Chapter 13: The Council Chamber

The cellar smelled of lamp oil and sickness.

The groom lay on his side on the stone floor with his knees drawn up.

One hand was still stretched toward the door.

"Who had the key?" said Alaric.

"I did, Your Grace," said the captain. "I gave it to nobody."

"Then somebody took it from you."

"Or copied it," I said.

They both looked at me.

I did not say the rest, that a man who could copy a seal could copy a key.

There was a tin cup by the groom's head, and the duke would not let me near it.

"We have no time," he said. "The king sits at noon. Captain, bury him decently and tell the household he took ill."

"And the mould?"

"Comes with us," said Alaric. "In my coat."

We rode for the capital in the grey morning, with Maud and Wynne behind us in her coach.

I did not speak for three hours.

Neither did he.

But every time the road turned, he looked back to see that I was still beside him.

The council chamber was a long room with a table down the middle.

The king sat at the head of it in a plain chair.

He was a heavy, tired man of sixty, and he looked at my husband with no warmth at all.

The chancellor sat on his right.

Viscount Rook stood on the left, in black, with Edmund a pace behind him.

Edmund saw me come in and smiled.

I sat on the bench they gave the wives, with my hands clenched in my lap.

Maud lowered herself beside me and planted her cane.

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