Dave Duncan - When the Saints

Two well-dressed men of middle years came hurrying in. The witnesses were all present and business could proceed.

“We have brought the contract for your royal consent,” the cardinal announced.

Brother Daniel was already at the king’s right hand, with writing equipment laid out on a bedside table. He uncapped his ink bottle, dipped a quill, and reached across to offer it to the king, whose fingers closed around it.

The other friar’s nimbus brightened even more. The king’s hand rose. His eyelids might have lifted an eyelash width-it was hard to tell. The friar held out the vellum sheet, resting on a writing board, and positioned it so the pen hung over the appropriate space. The king signed. The princess and the nuns crossed them crossedselves. So did Pavel and Augustin, but Lubos and the prince just stared in disbelief.

Displaying no sign that anything untoward had happened, Brother Daniel sprinkled sand on the ink and repeated the process with a second vellum. Then came the rigmarole of wax and candle and attaching the king’s seal. The witnesses signed and attached their smaller seals. Peering over shoulders, Wulf could see that the king’s signature was firm, Konradus Rex. Indeed, it looked steadier than the prince’s Konradus Princeps. His Highness was definitely shaken. He must be wondering how long Jorgary would be ruled by a corpse.

Nobody asked Wulf to be a witness, which was just as well, because he did not possess as much as a signet ring. He was entitled to wear one now, though. An emblem of a wolf and a sword had been his childhood dream. Now something Satanic might be more appropriate: a wolf howling at a crescent moon, perhaps. A wolf, definitely. He would ask Madlenka.

Their business completed, the visitors bowed their respects and took their leave. The prince stomped out the door in obvious fury. He had come to expose the cardinal’s trickery and succeeded only in putting his own seal of approval on it, quite literally. His guards and sycophants hurried after him.

“And what happens now, Your Eminence?” the princess asked eagerly.

The cardinal beamed down at her like a doting grandfather-a doting but triumphant grandfather. “Now we send the agreement off to Rouen by the fastest courier service in Europe. You do understand that the terms are not binding until both parties have signed? I anticipate no last-minute difficulties, but we must not count our dragons until they are hatched, as I once heard your dear mother say. To be honest, I do not foresee that your wedding can be celebrated anytime in the next two years. Not in Jorgary.”

She nodded sadly. No one must mention official mourning, but everyone knew it was looming like a thundercloud.

“If your brother permits, Your Highness,” the old man continued, benevolent as a bishop addressing a class of postulant nuns, “and if a winter journey would not distress you, you might think on being married in Rouen, or perhaps Paris? Paris in the spring is said to be very fair.”

Wulf could only admire the devious gyrations of the old rascal’s mind. Now that he had granted the second in line to the throne a fiance who might someday be seen as a potential king, she must be evicted from her homeland as fast as possible, to somewhere beyond the reach of perfidy. If Krystof II did prove unmanageable, then the Assembly of Nobles must see no option except to leave the government in the hands of the true and trusty Cardinal Zdenek.

Soon everyone had gone except for the Scarlet Spider, Wulf, and the two friars. Plus the undead king.

Wulf’s hands itched to clasp those precious sheets of vellum, so vital to his happiness and Madlenka’s. “I may now play the fastest courier in Europe, Your Eminence?”

“Shortly,” the cardinal said smugly. The ancient eyes missed nothing, not even Wulf’s impatience. “We must take note of the witnesses and so on, and I need to make arrangements to spare Brother Daniel, so he may accompany you. That was our agreement.”

“It was,” Wulf agreed.

“He will find you when we are ready.” He offered his ring in the sign of dismissal.

Wulf emerged from limbo in a deserted corner of the palace stables. He demanded his horse, and watched as Morningstar was saddled up. With two or three hours before his sunset deadline, he must now turn his attention to Guillaume Cardinal d’Estouteville. It was make or break time. It felt very much like that breathless moment when the lances were couched, when his horse was pounding along the lists toward the other horse approaching, when the crowd was roaring, and a fearful, jarring impact was about to settle who stayed in the saddle, and who flew over his horse’s rump to hit the ground inside sixty pounds of steel. And in this case the stakes could not be higher: the hand of the lady, or the hatch to hell.

As soon as Morningstar was ready, he vaulted into the saddle and rode off through the sleepy Sunday town to the Bacchus. There he tied Morningstar to the hitching rail and ducked through a low doorway into the dim, tiny lobby. Thus his great-great-grandfather must have often come, perhaps even on peaceful Sunday afternoons like this one. The owner he found behind the counter would have been the two-or-three-greats-grandfather of the current one, Master Oldrich, who was standing there now. He was a plump, jovial man, with the oddly babyish appearance that came from a total lack of hair, even eyelashes. He wore an elaborate, old-fashioned red turban that concealed his baldness, and he had painted eyebrows, but the result was still bizarre.

He beamed. “Squire Wulfgang! God bless! Very happy to see you back so…” He hesitated, calculating. Wulf and Otto had visited only three days ago, and they had certainly not had time to ride home and return. “Is anything wrong?”

“Nothing at all. Life is wine and music and the joy of youth. You have a room for me and my dear wife, who will be joining me shortly?”

After a flurry of blessings and congratulations, Oldrich enthused that the Horse Room was available, the best room in the house, top floor, very quiet, and for newlyweds he would cut a special rate. It was Magnus family lore that the Bacchus’s rates were always special and the best room varied every time; but none of the rooms were really bad, which was what mattered.

“That will do splendidly. Has anyone been asking for me?”

“No, squire.”

Wulf had told the prince he was staying here. Evidently Konrad was not yet suspicious enough to think of confirming that.

“If anyone does, then I have been here since Wednesday.”

Nodding vigorously, Oldrich reached under the counter for his slate. “I distinctly remember writing that.”

“When we leave,” Wulf said, “there will be no need to change what you remember writing.” He was being very generous, considering that his pouch did not contain one copper mite. “I did not sleep here last night, though. I was off hunting.”

“I trust your chase was well rewarded?”

“An eight-point stag. His Highness was well pleased.” Wulf hesitated. Esquires were notorious braggarts. Years of denying his Voices had made him unnaturally reticent, but he should stay in character. He must behave like a swordsman, not a sorcerer. “Yesterday His Highness knighted me and appointed me his master of horse.”

Oldrich of course responded with a blizzard of congratulations mixed with compliments on the House of Magnus, but Wulf had noticed the momentary twitch of disapproval from the lashless eyelids. Konrad had done such a splendid job of ruining his own reputation that now Wulf would be tarred with the same brush.

With a final “Please have the lads see to Morningstar,” he headed for the stairs. He trotted up two steep flights and explored a gloomy, squeaky-floored corridor, passing images of a bell, a fish, and a snail, until he found a door with a horse on it. The room was modest in size and cramped by the presence of a single overlarge bed. Oh, Madlenka! But it should be quiet on this side.