CHAPTER 842: JOCELYNN’S PLANS (PART ONE)

In the prestigious guest wing of Lothian Manor, the sound of rain gently falling against glass blended with the crackle of the hearth and the clink of silverware to create a soft, ordinary symphony of background sounds to a gathering that was anything but ordinary.

"Is the food sitting well with you, cousin Eleanor?" Jocelynn asked gently as she watched the severe looking woman slowly working her way through a thin soup of oats and crushed nuts while the other guests at the heavy oak table in her private dining room feasted on thick cut bacon, hearty beans and crusty, freshly baked bread.

"Even though we’re prisoners," she said bitterly. "No one has stooped so low as to forget our stations. If you need something else from the kitchens..."

"I’m fine, my lady," Eleanor said after carefully swallowing a small spoonful of the thin oat soup, her throat working visibly with the effort. The warm, nutty aroma of the crushed almonds in the broth should have been comforting, but her hands shook slightly as she lifted the spoon again, forcing her to take even smaller bites if she didn’t want to spill the porridge across the front of her formal Confessor’s vestments.

For much of her time following Jocelynn in Lothian March, she’d replaced her formal attire with the simple white robes trimmed with gold that any initiate or sister of the faith would wear. After all, she was acting as Lady Jocelynn’s chaperone rather than performing her duties as a Confessor and it wasn’t appropriate to flaunt her status in a way that might overshadow her charge.

Now, however, she wore the gold robes with the crimson cowl that represented her station as a sort of armor, visibly reminding the men of Lothian Manor that she held one of the highest offices in the Church that a woman could rise to, and one with close ties to the Inquisition.

It was a feeble, thin layer of fabric that would do nothing to stop a knife or a sword from claiming her life if Bors attacked her the way he’d attacked Lady Jocelynn, but in the minds of most men, it protected her every bit as much as a knight’s suit of armor would. More importantly, it helped to protect Eleanor from the feeling of impending doom that had been growing stronger for months and was more intense now than ever before.

"You forget my years in the convent," she said in a voice that was softer and more strained than her usual speaking tone, pausing to dab at her lips with a linen napkin as she tried her best to project an aura of confidence for her younger cousin. "Even your mother ate simple meals like this when she visited me there. Simple meals are best when the body needs to recover."

"But you will recover, won’t you?" Jocelynn asked anxiously. Half a year ago, she’d resented her father for insisting that she take a chaperone with her when she left Blackwell County, but she had to admit that Eleanor had become more than just a simple chaperone in the months since they’d arrived in Lothian March.

Now, seeing her sunken eyes along with her dried and withered looking skin, the sound of the Confessor’s weakened voice cut Jocelynn more deeply than the knife she’d taken to the chest had. When she woke last night, she’d been horrified to learn how close Bors Lothian had come to killing her, but she’d been even more sickened by the terrible cost her cousin seemed to have paid in order to call down the power of the Holy Lord of Light to heal her.

"If the Holy Lord of Light is willing, then I will recover," Eleanor said with a fragile smile on her thin, chapped lips. "And if he is not willing, then I have helped a good woman in her time of need and I can make my way to the Heavenly Shores with a clean conscience at the end of this life or the next."

"I’m sure it won’t come to that," Captain Albyn said with a deep frown. "You did the most righteous thing of everyone there," he insisted. "This whole thing is madness. Count Blackwell would never have..."

"Careful Captain," the room’s fourth and final occupant said, casting a warning glance at the former sailor from the end of the table that directly faced Lady Jocelynn.

Sir Elgon Prowell was the oldest and most senior of the knights that had accompanied Lady Jocelynn on this journey and he deeply regretted that he hadn’t been with her last night, but it had never occurred to him that he needed to stand guard over his liege lord’s daughter while she dined with the Lothian Marquis. Now, he felt as if the small group of people from Blackwell County who followed Lady Jocelynn were cast adrift on a ship with a broken mast. He didn’t know what they should do, but he was exceptionally wary of rocking the boat while they were in uncertain waters.

"You’ve told me what you saw last night, and what Lord Bors had to say about it all," the veteran knight said carefully. "And I agree that things don’t add up. I also trust Lady Jocelynn over anything someone says against her," he added quickly. "But we have to mind our words here. Calling something ’madness’..."

"You’re right," Captain Albyn said, yielding the point without taking offense. "But whether you use one word or another, the fact remains that his lordship Bors Lothian intends to charge Lady Jocelynn as a demon or a witch, or some kind of heretic without a lick of proof."

"Meaning no offense, Confessor," the weathered sailor said with a glance at Eleanor. "But people out here on the frontier take the threat of demons more seriously than the threat of a summer drought or a cutpurse in the night. I feel like they’d rather see an innocent woman dangle by the neck than risk a demon getting loose in their town."

"She wouldn’t hang," Sir Elgon said with a dark frown beneath his well trimmed mustache. "Noblemen face the headsman’s ax," he corrected. "They say that a person is still alive long enough to see their own body when they hold up the severed head and show it to the crowd. The last thing they hear is a crowd cheering for their death."

Jocelynn’s spoon froze halfway to her mouth with a bite of saucy, savory beans dripping back onto her plate as Sir Elgon’s words conjured a gruesome image in her mind. The rich taste of of the creamy, tarragon infused bean-sauce turned bitter on her tongue, and she set her spoon down with trembling fingers as she imagined an unruly crowd howling in anticipation of the moment the ax would fall.

"These people of the frontier are a bloodthirsty bunch," the knight said, shaking his head in mild disgust. "If they decide that Lady Jocelynn has consorted with demons, the fate she’ll suffer is worse than a simple hanging."

"It’s worse than the headsman’s ax," Eleanor corrected as she looked between the two men. "You heard Lord Bors’ threat, didn’t you, Captain? He accused her of being a witch and said he’d see her burn at the stake."

"He’d see both of us burn," the Confessor said with a slight tremble in her voice as the calm, courageous facade she’d worked hard to maintain for Lady Jocelynn began to crack under the strain of the threat facing them. "Perhaps he’d see us burn whether we’re innocent or not."