the crowd and reached the front, her stare fixed on Lord Nettice.
‘I bid six hundred and eighty pieces of gold!’ she said. ‘Do you have the nerve to outbid me, Lord Nettice?’
‘Nerve?’ Lord Freychinet laughed, looking at his friend. ‘What has nerve to do with it? I’ll lend you the rest, Nettice.’
Lord Nettice hesitated and Beatriss dared the coward to be the first to look away. For it would not be her. Never again would she look away from this man. She stepped closer, until she was almost nose to nose with him.
‘I defy you to outbid me,’ she said. ‘I defy you.’
There was a hush from the crowd filled with confusion and anticipation and hope.
‘Sold to Lady Beatriss for six hundred and eighty pieces of gold,’ the auctioneer shouted, his words slicing through the silence.
‘What?’ There was outrage from Lord Freychinet and their companions.
‘Too fast,’ Lord Freychinet shouted at the man. ‘Too fast.’
‘
‘This is an outrage!’ Lady Milla said.
‘Nettice! Do something,’ his wife said.
‘Leave it,’ Lord Nettice said to his entourage, his tone cold and bitter. ‘Leave it. She’s paid too much for it anyway. Fenton was always the runt of the villages.’
Through the crowd Beatriss could see Trevanion, his eyes on Nettice as if he wanted to tear the man apart. But a moment later she was surrounded by those of Fenton and lost sight of him. Abian and August were there too, as were Tarah and Samuel and anyone present from Sennington. They all seemed stunned at the quick outcome of the day’s events. Beatriss could hardly find the words to speak.
‘Did I just buy a village?’ she asked.
Then Makli laughed. ‘You did indeed, Lady Beatriss. You did indeed.’
That afternoon her home was filled to the brim with those from Sennington and Fenton. Even the auctioneer had returned with them when he heard of the ale and the sweets to be served.
‘May I make a toast?’ Beatriss called out when the sun was beginning to set and it was time for her guests to leave. Silence came over the room.
‘A toast to Lord Selric and Lady Milla and Lady Hera and Frana and Lestra. And a toast to those others we lost from Fenton and Sennington.’ Beatriss’s eyes blazed with tears. ‘We won’t have a moment’s rest this coming year, dear friends. Not a moment’s rest, but we break our backs in their names.’
There was a cheer for her words and she stood amongst them overwhelmed with fear and exhilaration. What had she got herself into? What would people say? One moment refusing to step outside her house, next moment buying a village.
Later, the man who had conducted the sale approached and took her hand, and she smiled.
‘I gather you weren’t a big supporter of Lord Nettice after what you did today?’ she asked. ‘Did he do you wrong, Sir?’
The auctioneer named Pollock shook his head. ‘I’m not interested in those who do me wrong, Lady Beatriss. There’s not enough time in the day for them. But my daughter spent five safe years in the cloisters because of you and that mad Tesadora. Won’t be forgotten by me and my wife. I can tell you that.’
She stood a while and watched them all go, but as she turned she heard the sound of a horse coming down the road. Samuel stepped out beside her.
‘It’s the Captain,’ she said quietly. ‘I’m safe, Samuel.’
She waited for Trevanion to dismount and without a word he followed her into the house.
‘Was it him?’ he asked, and she heard the barely contained rage in his voice.
She sighed, pouring him a cider and cutting him a slice of cake.
‘And what are you going to do to him if it was?’ she asked.
‘Kill him,’ he said through clenched teeth.
‘No, you won’t,’ she said gently.
Trevanion kicked the stool out of the way and it bounced off the wall and splintered. ‘I’ve killed traitors before, Beatriss. It’s my job. In what way would this be any different?’ he asked.
Beatriss calmly picked up what was left of the stool. ‘Because you don’t have proof. Nettice was smart in that way. He would come to this house often in the early days to talk about the soldiers and his hatred for the impostor King. Later he’d tell me he was lonely. His wife kept a cold bed. I would send him away each time. And then suddenly he was a guest of the impostor King in the palace. A fact I knew because I was dragged down there often enough.’
She caught Trevanion’s wince of pain.
‘Nettice would tell all who would listen that his visits to the palace were to make life easier for us, but the only families who had an easy life were those who collaborated.’
She swallowed, trying to keep down the bile that always rose when she thought of those years.
‘He must have made a deal with the impostor King and somehow I became part of that bargain because the King and his men didn’t touch me again. And do you want to know the truth, Trevanion?’ she asked. ‘I felt relief. Each time he came up that path, I felt relief. Better a demon I knew, better one man than any of the others in the palace. Relief,’ she cried. ‘Nothing more. Nothing. And that relief shamed me and he knew, trading on that shame all these years.’
Trevanion closed his eyes, his expression so pained that she wanted some kind of magic to take away all their suffering. But that type of magic didn’t exist.
‘He stopped the visits when I was carrying Vestie and then of course there was Tesadora. Nothing frightened those cowardly men more than Tesadora. Her friendship saved my life. It saved my spirit.’
Beatriss began to clear away the plates and cakes. She looked away, so she wouldn’t have to see his face. Would there be judgement? Had it been easier for him to love Vestie knowing that the father was nowhere in their lives?
Trevanion stayed, his silence frightening. And there they sat opposite each other, two people who had grown older without the comfort of the other. She wanted to weep for the lost opportunities. But deep in the night when she thought there would never be words between them again, he spoke.
‘The reason I couldn’t ask questions all this time, is that I feared I’d have to respond to yours in return.’ His voice was low and hoarse. ‘That I’d have to speak of being imprisoned in the mines and my first months there and what I let them do to me and how I couldn’t save those two brothers from the Rock who came to join me there.’
He looked away, the tears biting at his eyes.
‘We didn’t let them do anything to us, Trevanion,’ Beatriss said fiercely. ‘They did it without our permission.’
She walked to where he sat and placed her arms around him. He turned and buried his face against her waist and she thought she felt a sob against her and they stayed wrapped around each other, bathed by the sounds of this house that had seen the worst and best of times. But all Beatriss had to hear was the sound of his breathing and her child mumbling in sleep to know that perhaps for tonight alone all was good in her world.
‘Do you remember the day three years ago when we spoke at the babe’s grave?’ he asked. ‘Do you remember your words? Has anything changed? About how you can never go back to the way things were?’
She took his face in her hands. ‘I only remember the words that haven’t changed, Trevanion.’
She pressed her brow against his.
‘I still wake with your name on my lips every morning.’
Chapter 41
Froi’s only consolation as they crawled through the underground caves of Paladozza was that the tunnels
