Conflict and Courage (51 page)

Henri Cocteau
decided to agree with Sam Baker.

* * * * *

“The regiments
took few losses thanks to you,” said Sam Baker when the regiments
returned to Fort.

“The Larg are
not pleased with our conduct on the battlefield,” worried General
Karovitz, “they complain that our men sat safe behind the
barricades and did not help.”

“There’ll be no
more trouble from them,” said Sam Baker with a triumphant grin of
pure malice. “The rumours are true. Disease. They’re dropping like
flies. Now is the time to consolidate what is ours, perhaps we
could even bite off a chunk of that arable land in the north.”

Sam Baker was
content. He had achieved the power and prestige his ego demanded.
He was in control. It was unfortunate that he could not marry one
of his daughters to young King Elliot but not just Pierre Duchesne
had balked at a marriage between a half-brother and sister. His
blood would flow in all the noble houses except the royal one and
next generation perhaps there too.

* * * * *

Aoalvaldr was
dead.

The Largan was
dead, together with most of the ruling pack.

The surviving
Larg retrenched in the deep south and left the humans to it.

Lord Regent
Baker breathed a sigh of relief and pressed on with his plans. He
completed the complex arrangement of betrothals and marriages
between the noble houses and consolidated his power over young King
Elliot. Under his rule feudal Murdoch had come into being.

In the north
Jim Cranston recovered from his wounds but was unable to continue
as Susyc. Francis and Asya were confirmed in the position. Jim and
Larya left for domta Afanasei where he spent his remaining years in
honourable retirement.

He kept busy,
forcing through certain legislation in Argyll to ensure that when
the Larg re-emerged, the continent would have the means to defeat
them.

He saw, as did
Tara, Kolyei and some few others, that Argyll and Vadath would go
their own ways in the years to come.

There were
signs already that some citizens of Argyll, especially those who
were settling in the mountainous north, felt themselves to be
different to those of Vadath. True, they were happy enough having
the Vada in Argyll protecting the coasts and the services provided
by the ‘Lind Express’ were appreciated, but already there were
those who called those who bonded with the Lind ‘freaks’.

In year twelve,
he chaired his last conference, at Stewarton, the new-built capital
city of Argyll, where the Councillors of Argyll and representatives
of both Vadath and the Lind signed a new treaty of mutual defence.
He could do no more.

Jim’s greatest
joys were the visits of his friends and his friend’s children who
called him Uncle Jim and Larya, Auntie Larya. As he pottered around
their daga with Larya sleepily watching, his tired eyes would light
up when one or more of them appeared. They liked to surprise him
and Larya never let on.

* * * * *

Lord Regent Sam
Baker’s plans for betrothals between the children of the most
powerful were coming to fruition by the summer of year sixteen.

King Elliot and
his twin sister Princess Ruth were fourteen years old.

Elliot would
have to wait, his future bride, the daughter of Lord Smith was only
twelve, but Ruth’s intended was the eldest son of Lord Gardiner and
he was older than she was by some months.

Sam Baker
informed the King, “your sister leaves next week.”

Elliot raised a
shocked face to his guardian. Underlying Baker’s pronouncement and
unspoken was the knowledge that, if anything happened to Elliot,
Ruth’s children would be Baker’s security, but she wasn’t as strong
as her twin as the old doctor, who had cared for her since birth,
told Elliot.

Elliot turned
to Sam Baker with concern, “where exactly is she going? Gardiner’s
castle is low-lying and beside the river, not a healthy place for a
chesty person.”

He was fond of
his twin sister and was not happy about Baker’s choice of husband.
David Gardiner was slow-witted and a bully into the bargain.

“Gardiner has
drained the marsh. He assures me all precautions have been
taken.”

“Could we not
at least postpone the marriage for a while?” ventured Elliot. “Send
her to Gardiner by all means but to the bracing air of the coast
where the air is fresher and cleaner. We could send a guard. She
would be quite safe and when she is stronger she could marry
then?”

Sam looked at
Elliot. The boy had been difficult of late, trying to assert his
authority as King; of course he had none, Sam Baker had seen to
that, but it might do no harm to give way on this relatively
unimportant issue.

“If that is
your wish my King,” he agreed, “I have no objections.”

“It is,” said a
firm Elliot, very much on his dignity.

“Perhaps you
would also like to make the arrangements for her journey?”

“Go now,”
Elliot said turning to an aide and sitting up straighter in his
throne, “tell my sister I will visit her this evening and tell her
of the arrangements.”

“Yes Sire,”
announced the aide, bowing repeatedly as he backed out of the
chamber.

Sam Baker
looked at Elliot. The boy sat, very pleased with the results of his
show of independence.

Time to burst
the bubble.

“Let us get on
with more important matters,” he began, “the Conclave, your
Conclave has agreed on the main points regarding the disputed
border. All you need do is sign the proclamation.”

Elliot sighed.
His Conclave. That was a fiction and well he knew it. The bigger
decisions were not his. He looked at his guardian through narrow
eyes. A look Sam Baker did not see, engrossed as he was in settling
the papers in front of Elliot.

King Elliot
would bide his time but he was King and would get rid of Sam Baker
one day.

Baker had
brought Elliot up to be as ruthless as he was himself.

He should not
have been surprised when his protégée made his bid for power, only
that the axe fell so soon.

* * * * *

“You will leave
for Gardiner as soon as transport can be arranged. Lord Gardiner
grows impatient. Fourteen is old enough.”

Ruth sat
upright, embroidery forgotten on her lap.

“So soon,” she
managed to say, “I thought next summer?” Her voice betrayed a plea
that Sam Baker’s aide ignored.

“The Lord
Regent will be pleased to see that you appear happy with his
arrangements.”

Ruth’s eyes
were stinging, but she would not let him see her cry. She was all
Princess as she asked the aide her next question.

“May I see my
brother before I leave?”

“My Lord Regent
shall arrange it.”

Doctor Arthur
Kurtheim had not planned to say anything but during that afternoon
Ruth opened the topic, seldom discussed, of her mother.

“Mama used to
say her first husband called her his green-eyed elf,” she
began.

“You are very
like her.”

“Do you think
that a strange thing to call someone Doctor?”

“It is a term
of endearment Ruth, when two people love each other as deeply as I
believe your mother loved him, it takes on a whole new meaning.
You’ll find out yourself one day.”

“With David
Gardiner?”

“Perhaps the
marriage won’t happen.”

“We’ve been
betrothed for years. Nothing will stop this marriage.”

“Have
faith.”

“Mama used to
say that too, “but it didn’t do her much good.”

A plan was
forming in Arthur’s mind, an audacious and dangerous plan.

“How good are
your acting skills little Ruth?”

Ruth stared in
surprise, “fairly good I think. I seem to have been acting the part
of dutiful princess for most of my life.”

“Feel up to
some more?”

* * * * *

Who would
have believed
, thought Arthur Kurtheim as he walked with the
aid of his stick across the courtyard of the Little Sisters
Hospital,
that six years ago when I ‘persuaded’ Lord Regent Sam
Baker to give me Cara to train that this would be the
result?

Cara had
become, under his tutelage, nurse and midwife then had announced
that she wished to form an order of like-minded women with the
intention of tending to the poor and needy. Dressed in white, the
Little Sisters of the Poor, named after a religious order on old
Earth, now numbered twenty-four women of varying ages and
disposition who had decided a life of chastity and nursing the poor
was vastly preferable to the alternative. They had joined Cara, the
oldest over sixty, the youngest a child of twelve whose father, a
farmer-vassal of Lord van Buren, had desired her removal at all
costs from within the grasp of his Lord.

Arthur directed
their medical training and Cara took on the governance of the
group.

The presence of
the Little Sisters meant that the Lord Regent did not have to
bother himself arranging for the care of the old and the sick at
Fort. He had been under considerable pressure to do so. In his
opinion, the Little Sisters were the perfect solution to the
problem.

It had taken
time, but Cara had managed to locate Marcus Kushner’s sister
Charlotte. Cara had been ‘invited’ to organise van Buren’s rather
haphazard medical system and, in the process, had located
Charlotte. As payment for her services, she demanded that Charlotte
be given to her. So grateful had Raoul van Buren been that he had
raised no objections.

Raoul van
Buren must have thought it a fair exchange
, mused Arthur as he
reached the doorway of the inner hospice, a large rambling wooden
structure where the dying were cared for, an increasing number each
season as the ex-convict population aged.

The Sisters
were held in high esteem by the men of both encampments, or River
City as it was becoming known and Fort. None dared molest them. The
reaction and punishment meted out by their fellow citizens by those
foolhardy enough to try, was too awful to contemplate.

Sam Baker had
unbent enough to endow the sisters, in perpetuity, with the land
and buildings they presently occupied and had even, at Cara’s
insistence, (Arthur was still amazed at her temerity) sent soldiers
to build a sturdy wall around, repair the fabric and adapt the old
barn into a hospital. Not to be outdone, Lords Cocteau and Gardiner
had provided money and labour too.

The Little
Sisters, unlike the long dead women they were named after, was not
a religious order. The women did take vows, that was true, but
these vows were purely to their vocation of nursing and to a life
of chastity and moderate poverty.

The women were
happy; no one was there against their will including the latest
novice, young Bernadette.

Arthur could
hear her voice chattering merrily as she went about her duties, no
actual nursing yet, but she could help with the carrying and bed
making, the little things that kept the place running.

He reached the
blue door that marked the entrance to the convent proper. Inside
the peace enveloped him as the old sister led him along the narrow
corridor to the Mother Abbess’s door.

“Better get
some more of these white habits of yours ready,” he joked, eyes
twinkling.

“More novices?”
Sister Jean queried with a sad-faced smile.

“Four young
novices,” he answered.

“Bernadette
will be pleased,” the old nun said, “she finds it lonely with no
other young ones to play with. When do they arrive?”

“Very soon,” he
promised and was rewarded with a beaming smile as she sped away as
fast as she could, which was, Arthur reflected sadly, not much
faster than him these days.

He knocked and
he heard Cara’s sweet voice as she called for him to enter.

She looked up
at him eagerly.

“What news? Has
Lord Cocteau finally decided?”

Arthur eased
himself into the indicated chair.

“And more,” was
his tantalising reply as he placed his walking stick beside him.
“General Karovitz too. Henry Cocteau is very aware of his status,
overly so, all the Lords are, probably as a result of reaching such
exalted positions so late. With the death of van Buren’s boy
Wolfram there isn’t a lad of similar age and rank for young Celine
to marry and Cocteau is of no mind to pass her over to van
Buren.”

“I can
understand that,” said Cara, “it is a despicable law.”

“The Lords were
happy enough to agree to it.”

“Only when it
is not their daughters who are forced into the breeding programme,”
Cara reminded him.

“I believe him
to be genuinely fond of his children and he certainly doesn’t want
to see her unhappy.”

“Does the girl
truly wish to join us? I will not accept the unwilling. It is not
an easy life.”

“According to
Lord Cocteau, yes, at least she is not adverse to the idea. General
Karovitz wishes to send his eldest daughter as well. She
does
want the life.”

“So we get both
of them?”

“My dear, you
have not two but four joining you this week, the other two are
friends of Celine and the Karovitz girl but the main point is that
you get two novices from the most powerful families in the country.
It will protect you. When I’m not here you will be safe.”

“What do you
mean, when you’re not here?”

“Cara, I’m an
old man, but my imminent demise is not what I’m talking about. I
plan to be away for a while.”