But before she could speak, her older companion inclined her head toward Alyce.
«A terrible sadness», she said quietly. «But they are with God now».
Gently Alyce reached out to lay one trembling hand on the bulge of Marie's folded hands beneath the veil covering her, her vision blurred by tears.
«Dear God, I had thought I had no tears left to weep», she whispered, crumpling to her knees to rest her forehead against the edge of the bier.
After a moment, blinking back tears of her own, Vera sank down beside her, one arm around the shoulders of her twin, and Zoë knelt on Alyce's other side.
«Could you please leave us for a moment?» Zoë said softly to the two sisters.
In unison, the pair inclined their heads and padded silently from the chapel, settling to wait outside until the visitors should finish paying their respects.
Not far from the entrance to that chapel, Seisyll Arilan watched for a long moment, then turned to make his way toward the stables.
The day's events, of a certainty, required a report to the Camberian Council, not only to share his impressions regarding young Krispin MacAthan — which easily could have waited until the next regularly scheduled meeting — but now to report the untimely and quite senseless death of Marie de Corwyn. The death of a Deryni heiress of her importance would require the Council to considerably reshuffle their careful strategies regarding desirable marriage alliances. But before he went to tell them, he intended to have a look at the body of the accused poisoner. Because the wretched Muriella had taken her own life, she lay not in the chapel royal or even in one of the side chapels of Saint Hilary’s-Within-the-Walls but in the castle's stables, in one of the loose boxes usually reserved for foaling, laid out on boards across a pair of trestles. Two of the queen's maids had washed away the blood and dressed her in a clean white shift, wrapping her shattered head in linen bandages, so that she looked like a nun.
Now one of the maids was sewing the dead girl into her burial shroud while the other tucked bunches of sweet herbs amid the folds of fabric. A wreath of rosemary lay beside the basket of herbs. Both of the maids looked up guiltily as Seisyll appeared at the stall door, and they dropped him nervous curtsies.
«Is that the girl who fell to her death? Muriella, I believe?» Seisyll asked, jutting his chin toward the corpse.
The girl sewing up the shroud gave him a fearful nod.
«Aye, m'lord — poor lady. She'll get nae better wedding wreath», she added, nodding toward the circlet of rosemary. «But she didna' mean to do it».
«She didn't mean to do it», Seisyll repeated, raising a quizzical eyebrow. «What — she didn't mean to kill herself, or she didn't mean to kill all those people?»
His rapid-fire questions silenced the speaker, but the other girl boldly lifted her chin to him.
«She didna' mean to kill anyone, m'lord! 'Specially not the boy». The other girl was now nodding emphatic agreement. «But she was fair green wi' jealousy!»
«Jealousy of whom?» Seisyll demanded.
«Why, the Lady Marie», came the prompt reply. «Everybody knew that — 'cept Marie an' her sister, o'course. Marie was fair smitten wi' Sir Sé Trelawney, an' too besotted to notice that Muriella fancied him, too».
«Indeed?» Seisyll murmured. «So she did mean to kill her rival, at least. And when that went all wrong, she killed herself?»
Both girls nodded wordlessly, wide-eyed.
«Poor, stupid, cowardly child», Seisyll muttered under his breath.
«Will she — burn in hell, m'lord?» one of the girls asked tremulously.
«Probably», Seisyll retorted, then softened at the look of horror on the two faces. «But perhaps not, if we say prayers for her soul». He reached over the door to the loose box and lifted the latch. «Why don't we say a prayer for her now?» he said, coming inside to slip between the two, a hand on each shoulder pressing them both to their knees.
At the same time, he extended his powers and took control of both of them, kneeling between them then to reach deeper memories from each. If anyone came upon them, it would appear to be only what he had claimed: the three of them kneeling in prayer for the deceased — and that was all the girls would remember.
A superficial dip into both young minds gained him little information beyond what they had already told him. And even the more rigorous process of taking a death-reading from the unfortunate Muriella failed to reveal much more.
The poisoned marchpane had indeed been intended for Marie alone — or possibly her sister as well, for Muriella had liked Deryni no better than she liked any rival for the affections of Sir Sé Trelawney. But she certainly had never thought that anyone else would sample the marchpane: not young Isan or the other maid of honor, and certainly not Krispin or Prince Brion. Seisyll shuddered at the thought of how close the crown prince had come to death — spared by the simple happenstance that he did not care for the sweet confection.
Nor had Ahern de Corwyn had any part in the plan, though he supposedly had sent the marchpane. Muriella had invoked his name in order to allay any suspicion on the part of Marie, never thinking beyond the initial stages of her plan — for surely, even if the Delacorte girl had lived, and held her tongue, it still would have emerged that Ahern knew nothing of marchpane. And it had been blind fear of the hangman's rope that had impelled Muriella to throw herself from the castle wall, when she knew herself discovered and her oh-so-clever plan gone horribly wrong.
«Stupid, stupid little girl!» Seisyll whispered under his breath, as he came out of trance, having set his instructions in the minds of the two maids.
Leaving them on their knees to pray a while longer, he rose and gazed down at Muriella for a long moment, gently shaking his head, then wearily picked up the wreath of rosemary from atop the basket and put it on her bandaged head.
Though the church taught that suicide was a mortal sin, Seisyll had never been able to accept that teaching as an absolute. Muriella had been frightened and desperate enough to take her own life rather than face up to the consequences of her actions — which had certainly been horrendous — but he thought that if she burned in hell, it would not be because she had loved and then had feared. And even the murder of three innocents besides herself could be forgiven, in time, if the murderer truly repented.
But that was for Muriella to sort out with her God. For himself, Seisyll could only breathe a final prayer for her soul, with an appeal to the Blessed Mother to take this foolish child into her loving care and eventually restore her to grace.
Pityingly, he brushed his fingertips across the dead girl's cheek in farewell, then bent to press a holy kiss to her brow before turning to go.
The following week would pass in a numb blur of grief for Alyce de Corwyn, for she now must bury her sister, as she had buried her father but two years before. As she had done after her father's death, she traveled back to her ancestral lands — not to Cynfyn, for Marie had been little a part of that, but to Coroth, the Corwyn capital, where this latest scion of the line of Corwyn's dukes would lie with her ancestors.
In this season of the year, still languishing in the heat of the summer just ending, the cortege wound its way southward only as far as Desse, following the royal road that ran along the east bank of the River Eirian. Thence the party transferred to the relative comfort of one of the king's galleys for the voyage into the great Southern Sea and thence around the horn of Mooryn, heading eastward then until at last they sighted the twin lighthouses guarding Coroth Harbor.
The news, of course, had reached Corwyn's capital well in advance of the funeral party, sent by fast courier the very day of the tragedy. The king had been out hawking on the moors the day it arrived, with Lord Hambert, the Seneschal of Coroth, and the Tralian ambassador, attended by Sir Jiri Redfearn, Sir Kenneth Morgan, and Sir Sé Trelawney, along with a handful of knights. It was a bright day in early October, and the expedition was to have been the last such junket before Donal's planned departure for Rhemuth in a few days' time.
Ahern had begged off, declaring himself possessed of a mild indisposition.
Donal had braced himself for bad news when he saw the look on the messenger's face, as the rider in Haldane livery reined in his lathered horse and sprang to the ground. The man himself had known little of the tragedy beyond the stark fact that several had died in Rhemuth as a result of poison hidden in a parcel of sweetmeats, but Seisyll Arilan's terse missive held a fuller story.
The poison appears to have been meant for the Lady Marie, Seisyll had written, in a letter folded around another, smaller square of folded parchment, but she shared the treat with Lady Brigetta Delacorte and some of the children — none of the princes, for which, God be praised, but young Isan Fitzmartin is dead. Ostensibly, the sweets came from Lord Ahern, in the diplomatic pouch from Corwyn, along with the enclosed letter from Sir Sé Trelawney.
Donal's eyes darted to the folded square he had removed from inside Seisyll's letter, then skimmed on down the page.
Young Krispin MacAthan tasted one of the sweetmeats but did not like it, and spat it out, Seisyll declared. He came to no harm. Not so, young Isan, who ate the rest of Krispin's share, in addition to his own. He perished, along with Lady Marie and Lady Brigetta. The poisoner, Lady Muriella, threw herself from one of the parapets when she saw what she had done.
The king's relief that Krispin had survived was tempered by regret at the names of the dead — the sad waste of it. And but for the grace of God, any of his true-born sons might have perished as well.
Very sadly, it now fell to him to inform young Ahern de Corwyn of the death of his twin sister. Donal could not, for the life of him, remember what the Lady Brigetta Delacorte looked like, or even the jealous and spiteful Muriella, but Marie de Corwyn, besides being a valuable heiress, had been a delight to eye and ear, a notable adornment to the court of Gwynedd. Furthermore, the loss of her marriage as coinage of political expediency was greatly to be regretted. Sadly, no one would ever know what might have become of young Isan — an engaging and promising boy, now gone as if he had never lived.
«Ill news, Sire?» Sir Kenneth asked quietly.
Slowly Donal nodded, not speaking as he opened the second folded piece of parchment, addressed on the outside to the Lady Marie de Corwyn. He recognized the handwriting, for Sir Sé Trelawney had been serving as secretary for much of the recent correspondence with the court of Torenth. The content of the letter had largely to do with the minutiae of life at the Corwyn court — nothing at all improper or intimate — but he could guess how it would have thrilled the fair Marie to receive it.
«Sir Se», he called, lifting his gaze and the hand with the letter toward that young man, tending the hawks a little ways away.
Sé gave the hawks into the care of a nearby squire and came at once, curiosity in his eyes.
«Sire?»
«Yours, I think», the king replied, handing him the letter. «May I take it that you know nothing about a parcel of marchpane sent to the Lady Marie in the last diplomatic pouch to Rhemuth, ostensibly from her brother?»
Sé shook his head distractedly, his face blanching as he glanced at the letter and recognized his own handwriting.