“What do you say to that?” he finished.
“In truth,” Alain said, “I believe that the halfwit boy Lackling was Lavastine’s bastard son.”
Geoffrey hissed out his breath but made no retort.
“I do not believe I was Lavastine’s son by the laws that rule succession, those of blood. Yet I called him ‘Father’ and he called me ‘Son.’ I cannot tell you now that those words meant nothing.”
“They mean nothing legal!”
“What they mean matters only to me, and mattered to him. That is all.”
“What do you want, damn you?”
“Let me see you,” said Alain.
After a hesitation, Geoffrey came forward. In the filtering of light that illuminated the Hearth, Alain could see the other man’s features. Geoffrey was changed. He had once looked far younger and more carefree, a good enough looking man, but now his face was scored with lines and fear haunted his gaze. His mouth furrowed his face in a frown that seemed set there, as in stone. Despair marked his forehead in a dozen deep wrinkles.
“You are troubled, Lord Geoffrey.”
“This county is troubled! One thing after the next! I even rode east—but there was no help for it! Laws are silent in the presence of arms, so the church mothers say. Those who ought to rule are set aside, and those who rule turn their gaze away from the plagues that beset us, seeking only their own advancement and enrichment and pleasure.”
He shook a fist although not, it seemed, at Alain, but rather at Fate, or at God, or at some unknown individual whom Alain could not see and did not know. Rage growled, and Geoffrey lowered his hand quickly to his side but did not unclench it.
“So I am served, a taste of the supper I served to you! Have you come to gloat?”
“I am here for another reason,” Alain said, smiling faintly, because he knew pain lifted that smile as well as an appreciation of its irony. “Strange that it took me so long and over such a road to see it. I pray you, Lord Geoffrey, sit down.”
“I will not!”
Alain sighed. Where his hand lay on Lavastine’s, he had a wild and momentary illusion that the dead count’s stone skin warmed; he breathed, in that instant, the pulse of another, as slow as the pulse of the earth but no less steady. Down, deep in the earth, the rivers of fire that burn in the heart of the mortal world flow on their mighty course, and behind them, so distant that it is like reaching to touch the stars, dwells an old intelligence, weighty but not dim. Down he fell, remembering the touch of those ancient minds on that day when the bandits had brought him to Father Benignus’ foul camp. That day Alain had killed Father Benignus by revealing to his followers that he was nothing but a shell that sustained its own life by feeding on the souls of those he had murdered.
Only his skeleton remained, darkening where sunlight soaked, into bone The stench of putrefaction faded as anger boiled up and men snarled and shouted, closing in. Rage leaped, growling furiously. A sharp blow cracked into the side of his head.
Gasping, he came up for air and found himself after all in the silence of the church, with Geoffrey standing stiff and arrogant before him and the hounds quiescent, not moving at all, ears down.
He steadied himself on Lavastine’s cold arm. “One boon I ask you, Lord Geoffrey.”
“What is that?”
“I have brought a child with me, a girl seven or eight years of age. She is the eldest child of one I once called ‘brother,’ a good man who has now a wife and child. Although he was betrothed to the girl’s mother, they never wed. Let her serve, I pray you, in your retinue. Honor her as the granddaughter of one of your faithful householders in Osna Sound. Treat her well. Let her serve Chatelaine Dhuoda. If she has the wit to learn to mark accounts and learn to write and read, let her do so. If she has not such wit, let her serve in the kitchens under Cook’s tutelage.”
For a while Geoffrey said nothing. At last, as if puzzled, he scratched his beard. “What means this girl to you? Why do you bring her here?”
“Nothing good will come of leaving her where she was. Best she make a new start, if she can.”
“That’s all? Is she pretty? Is she meant to tempt me, or some other man? Is she your by-blow, meant to twist my daughter’s heart and loyalty if she grows up beside her?”
“None of these things. A tree will grow twisted if the wind rakes it incessantly. Better she grow true, if she can. I hope it may be possible for her to do so here at Lavas, away from an otherwise good family that does not like her. That is all.”
“You always had a care for the unfortunate!”
“Do not mock the unfortunate, Lord Geoffrey. They suffer more than the rest of us do.”
“For their sins!”
“Do you think so? Rather they suffer for our sins. Is it not a sin to look the other way when you might extend a hand to one who is drowning? Is it not a sin to eat two loaves of bread when you might share one with those who are starving? Suffering is the task God set us. We choose whether to take action or turn away. Thus are we judged.”
Geoffrey broke down and wept. “It is all gone wrong! My daughter—lamed in a fall from her pony! My dear wife dead in childbirth days after the terrible storm. Our sons held as hostages in Autun. Bandits afflict the forest and prey on the farmers. Plague eats at our borders. Hoof rot strikes down our sheep and cattle. All the birds are fled as if we live in a desert. And more besides. Far more! Too much to tell! How have I offended God?”