Chapter 980: Ian Hanrahan’s Vile Tongue (Part Two)
Toward the back of the crowd, Madam Cordelia fud, and her face had turned a shade well beyond red with the fury that threatened to erupt from her. She’d been a much younger woman when she served Baroness Caitlin, but her lady had always been kind, gentle, and generous to a fault with people around her.
It had been heartrending enough to hear Da Sybyll talk about the way the old Baroness had suffered for fifteen long years after everyone else had mourned her and given her up for dead. In Baroness Caitlin’s day, every feast produced so much excess that every servant who toiled away while others feasted was able to take ho a small feast of their own to share with their family, and she saw to it that no one working in the keep ever went hungry.
To hear that she’d been forced to beg, that she’d been beaten and robbed just for trying to get help, and likely suffered much, much worse from the cruel n who preyed upon the weak and the vulnerable was already heartbreaking. But to hear the filth dripping from Baron Hanrahan’s mouth as he slandered a woman who has sacrificed everything to protect and care for her daughter... It was almost more than Madam Cordelia’s frail old heart could bear.
Elsewhere in the crowd, however, a few voices had begun to mutter in support of Baron Hanrahan’s scandalous accusations.
"...It happened ta’
cousin in Lothian City, I swears it did," one man said quietly to his neighbor. "Spent one night havin’ a roll in tha’ hay with wench co in from the countryside fer market, a year later, she’s back again wit’ a babe in her arms, layin claim ta’ a quarter of his wealth fer tha’ raisin of his child. His wife almost tossed him out on tha’ street right then an’ there..."
"...Once Baron Hanrahan acknowledged Hugo as his son, how many people fell out of trees and crawled out of bogs to claim to be another of his bastards?" another man asked. "A man has one mont of weakness and suddenly everyone acts like he can’t keep his sword in his scabbard..."
"...This is why a man’s got ta’ keep a firm hand wit’ his won," a third man told his neighbor, speaking as if it was an argunt they’d had in the past. "Black her eyes once so she knows not ta’ look at another man, and smash her hand if she ever touches a fellow who isn’t you. Otherwise, yer as like as not to find yerself raisin’ up so other man’s child..."
"Or maybe it’s more likely that this demon is a victim herself," Ian speculated loudly, continuing to pile on the scorn and derision as he heard his ssage taking hold in the crowd. "I wouldn’t be surprised if she were a random child who bore a slight resemblance to my late aunt, certainly more of one than she bore to the old cripple who showed up in my chambers."
"She was a convenient tool in the old crone’s deception," the captive baron proclaid confidently. "A child fed lies about her own parentage from the very beginning. No wonder that old hag would never try to prove her identity to any of the people who would certainly have helped my late aunt if it turned out she’d still been alive..."
Suddenly, the ground at Ian Hanrahan’s feet erupted into flas, singeing his fine clothes and shooting up high enough to reach his waist, where the intense heat seed to focus almost maliciously on his nether-regions.
"Aaaa!!!" Ian cried, dancing back away from the tongues of fla that vanished as quickly as they appeared. In his haste to escape the heat, he stumbled over his chains and fell painfully on his backside while clutching himself protectively. Only when he was certain that he was still intact did he look upward to et the dark, smoldering gaze of the Inquisitor on the dais.
Diarmuid held a tiny mote of fla in his right hand, which he quickly dismissed before returning the hand to clasp its companion behind his back while he glowered at the portly baron.
"Don’t think that you can insult or degrade a lady simply because I asked Da Sybyll not to threaten you," Diarmuid said fiercely as he reached the limit of what he could tolerate from the blustering baron.
He’d allowed the man to speak freely to give the man an opportunity to reveal truths, and indeed, the baron had revealed several truths. Unfortunately, the greatest truth he revealed to the Inquisitor’s trained ears was the truth of how low he would stoop and how much he would distort facts if he felt it would serve his own ends.
"And don’t believe that I won’t see through blatant lies," Diarmuid added sternly. "You know that woman was her mother. You never once thought that she was unrelated to Da Sybyll."
"Cheap theatrics like that might work when you’re sitting on a throne, Baron Hanrahan," the Inquisitor reminded him. "But before the Inquisition, all n are the sa. I’m not one of your knights to bow down before your title, nor one of your fellow barons who is too consud by protecting their own interests to expose your lies. If you lie to , I will see through it and you will burn for it," he said sharply.
"Now, tell
that you understand the rules, Baron Hanrahan," Diarmuid said. "And then we can proceed with the real questions."
"I, I understand," Ian Hanrahan said with sweat plastering his thinning hair to his scalp. He’d thought that he could put on a show before the audience. He’d thought that if he could sway the crowd the way he so often swayed the Lothian Court over the years, if he could gain the support of the people with a few cheap exaggerations and a bit of blustering, he could create the opening he needed to get out of this ss. And he’d thought that the Inquisitor would defer to his title enough to allow him to get away with it.
Clearly, he’d been very, very wrong about this particular Inquisitor.
"Good," Diarmuid said as he resud his pacing across the dais with his hands clasped behind his back, as though nothing untoward had happened. "Now, answer my first question," Diarmuid said as he looked down at the baron. "As a loyal vassal of the Lothian Marquis, why didn’t you throw Sybyll and the woman claiming to be Baroness Caitlin into your dungeons until you could turn them over to the Lothian Court?"
"After all," Diarmuid pointed out. "Magnicide is a serious cri, and they accused your father of murdering your uncle. Wasn’t it your duty to bring their accusation before your liege lord so that you could clear your father’s good na?"
"Or did you kill the old woman because you knew that she was Caitlin Hanrahan?" Diarmuid asked. "And you were trying to conceal your father’s cri?"
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