Maze of Moonlight by Gael Baudino (read with me TXT) 📕

“Reasons?”

“Ah . . . reasons.”

Isabelle looked at him, inquiring, and he was afraid that he was going to have to talk about the whole messy incident when the door opened and his sister Catherine strode in, tall, blond, and strong. She was clad in simple garments of green and gray: a tunic, and breeches that bloused just above soft, knee-high boots. “Look at this,” she said. “I've been looking for these for years, and I finally found them. They weren't with Mother's things at all: they were up in a chest in the third storeroom. They fit, too!” Hands out from her sides, she modeled the garments. “Well, what do you think?”

Paul had sat down hard when she had entered, and now he caught his breath. “Dear Lady, Catherine, you gave me a turn. I thought one of the Elves had come.”

Catherine beamed at the compliment, but Isabelle was shaking her head fondly. “Perhaps you'll be moving to the forest full-time now, sweet?”

Catherine smiled at her. “Only when you and Paul move with me, dear sister.”

Smiling affectionately, Isabelle plunged her needle into the embroidery once again.

But Catherine's sudden appearance had started Paul thinking. Roger had changed. And now Christopher, after remaining cloistered for months, had suddenly offered his hand in friendship to all of Adria. Transformation, reconciliation. But why should the few remaining Elves turn their attention toward a family that had in the past been so cruel to them? Roger's fate had been, perhaps, appropriate. But Christopher . . .

Christopher had taken care of Martin after the incident with the papal legate, but who was Martin Osmore to the Elves? No, there was something else.

Then he recalled Lake's daughter, Vanessa. And Vanessa . . .

Catherine was reading the letter now, plodding through it laboriously, mannishly. She had always preferred horses, weapons, and forestry to learning and huswifery, and at thirty, she was still a spinster. Hugo of Belroi had tried to tame her, but faced with his demand that she obey him, she had thrown him out of his own bedroom and gotten a good night's sleep before returning home. With her dowry. No one in the city had even considered trying to stop her.

“Dear Lady,” she said when she finished. “What's gotten into Christopher?”

“I wonder . . .” said Paul.

Chapter Fourteen

Christopher was fighting a battle. To be sure, it had nothing to do with swords and armor, but it was a battle nonetheless, for he was fighting complacency, habit, and the deep rift of schismatic alignment. The first skirmish, however, was discouraging. Of the fifty odd barons, great and small, to whom he wrote,k only Paul delMari expressed a willingness to cooperate. The others, for the most part, replied evasively, expressing a vague interest that had nothing to do with actual commitment. The smaller barons, as Christopher expected, were looking to Hypprux and Maris, the centers of economic and military power in Adria, for guidance.

But Yvonnet's answer came almost by return messenger, and it was abrupt and unequivocal: he had simply scrawled NO! at the bottom of Christopher's letter and sent it back. And though Ruprecht a'Lowins of Maris sent a long, official document—in Latin—full of erudite turns of phrase and frequent untranslated quotations from the Greek philosophers, it proved, when Jerome and Natil had plowed through its intricacies and ornaments, to say the same thing. Ruprecht simply did not take the threat seriously. He, after all, occupied the multiple-walled fortress that had been built up four hundred years ago by Alfonse-Dylan IV, the ill-fated king of Adria who had been concerned about the very kind of baronial uprisings that had eventually deposed him and ended Adria's days as a kingdom. Ruprecht, taking a lesson from the king's downfall, was not about to be lured out of his stronghold for frivolous reasons.

“And so . . .” Natil was reading the letter out loud once more. She really did know Greek and Latin extremely well, and translated on the fly. Even Jerome, who considered woman to be very much the weaker vessel, was impressed enough by her learning that he had not objected to her inclusion in Christopher's councils. “. . . as the great Aristotle says—”

“Kill them all,” Christopher finished sourly. “Let God sort them out.”

“No, my lord,” said Jerome, “that was Robert of Geneva.”

“Right now it's Ruprecht of Maris.” Christopher plopped his feet on Jerome's desk as the Franciscan scurried to move his maps and papers out of the way. “Well, he obviously doesn't give a damn, and neither does Yvonnet.”

Natil looked up from the document. “Do you wish me to continue, my lord?” she said politely.

“No, Natil. Thank you very much. If I hear one more elegant turn of phrase from Ruprecht's secretary, I'm sure I'll throw up.” Though the reactions of Yvonnet and Ruprecht were absurd, they were, he admitted, neither unexpected nor without precedent. The same thing had happened in France. The nobles of that country had simply not been able to believe that bands of unemployed soldiers could destroy their lands and their prosperity and then move on. Perhaps someone else's lands and prosperity, but surely not theirs.

But it had happened, and in some cases, the nobles themselves had hired the free companies to carry out vendettas against other nobles.

“Well,” said Christopher, “they thought I was mad before, and so I suppose they think I'm raving now.” Paul delMari's letter lay nearby. Christopher grabbed it and glanced over it for relief. Good old Baron Paul! No dissembling, no fancy obfuscation. Just wholehearted acceptance. And Paul was apparently even willing to put aside the unfortunate matter of his grandfather's murder.

“Paul has adequate forces,” said Jerome efficiently when he saw Christopher pick up the letter. “I took the trouble to tabulate his last reported strength. It's twenty-five years out of date, but it gives us some idea.”

“We don't have a spy in Shrinerock?”

“Ah . . . no,” said Jerome, holding up the tabulation. “Somehow, we've never managed to keep one