“If your reasoning is as tortuous as those words you just spoke to me, then mayhap I should despair at your lack of wits,” Bishop said, knowing he’d insulted her just to see what she would say.
Actually, she looked eager to shove her grandfather aside and leap on him.
After a moment of dead silence, he said, seeing her fists clench, “No. That isn’t why I’m here at all.”
Lord Vellan said, even as he took his granddaughter’s hand and lightly squeezed it, keeping her in place, “This is my granddaughter, and heir, Lady Merryn de Gay. If you are not a churchman here to inform me as my granddaughter just said, then why do you come to Land’s End in the midst of a drought when everything is slowly dying around me?”
“The king sent me to expunge the Penwyth curse, my lord. I am not a man of the Church. I am a man of profound knowledge, a man of science. I am considered by many to be a wizard, gifted in the understanding of otherworldly phenomena.
“I have heard that this curse has smitten four men to their death. It is doubtless a powerful curse, but I will get rid of it.” Bishop smiled; he’d made all his claims without hesitation, looking Lord Vellan straight in the eye.
Lord Vellan blinked, and Bishop thought that was probably good. The old man then pushed his heavy silver hair back from his face and said hardly above a whisper, “A wizard, you say?”
“Aye, I say that.”
“I have never before met a man who is said to be a wizard. Well, then, about the curse. It has been good to us, that curse, for the four men who forced my granddaughter to wed them—all were villains, every single one of them. And now you’re telling me that the king wants you to rid Penwyth of its curse?”
“Aye, that’s it.”
“But don’t you understand? We want the curse,” Merryn said, stepping forward again, chin up, shoulders back, ready to slit his throat if given the opportunity, his men’s as well. “The curse has saved us four times.” She waved four fingers in his face. “The curse has saved me.”
“Madam,” Bishop said in a voice as stern as his father’s, “you have buried four husbands. You will bury no more. The king forbids it.”
“If it is the king’s wish, then so be it. We will not bury another one. Aye, we’ll let their miserable bodies rot in the fields. As for my four husbands, one of them was so repellent he didn’t have a single tooth in his mouth and I doubt he was much older than my father, who had all his teeth when he died, at least all of the important ones. Listen to me, sir. They were bad, all of them. I am very glad they are dead.”
“Which one didn’t have a single tooth in his mouth?”
“The third one, Flammond de Geoffrey,” Merryn said. “A mercenary who spoke little English.”
“When he forced her to kiss him, he gummed her,” Lord Vellan said, and shuddered. “It was dreadful to watch. Merryn clouted his ear. He couldn’t kill her since he had to have an heir from her, and so her punishment was to be the death of one of my men. He lifted his sword to run it through Crispin, held by six of his men, then he suddenly dropped it, stared straight up at the beams overhead as if someone were there, and started screaming and screaming. Then he vomited up mounds of white foam.”
“Aye,” Merryn said. “It just kept pouring out of his mouth as he screamed and choked. Then he finally fell to the floor, gagging and ripping at his own throat.”
It was a nice performance, Bishop thought. They did it well. Anyone listening would be petrified to his toes. He wondered if it was true. He said, “Your third husband has nothing to do with me, Lady Merryn. Now, I doubt any of the husbands particularly wished to wed you either, but a man does what he must to gain what he wishes to have.”
He could have sworn he heard her curse him behind her teeth. It would be a major task to educate her on the manners befitting a widowed lady. He went right ahead, ignoring her. “Now, again, you have misunderstood me, apurpose this time. I will speak it plainly so the meanest brain can understand: There will be no more deaths at Penwyth. It is the king’s command.”
She said something under her breath, but not under enough. “By God’s divine angels, this is idiocy, brought to us by an idiot.”
“I am not an idiot.” Bishop knew it was time to get all of them in line. A dose of fear should do it. He spoke loudly so that all in the inner bailey could hear him. “Heed me, madam. I am a wizard. I have my own powers. And if my powers chance to fail me, why then I am also a warrior, able to split a man’s head open with my sword.”
The girl shouted, “You, Sir Bishop, wizard and warrior, just how would you split open the head of the spirit of a Druid priest?”
“I should use my invisible sword,” he said and slashed his hand through the air. One of the old men-at-arms jumped back. “You see, he felt the sting as my invisible sword sliced through the air.”
She laughed. Bishop sheathed his invisible sword, smiling a bit himself. There was talk among the people in the inner bailey. He heard a woman say, “I felt the hiss of the blade, I did.”
“I smelled the heat of his sword,” another man said, and crossed himself.
Good, Bishop thought, that pleasing threat of the supernatural should bring even this loudmouthed girl in line.
A little boy said, “Father, is he the pope?”
“He is a sinner,” Merryn said. “Ah, but just look at how I’m quaking from the threat of his invisible sword.”
The sneer on her face was full-bodied, inviting a clout, but he contented himself with the high ground. “You will see. Now, are you and Lord Vellan agreed? No more deaths at Penwyth?”