The Burning Stone (Page 264)
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At these words, Geoffrey made to speak.
“Hold, hold,” said Henry, lifting a hand. “If you knew that this child Lackling was the baby borne by Lavastine’s mistress, and that the child Alain was borne by a different woman, then why did you say nothing when Count Lavastine named this young man as his heir?”
The old cook looked troubled. “What was I to say, Your Majesty? Was I to tell the count his own business? Was I to rule for him?”
“You could have told him what you knew.”
She gestured toward Alain. “There was the hounds, Your Majesty.”
Of course everyone looked. A hound sat on either side of Alain. He had a hand buried in each one’s neck, as if holding them back—or as if they were all that was holding him up. Yet she could read nothing in his expression except perhaps a kind of resigned calm. His black hair had been recently cropped; his clothes were neat and handsomely fitted. But except for the hounds he sat unattended even by a servant while Lord Geoffrey was flanked by noble kinsmen who, with empty sword belts and arms crossed menacingly, looked ready to solve the problem with their fists. Lord Geoffrey had the kind of red face that comes of too much choler seeping from the blood into the mind. He looked as if he were about to burst into wrathful speech at any moment.
“The hounds?” asked Henry.
People chuckled and whispered around Hanna, finding amusement in this salacious tidbit. Henry frowned and rapped his scepter once, hard, on the floor. Everyone quieted.
“Pray give this woman silence in which to testify.”
She rubbed her nose again, which had gotten quite red from the heat of the hall, or of the king’s regard. “She were so poor and so poorly treated by her father who was always slapping her and calling her indecent names right out where everyone could hear that it’s no wonder she went looking for what she could get wherever she could get it. Everyone knew she made her assignations up in the old ruins. She were always going on about meeting the Lost Ones there, and how a prince of the old people was coming in to her and was going to make her a queen. Who’s to say she didn’t meet the young count up in the ruins one night? Every man in this holding looked at her with lust in his eyes, she was that pretty and had that kind of way with her that made you know that if you just gave her the right thing she’d, well, begging your pardon, she’d make it worth your while. It’s as likely that Count Alain was Count Lavastine’s son as any other man’s, Your Majesty,”
Lord Geoffrey looked ready to burst, and he burst now. “He might have been the get of any man in this holding! He might have been the lowest stable boy’s by-blow! Ai, Lord! He’s as likely to be the ill-begotten product of an incestuous union between the girl and her father!”
“Begging your pardon, my lord,” the cook retorted with astonishing asperity, “but what about the testimony of the hounds, then? Not any man but the counts of Lavas can touch them hounds. They obey Count Alain just as they obeyed Count Lavastine. That was good enough for Count Lavastine, and he was a careful man and a good lord to us. We trusted him and never saw reason to question his judgment. He only did one foolish thing in his life, when his poor daughter was killed, and he repented that the rest of his days.”
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