The Falcon Throne (The Tarnished Crown Series) (47 page)

“Yes, my lord,” Balfre said, still kneeling. Not humble, for he could never be that, but with his natural arrogance tempered, at last. “Which I think you know, or you wouldn’t have sent me to speak for you at the Crown Court.”

No, he’d sent Balfre to the Crown Court to prove himself trustworthy.

And when he could’ve slaughtered Humbert, slaughtered Vidar, wreaked his vengeance upon Clemen, he stayed his hand and came home to seek my guidance
.

What else should Balfre do to prove himself worthy of trust?

“You’d need another lord to aid you. The Marches are too big for one man.”

“I’d take Waymon, Your Grace.”

“Not Joben? Or Lowis? Or even Paithan?”

“No,” Balfre said, regretful. “Harcia needs Joben’s voice on the council. Lowis’s health is uncertain. And with Herewart growing feeble, Paithan should be close at hand. His father will need him far more than I.”

“Waymon,” said Grefin, uneasy. “I know he’s your friend, Balfre, and I’d not smear him, but…”

“He can be wild,” Balfre said, looking at his brother. “But he saved
my life in the Marches. In time he’ll season. If he’s given the chance.” He almost smiled. “As I have.”

Aimery pinched the bridge of his nose. Waymon wouldn’t be his choice, either. But Balfre had earned the right to decide. Just as he’d earned the right to rule the Marches.

“Very well, Balfre. You are my Marcher lord.”

Balfre leapt up, brilliantly smiling. “Thank you, Your Grace. I swear on my honour, I’ll not disappoint.”

“I know.” He released an unsteady breath. “Now, you’ve come to me straight from the road, weary and travel-stained after much hard riding, and though you keep close counsel I know you’re heartsore over Bayard and Egbert and our slaughtered men. Eat, sleep, and put aside sorrow for a time.”

“Your Grace,” said Balfre, and turned. “Grefin.”

Grefin crossed to his brother, folded him into an embrace. “I’m proud of you, Balfre. I doubt I’d have kept my head, if I’d been there.”

As Balfre departed, Aimery let himself slump. His weakened body was trembling, and grief threatened to break free.

Grefin reached for him. “Father—”

“Don’t, Grefin,” he said harshly. “There’s nothing you can say. Balfre is right. Clemen has ever been greedy and deceitful. Shame on me for thinking that could change.”

“Not shame,” said Grefin, his voice thick. “Never shame. There can’t be shame in an honest seeking after peace.”

He shuddered. “Say as much to Bayard and Egbert. See if they agree.”

“
Father
—”

“No, Grefin.” He raised a defensive hand. “You mean well, and I’m glad you badgered me into letting you stay in Cater’s Tamwell till Balfre returned. But I’d be alone. Go and play with your children. They’ll be grown and you’ll be an old man, soon enough.”

“Your Grace,” Grefin murmured, and did as he was told.

Aimery waited until the chamber door shut before he let the tears fall.

“Well, leech? Will Lord Waymon be spared?”

“Count Balfre!” The startled castle leech dropped his bone needle and length of boiled horsehair. “His lordship’s life is not in peril. The wound is more a long gash than deeply penetrating. Most fortunate.”

No, not really. Waymon had taken great care not to kill himself by
accident. Inspecting the unstitched and freshly bloodied dagger-wound in Waymon’s side, Balfre raised an eyebrow.

“Were you not satisfied with the herb-woman’s stitchery?”

The leech sniffed. “There were gaps, my lord. Ill humours were gathering.”

“She had worse wounds than mine to mend,” said Waymon, grinning despite the pain. Bloodied linen cloths were scattered at his feet. “Count Balfre used his dagger on those Clemen filth with lordly skill.”

He frowned Waymon to silence. “A few proper stitches is all Waymon requires, leech?”

“Yes, my lord,” the leech said, cautious. “With a good daubing of speedwell ointment after, and a linen bandage to finish. I’ve one here, soaking in a tincture of cockleburr, comfrey and goldenseal.”

“Then go seek a patient elsewhere,” he said. “I know my way around a needle.”

Not pleased, but no fool either, Tamwell’s leech withdrew from the stone-walled infirmary. Balfre latched the door behind him.

“My lord?” Waymon was eyeing him like a skittish horse. “Are you sure you—”

“You wound me, Waymon,” he said, crossing to a bench where the leech’s tools were neatly displayed. “I could slit your throat and stitch it shut again well enough.”

Waymon laughed, uneasily. “I’m encouraged to hear it. I think. Have you seen the duke?”

Ah, Waymon. A little murder and mayhem and he thought they were almost equals. But this wasn’t the time to put the upstart in his place. Waymon was yet useful… and knew more than enough to be dangerous. He must be kept close.

“I’ve just come from him.”

“How went it?”

With his back turned he didn’t have to school his face. But he made sure to keep the aggravation out of his voice. “Sadly,” he said, choosing a fresh bone needle. “Aimery’s grieved by the loss of good Harcian men, and his grief grieves me. I did what had to be done but it gives me scant pleasure.”

“Better a little pain now than a great pain later. Clemen is a festering sore.”

Indeed. He fished a horsehair from its jar of spirits, and threaded the needle. “Though one good thing has come of this shambles. I’m named Harcia’s new Marcher lord.”

“Truly? ’Tis excellent news, Balfre!”

Waymon sounded astonished, but pleased. Just what he wanted to hear. “It’s a solemn duty.”

“You’ll perform it well. When do you leave?”

“Soon.” He crossed back to Waymon, who immediately looked skittish again. “Clemen must remain cowed. Now, my friend, hold your arm out of the way and grit your teeth. This will pinch.”

Womanish, Waymon yelped at each popping bite of the needle and closing tug of horsehair. Yelped louder as ointment was slathered across the wound, then groaned as the herb-soaked bandage was wound around his ribs.

“Thank you,” he said, when the task was done. “But don’t take it amiss if I say you were born to be a duke, not a leech.”

“I won’t. Waymon…” He settled his hand on the man’s shoulder. Showed him nothing but the duke’s loving son, a good friend. “You must think me monstrous ungrateful, that I’ve not yet spoken of what you did for me in the Marches.”

Waymon flushed. “My lord, I failed you in the Marches. I didn’t stop Humbert from claiming the trader’s body.”

True. But while the mistake still rankled, he was prepared, this once, to forgive. Humbert might have the body, but bodies rotted. He, on the other hand, had retrieved the forged letter. And it was the letter that gave him the leverage he needed over Aimery and Grefin. Which meant he had the power. All Humbert had was putrid flesh.

He gave Waymon’s shoulder a light squeeze. “No, my friend. Everything I asked, you did, even when what I asked was difficult. And I know it was difficult. Not killing that lone trader and dressing him in Roric’s livery, but wounding yourself. Killing Bayard. And maiming our own Marcher men so they’d not survive.”

“You killed Egbert, and some of our men,” Waymon said, shrugging. “How could I flinch, when you didn’t? Besides, they failed Harcia. They failed you. What could any of them expect for that but death?”

He sighed, as though impossibly burdened. “I’m glad you feel that way. There are many who’d think my judgement too harsh.”

“Not I,” said Waymon, fiercely. “Can a meek lamb rule Harcia?”

The man’s unswerving loyalty was a balm to his scorched spirit, which hadn’t healed from Aimery and Grefin’s betrayal. Might never heal. Some wounds were too deep. Some betrayals beyond forgiveness.

“Many would say yes.”

“Then they’re fools, my lord. I’d rather be dead in a ditch than suffer the lordship of a lamb.”

Well. That was one thing they had in common, at least. Balfre wandered idly back to the bench, where he’d left the jar of speedwell ointment unsealed. Pushing the cork plug into its neck, he glanced over.

“The letter from Roric I gave you to put with the Clemen man’s body. I know you must have questions.”

“Well—” Waymon hesitated. “Balfre, I don’t need—”

“No, but I’ll explain,” he said, smiling. “I owe you that much. How the letter came to me, it’s best you don’t know. I’d keep you safe whenever I can. But how I came by it meant I couldn’t easily reveal its existence to Aimery. And so… a small deception. Dishonesty in service of a greater truth. If that disturbs you, then—”

“I told you, Balfre,” Waymon said, sombre. “Whatever you need. Ask me, and it’s done.”

Returning to him, Balfre slid his hand to the back of Waymon’s neck, pulled him close so he could press their foreheads together. “Such loyalty is a rare gift. Worth more to me than a lake of molten gold. I’d reward it. Come to the Marches, Waymon. Be my strong right arm.”

Waymon jerked back. “Balfre! Me? But what—”

“My cousins are our friends and are good men, and I love them,” he said. “And I’ll have need of them, in time. But they lack your heart, Waymon. They would’ve stayed their hands in the Marches. Doubted what they were asked to do. Doubted me.”

“Then they’re fools too,” said Waymon. “Because what you did saved Harcia from Clemen’s treachery.”

“No, Waymon.
We
saved it.”

Struck dumb, Waymon swallowed.

“Now, my friend, you should eat a hearty meal, then rest,” he said. “As I intend to do. For the task before us is daunting and we shall need all our strength.”

The next morning, after a poor night’s sleep, disheartened by Roric’s duplicity and fretting for Aimery, Grefin found that not even Mazelina’s gentle company or his children’s laughter could soothe him. So he took refuge in childhood memory, and sought out the place where he used to hide as a boy: the crooked branches of an old apple tree, in a far corner of the bailey. There he sat, knees pulled close to his chest, and brooded.

Balfre found him there an hour later.

“We should talk,” his brother said, fisted hands on his hips. “Just the two of us.”

He pulled a face. “I’m not in the mood, Balfre.”

“Too bad. I am.”

There was no point protesting, so he climbed out of the tree and walked across Tamwell castle’s outer bridge with his brother, thinking they’d wander along the cliff or maybe through the township. Find a quiet tavern and hide themselves in a corner. But no. Instead, Balfre led him down to the river and threw coins at a wherryman for the use of his sturdy little boat.

With a comfortable sigh, Balfre settled himself on a bench seat, his back to the stern. “You’re the youngest. You can row.”

Bastard. Grefin hunched onto the wherryman’s seat, took hold of the oars and wrangled the wherry away from the dock and into the lazily flowing river. The wherryman stared after them, shading his bemused face with his hand.

“Mind, now,” said Balfre. “The river’s well-travelled and this doublet’s not for swimming.”

He was right. The river Tam was Harcia’s highway, thronged daily with wherries and barges unless it was a hard winter and the water froze. Then horse-and-carts used it like a regular road, and children tied shingles to their shoes and slid about in riots of laughter, and older boys held archery contests under the sparkling, ice-blue sky. Two hundred and sixty-odd years ago the Tam’s waters had flowed through the Marches and into Clemen. But Harcia’s duke in that time, Gorvenal, he’d put an end to that. Summoned every able-bodied man and boy in the duchy to the slow, narrow river bend beyond Cater’s Tamwell and turned them into an army of spadesmen. Upon his command they’d diverted the river back into Harcia. And though Clemen had howled and pleaded and threatened, Gorvenal stood firm… and Clemen didn’t fight. That was something to remember, in these uncertain times.

Glancing over his shoulder, then left and right at the wherries gliding beside them, making sure he was in no danger of a collision, Grefin heaved a sigh. “Balfre, where are we going?”

Balfre waved a vague hand. “Does it matter? Surely even you can’t get lost on a fucking river. Now put your back into it. It’s past time you worked up an honest sweat.”

If he’d not needed both oars, he’d have smacked his brother with one.

Feeling his muscles loosen as he worked into the rhythm of the task, feeling the impersonal tug of the flowing water and the strength it cost him to keep the wherry driving straight, he deepened his breathing. The air smelled of the midden, and open fields, and damp ploughed soil, and cattle.

“I’m wondering,” he said, watching Balfre watch the cottages and countryside glide by. “When you leave, will you take Jancis with you?”

Balfre grimaced. “No.”

“So you’d not object if she spent a little time on the Green Isle with me and Mazelina?”

“I would. Aimery needs her to tend him.”

“Balfre, she’s nursed Aimery since he fell ill. She’s tired. A respite will restore her spirits.”

“What the fuck do you care for my wife and her spirits?” said Balfre, staring. “Besides, surely Mazelina is trouble enough on her own.”

Grefin thought a moment before replying. If only Balfre weren’t so prickly when it came to talk of marriage. It touched too near the question of children, of sons. His disappointment, and how he blamed that on his wife.

“It’s Mazelina who’s asked me to ask you. She’s fond of Jancis. She says the wives of men like us must love each other like sisters.”

“Men like us? I suppose that’s an insult, is it?
Men like us
.”

“Balfre…” He shook his head, amused by his brother’s outrage. “Can you call us easy? Were you a woman, would you wish to be married to you?”

“Instead of you? Fuck! What do you think?”

“I think that when it comes to my wife, I know which battles to fight and when I shouldn’t even bother unsheathing my sword.”

“Fuck.” Disgruntled, Balfre worried at the ruby ring on his thumb. Then he shrugged, an irritable twitch of one shoulder. “Fine. Take Jancis back with you. Keep her for all I care.”

A double-sailed flat barge wallowed by them, laden with slabs of blood granite quarried in Danstun, three days’ ride to the north. Breathing hard, Grefin struggled to hold the wherry against the barge’s heavy wash. He could hear shouts and curses as the river’s wherryman fought to keep their own boats steady.