"Marry the bitch," the king repeats slowly, as if tasting the syllables on his tongue. "Marry the countess of Arbonne. How old is Signe de Barbentain now, sixty-five, seventy? An astonishing suggestion… how is she with her mouth, does anyone know?"
Several of the men and one of the women by the window titter with laughter again. None of the foreign envoys is in the room at the moment; given the current subject matter, an extremely good thing. Rosala de Garsenc is pale, but her square, handsome features betray no expression at all.
On the other side of the room her husband abruptly reaches for his flagon again. This time he spills some ale as he brings it to his lips. He wipes his moustache with a sleeve and says, "Does it matter? Would anyone imagine I speak of more than a marriage of acquisition?" He pauses and glances, almost involuntarily, downward for an instant, and then resumes. "You marry the crone, pack her off to a castle in the north and inherit Arbonne when she dies of fever or ague or whatever else the god sees fit to send her. Then you follow through with your marriage to Daufridi of Valensa's daughter. She may even be old enough to bed by then."
Ademar has turned in his seat to look fully at him, his pale eyes unreadable above the yellow beard. He says nothing, chewing meditatively on one end of his long moustache. There is a stir at the far end of the room, made louder by the silence around the throne. The great doors swing open and the guards let someone through. A very large man in a dark blue robe enters, striding purposefully forward. Seeing him, Ademar's face lights up. He grins like a mischievous child and glances quickly back at Ranald de Garsenc, who has also taken note of the man entering, though with a very different expression on his face.
"My dear High Elder," the king says, his tone brightly malicious now, "you are narrowly in time to observe how we value our cousin, your son, and his wise counsels. Our well-beloved Mistress Belote is even now assuaging him with his lady wife's full approval. Will you come make this a family affair?"
Galbert de Garsenc, High Elder of Corannos in Gorhaut, Chief Counsellor to the King, disdains to even glance at his son, nor does he appear to acknowledge the amusement in the room that takes its cue from the king's brittle tone. He stops not far from the throne, a bulky, formidable presence, and inclines his large, smooth face towards Ademar. saying merely, "What counsels, my liege?" His voice is deep and resonant; though he speaks quietly it fills the large chamber. "What counsels, indeed! Duke Ranald has just advised us to marry the countess of Arbonne, send her off north and inherit her sun-drenched country when she succumbs in her decrepitude to some lamentable pestilence. Would this be a thought you and your son have devised together?"
Galbert, the only clean-shaven man in the room, turns to look at his son for the first time as the king finishes speaking. Ranald de Garsenc, though very pale, meets his father's gaze without flinching. With a contemptuous twist of his mouth, Galbert turns back to the king.
"It would not," he says heavily. "Of course it is not, my liege. I do not devise with such as he. My son is fit for nothing but spilling ale on himself and occupying tavern sluts."
The king of Gorhaut laughs, a curiously joyous, high-pitched sound in the dark-beamed, shadowed room. "Tavern sluts? In the name of our blessed god! What a way to speak of the noble lady his wife, my lord Galbert! The woman bearing your grandchild! Surely you do not think—"
The king stops, hilarity vivid in his face, as a flagon of ale hurtles across the room to strike the High Elder of Corannos full on his broad chest. Galbert stumbles heavily backwards and almost falls. At the long table Ranald rises, hastily pushing his semi-erect member back into his clothing. Two guards step belatedly forward but pause at a gesture from the king. Breathing heavily, Ranald de Garsenc points a shaking finger at his father.
"Next time I might kill you," he says. His voice trembles. "Next time it may be a knife. Take note for your life. If you speak so of me again, anywhere where I might hear of it, it may mean your death and I will submit myself to whatever judgment of that deed Corannos makes when I leave the world."
There is a shocked silence. Even in a court not unused to this sort of thing, especially from the de Garsenc clan, the words are sobering. Galbert's rich blue robe is stained with dark ale. He fixes his son with a glance of icy contempt, easily a match for Ranald's impassioned rage, before turning back to the king. "Will you allow such an assault upon your High Elder, my liege? An attack upon my person is an insult to the god above us all. Will you sit by and let this impiety go unpunished?" The deep voice is still controlled, resonantly pitched, soberly aggrieved.
Ademar does not immediately reply. He leans back once more against the heavy wooden seat-back of the throne, stroking his beard with one hand. Father and son remain on their feet, rigid and intense. The hatred between them lies heavy and palpable in the room, seeming denser than the smoke of the fires.
"Why," says King Ademar of Gorhaut, at length, his voice sounding even higher and more querulous after the High Elder's deep tones, "is it such a foolish idea for me to wed Signe de Barbentain?"
Abruptly Duke Ranald sits again, a tiny smile of vindication playing about his lips. Impatiently he moves a knee to forestall an obedient attempt by the woman beneath the table to resume her intentions. On the far side of the room he notices that his wife has turned away again and is staring out the windows with her back to the king and the court. It has begun to rain. He looks at Rosala's profile for a moment, and a curious expression crosses his own features. After a moment he lifts his flask and drinks again.
The only thing I really don't know, Rosala de Garsenc is thinking just then, looking out at the cold, steady, slating rain and the mist-wrapped eastern moors, is which of them I despise most.
It is not a new thought. She has spent a remarkable amount of time trying to decide whether she more hates the erratic, usually inebriated man she'd been forced to wed by the late King Duergar, or the dangerously cunning, Corannos-obsessed High Elder of the god, her husband's father. If she chooses, as today, to take the thoughts one small, very natural step further, it is easy to include Duergar's son, now King Ademar of Gorhaut, in that blighted company. In part because she is uneasily, constantly aware that when the child she now carries is born she is going to have to contend with the king in a very particular way. She doesn't know why he has singled her out, why her manner seems to have captivated him—goaded him, more likely, she sometimes thinks—but there is no denying the import of Ademar's flat, pale gaze and the way it lingers on her, especially in that dangerous time of night here in Cortil after too much ale has been drunk around the banquet tables but before the women are permitted to leave.
One of the reasons, perhaps unfairly, that she despises her husband is for the way in which he will notice the king staring at her and indifferently turn away to his dice cup or his flagon. The duke of Garsenc ought surely, Rosala had thought, in the early months of her marriage, to have more pride in him than that. It appeared, though, that the only people who could arouse Ranald to anything resembling passion or spirit were his father and brother, and that, of course, was its own old, bleak story. It sometimes seems to Rosala that she has been part of their tale forever; it is hard to remember clearly back to a time when the lords of Garsenc have not trammelled her tightly about with their festering family griefs. It had been different at home in Savaric, but Savaric was a long time ago.
The wind is rising now, coming about to the east, sending droplets and then a gusty sheet of rain through the window to strike her face and the bodice of her gown. She doesn't mind the cold, she even welcomes it, but there is a child to think of now. Reluctantly she turns away, back to the smoky, stale, crowded room, to hear her husband's father begin to speak to the issue of forced marriages and conquest in the warm bright south.
"My liege, you know the reasons as well as I, so, indeed does every man in this room, save one perhaps." The glance flicked sideways at Ranald is so brief as to carry its own measure of bone-deep contempt. "Even the women know my son's folly when the
y hear it. Even the women." Beside Rosala, Adelh de Sauvan, who is venal and corrupt and newly widowed, smiles. Rosala sees that and looks away.
"To wed the countess of Arbonne," Galbert goes on, his rich voice filling the room, "we would need her consent. This, she will not give. Ever. If she did, for whatever reason, maddened by woman's desire perhaps, she would be deposed and slain by the assembled dukes of Arbonne before any wedding could take place. Think you that the lords of Carenzu or Malmount or Miraval would sit by and watch us so easily stake a claim to their land? Even a woman should be able to see the folly in such a fatuous thought. What, my liege, do you think the troubadour lord of Arbonne would do at such a time… think you that Bertran de Talair would stand by and let such a marriage take place?"
"That name is forbidden here!" Ademar of Gorhaut says quickly, leaning abruptly forward. Two spots of unnatural colour show in his cheeks above the beard.
"And so it should be," Galbert says smoothly, as if he'd expected exactly that response. "I have as much reason as you my liege to hate that schemer and his godless, discordant ways."
Rosala smiles inwardly at that, keeping her features carefully schooled. It was little over a month ago that de Talair's latest song had reached the court of Gorhaut. She remembers the night; wind and rain then, too, a trembling, whey-faced bard obeying Ademar's command, singing the duke of Talair's verses in a voice like rasping iron:
Shame then in springtime for proud Gorhaut,
Betrayed by a young king and his counsellor.
And more, much more, and worse, in the creaking, barely audible mumblings of the terrified singer while a wind blew on the moors outside:
Where went the manhood of Gorhaut and Valensa
When war was abandoned and pale peace bought
By weak kings and sons long lost to their lineage?
Rosala can almost find a kind of warmth in her heart at the memory of the torchlit faces around her that night. The expressions of the king, of Galbert, the furtive glances that flitted about the hall from one newly landless lord or coran to another as the driving music brought the force of the words home, even in the timid voice of the singer. The bard, a young trovaritz from Gotzland, had almost certainly owed his continued life to the presence in the great hall of Cortil that evening of the envoy from his own country and the undeniable importance of keeping peace with King Jorg of Gotzland at this juncture of the world's affairs. Rosala had no doubt what Ademar would have liked to do when the music ended.
Now he leans urgently forward again, almost rising from the throne, the two bright spots vivid in his cheeks and says, "No man has as much reason as we do, Galbert. Do not exalt yourself."
The High Elder gently shakes his head. Again the rich voice encompasses the room, so warm, so caring, it can so easily deceive one into thinking the man is profoundly other than he is. Rosala knows about that; she knows almost everything about that by now.
"It is not in my own name that I take umbrage, my liege," says Galbert. "I am as nothing, nothing at all in myself. But I stand before you and before the eyes of all those in the six countries as the voice of the god in Gorhaut. And Gorhaut is the Heartland, the place where Corannos of the Ancients was born in the days before man walked and woman fell into her ruin. An insult to me is a blow delivered to the most high god and must not be tolerated. Nor will it be, for all the world knows your mettle and your mind in this, my liege."
It is fascinating, Rosala thinks, how smoothly, how effortlessly, Galbert has shifted the matter at hand. Ademar is nodding his head slowly; so are a number of the men in the hall. Her husband is drinking, but that is to be expected. Briefly, Rosala feels sorry for him.
"We would have thought," the king says slowly, "that Daufridi of Valensa would share our attitude to this provocation. Perhaps when we next receive his envoy we ought to discuss the matter of Bertran de Talair."
Daufridi has all our land north of Iersen now, Rosala finds herself thinking bitterly, and knows that others will be framing the same thought. He can afford to tolerate insults from Arbonne. Her family's ancient estates along the Iersen River are right on the newly defined northern border of Gorhaut now; Savaric had not been so exposed ever before. And there are men in this room whose lands and castles have been given away; they are part of Valensa now, ceded by treaty, surrendered in the peace after being saved in the war. King Ademar is surrounded by hungry, ambitious, angry men, who will need to be assuaged, and soon, however much they might fear him for the moment.
It is all so terribly clear, Rosala thinks, her face a mask, blank and unrevealing.
"By all means," Galbert the High Elder is saying, "raise the matter with the Valensan envoy. I think we can deal with a shabby rhymester by ourselves, but it would indeed be well to have certain other matters understood and arranged before another year has come and gone."
Rosala sees her husband lift his head at that, looking not at his father but at the king.
"What matters?" Duke Ranald says, loudly, in the silence. "What needs to be understood?" It is only with an effort sometimes that Rosala is able to remember that her husband was once the most celebrated fighting man in Gorhaut, champion to Ademar's father. A long time ago, that was, and the years have not sat kindly on the shoulders of Ranald de Garsenc.
Ademar says nothing, chewing on his moustache. It is Ranald's father who replies, the faintest hint of triumph in the magnificent voice. "Do you now know?" he asks, eyebrows elaborately arched. "Surely one so free with idle counsels can riddle this puzzle through."
Ranald scowls blackly but refuses to put the question again. Rosala knows he doesn't understand; again she feels an unexpected impulse of sympathy for him during this latest skirmish in his lifelong battle with what his father is. She doubts Ranald is the only man here bemused by the cryptic byplay between the High Elder and the king. It happens, though, that her own father, in his day, had been a master of diplomacy, high in the counsels of King Duergar, and Rosala and one brother were the only two of his children to survive into adulthood. She had learned a great deal, more than women tended to in Gorhaut. Which, she knows, is a large part of her own private grief right now, trapped among the de Garsenc and their hates.
But she does understand things, she can see them, almost too clearly. If he is sober enough, Ranald will probably want her thoughts tonight when they are alone. She knows the heavy, hectoring tone he will use, the scorn with which he will quickly dismiss her replies if she chooses to offer any, and she also knows how he will go away from her after and muse upon what she tells him. It is a power of sorts, she is aware of that; one that many women have used to put their own stamp, as a seal upon a letter, upon the events of their day.
But such women have two things Rosala lacks. A desire, a passion even, to move and manipulate amid the fever and flare of court events, and a stronger, worthier vessel in which to pour their wisdom and in their spirit than Ranald de Garsenc is ever going to be.
She doesn't know what she will tell her husband if he asks for her thoughts that evening. She suspects he will. And she is almost certain she does know what his father's designs are and, even more, that the king is going to move with them. Ademar is being guided, as a capricious stallion by a master horsebreaker, towards a destination Galbert has likely wanted to reach for more years than anyone knows. King Duergar of Gorhaut had not been a man susceptible to the persuasion of anyone in his court, including his clergy—perhaps especially his clergy—and so the High Elder's access to real power dates back only to the precise moment when a Valensan arrow, arching through a wintry twilight, found Duergar's eye in that grim, cold battle by Iersen Bridge a year and a half ago.
And now Duergar is dead and burned on his pyre, and his handsome son rules in Cortil, and there is a peace signed in the north disinheriting a quarter of the people of Gorhaut, whether of high estate or low. Which means—surely anyone could see it if they only stopped to look—one thing that will have to follow. Instinctively, a motion of withdrawal as much
a reflex as a forest creature's retreat from a tongue of flame, Rosala turns back to the window. It is springtime in Gorhaut, but the grey rains show no signs of ending and the damp chill can ache in one's very bones.
It will be warmer, she knows, warmer and softer and with a far more benevolent light in the sky, in Arbonne. In woman-ruled Arbonne, with its Court of Love, its wide, rich, sun-blessed lands, its sheltered, welcoming harbours on the southern sea and its heresy of Rian the goddess ruling alongside the god, not crouched in maidenly subservience beneath his iron hand.
"We will have much to speak of yet," Galbert de Garsenc is saying, "before summer draws fully upon us, and to you my liege will rightly fall all decisions that must be made and the great burden of them." He raises his voice; Rosala does not turn back from the window. She knows what he is about to say, where he is taking the king, taking all of them. "But as High Elder of Corannos in this most ancient, holy land where the god was born, I will say this to you, my liege, and to all those gathered here. Thanks to your great wisdom, Gorhaut is at peace in the north for the first time in the lifetime of most of those here. We need not draw axe and sword to guard our borders and our fields from Valensa. The pride and the might of this country under King Ademar is as great as it has ever been in our long history, and ours is still and ever the holy stewardship through the six countries of the power of the god. In these halls walk the descendants of the first corans—the earliest brothers of the god—who ever bestrode the hills and valleys of the known world. And it may be—if you, my liege, should decide to make it so—that to us will fall a scourging task worthy of our great fathers. Worthy of the greatest bards ever to lift voice in celebration of the mighty of their day."