That Way Lies Camelot

  The horsebreaker slapped thighs clad in worn and dusty leather. 'I break other people's stock,' he declaimed. 'I don't keep any for myself.' As the Lord beside him left the fence, the horsebreaker remained riveted by the stud, who pranced and stamped in tight circles. The longing on even that man's jaded face was fresh and bright and transparent as at last he turned to catch up. 'Still, we'll see. Would you consider a split? Payment in silver, and one foal?'

  The Lord snatched his cuff from the clutch of a briar the mowers had missed. His mouth turned down. 'Certainly not. Duke Tanemar's enough man to please, for setting such store by a daughter who's nobody's beauty. It's the foals or nothing, for you. Press too hard, and I'll send for a gypsy.'

  'What, and see your treasure stolen the moment it's tamed enough to halter?' The voices of the two men dwindled, amiably contentious as they hammered out terms for their bargain. Trionn sat up in the brush, feeling whitely shaken. He wished all the cats had not left. In balled up, tongue-tied frustration, he watched the stallion storm out one last gust of air, then settle his head down to graze.

  A sadness near to pain ached in his chest at the thought that such a beast should ever be trapped or taken.

  Distressed beyond concern for the slaughtered pig, Trionn saw the sun gone, and the sky turned silver at twilight before he trudged back to resume his neglected chores. The first thing he noticed as he approached the haphazard cluster of frame buildings that made up Silverdown's manor was that lights burned in nearly every window. Reflections of a hundred flames danced in the boggy, sediment-choked ditch that fronted the tumbledown breastworks. Trionn might have a clumsy tongue, but he was exceptionally quick at balancing. He crossed the ditch by footing across a slime-caked log, last remains of the decrepit palisade. He reached what the servants called the yard, a narrow, irregular court whose cobbles were furred in moss; or had been. A fresh, dirt-colored scar sliced one corner, where a drudge labored by torchlight to scrape the paving bare.

  More of the new Lord's fussiness, Trionn concluded. Stones could not grow clothes of moss, and wax lights and tallow dips could be burned without care, as the animals were slaughtered for the table; as a great dun stallion could be torn from his freedom and used as a bribe to court a girl. Wrapped in unhappiness, Trionn failed to notice the cat that had found him already. It trotted up .and shouldered between his shins, joined at a run by two more.

  The alley past the stables bustled with activity. Horseboys jogged between stalls with buckets and grain to tend a half dozen strange mounts. Notes spilled in haphazard arpeggios from the gallery window as a minstrel tuned up to entertain. A woman laughed and a hound howled, while guards who normally would have argued over dice stood up straight and silent at their posts. Their weapons had never been less than sharp, and they had stayed alert enough to challenge intruders; yet their past rows had enlivened their duty watch, ending always in companionable laughter. The change in Silverdown's rule had seen new uniforms with badges at the shoulder. Trailing streamers adorned each man's polearm, as if they were bedecked for a tournament.

  But the occasion was no holiday. The servants had little cause to celebrate. All of Silverdown had been swept into change, until Trionn no longer felt at home. He hurried between a drudge with a basket of soiled linens, and the fowler, who carried the cranky old goshawk hooded, and muttered that his dearie should be mewed up and asleep to keep her health.

  Trionn threaded a practiced path through the turmoil, until the orange tabby streaked across a patch of torchlight to join his impromptu escort. The cat's arrival drew the eye of the cook, en route from root cellar to bakehouse to chastise the Lord's page for dawdling.

  'You! Trionn! Where've you been all afternoon, and the pots all stacked up for washing? You're a wastrel, boy, and due for whipping. Get inside and back to work, or it's the Lord's own war captain'll be the one who stripes your back.'

  Trionn ducked his towhead between his shoulders and ran. The cats obligingly followed. Clumsy all of a sudden, he tripped over the door stoop and crashed into a servant with a basket.

  'Boy! There's good bread you've close to spilled and wasted, and the new Lord with a hall full of guests to feed! Say you're sorry now!'

  Trionn bobbed his head. He did not answer, though he was capable; speech did not always tie his tongue up in knots. His silence had long since branded him half-wit, and shy to the point of cold sweats, Trionn did not argue the misconception. Let Silverdown's staff think him stupid. The sting of their scorn was less than his dread of using words to correct them. He talked to the cats well enough when he wished, and had held very halting conversations with the old Lord, before his illness had brought physicians who would bar the master's door rather than admit a scullion presumed to be a simpleton.

  With the cats, now four, trailing on his heels, Trionn left the bread girl to her curses. He zigzagged past the spits into the pantry to avoid the butcher's notice, lest his absence at the slaughter pen cause contention.

  For all his care, he was spotted.

  'The pigs take the knife better when you're there, Trionn,' the butcher reproached gruffly. 'You want them not to suffer. Well, if they're held still, the cut is fast and clean.'

  But it was not at all the matter of the pig's dying; had Trionn been asked his own wish, he would have let the animals stay alive. His oversensitivity was no simple affectation. Where others in Silverdown's service might lament upon the waste, and curse the Lord's lavish feasting that saw a surfeit of scraps thrown to the hounds, Trionn woke up each night in cold sweats, apologizing in half-smothered whispers to the dead beasts needlessly sacrificed.

  Today's pig would haunt his dreams no less for the fact he had not bloodied his own hands.

  Left at last to his duties, Trionn hauled water to the washtub and started to work the dirtied pots. Cats curled around his feet, knotted together in contentment, while the speculative gossip of the servants came and went through the rattle of plates and crockery.

  Enith, as always, was most outspoken. She did not sigh over her new romance with the war captain, but turned sharp-tongued invective against the master. 'Chased the linen maid as if she wasn't married, and never mind the tart he worships in his next breath is this highborn daughter of a duke.'

  'She may well be Silverdown's next Lady,' interrupted the page. 'You should be careful what you say of her.'

  His comment was ignored.

  'She's small, and no beauty, it's said. All dark hair and wide eyes, and hips too narrow to bear a child.' This from the cook, who had a brood of eight, and his wife once again near term.

  'Never mind looks,' the butcher ventured his opinion. 'It's the lass's dowry that's at issue. She'll bring three chests of gold to her bridegroom, and if we're to have candles for the dark nights this winter, better all of us pray Silverdown wins her.'

  Trionn reached for another pot, and a gob of wet sand for scouring. Behind him, watched by the lazy eyes of his cats, the Lord's steward hurried in, looking harried. 'Another five bottles of the red wine, and quickly, before there's trouble.'

  'Man's brought his horsebreaker to table,' the cook grumbled. 'Those kind always drink.' He wiped greasy hands on his sleeves. 'Enith, take down the lantern and go for more red!'

  'Been to the cellar twice already tonight,' she howled back. 'More big spiders than bottles left, that's certain.'

  'No help for that.' Still mournful, the cook added, 'Do you suppose the horsebreaker's here to handle that murdering dun stud? If so, he'll want the wine. It's the last drink he'll have before he's dead.'

  The pageboy took umbrage at this. 'Khaim's better than that. I once saw him break the neck of a colt who tossed him. Hit it a blow that knocked it sideways, and it couldn't stand up afterward.'

  'No man's that strong,' the cook objected over the creak of the hearth chain as he dragged a kettle off the fire.

  'Horse had to be a weak, spindly thing, maybe,' ventured the butcher.

  The page insisted not.

  Trionn let
his scouring sand sink to the bottom of the wash water, sickened all over again. Though he strove over the noise and the chat to picture the stallion at his flat, free run across the meadow, instead he was poisoned by visions: of blood in the grass and the air split by a scream that might have been a woman's. Except that a horse in agony will make the same shrill sound. Trionn doubled over and shivered.

  A hard hand cuffed him back upright. 'Get back to washing, boy,' snapped the cook. 'There's barely a clean pot in the rack yet.'

  Half dizzied, Trionn groped for a ladle. His hand stopped still in midair. He could not touch the gravy that seemed suddenly the same color and sheen as congealed blood, nor could he look at the wash water clinging to his skin, so much did it shine like salt tears. The cook saw his stupefied pallor, and cuffed him all the harder.

  'Oh, no, lazy boy. Though you're sick clean down to your boot-tops, you'll stay and scour, until all this stack of washing is done and dry.'

  Trionn nodded dully. Midnight came. The lanterns and candles all burned down, leaving darkness cut only by the struggling wick of a tallow dip. Alone in the cavernous kitchen, he finished his appointed chores. When he stumbled out at last to find his cot, the mists had hidden even the moon.

  * * *

  Banners snapped, and dust blew. The new Lord had invited two friends and all of his companions at arms to watch the dun stallion's breaking. Once again Trionn had shirked his part in the slaughter pen, since a calf roast was to finish the occasion. Hidden in the crowd of Silverdown's servants, he stood in cap and apron, only one cat by his shins; the commotion had driven all but the boldest and most determined tom away.

  The stallion on whom all this interest centered galloped the far fence line, ears tripping backward and forward, and nostrils distended in deep-chested snorts of alarm. Trionn could not watch him. He could not be as the others, and admire the glossy silver coat, nor the high, black tail that cracked like a flag in the wake of his thundering run. Trionn could not bear the sight of the creature's eye, rolling white, nor could he forget the dreams that had repeatedly broken his sleep: of blood in the grass, and the stallion's ringing neigh of distress.

  And yet, unlike the dragging of animals to the butcher's knife, here, he could not be absent. Tormented by a sickness of fear that ate at his spirit from within, he could not run, but only stare down at the worn-through leather of his boot toes, his shoulders as hunched as though he expected a beating; as if he carried upon them a burden that could bend and break, as finally and carelessly as grass stems were trampled under the feet of today's thrill seekers.

  The scullion knew when the horsebreaker climbed the fence by the scream of the dun stallion's challenge; second and without importance came realization that the onlookers had ceased conversation, even the cordwainer's apprentice, who was said to jabber in his sleep. The slap of a rope shaken out of its coil reached Trionn's ears, eerily and evilly distinct over the drumroll of the stallion's charge. The scullion bit his lip. He felt through his feet the shake of the ground, and his sensitized nerves seemed to shudder at the step of the man who paced the greensward, eyes narrowed and line poised to toss.

  The stallion came on like thunder, like storm. The crowd sucked in a taut breath. The horsebreaker poised with slightly bent knees, admiring, though his life stood endangered. He was confident when the dun snapped up short from his run and towered into a rear. The man's hand on the rope did not tremble as black forelegs raked out to strike. He tossed his loop then, supremely, recklessly sure that his lifetime of skill would not fail him.

  The throw missed.

  Too fast for the eye to follow, the loop collapsed in a whipping slide off the stallion's knee as his head snaked down, and he whirled.

  Not off his guard, nor yet shaken, the horsebreaker shouted and snapped the rope. This horse, like a thousand others, would be bound to shy from any movement, half-seen where equine vision was obscured by the length of his muzzle. Stallions could be predicted. Their forehooves came down, then their head, with ears pricked to assess the threat to their footing; the shy ones would often whirl and run.

  The dun stud twisted instead. He landed, still spinning, his ears pinned flat. The horsebreaker shouted to drive him back to a gallop, his hands swiftly reeling in rope. But the stud had done with running. His silver-blue quarters bunched, and one hoof flashed back in deadly perfect accuracy to hammer the man where he stood.

  Bright blood flecked the green grass. The horsebreaker lay unmoving, while a woman screamed, and men on all sides started shouting, most jostling back from the fence, but others pressing forward. The stud danced a half pirouette, some swore, in celebration of his unholy victory. The grooms and the stable hands disagreed; the horse was a killer, but not so driven by rage that he ever once stopped thinking. The blue dun was far too crafty to mire his pasterns in a corpse or a tangle of rope.

  Solitary, unmoved to any human commiseration, Trionn crouched with his hands laced over his face. He alone had not exclaimed in shocked sympathy as the Lord's men reached beneath the lower rails, and dragged the horsebreaker's body beyond reach of further mauling. The victim was wounded beyond solace, if not immediately dead, and the tears of Silverdown's scullion were shed only and completely for the horse.

  His terror-inspired visions did not leave him. There was blood on the grass, but a man's, and the beast's, for a surety, must follow.

  * * *

  The talk in the kitchens after sundown encompassed nothing else. Trionn scrubbed his pots in his corner, and took no solace from the cats, who were thicker than usual about his feet. They might not have speech, but as he did, they could sense when trouble was afoot.

  Enith was shrill in her complaints, as she tapped chilled butter from the molds. 'What if the Lord sends his captain to do the killing? Waste of a fine piece of manhood, did that happen, and our champion took a kick like that horsebreaker.'

  'Won't,' grunted the butcher, who recalled just short of a mistake that the cook would run him out for spitting in contempt on the floorboards. 'The captain's a bastard for pride. He'd scarce soil his sword on a job better suited for my flensing knife. Though, mark, if I'm asked to cut that devil creature's throat, I won't, unless he's tied down.'

  'Who's to tie him,' Enith snipped back. 'No man but my captain has the courage.'

  'Your captain?' muttered a stable hand, in to grab dinner between seeing the guests' horses harnessed. 'Man's owned by nobody, least of all any one lass. He tumbles anything in skirts, every chance he gets.'

  His muttering tangled with the voice of the cook, who offered, 'T'were mine to say, I'd use poison. Why take chances, when a bit of tainted feed dumped over the fence could do the job just as well?'

  The Lord's page overheard, as he entered with an emptied platter. 'The horse won't be killed,' he called clearly. 'He's much too valuable for that.' Heads turned, all wearing hostile expressions, except Trionn's; he stared fixedly at his hands, immersed to the wrists in grease-scummed water, while the cats butted heads against his ankles.

  'The Lord has already decided,' announced the page in crisp arrogance. 'He's sent for a gypsy horse-caller. It's broken for saddle he wants that stud, not dead.'

  The cook slammed his cleaver upon the cutting board. 'Magic,' he said in contempt. 'Where's the coin to pay for such? Gypsies with the caller's gift come dear.' His thick, sure hands did their task slowly as he heaped steaming meat on the platter the Lord's page held ready. it's the girl he wants to impress.' Enith sniffed. 'Silverdown will be beggared ere his Lordship wins her.'

  'That's not your trouble,' the Lord's page sniped back, out of sorts because he was no longer entrusted to wait upon his master's table. With Duke Tanemar's daughter expected to accompany her father when the stallion was presented as a gift, the Lord had borrowed a page of higher station, and presumably more refined manners, from his brother's household in Tanley. Appointed to serve the lower hall until a gypsy could be found to tame the stud, the displaced page made his resentment felt at every
opportunity. Only Enith was exempt, since the boy yet held out hope he might win her favours from the captain; to any who would listen, he bragged that soon it might be he who tumbled her in the hayloft over the barn.

  Crouched over the washtub until his hands shriveled and his cuticles chapped and split from the unending mess of dirtied kettles, Trionn reflected sourly that he lost nothing from his disinclination to speak. What were words after all, but winds that blew here and there to no purpose? The cats had better sense, to express their contentment through purring. They yowled only for misery, and met daily disaffection in dignified, unblinking silence.

  The slaughtering continued the next afternoon, yet Trionn was excused. The master commanded, and for fear of his Lordly displeasure, every servant not required for other duties set to work in the sun, pulling out briars by hand. Trionn was given the noisome task of raking dirty rushes from the hall. The wooden boards underneath were to be sanded and cleaned. Enith, between frequent sniffs, claimed carpets were sure to follow. When the last wheelbarrow filled with beetle-infested straw was carted out, Trionn set to with sand bucket and rags. As cats scattered back from the spatter of his scrubbing, he reflected that Enith was spiteful. The rushes had been spread at the behest of a lazy house servant, and only after sickness had confined Silverdown's doomed cripple to his bedchamber. The floors before then, back to the old Lord's rule, had been shiningly kept oiled.

  Trionn was still at his work, mopping up sand in the shadows of a back corner, when the gypsy horse-caller arrived. She proved to be a woman, to the surprise of all; tiny, raven-haired, and wearing a patched mantle of greens and browns that might have been pilfered from a minstrel. The tassels at the hem were worn to a ragged motley of threads, and though her hair was braided and clean, her skin was the ocher of mud baked dry in the sun.