Thorn by Fred Saberhagen (books to read romance .txt) 📗

my wrist. The little room stank, in one far corner was a crude clay chamber pot. A dish and cup for food and water, both empty now, waited on the floor closer to the door, through which a little air had now begun to circulate.

      In a few minutes a slave girl, one of the working servants, came up with the provisions I had called for. As soon as this servant had left the two of us alone again, I pushed the silver utensils within Helen’s reach and sat back. After a quick glance at me she grabbed up the bright cup and drank thirstily, then began to eat the biscuits and sausage. She kept what must have been a half-starved appetite under careful control, like one who has had experience of what a sudden load of food might do to a shrunken stomach. Between measured bites, she cast at me more calculating looks than before.

      The pauses in her eating began to grow longer, and I helped myself to a portion of the remaining food. Helen sat back on her haunches and looked at me steadily. “And now?”

      She had spoken in her bad Italian; I answered in her native Hungarian: “Now you are going to come away from here. With me.”

      It was a shock. Until that moment I do not think that she had seen me as anything but another rapist to be endured somehow. But now she started. Her expression changed rapidly, as surprise was followed by the beginning of understanding, and that in turn by relief—a relief mixed with bitterness, but still a great liberation for all that.

      She said in Hungarian: “Our Lady be thanked, for she has heard my prayers. I will certainly go to my brother, even, to get myself out of this.”

      “I should think you would.” I did not tell Helen that returning her to Hungary was not one of the two options allowed me by her brother’s royal command.

      I moved close to Helen now, and drew my dagger. The bright links of the chain had scraped her slender ankle sorely where she must have tried to force it off. Holding her ankle and the chain against the floorboards, I could feel a delicate trembling in her leg, in her whole body. My dagger, a crude northern weapon, bit silently through the links when I leaned my weight upon it. It took me another moment to cut the other end of the chain free of the lock that held it round the post.

      The blade went back into its sheath. Helen was still trembling, with the relief of the strain of fear. She told me later that she had been utterly convinced that the Boccalini were never going to let her go alive after what they had done to her against her will. Probably she was right. No one would take very much notice, or remember it for long, if a street waif simply disappeared. On the other hand a survivor telling stories would have been at least somewhat detrimental to the family’s standing in the eyes of business associates and of the church.

      “He is not really a savage man,” Helen told me, rubbing her freed ankle, and at first I thought that she meant Sandro. “But he is king.” Her eyes lifted, and for a moment I saw a spark of her own royalty in them. “And your name?”

      “Here I am called Ladislao. But at His Majesty’s court, Wladislaus.” I could see at once that the name suggested nothing in particular to her. All to the good, I thought. Had the lady known me by reputation, my task might well have been still further complicated.

      As it stood, it was quite demanding enough.

      One of the options allowed me by the king was to report back to him that with my own eyes I had seen his sister safely and anonymously dead. For me to take that course would mean at least that the family name was guarded from any further damage. And it would be possible to hope that in time the scandals already generated might be forgotten.

      The only other alternative I had been given by Matthias was to try to civilize the girl—which would of course require that first I take her to wife.

      Startled though I had been when the king first broached this plan to me, I had now been able to mull it over long enough to appreciate the reasoning behind it. I had been forced to conclude that from the king’s viewpoint it had merit, the advantage of making some positive good at least a possibility.

      Consider. For Matthias to somehow put an end to Helen’s escapades was imperative. They put him in danger of becoming an international laughingstock, and a king who has that happen to him is lucky if he retains his crown, let alone such a position of world leadership as the ruler of Hungary was grasping for. So he had to either kill the girl, tame her, or send her to a convent—and having had one bad experience with such an establishment already, His Majesty was not disposed to favor them as instruments of policy. To tame the wench into a public asset was a much more attractive idea—Matthias was never one for wasting people who could still be used. Helen as my wife would bind me to his service, and might even produce strong nephews to aid the royal cause in later years. And, again, Helen’s re-emergence into public life as a lady of importance would tend to give the lie to the extravagant stories that must be already in circulation regarding her behavior. Whereas her permanent disappearance would tend, if anything, to confirm them.

      For my part, I had wit enough to see that such a marriage must be a mixed blessing for me at best, despite the royal alliance that it entailed. Like an awkward military position, it might have to be defended constantly, not to mention the time and effort that would probably be required to manage