Fire of the Soul (4 page)

“I have some particular instructions for
Calia. Garit, my lad, you may sit up as long as you like, but I am
an old lady and I need my rest.”

With that, she headed for the steps to the
solar and her bedchamber beyond, leaving Garit to stare after her
in astonishment that she would ever admit to weariness. Unless she
wasn’t tired at all, but wanted to escape from further discussion
of his foolish stepmother and her new husband.

Garit watched Calia follow in silence, with
her head bowed. She hadn’t looked at him, nor bid him a good night.
He saw Mairne gaping open-mouthed at her mistress’s departing back
and he guessed she was as surprised by Lady Elgida’s abrupt
departure as he was. Then he noticed Anders looking at him and when
their glances met, Anders winked. Garit relaxed a little, knowing
that Anders would question Mairne so cleverly that she’d never
realize she was giving up information. Hiding a smile, certain he’d
soon learn what secrets were being kept at Saumar Manor, Garit
pulled his trencher closer and began to eat again.

“Shut the door, Calia, and latch it,” Lady
Elgida commanded. “I want to speak with you in private and without
any interruptions.”

“Yes, my lady.” Calia did as ordered, then
stood waiting with her hands clasped at her waist.

“Oh, do sit down, child.” With a look of
impatience Lady Elgida gestured to a stool set next to the low
brazier where a small fire burned. On the other side of the brazier
and close to its warmth a chair with a back and wide arms awaited
the mistress of Saumar. Striding past the large, blue-curtained bed
that took up most of the room, Lady Elgida sank into the
embroidered woolen cushions that padded the back and seat of the
chair. She placed a hand on each arm and her feet on a low
footstool.

Calia thought the posture made her appear
rather like a queen who was considering what punishment to decree
for a recalcitrant subject. Her next words offered little comfort
to Calia’s frayed emotions.

“Sit down,” Lady Elgida repeated, “and stop
wringing your hands like a martyr who’s about to be sent to the
scaffold.”

Calia sat, but her hands seemed to flutter of
their own accord, so she folded them in her lap and tried not to
wring them.

“Now, what do you want to tell me?” Lady
Elgida demanded.

“Tell you? My lady, I thought you said you
wanted to speak with me.”

“I should have said that I want to listen to
you.” Lady Elgida fixed her gaze on Calia’s face and Calia stared
back, feeling once again like a snared bird, only this time her
wings fluttered helplessly against the net as she sought a way to
escape. She knew she was wringing her hands, but she could not stop
the motion.

“Speak!” Lady Elgida ordered. “Or, by the
heavenly blue sky above us, I’ll turn you out of Saumar this very
night, and Mairne with you.”

“My lady, please, Mairne knows very little
about my past. She is not to blame.”

“And you are to blame? For what? What have
you done, Calia?”

“It’s not what I’ve done, but what I haven’t
done. It’s who I am. Mairne had nothing to do with this. I know I
should have told you everything on the first day I came to Saumar.
But I liked you at once and I wanted to stay. I could see that
Mairne wanted to stay, too. Neither of us could bear the thought of
returning to Talier Beguinage. It’s not that anyone there was ever
cruel to us, just that neither Mairne nor I belonged at Talier.
Neither of us has the proper vocation for the work the lady mages
do there, nor does Mairne have any Power at all.

“So I delayed giving the explanation you
deserved,” Calia went on. “I promised myself that I’d confess
everything soon, in a day, or a week, after you and I knew each
other better, after I’d thought of a way to make you understand.
But time went on and still I kept quiet, until finally it seemed to
me that if I did tell you, you’d be angry at all I’d kept from you
for so long. I beg you to believe I’m sorry now that I didn’t tell
you sooner.”

“Will you stop dithering, girl? This is most
unlike you. Come to the point.”

Those exasperated words from Lady Elgida
brought Calia’s floundering attempts at an apology to a halt. The
time for excuses and delays was over.

“To begin at the beginning, I am
illegitimate,” she said.

“You’ve made no secret of it,” Lady Elgida
replied with some lingering exasperation. “In any case, Adana
included that information in the letter she had you deliver to me
when you first arrived here. I haven’t raised the subject with you
because, until now, the unfortunate circumstance of your birth has
made no difference to me.”

“It would make a difference if you knew who
my parents were.” Calia paused, waiting for a response. When none
came, she drew a long breath and continued. “My mother was a
certain Lady Casilde, wife of an elderly Sapaudian lord who was
often at King Henryk’s court at Calean City. That’s where she met
my father. He told me once that she was young and very beautiful,
while her husband was so old and infirm that he could barely
walk.

“According to my father, Lady Casilde was so
eager for a man’s embrace that he didn’t have to seduce her. He
said she threw herself at him. Considering what I now know about my
father, I’m not sure that was the true version of my conception. I
can’t be certain that anything he ever said to me was the
truth.”

“You knew your father, then?”

“Barely. I used to think I was fortunate that
he acknowledged me. Some fathers just abandon illegitimate
children, especially girls. My mother’s husband died shortly after
I was born and she quickly remarried. I’ve been told she wanted
nothing to do with me.” Calia took a moment to think about that.
Deciding her own emotions were irrelevant to the discussion, she
continued, “When I was six years old the wet nurse who had fostered
me in her own home died. That was when my father took me to his
castle and left me there in the care of the seneschal’s wife.”

“From what you’ve said so far, he seems to
have been a surprisingly caring parent.”

Calia smothered a cynical laugh. Her father
hadn’t cared at all; he’d just kept her in reserve against the day
when he could use her for his own purposes, the way he’d used
Mallory; the same way that Mallory had used her for years as his
unacknowledged chatelaine and personal spy.

“Tell me about your brother,” Lady Elgida
said as if she could hear Calia’s thoughts. “The brother who sent
you to Talier Beguinage against your wishes.”

“I begged him to keep me with him. But
Mallory has his own purposes, his own ambitions. In that, he is
much like our father. My tears and all my pleas meant nothing to
him.”

“Mallory,” Lady Elgida repeated. Her gaze on
Calia was so alert that the younger woman knew she dared not
prevaricate, though she wished she could evade this particular
truth.

“Sir Mallory of Catherstone,” Calia said. “He
is six years older than I, our father’s bastard by one of the
castle women. Mallory was trained and knighted by our father and
kept at Catherstone as a household knight. Later, our father made
him seneschal of Catherstone after the old seneschal and his wife
retired to their own small holding. Fortunate old souls, to be
safely away from Catherstone when the blows fell. Fortunate to
escape the shame.” She fell silent then, swallowing hard, blinking
away the tears.

“Don’t stop now. Tell me all of it,” Lady
Elgida said, her voice surprisingly gentle. “Every bit, every
detail. You need to speak the words out loud.”

“You know!” Sudden comprehension tore the
tears from Calia’s eyes and melted the lump in her throat that
threatened to stop her breath. “All this time, since I first came
here, you have known. And you never said a word.”

“Did you imagine that Adana would send you to
me without revealing something so important? What do you think was
in that letter you carried to me from her, if not the entire
truth?”

“All this time and you never said – never
hinted-” Calia stammered her way to a confused halt.

“I have been waiting for you to trust me
enough to tell me,” Lady Elgida said.

“I do trust you. And I love you as I would
have loved my mother, if only I had known her,” Calia cried. “But
lately I’ve been afraid you’d cast me out if I confessed
everything.”

“Then you do not trust me at all. You
disappoint me, child, if you think no better of me than that.”

“I have been so afraid. First my mother, then
my father, and then Mallory – no one wanted me. I feared you
wouldn’t want me, either.” She did not add what Lady Elgida surely
already knew, that if she were forced to leave Saumar, she’d have
no place to go.

“The time has come for me to hear the rest of
it from your own lips,” Lady Elgida said. “Now, Calia; this very
moment. Speak your father’s name. I’ll wager you haven’t said it
aloud since the terrible news reached Catherstone.”

Calia had to draw several deep breaths before
she could pronounce the hated name and admit her dreadful
parentage.

“My father was Walderon, the lord of
Catherstone. Almost four years ago he abducted my two cousins – my
legitimate lady cousins who were both heiresses – and ordered the
murder of one of them, so he could inherit her estates. That girl’s
name was Chantal and she was secretly betrothed to your grandson,
Garit.”

“I know.” Lady Elgida’s expression was
inscrutable. “Go on, Calia.”

“Walderon almost succeeded in killing the
other girl, Jenia, when she learned of his traitorous scheme to
assist an invasion from the Dominion. Fortunately, Jenia was
rescued by Garit and his best friend. Thanks to the three of them,
my father was captured, tried, and then executed for treason and
murder.”

“I am glad you finally found the courage to
speak.” Lady Elgida sat looking at her, a half smile curling her
lips.

“But I haven’t told you everything yet,”
Calia whispered.

“I didn’t think you had.”

“Catherstone was confiscated by the
crown.”

“The estates of traitors are always
confiscated.”

“Mallory and I were turned out of our home,
with just the clothing on our backs, though we had known nothing of
our father’s schemes.”

“Are you sure Mallory didn’t know?”

“I – oh, dear Lady Elgida, as heaven is my
witness, I am not certain. He may have known and not told me. I’ve
come to realize since we parted that Mallory always kept something
from me. It was his way of holding power over me, by keeping me in
ignorance.”

“Rather like his father, I suspect.”

“Yes, sadly.” Calia drew another long, shaky
breath as she considered how to explain a relationship that was
half fear and half desperate love, for she’d had no one else to
love. “I do not trust Mallory. He frightens me.”

“How?” Lady Elgida’s gaze sharpened. “Did he
beat you?”

“Occasionally, he’d slap me. I’ve seen other
men do much worse to their womenfolk. But after our father was
executed and word came that Catherstone was confiscated to the
crown, Mallory became very cold and hard. Every bit of kindness
seemed leached out of his heart – what little kindness he’d had to
begin with. So, he ignored my protests and left me at Talier
Beguinage. Then he hied off across the sea to the northern border
of Kantia, there to insinuate himself into Prince Dyfrig’s court,
knowing that Dyfrig would be the next king of Kantia. And now we
learn that Mallory has wed Garit’s stepmother.”

Calia stopped then, uncomfortably aware of
Lady Elgida’s tense silence and of the way her aged hands clutched
at the arms of her chair. The silence went on and on, until Calia
wanted to scream at her companion to say something, anything. When
the question came, it was the one she expected, and she was
prepared for it.

“Do you think he married her deliberately?”
Lady Elgida asked.

“I do not doubt it for a moment,” Calia
answered. “Knowing Mallory, I think he assessed the situation and
made clever, innocent-seeming suggestions. In the end, King Dyfrig
probably imagined the marriage idea was his alone. I know you are
not overfond of Lady Fenella, but I pity her, bound as she now is
to Mallory and his ambition.”

“She could have refused to wed your brother.
Kantian women do have that right.”

“I wonder if any woman can withstand
Mallory’s will,” Calia said. “He may have convinced her that he
loves her.”

“Fenella’s mistakes are her own. Let her deal
with the results of them,” Lady Elgida said. “What concerns me is
the welfare of my grandsons. Could Mallory want Kinath Castle for
his own? Perhaps he sees his marriage to Fenella and his holding of
the castle as a form of revenge against Garit. Calia, is your
brother capable of murder?”

Calia caught her breath at the question. She
started to shake her head, to deny the possibility, until she
recalled unexplained deaths at Catherstone and knew that she had to
be completely honest. The lives of two children could be at stake,
and perhaps Lady Fenella’s life, too.

“I am sorry to say that Mallory can be
vicious when he’s crossed,” she admitted. “If someone stood in the
way of something he wanted very badly, then I fear he’d have no
scruples at all.”

“Someone like a boy, or two boys, whose
continued existence would prevent him from claiming a large, strong
fortress as his own by right of marriage?” Lady Elgida
insisted.

“Yes, my lady,” Calia whispered, thinking
again of those deaths at Catherstone. “But Mallory is clever, and
patient, too. He’d wait until he could make the deaths seem to be
accidents, or the result of perfectly natural illness. Oh, I am
ashamed to admit this about my own kin. Truly, my blood is tainted
by murder and treason.” She bowed her head under the weight of that
terrible heritage.