Dave Duncan - Speak to the Devil

She could not defy the king, the cardinal, the bishop, the count, and her mother all at once. Oh, Wulf, Wulf! I tried!

“As it pleases my lord,” she whispered. “But your wound, my lord? Should you not be resting?”

Anton beamed. “I assure you I have never felt better. I have completely recovered my strength. Now, the bishop suggested suitable words. Who shall we call in as witnesses, Lady Edita?”

“Now?” Madlenka said. “You mean to do this awful thing right away?”

That was exactly what he meant.

There followed a brief ceremony of joining hands and swearing fidelity, a quiet supper for two, and, right after that, Anton solved her virginity problem.

Wulf’s first problem was clothes. He was still wearing remnants of Petr Bukovany’s wardrobe, which were annoyingly long in the legs and sleeves and flatteringly tight across the chest and shoulders. He had assumed that some of the castoffs he had left behind at Dobkov a month ago would still be around, but they had all gone to the servants or been reassembled as something else. Branka skillfully measured him in all directions and organized a make-do sewing session among the female staff who normally made the family’s clothes. The kitchen was happy to provide the second half of a meal he had started some hundreds of miles away, and about fifty adults and children had to mob him and make him welcome.

They all wanted to know where Anton was, what had happened to Wulf’s face, why he had come back, if he was going to stay long. The adult servants were too respectful to ask outright, and quickly hushed the children who did. Father Czcibor, the cadaverous but kindly castle chaplain, was content to wait and hear it in private. Truth be told, it felt very good to be home and to be somebody again after being nobody in Mauvnik.

But after an hour or so, when Otto had managed to dispose of the steward and his helpers, there came the tricky moment. Wulf had to explain that he would very much prefer to tell his story to Otto alone. Branka raised her painted eyebrows very high at that. Father Czcibor lowered his feathery ones, and a winter chill descended, but Otto backed him up.

So shutters were closed, candles lit, and the two brothers settled down in the familiar old solar with a crackling fire and two flagons of Dobkov’s best vintage. Their only companion, Whitetail, curled up at his master’s feet and went to sleep as Wulf began to talk. In the long years of Father’s last illness, Otto had naturally taken over as head of the family. Otto was completely loyal. He would support Wulf even against the Church’s wrath, if he had to.

It was very late and the candles were low when Wulf finished, having revealed everything except his broken heart, which was the crux of the problem. That tragedy was too painful and too hopeless to discuss. He feared that even Otto, who had accepted his claims of miracles without a blink, would not believe that a man could find the love of his life at first glance. Both Dante and Petrarch had done so, but they weren’t around to help with any heartrending verses. And Wulf was no poet.

“That’s all?”

Wulf laughed ruefully and refilled his cup. “Isn’t it enough?”

“No. Who are these Voices? Angels or devils? Who are you that they Speak to you? And what else can we do to help Anton? More wine?”

The answers took the best part of an hour. At the end of it, Otto took up the wine flagon again, but then just sat back, holding it and staring into the fire, thinking. One of the candles flickered and went out. The shadows moved in. Suddenly he said, “Throw another log on,” and filled Wulf’s cup. “So, in effect, you can do anything you want?”

“No!” Wulf said uneasily. “I have to ask. I have to ask aloud. Seems that in anything involving other people, I have to be close to them. I had to be close to Anton before they would heal his wound.” He had not mentioned the curious glimpse he had been given of Otto negotiating in his counting room.

“Mm,” Otto said. “Can you force people to obey you? Or change their minds for them?”

Wulf pulled a face. “I don’t know. Don’t want to know.”

“Remember Great-aunt Kristina, the abbess?”

“No.”

“Of course. I was very young the last time she came visiting. You wouldn’t even have been born. In his last months, Father told me many stories he wanted recorded in the family chronicle, things that it would have been dangerous to write earlier. Kristina was a Speaker. She entered a convent voluntarily and, so far as Father knew, the Church never learned of her powers. She certainly kept them quiet. But she strongly believed that the Voices came from Heaven.”

He sipped wine for a moment, pondering. “Some years ago, in France, there was a girl known as La Pucelle. Ever heard of her?”

“Vaguely.”

“ La Pucelle just means ‘the Maid.’ Her name was Joan, usually known as Joan of Arc. She was an illiterate shepherd girl who heard Voices. War had turned France into a desert. You can’t imagine how bad the situation was. Branka’s grandsire was there, fighting for the Burgundians, and saw it all. People were starving, living under hedges, resorting to cannibalism. It wasn’t just the English, although no one could resist their bowmen. The duke of Burgundy was making war too, because he wanted the throne, and the rightful heir, called the Dauphin, couldn’t get himself crowned because the duke held Rheims, where coronations were always held. Every time there was a battle, the French lost. The countryside had been ravaged so often and so many cities sacked that the Dauphin didn’t even have the tax income to pay an army. By 1428 or so, he was at the end of his rope. He controlled no more than fragments of the country, with enemies closing in all around. The English were besieging the city of Orleans, and if that fell he would have almost nothing left.

“Enter this ignorant, uneducated girl, aged about seventeen. She gets herself to where the Dauphin is and says her Voices have sent her to take command of the French army. He thinks that sounds like a good idea and appoints her. You believe that?”

Wulf laughed. “No. I don’t believe she would be allowed within two bowshots of a crown prince in the middle of a war.”

Otto smiled at the crackling logs. “Yet it happened. He received her, listened, and believed. He had her examined by a panel of clerics, but in the end he gave her the army. It sounds to me as if that young lady had all the powers you have and was unscrupulous enough, or desperate enough, to use them to change a few men’s minds. She turned out to be one of the greatest generals since Caesar. She remade the army-no camp followers, no swearing or cursing, lots of hymn-singing. The army was transformed, inspired. It raised the siege of Orleans. Every time it met the English now, it won. But then Joan was captured by the Burgundians, who sold her to the English. The English put her on trial and convicted her of heresy.”

That made no sense at all. “How?” Wulf said. “Why didn’t her Voices rescue her from jail?”

“I don’t know. That’s something you must try to find out. Why didn’t they rescue her when the English tied her to a stake? The English burned her, then burned her remains twice more and threw the ashes in the river.”

“The first time would be the worst,” Wulf grumbled, reaching for the wine flagon.

“But I heard recently that the Holy Father reopened the case and decided that her conviction had been an error. That didn’t do her much good in this world, I grant you, but the Church did admit that it had made a mistake. Now listen! According to Father, Great-aunt Kristina used to hint that the Church doesn’t want saints, not live ones. Dead ones can’t argue, and people collect bits of them as holy souvenirs, but living saints who go around performing miracles could be embarrassing or even dangerous. Suppose they disagree with official doctrine and preach heresy? What if they call the pope names and denounce the Church as corrupt? Which it is, of course. Saints can perform miracles and the pope can’t, so which one would you believe?”