“I did, and I know who killed him.”
“But you saw him. You recognized him for your own, since you set the people on to kill those whom you believed had slain him.”
“Yes,” she answered. And added the question: “What do you want of me now?”
“What do I want?” He was amazed that she should ask, exasperated. Had the conventual confinement turned her head? “I want your testimony. I want you to denounce this fellow for the impostor that he is. The people will believe you.”
“You think they will?” Interest had kindled in her glance.
“What else? Are you not the mother of Demetrius, and shall not a mother know her own son?”
“You forget. He was ten years of age then—a child. Now he is a grown man of three-and-twenty. How can I be sure? How can I be sure of anything?”
He swore a full round oath at her. “Because you saw him dead.”
“Yet I may have been mistaken. I thought I knew the agents of yours who killed him. Yet you made me swear—as the price of my brothers’ lives—that I was mistaken. Perhaps I was more mistaken than we thought. Perhaps my little Demetrius was not slain at all. Perhaps this man’s tale is true.”
“Perhaps...” He broke off to stare at her, mistrustfully, searchingly. “What do you mean?” he asked her sharply.