Kushiel's Dart - Jacqueline Carey [50]
"You've no wish to see your mother?"
He shuddered. "Delaunay was half a step ahead of the Skaldi. We were four hundred yards out of town when we heard the screaming start. He carried me on his pommel and covered my ears. There was nothing he could do. We could see the smoke rise up behind us all the way down the mountains. I wept for my nurse, but I never knew my mother. And I will never go back there."
I pitied him; and envied him a little, in truth, for my own story was not half so romantic. Escaping down a mountain! It was certainly more exciting than being sold into indenture. "You should ask him again. You have a right to know."
"He has a right not to say." Alcuin got up to put away the book he had been reading, then turned and cocked his head at me. "I don't remember very much of my childhood," he said softly, "but I remember how my nurse would speak to me in Skaldic. She used to tell me that a mighty Prince descended from angels had promised that I would always be taken care of. Delaunay is keeping Rolande de la Courcel's promise."
We talked late into the evening-Delaunay was away at a party that night-and I learned that Alcuin's marque was not a matter of contract, as was mine. Delaunay had moved at whim for years in and out of the royal court and the demimonde, but it was Alcuin who chose to follow, pledging himself to the service of Naamah to discharge a debt that could never be paid. I thought of Guy's story, and the invisible ties that bound us all to Anafiel Delaunay. I thought of Alcuin's story, and wondered what invisible ties bound Delaunay to the long-slain Prince Rolande.
But it was Hyacinthe who came up with the theory.
"So what do we know about Prince Rolande's first betrothed?" he asked rhetorically, sitting in the Cockerel with his boots propped on the table and waving a drumstick. I had helped him arrange a liaison between a married noblewoman and a handsome player, and he had splurged on spitted capon and tankards of ale for the both of us. "Other than the fact that she broke her neck in a hunting accident. We know that Anafiel Delaunay was alleged to have written the lyrics to a song which suggested Isabel L'Envers was to blame. Although he never confessed to it, we know that his poetry was thereafter proscribed, which suggests that someone in the royal court believed it was true, with evidence sufficient to convince the King. And we know that Delaunay was not banished, which suggests that someone else protected him, and had the grounds to do so. Some years later, he makes a point of honoring the promise of Prince Rolande, which suggests there was a debt between them. Where does it begin? With the Prince's betrothed. So who was she?"
Sometimes I despaired of the fact that Hyacinthe was better at what I was trained to do than I myself.
"Edmee, Edmee de Rocaille, daughter of the Comte de Rocaille, who is lord of one of the largest holdings in Siovale. There is a small university there, where the Kindred of Shemhazai study the sciences." I shrugged and took a sip of ale. "He donated his library, which is famous."
Hyacinthe tore at the drumstick with his white teeth, smearing grease on his chin. "Did he have sons?"
"I don't know." I stared at him. "You think Delaunay is her brother?'
"Why not?" He gnawed his capon to the bone and quaffed ale. "If he wrote the lyric-and if he would not confess, I have never heard he denied it-he had a powerful interest in discrediting her murderess. And if he wasn't her brother, maybe he was something else."
"Like what?" I eyed him suspiciously over the rim of my tankard. He set down his own mug, lowered his feet and leaned forward, a conspiratorial gleam in his gaze.
"Her lover." Seeing me form an incredulous response, he raised a finger. "No, wait, Phedre. Maybe he loved her, and lost her to the heir to the throne, but loved her nonetheless.