As Mathias had expected, Sir Bogdan was ready to renew his assault following supper, but it was not he who stepped forth personally to address the subject. The knight had obviously made use of the intervening hours to consult Father Karel, the castle chaplain and Mathias's confessor. It was the white-bearded priest who took up the charge.
"Your duty in thus is clear, my lord," he sermonized boldly, "both as a subject of the King and as a true son of the Church. It is not merely the vows of political fealty that call to you but service to God."
"And did I not make vows before God when I entered into the sacrament of marriage?" Mathias asked.
"Do you dare mock the Lord?" Karel thundered.
No; I mock you, Mathias thought, turning his back and walking to the sideboard so Karel could not see his smile. To offer an excuse, he poured himself a cup of wine, watching the liquid flow, the color of old blood, into the goblet.
Karel was fiercely proud of the fact that he came from peasant stock, one reason Mathias had chosen to receive the priest in his private study. The luxuriant tapestries, the ornaments of gold, and perhaps above all the bookshelves piled with manuscripts, bound volumes, maps, and scroll-cases were all trappings of wealth and power that made the older man uncomfortable.
"My wife is gravely ill," Mathias insisted.
"Yet through the grace of God she is recovering."
Mathias's arched brows rose even higher at the remark.
"What do you mean by that?"
"Surely, you cannot fail to see the parallel, Lord Cronqvist? We are all in God's hands. He has shown you the glory of His mercy out of His love for His children and not in some merchant's bargain as are the devil's ways. Now, would you abandon your sword duty to Him?"
"Father Karel--" Mathias began, but there was no way to easily rein in the old man once he had started in on a harangue.
"The Albigensian heresy is a blot upon our Christian faith! Those who follow its tainted lures are abandoning their souls to the Unholy! It is a plague-spot on our world that must be struck out. Sir Bogdan informs me that one of your peers has given his soul to the heretics in the hope of gaining political power, and in turn will permit them to spread and thrive in his lands!"
"Those are," Mathias granted with a nod, "the known facts."
"Then your duty is clear! You must ride forth on the morrow to join your company. These heretics and rebels must not be allowed to spread, but needs be brought to heel now for the glory of God and King alike!"
His words had scant effect upon Mathias in and of themselves; there was little in them to appeal to the nobleman's reason or emotion. That had never been Father Karel's strength in dialogue with Mathias, though. It was not brilliant rhetoric or the powers of logic that lent the priest a power of persuasion, but his faith. What was undeniable was his belief in what he said, an absolute, unshakable purity of purpose. His faith was so strong that it impressed the listener with the suggestion that his beliefs had to be worthy because they inspired such wholehearted devotion. Circular logic, Mathias told himself, but the effect was still undeniable.
"He's right, my lord," Bogdan added his voice to the priest's. "If you do not ride forth with us, you betray all you hold dear."
All but the dearest of all.
Angered by the thought, he spun to face the knight.
"Sir Bogdan, I am only asking for one week's delay!"
"If I were the King, I might grant it. After all, the future of your house is a matter of import for him. I am not in that position, though, and you know what His Majesty would say if you went against his instructions."
That was a point to be considered. Like many monarchs, the King was jealous of his authority. He could be magnanimous if his favor was properly requested, but could not bear to be crossed. Nor could the company wait a week for him on its own accord. Leon, Mathias believed, would probably do so out of friendship, offering some excuse about military necessity if it was in his own hands, but there were many officers in the company, men who would be champing at the bit to do God's work and who would brook no delay.
They were putting him in an impossible position.
"Lord Cronqvist, you cannot refuse God's will," Karel urged.
"No," he sighed bitterly, "I cannot. I will join you in returning to the company on the morrow, Sir Bogdan."
His capitulation, however, did not mean that he would just abandon Elisabetha to fate's mercies. When the two men left after accepting his assurances, Mathias did not rejoin his wife. Instead, he went to the castle's west tower, and once alone he turned a certain iron torch-sconce first one-quarter turn counterclockwise, then a full turn and a quarter clockwise. A section of the stone-flagged floor sank into the darkness with a dull grinding noise. Mathias descended, and operated another switch to close the door.
Generations ago, the hidden room had been merely part of the castle dungeons. Mathias's great-grandfather, though, had had the connecting passage bricked up and the staircase apparently so but instead creating a door. The result was to create a bolthole for private research in areas not favored by society. Elisabetha had hinted at it in the garden, for she of course knew the general truth, but even she was unaware of the specifics.
Alchemy was still a fledgling art, Mathias reflected as he descended the stairs. Much had been lost since the pagan years, for the more fanatical of the Church's adherents saw such natural science, to say nothing of the magical aspects, as nothing more than witchcraft. The burning of the great library at Alexandria had been Christianity's greatest blow against such ancient knowledge; the present alchemists had been forced to draw what arts they could from pagan cult survivals, superstition, and knowledge gleaned through trade with Saracen lands and beyond. Painstaking experimentation was required to cull the wheat from the chaff. The Philosopher's Stone, which transmuted all materials, and the Elixir of Life were the ultimate goals of alchemy. Mathias was much more interested in the latter.
Set in the wall was an iron vault, additional protection for the most priceless of treasures in case the laboratory was ever breached. Mathias turned the key in the lock, heard the deep clunk of bolts falling into place, and opened the door. A baleful red light spilled across him as he did so, and Mathias shuddered reflexively.
His grandfather's work, the Crimson Stone, had come about as a failed attempt to create the Philosopher's Stone. In truth, its function was closer to the Elixir, for it promised eternal life of a kind, and great power as well, but at a hellish price.
Gingerly, Mathias reached into the safe and removed the thick tome that lay next to the Crimson Stone's case. These were the alchemical records of four generations of Cronqvists, the secrets of chemistry and natural magic once handed down orally but now codified. With relief he swung the vault shut again, sealing away the bloody glow. He set the book down on the worktable and lit the lamps from his candle.
If he was going to be there to oversee the process, to be alert for changes, Mathias would have trusted to the medication his Crusader comrades had brought back. Since that was not possible, though, he felt that he had to take the next step. He had to be sure. He could take no chances with Elisabetha's health.
-X X X-
"You miss him, do you not, my lady?" Magda asked.
"Am I so obvious?" Elisabetha replied with a faint smile.
"Well, you have been attempting to read for well over an hour now, but you have scarcely finished a page. Instead, you stop every few moments to gaze out the window." The view from the high tower bedroom shared by Lord and Lady Cronqvist was spectacular. Not by coincidence, it also overlooked the road, the only safe approach to the castle.
"This morning," Elisabetha admitted, "I stood here and watched Mathias, Sir Bogdan, and their escort ride away until they were gone beyond the mountains, just as if I was a silly maiden in a troubador's romance." She sighed and continued, "He is my life, Magda. I do not know what I should do without him."
"Take heart, my lady," Magda said. "The heretics shall not strike him down." Then, because she, too, required the reassurance, she recited aloud, "Lord Cronqvist is a great warrior in his own right, able to deal with any mischance. With knights such as Baron Belmont at his side, he cannot fail to return to us."
It should be "us," but he has eyes only for you.
"You are right, Magda. I mustn't worry," Elisabetha said. "Indeed, if I fret so, I shall only make myself ill again. Mathias rides into battle, and yet he has more to fear for my sake than I do for his. I must take care of myself for him."
With an almost furtive look in her eyes, she glanced out at the setting sun, then back to Magda.
"I shall retire early tonight, Magda. I shan't need you until tomorrow."
It was unmistakably a dismissal and cousin or not Elisabetha was still the chatelaine of the castle. Magda gathered her needlework and rose.
"Then I shall bid you good night, my lady."
Magda left, but the glint in her cousin's eyes made her curious, simply because it was so unlike her. Secrets were not Elisabetha's stock in trade and never had been; she was open and innocent to a fault. Magda closed the door behind her, but instead of leaving pressed her eye to a gap between the boards where a splinter had broken away.
Elisabetha glanced around herself, as if unsure whether or not she was truly alone, then went to her bed and from beneath the pillow--a child's hiding place, thought Magda--withdrew a glass phial filled with a milky white substance. She then poured herself a goblet of wine and added a measure of the milky liquid, which she stirred in before swallowing the whole. The phial she restoppered and put back beneath the pillow.
Magda straightened up and went striding down the corridor, a satisfied smile on her face.