The king of Ferrieres was his cousin, just as the man he’d slain had been his cousin. That might, he conceded, as his thoughts chased themselves around, be argued in different ways. (He did prefer the word “slain” to “murdered.” “Slain” spoke of old tales and heroic poems.)

But he’d gone to Rhodias, exactly as had been demanded of him. He’d knelt before the pig-eyed Patriarch and kissed his foot and his ring. And spent a great deal of money there.

Was there any point to that abasement if no forgiveness resulted in Ferrieres? He didn’t really like that word, either. Forgiveness. In his own view, his cousin Rollin had been squeezing him mercilessly for years, as if by the throat. One cousin, one duke, had to emerge triumphant. There was no real way the two of them could continue on either side of the young Prince Girald, with the father, the king, drooling mad.

Of course the father was no longer so. And Hardan of the Anglcyn was locked in the Châtelet of Orane, and was not, it was increasingly evident, ever going to be ransomed. More likely, Barratin thought, Hardan would be killed for his brother back home. For a price. It was what he’d do, were he the brother in Angland. They didn’t want their king back, was what his spies there told him.

Treachery, he thought, in his garden in Berga on a summer’s evening, could come from anywhere. He ought to have killed Corbez Barthelmy the night of the assassination, for example. The red-cloaked man (stupidly so, it marked him too much) had been an obvious source of danger after organizing and leading the attack. Burkard van Aribert, whom he trusted, had urged it from the start.

But the man Barthelmy had proved more cunning than expected. He’d written two letters with full confessions detailing what they had done, and by whose orders and payment, to be revealed if he were suddenly to die, or even disappear. And he’d informed the duke of this by way of another letter. Wouldn’t surprise Barratin if there were three letters. One sent to some place of holy men. He’d have done that, too.

So, yes, he ought to have killed the man, but he couldn’t! And then Barthelmy had been taken in Orane. An idiot. Idiots could be cunning sometimes. They were still fools. But dangerous ones. Barthelmy was dead now, and would have told them everything they wanted to know in the Châtelet.

It began to rain in the garden. Stubbornly, he stayed outside.

It felt as if too many things had turned against him, the duke thought. And he wasn’t a man to accept that passively. To just sheathe his ambition, accept the wealth of his dukedom, his wine, his mines to the east, the vastly profitable cloth trade.