Fire Angels

Chapter 15 Part 5 The Dukes Secret Love

The morning after Shad left for Montlammer, I awoke in the grey dawn light to hear a tapping on my window and started awake with visions of Bedazzer in my mind. To my astonishment I saw Symon sitting huddled in the window embrasure. The window was five stories up in the air so I quickly ran to help him, thinking some disaster of magic and exhaustion must have occurred. When I opened the window however, he simply ducked his head through and told me that he had something to show me in the forest behind the castle in half an hour.

I closed the curtains so that I might scramble into my clothes in private, but it was not necessary for when I opened them again he was gone. A big black raven was sitting on a nearby tower and it cawed imperatively at me as I looked at it and then flew away.

A stone wall separated the White Tower from the forest behind it. The tower itself was guarded by sentries, but the gardens were only protected by magic and so there was no one to wonder where I was going so early. A locked iron gate gave a way through into the forest beyond. As I came up to the gate, a hand reached through and unlocked it. It was Symon again, dark in his old dingy black. He led me quickly and with signs to be silent out into the forest that lay below the White Tower.

It was still very early in the morning. The forest smelt wonderfully of dew damp sweet-oil trees. Now it was almost summer the bright golden mimosa was in bloom. We turned quickly off the path and ducked down a series of narrow animal trails brushing through bushes and causing showers of the fluffy golden blossom to rain down upon us. We rustled on until we were almost at the bottom of the hill. Here Symon stopped and, motioning me to follow, went down on his belly and began crawling though the damp leaf mould under some bushes. Obediently I followed. Shortly afterwards, we came to a place were we could see down a bank into a small clearing below.

Beneath us on a tree stump sat the Duke of Gallia. At his back stood Garthan Redona. Redona stood calm and still as a man on guard should, but the Duke was impatient. His feet kicked at the tree stump and twice he got up and paced up and down the clearing before the person he was waiting for came down the path behind us.

It was Blanche Shomnee, walking her lithe snakelike walk and humming under her breath.

A look of joy crossed the Duke's countenance, which shocked me for his was not a face I associated with such soft emotions. He took Blanche's hand and kissed it as if it was the most precious thing in the world. They retired to the other side of the clearing where a rug had been laid on the damp grass.

Garthan Redona had disappeared, withdrawn discreetly back behind a tree, no doubt.

Duke Leon and Lady Blanche sat talking for some time and though I could not hear what was being said I could tell from the way they sat together, from Blanche's coquettish looks and the way the Duke kept kissing her hand and once or twice her neck, that some kind of seduction was taking place, if it had not already done so. I stared at Symon in amazement for I had had no inkling of this. Symon merely nodded and put his fingers to his lips.

I was filled with anger then. How dare the fellow. He was not even married to Lady Julia yet and here... Good God he had even forced her to take on her rival as a Lady in Waiting.

Yet it did not seem that the Duke was having everything his way, for the second time he kissed Lady Blanche's neck, she moved away and this was the signal for an argument to begin. At first they spoke in low tones but when Lady Blanche jumped up and began to hurry away, the Duke leapt up and caught her shoulder.

"Do not try my patience too much, Madame. There are plenty of women with charms like yours. I will not wait forever."

"Then do not," she said. "I came here throwing myself on your mercy and offering you the chance to put the crown of Moria on your head and what have you offered me in return? A chance to become a whore and to be called so by everybody. I am a gently-bred convent girl and was brought up to accept nothing less then the title of wife."

She twitched herself out of his hold and ran back up the path towards the White Tower. After angrily kicking the tree stump, the Duke strode away in the opposite direction. Garthan Redona appeared briefly from between the trees, scooped up the rug and followed him.

We waited till they had gone then the two of us wriggled back through the bushes.

"What was going on? Is Blanche...?"

"I do not think she is his mistress yet, but as you see "negotiations" are going on."

"But that's... how dare the man do such a thing?"

"Why? Because he is engaged to marry Lady Julia. That's convenience. Many rulers have done the same."

I had to admit he was right. It was not unusual that ruler's wife had to tolerate a rival as Lady in Waiting either. It was the obvious position for a woman at court.

"But he seems quite smitten with Blanche," said Symon "Would you have said he was normally that kind of a man?"

"No. The Duke of Gallia always let his heart be ruled by his head. She said something about being a wife... Do you think...?"

"It is a narrow game. The chances are slim. The Duke of Gallia could not become King without marrying Lady Julia. But after the crown has been on his head a year or so, who could say what fortunate circumstance might occur."

"We must warn her."

"You think she doesn't know already?"

I remembered Duke Leon and Lady Julia together after the Klementari had come. I had sensed a double meaning behind their words. Now I realized what it was.

"It is you I wished to warn. Be careful of Lady Blanche."

"I've never trusted her. But why me particularly?"

Symon simply shrugged.

"You are covered in mud," he said.

I brushed the mud and blossom off my clothes using a homely little spell, the kind of spell that would not be seen as unusual by anyone who saw it from the White Tower. A slug had found his way up my sleeve and took some getting out. While I did this, Symon sat down and pulled out a package. He unwrapped it and offered me bread and cheese.

"I don't doubt we are at an important point in time," he said, as we sat munching in the leaf-dappled sunlight. "At this point, the future is that Lady Julia will be Queen of Moria. Foretellers see it everyday still. But this Blanche could change things. We must make sure she does not." He frowned into space.

Ever since Shad had told me what the foretellings had said of Lady Julia, I had tried to think of her as ruler in her own right. But I was a creature of my time and place. Such things had never been and I found it hard to imagine them.

"So Lady Julia will be Queen?" I asked Symon. "Who will be King?"

"There will be no king. She will rule alone and mostly well. She is the best choice, Enna Dion. The Duke of Gallia cares only for conquest and power. He is not a compassionate man. And Gerard Hawksmoor will be a puppet of the Patriarch. And neither of them would give Ernundra to the Klementari. Lady Julia would. Were it not foretold that she would be Queen, I still would work to make it so."

I remembered Symon's words in the Spirit Cave. "You do believe in foretelling, don't you Symon?"

"Oh yes! I believe that my people can see the future. I also believe that we can make the future happen with our actions."

Later as we were climbing back up the path to the White Tower a thought occurred to me.

"This is a very clever game Lady Blanche is playing. And she is only seventeen."

"She has been well tutored to play just this game. Her tutor will be here tomorrow and then we will see just how clever he is."

"Who is he?"

"You will see him tomorrow. He is someone you already know."

"Who?"

But he only smiled his Symon smile and went away in a whirl of black.