He’d given the guards strict orders not to speak with the prisoners, nor allow them to exchange words between themselves. Egalion himself spent most evenings brooding silently about his camp fire.
If Egalion had treated them firmly but fairly, their treatment had altered harshly once they were under the direct control of Cavor in Ruen. Joseph and Garth were thrown into separate cells, where they lingered for two cold and dark days. No-one spoke to them and no-one entered their cells, although Joseph wondered if occasionally Cavor himself came down to the dungeons to stand outside their iron doors and peer through the peepholes.
Sometimes he’d thought he could feel such venomous anger seeping from the other side of his cell door that Joseph had shuddered and turned his back.
Silence surrounded them, even here in the Chamber of Justice, for Cavor doubtless wanted no-one to hear who it was that the Baxtors had helped escape.
Yet the chamber was packed.
Immediately below the dais where Cavor would sit to pass judgement, the prisoners’ dock to one side, were a veritable horde of scribes, eyes sharp and yet curiously still, their quills sharpened and held at the ready, pots of ink full and easily to hand.
Behind them ranged several hundred observers. Nobles mostly, although Joseph could pick out a score of Ruen’s most important townsmen and merchants, and behind them a goodly collection of the shopkeepers and workmen of the city. Even further to the rear lurked three or four pickpockets and cutpurses—here to witness or to enrich themselves? Joseph did not know and cared even less.
Ringing all were at least four squads of Egalion’s most experienced soldiers, faces blank, bodies tense. Egalion himself stood to one side of the dais, as silent as all the rest, waiting for Cavor’s entrance.
Joseph was not heartened by the empty jury box directly opposite the dock; but then, treason was always tried and judged without the benefit of a jury.
Surreptitiously he dropped a hand to one side and touched Garth on the hip, gently, reassuringly, and was rewarded by a slight relaxing in his son’s muscles. Quickly, before the guard could see and intervene, Joseph sent as much love through the Touch as he could.
More than anything else, he regretted that Garth had been caught in this trap. The boy was far too young to die.
Whatever reflections those within the silent chamber were engaged in ceased the next moment as Cavor emerged from a rear door and stepped crisply to the dais. He was dressed in the blue bearskin-trimmed robes of the highest Justice in the realm; Joseph saw that he wore armour beneath them, the Manteceros gleaming from a brightly burnished chest plate.
Joseph’s mouth twisted wryly; did Cavor need to hide behind armour from the inevitability of Maximilian’s return?
The smile died, and Joseph wondered if Maximilian, even if aided by the powers of Ravenna and Vorstus, could rescue them from this predicament.
Unlike Joseph, Garth harboured no doubts that Maximilian would rescue them. Right was on their side, and if judgement was to be served here today, then Garth believed that it would be passed on Cavor, not on himself or his father.
Garth’s face hardened slightly as he watched Cavor take his place. The man had carefully avoided looking at them, and he arranged his robes scrupulously as he sat in the Seat of Judgement—a high-backed and heavily carved wooden throne. When he raised his head Garth saw that Cavor had just as scrupulously arranged his features; sadness and betrayal shone from his face in equal amounts. Here was a king who had trusted, and who had been betrayed vilely by those he had every reason to trust. Garth had to admire him; few present could have seen beneath the exterior to the lies and secrets kept for seventeen years.
Far to the rear, the mouth of one of the street thieves, his hands uncharacteristically in his own pockets for a change, twisted in a humourless smile. These past days rumours had swept the streets, and the thief had collected them as assiduously as he collected the earnings of other men. Unlike the coin he hoarded, however, the thief had passed the rumours on.
But Garth did not notice the reactions of men in the rear of the chamber. Behind him a guard poked him in the back, and he rose to his feet with his father.
Cavor raised his head to speak, his face composed and grave, his voice ringing with the sadness of betrayal. “My people. It troubles me greatly to request your presence here this day to witness. In the dock,” he did not look their way, “stand two I had once counted among my friends. I trusted them, with my secrets—”
Not all, Garth thought cynically.
“And even with my life.” Cavor shuddered theatrically, and closed his eyes for a moment. “Why they did not slip the knife into my ribs when they had me alone, I do not know. Perhaps they did not have the courage.” He paused. “But I digress.”
His tone strengthened and he sat straighter in his chair. A faint blush stained his cheeks, as if the enormity of the Baxtors’ treason cut to his soul. “Physician Joseph Baxtor, of Narbon, and his son and apprentice, Garth, are charged with treason of the most reprehensible and highest degree. They did knowingly conspire to effect a mass escape of the prisoners justly condemned to the Veins—”
A polite shiver ran through the front ranks of the nobles, although Garth noticed it did not spread to the back of the chamber where stood the ordinary people of Ruen. Undoubtedly many had lost husbands, sons and brothers to the gloam.
Garth’s eyes switched to Egalion. The man’s face was as unreadable as blank stone.
Cavor continued, encouraged by the reaction of the nobles. “Once they had their disorderly rabble freed into the sunlight, they meant to stir a general revolt against the throne of Escator. I have no doubt, my friends,” and Cavor’s tone dropped, as if the words hurt him as badly as the death of a friend, “Baxtor meant to put himself on the throne in order to satisfy his base instincts for power.”
Both Garth’s and his father’s mouths dropped open and Joseph stirred, as if he would say something, but Cavor forestalled him.
“Silence!” he hissed venomously, and the hand he had wrapped about his orb of state trembled violently. “I will hear none of your perfidious and warped words! Your actions judge you, and words will only condemn you deeper into the everlasting fire pits of the afterlife.”
Garth’s chest constricted, almost unable to bear the enormity of the lies Cavor spoke against them.
But then, Cavor had a lot to hide.
To one side, a hint of consternation flickered across Egalion’s face, but he controlled it quickly. Within the back ranks of observers there was a moment of restless movement, but it stilled quickly.
Cavor passed a hand over his eyes, then continued in a quieter and more controlled voice. “They did not succeed—their ineptness resulted in the escape of only one prisoner.” He glossed over the issue of the prisoner. “But I must judge them on their intentions, not their ineptitude, and so,” he took a deep breath and sat back in the Seat of Judgement, “I do so pass judgement. Egalion?”
Egalion jumped, as if his thoughts had been far away.
“Egalion. The covered axe, if you will.”
Despite his determined optimism, Garth shuddered. The covered axe would reveal his and his father’s fate, and Garth had no doubt what it would be.
Egalion moved to a small pedestal behind the dais, removing a large tray covered with a deep red velvet cloth from its top, then stepped onto the dais and moved around to the Seat of Judgement.
“There is a rumour,” came an anonymous and rough voice from the very rear of the chamber, “that the Baxtors freed Prince Maximilian from the Veins.”
Egalion, still several steps away from Cavor, started and faltered in his stride. He recovered quickly.
“Seize that man!” Cavor yelled, his composure deserting him in an instant. He half stood from his seat, then sunk reluctantly down again.
Guards immediately sprang into the packed audience, but it was too late. Murmuring swelled through the crowd. “Maximilian? Alive? Maximilian? Not dead? What? Who? Maximilian?”
“Aye!” called another, even rougher voice, “and brought back from a living death, ‘tis said.”
Garth and Joseph exchanged quick glances—this must be the work of Alaine the woodsman.
Any further comments were silenced by the guards who had muscled their way into the tight knot of tradesmen and street thieves. They seized four or five men, hustling them out the rear doors, and the Chamber of Justice returned to some semblance of order, although there was still an observable undercurrent of tension, if not of murmur.
Cavor smiled reassuringly, although from his close vantage point Garth could see what an effort it cost him. “See the result of abominable treason, my friends?” he called softly. “No doubt the Baxtors meant to dress up some poor prisoner and hope to pass him off as Maximilian—may his soul rest in peace.”