Chapter 9
The trials took place in spring.
Blackthorn sent witnesses south to the Crown court at Bellmere.
Maeve hated Bellmere.
Too warm.
Too many bells.
Too many people asking whether she was “the maid who caught the baby.”
She corrected the first three.
“Servant.”
Then stopped correcting because neither word captured what she had become.
Gideon had offered her a title.
Mistress of Household Safety.
Maeve laughed for a full minute.
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because that sounds like I spend my days measuring stairs.”
“You do complain about stairs.”
“I complain about your stairs.”
Then he offered money.
A pension.
Land lease.
A cottage.
Not as reward for Elodie’s life, he said.
As compensation for injury and because Maeve’s household service had been underpaid for years.
That distinction mattered.
Maeve accepted a cottage lease and wages as senior chamber steward after shoulder healed.
Not nobility.
Not savior.
A better job.
Her choice.
At Bellmere, the Crown court did not produce one clean villain.
That disappointed the public.
People like simple.
Orren came closest.
He was convicted of Brother Alden’s murder, conspiracy in the attempted murder of Elodie, coercive confinement and forced exile of Perrin, multiple violent intimidations, corruption, and destruction of evidence.
For Isolde’s death, the court found he had not intended to kill her but had deliberately used a trained hound to trap a child near a stair while stealing papers.
The law called it unlawful killing through reckless coercion.
Maren sat through that judgment without expression.
Later she vomited in courtyard.
Grief does not care about legal category.
Orren received life imprisonment in the northern fortress of Kestrel Rock.
Not execution.
Why?
Partly because the Crown wanted continuing testimony about Carrow-linked corruption and the hound network.
Partly because Bellmere had limited capital sentences after recent reforms.
Some called it mercy.
Maren did not.
“Living with what he built may be longer.”
Maybe.
Not a sentence anyone could measure.
Sabine’s judgment came two days later.
Attempted murder of Elodie.
Conspiracy.
Abuse of rank.
Use of a trained animal in commission of violent crime.
Obstruction.
Participation in concealment of Alden’s death.
She stood without jewelry.
No silver whistle.
The Crown prosecutor emphasized:
Sabine had opportunities to stop.
She rescued Elodie from Morcant.
She saw Maeve below.
She heard Gideon approaching.
She still chose to throw.
Grant? no.
Orren’s manipulation and blackmail mattered later.
They did not erase initial agreement.
Her defense did not argue madness.
Good.
They presented fear.
Family conditioning.
The forged compact.
Orren’s pressure.
Her belief she was preserving Blackthorn.
The court answered:
Believing power necessary does not make murder protective.
Sabine was sentenced to permanent confinement at Saint Hara’s royal abbey-prison, stripped of inheritance rights and household authority.
Why not execution?
Her full confession, cooperation against Orren and Lucan, and Elodie’s survival weighed.
The court left no automatic release.
Any future petition would require Crown review.
Gideon listened.
Felt nothing clear.
He had imagined satisfaction.
Instead saw sister who taught him to ride, once stitched his hand after falcon bite, once threw his daughter from a tower.
All true.
No verdict could sort.
Sabine asked permission to write Elodie one letter a year.
The court said only if Gideon stored them unopened until Elodie was old enough to choose.
Gideon agreed.
Not because Sabine deserved.
Because Elodie might one day want record from her.
Choice deferred.
Then Lucan Dacre.
His trial drew more nobles.
Forgery.
Political extortion.
Corruption.
Knowing use of false wardenship compact.
Funding an intimidation network.
Concealment of suspicious deaths.
Misuse of ducal office.
No charge of conspiracy to kill Elodie.
People whispered that wealth protected him.
Ysabel Trent answered publicly in findings:
“No evidence proves he joined that murder plan. We do not add a crime because other crimes make us angry.”
Maeve respected.
Lucan was convicted of forgery conspiracy, extortion, corruption, and abuse of office.
Stripped of chancellorship.
Property seized to repay diverted silver funds.
Sentenced to twelve years imprisonment and permanent ban from royal administration.
Some miners thought too light.
Some nobles thought severe.
The court did not ask for applause.
Duke Carrow faced Crown audit.
Evidence showed his household benefited from underpriced Blackthorn silver and political leverage.
But records did not prove he knew seal forgery or hound violence details.
He paid restitution under royal settlement, surrendered disputed mining privileges, and accepted oversight.
Not innocent in broad moral sense perhaps.
Not convicted of murder.
Again distinctions.
Halwen received long imprisonment for the attack on Maeve, conspiracy, and corruption.
Garrick received prison and restitution for arson and silver-smuggling bribes.
Jonas Edrin lost clerk position for deceptive whistle placement and evidence misconduct but was not imprisoned.
He later worked as village copyist.
Nurse Anya kept her post after training and reprimand.
Bad judgment did not become treason.
Perrin returned to Blackthorn?
No.
Gideon offered.
Perrin refused.
“I spent eleven years becoming Brother Pell.”
He stayed at Saint Vey.
But he visited once a year and helped audit old accounts.
Good.
Maren did return.
Not to live in castle.
She took a small house near priory ruins.
Gideon asked:
“Why not Blackthorn?”
“Because I want to love you from somewhere with fewer walls.”
Fair.
Then mine restitution.
Hard.
Records incomplete.
Families dead.
Amounts uncertain.
Blackthorn created an audited compensation fund from recovered silver profits and Vale estate contribution.
Not charity.
Restitution where documented.
Community improvements for unverifiable broader skimming.
Miners elected two representatives to oversight.
Gideon hated meetings.
Maeve enjoyed watching him learn.
Then succession charter.
Publicly registered.
If Elodie inherited as minor:
Personal guardian chosen by a council including family, Crown-approved neutral, household representative, and clergy.
Property management separate.
Mine voting separate.
No single regent.
No secret compact.
Any amendment filed outside Blackthorn.
Copies at Bellmere, Saint Vey, and town hall.
Redundancy as protection.
The family had hidden too much in one archive.
Then Morcant.
His rehabilitation took a year.
The royal handler, Sella Norr, stayed six months.
No whistle commands.
Visible hand signs.
Voice.
Reward.
Muzzle in crowded spaces initially.
Never near nursery.
No children unsupervised.
He remained dangerous because of size and history.
Not demon.
Not pet for everyone.
Maeve worked with him because she chose.
Sometimes he froze when church whistle sounded.
Conditioning.
Sometimes he growled at men carrying old kennel poles.
Memory? Association.
Sella said:
“Do not make poetry out of it. Dogs learn patterns.”
Maeve liked her.
Morcant slowly learned new ones.
Sit.
Stay.
Back.
Come.
Ordinary.
One afternoon Elodie, now eighteen months, saw him from across fenced courtyard.
She pointed.
“Dog.”
Everyone froze.
Gideon almost took her away.
Maeve said:
“He’s behind fence.”
Safe distance.
Elodie said:
“Dog.”
Morcant looked.
Then lay down.
No whistle.
No hidden command.
Gideon cried later where nobody saw.
Maeve saw.
Said nothing.
At three, Elodie wanted closer.
No.
At four, closer with Sella’s successor and barrier.
At five, she tossed a treat through fence with adult help.
Not as therapy.
Because she wanted.
Morcant caught badly and sneezed.
Elodie laughed.
The sound echoed in courtyard.
Servants watched from windows.
The legendary black monster sneezing over dried meat.
Stories change through ridiculous details too.
Then Morcant aged.
His muzzle went gray.
Hip stiff.
He no longer patrolled.
Mostly slept near lower kitchen, because warmth.
Some servants never trusted him.
Allowed.
One old cook refused enter if he was loose.
Maeve respected.
Safety did not require emotional reconciliation with animal.
Then when Elodie was seven, Morcant died in sleep.
Maeve found him by hearth.
No drama.
She sat beside for a while.
Gideon asked:
“Bury him in hound cemetery?”
Old kennel graves outside wall.
Maeve shook head.
“Those graves are part of legend.”
“Then where?”
She chose orchard edge.
No statue.
No inscription:
Morcant the Savior.
Morcant the Monster.
Just stone.
MORCANT.
A HOUND OF BLACKTHORN.
Dates.
Enough.
Elodie attended.
She knew basic truth by then.
Morcant had been trained by people to frighten and hurt.
He had grabbed her blanket because he was commanded.
Sabine threw her.
Maeve caught.
She asked:
“Was Morcant bad?”
Maeve said:
“He was dangerous.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
Maeve smiled.
“You are Gideon’s child.”
Then:
“I don’t know if bad is useful for a dog. He learned things people taught him. Some were dangerous. Later he learned different things.”
Elodie thought.
“Did he like me?”
“No idea.”
“Did you?”
Maeve laughed.
“Yes.”
Good.
Then Elodie asked:
“Did Aunt Sabine?”
There.
Harder.
Maeve did not answer for Sabine.
“She can tell you what she felt, if you ever choose to ask. What she did is already known.”
That distinction became family rule.
Feelings uncertain.
Actions documented.
Years later, Gideon wrote it into Elodie’s archive guide:
When stories disagree, begin with what people did.
The castle that once survived by legend began learning to survive by records.
Less romantic.
Much safer.
After Bellmere, Maeve received letters from strangers.
Some thanked her.
Some asked how it felt to be brave.
One offered money for a painted portrait titled THE MAID AND THE FALLING HEIRESS.
Maeve refused.
She kept only one letter.
It came from Lysa, the former kitchen maid Morcant had cornered years earlier.
I thought I was a coward because I never told anyone.
Now I know fear was part of what they were using.
Maeve read that twice.
Then answered:
You survived the thing they built. You do not owe courage backward in time.
She surprised herself with the sentence.
Perhaps it was for Maeve too.
Catching Elodie had not made every earlier silence shameful.
May you like
People act with the choices and risks available then.
History can judge systems without demanding impossible bravery from everyone trapped inside them.
