He wanted revenge. He wanted to get out of this suddenly horrible castle, to find his son. But he was even more terrified to find that what he really wanted, right now, was a plate of kidneys.
A damp dawn flooded across the landscape, scaled the battlements of Lancre Castle, stormed the keep and finally made it through the casement of the solar.
Duke Felmet stared out gloomily at the dripping forest. There was such a lot of it. It wasn't, he decided, that he had anything against trees as such, it was just that the sight of so much of them was terribly depressing. He kept wanting to count them.
'Indeed, my love,' he said.
The duke put those who met him in mind of some sort of lizard, possibly the type that lives on volcanic islands, moves once a day, has a vestigial third eye and blinks on a monthly basis. He considered himself to be a civilised man more suited to the dry air and bright sun of a properly-organised climate.
On the other hand, he mused, it might be nice to be a tree. Trees didn't have ears, he was pretty sure of this. And they seemed to manage without the blessed state of matrimony. A male oak tree – he'd have to look this up – a male oak tree just shed its pollen on the breeze and all the business with the acorns, unless it was oak apples, no, he was pretty sure it was acorns, took place somewhere else . . .
'Yes, my precious,' he said.
Yes, trees had got it all worked out. Duke Felmet glared at the forest roof. Selfish bastards.
'Certainly, my dear,' he said.
'What?' said the duchess.
The duke hesitated, desperately trying to replay the monologue of the last five minutes. There had been something about him being half a man, and . . . infirm on purpose? And he was sure there had been a complaint about the coldness of the castle. Yes, that was probably it. Well, those wretched trees could do a decent day's work for once.
'I'll have some cut down and brought in directly, my cherished,' he said.
Lady Felmet was momentarily speechless. This was by way of being a calendar event. She was a large and impressive woman, who gave people confronting her for the first time the impression that they were seeing a galleon under full sail; the effect was heightened by her unfortunate belief that red velvet rather suited her. However, it didn't set off her complexion. It matched it.
The duke often mused on his good luck in marrying her. If it wasn't for the engine of her ambition he'd be just another local lord, with nothing much to do but hunt, drink and exercise his droit de seigneur.[2] Instead, he was now just a step away from the throne, and might soon be monarch of all he surveyed.
Provided that all he surveyed was trees. He sighed.
'Cut what down?' said Lady Felmet, icily.
'Oh, the trees,' said the duke.
'What have trees got to do with it?'
'Well. . . there are such a lot of them,' said the duke, with feeling.
'Don't change the subject!'
'Sorry, my sweet.'
'What I said was, how could you have been so stupid as to let them get away? I told you that servant was far too loyal. You can't trust someone like that.'
'No, my love.'
'You didn't by any chance consider sending someone after them, I suppose?'
'Bentzen, my dear. And a couple of guards.'
'Oh.' The duchess paused. Bentzen, as captain of the duke's personal bodyguard, was as efficient a killer as a psychotic mongoose. He would have been her choice. It annoyed her to be temporarily deprived of a chance to fault her husband, but she rallied quite well.
'He wouldn't have needed to go out at all, if only you'd listened to me. But you never do.'
'Do what, my passion?'
The duke yawned. It had been a long night. There had been a thunderstorm of quite unnecessarily dramatic proportions, and then there had been all that messy business with the knives.
It has already been mentioned that Duke Felmet was one step away from the throne. The step in question was at the top of the flight leading to the Great Hall, down which King Verence had tumbled in the dark only to land, against all the laws of probability, on his own dagger.