Alain squirmed in the chair and took a sip of wine to cover his discomfiture. The wine was fine and smooth; he had never tasted anything as good before. Wine such as this did not come to the lips of common folk, not even the freeborn.
“He says—” He says. Alain thought, briefly, about lying. But Henry and Aunt Bel had not taught him to lie. They had treated him as kin, and it would dishonor them to twist their words now, even if the truth disgraced him before Count Lavastine. “My mother was a servant woman at your holding, my lord. My father Henri … had an affection for her. She was known to—” He bit at his lip. Ai, Lady, he could not simply call his mother a whore. “—to have consorted with men. She died three days after giving birth to me. The deacon gave me into Henri’s care in return for his promise to offer me to the church when I turned sixteen.”
“You are older than sixteen, are you not?”
“Seventeen now, my lord. I would have entered the church last year, but the monastery at Dragon’s Tail—”
“—was burned. Yes. That is the whole of the story?” “Yes, my lord.”
Lavastine sat in the gloom and toyed with his cup, turning it around and around until Alain feared he would spill it. From outside, Alain heard Lavastine’s captain speaking, something about Henry and Autun and the king’s mercy, but even with his sharpened hearing, he could not string the phrases together into intelligible sentences. Sorrow yawned a dog’s yawn, full of teeth, and threw himself against Alain’s legs, leaning there until Alain was practically tipped over. He adjusted the chair, and this movement stirred the count to a decision.
“Attend, child,” he said in his brisk, impatient way. “I must now tell you a tale and you must listen carefully, for this story I have never before confessed the whole of, and I will not speak it aloud again while I live.”
Alain nodded and then, realizing the light was dim, managed to whisper, “Yes.” The hounds snuffled and whined and grunted, eight fine black hounds, beautiful creatures, if vicious.
“I married once,” said Lavastine softly. “But as all know, my wife and daughter were killed by my hounds.” “But how could that be?” asked Alain, curiosity overcoming good sense. “Or the child, at least—”
“Listen!” snapped Lavastine. “Do not interrupt.” Fear, thwarted of a place at Alain’s side, had gone to the entrance and nosed aside the canvas flap. By this new stream of light, Alain saw Lavastine smile grimly. “How can that be? Even I don’t know the true story of how my grandfather got the hounds, whether he received them in exchange for some kind of pact—with whom, I don’t know—or whether they came to him as part of his birthright. But my father—the only surviving child— inherited them in his turn, and I—also the only child who survived to adulthood—in mine. So my father arranged a marriage for me at the appropriate time so I could beget children—more than one, it was hoped—to carry on the line.”
He drained the cup of wine suddenly and set the empty cup down on the carpet. “I was young, then, and I had taken a lover, a pretty girl from among the servingwomen. We often met up among the ruins, because I wanted to keep our meetings secret. But in time, as happens, she became pregnant and begged me to acknowledge the child so that she would not be branded as a common whore. But my bride was proud and covetous, and when she came to Lavas she told me she wanted no bastard child running about the hall. So I put aside the other woman and denied any knowledge of the child, and confessed my sin to the deacon, may her memory be blessed. The deacon promised to take care of the child and assured me I need trouble myself no longer. She was not even a freeborn girl.” He picked up the winecup, tested it as if he had forgotten he had drunk it all, and set it down again with some annoyance. “I was not, perhaps, without fault in this matter.”
Alain gulped air. He had forgotten to breathe. “Did she die? Giving birth, I mean.”
Lavastine jumped up and strode to the entrance. He slapped Fear lightly on the flank and the hound retreated; the flap fell shut. “You will remain silent while I speak, Alain.”
Alain nodded but Lavastine’s back was to him.
“No more wine,” muttered Lavastine. “Yes, she died in childbed.” He turned and spoke crisply and rapidly, as if to hurry the story to its ghastly conclusion. “My bride was young, strong-willed, impatient, and argumentative. Since I was of the same disposition, we did not suit. She rarely allowed me into her bed. I refrained from taking a concubine, but I soon suspected that she had taken a lover. I could prove nothing because her servingwomen were loyal and helped her hide this fact. When our first child was born, I did not trust her. I did not believe the infant was my child, and yet—” He made a sharp gesture and strode back to the chair, but did not sit. “Yet it might have been. She raised the child to distrust me, though I tried to befriend it. The child was often a sweet girl, or so I could see from a distance. And with a daughter to assure the succession, my wife gave up the pretense. She forbade me her bed completely and began to flaunt a lover openly, a common man. She might as well have slapped me publicly in the face. But she said, ‘what you had, a commoner in your bed, I may have as well.’ She became pregnant again and I knew that this child was not—could not have been—mine. I demanded she put our daughter to the test, to face the hounds.”