“Alain!” he cried, grabbing his cousin by the shoulders. “Thank God. For a while I thought you might have been chopped into small pieces by Tiarnán of Talensac.”
Alain grunted, though he found the greeting comforting. Tiher was a prickly fellow, not given to sympathetic cousinly embraces, and this warmth from him seemed an acknowledgment of the seriousness of what Alain had undergone.
“You look awful,” said Tiher, holding Alain by the elbow and guiding him to the bench where he himself had been sitting. “Here, come sit down; do you need something to drink? Servant! A cup of wine for my cousin. — Lord Christ, Alain, you were a fool to go to Comper!”
“I had to,” said Alain, and felt a secret satisfaction at his own daring. Looked at rightly, slipping into a stronghold and snatching a private conversation with his beloved under her father’s very nose, and then boldly facing her approved lover on the road afterward, was a heroic thing to have done. He at once launched into a glorified account of it. Of the meeting on the road, he said only that his rival had asked for the privilege of returning the armor of a noble opponent.
“That was very magnanimous of him,” broke in Tiher. “But I suppose you can afford to be magnanimous when your lady has thrown your rival out the window with her own fair hands.”
Alain gaped at his cousin indignantly.
“Look, Alain,” Tiher went on, brushing heroism aside, “I’ve made all the excuses for you that I could think of, and the duchess, who has a soft spot for lovers, has put in a few good words as well. When we turned up and they noticed that Lady Marie had been roughly handled, and you weren’t there, there was uproar like a melee of hounds around a kill and —”
“Do you think I care about that?” demanded Alain. “I’ve lost the one thing in the world I most desired; what difference does it make that the duke’s annoyed?”
Tiher rolled his eyes heavenward and crossed himself. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” he exclaimed. “I wouldn’t want to explain to your father that his overlord has dismissed you for disobedience and neglect of duty, but if you want to, by all means go!”
Alain gaped again. The servant came up with the cup of wine, and he took it numbly. “The duke couldn’t really dismiss me, could he?” he asked.
Tiher shook his head in amazement at his cousin’s simplicity. Of course, Alain had no great experience of the ducal court. He’d done his service as a page at Chateaubriant, the castle of one of his father’s friends. Tiher had joined him there, as a squire, after his spell at the monastic school. Nobody at Chateaubriant would have dreamed of dismissing the son of the lord of Fougères. And after Chateaubriant there’d been different manors belonging to the castle of Fougères, months at Fougères itself — it had only been in the last year or two that he and Alain had spent any time at court. Alain still didn’t seem to have grasped that the second son of a Marcher lord was not a person of much consequence outside his father’s domain.
“The duke is perfectly entitled to send you pacing,” he told Alain. “You were in charge of bringing Lady Marie here, and you ran off and left her on the road. And cousin, he was angry … .” He told Alain of the duke’s furious lecture. “And it doesn’t make it any better,” he finished, “that what you did instead was to try to steal away the betrothed of one of the duke’s favorites. But, as I was saying, I put the best gloss on it I could, and I think the duke will pardon you. I made excuses for you, the duchess interceded for you, and when Tiarnán came in this afternoon he behaved very handsomely. He told us he’d met you on the road near Montfort, looking mournful as an owl because the Lady Eline had thrown you out the window, and that you’d be along as soon as you could, but that your horse was worn out with lover’s errands and had to come slowly. Hoel was tickled by that; he laughed over it with the duchess. As soon as you’ve finished that wine, you’d better go and apologize to him. Tell him that you were confident that, after her ordeal, Lady Marie wasn’t going to try to escape again; that you thought he wouldn’t mind if you left me to escort her on the last stage of the journey; and that you were mad with love and despair. I think he’ll give you a ready hearing and a free pardon.”
Alain took a swallow of wine. “Tiarnán came in this afternoon?” he asked unhappily. “So the duke’s been told that he’s going to marry Eline?”
“What did you expect? Hoel had heard as much from us already — I had to explain why you weren’t here — and he was a bit disappointed, but he congratulated Tiarnán and suggested they use the cathedral at Rennes for the wedding.”
“Hoel was disappointed?” Alain asked suspiciously. “Why?”
Tiher shrugged. He was fairly certain that Hoel had hoped Tiarnán would marry Marie Penthièvre and secure Chalandrey to Brittany. It was clear enough that if anyone in Brittany was going to be acceptable to Marie, it would be Tiarnán. She’d been singing his praises loudly to the duke and duchess, and had listened to their opinion of him with glowing eyes. Well, that was only fair: he’d saved her. But it was also perfectly clear that Tiarnán had no interest whatever in the girl he’d rescued, and had, indeed, almost forgotten her. When he’d arrived in Rennes he’d been surprised when the duke and duchess thanked him for his services to the duchess’s kinswoman — “What? Oh, you mean Lady Marie” — and had gone straight on to talk about his forthcoming marriage. Marie herself had come into the Great Hall while he was talking, and he’d paused only to greet her politely and ask her how she was, before returning to the arrangements for the wedding. Marie had stood watching him for a little, then gone silently back upstairs to the duchess’s apartments. And as soon as the announcement and the arrangements were concluded, Tiarnán had left the court without even waiting for the evening meal. He was doing penance, he’d said, so as to be free to take the sacrament at the wedding Mass, and was no fit company for a noble court; he would return in a month for the wedding.
Tiher had been relieved to discover that Marie’s rescuer had so little interest in the rescued, though he was offended on Marie’s behalf: a lady like that deserved more attention! But there was absolutely no point in telling any of this to Alain, who at the moment had ears for nothing but his own grief.
“Hoel would prefer a man of proven loyalty to marry land,” he said instead. “Tiarnán could have had an heiress from him for the asking any time. But of course, the duke didn’t want to offend Tiarnán, or Hervé, and he had no reason to interfere with their arrangement, so he blessed it. The marriage will take place at Rennes cathedral on Midsummer Day.” It was a mark of the duke’s esteem for Tiarnán that the wedding would be arranged by the court at the cathedral; a minor nobleman would normally marry at home.
Alain blinked miserably as he took in this further sign of his rival’s honor and his own wretched disgrace. He put the wine down and pressed his head into his hands.
Lord, he’s wallowing in it, thought Tiher. “I’m very relieved you’ve turned up unharmed,” he said aloud. “I didn’t know what I was going to say to your father. My God, man, you were a fool! Eline couldn’t legally marry you even if she wanted to: she’s under her father’s authority. And Hervé was entitled to do pretty much what he wanted with you, finding you in his own manor — and, it seems, in his daughter’s bedroom! As for Tiarnán, he’s the last man in Brittany I’d want to fight. You’ve been very lucky to come out of this so lightly.”
“Lucky?” asked Alain wretchedly. “To lose my lady, and then have to crawl to the duke with apologies for trying to get her back? I won’t count myself lucky unless Tiarnán breaks his neck.”
Tiher raised his eyebrows. Tiarnán’s magnanimity had been squandered in vain. But he supposed there was no point to magnanimity if you didn’t squander it. “There are other ladies in this world, thank God,” he remarked neutrally.
“None as lovely as Eline,” replied Alain.
Tiher shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s said they’re all lovely in the dark. And, to speak plainly, there are some I prefer to Eline in clear daylight.”
/> At this Alain picked his head up in genuine shock and astonishment. I have blasphemed, Tiher observed. Mary the mother of God couldn’t be preferred to Eline. “There’s Lady Marie, for instance,” he said, unable to resist a bit of goading.
“Her!” exclaimed Alain in disgust. “How can you compare her to Eline? It’s like comparing a swan to … to a thieving magpie!”
“The magpie is a brave bird, cousin. You’ll find all the court agreed in praising her. When she came in here, she declared straight out that she would marry no servant of her father’s enemy, and that she would rather die defending her honor than live deprived of it. She looked as gallant as Count Roland defending the pass, but much prettier. Now Duke Hoel has said that she may marry whichever of his knights she pleases, provided the man is noble, loyal to himself, and willing. And, of course, we’ve all declared our great willingness, all those of us that aren’t married already, and some of those that are looked as though they wished they weren’t. But she’s refused us all, and announced to the world that Tiarnán is standing surety that no one will force her — though she never needed any protection from him, of course. It’s a sad comment on the way they do things in Normandy that she thought our duke would let someone force her. Duchess Havoise has made her a lady-in-waiting. They’re cousins of some kind, of course.”
Alain had no interest in any branch of the Penthièvre clan. He drained his wine and dropped the cup on the table. “The court can praise any silly magpie it pleases,” he said contemptuously. “I won’t.”
“Good,” returned Tiher. “All the more chance for us.” Alain stared. “You really do admire that Penthièvre girl!” he exclaimed in surprise.
“Oh, yes,” said Tiher warmly. “Without hope, cousin, without the least hope. But I intend to enjoy myself admiring. It’s good sport. You go apologize to the duke. If your armor arrives, I’ll see to it.”
IV
By midsummer the lovely weather that had gilded the end of May was only a dim memory. June started with rain and continued with more of it. At Rennes the castle moat was no longer a dry ditch, but a slippery bank leading to a deep puddle full of rubbish and drowned grass; streams ran through the streets of the town, washing their filth into the brown and swollen Vilaine River.
The wedding party from Comper set out at dawn on the nineteenth, and had a miserable journey to the court. The roads were deep with mud, and the cart of baggage got stuck twelve times, and had to be levered out with branches broken from the trees. When they at last arrived in Rennes, late in the afternoon, Lord Hervé left the servants at the castle stables to see to the exhausted horses, and hurried his equally exhausted daughter across the muddy outer bailey and up the stone steps to the keep. There he learned that Duke Hoel was in the kennels, inspecting his hounds. After a brief discussion in the guardroom, Hervé went off to greet his overlord, leaving the duke’s butler to escort Eline to the Duchess Havoise, who was sitting with her ladies in the solar, the dayroom above the Great Hall.
The duchess and her attendants had been weaving, spinning, embroidering clothing, and, of course, talking. It seemed to Marie, sitting and listening to them as she so often did, that no one in Rennes ever stopped talking. The court was an exhausting and exhilarating labyrinth of voices: every evening she lay down weary but hopeful, thinking she’d grasped one of its patterns; every morning she woke up to find the pattern changed, a new voice added, another turning to the maze. People were always coming and going. The duke’s family and officials, the servants, and some thirty of the household knights remained at the court all the time, but the rest of the faces changed with dizzying speed — knights supplying their overlord with their due of military service for the year, arriving, paying their respects, going off on postings or staying with the garrison; tenants and stewards of the ducal estates coming with reports and going with instructions; barons suing for a favor or complaining of their neighbors’ depredations; bishops and abbots arranging benefices, arriving in a cloud of servants and leaving in a procession of clerks. To Marie, accustomed to small communities where the appearance of a stranger was an event, it was breathtaking. And all these people talked constantly. Even the language they talked in shifted all the time: a conversation could begin in Breton, end in French, and be Latin in the middle. Nearly everyone spoke both the vernacular tongues, and most of the officials were fluent in the learned one as well. The duke preferred to speak Breton — he was from Quimper, deep in Breton-speaking western Brittany — so most of the knights did the same. Marie had asked one of the duchess’s ladies to teach her the language. She could get by on her own French tongue, though: the duchess, born and bred in the March city of Rennes, spoke French by preference, and her attendants naturally followed their lady’s lead. When Eline entered the solar, it resounded to a lilting Breton French discussion of, naturally enough, the rain. Her arrival, cloaked and dripping, simply provided the conversation with more fuel.
“By Saint Anne, child, you’re drenched!” exclaimed the duchess.
Marie had tried to dislike Havoise, but had utterly failed to do so. The duchess was strong-willed, domineering but good-humored, sentimental, sly, and surprisingly coarse; she had bad legs, a poor digestion, an omnivorous interest in other people, and a tremendous zest for life. She was kind, too: Marie would not quickly forget the poultice of borage leaves her first night in Rennes, or the way the duchess had fussed to find her new gowns, declaring indignantly that it was absolute nonsense for Marie to be afraid: nobody was going to harm her cousin. It had been impossible even to refuse the gowns: “Child, you cannot, cannot wear that black thing at court. I forbid it.” Since, apart from “that black thing,” all Marie had were some old gowns from Chalandrey that no longer fit her, she’d had to accept the duchess’s charity, though she’d taken only the plainest of the dresses offered her. Pressed between the firmness and the kindness, she found herself giving the duchess her oath that she would not try to escape from her gentle captivity again — not unless she was being forced into marriage.
“Take that wet cloak off,” Havoise now ordered Eline. “Sybille, go fetch the girl a blanket. I don’t know when I’ve seen such foul weather for June.”
“If it keeps coming down like this,” said Sybille, who was the wife of the duke’s stable master, and Havoise’s greatest confidante, “they’ll have to cancel the opening hunt of the stag season. Lord, what the men will say to that! — There aren’t any blankets in the chest here, my lady.”
“Go fetch one off a bed!” ordered Havoise. “And you, Corentin” — to the butler — “have some mulled wine sent up for the girl. And — why not? — some for the rest of us as well.” He bowed and went.
“I’ll fetch my blanket,” said Marie, and went to get it. When she came back with it, Eline had been seated in Sybille’s chair next to the duchess, and Sybille was on the chest, with Eline’s wet cloak and damp wimple beside her. Eline had curled her cold feet up into the chair, leaving her muddy slippers in the rushes. Rain-sprinkled, fragile, fair, and radiant, she shone in the rain-dimmed solar like white violets in a dark wood. Marie looked at her with relief. She had hoped that Eline would prove extraordinarily beautiful. Her heart still clung to its habit of stinging when she thought of Tiarnán, despite all attempts to point out to it the absurdity of this behavior. If Eline was extraordinary, there was no reason to be ashamed of herself in comparison. Marie draped the blanket carefully around the slim shoulders, and Eline looked up at her with a sweet smile of thanks.
“I hope the sun shines for your wedding, Lady Eline,” said the duchess. “But meanwhile, be very welcome here. The castle is crowded just now, I’m afraid, and you’ll have to share a bed until your wedding.”
“After it, too,” put in Sybille slyly. The duchess had no doubt anticipated the joke, but she laughed at it heartily. Eline went pink.
Visitors might have to share a bed at any castle, but at Rennes more often than at most. There was never enough furniture for the private apartments. The
court of Brittany, like most noble courts of the time, did not stay in one place, but moved about among the duke’s various residences — Nantes, Rennes, Quimper, Ploërmel, and a number of lesser places. This spread the burden of providing for it over a larger number of estates, and it also helped to keep the castles sweet. (After a few months with the whole court in residence, the overburdened ditches and middens about any building reeked overpoweringly, for there were no proper sewers.) When the court moved away from the smell, it took some of the furniture with it in a great baggage train, but most was left behind in the empty rooms, guarded by the castle’s regular garrison. Rennes was so new that it hadn’t accumulated much furniture of its own. The very stone it was built from was sharp-edged and shining; even the ceiling of the Great Hall was bright, not yet blackened by decades of smoke. Inside, its walls were still mostly bare, the few tapestries and curtains hanging among yards of blank stone. The partitions used to divide up the rooms were designed for smaller residences, and never stretched all the way to the walls. If you went to the solar you had to remember to take a stool with you, or else you sat on the floor, or on the chest like Sybille.
“Lady Eline can share with me,” said Marie, “if she likes.” Eline smiled at her again, this time with a touch of confusion. “Have we met, Lady … ?”
“Marie. We haven’t met, but your husband-to-be did me a great service, and I’d like to repay it in any way I can.”
“Oh!” exclaimed Eline, and jumped smiling to her feet. “You're Marie Penthièvre! I’ve heard so much about you.” Inwardly, she, too, was relieved. She hadn’t been able to help feeling jealous and anxious about the runaway heiress Tiarnán had rescued, especially when one of her brothers told her that the whole court was in love with the unknown. But it seemed there had been nothing to worry about. Marie was ordinarily pretty, no more, dressed simply in a plain blue-gray gown, and old to be still unmarried. Eline liked the way she had referred to “your husband-to-be” in such a frank and friendly way. There was no danger here. “I’d be delighted to share with you,” she said.
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