Lora of Two Worlds

In the study, Lora didn’t see her mother and Margaret at the door. She couldn’t understand why Carl had held her back, nor why her father had handed Coltrain over to the sheriff’s court just so:

Felix had been there, but was he not kin? Could it be he had come on purpose to take Coltrain away?

When her eye fell by chance on Steward Webb, she saw in him a gloating look, falling on her without disguise, with a thread of defiance.

Only then, belatedly, did she recall what Steward Webb had said in the garden:

It will only make the unlucky more unlucky.

This was Steward Webb’s warning shot across her bows, and he had Coltrain and Norton caught in the same stroke!

She had been too young and too hot, all set on playing the mistress to right Norton’s wrong; she had undervalued such a stab-in-the-back knave, thought him no more than a steward of the house, easy to shame in public, and the one made a fool of was me!

Lora’s breast rose a little; she held back the tears of anger. The defeat put a sullen look on her face.

The Count took in his daughter’s face. He looked again at Norton, kneeling on the floor, blank and bewildered, and recalled what his daughter had said a moment before. His tone softened:

”As the assassin hasn’t yet been taken, don’t let down your guard in the house.”

”Yes, Father. The house is now patrolled in three watches; Lora has two shifts of hidden guards; and the tower chamber has been given four new household servants,” Alvin answered.

The Count, with a mind to please his daughter, looked at Lora and said gently:

”Add Norton to the tower chamber’s servants. He’s learned some fighting skills from Coltrain, and he can teach Lora to use a hidden weapon. A hundred guards aren’t so good as one who can defend herself.”

What? She had been puzzling how to get Norton for her own, and now her father had given him to her. Lora’s temper eased a little:

The poor boy, for his foster-father’s quarrel with Steward Webb, he had been a scapegoat so long; he had likely never told his foster-father of the beatings he had taken.

To keep him in the tower chamber was best, at least no one would bully him there.

”What, you don’t want him?”

Her father’s voice drew her back. She looked at Norton’s hopeful face and forced a smile:

”Thank you, Father. I’ll learn well.” She lifted her chin and went on:

”Since he’s mine, I’ll give him a new name. Not the ’wood’ of a blockhead, the ’adore’ of one who’s beloved. From now on, whoever calls him ’blockhead’ calls me, his mistress, a blockhead.”

Steward Webb kept the smile on his face, but his eyebrow twitched; he shot Norton a vicious look:

Lucky mute! What does the young lady see in you, that she must step out to take your part?

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”Your man, call him what you like,” the Count said, smiling. He turned to Steward Webb:

”Coltrain’s case goes to the sheriff’s court; you won’t meddle in it further. Find out who planted the trug of gold thread; report to the Countess, and take her ruling on it. You may withdraw.”

The Count’s word was as much as to say Norton had been wronged. Steward Webb was no fool, he wouldn’t pit himself against his master. He answered, submissively:

”Yes, I will see to it.”

Roland followed Felix out; Brendan’s backside kept him from coming; when Steward Webb withdrew, Norton slipped out as well. In the study were left the Count and Lora and her three brothers.

Only then did Lora look carefully round her father’s study.

The study held, in neat order, a fair number of books of war. On the wall behind the writing-table hung a Map of the Marches, at a glance, the Aurelian Empire’s marcher divisions. Many of the names were strange, but the familiar shapes of the Aurun and the great southern river were like old friends met again, and Lora’s heart beat hot.

”Father, why send Coltrain away?” Carl still had his doubts.

”If we didn’t send him away, how would the man behind him show his hand? Lora’s case is no common matter. So convenient, a large sum of silver found on an old retainer of the house; whether the two are tied or not, we can’t let either pass.”

Gareth spoke, and waved a hand at Carl: ”Carl, take Lora out. We and Father have more to discuss.”

A batch of arms had been quietly added to the city. Had Lora not been set upon by an assassin, and had the dagger sent Gareth to the smiths of the whole city, the Lohenheim garrison would still have been kept in the dark, so great an ill could have gone unmarked.

Lora stepped up and caught her father’s sleeve:

”Father, you don’t truly suspect Coltrain? He and Steward Webb have a quarrel; he may have been set up.”

The Count laughed. ”My daughter knows, too, that one must look beneath the surface, and tell right from wrong. I believe him, but this silver, plainly not his, he must account for; until he does, I won’t let him off.”

”My lord, I know the source of that silver.” The Countess came in from the door; Alvin went over to seat his mother. In the startled looks of all, the Countess went on:

”Fourteen years ago, the boy Coltrain brought back, he wasn’t a refugee child picked up by the roadside. He was taken from a carriage by the road. The carriage, so they judged... had come out of the rebel lord Vautrin’s house. The two silver ingots were taken from a dead woman in the carriage.”

Could Norton be a rebel’s son? That was a heavy matter.

”Coltrain didn’t dare tell the Count. When he came back to the house he told me his guess. I saw Norton was much the same age as Carl, and couldn’t bear it; I had him keep the matter hid. The son will not pay for the father’s sin.”

When the Countess had done, the Count had some doubts: ”The carriage too was a guess of his. And Vautrin had three sons, all beheaded at Caerlorn, there was no word of a fourth...”

”Vautrin held Caerlorn Castle some years; a child born in that time isn’t impossible.”

In that year Alvin was but nine, and had ridden with the army to besiege Vautrin; only, by the time he saw Norton, Coltrain had the boy tucked in his arms. Now, hearing his mother, he thought it over, and there was much to be said for it.

”This must not pass out of the room. Roland and Brendan aren’t here, keep it from them as well. Though it’s fourteen years gone, if a man with a mind to it learns of it, to harbor the heir of a traitor is a Bill of Attainder on the whole house. Lora, Norton can’t be yours; he must be sent away.”

”He’s deaf and mute; he can’t hear a thing; when he came to the house he wasn’t old enough to remember. Father, where will you send him?”

Lady Margaret, seeing her daughter’s distress, took her part: ”To send him out is only to send him to a manor, and that’s less safe than keeping him under our eye.”

The Count was silent a moment, then looked at Lora: ”This touches all our lives. Not one word of it to Norton.”

”Lora understands. By the bye, Mother, were there any marks on the two ingots?”

Lora was, in spite of herself, a little excited, truly, an old mummers’-play trick: the child the Su house had taken in and raised for years was... no, should it not have been a prince? How came it to be a rebel’s son?

”I looked. Apart from a few tooth-marks, not even a merchant’s stamp, which is why I let Coltrain keep them for him. I don’t know how Steward Webb came to find them this time.”

Lora didn’t think so.

She had quarreled with Steward Webb in the forenoon; Steward Webb had come in the afternoon with proof, to denounce Coltrain to her father.

She laughed coldly to herself:

He’s his schemes; I have my ladder.

We’ll see, and pray I don’t step on the fox’s brush!