“His work is…well-proportioned,” she said cautiously. “It always gives the ear what it expects, which satisfies an audience.”
“But can, perhaps, not move them?”
“Precisely my thought too, mi’lord,” Janseni said with some relief. The musician leaned forward with increasing passion. “Is it the place of art to merely give the people what they want? Or should we teach them to want more, expect more, hear more! Art, real art, something more than balance and proportion must possess. It must have fire, and passion. Art must have a vision, a challenge and a lesson to bring before its audience.”
“I like a challenge too: but not at dinner!” Lord Peridot remarked. The Countess Malahat smiled, half for him, half at her.
“Not a challenge then; I mis-spoke myself. Say rather, I would hope my music held a hand out to its listeners, and led them to a place where they had never been before.”
Valerian nodded. “Or seen once long ago; or dreamed; but thought they had forgotten.”
“Exactly,” Janseni said. “Just so.” She coloured, and abased her eyes beneath Peridot’s amused smile. “Of course I cannot promise that the piece your Lordship asked from me will reach these lofty goals; perhaps at least it will amuse.”
“Oh, it will at least amuse, dear girl. Have no fear of that.” And though Peridot’s smile seemed kindly, Janseni blanched. After that she spoke seldom, and reluctantly.
All dinner long, Mark noticed, Janseni was constantly watched by a young man two tables away, whose wan face and ardent gaze told everyone in the hall how desperately he loved her.
The Countess Malahat was what Mark’s friends called a Rain-in-April Woman: one who could stir even the deadest root. Must use wire in the bosom of her gown to push ’em up, Mark thought. You want to knock ’em with your knuckles to see if they’re ripe.
He chatted a little with her, and then a little more, kindled by the sparkle in her eyes. There was a moment, as their glances met and tangled over the remains of the cold snipe, when he found himself thinking wistfully that if only he had known about the amiable Countess, he might not have been in such a hurry to dicker for Astin’s strong-willed daughter.
The Bishop was going on at length about angling, a passion of his, and Mark tried to pay attention. Much better to think about fish, than to let his mind wander in the dangerous direction of the Countess Malahat’s bewitching green eyes. Mark caught the Bishop looking at him, old eyes cold and bright with lazy amusement. Mark blushed and looked at his hands, twisted together on the tabletop, his muscled fingers monstrous by the delicate dessert spoons.
“I lust for trout,” the Bishop remarked. “The cunning lures, the careful seduction of a teasing fly or wriggling spoon; the strike’s fierce consummation!”
Like soft fingers Mark felt the Countess’ eyes running over his back, his neck, his arms.
“—And the desperate, hungry battle between the angler and his prey…Ah,” the Bishop sighed, eyes glittering like frost. “Nothing like it.”
“Ha! The Queen is tristeful,” Val said suddenly.
All eyes darted to the head table. The Queen was frowning at a butler, but just as Mark looked up, Gail happened to be looking at him. Her brown eyes were fierce and alarmed.
Her look ran through him like a crossbow bolt; his nerveless fingers went numb upon the table.
Valerian blinked blandly at him. “Remember something?”
Sharply Mark drew in a breath, tried to smile, shook his head.
Steady on, steady on. You and Princess Gail were meant for one another, lad. He remembered that afternoon, the feeling just before he asked for her, taking his life into his hands like a jug of ale he meant to drain at a gulp. He sat, stricken to the heart that he could have thought of turning from her.
She won’t be easy, I guess: but to shy from her would be base treason, breaking faith wi’ all that’s fierce and proud and free in both of you.
A silence dragged out for quite some time before he realized everyone was waiting for him to speak. “Beg pardon?” he gasped.
“I asked you your opinion on the Ghostwood’s game,” the Bishop asked, “and if there would be hunting there, now the spell is ended.”
“Uh, well. Squirrels, of course. Good hunting if you like squirrel pie.” The Bishop’s nose wrinkled. You’re babbling lad. “Some nice trout in the Boundary though.”
“A fine little river,” the Bishop reflected. “Fine trout I had there, three years ago, and carp, too, if you can believe it. But as for game, now, I should like to try the Wood itself. Picture it! To hunt a glade no man has swept with hounds before!”
Countess Malahat shuddered provocatively; Mark watched the shiver travel from her closed eyes down past her ripe mouth, her soft throat, her silky shoulders, and, some long time later, down into the folds of her plum-coloured gown. When he looked up he found her watching him, and smiling. “Would you not think it dangerous,” she suggested, “to seek your sport in a—forbidden place?”
The Bishop chuckled. “Not after what our friend has done. We sportsmen all owe him a debt, for making good another great preserve. The spell is broken, the Wood is safe.”
“Think you so?” Janseni said softly. “I think so long a song of mourning must an echo leave.”
Mark nodded. He did not believe that sunlight soon would gladden the Ghostwood’s eaves. Too much lay buried under dry needles there. Too many years lost. Too many lives.
He shuddered. By God you let some loneliness out when you broke that spell, Shielder’s Mark, and it’s followed you home. No great deed without its consequences, good and bad, he thought, looking at Valerian. For the first time doubt blew into his heart like a puff of wet spring wind, damp and cold and cloudy. Could he have been wrong to break the spell? ‘A mad quest to wake the dark’—that’s what Stargad said. Under the table Mark touched the cold black handle of the iron dagger. ‘Stay the dagger must, or the heart will bleed.’
The Bishop chuckled. “It is a woman’s place to shiver at a name, a past, or anything which local legend has invested with an awe and sense of dread.” He smiled at the Countess, reaching for his wine glass. “This curse was laid in grandfather days. The Time of Troubles, of ghosts and magic chained by Aron, Duke of Swans, has long since passed. From out of superstition’s dusk to daylight have we come since then. How runs the ancient adage? ‘Faith is a candle, where Reason is the sun.’”
“I have heard it,” the Countess said, smiling and widening her eyes, “But I never thought a Bishop said it, Father!”
The Bishop smiled again and swallowed his wine. “That I do not know.”
“Ask Valerian,” Lord Peridot suggested. “He knows everything.”
Valerian frowned warily. “Why tease me, cousin? Never have I made that claim, nor never will. My moiety of wisdom exceeds not by one drop the portion held by any at this table.”
Peridot grinned. “Of course! You surpass us all in all, including modesty…And you do know whom the Bishop quotes, I wager.”
“Well, yes,” Valerian admitted. “It was Aredwyth the Sage, a theologian of Duke Aron’s court.”
Lord Peridot raised his hands to the rest of the table. “You see? I told you he knows everything.”
“Not a fraction of a fraction of it,” Valerian protested. “Theology by chance is one of my amusements, and Aredwyth a writer not easily ignored.”
“He can’t be that important if the Bishop didn’t know him,” Mark pointed out.
There was a long moment of silence around the table as everyone but Mark looked away from Bishop Cirdon, who was studying something at the bottom of his wine glass with great care.
Oops.
Shite.
As Mark began to blush, Valerian dove into the silence. “The passage, though obscure, is interesting because nobody remembers the second half. In full, the famous lines of Aredwyth should read,
‘Faith is a candle where Reason is the sun;
No one needs a candle: until darknes
s falls.’
You see, the meaning of the adage changes considerably in the context of the whole.”
“Yes,” said the Bishop at last, turning to signal a steward for more wine. “I see that.”
As the remains of the seventh course were being cleared away and a last round of lemon ices served, the King stood to make a speech. It was about the dawning of a new age, and seemed to take one. The lemon ice was consumed, the bowls removed and replaced with salvers of rosewater. Heads were nodding by the time the King announced that before the wedding Mark was to be knighted and given charge of Borders, the Keep that stood across the river from the Ghostwood. He would be made a Duke, and the Wood itself would be his preserve, including the Red Keep, should he choose to restore it. Of course the King’s men would first sweep through the Wood and the Keep, to make sure all things lost there were restored to their rightful owners.
Mark leaned over to Valerian. “That means they’re going to loot it before they turn it over, right?”
Val nodded.
The King then congratulated Mark upon his title, his land, his heroism, and his choice, if he did say so himself, in brides-to-be. Everyone sipped from their glasses, and there was a scattered round of polite applause.
Lord Peridot clapped the loudest. Pushing back his chair he stood and bowed. “Your Majesty! Allow me to present a present to the Crown.” The King nodded; Janseni tensed. “In honour of your daughter and your new-found son-in-law-to-be, may I present the first recital of a song commissioned from Janseni, the wonderful young woman whose tunes propose to teach us all a lesson!” Turning, he signalled to a far archway.
The sound of flutes wound into the room, two of them, laughing and quarrelling. Finally, a kind of harmony emerged from their strife; the same notes that had struggled the moment before were now part of a beautiful melody, merry and haunting at once, like children seen playing from a distance.
It was strange music. At first Mark thought it odd for oddness’ sake, and ugly at that: typical of the Court. But when the melody popped out, he realized it was a tune he’d known all his life, sung by the children in his village. Only here it was richer and more complex.
He glanced over at Valerian, who smiled and shook his head in wonder.
Two flutists entered and stood on either side of the archway leading into the hall. Marching in behind them, dressed in sombre robes and grave expressions, came three midgets. They waddled, trying their best to keep in step. As the flutes began their melody for a second time, the dwarfs began to sing. Or rather, to croak.
Midgets Two and Three looked frankly scared to be parading before so glittering a company; their voices faltered. Their leader kept grimly at his task, but he was hopelessly tone-deaf, and each note was agonizingly off.
A nervous titter started from the back of the Hall. The lead singer frowned, but his juniors, clearly trained as clowns, clutched for that laughter like drowning men. They began to caper, bellowing their parts and making droll faces.
The laughter grew, and their antics with it, until soon the flutes were lost, and all that was left of the song was the first midget’s part, yelled above the crowd.
The clowns clambered up onto a table, dancing together. The aristocrats of Astin’s Court laughed until tears streamed down their cheeks. Twice as funny because the bastards were embarrassed first, Mark thought, revolted.
Janseni was deathly pale. “Why?” she whispered, unable to meet Lord Peridot’s lazy eyes.
“Come, come, girl. Your music is a hit! See the merriment it brings before the Court.”
Countess Malahat laughed, bright as sun on ice. “I must admit that something in this music took my hand, and led me where I’d never been before.”
Two tables over, a young knight flung back his chair with a crash. The flutes faltered and the crowd fell silent as he strode over to their table. “Lord Peridot?”
Peridot glanced up at him. “Deron, is it not? Count Berkeley’s son. The passing of your father was a wound this kingdom will not easily survive.”
Deron’s handsome young face was white with rage. He was the fellow who’d been mooning at Janseni all night, Mark remembered. How horrible, to see the woman you loved so humiliated. “Sir, you are no gentleman. This music is a work of great passion, by a lady of unparalleled artistry. To demean, to sabotage it with these antics I would have thought too low a thing for even you to do.”
Peridot shrugged. “A matter of opinion, sir. You are free to yours.”
“He’s giving you an out,” Janseni said in a low voice. “Take it, Deron.”
Deron stood a moment longer, jaw working. “I do not think I can,” he said at last. And then he slapped Lord Peridot so hard it snapped his head around.
Peridot rubbed his cheek thoughtfully with his right hand, displaying his missing finger. His voice was light, but he gazed at Deron with serpent’s eyes. “Is it now in fashion, striking cripples? Or is it only old Count Berkeley’s son who is so brave? Well well, ’tis clear I am no man of arms. A sword I will be forced to borrow. Your Majesty,” he called, turning to the throne. “I hate to bother you, but this young man has challenged me, cripple though I am. I must petition for Sir William’s loan.”
Deron swallowed, glancing up at William, the King’s champion, but said nothing.
“Sir William!” Gail cried. “Father! Letting Lord Peachblossom mock my wedding is one thing, but giving him the satisfaction of murdering Deron in the bargain is too much!”
“Be quiet!” Astin roared. “This squire before us all did willfully challenge Lord Peridot while knowing him to be unfit for combat. It was a churlish act, and if Duke Richard’s trusted man begs of us the service of our champion, he shall have it!”
Janseni’s head sunk into her hands. “There Deron, what did I tell you?” she said listlessly. “With one night’s work he’s killed us both.”
4
Gail
The following evening Mark and Valerian were talking in Mark’s chambers. Valerian was hunched before the fire, peering at an embroidered cushion through a large disc of glass that made small things look bigger. He clucked in admiration. “To think of sewing all those stitches! Women’s work would drive me mad. What clever fingers, what knowing hands!” He frowned at his own hands: soft, pale, plump.
Mark paced the flagged floor. “Why would Peridot stick his knife in Janseni? Had she jilted him or summat?”
Valerian pocketed his seeing glass. “If you can’t cut down the tree, you may at least collect its fruit,” he observed.
“What?”
Valerian stroked his beard and ventured a smile. “Shielder’s Mark grasping Court intrigues is like a man clutching at a cloud. Well, you’ll learn…The ancient theologians wrote that bodies were mere husks for souls. Within the orbit of the Crown a like phenomenon may be observed, for people here are pails to carry power in, each face and heart but boots, cloak and breeches for the true political reality. I cannot see Lord Peridot’s heart, assuming that he has one, but it isn’t hard to make a guess or two. Janseni is a brilliant newcomer, a challenge to the status quo. Thus she threatens Avedut, music-master of the Court for many years.”
“Now I follow you,” Mark breathed. “Peridot was drawing swords for his friend Avedut!”
“I do not think the men acquainted,” Valerian said briefly. “In truth, I never prior to last night had heard Lord Peridot reflect upon a single note of song, nor take pleasure in the art. The point is that the patron of Sir Avedut is the honourable Councillor Anujel.” Valerian blinked meaningfully at Mark, as if this made the whole matter quite plain.
Mark’s shoulders slumped. “And so…?”
“Anujel gave Richard his support for Gail’s hand, and the Consortship, of course. For Peridot to attack Janseni is for his master, Duke Richard, to support Avedut and thus Anujel, his ally at the shoulder of the King. This much is clear as glass.”
“But Anujel’s support doesn’t matter now that I’m going to marry Gail, d
oes it?”
“Well, no, but it mattered when Peridot originally commissioned the song. Going ahead with the parody at a feast in honour of the engagement was a mistake, though: pure viciousness on Peridot’s part. Richard will be displeased with him for that, I think. After all, were you to suffer an…accident, then Gail’s hand would once more be free, and Richard wouldn’t want to have burned any bridges.”
Mark gulped as Val had begun to muse. “For Peridot it was a lucky chance that Deron loved the lady. He is Duchess Fenwold’s nephew; eccentric as the horse-faced Duchess is, the taint of his hot-headedness will surely mark her. Fenwold is hers, not her husband’s; she is too great for even Richard’s arm to shove aside, but she can be pushed out of the lists and into the stands, if he is shrewd about it. Had she interceded with the King for Deron’s life, she would have put herself in debt to him, and so reduced her influence. Thus would there be one fewer Power with whom Duke Richard must contend…”
Val trailed off and shook his head. “Too complex for me! Divine Lissa, that angel who attends upon your bride-to-be, could give you deeper reading. In matters such as these her mind is like my scrying-glass, that makes the tiny clear. If a duke were plotting for the Crown, she would sniff it in his wife’s perfume, or read it in the trimming of his beard.”
Mark paced from the fireplace to the window. It was dark out, and cloudy: all he could see in the glass was his own faint reflection, pale and powerless and angry as a ghost.
“At least Deron was not badly maimed,” Valerian observed.
Mark grunted. “Sir William let him off easy.”
Oh yes, that bloody duel was an education, wasn’t it? Intrigue’s not the only thing you don’t understand. You thought yourself a warrior. But watching Deron and Sir William was the end of that little fancy. Soldiers, real knights, fought sheathed in steel from boots to helm. “Bastards wear a bloody smithy on their backs, and feel it no more than a fish his scales,” he murmured, awed and angry.
“Any knight can dance a galliard in his plate, my friend. The years that you spent stooking corn or plowing fields or shearing sheep these men spent at tilts and butts and buffets, with masters for the sword and lance and bow. Every noble’s son can make a warrior, if he wills it.” Valerian winced, glancing wryly at his own soft belly and white uncalloused hands. “I never took to it, myself.”