“How long now before they open the gate?” Madlenka demanded.
Giedre peered through a clear spot in the lozenge-paned window to see how far sunlight had descended Mount Naproti. “Very soon, I think.”
Knuckles rapped on the door. “Madlenka, my child?”
Madlenka knew that sonorous and melodious voice. “Please enter, my lord bishop.”
Both women curtseyed as Bishop Ugne strode… um… waddled into the room. His voice was the best part of him, and his appearance never failed to disappoint. Even when swathed in many layers of ecclesiastical vestments of blue and cloth-of-gold, he was too short and dumpy to impress, and his towering miter made him look top-heavy. His face was ruddy and chinless, so dominated by a massive curved nose that Madlenka was invariably reminded of a parrot she had once seen for sale in the spring fair. It had clung to the side of its cage very much the way the bishop’s soft white hand clutched his tall crozier.
The castle women distrusted the bishop and the numerous female servants he had brought with him. There were whispers that his housekeeper was his mistress, her sister was another, and his two young nieces were actually his daughters. Ugne was of noble blood-son, brother, and uncle of dukes-and had no doubt paid a high price to purchase his office, and that was another grievous sin. Everyone knew that the Church was corrupt; the Jorgarian clergy were probably no better or worse than any others.
Surprisingly, Father had rather approved of Ugne, on the grounds that most of his predecessors had refused to reside in this bleak mountainous diocese and had preferred to delegate their duties to vicars. Petr had approved too, for the very different reason that he ranked Ugne as the third best horseman in the county. He was also an enthusiastic hunter and had, by God’s mercy, been present to administer the last rites on the day Petr was gored.
He glanced meaningfully at the bed curtains.
Madlenka shook her head. “No better.”
“As the Lord wills. Now, daughter, why do you summon me with such frantic claims of urgency on a Sunday morning? It is everyone else’s day of rest, but to those of us who do the Lord’s work, it is a busy one.”
Her note had explained the problem. If he did not consider it important, what was he doing here in the castle in his full vestments?
“Count Vranov, that’s why! He crossed the border with a small army last night. One of Father’s vassals… one of the tenants from up near the forks of the Hlucny rode in after curfew last night to report that a sizable troop of Pelrelmians had ridden by his fief. He saddled up and trailed them, and watched them pitching camp at High Meadows, then came up to the gate to report. Father would have rewarded him handsomely! You could see their campfires from the wall. This morning the lookouts heard their bugles sounding reveille.”
The bishop frowned. “And what size do you consider a small army?”
“About two hundred fighting men, he said, and that’s not counting servants.”
“Who said? I hope you were not out on the wall cavorting with sentinels in the dark, unchaperoned?”
“My lord bishop! Of course not!”
“Then how do you know all this?”
“Dali told me.” Dali was Dalibor Notivova, Constable Karolis’s deputy. “He came to see me, but I was certainly never alone with him. Later I sent for Sir Karolis, too. He condescended to come eventually, although he kept me waiting long enough. I asked him what he was going to do, and he said he would open the gate and let them in!”
Father had neither liked him nor trusted Count Vranov, the Hound of the Hills. Now Madlenka suspected that he had been behind the sorcery that had killed both Father and Petr, and she was convinced that the constable was in the Hound’s pay.
Bishop Ugne was looking thunderous. “Was Dalibor also the one who told you that Sir Karolis had not reported your father’s stroke to the king?”
“I promised that person I would not reveal his identity.”
The bishop took that refusal as confirmation, which it was. “My daughter, has it occurred to you that Dalibor Notivova may be after Sir Karolis’s job?”
“It would be an improvement.”
“Or your late father’s, even? He is a relative, is he not?”
She hadn’t thought of that and she felt herself blushing. Dalibor was a widower. But the idea was absurd-she could neither inherit the title nor pass it on to her husband. “I’ve known Dali all my life. He taught me how to groom a horse. He is distantly related to me, yes-third or fourth cousin. He’s the only surviving male relative I know of. Of course, his claim would be through the female line and wouldn’t be valid… would it?”
“Possibly not,” the bishop admitted. “Arturas the herald could tell you. But the direct male line is certainly extinct, which means that the king will have to appoint another lord of the Cardice marches. A local man and a distant relative, even on the distaff side, might have a chance. But Dalibor Notivova doesn’t, because he is a commoner and His Majesty has certainly never heard of him.” Ugne peered at her suspiciously. “Or did you mention his name when you sent the report to Mauvnik?”
“No. He… My informant made me promise not to. To mention his name, I mean! He refused to say why.” The devious cleric was tying her in knots.
Now the parrot had a cracker. The bishop smiled. “Then I have been misjudging him, just as you may be misjudging Count Vranov. You had no prior word that he was coming? I mean, it is both normal and commendable for a neighbor to come and pay his condolences after such a tragedy.”
“Not a word! The counts of Kipalban and Gistov both sent couriers with expressions of sorrow and promises to endow prayers for their souls, but not Vranov. Not a word. So why is he here with an army?”
“Your definition of an army may not agree with the constable’s, Madlenka. But on my way here I encountered Captain Ekkehardt, who was heading to the barbican to discuss this very problem with the constable. So why don’t we go there and see what our military experts have decided?”
God be thanked! Until this disaster of her father’s and brother’s deaths, Madlenka had never expected to feel grateful for the presence of the landsknecht mercenaries in the town. But if Constable Kavarskas was to prove false, the Germans might prove a counterweight to his treachery. Delighted at the thought of action, she darted across to one of the chests and began hauling out clothes, hurling them aside, burrowing ever lower, until she had found the winter robes. She kept her mother’s sable for herself-she was in mourning, after all-and tossed a dark brown fox fur one to Giedre.
A glance at the mirror called for a sigh. Black was definitely not her color; it made her pale face look like a skull. And the fur was not quite the same shade of black as her hat. She lowered her veil, so no one could see her at all. “Quickly, then!” she said.
Bishop Ugne had already opened the door and beckoned for the countess’s nurse, who had been sent out to wait in the dressing room.
Madlenka, Giedre, and Bishop Ugne left the keep by the upper door, and were saluted by the sentries. They crossed a drawbridge high above a street and then climbed some steps to the top of the curtain wall, where they were brutally assaulted by the torrent of wind that always blew there. The reverent bishop muttered something in the vulgar tongue and grabbed his miter just before it disappeared. His vestments billowed and flapped. Madlenka wondered if she dared offer to carry his crozier for him.
Heads bent into the gale, they hurried along the wide parapet with the black slate roofs of the town below them to their right. On their left, outside the battlements, the wall dropped sheer for thirty feet to a cliff about ten times as high, and below that lay the rocky bed of the foaming Ruzena River.
Had their eyes not been watering so hard, they would have seen the great valley ahead of them, widening southward until the embracing hills fell away and it merged with the forests of the Jorgary Plain, clad that day in fall gold. Fields and vineyards, villages both large and small, lay well concealed, for even high church spires failed to overtop the trees.
According to tradition, on his way to the Third Crusade the Emperor Barbarossa had acclaimed the shelf on which Castle Gallant stood as “designed by God to hold a fortress.” The great rocky slab blocking the western half of the valley had held a castle even in Barbarossa’s day, but in the three centuries since then, many successive rulers had worked hard to take advantage of the Lord’s generosity. The entire top of the little plateau had been fortified, and its sides chiseled and shaped. With steep cliffs rising above it on the west and the foaming waters of Ruzena flanking its other three sides, Cardice was renowned as one of the most secure castles in Europe. It had
