“That is…a generous offer,” Fredegar said at last. “Who am I to refuse such a profitable match with a woman of great beauty and great stature?” His gaze shifted to Agnes. It was a gentle gaze, bemused. “My bed has been empty for a very long time. Lady, I would gladly make you my wife.”
XXXII
Pliny
As if a spigot had been turned, a flood of bodies washed out of the great hall. The Dolorous Guard, a tributary of gray, carried the prince and the lady Agnes along their course. Then Unruoching, whose vanishing was as quick and cold as a floe of ice borne down a fast-melting river. In mere moments, the hall was left parched and empty.
Save for Pliny and the lord of the castle. Fredegar exhaled loudly and slumped over, Pliny rushing to his side to support his master’s weight.
“Thank you, Your Scrupulousness,” Fredegar murmured.
Pliny frowned. A thousand and one times he had told Fredegar not to bother with such stilted formalities. He had pulled forth the man from between his mother’s legs, wiped from him the plum-colored mucuses of birth, and clipped the fleshy cord with his own shears. They were long past this pomp and mummery.
“Would you like to go to your chambers, my lord?” Pliny asked.
Fredegar gave a tight nod. “Yes. We cannot discuss these matters here.”
Thus began the journey to the master’s chambers, which were not far but felt quite distant to Pliny, aware that the castle had been invaded by outsiders with their inscrutable agendas. These halls were as well known to Pliny as his brain’s own circuitry, but with the intrusion of the prince and his retinue, they began to feel obscure, strange. The corners, where neither the sun nor the torchlight reached, seemed impenetrable with shadows.
Once they were within Fredegar’s chambers, Pliny shut the doorand his master went immediately over to the table, where his carafe of wine was waiting. He poured a glass, drank deeply of it, then set it down again with a burdened sigh.
“Truly it is incredible,” he murmured, “how a man’s stars can change within the span of a moment.”
“For the worse?” Pliny asked. “Or for the better?”
Fredegar smiled with wine-stained lips. “I was hoping you would tell me.”
Pliny flexed his fingers, the fingers that had pulled the master and his son from the womb, the ones that had performed a thousand desecrations at Lord Fredegar’s heed, yet were still remarkably smooth and strong, unmarred by the blotches of age or the creases of a lifetime of labor. Because rarely did these efforts feel like labor when he knew he was performing them for his gentle master and for the noble House of Blood.
“I fear you do not have much choice in the matter,” Pliny said at last. “But you are wise enough to know that. The king’s orders cannot be refused.” He paused. “I do wonder what his purpose is with this match. If still he is wary of your treachery and thinks binding you to the lady Agnes will keep you in check. Now that the Crown is allied forever with the House of Teeth.” Again he paused. “But it is a profitable match, as you said. You could hardly hope for a wife of finer pedigree.”
At that, Fredegar inhaled sharply. “You know the stories, don’t you, Pliny? Do you think they are true?”
Once more, Pliny looked down at his hands. This time, he found them to be slightly more infirm. Tremulous and showing their age.
As remote as Castle Peake was, it could not hold all its secrets within. Rumors rolled down the mountains like mist. And for the oldest men and women on Drepane—older even than Pliny himself—with the longest-reaching memories, these were more than idle gossip.
“I do,” he admitted. “No one can say for sure, of course—now that the old woman is dead. The truth may have perished with her. But…” He trailed off, then shook his head, as if not to be consumed tooinexorably by this smog of ugly thoughts. “…for myself, yes, I do believe them to be true.”
Fredegar was silent. He lifted his wineglass again but did not drink from it. At last, he said, “I had hoped you would say otherwise.”
Pliny merely looked back at him grimly.
Fredegar sighed. “Such degenerate cruelty within Castle Peake. Old crimes and old sins. I never knew the man, the grandfather of Adele-Blanche, who perished under the blade of Berengar. But perhaps that one murder was just. I cannot fathom—to force your granddaughter, at fifteen, to bear your child.”
“Children,” Pliny corrected softly.
“Yes.” Fredegar swirled his cup. “Children. The mothers of the princess and the lady Agnes. They were never married. Adele-Blanche rejected all suitors. I wonder, by what means were her daughters bred?”
“Adele-Blanche would have her title pass only through her female heirs.” This fact, at least, was known by all, and had alone birthed some of the grisliest rumors. The conditions that might cause a woman to rule would, in the minds of men, necessarily be repugnant. “Perhaps she did not wish for her grandfather’s crimes to be repeated. It is suspected—merely suspected, of course—that she used peasant men for breeding stock, as one harvests the seed of bulls to propagate their herd. Her daughters impregnated by nameless, faceless serfs. It is a clever solution, I must confess. Her line has remained unsullied, the power of her daughters and granddaughters unchallenged by male relatives.”
Fredegar nodded slowly. The wine in his cup formed a small red tempest. “I do not see the stain of incest upon the lady Agnes. She is beautiful, no?”
“In a peculiar way, as a statue, or a corpse before its desecration.” Pliny tried to inject his voice with humor, but his master did not smile. “But yes, my lord. She is lovely.”
“I did not think I would ever be prevailed upon to marry again, after Eupraxia.” Fredegar cast his gaze out the window, and Pliny wondered what he was seeing there. Eupraxia, dancing as she once had inthe courtyard, pale flowers in her hair? She had been so young then, and so had he. “I have often wondered if my heart has become too scabrous and shriveled for love.”
“Love and marriage have little to do with each other,” Pliny said gently.
