‘I am sorry,’ he said instantly. ‘I did not wish to be discourteous.’
Maev reached out and patted his shoulder. ‘I am too sharp sometimes, my friend. To be truthful I do not really know what I feel for Jaim. I think of him constantly and I feel empty when he is gone. If I close my eyes I can see that big, ugly face with its childlike grin. I sometimes think that living with Jaim is like having a pet bear.’ He saw her smile then. ‘In another time we would probably have wed. A safer time – when I didn’t have to worry constantly about him being taken and hanged. Now there will be no such time.’
Alterith had wanted to tell her about Jaim’s rescue of him, but he could not. In all their conversations her biggest fear had been of Jaim Grymauch’s being hurt. If she knew he was back she would spend her last hours fretting and anxious.
‘Apothecary Ramus has given me a potion,’ he said, dipping his hand into his pocket. ‘If you take it an hour before the . . . the allotted time it will remove all pain. He says you will feel nothing.’
‘I want no potions,’ she told him. ‘I want nothing to dull my eyes or my heart, or leaden my limbs. I will walk from here as a Rigante should, head high.’
A guard had opened the door then, telling Alterith his time was at an end. Maev had risen from her chair and taken hold of his hands. ‘You take care, Alterith,’ she said. Then she leaned in and kissed his cheek. The last person to kiss him thus had been his mother, twenty years before, and tears fell from his eyes.
The guard took his arm and led him from the cell. As the door closed Alterith saw it was the same guard who had administered his lashing.
‘How is the back, sir?’ he asked.
‘It is healing, thank you.’
‘The bishop has not yet ordered the remainder of the sentence to be carried out. That’s good. Gives the scars time to form.’
‘Yes,’ said Alterith.
‘She’s not going to suffer, sir. The lads have doused the lower pyre with black oil. The smoke will – you know – make her pass out before the flames reach her.’ Alterith looked into the guard’s open and honest face.
‘She is an innocent woman,’ he said. ‘This should not be happening.’
‘I know that, sir. We all know that. It’s a terrible thing, and no mistake. You did your best, though. A man can do no more. Now you better be going. There’s a dozen highlanders outside waiting to walk you to your lodgings.’
Now, with the dread day upon him, Alterith had no wish to witness the outcome of the evil. He could not bear the thought of watching Maev Ring burn.
On the tiny table beside the bed were all his notes from the trial. He sat quietly, arranging them, then he rolled them into little bundles, tied with string. These he pushed into an old leather shoulder satchel. What will it be worth, he wondered, when they are read in Varingas? Last night he had gone to the house of his clerics. Both men had been visited by the knights, who had removed their records of the trial and warned them not to appear for the final day. Without those records would anyone be impeached? Would the bishop face censure? And what were the chances of his own notes reaching Varingas – or indeed his being alive to give evidence should he be so called?
Alterith had always believed that evil should be faced, and that good would ultimately triumph if men stood their ground. Yet, in this place, the evil had been institutional, pervading all areas. Good men had been coerced into silence, or murdered, and the power of the Church had been behind the killers. Throughout the centuries fine, brave people had suffered and died to establish a religion based on love and tolerance; to build a society whose laws protected the poorest. Yet within a generation vile men had corrupted the purity of the law, and the spirit of the faith. It was enough to make a man doubt the existence of any higher celestial Power. What kind of a god would allow such iniquities? Where, in all this sea of corruption, greed and vengeful malice, was there a single indication that the cause of good had any strength?