In the King's Service by Katherine Kurtz
She thought to look around her then, searching for someone to help her, but there was no one in sight.
IN the queen’s chamber, the council meeting being concluded, the queen’s ladies were helping their mistress to partially disrobe for an afternoon nap. Alyce was attending her, and also Jessamy, Brigetta, and Zoë. Muriella was tuning a psaltery near an open window.
“Well, ladies, it appears that the king will be able to return shortly,” Richeldis said, pulling the pins from her dark hair and shaking it loose before lying back on the day-bed. “Alyce, he sends glowing reports of your brother, who has acquitted himself quite admirably, both in the council chamber and in the field.”
Alyce smiled contentedly and settled at the foot of the queen’s day-bed to remove her shoes.
“I would be surprised if it were otherwise, Madam,” she said. “Zoë and I watched him ride against Duke Richard last autumn, when he was only partially recovered from his injury. He must be far better now. But he has had exceptional teachers, including the king himself.”
“True enough,” the queen agreed. “Ah, Jessamy, that feels so wonderful!”
Jessamy had begun massaging the queen’s temples, and smiled distractedly, though she said nothing, for she had noticed that Brigetta was looking decidedly unwell.
“Brigetta, are you ill, child? You’re suddenly looking very pale.”
Brigetta had been pouring a cup of chilled wine for the queen, but set it shakily aside and turned away, clutching at mouth and abdomen as she darted toward the garderobe.
“I do beg your pardon,” she managed to murmur, just before she was taken with a violent fit of vomiting.
Jessamy went after her immediately, as did Alyce. The queen sat up in some concern. Muriella had stopped her idle plucking at the strings of her psaltery, and stared after the stricken Brigetta in horror.
Together, Alyce and Jessamy tried to comfort Brigetta as she continued to heave, Alyce holding the girl’s hair out of the way and Jessamy venturing a probe.
“Child, child, what is it? Was it something you ate?”
“The marchpane! It must be—!” Brigetta managed to gasp out, between gagging fits. “Lord Ahern sent it. S-some of the boys ate it, too—and Marie. Dear God, I can’t breathe!”
“Which boys? How much? Where are they?” Jessamy demanded, as Alyce recoiled from the pain washing through the stricken girl.
“She’s poisoned!” Alyce blurted. “They’re all poisoned! But Ahern can’t have sent poisoned marchpane!”
“Krispin!” Jessamy cried, for she saw Brigetta’s memory of all of them partaking. “And Isan—dear God! They’re in the garden!”
“Sweet Jesu, no!” the queen cried, trying to lurch to her feet. “Jessamy, do something! Find them!”
Alyce was already dashing toward the door, heart pounding, reaching out with her mind to Marie, calling, a part of her sickly aware that it was already too late. And even as she ran, Jessamy close behind her, she realized who had given the marchpane to Brigetta to deliver: Muriella! And suddenly, it all became horrifyingly clear.
She faltered, outrage drawing her back, but her sister’s need—and that of the children, the innocent children!—was far greater than her desire for immediate justice.
“It was Muriella!” she said breathlessly over her shoulder to Jessamy as they ran toward the gardens.
“I know,” Jessamy gasped, and seized the arm of a guard as they came abreast of him, pausing only long enough to bark out a single command.
“Go to the queen’s solar,” she ordered, “and arrest Lady Muriella!”
They had seen the location in the garden where Marie had been reading her letter. At the path to the arbor, Alyce split off in that direction, leaving Jessamy to continue on toward the castle’s fishpond.
As Alyce approached, she saw the rumpled blur of her sister’s peacock-colored gown, stark against the creamy stone of the bench beneath the arbor, and the tumble of her loose hair veiling her face. With a little cry, she ran to Marie’s side and swept the hair aside, but the blue eyes were open and empty, the fair face already waxy pale. Sobbing, Alyce gathered her sister to her breast and held her, weeping for her loss—for Marie’s loss—for all the tomorrows that now would never be.
But urgency soon drew her from her own grief, to see what help she might render to Jessamy, for she knew, from the brief images she had read from Brigetta, that the tragedy did not stop here. With a little sob, she gently shifted her sister onto clean grass and scrambled to her feet, dashing off the way Jessamy had gone—and found her beside the fishpond in the kitchen yard, weeping as she cradled the lifeless Isan in her arms. Young Prince Brion was hugging a very frightened and wide-eyed Krispin, who at least did not appear to be too affected other than being very shocked. Jessamy’s cries had brought several kitchen servants into the doorway to investigate the source of the distress.
“Alyce—oh, thank God!” Jessamy sobbed, looking up. “Take Krispin inside at once and make him vomit! Give him the whites of half a dozen eggs, and then a great deal of water with plenty of salt in it.”
“But I didn’t eat any! I spat it out!” Krispin insisted, as Brion began dragging him toward the kitchen and Alyce hesitated uncertainly.
“Is Isan—?”
“Yes, he’s dead!” Jessamy cried. “And God knows what I shall tell his mother. He had nearly twice as much as the others. Dear God, how did we not see this coming?”
Suddenly very weary, Alyce started to sink down numbly beside Jessamy, but the older woman seized her roughly by the shoulder and gave her a shake.
“Don’t you dare!” she whispered vehemently. “Go and tend to Krispin. There’s nothing to be done here. Save your passion for the living!”
Half-dazed with shock, Alyce straightened and followed after Brion and Krispin, pushing past the servants in the doorway. In the bustling kitchen beyond, preparations were underway for the evening meal.
Forcing herself to focus, Alyce herded the two boys ahead of her until she spotted a basket of eggs. She seized a large cup as she changed course in that direction, nodding toward the nearest pair of kitchen maids.
“You,” she said to the younger one, “fetch us some fresh water—at once! And you,” she said to the second, “separate the whites from half a dozen of those eggs and put them in this cup. Brion, bring Krispin over here!”
“But I didn’t eat any of the marchpane!” Krispin protested.
“We must make sure,” Alyce replied. “Hurry!” she added aside to the white-faced servant, who was breaking eggs and tipping the yolks back and forth between the two halves of each, letting the whites drain into the cup Alyce held. “My sister is dead. By now, so is Lady Brigetta. And Isan.”
The boys’ faces drained of color, and anger flashed in young Brion’s gray eyes.
“Who did this terrible thing?” the crown prince demanded.
“I don’t know,” Alyce replied. “I think it was Lady Muriella.”
“But, why?” Krispin wanted to know, tears spilling down his cheeks.
“I don’t know.” Alyce took the cup, now half-filled with egg-whites, and put it into his hands. “Now, drink this—all of it!”
“No. It’s slimy. It’ll make me puke.”
“That’s the whole point. Drink it!”
At the same time, Prince Brion gave his shoulder a shake and repeated, “Drink it, Krispin.”
The younger boy braced himself and drank, forcing himself to gag down the contents of the cup in three large swallows. When he had finished, Alyce refilled the cup from an ewer the younger servant had brought, added a generous measure of salt and stirred it with a finger, and ordered the boy to drain that, too—and then a second cup. As he labored to finish the second draught, making a face, she pulled an empty basin closer, nodding for Brion to hold it under Krispin’s chin.
“Revolting, wasn’t it?” Alyce murmured, cupping the back of Krispin’s head with her hand. “Believe me, I do understand. Now open
Too startled to resist, Krispin obeyed, only to have Alyce poke two fingers down his throat, at the same time pressing his head over the empty basin.
The result was immediate and spectacular. When Krispin had finished retching, Brion dutifully holding the basin and looking scared, one of the kitchen maids brought him a clean towel, another offering one to Alyce.
“Will he be all right, my lady?” the girl asked.
“I think so,” Alyce replied numbly. “It doesn’t appear that he actually got a dose of the poison, but I couldn’t risk not doing everything I know to do. It was in some marchpane, but he said he spat out what he tried.”
One of the women was inspecting the contents of the basin while Brion helped Krispin wipe his mouth and Alyce washed her hands in another basin a young kitchen maid had brought.
“Marchpane, y’say?” the woman said, shaking her head. “Well, I don’t see no trace of that, my lady. I doubt he’d had anything since this morning.”
“For which, God be praised!” Alyce murmured, drying her hands.
Welcome relief flooded through her like a physical wave, and she leaned heavily on the vast kitchen table. But this momentary respite quickly gave way to recollection of less favorable outcomes: images of her sister lying dead in the garden, and the innocent Brigetta stricken in the queen’s chamber—and Isan, who had eaten more of the tainted marchpane than any of the others, likewise dead. A sob welled up in her throat, but she mastered it and laid her arms around the shoulders of Krispin and the prince.
“That was well done, gentlemen,” she murmured, hugging both of them close. “You were very brave.”
“What about Isan?” Brion asked hesitantly. “Is he really . . . ?”
“I’m afraid he is, your Highness,” she replied.
“I want to see him!” Krispin said boldly.
“There is nothing you can do for him now,” she said. “But your lady mother will be frantic to know that you are safe!”
Chapter 19
“ Wrath is cruel, and anger is outrageous, but who is able to stand before envy?”
—PROVERBS 27:4
THE prince’s mother was, indeed, frantic, but not alone for worry over her son. Watching white-faced and silent as men from the castle guard wrapped the body of the unfortunate Brigetta in a cloak to carry it from the room, the queen jumped to her feet as Alyce came in with Prince Brion and Krispin. In the room beyond, Jessamy was trying to comfort Lady Megory Fitzmartin, the mother of Isan, who was holding her dead son in her arms and keening, rocking him back and forth. Lord Seisyll Arilan stood just inside the door, apparently enlisted to carry the dead boy back to his mother.
Seisyll turned as Alyce entered with the two boys, and the queen tearfully held out her arms to her son. Brion ran to her, burying his face against her waist, starting to cry at last as his mother shed more tears of sheer relief.
Krispin held back at first, then pressed past Seisyll into the room beyond and stared at the dead Isan as his mother silently embraced him. Meanwhile, in the queen’s chamber, her other ladies were staring at Alyce, Vera and Zoë among them, their eyes begging her to say that none of this was real. All had been weeping.
“Majesty, I don’t think Prince Brion has taken any harm,” Alyce managed to murmur, not looking at Vera or Zoë. “Krispin seems fine as well. Is Lady Brigetta—”
The queen bit at her lip and looked away, holding her eldest more tightly. “Dear child, there was nothing we could do. And your sister—?”
Alyce shook her head, lowering her gaze and choking back tears. Beyond the queen, Zoë gave a sob and Vera went even paler than she had been, but dared not show the true extent of her grief.
“Dear God . . . ,” the queen murmured.
Alyce drew a deep breath. “What has happened to Lady Muriella?”
“I don’t know,” the queen said dazedly. “She ran from the room, heading toward the main keep, and I heard guards running in that direction a while later. . . .
“But, do not tarry here, dear Alyce. Go to your sister, by all means. I am so sorry! Oh, that spiteful Muriella! Why did she do it?”
Alyce only shook her head and fled—but not to her sister, who could not be helped in this world, but to see what had become of Muriella.
The castle was in an uproar, with armed and angry soldiers moving everywhere, purpose in their looks and strides. When Alyce could make no immediate sense of what was happening, she caught the sleeve of a passing sergeant who usually had kind words for her.
“Master Crawford, please—can you tell me whether they have found the Lady Muriella?” she asked.
“No time now, m’lady,” he grunted, shrugging off her touch and hurrying on. “She’s run up the north tower, she has.”
He was gone at that, ducking into a turnpike stair to clatter after others also headed upward. Heart pounding, Alyce followed, gathering up her skirts to climb as fast as she could, stubbing her toe on one of the stone steps and nearly sent sprawling.
She heard shouting as she ascended, and a woman shrieking, and—just before she reached the final doorway onto the walkway along the battlement—a renewed chorus of shouted demands by heated male voices, punctuated by a woman’s anguished scream that faded and then was cut short by the distant, hollow thump of something striking the ground far below.
“Christ, I didn’t think she’d jump!” one of the men was saying, peering over the parapet as Alyce pushed her way among them.
“Well, she has saved herself from hanging or worse,” said another, cooler voice.
Steeling herself, Alyce forced herself to peer between two of the merlons studding the crenellated wall, down at the crumpled heap of clothing and broken bones now sprawled in the courtyard below, where a pool of blood was rapidly bleeding outward from Muriella’s dark head. Gagging, she turned away, one hand pressed to her lips and eyes screwed tightly closed, grateful for the hands that drew her back from the parapet.
“Lady Alyce, you needn’t look at this,” someone said, not unkindly.
“She killed my sister, and Lady Brigetta,” Alyce managed to whisper, before gathering up her skirts to flee back down the turnpike stair. “And she killed a little boy. . . .”
By the time she got down to the courtyard, a crowd had gathered: soldiers and courtiers and servants and a stranger in priest’s robes, who had just finished anointing the body. Seeing him, Alyce pushed her way through the crowd and stood there, numbly staring down at the dead woman, until the priest glanced up at her.
“Child, there is nothing you can do,” he said, closing his vial of holy oil.
“And there is nothing you can do, either, Father,” she replied in a low voice. “Do you know how many lives she has taken today, besides her own?”
The priest’s face tightened, but he said nothing, only shaking his head.
“She poisoned three people, Father,” Alyce went on, outrage in the very softness of her tone. “She murdered two innocent women and an innocent child—and very nearly killed another child. It could as easily have been one of the royal princes! And you would absolve her of that?”
A uneasy murmur rippled among the onlookers, and the priest slowly stood, looking her up and down.
“Are you not one of the heiresses of Corwyn, a Deryni?” he said coldly.
“What difference does that make to the three she killed?” Alyce snapped. “Does it make them any less dead?”
A soldier leaned closer to the priest to whisper in his ear, and the priest’s face went very still.
“The deaths are regrettable, of course—as is hers,” the priest said. “But it is up to God to judge her—not me. And it is not the place of a Deryni to instruct me in my duties.”
Alyce only shook her head and turned away, closing her eyes to the sight of him and the dead Muriella. She could hear the muttering following her as she made her way out of the crowd. When she found her way back to the garden arbor where she had left her sister, the body was gon
“Monks came to take her away, my lady,” he murmured. “Brother Ruslan said to tell you that she would lie in the chapel royal tonight. I’m very sorry. She was very kind, even to a mere gardener.”
She stared at him blankly for several seconds, then gave him a grateful nod. His name was Ned, she recalled, and he had always had a gentle word for both her and Marie.
“Thank you, Ned,” she whispered.
In a daze, she made her way to the chapel royal, where two black-robed monks were setting up a bier in the aisle before the altar. But of any bodies, there was no sign.
Forlorn, not knowing what else to do, she knelt at the rear of the chapel and said a prayer for her sister’s soul—and for Isan, and for Brigetta, and even for the wretched Muriella—then rose and went forward to where the brothers worked.
“Could you tell me where the bodies have been taken?” she asked.
The older man looked up pityingly and gave her a neutral nod.
“You’ll be asking after the women?” he said.
She inclined her head in return.
“We’re told that some of the sisters from Saint Hilary’s are looking after them,” he informed her. “But they’ll lie here tonight. Except for the one who took her own life, of course.”
“What about the boy?” Alyce asked dully.
“There was a boy as well?” the younger brother asked, shocked.
Mutely Alyce nodded.
“Dear Jesu,” the elder brother whispered, as both crossed themselves.
“In all fairness,” she forced herself to say, “I do not think the boy was meant to die—or the second woman. Or the one who planned the deed—God forgive her, for I cannot. I can only imagine that it was conceived in unreasoning jealousy, and went disastrously wrong. The poison was meant for my sister alone, but four now lie dead as a result of this day’s work.” She shook her head. “I’ll leave you to your duties,” she murmured, as she turned and fled.