The Red Knight winced. One of the two Scholae – young Mortirmir – raised a hand, and a third Academician stepped forward and a line of power connected them – the junior student passing raw ops to his classmate.
‘I hoped he might be stupid enough to try again,’ the Red Knight said. ‘Any luck, Morgan?’
The Alban student shrugged. ‘We’re seeking the weapon, but whoever did this knows enough to break the connection between bow and arrow,’ he said, his voice deeper and strangely confident for an adolescent.
Toby, head down and clearly ashamed, said, ‘I’m too used to having Ser Thomas. And Ser Ranald. I was lax.’
The Red Knight reached out and tweaked his squire’s cheek. ‘Horse shit, Toby, we’re all a little stretched right now. And this bastard is good. He chose his moment well. We covered it.’
‘Why do you have to go back out there?’ Ser Michael asked.
The Duke’s eyes rested on his – sardonic and dark and a little too glittery. And glinting red in their depths. ‘Michael – if I go down all hell will break loose. I promise you. If they don’t even see me hesitate—’ he smiled, ‘—then they’re going to have some fractures of their own.’
‘Who is this they?’ Ser George asked.
Ser Gavin pushed forward. ‘Fuck that!’ he said angrily. ‘This place can burn for all of me.’
The Red Knight shook his head. ‘Gentles all, we may have a busy Christmas night. We knew it was coming – Gelfred got a messenger, but there must have been a duplicate.’ He sat up. He was very pale. ‘However, if I survive the public dancing, we should be fine. If I don’t, let me take this moment to tell you all what a pleasure it has been to be your Captain.’
Atcourt turned to Ser Michael. ‘He’s insane. Make him go to bed. And shouldn’t we warn the princess?’
The Red Knight’s face closed.
‘Warn her?’ Ser Michael spat. He turned and looked at Ser Alcaeus, who stood with his arms folded.
The Morean knight shook his head, looking ten years older, but said nothing.
It was Ser Alison who took up the gauntlet. She laughed, and her raucous laugh rang out like a challenge to fate. ‘Warn the princess? She’s probably paying the fucking assassin.’
Harndon – The Queen
The Queen had tidied her apartments with Diota, and she’d busied herself, first meeting with Master Pye, who’d brought her gift for the King, and then wrapping it. Then she’d dressed carefully in brown velvet with bronze and gold beads and emeralds the size of nail-heads. Her belly showed, but Diota had worked a miracle of her own, recutting the brown velvet to match her latest expansion.
‘Where is Rebecca? And Emota? And my other ladies?’ she asked, as the winter darkness began to roll over the snow. She watched the shadows lengthen – the towers appearing to creep across the dirty snow in the main yard – and thought with a shudder of the other darkness in the corridors under the Old Palace.
‘Sweet, they’re late. Everyone’s late,’ Diota said, with her usual practicality. ‘Because it is Christmas, sweeting, and that’s what happens at Christmas.’
‘I’m fat,’ the Queen said. She glanced at her nurse. ‘Emota worries me. She looks ill.’
Diota rolled her eyes. ‘You are having a baby, Your Grace.’ She grinned. ‘It’s been known to add a few pounds.’ She looked thoughtfully at the mirror. ‘Emota – I’m a coarse old woman. I’d say she chose the wrong door at the stable.’
‘Emota? She is no light of love,’ the Queen said.
Her nurse shrugged. ‘Men are pigs. And they behave accordingly.’
‘What do you know?’ the Queen asked.
‘Know? Nothing. But I think that one of the Galles has turned her head, and the little bitch has been spying on us for them.’ Diota seized a hairbrush and yanked too hard at her mistress’s hair. ‘I heard one o’ they calling her a slut and a whore.’
The Queen shook her head. ‘Why are they so stupid? Blessed Virgin – my own husband thinks I was unfaithful,’ Desiderata said. Suddenly she sobbed. She hadn’t said the words aloud before.
‘He’s a fool,’ Diota said. ‘But he’s a man, and that’s the way of men.’
‘How can he even think it?’ the Queen shouted. She hadn’t meant to shout. The anger appeared, almost out of the air.
The privy door opened, and Lady Rebecca entered. She curtsied, her face as pale as new milk.
‘Oh, Becca, what’s wrong?’ the Queen asked.
Almspend shook her head, pursed her lips and said nothing.
‘I command you,’ the Queen said.
‘It is Christmas, and like everyone else, I am late,’ her secretary said. ‘Men in the halls are saying endless foul things.’
‘You have been attacked by one of the Galles!’ Diota cried.
Almspend smiled. ‘Unlikely,’ she said quietly. ‘Or rather, unlikely to happen more than once.’
The Queen sighed. ‘If only Mary – bah. She’ll come back after Epiphany.’ She looked out the window. ‘I would give much to leave the poison of this court. To go to a nunnery and have some peace until my baby is delivered.’ The thought of her baby clearly cheered her. She allowed a small smile to penetrate her anger.
Almspend made an effort, drew herself together and picked up a brush and began to work on the Queen’s hair.
Diota looked at her. The two exchanged glances.
‘Where is Emota?’ asked the Queen.
Almspend shrugged. ‘Busy, I expect, Your Grace.’ She was careful, but the Queen’s head turned.
‘Lying down for her Gallish lover,’ Diota spat.
Almspend glared at her. ‘That’s not how I’ve heard it,’ she said.
‘Nurse, do not be crude. Emota is the youngest of my ladies and perhaps not the brightest.’ The Queen smiled. ‘But she has my love all the same.’
‘You should keep it,’ Lady Emota said from the doorway. ‘I am not bright. I am dull, and stupid, and foolish. And pregnant. Can we share that, Your Grace? Like you, I will bear a bastard child.’
The Queen turned so fast that Almspend’s brush tangled in her hair and stayed there. ‘Emota!’ she said.
Emota pointed a finger at the Queen. ‘I am ruined because you are a slut. I believed you. I believed all that instruction about protecting the protectors and guarding the guardians and all I will have for my idles is a swollen belly and the reputation of being a whore just like my Queen.’ She burst into tears and threw herself on the carpet.
‘What has happened?’ the Queen asked. She looked at the other women.
Almspend got hold of the hairbrush and began to work it loose from the Queen’s hair.
Diota rolled the prostrate girl over and slapped her – none too gently – on the cheek. ‘Get up, you silly woman,’ she said.
‘He is the best knight!’ Emota said. ‘And he treated me like – like—’
‘Are you leman to Jean de Vrailly?’ the Queen asked.
‘Among others,’ Diota spat. ‘She’s ridden a prize number of warhorses.’
‘Aaaghh!’ wept Emota. It was as if she’d taken a wound, she cried so hard.
‘The Galles will use her against you,’ Almspend said, brushing on. ‘Her lechery will make you look a wanton, Your Grace.’
The Queen knelt by her lady. ‘Emota – I need to know what has happened. But I will not desert you.’
Almspend’s eyes met Diota’s in agreement for once. ‘Your Grace, it would be better if you did desert her.’
The Queen gathered the sobbing girl in her arms. ‘Why – because she loved the wrong man? What does it matter?’ she asked. ‘It is all male vanity and foolishness. All of it.’
Almspend’s eyes met her Queen’s. ‘That’s not the argument to use to a court full of men at Christmas,’ she said. ‘The Galles have us under siege, my Queen. And they have put a sap in through poor Emota.’
‘More like a battering ram,’ Diota said.
‘Be kind. Both of you. What has this girl do
ne that is so bad?’ She turned to Almspend. ‘I understand your argument, my dear. I am upset too.’ She pressed her hand against Almspend’s cheek. ‘You are angry.’
‘More afraid than angry,’ Almspend said cautiously.
‘What do you know?’ the Queen asked, gazing into her secretary’s eyes. Almspend’s eyes were pale blue and shone like ice on a clear winter day. The Queen’s were deep and dark, green and brown and gold, and they seemed to hold secrets – all the secrets of an ancient world.
‘What have you learned?’ the Queen asked.
Almspend pursed her lips and frowned, and her eyes darted away. ‘Not today – please, Your Grace.’ She looked at the young woman sobbing on the floor. ‘Your Grace – I apologise. Emota is guiltless of anything but having her head turned. I’m sure of it. But the vitriol we will reap—’
‘When you call me Your Grace this often, I know that something is very wrong.’ The Queen smiled. She looked down and put her hand on the girl. ‘But no girl who has been raped is guilty of anything, and we will not make her more a victim.’ She ran her hand down the girl’s back and golden light seemed to fill the room.
‘Ahh!’ sighed Emota.
The air seemed clear and clean.
Diota breathed in and out noisily, and then sighed. ‘Ah, poppet. You have deep places in you, and no mistake.’
The Queen shook her head. ‘I will make them pay. I will make them pay for Emota and for Mary and for every harsh word they have said. I swear it.’
The lights flickered.
Almspend shuddered. ‘That – was heard.’
‘I care not. They would toy with me and harm those I love? I will rip their manhoods from them and blind their eyes with my talons.’ The Queen stood up like a statue of bronze, and she shone.
Almspend stepped back.
The Queen put a hand to her forehead. ‘Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners now and in the hour of our death. Holy Mary, what did I say?’
Almspend shook her head.
The Queen took a little holy water from a vial and crossed herself. Then she took a deep breath. ‘I was in touch with something,’ she said. ‘Becca, you are troubled and you were before Emota came in.’
‘Humour me,’ Almspend asked without raising her eyes. ‘Your Grace.’
‘Is it something bad?’ the Queen asked.
Almspend raised her eyes. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Oh, how I wish I could lie.’
The Queen smiled. ‘Let us kneel, and pray to our Lady for succour. And to Christ Jesus.’
Almspend sighed. They all knelt, and prayed.
There was noise in the courtyard, and Diota leaned out to watch. A dozen squires – most of them Galles, but several Albans – trooped by with torches. They stopped in the middle of the courtyard and began to sing a bawdy carol. They were dancing – Diota leaned out further.
Her breath sucked in, and she turned inside.
‘They have figures. Made like Your Grace, and Lady Mary, and Lady Emota. In whore’s clothes. They are dancing with them.’
The Queen’s face darkened. ‘Send for my knights.’
‘Your Grace, most of your knights were sent north by the King.’ Almspend shook her head. ‘There’s Diccon Crawford and Ser Malden. They can hardly fight all the Galles.’
The Queen’s face darkened further.
‘And the King has just stepped onto his gallery,’ Diota reported.
‘He will act,’ the Queen asserted.
‘I’m sure of it,’ Diota said. She came back to Almspend’s side, and took up a brush.
After some hooting from the courtyard rose to assail them, the Queen sobbed. The harsh laughter of young men rose to assail them.
And the King did nothing.
‘How did it come to this?’ the Queen asked.
N’gara – Yule Court
The hall was set with a thousand stars and ten thousand tapers – slight lights of beeswax that nonetheless seemed to burn for ever, while a hundred small faeries flitted from light to light like bees with flowers. The silver sound of their laughter was polyphonic and, against it, Tapio’s harper played an ancient lament, the ‘Song of the Battle of Tears’, which was only played at Yule.
Tamsin sat in state and Bill Redmede, who loved his own lady to distraction, nonetheless found her the fairest being he’d ever seen. Today her heart-shaped face was framed with her snow-white hair and her gown of white wool was embroidered with golden leaves and red berries intertwined with real holly and real ivy, and she wore an ivy crown.
She sat in the centre of the dais with Mogon, the Duchess of the Westmores, as her title was translated, on her right, and a tall golden bear on her left. At her feet was a table full of men – Redmede himself, and Bess and young Fitzwilliam and Bill Alan, and Cat, and the Grey Man. And on the other side sat Outwallers – a very young shaman, an elderly hunter who’d been healed by Tamsin herself, and a handsome man with the strangest skin Redmede had ever seen, blue-black like charcoal, with lively brown eyes and curly hair.
He caught Redmede staring at him, and instead of glaring he smiled. Redmede responded with his own smile.
‘Nita Qwan,’ the man said, extending his forearm in the Outwaller way, and Redmede bowed his head as Jacks did and then embraced the man. ‘Bill,’ he shouted over the music. The irks tended to listen for a bit and then wander off into conversation, and the hall was loud, although the plaintive notes of the lament were easy to hear, if you listened. ‘Or you may call me Peter!’
‘Your Alban is easy on the ears,’ Redmede said. He introduced the black Outwaller to Bess, who grinned, and to Bill Alan, who looked at the man’s hand for a moment as if it was a precious artefact.
‘Was it an accident? Or some monster did this?’ Alan asked.
Nita Qwan laughed. ‘Where I come from, all men look like me.’
‘O’ course they do, mate!’ Bill Alan said. ‘Don’t mind me – too much mead.’ He raised his cup. ‘An’ very fine it looks on ye, too!’
‘You must be the Sossags,’ Bess said.
Nita Qwan grinned and swallowed some mead of his own. ‘We must, lady,’ he said.
The music changed, and couples – mostly irks – began to rise from the benches. There were enough Western Kenecka Outwallers – with their red-brown skin and high cheekbones – to provide a solid contingent of men and women, and the Jacks and Outwallers were game to dance.
Tamsin came down the dais, and Tapio forward from the tapestries at the back of the hall to bow deeply over her hand. She smiled, as radiant as the brightest mid-winter sun, and the mistletoe in her hair seemed to glitter with life and barely suppressed magic, and Tapio gathered her in his arms and kissed her. And as they kissed, many others kissed throughout the hall, and Redmede found himself lost in Bess’s eyes.
And then the Faery Knight took a great cup of beaten gold from one of his knights and walked to the centre of the hall.
‘Be free of my hall, all you guests. But be warned that this night we celebrate the triumph of the light over the darkness – whether you choose to call that Yal’da or you celebrate the coming of a blessed babe or you merely yell for the crushing of the long night. If you serve the dark, begone!’
He raised the cup, and light flowed out like spilled wine, and the irks raised a great shout, and all the Outwallers too, and the high-pitched war cry ripped out into the night.
‘Now drink and dance!’ Tapio said. ‘Those are my only commands.’
The wreckage of the hall was fitting tribute to the finest revel Bill Redmede had ever witnessed, or joined, and he himself was almost too drunk to care what happened under the table, behind the tapestries, or on the dais at the head of the hall.
Bess reached out to a beauty – a fair irk woman with a slim figure and a halo of golden hair – and the woman caught her hands and kissed her on the mouth. ‘Child of man.’ She laughed. ‘You taste better than I’d imagined. A bright Yule to you and your mate.’
Bess curtsied. ‘You
are all so beautiful!’ she breathed. ‘Where are the hideous irks? The ugly faces and the fangs?’
The irk maid passed her silver fan over her face and there she was, a glowering hag with a nose six inches long and warts with hair. ‘Would you go to war dressed for a party?’ she asked. ‘Or to a party, dressed for war?’ she asked, and her face returned to its elfin beauty. ‘I have as many faces to wear as a child of man has dresses. Fair is fair,’ she added, and kissed Redmede until his head spun. The irk maid spun away on light feet. ‘Your mouths are rich, children of men. Be love!’
And later still, when only a hardy few eaters were picking the bones of a deer carcass on the centre table, and a hundred faeries flitted high in the cavernous ceiling, leaving streamers of pale fire as they moved, and half the hall was dancing and the other half was singing or playing instruments – hautboys, sackbuts, and corinettos and oboes and recorders and whistles and lutes and harps and a hundred stringed instruments that Bill Redmede had never seen before – some very small, or possessing just two or three strings, so that the vast cavern that was the Faery Knight’s hall seemed to move with the dance – then Mogon came and squatted on her haunches by him.
‘The time is now,’ she said. ‘This is a magic time. The aethereal is wide open to the real. Thorn will be blind as a bat, and without high-pitched sounds to help him, and all his little helpers will be deaf until morning.’
Nita Qwan, the Sossag, was resting under the table on the trestle. He emerged with a flagon of Yule ale. Redmede worried briefly what the Outwaller had seen – he and Bess had been a little busy.
‘May I see Lord Tapio now?’ he asked Mogon.
Mogon nodded. ‘You’ll see him, as he invites you.’
Nita Qwan and Redmede bowed to their companions – those still upright – and followed the Duchess through the hall. The great warden danced among the dancers, passing light-footed through the intricate whorls and turns of a hundred couples and two different figures.
At the back of the hall hung a tapestry of a unicorn, done in white spider’s web on a tissue of spider silk by a thousand faeries. It was so light that it fluttered in the breeze and so vivid that Redmede expected the unicorn to move.