at her.

“
Hiril
, I was here, remember,” she said. “I have relevant observations.”

Astrid nodded and raised a hand in permission, and her niece went on: “Two years ago, they were very close. The rumor
then
was that Martin was ambitious, and that she was right behind him pushing with all her weight and fitting herself for a consort's crown. I only met her in passing, but she was . . . impressive. Hard, very intelligent, I thought probably quite ruthless too, though maybe not cruel for the sake of it.
Not
the I-deserve-it type.”

Gleam nodded. “Yeah, that's how it was then.”

Astrid rested her chin on her hands again, something stirring in her moon-shot eyes.

“And when was this change? When she had her child?”

“No, a good long while after that. Just lately, since he got back from Bend in May. That's where he had his conference with Sethaz. He'd done that before but this time . . . there was something different about him. A lot of people noticed it, and apparently the First Lady did more than most. Which makes sense.”

“Let me think.”

Astrid closed her eyes; there was silence except for the tapping of a venetian blind against the frame of an open window in the cool night breeze. The street outside was quiet too, and then the tapping of a Natpol's truncheon against the walls rattled through the silence as he walked his rounds.

“It's risky,” she said at last. “But it's our best chance. We have to get someone into the compound and get more information about this. It's that or go home, and the fate of the High Kingdom may depend on this.”

Everyone turned and looked at Ritva.

Dulu!
Ritva thought.
Help!

 

Ritva had her hair hidden under a kerchief, and she wore a longish brown wool skirt, brown because it hadn't been dyed. Keep your eyes down, slump a little, don't swing your legs, hesitate a bit before you move your hands. Those minor things added up; they changed the gestalt that people recognized as much or more than they did faces, especially faces they weren't very familiar with. The best protection was to look
bored
, though. Boredom was like a magical force pushing people's attention away.