There we had something in common, I thought.
‘I’m all right,’ Rosie said, after a moment, and she choked back snot to say that she meant it. ‘I know Heinrich’s gone, and I’ve made my peace with that as best I can. But you listen to me, Mr Piety, and you understand how this works in my head: I’m Anne’s woman now, and I stand with her. As long as she stands with you, then so do I.’
I couldn’t ask for more than that, I supposed.
Chapter 20
A coach came in from Varnburg a few days later, and it brought a woman to the house of law. Her name was Sabine, and she must have had almost seventy years to her if she had a day. She was still striking for all that, tall and lean with long iron-grey hair that she wore pinned back from her sharp face with a pair of black combs.
We were introduced by Iagin in what I had come to think of as the mess.
‘Tomas, what a pleasure,’ she said.
Her voice was like a whip, and the hand she extended to me was thin and pale, with the long nails lacquered the same glossy black as her combs. The effect was something like the talons of a bird of prey. Her black mourning gown was very tightly laced around her narrow waist, and looked extremely uncomfortable. In truth I thought she looked how Ilse should have done, and didn’t.
‘Good to meet you,’ I said.
I didn’t know if I was supposed to kiss her hand or not, so I opted for giving it a brusque shake instead. She wore several ornate silver and black rings on that hand, and at least one of them dug sharply into my finger as I did so.
‘A soldier’s handshake,’ she said, and smiled. ‘I can feel the swordsman’s calluses on your palm. Iagin, dear, might I trouble you for some wine? I’ve had a very long journey.’
And a very slow one, I thought. Varnburg was a long way, aye, but it wasn’t that fucking far. This Sabine certainly hadn’t troubled herself to hurry at Vogel’s summons. That was interesting in itself.
Iagin poured dark wine for her into a tall goblet, and I noticed the way her fingers lingered on his hand as she took it from him. He cleared his throat and turned away to busy himself with the brandy bottle, quite obviously feeling uncomfortable in her presence.
‘Did you have a good journey?’ I asked her, feeling like I should say something to fill the silence.
‘I don’t recognise your accent,’ she said, completely ignoring my question. ‘Where are you from, Tomas?’
‘Ellinburg,’ I said.
‘Oh, how very intriguing.’
She sipped her wine, her grey eyes holding my gaze over the glass. In her hand, the wine looked like blood.
‘Here,’ Iagin grunted, and passed me a brandy.
Something about Sabine was clearly putting him on edge. I was starting to feel the same way, although I couldn’t have said exactly why.
‘I suppose I should present myself upstairs,’ Sabine said after a moment. She put her barely touched wine down on a table and smiled. ‘I’ll be seeing you both, I’m sure. Until then.’
She turned and stalked out of the room, the tall heels of her glossy black shoes clicking on the wooden floor as though they were tipped with steel. Perhaps they were, at that.
‘Fuck,’ Iagin muttered, once the door was closed behind her. ‘I’d been starting to hope she wasn’t coming.’
‘Striking lady,’ I said, for want of anything better.
He snorted and drained his brandy. ‘Aye, well, she’ll try to seduce you, that’s for sure,’ he said. ‘She always does. I don’t know how your tastes run, Tomas, but don’t even fucking think about it. She’s untouchable.’
‘I wasn’t thinking about it,’ I said. ‘But why’s that, then?’
‘You don’t know? Actually, I suppose you wouldn’t – I don’t think Ailsa does either, come to that. It was before her time.’
I shook my head. ‘Know what?’
He met my eyes.
‘She’s the Old Man’s wife.’
I remembered the dinner Vogel had thrown the previous summer, and the empty place where the hostess should have been seated. He always hosts alone, Ailsa had told me. His table is always an odd number with a vacant place setting laid at the foot. I don’t know precisely why.
Perhaps she didn’t know, at that. Even Ailsa didn’t know everything, and I took some comfort from that thought.
‘I see,’ I said.
‘No, you don’t,’ Iagin said. ‘Sabine was Provost Marshal once, twenty years and more ago. It was her who swore me into the service, not the Old Man.’
‘What happened?’
He shrugged and poured himself another brandy.
‘Buggered if I know. They were already married back then, and he was one of her Queen’s Men. She left him, I know that much, put him in charge and fucked off to Varnburg to run the operation on the coast. I don’t think he ever really made his peace with that. You’ve seen how he hosts dinner?’
‘Aye,’ I said.
‘Well, there it is. Watch yourself around her, that’s all I’m saying, and watch the Old Man’s mood too. Seeing her again isn’t likely to put him in a good humour.’
I supposed it wouldn’t, at that.
*
I managed to avoid Vogel and everyone else for the next two days, until a messenger came to the Bountiful Harvest and brought a summons with her.
‘Tomorrow,’ I told Anne and Luka, after I’d sent the messenger on her way. ‘I’m being sworn in. Properly, I mean, not like that bollocks with the knighthood.’
‘Do you want us there?’ Anne asked.
I shook my head. ‘No,’ I said. ‘I mean, I do, but I can’t have you, apparently. This is a family thing. Strictly only Queen’s Men, which is why we had to wait for Sabine. There have to be enough witnesses, so Ailsa told me.’
Anne nodded. ‘Like when we swore Desh into the Pious Men.’
‘Aye, something like that, I expect,’ I said.
I wished she hadn’t reminded
