“Friend Ber-ge-lin! Friend Ber-ge-lin!” The voice from below-stairs
brought back to a consciousness of unhappiness the mind that had lost
itself in the sweet cadences and imagined worlds of Momoroso. Rodvard
sprang up and threw open the door.
“What will you have?”
“Someone to see you.”
Down the hall another door closed. It would be the little old man who
asked so many questions and went almost a-tiptoe, as though always
prepared to look through a keyhole. From the stairhead, Rodvard could
see in the evening’s first shades a figure covered with a long cloak,
somehow familiar, but the face hooded over.
“Beg her to come up,” he called. The figure mounted with one hand on the
bannister, in the slow manner of the old. Near the last step his mind
clicked; he was not surprised when in the room the hood fell back to
show Mme. Kaja. Face cold as ice, he remained standing. She came across
the room in a whirl of skirts, with both hands out.
“My de-ear boy,” she said.
With the hangings at the windows, it was too dim to tell how far her
sincerity went. “I am more than honored to have one of the regents—,” he
said, and let it hang.
“Oh, you are the most necessary of all,” she said, and frou-froued to
the best chair. “I hope you have forgiven me. It was so-o-o necessary;
someone had filed an information with the provosts that I was part of
the New Day, and it was such a help. Isn’t it to-o bad about the
Episcopals not cooperating? But there are so many of the priests on our
side.”
She had seated herself where her face was in the shadow.
“Madame, why have you come?” he asked brutally.
There was a silence in the darkening room. Then: “To help you,” said the
voice that, though it might no longer sing, had not lost its silver in
speech.
“I will make a light.”
She stirred. “Do not. It is better so . . . I know—you are thinking of
the Blue Star. Do you imagine that I fear your using it? No.”
He sat quietly (noting with the back of his mind how the dubious nicety
had dropped from her voice, and thinking that this was the woman who had
been taken into the High Center). Once more she seemed to gather her
forces. “Rodvard Bergelin,” she said, “do you know why I am in the High
Center?”
“I . . . think so.”
“I will tell you. It may be that in my ancestry there is a strain from
one of the witch-families. It may be because I sincerely serve God. I do
not know. But it has been given to me to be able to trace certain
secrets of the heart.” Her multitudinous bracelets jingled as she lifted
a hand to her breast. “Not as you do with the Blue Star.”
She was silent again, and he (unable to restrain an impulse toward
malice) said; “Your success in understanding Dr. Remigorius was—as great
as my own.”
“Rodvard, you are so-o unfair.” She dropped for a moment into the old
manner, then seemed to shake herself. “I know. Your—witch will never
forgive me. Not that I brought the provosts, but that I came in that day
when you were on the bed. I do not care; she brings an evil Art into our
New Day.”
“Do you think so?”
“Rodvard, hear me. This witch, to whom you are affected, will one day be
the end of you. I have seen her but little, yet I know—it is your nature
to give offense, and hers to take it. Sooner or later it will happen
that she will find something not to be borne and put a witchery on you
that will strike like lightning.”
(This clipped him close; with a certain convulsion round the heart, he
remembered Lalette’s occasional sudden rages.) “Well,” he said, “what
would you have me do?”
“Bid her farewell. Both of you can find partners better suited.”
Rodvard came to his feet and walked across the room slowly (thinking in
little flashes of sweet Leece and Maritzl of Stojenrosek). Mme. Kaja sat
immobile.
“No,” he said. “Better or worse, I will not give her up for anything.”
Mme. Kaja also stood. “Forgive an old woman,” she said, and gathering
her cloak around her, slipped out the door.
28
EMBERS REVIVED
“We will hear the next case,” said the kronzlar Escholl.
The people’s guard opened the door to the room of the accused and
called, “Bring her in,” while a sharp-faced countryman stepped forward
from the rear of the court, two more guards behind him. The countryman
had a merchant’s badge and so quick an eye that Rodvard gazed at him,
fascinated to see what it would tell, and was therefore unprepared when
he turned his head to see the accused.
It was Maritzl of Stojenrosek.
A Maritzl pale behind her red lips, still even when she moved, and much
changed. (How? Rodvard asked himself and could find no answer but in a
certain lessening of fibre that was expressed around the mouth, though
the breathtaking thrill of her presence was still so much there that he
swallowed.) The craggy-faced prosecutor stepped forward. “I present an
accusation of treason against the nation on the part of the Demoiselle
Maritzl of Stojenrosek, mistress of Count Cleudi, the foreign traitor. I
call the innkeeper of Drog.”
(“Mistress of Count Cleudi?” and Drog?) The sharp-faced man stood forth.
Maritzl turned to look at him, and as her eyes turned back, they fell on
Rodvard. She started (and before she looked down again he caught from
them an arrow of purest and most astounding hatred). “Tell us your
story,” said the jurist president.
“I keep a good house,” said the man, twisting his cap in his hands, “and
I have to be careful to preserve its reputation, because—”
The prosecutor touched his arm. “Give your condition first.”
Head bobbed. “Thank you, friend. I am keeper of the inn Star of Dossola
at Drog, on the road through the Pass of Pikes in the Ragged Mountains,
and mine is the largest inn there, with three upper rooms beside the
general chamber.” (Maritzl was looking at him again, not now with
hatred, but weariness of the world, and the thought that he, Rodvard,
was as dreary as any part of it.) “It has never been necessary for the
provosts to come to my place except when I called them. Now when this
woman came into my inn, I knew right away that something was wrong. Late
at night it was, and she in a three-horse coach with a driver, and that
seemed strange—”
The prosecutor halted him again. “Explain why you thought something was
wrong.”
“Look at her; she comes evidently from the court and bears the marks of
it.” He jabbed a finger at the girl, but it was Rodvard she looked at (a
long slow glance, in which was some decision to make a desperate
appeal). “When I saw her, I think to myself, as a man often will, that
this is not the place for a court woman to be, not with the court in
Zenss. So I think this is a good one to watch and perhaps I will learn
something, and while she is supping—she sat apart from the coachmaster
in the high dining room, she did—while she was supping, I served her
myself and marked how there was a little casket she kept beside herself
and touched her hand to, even while she was eating.”
(Her face now outwardly held the appeal, but a plan was building in her
mind; he could see it grow stone by stone, but not clearly what it was,
because little hate-flashes kept jagging across the picture.)
“So I said to her that if her casket was that precious, I ought to hold
it in the strongbox of the inn, there being so many wandering soldiers
about. When I said this, her ladyship—” he grinned a vulpine grin to
show this was intended for a joke “—said no, she would as soon lose her
life as the casket, which being so small, I think it must have in it
something beside jewels. So I said to myself, here is some mystery, but
if anyone can unlock it, it is my friend Khlab, that was a provost of
the court at Sedad Vix till it was broken up. So while her ladyship was
at the dessert, I slipped out to find my friend Khlab, and let him walk
past the door to look at her. The minute he saw her—”
“One moment,” said the prosecutor, and addressed the court. “I present
the former provost Khlab, now a people’s guard.” He motioned to a man
behind, who took the innkeeper’s place. “Tell your story.”
“Yes, your—friend. I saw her through the door as I went past and I knew
her at once for Maritzl of Stojenrosek because I had seen her before.
She is the one Count Cleudi brought to Sedad Vix to be his mistress
after the spring festival. I told this to friend Brezel, and he said if
she was as close as that to Cleudi, she had no business in Drog. So we
went in and under pain of the sword, made her give up the casket. It had
some jewels in it, but underneath the lining was the letter.”
“The letter is here,” said the prosecutor, handing up a parchment,
partly torn, but bearing the unmistakable blue star seal. “It is a
document already famous, in which Cleudi beseeches the aid of the
Tritulaccans in return for cessions of territory. Most treasonable
matter.”
“Hm—hm,” said kronzlar Escholl, looking at it as though he had never
seen it before. The Zigraner jurist craned his neck. (Her plan was
complete now;) she took one step forward and in a low urgent whisper
said; “Rodvard, help me.”
(It was an entreaty, and as though she knew of the use of the jewel, she
was projecting a promise behind the entreaty; and the plan was behind
the promise. But it was as though that “Help me” laid a compulsion on
him.) Rodvard turned round, as Escholl was handing the parchment to the
third jurist. “Your pardon, kronzlar.”
A frown. “Very well, I will see it.”
Rodvard stepped to the bench and whispered; “She is thinking of some
sort of plan, I do not know for what. I think I could find out, if I
could question her alone. I knew her in the old days.”
“I see.”
Escholl addressed the court. “This is perhaps the foulest piece of
treason in the history of Dossola; and we have proof that the message is
no forgery in the recent march of the Tritulaccan shars over the
southern border, and the delivery to them without a battle of the castle
of Falsteg. It is evident that the accused had full knowledge of the
contents of this letter, and is therefore guilty of taking part in a
vile conspiracy against the nation. But this court is required to follow
every treason to its source, not merely to establish individual guilts.
We will postpone this matter for inquiry, and pass to the next case.”