CHAPTER III
GYPSIES AND HISTORY
There is some good in everything, if one only troubles to look for it. Bronwyn was willing to try if only because the effort involved was no greater than that required for becoming hysterical. And she normally wasn’t an hysterical sort of person, at least not when it would show. She had always disliked making a public spectacle of herself and felt that tears, wails, recriminations and self-pity usually drew the kind of attention normally reserved for people who have sidewalk fits. Besides, from a practical point of view, she believed the energy spent banging her head against a wall in frustration would be better used in finding a way out of their predicament, a task she feared would not be easy.
Thud, however, was in a paroxysm of remorse. When he had set the princess onto the bank, she had shot him a look that had pierced his heart as though she had driven an icicle through it. In his efforts to help the girl he had only succeeded in making her troubles worse. Would this happen every time he tried to be kind to someone? He couldn’t know: she was his first experiment in kindness. Worse, Bronwyn had been one of the rare people in his life who had not looked at him with automatic repugnance, nor had she treated him like an idiot, as nearly everyone else did. Now look how she had been repaid!
In fact, though Thud would never have known or even suspected this, Bronwyn had been treating him not like an idiot but like a servant, accepting his services with gratitude, but at the same time with the assumption that Thud could scarcely be doing otherwise. This is what people like Thud were for, from Bronwyn’s viewpoint. Still, the finer nuances of the princess’s attitude would not have made much difference to the big man even if he had perceived them; he realized that he was not her equal on any count, except perhaps size and physical strength, categories in which he of course vastly surpassed her; to him, her treatment implied that he possessed an equality not with her but with that vast welter of human beings who occupied the social classes beneath that of the princess and that was good enough for him. He had never been anyone’s equal before and now due to the princess he was equal to millions! And look at how he had shown his gratitude ...
Bronwyn was all too aware of how the ramparts of Palace Island were glowering at her; she was certain it would be only minutes before a Guard would see them. At the top of the bank was a road; across the road were buildings and beyond the buildings was the city and the sooner they were lost in it, the better she’d feel. While things weren’t going according to plan at all, they could have been a lot worse. They were at least on the right side of the river. All they needed to do was get across the city undiscovered and she could be on her way north.
Unfortunately, there was still one more river to cross and they were nearly two miles from the bridge they had originally planned to use. The one now nearest would surely be heavily guarded. The Guards would be stopping everyone, suspicious or not. And there was no way in the world she would consider crossing the Moltus by boat; there had been quite enough of that.
Well, she thought, then laughed silently; she had been about to say to herself, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.
She started up the bank, then looked back when she realized that Thud hadn’t followed her. He was still sitting on the grass, watching her with his usual lack of expression. “Come on!” she hissed. “We’ve got to hurry—we can rest once we’re in the city.”
He seemed to be surprised, but got to his feet and followed her; they quickly crossed the road and were in the shadows of an alley between a pair of dark storefronts. Bronwyn mentally oriented herself. They were on the north bank of the Slideen, on the south side of the city and at the point where the peninsula was broadest (worse luck). There would be at least a mile and a quarter to travel before they could reach the Moltus bridge. In a straight line, that is: a direction not possible to travel in Blavek. The West Side was the oldest part of the city and its narrow streets were a labyrinthine maze, meandering in all directions, like an ant nest, and each alley was seldom more than a few hundred yards long before it branched willy-nilly. The buildings were for the most part still made of wood, and their overhanging upper stories made gloomy tunnels of the passages even during the day. In all her life, Bronwyn had never been on foot within the labyrinths of Old Blavek. “Thud,” she asked, “do you know your way around the city?”
“No.”
“Well, that’s no help. I suppose we ought to keep going north as best we can. Try to keep track of our turns.”
She started up the alley, but it ended after a few score yards when it ran into a cross street. This didn’t appear to cross exactly at a right angle. She chose the turn that seemed to go most directly into the City. Thud followed silently. Once again the street she was on ended in an intersection. The right branch, she thought, looked as though it would take her back in the direction of the river, so she turned to the left. The narrow lane curved in a quarter circle before crossing another street. This time a right turn seemed correct and she took it without hesitation. Street after street they traversed, their footsteps clop-clopping in the quiet, in what Bronwyn thought was a methodical, but was in fact a completely haphazard way.
So far they had seen no one else: the district they were passing through was mercantile, but all of the businesses had been long since closed for the night and were dark. Gas street lighting had not yet been introduced into the shop districts, and only an occasional oil lamp on a corner relieved the gloom. This worried Bronwyn. Should the police see them they would surely be stopped. Bronwyn, who had never been in the city when the streets had not been teeming with people, found the lifeless dark frightening. Thud, who had lived his life within the confines of the Transmoltus, thought it fascinating. He had never before felt so safe while virtually alone on a street at night. It was pleasant but disconcerting. He had never seen buildings so beautiful, nor windows with so many wonderful things in them—though he couldn’t have told what most of those things were, swimming behind glass panes like ghostly fish of gold and silver and porcelain.
Again the street they were on ended when it ran into another. There seemed, as usual, to be equal choices between which way to go. Bronwyn headed to the left. This way made a long curve between the overhanging buildings. The silence and solitude was complete and concrete; around them rose, black and dumb, imposing masses of architecture that glared at them each time lanternlight glinted from one of the thousand windows.
At the end of the curve, the street made a sharp turn and, to Bronwyn’s horror, revealed not a hundred yards away the broad causeway to Palace Island. It was brilliantly lit and alive with traffic. She quickly about-faced, bumping into Thud’s broad chest. “Quick! Back around the corner!”
She leaned against the grimy building and pounded her fists together. “Damn, damn, damn! We’ve just gone around in a big circle. We’ve been wandering for an hour and we’re practically back where we started. How’re we going to get out of here? I don’t know my way; we could wander all night and still keep going around in circles. Damn!” Thud was surprised; the princess had made practically the same mistake he had! He was almost giddy with the egalitarianism of it.
“Well, what now?” said Bronwyn, more to herself than her companion. “Let’s try up this street. At least it heads away from the palace.”
“What are you two doing?” came a strange voice. Bronwyn jumped, turned and saw that it issued from a Guard who had approached unseen from the other arm of the intersection. The black-uniformed patrolman was crossing the broad street, lowering his rifle as he came. His black cuirass shone dully, like a beetle’s carapace...or a cockroach’s, to be more truthfully specific.
Bronwyn felt her huge companion stiffen and she laid a restraining hand on his arm. “Don’t,” she whispered. “It’s dark. Maybe we can bluff it out.” Thud grunted doubtfully.
The Guard stopped a few paces away. “What’re you two doing on the street?”
“We’re lost; officer,” answered Bronwyn. “We can’t find our hotel.”
“And which hotel would that be?”
“The, uh, Excelsior,” answered Bronwyn, thinking too quickly and giving the name of the only hotel she had ever heard of—unfortunately the most exclusive one in the city.
The Guard looked skeptically at the pair that faced him: an ugly giant, probably an imbecile by his looks, dressed in a brown suit that was a crazy quilt of mismatched patches and carrying a suspiciously rattling bundle over his shoulder; and a lanky, effeminate kid in ill-fitting hand-me-downs. The Excelsior Hotel, by the warts of Musrum! They must think him an idiot, which, unbeknownst to him, the princess of course did. “I think you two’d better come along with me,” he said.
“Well, officer, thanks very much, but I don’t think that you have to go to all that trouble. If you’d just point us the right way?”
“The only way you’re going is to the district office.”
“What for?”
“Never you mind. Just do what I say, if you’d rather not be carried there.” Considering Thud, that was a ridiculous threat, but the anomaly was at the moment overlooked by all three.
“We weren’t doing anything except walking, officer; why don’t you just let us go on our way?”
“Just keep quiet and do what I tell you,” answered the Guard, raising the muzzle of his rifle.
“Well, I don’t think so,” said Bronwyn. Thud dropped his bag with a clattering crash. When the Guard swiveled his gun toward the big man, Bronwyn pounced on the black-sleeved arm like a terrier, biting into the wrist as hard as she could. The Guard growled in surprised pain and struck at her head with his free hand. Bronwyn’s hat went flying. The Guard goggled at the exposed face and then cried, “Holy Musrum, it’s...” His exclamation was cut short by Thud’s fist bursting his nose like a ripe tomato, giving him much more immediate things to think about. The gun fell to the street with a clatter, followed by the Guard, clutching his squashed and squirting nose with both hands.
“Run!” urged Bronwyn and the two bolted down the street. Behind them, the wounded Guard had gotten to his knees and was creating piercing shrieks with his whistle.
“We’ve had it now,” panted the princess. “The place’ll be swarming with Guards any minute. Musrum damn it, can’t anything go right?” As she spoke, something like a hornet buzzed past her ear at the same moment a sharp crack sounded behind them.
“They’re shooting at us!” said Thud, unnecessarily. Bronwyn made a right-angle turn into a narrow gap separating two buildings. Peering back around the corner, she could see a confused mass at the far end of the street.
“There must be at least a dozen of them coming this way.”
“Which way do we go?”
“How am I supposed to know? We can’t go back out to the street, so let’s see where this takes us.”
The alleyway was barely wide enough for Thud’s broad body and his elbows brushed the walls as they hurried through. Bronwyn was praying that the passage didn’t end in a cul-de-sac. It did and it didn’t: their way was blocked by a fence about midway in height between Thud’s head and Bronwyn’s. Behind them they could hear the noise of the soldiers as they discovered the passageway. Bronwyn was panting, and a cramp in her left side threatened to fold her like a jackknife. She didn’t think they could be seen from the street, but surely the Guards could hear her.
“Come on, quick!” said Thud, making a stirrup of his hands. Bronwyn stepped into it, balancing herself with a hand on Thud’s shoulder, and was effortlessly launched over the fence. She went over with all the grace of a rag doll, landing, fortunately, in a mass of refuse excelsior. She clambered to her feet, covered completely with curly little shavings that made her resemble even more completely the terrier she had recently impersonated.
“Thud?” she called through the slats. “How’re you going to get over?”
A good question, since he would never be able to hoist his own enormous bulk over the barrier. She heard the banging and crashing of ashcans and boxes. She peered through the fence, but could see nothing but vague movement. The sounds of their pursuers were getting far too close. Bullets began to whistle over their heads, the reports of the guns echoing thunderously in the tunnellike alley. Two or three times there were little bursts of splintered wood as a bullet smacked into the opposite side of the fence.
“Thud?” she called again, anxiously.
“Watch out!” came the answer from over her head. Looking up she saw the big man hovering directly above her. She nearly fell over backwards scuttling out of his way as he dropped to the ground with all the grace of a walrus completing a grand jeté. He picked the girl up and set her on her feet, already running. “I made a stairs,” he puffed, “and climbed up them.”
“That was stupid! The Guards’ll just use them, too!”
“I don’t think so. Look.”
Bronwyn stopped and turned. A glow was flickering through the gaps in the fence. Suddenly a pennant of orange flame licked up from its far side. “That’ll give them pause, all right,” she observed with a kind of awe. “But you’ll set the whole city on fire!”
“I never thought of that,” said Thud, surprised and a little hurt. He felt stupid again.
“Well, who the hell cares?” the princess said, shrugging. “We’ve got ourselves to worry about. And you’re right, you have stopped them for now.”
The lurid light from the blazing barrier lit the backs of the two fugitives until they disappeared into a branching alleyway. They zigzagged at every opportunity. They had long since lost any sense of where they were within the city and only hoped now to confuse pursuit as much as possible. They were at least certainly confusing themselves.
Finally, the labyrinthine passages opened into a broader street and that in turn led into a small plaza. The weedy rectangle in the center was occupied by a circle of rustic wagons. The scrawny trees amongst them were festooned with garlands of paper lanterns. Bronwyn recognized the set-up as belonging to gypsies. They, or ones just like them, had often been invited to perform on the lawns of the palace, or in the parks surrounding any one of the family’s several royal country houses. She had always loved their sweet, sad music and colorful costumes. There were eight or nine of the boxy caravans, their sides bright with gaudily imaginative designs and cabalistic figures. A little corral had been created with rope and stakes in one corner of the plaza and within it a dozen ponies stood sleepily. All but one or two of the lanterns were dark and no light shone from within any of the wagons. It was well past midnight and the music, games and fortune telling were long finished. Bronwyn and Thud by unspoken agreement decided to circle the camp, keeping as far away from the caravans as they could. They had completed half of their circuit when an amused voice from nowhere asked, “Running from someone?” The voice seemed to Bronwyn to have been whispered directly into her ear and she jumped convulsively. The voice chuckled, “I might have guessed so.” Bronwyn would have run if she could, but she was exhausted. Her legs simply refused to answer to her orders any longer and her brain had coasted to a standstill, like an engine whose fire had gone out.
“Where are you?” she asked.
“Right here!” came the jovial answer. But still she could see no one.
“Please, I’m too tired to play games. Either show yourself or let us go on our way.”
“Who is stopping you?”
Bronwyn had to admit that was a fair question.
“Do not worry, I am a friend.”
A figure stepped out of a shadow that Bronwyn would have sworn was cast on a flat wall. It was a large man, something like a one-quarter-scale Thud. He wore high, wrinkled leather boots into the tops of which were tucked the baggy legs of his wide-striped trousers. His broad chest was covered, barely, by an elaborately embroidered vest over a dark shirt with balloonlike sleeves. Teeth, alternately white and gold, glinted in the midst of a face as broad and hairy as a buffalo’s. Even in the darkness Bronwyn could see the twinkle in at least one eye. The whole effect was emphatically and deliberately theatrical. “You do not have to tell me what you have done. It does not matter: I am friend to anyone the Guards are looking for.”
“How do you know the Guards are looking for us?”
“They have been here already. Half a dozen were here an hour ago. Rousted us all out of our honest slumber. Went through every inch of the wagons while we stood outside shivering.”
“Well, I’m sorry,” she replied insincerely, impatient with all of this self-pity.
“No matter. Happens everywhere we go anyway, but I appreciate your concern.”
“Are they coming back?”
“Oh, I doubt that they will be back before morning, though there is no telling—they seemed to want you very badly, I think.”
“They tell you why?”
“They would never tell us anything! Just a description. I was waiting for you. Did not expect your friend here, though. I do not think they know about it, do you not think so? Is it human?”
“Of course it’s—he’s human. I think they do know about him now, but I don’t think they know who he is. He saved my life.”
“Well, well,” the gypsy said to Thud, “good for you! That is all the recommendation I need for you.” Then he said to the girl, “Does it have a name?”
“My name is Thud and I have a temper, too.”
“No offense meant!”
“You must tell us how to get out of the city!” begged Bronwyn, who was too tired not to beg. “We’ve been trying all night.”
“I could, but I doubt it would do you any good. It is more of what you have already been through; I would have to draw you a map, which I probably could not do, and, besides, the district is as crawling with the damned Guards as a whore is with crabs.” Bronwyn winced daintily at the crude simile, not knowing it would prove to be one of the last times she would exercise such a nicety.
“I guess we’ll have to chance that,” she said.
“Why? No need to even worry about it. Hungry?” he added, irrelevantly.
“We brought some things with us ...”
“Pooh! I can guess what you have in that bag—the food of Tamlaght!—and the thought makes me ill and my eyes to water. You need some honest food and a rest, for sure. Come along, then.” The man turned and, without a backward glance, crossed the street into the plaza.
Bronwyn looked at Thud, who shrugged. The gypsy had a point: of all the places the Guards certainly were at this very moment, this was one place they could be sure the Guards were not. And they were hungry and tired (or at least Bronwyn knew she was; Thud looked like he had merely been out on a bracing stroll). So they followed the man as he led them to the door of one of the dark wagons. He tapped at it lightly and a light came on instantly.
“Open up,” he whispered. “It is them.”
After the sound of a latch unlocking, the door swung open an inch and a blurry face peered out above a hand-shielded lantern. “Come on!” said the man. “Let us in! Do I look like a damned Guard?”
The face answered with a sniff but stood back as the door opened. The gypsy let Bronwyn and Thud precede him up the short steps into the wagon.
It was as cozy a little room as Bronwyn had ever found herself in. A miniature cast iron stove warmed it like a big fat black cat. On its flat top rested a covered kettle from which savory vapors puffed. Everything was so cozy, friendly and safe that it actually seemed weird. The gypsy gestured for them to sit. Bronwyn feared for the elaborately carved and painted chair that Thud lowered himself onto but it was made of stern stuff.
“Here you are welcome,” said the gypsy, his grin shining through his grizzled beard like a crescent moon gleaming through treetops. Every other tooth was gold, a decoratively checkerboard effect from which Bronwyn found it difficult to take her eyes. “And you are quite safe. Henda! Give these poor travelers some food! Can not you see they are tired and hungry?”
The creature Henda, a shapeless mass of colorful rags from which a pair of birdlike eyes peered, the rest of the face being swathed in a nest of ragged scarves, gave another sniff and began ladling the contents of the kettle into deep wooden bowls. It set them before Bronwyn and Thud; the girl thought she had never smelled anything quite so good, whatever it was. Thud began shoveling it in without preamble. His head had hinged back from his enormous mouth and it was as though the food were being dropped into the top of an open pipe.
“Go ahead and eat, Princess, we can talk after,” said the gypsy; he laughed at the surprise on her face. “Do not worry about how I knew; a word here, a word there, the news traveled faster than you did. The mystery is why a princess would be chased like a criminal by the Guards. No one can understand that. I cannot, that is for sure!”
Bronwyn told the gypsy what she had a day earlier told Thud, more or less, and then elaborated: “As my brother got older, he also became lazier and more stupid. Once he realized that hunting, riding and yachting were activities reserved for his rank, and not chores being forced on him, he became enthusiastic about them. He’s surrounded himself with a gang of unemployed, aristocratic parasites who term themselves ‘sports’. He discovered that he did have one talent: he’s entertaining. So he never engages in any activity that requires him to be more than a charming half-wit.
“Ferenc is a year and a half older than I am. He’s tall and slim and exceedingly good-looking, if you like that type, though I think he’s going to go quickly to fat. He has an ingratiating smile and laughs at everyone’s jokes, whether he understands them or not—usually not—and in a silly giggle that makes me gag. He’s invited to every party and ball where the petty nobility force their inbred daughters on him—it makes me laugh to think what a child by him and one of those glassy-eyed sluts might be like! Musrum! You’d have to keep it in an aquarium. They’re all over him, the simpering idiots, like flies on a dead squirrel.
“Ferenc’s never had an original idea in his life. Everything he says is simply repeated from what he’s heard—there’s no more intelligence behind his words than a parrot has. His toadies and sycophants think he’s a clever wit—well, they at least act as though they think so. Compared to them, I have no doubt but that he is.
“He does have certain beliefs: he believes that his right to rule is granted by Musrum; and he believes that the king isn’t simply the representative of the ruling class, but is absolute monarch. These two things, his lack of imagination and originality, and his wholly mistaken conception of the throne, are what make him so dangerous.
“Ferenc’s fatal weakness is that he can’t stand on his own: he must have someone stronger to lean on, someone who’ll provide the words he speaks, the thoughts he’ll believe are his own, the reasons and justifications for his actions; who’ll tell him—as though he were only being reminded of something that’s slipped his mind—the things that he must do, when he should do them...and to whom.
“Well, my brother found his alter ego in Lord Payne Roelt. He’s the only son of the elder Payne Roelt, the Earl of Swynborn, a powerful baron. Payne, who’s only a year younger, I think, had been a playmate of my brother’s since childhood. Even in my earliest memories I can recall how Payne controlled Ferenc’s every thought and action, as though my brother were a hound and he the master. Payne had—has—a way of suggesting things to Ferenc in such a way as to make Ferenc think they came out of his own head. And when Ferenc finally gets the idea that’s been planted and speaks it aloud or carries it out, Payne laughs and says, ‘Good boy!’ as though he were delighted with a puppy that’s just learned a new trick! And when Ferenc smiles at him in that simpering way, I know that nothing in the world has pleased him more than the thought that he’s won Payne’s approval. It’s just sickening.
“Payne is everything my brother isn’t. His intelligence is diabolically reptilian; he’s ingratiating, suave and urbane. He’s a clever and plausible diplomat: he creates intensely loyal friends and can win the support of his enemies before they even realize what’s happened to them. Afterwards, they can’t think what could’ve caused them to ever dislike such a clever, courteous fellow—until they unwittingly cross him.
“Payne’s a smallish man, almost a full head shorter than I am, slightly built—almost fragile—and very pale. Nevertheless, he’s very strong. His physical power and stamina’s probably not rivaled by anyone outside the Guards; I’ve seen him outride the best of them. He not only has great psychical power, but a scheming intelligence to go with it. He can convince anyone of anything. Yet Payne has only one motive for everything he does: his passion for wealth is overwhelming. His interest in gaining power over the throne is only in the wealth it’ll ultimately gain him. He has no real desire for power in itself. He needs power only to wring every poenig possible out of the throne and the country. He’s absolutely blind to everything else.
“My brother’s so enamored of his ‘protégé’ that, ever since our father died, he’s lavished enormous wealth and property on him. The drain on the state treasury’s been a scandal. Ferenc’s taken every possible step to prevent the Privy Council from meeting since the king’s death, from fear that they’ll discover exactly how much he’s been spending on Payne. He doesn’t realize that this has probably cost him money in taxes they might’ve been convinced to vote for his use. He’s made Payne the household chamberlain, and Payne’s used this position to loot the palaces and to juggle the housekeeping accounts so that most of the money goes into his own pockets.
“Payne’s created a wall around Ferenc that’s virtually impenetrable without Payne’s knowledge and permission. No one sees Ferenc unless Payne knows about it. No one speaks to Ferenc without Payne being present. Since his correspondence wearied and bored my brother, he was glad to let his aide gradually take it over. Now neither letter nor proclamation is issued over my brother’s signature that’s not been written or dictated by Payne. My brother sees no correspondence that’s not first passed through Payne’s hands. If it contains anything he feels Ferenc ought not to see, it’s destroyed—or sometimes rewritten. Payne has a veritable army of spies and informers throughout the city, who keep him apprised of even so much as a single word that might be spoken against him. The response is instantaneous and permanent.
“Ferenc’s absolutely unaware that any of this is taking place. He’s so happy in his dreamy world of dances and parties and yachts and hunts that he isn’t aware of the cage that Payne’s built around him—and, truthfully, probably wouldn’t care if he did. Payne doesn’t begrudge my brother his mindless, simpering ‘friends’—he knows that they’re as harmless as they are brainless. They’re the toys he uses to keep a simple-minded child happy and uncomplaining.
“The barons—the landowners—are intensely jealous and afraid of Payne’s influence and power. Half of them would like to see him disposed of, by force if necessary—perhaps even by force regardless. The others advise waiting, thinking perhaps that some of our father’s belligerence will eventually manifest itself in the prince and he’ll banish the interloper himself, fat chance of that ever happening. I think Payne enjoys seeing the baronage split and fighting amongst itself, something I wouldn’t doubt he’d planned all along.
“What’s made all this so dangerous is the constant threat of war from the north. Crotoy is perfectly aware that the heartblood is being drained from this country. What Payne’s been doing has been no secret from Crotoy’s barons. You probably know this, but Crotoy is not a wholly alien nation; we have a common language and a common heritage since three hundred years ago we were a single people. Bloodlines cross the border at every social level, but especially among the nobility.
“Once Payne made an enemy of our barons, the barons of Crotoy knew all about it as well. They’re all too aware of what’s most angered our baronage: that Payne’s effectively disarmed the army. With no money for weapons, uniforms, food or pay, the army’s gradually disintegrated. What’s left has nothing to fight with, even if it wanted to. On the other hand Payne’s created the Guards—ten thousand of them!—and they’re well fed, well paid, well-trained, well armed and powerful. They’re Payne’s personal army, answerable only to him and intensely loyal. I’m sure they’re the only thing that’s kept him alive to this day. He’s all too aware, I’m sure, that the barons would like nothing better than to see him dead.
“Anyway, Crotoy knows that our army is ineffective, and that the nobility is busy fighting amongst itself: the barons against a vapid, useless monarch, or monarch-to-be, that is. Can you imagine Ferenc leading an army into battle? Neither can anyone else. Already, Crotoy’s made exploratory incursions onto Tamlaghtan soil. It has armed camps on our side of the border, and not a soul has tried to stop them.
“My cousin, Piers Monzon, is on his way to the border now, with a small army the barons have raised, to see if it’s not too late to do something. Piers is my first cousin. He’s a powerful man, probably the most powerful of all the barons. He’s hereditary High Steward of the court, which would make him regent in Ferenc’s absence or incapacity, and holds half a dozen earldoms. He’s a big, charismatic, physical man. We’ve always liked one another an awful lot; when I was a young girl, I spent more time with Piers than with my own father. It was Piers who taught me to ride and shoot, for example. It’s my greatest pride that he once told me he thought I was the best swordsman he’d ever trained. Unfortunately, Cousin Piers has nowhere near Payne’s cunning and intelligence. Payne can easily outthink him; Piers’s brain is just too plain and honest.
“Be that as it may, Cousin Piers has the undiluted respect of the other barons. Not one of them has a greater hatred for the leech that’s attached itself to Tamlaght than has Piers. He’s the leader of a formidable opposition.
“Well, that more or less brings you up to date; there’s only one more incident to tell you about, and then you’ll understand why I was in need of Mr. Mollockle’s rescue yesterday.
“Three weeks ago, a group of barons decided that they’d had enough of Payne. Without the knowledge of Piers or the other barons, they invaded Payne’s estates. These barons had pooled their private militia into a small army of about five hundred men. All of them changed their distinctive uniforms for civilian clothing. If it weren’t for their orderliness and economy of action, anyone would’ve taken them for a mob of countryfolk, which is what they had intended.
“In two nights of deliberate, organized pillaging they destroyed hundreds of thousands of crowns’ worth of Payne’s property. Fifteen manors were burnt to the ground; tens of thousands of sheep, cattle, oxen and horses disappeared or were slaughtered; yachts were burnt to their waterlines. Art, jewelry, silver, clothing—all vanished or were destroyed.
“Payne was in a paroxysm of fury; the barons—and he knew perfectly well who’d been behind the raids—had knowingly or inadvertently hit him where it hurt the most. He made the error of taking his complaint to the Privy Council, I suppose because he believed that he owned it and controlled it. He might’ve been right, except for one thing: he found the barons waiting there for him. With the strength of the nobles behind them, the chancellors of the Privy Council found the courage to confront Payne. The barons read a list of their grievances, enough to have sent any other man to the gallows a dozen times over.
“Unfortunately, by this time, my brother heard what was happening to his friend and hurried to the chambers. Confronted by the man who was soon to be their monarch, the chancellors began to waver. They thought they were caught between the baronage on one side and loyalty to their country on the other, in the person of the prince, who begged with surprising eloquence (coached, I suspect!) for the life of his chamberlain. You must remember that the one man, Piers Monzon, who could’ve possibly swayed the Council against Ferenc was hundreds of miles away in the north. They opted for merely exiling Payne.
“The barons were furious, of course; they wanted Payne’s blood. But there was little they could do. Payne hadn’t pursued his complaints against them, and I think they were afraid he would. What they’d done had been absolutely illegal, of course; and quite a large number of people had died, too, some of them innocent of any connection with the chamberlain. I think that even at the moment of Payne’s sentencing, the barons realized that the victory was more their enemy’s than their own. He was silently blackmailing them as he stood there listening to the chancellors decreeing his exile from Tamlaght.
“Payne’s sentence sent him only as far as one of the islands in the Gulf. He’s not more than two hundred miles from Blavek at this moment. And he’s coming back. I discovered that more or less by accident just a few days ago. I make no apologies for going through my brother’s papers and despatches—they mean more to me than they ever would to him, anyway, even if he cared to look, or could understand them if he did. I found that he’s been in constant communication with Payne since the day Payne left. Some days half a dozen letters would arrive from the coast. These were delivered directly into my brother’s hands, but once I discovered their existence it was easy enough to get hold of them. Although each one exhorted Ferenc to destroy it and all the other communications, he was too stupid or careless—or perhaps sentimental—to do so. Anyway, I found them.
“The upshot of the letters is this: Ferenc has started to plot Payne’s return.
“In the meanwhile, there’s been a victory in the north. Maybe you heard about it? It was small enough; Piers overwhelmed an undermanned, out-of-the-way post that had no particular military importance, but it’s a victory nevertheless and the papers are full of it. It’s the first good news in a long time and the people are going crazy. D’you know about all this nonsense? Well, following Payne’s directions, Ferenc is using this victory to gain a lot of public support—who else do you credit for a great victory but the man who is the corporeal representation of your country?
“Using this new popularity, Ferenc has gone to the Church and—Musrum forgive them!—has convinced the priests that Payne’s exile was illegal. They’ll now pressure the Privy Council to overturn their decision and allow Payne to return. What’s worse, he’s trying to force the chancellors, as compensation, to have the barons make full restitution for Payne’s damages. This, of course, would bankrupt most of them, as well as increase Payne’s power a hundredfold over what it’d been before. And that’s assuming the barons wouldn’t simply opt for civil war, which would be the most likely turn of events. What’s worse yet is that while he’s using the Church, through the prince, to further his own ends, Payne is plotting its destruction. He’s insanely covetous of the Church’s wealth and I know he’s devised some plan to loot it after the coronation.
“There’s just one thing that might prevent all this from happening: letting the Privy Council and the barons see the contents of the letters Payne sent to Ferenc.
“I have them. Payne knows I have them. His island’s not far enough away to prevent him from maintaining full control of his Guards and spies—and he has agents everywhere. He knows everything that goes on. As soon as he learned that I had the letters, he sent his Guards orders to prevent me from reaching the chancellors and to recover the letters—at any cost. I barely got out of the palace with my life.
“That’s why I was being chased. There’s no way that Payne’s going to allow me to get those letters to the Council.”