A door banged—open or closed. The assembly quieted as Lord Geoffrey entered with his young daughter. It was difficult to tell her age. She had a childish face and was short and slender and in addition walked with a pronounced limp, but despite her pallor she kept her chin high and gaze steady as she looked first at Alain and then over the assembled soldiers and local people for whom she was responsible as Count of Lavas. The hounds growled, a rumble in their throats too soft for anyone but him, and perhaps Blanche, to hear.

Lavrentia alone sat. Even her father remained standing.

“Let me hear your pledge,” she said in a high, clear voice. She lifted a hand to give him permission to approach, and Alain smiled to see the gesture, which echoed Lavastine’s decisive ways.

He set Blanche aside, giving her into Cook’s arms, and mounted both steps to stand on the same level as the lady. He did not approach her chair nor kneel before her. Instead, he turned to face the crowd. The hounds stood side by side on the first step, and the soldiers nearby shrank back from them.

“I pray you, listen!”

As though a spell had been cast over the multitude, they fell quiet and listened. Not a murmur teased the silence, although one person coughed.

“I make this statement freely, not coerced in any way. I came here of my own accord under the escort of Chatelaine Dhuoda. You know who I am. I am called Alain. I was born here in Lavas Holding and grew up in fosterage in Osna village. Count Lavastine of blessed memory believed I was his illegitimate son and named me as his heir. I sat in the count’s chair for some months before King Henry himself gave the county into the hands of Lavrentia, daughter of Geoffrey. This you know.”

Geoffrey was white, shaking, and strangely it was his young daughter who brushed her small fingers over her father’s clenched fist to calm him.

“This is what I must say to you now, so you can hear, and remember, and speak of it to others who are not here today. I am not Lavastine’s heir. I am not the rightful Count of Lavas.”

“Nay! Nay! Say not so, my lord!”

“We won’t believe such lies—!”

“I knew he was a grasping imposter.”

“What of the testimony of the hounds?”

“I pray you!” said Alain. “Grant me silence, if you will.”

They did so. There was another cough, a shuffling of feet as folk shifted position, a handful of murmurs cut off by sibilant hisses as neighbors shushed those who whispered, and, from outside, a chorus of barking, quickly hushed.

“I will depart this place by sunset with nothing more than what I came with, all but this one thing: this pledge made by Lord Geoffrey. That his daughter, Lavrentia, will rule as Count of Lavas but will stand aside if one comes forward with a claim that supersedes hers and is validated by a council of respected church folk or by Biscop Constance of Autun.”