The Black Raven - Katharine Kerr [79]
“That was only herbs and some sort of elixir she brewed up.”
“Ah. Truly? And here I believed it about the spells! Some of the women said she had lots of lovers, you see, and that’s why she’d use magic to keep her looks.”
Lilli’s breath caught in her chest. Had anyone guessed that Merodda’s brother had sired her daughter?
“Lovers?” Lilli said. “Why would they think that?”
“Well, I don’t remember exactly.” Abrwnna thought for a moment. “It all seems so paltry now, the gossip I mean.”
Lilli found it hard to breathe. Old gossip, swept away by the summer’s tide of blood and the horrors of siege—of course the other women would scorn such chatter now. But to her, it might mean the difference between having a place at court or losing one as a landless bastard.
“I do wonder,” Lilli said. “There must have been a lot of talk that I was never allowed to hear.”
“Well, it was all nasty stuff. There were a few tales that would have branded her a fiend if they were true. Like that child, the one she birthed after your father was slain, and everyone told me it wasn’t really his anyway.”
“What? What child? I never knew about that.”
“Well, it died a little while after it was born. Merodda left court and shut herself up in Dun Cantrae to birth it, and all the old gossips said she ran away because she was so shamed, but I wasn’t at court then, so I wouldn’t know the truth of that. When she came back in the spring she told everyone the child had died of fever. But ah Goddess, knowing what I know now, maybe the gossip was all true, and it wasn’t Lord Garedd’s child, and she smothered it or suchlike.”
“Indeed?” Lilli found it harder and harder to talk. “And whose was the child, then? Did they say?”
“A demon’s.” Abrwnna leaned forward in her chair to look at Lilli wide—eyed. “They said she’d been got with child by a demon she’d conjured up, and that’s why the baby was so sickly. But that couldn’t be true, could it?”
“I doubt it very much.” Lilli nearly laughed from sheer relief. “I truly do. Don’t the priests always say that demons don’t have real bodies? How could they sire anything without them?”
“You’re right, aren’t you? But that didn’t stop the gossip. All the old cats were still talking about the scandal when my father brought me to court to marry Olaen.”
No doubt it was sickly, Lilli thought. It was another child of incest, wasn’t it?
“And then the gossips said that one of Merodda’s retainers was a demon, too, so they thought he was the father.” Abrwnna paused, listening. “I hear voices in the hall. It’s probably Sanno.”
The chamber door opened: Anasyn indeed, followed by his page. The tieryn was by no means a handsome man, though not ugly, either, with his long face and long thin nose, but Abrwnna smiled at him as if he were a vision of Bel himself.
“There you are, beloved,” Abrwnna said.
“My apologies for being late,” Anasyn said. “I met old Gauryc in the great hall, and he wouldn’t let me go till he’d had his say.”
“About what?” Lilli put in.
“The gwerbretrhyn of Cerrmor. When he’s seated as king, the prince will have to give it up. Gauryc wants it. Badly.” Anasyn smiled briefly. “And to get it, he’ll need every ally on the Council of Electors that he can scrounge up. He’s not the only one with his eye on the rhan.”
“No doubt.” Lilli glanced at Abrwnna. “I’ve been there, and ye gods! It’s the richest place I’ve ever seen.”
“You simply must tell me all about it.” Abrwnna turned to the page. “Very well, you may serve your lord, and then Lilli and I will serve ourselves, and then you may take what you wish.”
For the rest of that evening their talk centered on the politics of the new court that Maryn was forming. Every now and then, though, Abrwnna would fall silent for a long while, and Lilli would notice her staring at the empty air as if she were seeing horrors drawn upon it.
Over the next two days the prince held councils of war. In the oldest broch stood a big round room that had been the great hall when Nevyn was young. Maryn took it over