Guardians Of The Keep

CHAPTER 8

I would leave the next morning. Neither screaming nor weeping would be of any use, but removing myself from Gerick’s life might. Even if I had to walk to Graysteve and hire a farm hack to carry me, I would not stay and watch, a child destroy himself and his home on account of me. Nothing I had done in the past four months seemed at all important. Philomena’s baby would die. Gerick desperately needed a firm, kind hand to lead him away from his hatred and isolation. I could help none of them.

Rummaging about my room, I furiously stuffed my things into my traveling bag. What had happened to make the child so angry? For the last few weeks we had lived without warmth, but with tolerance at least. Our Long Night celebration had left me with great hopes. What had changed? I was filled with foreboding that no rational consideration could dispel. Nothing made sense.

I woke in the middle of the night, huddled on top of the coverlet, still in my Covenant Day garb. My lamp had long since burned out. I pulled the blankets around me, letting the darkness drag me back into wild and fearful dreams.

The furnishings of my room lay shrouded in gray when my frantic beating on the door of some dreamworld prison faded into an insistent hammering on the quite real door of my bedchamber. “My lady, please. Nellia says you must come right away.” The terrified whisper drew me instantly awake. “Please, my lady, answer me. It’s terrible. I’m sorry to wake you, but Nellia says to. Won’t you please open the door?”

“Nancy? I’m here. One moment.” The knocking continued as I fumbled at the latch.

The serving girl was white and trembling. “Nellia says please to come right away.”

“Is it the young duke? The duchess?”

Nancy shook her head until her white cap threatened to take off on its own. “No, my lady. Her ladyship is still asleep. A message has come that the physician will arrive this morning, but this other business… it’s too awful, and we don’t know what to do.” She crammed a reddened knuckle in her mouth and closed her eyes, forcing herself to patience while she waited for me.

No further enlightenment was going to come from Nancy. I slipped on my shoes and let her lead me through a maze of passages into the servants’ quarters, a hive of small, plain rooms on the upper floor of the south wing. We turned into a short passageway, lit by a single grimy window, and found a distraught Nellia wringing her hands in front of a door that stood slightly ajar.

“Oh, my Lady Seri. I didn’t know what to do. With the duchess so delicate and all… to take such terrible news… and the scandal of it as soon as word gets around… But it can’t be dismissed, and I don’t know what to do.” Ten years’ worth of new wrinkles crowded Nellia’s already weathered cheeks.

I wrapped my arms about her shaking shoulders and hushed her like a babe. “Nellia, take a breath and tell me. What is it? Why are we here?”

“It’s Mad Lucy. Nancy was bringing her breakfast as she does every day…” Nellia’s words drowned in a sob.

“The feebleminded nurse? Is this her room?” I felt vaguely guilty at not having realized the woman yet lived at Comigor.

Nellia nodded, burying her face in her hands.

I pushed the door open a little further. The room was unlike any servant’s room I’d ever seen. Straw was scattered about the floor, and tucked into every corner were crates and baskets. A small table was piled high with scraps of fabric and wood, papers, nails, and balls of colored yarn. On one wall were stacked rough plank shelves loaded with all manner of oddments. In one corner lay a pallet where a yellowed sheet covered a shape of ominous dimensions.

“Has the old woman died, then?” I asked. Without reason, my voice came out a whisper, though no one was nearby to overhear.

Nellia pressed a hand to her breast. “Not peacefully, though, my lady. Not as she should. She’s done for herself.”

I picked my way through the debris and knelt beside the pallet. Nellia remained by the door, her spine firmly aligned with the doorpost. With great misgivings, I pulled back the sheet.

She was a woman of some fifty years, not ancient as I had expected, tall and sturdily made, her skin unwrinkled and her gray hair combed and twisted into a knot on the top of her head. She was laid out neatly on her back, legs straight, skirt and apron smoothed, arms straight at her sides, but she could have had no blood in her. The wool blankets of the pallet were soaked with it, and the color and texture of her garments were indistinguishable beneath the stiff and rusty coating. Ugly slash marks marred her wrists.

But shocking and terrible as these things were, they were but a whisper beside the shouts of warning that filled my head when I saw her face. I knew her. For almost half a year she had brought me food I did not want, and she had urged me without words to eat it. She had brought me water, and when I was too listless to use it, she had silently washed my face and hands. She had brought me a brush in the pocket of her shift and shyly offered it as if it were a priceless treasure, and when, in my anger, I had thrown it against the door of my prison, she had picked it up and gently brushed my hair every day until it was cut off in the name of penitence. They had told me her name was Maddy, and I had ignored and despised her because I believed any servant chosen by my jailers must be a partner in their evil. But she had bathed my face and moistened my lips and held my hands while I labored to deliver my child who could not be allowed to live. She had wept for my son when I could not, and she had taken him from the room as soon as she had cut the cord that was my only contact with him. All these years I had believed they had killed her, too, the unspeaking witness to their unspeakable crimes. What was Maddy doing in my brother’s house? How could he have kept her-a constant reminder of the murder he had done?

“What are we to do?” Nellia’s quavering whisper intruded on my horrified astonishment. “Such a thing to happen on the day when the little one is born so frail. It’s too wicked a burden.”

“We must think of it just as if her heart had failed, Nellia.” I was surprised at my own calm voice. “The appearance is awful, but if she was mad, then there’s really not so much difference. Just a different part of her that has given out.”

“She was daft. Done nothing but rock in her chair and sit in all this clutter for all these years, but I never thought as she’d do this to herself. Such a gentle soul she was with the young master.”

“She was Gerick’s nurse? You told me that, but I didn’t realize…” I didn’t realize she was someone I knew.

“Aye. She cared for him from the day he was born.”

Nellia was crying again, and to calm her I set her to work. I sent Nancy for a clean blanket, and asked Nellia to find some rags and water so we could clean things up a bit.

“We’ll set her to rights, and then call the other servants to help us take her downstairs,” I said.

Nellia nodded, and we set to work replacing the bloodied blankets with fresh and putting a clean tunic and apron on the dead woman. While Nancy and Nellia scrubbed the floor, I wandered about the room, looking at the things on Maddy’s shelves. They were a child’s things: a ball, a writing slate with childish characters printed on it, a rag doll pieced together from scraps and stuffed with straw, a pile of blocks, a puzzle, and a small game board with dried beans set on it like game pieces. She must truly have been in a second childhood.

“How long ago did Madd… Lucy become feebleminded?” I asked Nellia, who seemed much more herself now she had something to do.

“It was when the young master was close on six years old, and mistress thought he was not so much in need of a nurse. I guess it took Lucy’s spirit right away when she wasn’t needed no more. She took herself to rocking and moaning on the day she had to leave the nursery, and no one was able to get her to do nothing else ever again. But when the physician said that her mind had left her, His Grace, your brother, wouldn’t let her be sent away, as she’d no place to go but an asylum, and the child loved her so.”

“Gerick loved her?”

“Aye, indeed he did. They was always happy together when he was a wee one, even though she couldn’t say no word to him. She talked with her eyes and her hands, I guess. They’d look at books together, and he’d tell her what was in them. She’d teach him games and take him for walks and was a blessing to the little mite.”

I was happy to hear that Gerick had known such care and affection and had been able to return it. I ran my fingers over the slate and the ball. “He came to see her here, didn’t he?”

“Well, I suspect as how he did-though the duchess forbade him to. She said Mad Lucy might harm him, but she’d never, no matter she had lost her mind or what.”

Did he still visit her, I wondered, and found the answer at hand quickly. On the shelf beside some broken knitting needles and a tin box of colored stones sat a small menagerie made of straw: a lion, a cow, a deer, a bear. I looked a little further and found a flute. Crude, but a reasonable replica of the reed flute I had shown him how to make.

So many things bothered me about all this, but I couldn’t name them, as if sunbeams were dancing through storm clouds, illuminating a roof here or a tree there, but just as you would turn to look at it, the gap would close, and gloom shroud everything once more.

Why would Maddy have taken her own life? The malady Nellia had described seemed no violent mania. Could those with failed reason feel the pangs of despair that precipitated self-murder? Had they enough calculation left to accomplish such a horrific deed?

When Nellia and Nancy were done, Maddy looked far less fearsome. Nellia wanted to know if we should send for some of the men to carry the body downstairs. Though I hated the thought of it, I knew Gerick should be told before we buried his friend.

“Nellia, when was it that the young duke took on his present… moodiness?”

“About the same time as Lucy took ill. I’ve oft said to myself as maybe he took her being dismissed from the nursery as hard as she did. Though, since she didn’t have to go away, and he came here to see her, you might not think it would come to that.”

“Then this will be difficult for him, her dying like this.”

“Aye. Poor child. Losing the two who ever loved him so close together-his papa and his Lucy.”

“Then someone will have to break the news to him before the word gets out. Keep it to yourself for now. I’ll let you know when you may tell everyone and have her taken care of. And when the time is right, the staff may have a wake for Lucy if they wish. I don’t think it would be seemly to do so until all is settled with the duchess and her daughter.”

“I understand, my lady,” said Nellia, and she wagged her finger at Nancy, who nodded, wide-eyed.

After a brief visit to my room to wash the sleep from my eyes, I hurried to Philomena’s bedchamber. Voices from the adjoining room were arguing, quietly but vehemently.

“… dragged me away from her like I was a piece of rubbish. I’ve never been so humiliated. I’ll have the witch arrested.” Lady Verally.

“But what she has done, madam, for which you would have her arrested, is save your niece’s life.” The rumbling bass voice was Ren Wesley’s. “Her Grace’s labor was of such poor effectiveness that it could have lasted for many more hours. Having experienced hands to deliver the child was the difference between a tragedy and a double tragedy. If your authority had been allowed to prevail, your niece would be dead from it, and you would find yourself responsible for the death of a special friend of King Evard. In short, you should thank the Lady Seriana for saving you from a murder charge of your own.”

I walked in and greeted my defender. If Lady Verally had been possessed of a weapon, I might have ended up in the same condition as Mad Lucy.

The physician returned my greeting with robust gravity. “Good morning, my lady. It seems my timing was abysmal, and the very thing we hoped to prevent has occurred, but as I was just informing the good lady here, you’ve saved her ladyship’s life by your good judgment in summoning the midwife.”

“How are they?” I asked.

“You know it well, witch,” snarled Lady Verally. “You didn’t want my precious girl to die. It would have spoiled your evil fun, wouldn’t it? You want to watch her suffer.”

Ren Wesley turned his back on the seething lady. “Thanks to you and the most excellent midwife, the mother is resting comfortably and will soon be on her feet, none the worse save in her sorrow. It grieves me to say that the child has not survived the dawn. There was nothing to be done.”

“I feared as much,” I said, ignoring Lady Verally’s haughty departure.

“I’ve given the duchess a sleeping draught, and now I am on my way to find some breakfast.”

“I was hoping to speak with you for a moment,” I said. “I’ve a great boon to ask.”

“At your service.” The physician poked his head into Philomena’s room to let the maids know where he could be found. Then he took my arm, and we walked through the upper corridors to the galleries that overlooked the great hall.

I told him of Mad Lucy and how she had been found, and that Gerick had not yet been told. “He shouldn’t have to hear such news from me,” I said. “I’m too much a coward to face his wrath. I’m worried…”

“… that he’ll blame you.”

“With Lady Verally’s constant harping on revenge, it seems certain.” And how could I face the child, withholding the fact that I knew his Lucy and had ample reason to despise her?

“Perhaps it would be well if I saw the dead woman first, then spoke to the boy. I’ll remind him of the dangers of age and senility, and also that his mother bore two dead children long before you were in residence.”

“I’d be most grateful. It grieves me to be unable to comfort him. He is such a sad child.”

“You’ve become quite attached to him.”

“I suppose I have.” Somehow, what had begun as a challenge had become a work of affection I hadn’t thought possible. Yet, even after so many months, I scarcely knew the child.

Ren Wesley shook his massive head. “I wish we’d been able to speak with this nurse before she chose to withdraw from life. Perhaps she could have explained the boy to us in some fashion.”

The physician took his leave, following Nancy to Maddy’s room. Meanwhile I sent a message to Gerick, requesting him to meet Ren Wesley in the small reception room in half an hour.

A short time later Gerick’s young manservant sought me out with a worried look on his face. “The duke is not in his rooms, my lady,” he said. Then, with concern overshadowing discretion, he added, “And what’s more, his bed has not been slept in this past night. I asked the guards as were on duty through the night, and none’s seen the young master since yestereve.”

Thinking of my own troubled sleep, and the evidence I had found of Gerick’s disturbance of mind, I wasn’t surprised. “Yesterday was a very trying day for him, James. My guess is that you’ll find him curled up on a couch or chair somewhere. Take two others and search him out. We must speak with him.”

No sooner had James left than Nancy skittered into the gallery, saying that Ren Wesley respectfully requested my presence in Lucy’s room. I hurried along the way, leaving Nancy to intercept James should he return with word of Gerick.

Ren Wesley stood contemplating the still figure that lay on the pallet in the cluttered room. His arms were folded across his wide chest and he was twisting the end of his exuberant mustache with two thick fingers. When I came in, he whirled about, scowling.

“What is it, sir?” I asked.

“My lady, there is something you must know about this woman’s death. There is foul play here.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You must pardon the vulgar description, madam. There is no pleasant way to phrase it. Look at the depth of these gashes; they pass not only through skin and sinew, but right into the bone.”

He expected me to understand, but I shook my head.

“What it means is, she could not have done it to herself.”

“But she was a strong woman.”

“Look here.” He picked up Maddy’s hands and showed me her swollen joints and crooked fingers. I had seen such in several old servants, the painful inflammation that robbed strong and diligent men and women of their livelihood. One who had shod wild horses could no longer grip the reins of a child’s pony. One who had carried the heaviest loads or sewn the finest seams could no longer lift a mug of beer or grasp a sewing needle. “She may have had the strength to do such injury, but never could she have applied it with these hands.”

“Then you’re saying-”

“This woman was murdered.”

I was speechless… and appalled… and my skin flushed with unreasonable pangs of guilt. If anyone learned of my connection with Lucy-Maddy-the finger of accusation would point directly at me.

“Who would do such a thing? And for what possible cause?” Ren Wesley demanded in indignation.

“She was mute,” I stammered, shamed that my first thought had been of myself and not this poor woman. “And, from what I was told, a gentle soul. It doesn’t make sense.”

People were murdered because of passion: hatred, jealousy, fear. Lucy had neither physical beauty nor the kind of attractions or influence that could generate such emotions. People were also murdered for business: politics, intrigue, secrets. She had been involved in such things, but what could she know that could provoke murder? And why now? For ten years she had been out of sight; for five of those she had rocked in her chair and puttered about with children’s toys.

Ren Wesley was looking at me intently. Waiting. “What am I to tell the boy?” His words were precise, his voice cold.

“It would be difficult enough to tell him that she did it herself, but this…” The temptation to hide the truth strained my conscience. What if the woman had somehow let Gerick know of her connection with me?

“He has to be told,” I said at last. “However painful it is, hiding the truth will only compound the hurt.” Someday he would know, even if he figured it out for himself. “And when the duchess is well enough, we’ll have to inform her also.”

The physician nodded. I thought I saw a flash of relief cross his face. “I was hoping you would say that.” My reputation was wicked. If even so liberal-minded a soul as Ren Wesley had felt it reason to doubt me, I couldn’t blame him.

By late afternoon, Gerick had not been found. With my permission, James had started inquiries among the other servants, but no one had seen the boy since he had taken his cloak from his room the previous evening. I directed the servants to start at one end of the castle and search every nook and cranny, inside and out, high and low, no matter how improbable.

Meanwhile, the day dragged on, and we had to take care of Lucy. I dispatched a gardener to prepare a resting place in the frozen hillside beyond the family burial ground at Desfiere. As Nellia, Nancy, and I rolled the dead woman in her blankets so the men could carry her out, Nancy picked up something from the corner and laid it on top of the grim bundle. “She must’ve kept it since summer,” whispered the girl. “Nice for her to have a flower, even if it’s old.”

I looked at what the girl had found and touched it, not quite believing the evidence of my senses. It was wrong, jarringly wrong, like so much I had seen and heard in the past two days. But like a catalyst in an alchemist’s glass, the wilted blossom drew the pieces of the puzzle together: Philomena, whose womb could carry no children to full term… a firepit with no trace of ash or soot, yet bearing a lump of molten lead… a child who would allow no one to know him, not a tutor, not a kind physician, not even the father he loved… a child who lived in terror of sorcery… a woman who was living where she had no reason to be… And now, a lily… in the middle of winter, a lily, wilted, but not dead, its soft petals still clinging to the stem… a lily that had been fresh not twelve hours earlier. I knew only one person who loved Maddy enough to give her a flower, as he had given her straw animals and a reed flute and a hundred other childish creations. But where in the middle of winter would any child find a lily to give the woman who had tended him… from the day of his birth…?

“Nellia,” I said in a whisper, scarcely able to bring words to my tongue. “What is Gerick’s birthday?”

The old housekeeper looked at me as if I were afflicted with Mad Lucy’s malady. “Pardon, my lady?”

“The young duke… on what day and in what year was he born?”

I knew what she was going to say as clearly as I knew my own name.

“Why, it’s the twenty-ninth day of the Month of Winds, ten years ago, going on eleven in the coming spring.”

It was as if the world I knew dissolved away, leaving some new creation in its place, a creation of beauty and wonder that crumbled into horror and disaster even as I marveled at its birth. How could I find my place in such a world? What could I call truth any longer, when that which had been the darkest, most bitter truth of my life was now made a lie? To none of those questions could I give an answer, but I did know who had murdered Lucy and why, and it was, indeed, because of me.

Darzid had never expected to find me here, had not believed I could ever find out. When he discovered his miscalculation and my laughable ignorance of the truth sitting in my hand, he took swift action to remedy his mistake. Lucy had never been feebleminded, but brave and clever and devoted, feigning a ruined mind in order to keep the child she loved safe. She had taught him to hide what he could do. When she was told that she was no longer needed in the nursery, she knew better, and she did what was necessary to make sure she was close by to watch him, to be his friend when he dared not let anyone close enough to discover his terrible secret.

Ten years ago on the twenty-ninth day of the Month of Winds… two months to the day after Karon’s burning… the day the silent, gentle Maddy had helped me give birth to my son.

From my breast burst a cry of lamentation that would have unmanned the Guardians of the Keep, making them snap the chains that bound them to their sacred duty. I ran like a madwoman through the corridors of Comigor, knowing as well as I knew the sun would set that Gerick would not be found in any corner of the world I knew.