I wondered why that was.
Ill-informed and ignorant people are easier to suppress and control.
Ailsa had told me that once, and I dare say she had the right of it.
‘They’ll know us there,’ Rosie said, breaking my train of thought. ‘They’ll know the Queen’s Warrant, at least. The Sea Keep holds to the queen’s peace.’
‘Aye, that’s good,’ I said, but I was beginning to wonder if it truly was.
*
We presented ourselves at the gates of the Sea Keep at dusk, Anne and Rosie and me. We had left Beast and Billy and our coachman at the inn Beast had found for us close to the city gates. A sliding hatch in the door opened, and the narrowed eyes that looked out were about as welcoming as you might expect. One did not call at the door of a duchess uninvited, after all. I said nothing, just held up the Queen’s Warrant and let the guardswoman on the other side of the great oak-and-iron doors stare at it until the realisation sank in.
The Queen’s Men had come to her door, and no good ever comes of that.
At last the sally port opened, and the guardswoman offered a stiff bow as we filed inside.
‘My lord,’ she said, her voice cracking in a dry mouth.
The Queen’s Warrant conveys fear wherever it is shown, and that’s a thing that has long interested me. If you’ve done nothing wrong then you have nothing to fear, but everyone fears the Queen’s Men. Does that mean that everyone is hiding some wrong or another? I doubted it, but what would I know? That was a philosophical question, and I knew little of philosophy. What I did know was that I was now standing in the great hall of the Sea Keep of Varnburg with Bloody Anne and Rosie at my side. That was all the crew I needed that night, and that meant it worked and in Our Lady’s name fuck why it did, it just did and I would take that and be thankful for it. Results were what mattered, not the how and the why of it. That wasn’t my problem. I’m just a soldier, and I follow my orders.
I was just following orders.
*
The lad was in floods of tears, and that was only to be expected.
‘I’m sorry, Your Grace,’ I said, in the private family drawing room I had been reluctantly shown into. ‘Your father suffered an attack of the heart. It was very quick, and he would have felt no pain.’
‘Your Grace is my father, not me,’ the boy managed through streams of snot. ‘He’s . . . he’s my papa!’
He broke down once more, and I cleared my throat and sat forward on the plush red velvet couch I had been ushered to by a terrified-looking footman. Anne and Rosie were waiting in the great hall while servants and messengers hurried back and forth. There were Queen’s Men in the Sea Keep, and all was in turmoil and disarray.
‘I know, son,’ I said. ‘I know, and it’s a hard thing, but there it is. You are the Grand Duke of Varnburg now, and you are needed in the capital.’
The newly made Dowager Duchess of Varnburg was dry-eyed, her expression murderous behind her expensively made eyeglasses. Their gold half-moon rims shone in the lamplight as she stared at me over the finely ground lenses. She had some forty years to her, I supposed, although something in her manner made her seem much older.
‘Sir Tomas,’ she said in a voice cold enough to have frozen the sea itself. ‘Marcus is not your son, as I am quite sure you are aware. He is mine. I will thank you to address him in the style he has so suddenly inherited.’
‘Of course, Lady Varnburg,’ I said, and bowed my head. ‘My apologies, Your Grace.’
The lad waved my words away and blew a great bubble of snot from his left nostril as he sobbed, somewhat robbing himself of his noble countenance. The tutor who had brought him into the room produced a silk-and-lace handkerchief from her sleeve and handed it to him, and he blew his nose into it with all the dignity of a cart horse. The price of that handkerchief could have fed a family in the Stink for a week at least, I was sure.
Perhaps Varnburg wasn’t so very different from the capital, when all was said and done.
‘You absolutely cannot take my son away from me,’ the Dowager Duchess pronounced. ‘I will not allow it. He is only ten.’
‘With all respect, my lady,’ I said, ‘I can and I will. I have the Queen’s Warrant.’
‘And I have three hundred guardsmen loyal to the Duchy of Varnburg. How many men did you bring with you, Sir Tomas?’
Her face was like granite, and I had to agree that she made a strong argument. All the same, I was acting on Lord Vogel’s orders and I knew very well that failure wasn’t an option.
‘Let’s start again,’ I said, spreading my hands in what I could only hope was a conciliatory gesture. ‘I mean no threat or ill by my words, but here are the facts of the matter. Young as he is, your son is now the Grand Duke of Varnburg, as his father was before him. He is needed at court, to represent his duchy and his people. Surely you understand that.’
‘I understand that a Queen’s Man is trying to take my son away from me,’ the duchess said. ‘I remember the last Queen’s Man who came calling at the Sea Keep, that woman!’
Sabine, I thought. Oh, in Our Lady’s name, what legacy had she left behind her?
‘I know nothing of that,’ I said.
The duchess cleared her throat and looked into the fire that crackled and spat in the great stone hearth, and for a moment there was almost an expression
