The Dame

SEVEN

Silent as the shadow he crossed, Jameston Sequin moved along the line of pines, circumventing the drifts of snow with practiced ease. He knew this place, this tended grove, and knew, too, that he was likely being watched. He knew the watcher, though, and had come to see that very man.

Still, he kept his caution and covert manner, unsure of who might be gathered around the one he expected was more than aware of his presence.

A large raven flopped onto the branch of a nearby pine, looked right at him, and cawed loudly.

Jameston straightened and stared at the bird, smiling knowingly.

The bird hopped down and before it ever landed on the ground transformed suddenly and with a bright flash of light into an old man, bald and with a beard braided by clumps of dung, dressed in light green robes, a heavy fur cloak, and open-toed sandals. Only a Samhaist priest could keep his feet from freezing to black with those feeble shoes.

“One day I’ll catch you unaware,” Jameston said to the man.

“Or I’ll grow tired of your trying,” the Samhaist replied, but Jameston knew it to be a good-natured threat. Despite all their differences, despite Jameston siding with Gwydre against the troll and goblin hordes of Badden, despite Jameston’s obvious disdain for the Samhaist religion, Wisterwhig was not an enemy. Not a friend, perhaps, but not an enemy.

“So, Badden’s gone,” Jameston said.

“Killed by Dame Gwydre,” Wisterwhig replied. “And by his own arrogance.”

Jameston raised a bushy gray eyebrow at that startling admission, to which Wisterwhig merely shrugged.

“He did find Mithranidoon, and that is no small thing, of course,” the Samhaist said.

“You disagreed with his war?”

Again Wisterwhig, a man Jameston found quite reasonable compared with most of his Samhaist brethren, merely shrugged and then said, “It was not my place to agree or disagree. I do not remember Badden ever asking my opinion.”

Jameston snorted. “I love the hierarchy of learned men.”

“Spare me your incessant sarcasm, scout,” said Wisterwhig. “You come on behalf of Gwydre, I expect.”

“Indirectly,” Jameston admitted. “As much for my own curiosity as for her needs. There’s less activity now. I’ve seen no sign of goblins or trolls moving south.”

“Winter is on in full force in the northland,” said Wisterwhig dismissively.

“They fought through the winter last year,” Jameston reminded. “Ice trolls favor that season.”

The old Samhaist made no move to respond.

“Winter favors them in battle, but your folk aren’t sending them to Vanguard,” said Jameston.

“If you have all the answers, why do you bother me, scout?”

Jameston leaned back and grinned. “I have all the suspicions. I’m looking for the answers.”

“You ask that I would ease Gwydre’s mind?”

“Ease the minds of lots of folk,” Jameston replied.

“You presume that I have a responsibility to people who have turned their backs on the old gods.”

“No,” Jameston answered slowly, measuring his words. “I just think you’re a decent enough fellow despite those robes you wear.”

Wisterwhig laughed. “You’re quite wise for an idiot, yes?” he said, imitating Jameston’s even tone. Jameston laughed with him. “Or quite the decent murderer, don’t you think?”

“I’ve never hid my feelings for your church or th’other one.”

“You have never hidden your feelings on any matter,” said Wisterwhig. “Which is why I tolerate you.”

“Just tolerate? Should I be insulted?”

“We could banter like this all the day, I fear.”

“We have before.”

Wisterwhig surrendered with an upraised hand. “I am glad the war is over,” he admitted, a startling revelation to be sure.

“Is it?”

“You will not take my word to Dame Gwydre,” the Samhaist said.

“I can tell her enough without it,” Jameston agreed. “But I’m glad to hear it.”

Wisterwhig’s nod showed that they had a mutual understanding and agreement here.

“Who’ll be the next ancient?” Jameston asked, grinning widely, for he knew that he wouldn’t get much of an answer to that one. “Wisterwhig?”

“That is for the old gods to decide.”

“And will the one they name then start the war anew?”

“You speak of something a decade removed,” answered the Samhaist. “We are not as impatient as the brothers of Abelle. The successor will not be named this year, possibly not even next year, and, after that, he will have many months of work ahead of him in just informing the groves and calling in his disciples.”

“You surrender Vanguard to the monks?”

“Not so,” said Wisterwhig. “We know that the brothers of Abelle will fail in the end. Their baubles are impressive until the deathbed, and there they have no answers. Just empty promises. Those who follow them pass on unprepared for the judgment of the old gods.”

“And those dead ones will come back and discredit the monks?” was Jameston’s sarcastic response.

“The ghosts speak to us. To all. In the end, we Samhaists, not the monks, hold the answers most needed. If I did not have faith in that I would not wear these robes.”

Jameston conceded the point with a nod.

“Patience,” Wisterwhig added. “It is a necessary virtue and one, perhaps, that Badden lost in his last years. Events prompted change in Vanguard, and he wished that errant course corrected before his passing. We do not consider our ancient to be the sole proprietor of godly wisdom, scout. You know that much, at least.”

“So, many disagreed with Badden’s war?”

“Or thought it an unnecessary provocation. In the end we will win, and we’ll need not enlist goblins and trolls and powries and barbarians to achieve the victory. Because we are right, scout-because our gods are true-we will win.”

Jameston had been kidding earlier when he had asked if Wisterwhig, not a leading member of his religion by any means, might be named as the next ancient, but truly, Jameston wished that a possibility.

This Samhaist priest, at least, was reasonable and decent enough.

The scout’s step as he left Wisterwhig’s grove was much lighter than the footfalls that had brought him to this place. Jameston never feared a good fight and was always happy to kill a goblin or a troll, but he knew that the folk of Vanguard had suffered far too much already.

The weather here was trying enough without adding the burdens of a war.

Dawson McKeege tried to stay seated, but he couldn’t manage it. He kept getting up and pacing around the thick carpet, his eyes scanning the closed door at the side of the room. He knew what was going on in there. Gwydre had asked him to stay with her this evening because she had discerned the tone of Brother Alandrais when he had arrived earlier that day, and Dawson trusted her instincts implicitly.

“Come on, then,” he whispered, eyeing the door. He glanced across to a cabinet on the other side of the room where an hourglass drained away; he had upended it almost immediately after his friend had gone to meet privately with Brother Alandrais. She’d been in there nearly a full hour.

Dawson licked his lips. Perhaps things weren’t going quite so bad?

The man straightened as the door opened and Dame Gwydre came through. One look at her told McKeege that his hopes for some reconciliation had been in vain.

She stared into his eyes, her face very tight, and she nodded curtly, as if giving any further movement would cause her to dissolve.

Like telling someone when a loved one had passed, Dawson thought. “He’s a fool, then,” the crusty old sailor said.

Dame Gwydre walked past him and patted him on the shoulder as she moved to sit stiffly on the divan, eyes unseeing. Dawson was quick to her side.

“For the best,” he said, putting his arm about her. He was the only man in the world who might tell Gwydre that, he realized.

Gwydre was glad of it at that moment. She slumped at long last and put her head on his shoulder, turning to bury her face in his shirt, her shoulders bobbing with sobs. After just a few brief moments she composed herself and sat back up straight, sniffling away the tears. Then she gave a cleansing sigh and even managed a little laugh at herself as she wiped the moisture from her eyes.

“It’s for the best,” Dawson repeated without thought. As soon as the words left his mouth he heard them as incredibly inane.

But Gwydre just laughed and nodded. “I would have ended our love affair if he had not,” she said. “It was too much trouble now.”

“Now that the war’s looking to be over, and ain’t that the irony?”

Gwydre frowned. “With Ancient Badden looming, I had no time for quibbles with the brothers of Abelle. Now that Badden is gone, I expect that I and the church will face some trying moments of disagreement.”

“Alandrais wasn’t man enough to keep them separate,” Dawson accused. “He’d’ve kept jumping in at you whenever you took a stand against his masters. As with De Guilbe.”

Gwydre nodded. “All true.”

“If he loved you-” Dawson started, but Gwydre put her hand up to stop that line of thinking short.

“Once, he did love me,” she said. “And I loved him. It was not convenience that brought us together. Indeed, at the time we started this relationship I thought it the least convenient thing in all the world.”

“But did he?”

Gwydre eyed Dawson curiously.

“I mean, there’s no doubt the brothers of Abelle gained greatly through the relationship,” Dawson clarified. “Their fight with the Samhaists added a powerful ally because of Brother Alandrais’s loins.”

“Dawson!”

The sailor shrugged but didn’t retract.

“I would not have sided with the Samhaists in any event, and that much was clear before Alandrais and I fell in love,” Gwydre insisted. “As their grip on southern Honce eroded, Ancient Badden grew ever more demanding and desperate and vicious.”

“Aye, I know,” Dawson admitted. “And Alandrais loved you. I know that, too, though I’m wanting to punch the fool in the nose right now.”

“You can’t blame him for… this,” said Gwydre. She reached up and stroked her friends grizzled face. “It’s been a long time in coming, and it is for the best.”

“Still would feel good to punch him.”

Gwydre managed another laugh. She pulled herself to her feet and began to pace in much the same manner as Dawson had earlier. “I am quite the fool,” she muttered. “To get involved with a monk at a time such as this-nay, to get involved with a monk at all! Oh, what pain have I brought upon my people? I have betrayed their trust for the sake of my own selfish needs.”

“You betrayed nothing!” Dawson shouted and leaped from the couch. “ ’Twas Badden who betrayed you, who betrayed us all. He held Vanguard hostage to protect his losses in the south. He demanded of us-of you-that which you could not do! Were you to deny the folk the blessings of the monks’ gemstones? Were you to let the sick and injured die because Badden didn’t want the monks praying over them with the soul stones?”

“The situation wasn’t so bad before my tryst with Alandrais.”

“Before the war in the south turned the folk of Honce away from the Samhaists, you mean. Wasn’t about you and wasn’t about your monk lover. Badden’s desperation came from knowing that his priests were being chased from half the holdings of Honce, and even where they stayed in their groves, the lairds weren’t listening to them. Delaval and Ethelbert have the whole of Honce in flames, and the folk’re suffering. In that suffering they’ve turned to the brothers of Abelle and their gemstones and away from the Samhaists.”

Gwydre considered the reasonable rebuttal for a few long moments, then nodded and smiled her gratitude at this man, her friend Dawson. Dawson took his leave and went back to his own rooms, pleased that he had been able to help his friend through her trying night, for surely Dame Gwydre was as a beloved sister to the old sailor, a woman he would gladly die defending.

Dame Gwydre continued to pace the room long after Dawson had gone. She did feel much better than when she had walked out of her meeting with Alandrais. Dawson was a valuable friend to her, unafraid to speak to her as a friend and not as his liege lady.

Truly he was a shining gem to Gwydre. He kept her grounded, kept her humble, and she knew that his love for her was unconditional, that if she were thrown down the next day from her position of authority and cast penniless into the street, Dawson McKeege would treat her no differently and no less affably.

Some of his honesty that night had stung, though, she had to admit. She didn’t think that Dawson had mentioned the gains her tryst had brought to the brothers of Abelle simply to make her feel better. There was a ring of truth in his claim.

Too much, she decided, and so, instead of going into her private chambers to don her bedclothes, Gwydre, Dame of Vanguard, went into the cold winter night.

The brothers of Chapel Pellinor had just finished their evening prayers when she arrived at their door. Father Premujon did not deny her request for an audience. Nor did he say anything when she entered the room and told his attendants, who included Father De Guilbe, to leave them.

“May I help you, Lady?” Premujon said when they were alone. “This is most unusual.”

“I was visited by one of your brothers this night,” she said.

“I see,” Premujon mused. “And who-”

“I’ll not speak around it,” Gwydre said. “You know well of my relationship with Brother Alandrais, and you know by now that the relationship ended this night.”

“Dame Gwydre, I am not-”

“Father,” she prompted in an exasperated tone.

The man sighed in surrender. “I know. Of course, I know.”

“As you knew of it when it commenced.”

The father tilted his head and eyed her curiously.

“Before it commenced, perhaps?” she asked slyly.

“Now how would I have known that?”

“Because you blessed Brother Alandrais’s decision, this night and those months ago when first we began our relationship.”

Father Premujon sat back very straight, as if he had been slapped. “Good Lady, what do you imply? Do you believe that I sent Brother Alandrais to your bed?”

“Our relationship benefited Chapel Pellinor greatly.”

Father Premujon considered that for a moment and conceded the fact with a nod. “Indeed, you were a mighty ally in our struggles with Badden’s Samhaists, but I expect that you would have supported us over him in any case.”

“A cool war of words and not a fighting battle.”

“True enough,” said Premujon. “So now you fear that I orchestrated your relationship with Brother Alandrais, that I sent him to you hoping you would fall in love for the sake of Chapel Pellinor?”

Gwydre didn’t answer the charge.

“I did not,” Premujon stated flatly. “When Brother Alandrais became smitten with Dame Gwydre, he came to me and confessed in full, and he was a man in terrible conflict. He understood the implications of any advances he might make, both for the church and for his continuing role in the order. What would you have had me say to him, Dame? Generally, my order frowns on such relationships, of course, but we often make exceptions, or merely let the situation quietly run its course.”

“Quietly?” Gwydre asked sarcastically.

“Such situations do not usually involve a laird or a dame,” came the dry reply.

“And in this case?” Gwydre asked. “Which course did Father Premujon prefer?”

“That you and Brother Alandrais would find love, and that such love would bring benefit to Chapel Pellinor and help us rid the land of the vile Samhaists,” the man admitted without hesitation.

Dame Gwydre fell back a step, surprised by his forthrightness.

“What would you have me say?” the Father of Chapel Pellinor asked. “What would you have had me do? I saw the gain to my order, to be sure, and did not dissuade such a beneficial outcome.” He rose from his seat and walked over to Gwydre, placing a hand on each of her shoulders and looking her straight in the eye. “But milady, good Dame Gwydre, not I nor any of my surrogates sent Brother Alandrais to court you. In no way. We simply decided not to interfere with nature’s course. And now, this evening, no one here bade Brother Alandrais to bring an end to your relationship.”

Dame Gwydre didn’t doubt him. Somehow, the truth he had just spoken hurt her and comforted her all at once. Her love affair with Alandrais had been real. Of course, that meant that the end of that love was real, as well.

Gwydre reached up with her right hand and pulled Premujon’s hand from her shoulder, grasping it tightly. “It is my friendship and trust with you that placed me on the side of your order against Badden’s Samhaists, you know. My love for Brother Alandrais did not determine my actions.”

“But it spurred many of Badden’s,” the monk replied. “To the great benefit of Vanguard in the end.”

Gwydre nodded. “Thank you,” she said softly and took her leave.

She spent a long night thinking of her many days with Alandrais, days in the sun and in the snow. She laughed and she cried that night; she let the light and the darkness have their play in her emotions.

For the next morning, Dame Gwydre had to let it all go, had to be again the leader of her people in a time that was far from settled and far from safe.