The Truth-Teller's Tale (27 page)

“She will,” I said, my mouth so dry the words would scarcely come out.

No one else had a chance to speak. There were sudden voices in the hall, mostly male, and the sound of jostling bodies. “This way!” someone called, and in a moment, the door burst open. Nearly a dozen people poured into the room. There was so much motion and commotion that it took a minute for me to sort out what was happening. I saw Micah charge through the throng of people and rescue his sister from his father's hold—I saw Alexander, a half step behind him, snatch her limp body from Micah and shield it with his own. Indeed, she seemed so frail and he so stricken that they sank in a double half-swoon to the floor. There, Alexander cradled her against him, holding her so tenderly and seeming so unaware of anything else going on in the room that I was afraid they might be trampled. Then I saw Gregory move over to stand between them and the milling crowd.

Watching the two of them together, I began to have my doubts about the veracity of Adele's story.

But she had spoken the truth. I might have been able to speak a lie, but I had not lost my ability to recognize a falsehood. Alexander had married a village girl yesterday morning.

Or perhaps . . .

Before I had a chance to work through it, there was another influx of angry men into the room. There were now maybe twenty-five people in the den that was designed to hold comfortably about a quarter of that number. Adele, Melinda, and I found ourselves shoved toward the wall across the room from where Gregory stood guard over the couple on the floor. I craned my neck, straining to see around velvet shoulders and starched collars to observe what was happening now.

“Delton Karro!” exclaimed one of the new arrivals. “You are accused of piracy on the high seas!”

“What?”
bellowed Karro. He hauled the great bulk of his body around to face this new travail and seemed filled with so much force and energy it was as if he had not expended any of it on his daughter. “Who accuses me? What is the specific crime?”

“I accuse you!” cried another voice, and a second man stepped up beside the first. Finally, I recognized them both. The first was the harbormaster, an old but iron-willed former sea captain. The second was Mac Balder, Karro's chief rival, a cadaverously thin man with sunken cheeks and wispy white hair. Around them crowded some of the richest and most important men in Merendon, as well as several of the visitors from Wodenderry.

“
I
accuse you!” Mac Balder repeated, shaking his finger in Karro's face. Karro batted his hand away. “You sent one of your clippers out to harass my
Melva Blue,
and now it's missing, overdue in port by two days. Your men brought down my ship! Massacred my sailors, I've no doubt—yes, and stole my cargo, too! Do you think to sell it here in the Merendon shops once I tell everyone that you're a thief and a murderer? Do you think the queen will want to partner with someone like you when I tell her what kind of man you are? You'll be run out of Merendon, you liar, you scoundrel—you—you—
killer.
”

Indeed, there was such a roar of outrage from the gathering that it seemed likely Karro would be thrown out of the city this very night. Bodies pressed closer to him; hands reached out to cuff him across the face or shoulders. I thought it possible that any number of people, myself included, might be crushed underfoot by the reckless, furious crowd.

But two figures forced themselves between the angry townspeople and the embattled Karro. One was the harbormaster, who held up his hands for quiet. The other was Micah, who looked pale but determined.

“My father would not do such deeds,” Micah called, his voice barely audible above the boil of the crowd. “My father is an honorable businessman.”

“I've never cared much for the cut of his honor!” someone shouted in response.

The harbormaster held his hands even higher. “Let us hear what Delton Karro has to say in response to these accusations,” he commanded, and the noise around him subsided somewhat. “Let us hear his defense.” He turned to look at Karro, where he hunched against the wall, defiant but just a little apprehensive.

“I didn't bring down the
Melva Blue,
” Karro claimed, panting a little. “I admit it, I wanted to—but I didn't do it.”

There was another swell of outrage at this acknowledgment, and then the harbormaster shouted at them all to be quiet again. “How can we know that what you say is true?” the harbormaster demanded.

Karro pushed himself away from the wall, scanned the room—and pointed straight at me. “There. That woman. The Truth-Teller. She'll repeat what I told her two days ago about Mac Balder's precious ship.”

Now every person in the room had turned to stare at me. I couldn't help myself—I stole one quick glance in Gregory's direction, and found the encouragement on his face to be supremely comforting. I took a deep breath and stepped out a little into the mob of men. “Yes, indeed, you stopped me on the street in the middle of a rainstorm and told me a terrible thing,” I said in a clear voice. “You told me you had sent out one of your own ships to intercept one of Mac Balder's, that you were jealous of his foreign cargo and you wanted your own men to bring it to port. You said you thought there was a good chance of bloodshed, too.”

Now the noise in the room was deafening, men shouting and waving their fists, Karro hollering back with his face reddened by rage. I saw Micah wrestle his father to the wall as if to keep him from leaping across the assembled company to strangle me as he had strangled Roelynn. It was a good five minutes before the harbormaster was able to quiet everyone this time, and even then, Karro's voice could be heard in a manic rant. “She lies! She lies! The Truth-Teller lies!”

I waited till I thought people might be able to hear me, and then I spoke again, copying the cold tone Melinda had used earlier. “I do not lie,” I said. “But I admit that when Karro told me these things, he believed he was speaking to my sister, the Safe-Keeper. He thought he was confessing to someone who would keep his dreadful secret.”

“Ha!” Karro cried, straining against Micah's hold. “Then it was your
sister
I spoke to later in the day, when I came to your parents' house! I told her I had rescinded my orders. I told her that my heart misgave me and I had called my men back. I told her I could not do such a terrible thing, bitterly though I hated this man Balder. She knows—I told her. Ask that other girl!”

And now all eyes in the room turned toward Adele.

She stepped away from the wall with her usual poise and dropped a quick curtsy to the gathered crowd. The look on her face was grave and absolutely unreadable. The harbormaster said to her in a stern voice, “Is Karro telling the truth? Did he indeed tell you these things? Did he countermand his orders of piracy?”

“He certainly did speak to me that afternoon,” she said, her voice much steadier than mine had been. “But I am not at liberty to repeat what he said to me. I am a Safe-Keeper, and I do not reveal such secrets.”

Karro howled with fury and frustration. The mob erupted into fresh accusations of perfidy and surged forward again as if to destroy him on the spot. I heard voices demand that Karro be incarcerated, that he be forced out of town, that he be hanged, that he be thrown into the ocean to drown. Once again, the harbormaster was able to beat them back to a state of semi-reason.

“We do not have proof!” the harbormaster shouted. “We do not have definitive testimony! We cannot convict or punish the man based on the evidence of one missing ship! Ships are late into harbor all the time!”

“He is still suspect!” Joe Muller called back. “He should be dragged from his house and put in chains until we have discovered the truth of the matter!”

“He's a damned unscrupulous man, is what he is!” cried another voice. “Maybe he hasn't brought down Mac's ship, but he's lied and he's cheated and he's bullied men before this, and I say it's time the whole kingdom knows him for the unsavory rat he is.”

More men called out details of their own past dealings with Karro, and I could see that, whatever else this evening might bring, it would be the ruin of Karro's reputation. He could see it, too. His face, so ruddy with rage all night, was growing pale and lax; I could see a layer of sweat shining along his forehead. He tried to counter his neighbors' accusations with a voice that grew more feeble and unconvincing with every word. “No . . . you misunderstood . . . no, I never meant it that way . . . perhaps that was not quite fair, but we can work out a better deal. . . .”

Beside me, I felt Melinda shake out her gold and white skirts and then take a decisive step into the crowd. She had to push and tug a little, but as soon as all the men realized who moved among them, they hastily cleared a way for her. In a few moments, she was standing before Karro. She was not a tall woman, but at this moment she appeared to be gazing down at him.

“Delton Karro,” she said, and her voice rang to all corners of the room, “you know that I have the power to make some wishes come true. For the past seventeen years, your one and only wish has been to see your daughter marry the prince. It has been the thing you have worked for above all others. Now, tonight, you may see a second dream present itself. You may wish to save your good name and rescue your business, both at dire risk right now. What shall it be? I cannot make both dreams come true. You must choose.”

I held my breath to hear the answer. All around me, it seemed, the whole crowd similarly suspended breathing. No one spoke, no one moved, as we waited for Karro's reply.

At last he spoke, slowly, reluctantly. He was not a man used to being thwarted, not a man accustomed to giving up one thing to secure something else. He was a man who had always believed he could have everything he wanted. “I choose—I choose myself,” he said heavily. “My daughter can marry whom she pleases.”

“And your son?” Melinda added.

Karro dipped his head. “And my son. Let them wed where they will and be damned to them.”

Melinda gave a brief, quick nod. “What I did not tell you,” she said, “was that I would grant the wish you
didn't
choose. Your reputation is lost, but your daughter will still marry the prince.”

There was a moment of stunned silence, then pandemonium. My heartbroken cry of
“Noooo!”
was lost in the general uproar. How could she do such an awful thing, how could Melinda snatch happiness away from both Roelynn and Adele, even to punish this terrible man? It was wrong; it was unjust; it was so unlike her. She might be granting Karro one of his wishes, but she had ruined the dreams of four other people in the room. Or three people, if Alexander really had gone off and married another girl yesterday morning . . .

The unruly crowd now rocked back and forth, calling for more penalties to be inflicted on Karro. I felt a hand close over mine and draw me back toward the relative safety of the wall. It was Adele, and she was smiling.

“Do not look so upset,” she whispered in my ear, and even over the incredible noise in the room, I could hear her. “You'll see. Everything will turn out.”

“What did he tell you?” I whispered back. “That day at the inn? What is the truth?” For emotions had been so high in the room that even I had had trouble telling when a lie was being spoken.

She smiled again and put a finger to her lips.

Just when I thought the noise level in the small room could not get any louder, there was an ear-splitting inhuman sound that made it seem as if the whole world was baying. I snatched my hand away from Adele's so I could clap both palms to my ears, and around me everyone else did the same. The noise came again, and I realized that it was the harbormaster blowing a foghorn, designed to steer ships away from trouble—or silence intemperate mobs. We all stared at him in stupefaction, and he pointed at the door.

There, unnoticed in the hubbub, stood a new arrival. He was not a man I knew, but it was clear he was a sailor of some sort, and the exhaustion on his face proclaimed he was the survivor of a very hazardous journey. When he saw every person in the room staring his way, he drew himself up stiff and straight and gave us all one smart salute.

“Jack Ailsley of the
Melva Blue,
just come into harbor,” he announced. “Captain heard as there was some worry about our tardiness, so he sent me here to let you know we was all well.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

After that, it was clear the room was too small to hold all the rejoicing, recriminations, and retellings that were necessary to make sense of this night. The whole crowd streamed out into the corridor and then down toward the ballroom—or, who knows, perhaps to the dining hall or some other chamber meant for large gatherings. I didn't know where they ended up. I didn't follow. Like my sister, Melinda, and Gregory—like Alexander and Roelynn, still embracing on the floor—I stayed in the little den as the room emptied out. When the last man had exited, talking volubly to his companion, Gregory closed the door behind them all and set his back to it.

“Now,” he said, and his glinting blue eyes surveyed those of us remaining. “Will somebody please explain what just happened here?”

Melinda sank to a seat in one of the spindly upholstered chairs that were scattered around the room and that no one had wanted to take advantage of before. “Oh, my heavens,” she said, and her voice was faint. “That's not a night that I'd like to live through more than once.”

Alexander looked up from his position on the floor. I wondered how Roelynn could be so comfortable in his embrace when she had just learned that he had married another woman, but in fact, she seemed quite happy. For his part, Alexander seemed to be smoldering with a righteous fury. “That man,” he said, in his low melodious voice. “Roelynn's father. He ought to be horsewhipped out of this town.”