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- Author: Fletcher Pratt
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Rodvard stirred. “What decrees?”
Mathurin turned (with his back carefully to the candles, Rodvard noted, so that his face was dark). “There’s to be a new court, to try special cases; it was what I was about to mention when interrupted. Treason against the people and nation. You will be writer to it; more important than the sessions of the assembly.” He turned to Lalette. “There is also a part for you; you are one of the keys now.”
Lalette said unhappily; “In what way?”
“As versus these Episcopals. They spread venom; represent the greatest danger we now have to face. Pavinius? I give him a snap of the fingers; he is too nice, with his Mayern foreigners and western herdsmen. The Tritulaccans? Nothing by themselves, they had never beaten Dossola in the former war but for the revolt of Mancherei, Mayern help and the treason of the Kjermanash chieftains. The court? Now sold to Tritulacca, and destitute by its own action. But the Episcopals are still not out of credit with the people, who have been lulled by their solemn mummery. We drove them from the assembly of the nation this morning, good. But now they may join Tritulacca in the name of what they call true religion.”
“But what have I to do with the Episcopals?” asked the girl.
“Child, fool, use your Art. Not to the death; they’d only fill the office with another man, but paralyze, cripple, drive idiot. The Arch-Episcopal Groadon, notably. His loss would hurt them most.”
Lalette sat up. “Ser Mathurin, you do not by any means understand this matter of the Art. Groadon is protected by the holy oils, and nothing I can do will bite on him.”
“It is you that do not understand. I do assure you that if Groadon be taken in a moment of anger, as today, or other violent passion, neither his oils nor any other thing can protect him from your ministrations. Be assured, we will provide the occasion.”
Lalette’s mouth twitched. (She wanted to cry; “Not for any reward or punishment you can give!” but) it was a moment before she said; “Am I the only—witch in Dossola?”
Mathurin made a grating sound. “No. I’ll be open; we are pressing the search. Have found three others—aside from those who claimed the Art, but could witch nothing more consequential than a frog or chicken. One is an old beldame who has nearly lost her wits, and can be made to understand nothing. One’s a young girl—witch enough, but never taught, did not know the patterns, and beside, she ran away. One we caught, not found—she was in Chancellor Florestan’s pay.” He drew a finger across his throat. “None of them heiress to a Blue Star.”
“I am not sure I can follow all the patterns myself,” said Lalette. “I have used the Art—so little.”
Mathurin looked at her sharply. “Hark!” he said. “I see your slowness, but you more than another should be on our side; as witch and woman. The Art has almost died out; driven down by priest and Episcopal. There are likely many with the right inheritance who do not know it. Never taught. Yet it’s a woman’s defence. We have the butler Tuolén’s Blue Star, for instance. But where’s the girl can bring it to life? We do not even know her name.”
He whirled suddenly and flung out an arm toward Rodvard in an oratorical gesture. “Bergelin! I remember; that was the other matter. You were in the Office of Pedigree; know its secrets. Forget the great assembly for the time; that’s under control. Until the new court’s set up your task is seeking out Tuolén’s heiress. I’ll give you an authority.”
“It may be somewhat harder than you think,” said Rodvard.
“I did not say it would be easy; I said it would be done,” said Mathurin. “Slair, let us go.”
IIWhen they were out, he turned to look at Lalette. She had sagged down, with her face in the pillow, and now without moving, she said as before; “Rodvard.”
He went across the room and put an arm around her. “What is it?”
“My mother. She is with the court, and she knows the patterns. If that man takes her, he will have her throat cut.”
(The fate of many thousands, and the guarantee of the future, with the Art not in the hands of ignorant peasants, but women of intelligence and good will—balanced against one lie. But how to say it?) He said; “Has she shown so much concern for you?”
Lalette twisted under his arm. “If she had, would I know it? You hold me a prisoner—you and your Dr. Remigorius, who does not deliver letters, and your Mme. Kaja, who will sell me, and your Mathurin, who wants to cut my mother’s throat. I never knew what dirt was till I knew you.”
(Rodvard felt the blood beat at his temples; he wanted to strike her, to make a fiery retort.) He released her, stood up, and began to walk the floor. (No: no. A quarrel so entered could never be composed. Look beyond it, Rodvard; see how the world would be without her. Somewhere perhaps there was another who would have more response for an interior fidelity deeper than any single act; would not drive him from her side with bitter words when . . . He thought of Maritzl of Stojenrosek; and by this route came again to the high purpose. No. It was mere selfishness to let his own thought, his own problem, stand first; the very thing he had wished to bring her to see. Keep the peace.)
A small sound made him turn. She was just settling into place among the covers, and her face turned toward him. “Oh, Rodvard,” she said, “help me. I can’t do it. The Episcopal.”
Nothing more was said on the subject, but that night they slept in each other’s arms.
26THE COURT OF SPECIAL CASES
Punctual to the hour, as Rodvard and Lalette sat at breakfast with the woman who cared for the kitchen and a Green Islands buyer of northern wools, there arrived a messenger bearing the authority signed by Mathurin to consult all documents and registers in the Office of Pedigree, even those hitherto held under ecclesiastical seal. For Lalette also, a note; the Arch-Episcopal had declared himself in seclusion for prayer, and she would be notified further. Between them that morning there was a truce to contention; they walked for a while in the gardens among dead rustling leaves, and she kissed him sweetly when he left.
On the way to the Office of Pedigree, Rodvard thought of Asper Poltén and the rest when he walked in with an authority to examine the sealed registers, but this small triumph was denied him. Poltén was nowhere to be seen, and in the distributing office was only an old, dry, dusty man Rodvard remembered as having seen once or twice with some document close to his nose. He held Rodvard’s paper in the same manner, sniffed as though it had an unpleasant odor, and shufflingly led the way to the sealed strong-room, which he unlocked with a creaking key. There seemed fewer people than usual in the halls.
The sealed files themselves showed the search likely to be a long one; mostly old, written in crabbed hands, and largely concerned with the illegitimacies of persons now forgotten, or convictions of witchery in cases that now had no meaning. Of the specific line of Tuolén there was no trace that morning, and the older records of families having Kjermanash blood were so badly kept as to indicate a long search.
At noon, Rodvard went to a tavern and lingered over his mug to savor the gossip of the town, but that was something of a failure, too, for there was none of the high excitement over the doings of the great assembly he had expected. The only group he overheard specifically were three or four merchants at a table, rather gloomily discussing the rise in the price of wool caused by the troubles in the west, and the fall in the price of southern wine, which kept coming in from oversea and could not be dispatched to the disturbed seignories. Nobody said a word about the Episcopals; the only time the court was mentioned, there was a little growling over the name of Florestan.
In the afternoon, Rodvard began by setting aside the registers that had to do with the three northernmost seignories, Bregatz, Vivensteg and Oltrug; but the task was so wearisome and his mind so occupied with other topics that he put them away early. It seemed to him, as he summoned the caretaker to lock the room, that there was nothing in the world as dear or desirable as Lalette, if he could only somehow reach an agreement with her, all troubles would vanish away. As he walked back toward the Ulutz palace, he thought that if they could only sit down in the clear winter air after last night’s storm all coils would be unwoven.
But she was not in the room when he arrived, and when he found her, it was on a bench among the garden alleys, wrapped in a cloak and laughing as she talked to Demadé Slair. The swordsman leaped up at his coming. “Hail dauntless dompter of the written page!” he said, in a tone which was that of banter between friends, but with something in it that made Rodvard look sharply at the eyes. (Clear as speech, the thought came through; “And this long-legged booby who has never handled a weapon in his life will lie with her tonight while I’m alone.”)
Rodvard said, a little unevenly; “I have made a beginning. Are there any tidings?”
“Not in the assembly,” said Slair. “Much discussion of how to raise troops for the people’s army, and a report by General Stegaller. The decree for your court.”
“My court?” said Rodvard (thinking of the Queen).
“That of judgment in special cases.” (The eyes had gone blank.) “You’ll be writer to it, as Mathurin to the assembly. If there’s anyone you have a grudge against, name him for trial.”
He laughed; so did Lalette (and as Rodvard caught her eye, he saw in it a color of regret that he could not be as gay as the swordsman, and a wave of dislike for the man who had rescued him from Charalkis prison contracted his veins). “I think I saw in the library a book by Momoroso that I have never read,” he said. “I will see you before table, Lalette.”
II“The session will recess,” said the kronzlar Escholl. He rose and swept the courtroom with his curious lacklustre eye, that never seemed to be settled on anything. “I will go over the evidence with you, Bergelin.”
The legist on his right, the Zigraner, frowned; he on the left leaned his chin on his hand and his elbow on the table. The accused, a man with a coronet badge, iron-grey hair and heavy dewlaps, looked disconcerted. Rodvard gathered his papers and followed the president of the court to the little room in rear.
When they were there; “What have you found?” asked the legist.
“I think he tells the truth,” said Rodvard, “when he says he has given no help to the Queen’s party or Pavinius. When you asked him that, however, there was something like fear—perhaps for his brother. It was not clear.”
“Ah.” The legist placed his fingers together and studied them. “Bergelin,” he said, after a moment, “you are to remember that this is a special court of inquiry. We are empowered to handle not only direct treasons, but matters which the ordinary law holds criminal. Such acts dissipate the resources that of right belong to the nation. You tend to be narrow. Let us return.”
As they came in, one of the guards nudged the prisoner forward again. The jurist president frowned on him portentously. “Kettersel,” he said, “a brief examination of the record shows no evidence of your giving aid to either of the two destituted persons who claim to rule the realm of Dossola. Unless my fellow-jurists disagree, of that you are acquitted.” He glanced at one and the other; the Zigraner gave a somewhat unwilling nod, the third legist had only an absent expression. “But in pleading innocence of giving such aid, you are answering a charge that has never been brought. If you say you are not guilty of garroting people by night in King Crotinianus’ Square, we will find you innocent of that also, and so through a list of possible crimes, did it not waste this court’s time to agree with you that you have committed none of them. But you are charged with treason to the nation, which in its essence consists not of any specific act, but of a point of view, which may be proved by a number
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