"He is two men,” Vazul said as Nicolas paused for breath. "If he unites them he shall indeed be formidable. In the meantime, Your Grace, remember what interests him the most but do not discuss matters you yourself are not well versed in. Rather lead him to talk and then listen—for a good listener ranks high in any company."
Listen, she reminded herself now in the gray of early morning. Any speech they would exchange during the occasion to come would doubtless follow the full formula of court ceremony. And she had no idea when this very important listening could be arranged.
Then Julta was at her door, behind her the herb apprentice. The maid superintended the setting up of the big screen and the establishment of the bath behind it. Afterward, as Willadene moved toward the array of cosmetic soaps and the like Mahart spoke on impulse.
"I have never tried the fern lotion. It is so rare that perhaps it is best for this occasion."
Willadene picked up the fern-leaf-shaped bottle and instinctively held it to her nose. The scent was certainly right and she knew that no one else—unless it be Saylana—would be wearing it today. She nodded and held it out to Julta.
That enticing odor clung to both Mahart's skin and the hair Julta dried, first with a series of towels, and then combed until dampness was only a faint trace.
"Nothing else, I think," Mahart said when they were done and she sat in lacy chemise and petticoat to eat the breakfast which had been delivered to her chamber. This was one morning she would not have to face her father in the dining hall.
"Yes, Your Grace,” Willadene agreed. The scent clung to her own hands. "Save some cream beneath the eyes—let them seem the more lustrous—"
Mahart laughed and licked a drop of honey from her lower lip. "Oh, yes, trump me up as fine as Saylana—except I am not her. Keep that in mind." She looked more sober now.
It was many turns of the timing glass later that Willadene was free from that room where the rustle of fine fabrics and the many scents of extravagant fragrances made it seem that they were in the midst of a crowd of posturing ladies. Though Saylana did not appear, two of her ladies came to stare and, as Zuta said later, to snoop, their ostensible mission to present Mahart with a lace-bordered kerchief to be fastened to the chatelaine at her belt. And, of course, to present their mistress's best wishes on this joyful occasion.
Mahart's gown was of a dull blue, close to that of the sky of evening. And it did have the advantage of showing not only its wearer's slender form, but, in addition, the clearness of her skin. She had allowed only a touch of the rouge brush, Willadene agreeing heartily with her abstinence, while she chose to allow her hair to be braided as if she were truly younger than her years. However, among her brown plaits had also been woven with care silver chains studded with moonstones, a small tiara and a collar of the same stones providing her jewel display.
Willadene could well believe that the High Lady had deliberately chosen gown color and stones to be in contrast to the usual rich display Saylana seemed to favor. And, looking critically at Mahart, as two of the undermaids under Julta's hawk eyes adjusted the robe of state, she knew that indeed the Duke's daughter had chosen wisely to make her appearance in what might be termed sober garments.
The ladies Famina and Geuverir picked up the far edge of the heavy train, making an odd pair, as they assumed haughty masks and went to play their own parts in the day's pageantry.
Willadene saw to the ordering of the dressing table. The fern scent was certainly a staying one and somehow, during these past hours when it had been ever in her nose, she had found it less to her liking. But at least it was not of the heavy muskiness the other ladies favored.
She had already made her own plans for the morning. There was no hope, of course, of gaining any good vantage place below from which to watch the arrival of the young conqueror. But the day before she had marked a tower window from which, standing on a stool and leaning well forward, she could at least get a bird's-eye view of the ceremonious meeting before the castle gateway.
Now she slipped quickly along, hoping that no one else might have had the same thought, to find her favored lookout. It was necessary, she discovered, that she lean well out to view the swirling mob of colorfully dressed commoners, and she gave a start as the trumpeters used their instruments with full force—only to feel a hand behind her seize her girdle.
"Easy does it, mistress—" She did not need that voice to identify who stood behind her. As usual her nose supplied the proper name, though she glanced around at him.
On impulse she said, "The footing is wide enough for two, Master Nicolas." Though why she suddenly felt so at ease with him she could not explain, even to herself.
"Wise woman." He chuckled and then was up beside her. To her eyes he moved lithely, and she wondered at his speed in recovering from the wound which she had seen in all its depth and width as she had helped to dress it. There was, she decided, a certain pallor under his tanned skin but otherwise she could see no trace of ill about him.
He was up beside her now, but he had not removed his hold on her girdle and somehow she did not resent his touch, knowing it for no gesture of familiarity but meant to steady her in place.
“ 'The Prince cometh— ' " he quoted from the beginning of an old ballad. Indeed, the crowd had parted, or were swept back by the Duke's guards, to allow an open way for a man on horseback, followed with a parade-ground stride by a number of men who could never be mistaken for anything else but expertly trained armsmen.
The Prince himself was mail clad but with a brilliantly patterned tabard over that mail. He carried his helm before him on the saddle horn so that his head, with its dark curl of locks, was bare. Willadene could not see much of his face from above, but it was as if her present companion could read her thoughts for he said, "He is comely enough, mistress, truly a prince to win any lady's eye—if not her heart.”
There was something in his tone which caught Willa-dene's attention. "You do not find him as they see him, then?" She gestured toward the wildly cheering crowd below.
"I do not find him," he returned. "No, I shall not tease you with riddle, mistress. It is only that he is not open to any man's reading. In many things he excels—he is such a fighter as perhaps Kronen has not seen for generations; he can induce in those who follow him such a loyalty as has no price."
"Still"—she pushed, reaching behind his words to his tone—"you find him flawed."
Nicolas frowned. His lips shaped an answer she could not hear, so he moved the closer. Now his breath was warm on her cheek and she could catch, through those cheers, "Not flawed, perhaps more unknown. I have seen him, in battle against outlaws; as a representative of the Duke and from a House of name I have shared field rations at the same fire; we have spoken of old lore. He has a liking for such, which is one of the stranger sides of his character. But I think that the real man is guarded far inside him and no one has yet seen that Lorien."
“They say the Duke would have him wed with the High Lady." But she felt a moment of cold. The court was no place for openness (in fact, now a very fleeting thought of the strangeness of Nicolas's sudden frankness with her also struck), but the Mahart she had come to know deserved much better than a man who guarded his inner self past all knowing.
"Those of high blood do not do their own choosing," Nicolas commented. Then, as if he would change the subject quickly, he pointed with his other hand to a splash of rainbow colors to the rear and the right of the Duke, now advancing (giving his usual impression of being encased in someone else's finery) with Mahart a dutiful two steps behind him.
"There," Nicolas continued with no note of any deep respect for his rightful ruler's retinue, "stands the so-called 'glory' of our court—Lord Barbric and his companions. Note their mail, their swords!" He was openly scornful. "We would have rid ourselves of the Wolf and his kind long since and not had to wait for an over-border fighter to do it, had those slink hounds been of the old Duke's like. They have their own ways of fighting and it is neve
r clean."
Willadene remembered that morning in the shop—the smashed glass on the floor—the threats openly made.
"The Duke is the Duke," she said slowly. "And also Chancellor Vazul is no weak-willed man."
"One cannot build a fortress on sand with shifts underfoot, ready to swallow its stones," he said wearily. "You know—did not Ssssaaa report—that there is a growing rot within here?" He struck the stone ledge with his palm. "Your mistress thinks it something such as has not struck before. Perhaps the plague itself left some foul seed to sprout in later times. Have you heard talk of an old nurse of the High Lady Saylana who is given lodging and care by her solicitous mistress?"
Willadene shook her head. "Julta does not gossip, but the Lady Zuta continually brings news to the High Lady. She has never mentioned such."
"The Lady Zuta." He repeated the name. "Now look you—see that young sprig in violet blue, third to the right of Barbric?"
With some effort Willadene was able to place him. She was far more intent on what Nicolas had to say now than she was in the protracted ceremony in progress below.
"He is Lord Hulfric—note the name—it possesses the ducal ending. But he is very, very far removed from any hope of possession. Lately he has shown some interest in your Lady Zuta during her toing and froing in search of gossip. He is certainly a drinking comrade to Barbric upon occasions and yet not to the fore of that lord's companions. Watch Zuta if you can, mistress. Ah—Lorien is officially welcomed. I trust all the guardians of protocol are relieved that all went so well."
He was pushing back from the ledge when Willadene put out her hand and caught at his sleeve. "You hint much but say nothing clearly," she said soberly. "Just why did you seek me out?"
"Mistress, you are among our High Lady's close companions for now. And I remember a night when I saw you defeat something which should have had no existence in any sane world. There are very few under this roof who can be truly trusted, and I think that you can be counted among that number. Watch your mistress—the Duke's plans are known, and opposition to them simmers. We must be prepared if it comes to a boil."
His eyes were like steel points again as his gaze met hers. These skulking night games were his—yet Halwice trusted him and Willadene would trust the Herbmistress to the death.
She nodded, and then he slipped away and was gone, almost as if he were able to vanish into the wall. For a second or two she felt very much alone.
There would be the state banquet now before Mahart would return to her quarters to start the lengthy preparations for the ball this night. That the High Lady must accomplish two such ceremonial occasions in one day and then look forward to a night on display made Willadene very glad that fate had not called her to such a destiny.
Mahart stretched out on her bed and resolutely closed her eyes. Her feet ached, her back ached, and she felt that she had aged a lifetime since this morning. Also, she never wanted that fern scent around her again! At least they had to agree that she be allowed an interval between that never-ending smiling, listening (though she certainly had heard nothing but formal platitudes from the Prince during that interminable meal) to refresh herself—if such a thing were possible—before she need once more appear in full glory at the ball.
However, she longed for the right to just go to sleep— with Halwice's wonder incense beside her—to wake in that place of fields and flowers. She turned her head back and forth on the pillows now, trying to find a comfortable resting place. At least her hair had been freed of its banding with all the eyelike milky stones which they had strung upon her.
Only—there was the Prince. Did anyone ever call him just Lorien? she wondered. He smiled, yes, but never with his eyes. He spoke, but only the set, correct comments with a compliment which she was sure he did not mean thrown in now and then.
He was handsome, yes, and his warrior trappings distinguished him in an interesting way from the fops of the court. Though she had been seated next to him at the high table—Saylana at least three spaces away—he had been far more attentive to her father's halting bursts of speech, delivered as if the Duke were finding it difficult to remember he must carry on a conversation.
There had been a number of questions from her father about the attack on the Wolfs stronghold, of course. But it seemed to her that the Prince answered those in the most general fashion, not enlarging on any aspect of the engagement. He had admitted that they had taken some prisoners who had been duly turned over to his host's guard several days earlier, and that statement had appeared to render her father more than usually thoughtful.
Vazul had been duly presented to the Prince but then had kept his distance, not appearing at her father's shoulder like a bulwark as well as a dispenser of advice. However, Mahart did not doubt that the Lord Chancellor and the Duke had rehearsed many of the questions her father asked now.
Since she could add nothing to such a conversation on swords and deeds, she had indeed been reduced to listening. But after a while she detected a kind of pattern in her father's questions. While he outwardly was rejoicing over the downfall and erasure of the Wolf, he appeared also to be unduly interested in any men taken in close company with that outlaw—though he made no direct demand concerning them.
At length, it had all been over. She had found the rich food little to her taste and the company frustrating. Only one fact had struck deeply: the High Lady Saylana had kept a close eye on Lorien—or perhaps on the two of them. But, youthful as arts might make her appear, Saylana was far too old for the Prince—or was she?
Stranger matches had been made in the past. If a lord, to further some scheme, married a green girl near young enough to be his granddaughter—could not a lady with all the practiced allure of Saylana be able to attract this prince— notably not attached elsewhere? And what a blow that would be for the Duke—to have his tortuous plan go so awry—that his sworn enemy attract the very ally he had hoped to net!
Mahart dug her fingers into the softer coverlet. She had sent them all from her—Zuta, Julta, the Herbmistress's girl. But her period of freedom would be short. The ball—did her father actually believe that she could in any manner be a rival for Saylana should that High Lady set her snares?
Who was she? The Duke's daughter, yes, past seventeen years of age, until recently kept as if in slumber as far as the world was concerned. She knew nothing of the games within games which the courtiers played. And to her they seemed a stupid waste of time for the most part. In the old books things proceeded in a much more exciting fashion. High Ladies often even took up swords and fought battles for their rights. She thought of herself confronting Prince Loren with a sword and suddenly giggled.
No, she was Mahart and as Mahart she was determined to do the best she could for—herself! Let Prince Lorien caper his way about the ballroom (though she could not imagine his stiff figure performing any kind of a caper); she would watch and, as they had bade her, listen.
Pulling the coverlet tighter about her shoulders she finally drifted away as the aches of her body eased and no plans stirred to keep her from slumber.
Green—not the fields of her longing but giant ferns, curling tips well above her head. Around her was a green gloom, and a humid wind pressed against her, though she was sure that in this place her real body did not exist.
What did exist was a force which drew her past any will or ability to stem, and it seemed the farther she was into this murky gloom the thicker was this growth, as if the giant plants around her were attempting to pull her into fragments, absorb her into their own lush growth.
Mahart had known nightmares in her life. When she was younger shadows had come to grisly life and pursued her down dark corridors. However—this had a difference, a kind of reality which left her stiff with fear.
For a moment the ferns before her either parted or faded into nothingness and she could see a face. Old—old with such a map of wrinkles that even mouth and eyes seemed overborne by their depths. But the sparks of eyes—the maligni
ty in them was like a physical blow.
Behind this monster wrought by the changes of great age there was another—but only a column of mist—though she noted that it had a darker core. But it was those evil eyes which held her nettled. Two claw hands, wrapped by twisted and gnarled bone, arose—pointed—
"Your Grace!" It came like a shout and the fern forest was snapped into nothingness by its force—with it that which had confronted Mahart there.
She opened her eyes to find that she was sitting up in bed, panting as if she had raced through corridors the prey of some fear.
Zuta's hand was on her shoulder and Julta stood at the foot of the bed, the herb girl with her. They were watching her wide-eyed, and the herb girl was holding out an amulet in her hand.
"You—you are all right, Your Grace?" Zuta asked.
Mahart’s heart was returning to its proper rate of beat and she drew a deep breath. "It was a dream!" She said that defiantly, as one who refused to be caught by any night-born fancy.
Chapter 16
You are overtired, your Grace,” Zuta gently pushed Mahart back on the pillows. "Herb girl, have you no restorative? Her Grace has but a short time now before the ball begins.”
Willadene made for her herb bag. Yes, no one was immune to nightmares, but the High Lady seemed to have met with one deeper than usual terrorizing level. The smell of fern was very strong. It was lingering unlike any fragrance she had had contact with before, and she wished strongly for Halwice. For she was plagued by the belief that whatever talent she might indeed have was being overshadowed now by something else. Yet there was no betraying evil stench she could pick up.
Mahart seemed to agree with her, for when Willadene returned with a small cup of honey-flavored liquid, the High Lady was already out of bed and seated before a small table on which was a tray with a light meal.
There was another dinner to be served this night, but only for the male members of the court. The ladies were too intent upon necessary hours of primping to waste time so.