“My father was glad to get rid of me. Why would he object?”
“But your uncle?”
It was Branna’s turn to hesitate. She was wondering if she should just tell Neb outright that Aunt Galla approved and would work her husband round to her point of view, but Neb took her silence wrong.
“I see I’ve gotten above myself.” His voice turned stiff and cold. “My apologies for troubling—”
“Oh, don’t be silly! You’ve not done anything of the sort. I was just wondering what Uncle Cadryc would say, is all.”
Neb started to speak, but their eyes met, and all at once they both burst out laughing.
“You’re being so formal,” Branna said, “but your hands are full of goose feathers.”
“So they are.” Neb held the bundle out. “May I offer my lady a token of my esteem?”
“Why, my thanks, good scribe!” Branna plucked out a feather and held it up. “I shall cherish this in honor of you.”
Neb started to laugh again, glanced over her shoulder, and abruptly fell silent. Branna turned and saw Gerran, standing some fifteen feet away, glaring at her with his arms crossed over his chest.
“Neb!” Gerran called out. “The tieryn needs you to write a message.”
“He’s right.” Branna felt herself blushing. “I was supposed to tell you.”
“Then I’d best go in,” Neb said. “Will you accompany me?”
Gerran remained where he stood, scowling, between them and the broch.
“I won’t,” Branna said. “I need to talk with Midda.”
She turned and strode away, then glanced back to see that Gerran and Neb were heading in the opposite direction. She shamelessly ran for the servants’ quarters, but before she reached them, she hid the goose feather in her kirtle.
Midda and the other maidservants shared a long loft, spread with straw and scattered with mattresses and blankets. The younger lasses shared mattresses, two and three at a time, but Midda, the cook, and a few other privileged servants had a mattress apiece, and wicker screens to set off little areas they could call their own. At one end of the loft, near the only window, stood a wobbly plank table with benches on either side. At the moment shorn fleeces lay strewn on the table. Midda and three other women sat pulling them apart into fist-sized chunks with formidable bone combs. Before it could be spun, all this wool would need carding, using finer combs.
When Branna came in, the women started to rise, but she gestured at them to stay sitting. “Our lady wanted to know how you’re coming along,” Branna said.
“Not too badly,” Midda said. She laid down her comb and stood up, stretching her back. “We’ve done a good half of them.”
“Splendid! If you’ve got some ready for spinning, give it to me, and I’ll get a start on that.”
“I can give you a sackful, at least, my lady. I’ll fetch it.”
While Branna waited, the other women went on with their work. So many odd tufts of wool flecked their clothes that they looked as if they’d just come in from the snow. Fibers drifted lazily in the air, picked out by the sun coming through the window. Branna sneezed, thrice.
“I’ll wait on the stairs,” she called out.
In but a few moments Midda joined her in the cooler air outside. The maid handed over a pillow-sized sack, carefully packed to avoid tangling the fibers all over again.
“Ah, my poor lady!” Midda said. “I hate seeing you like this, having to spin like one of the servants.”
“Oh, come now! It’s not that bad. Even Aunt Galla takes a hand with the spinning now and again.”
“Still, you deserve better.” Midda set her lips tight—a sure sign that she was thinking of Branna’s stepmother.
“Actually, Midda,” Branna said, “I think I do, too. I’m just not sure what that may be. And speaking of better things, why aren’t you all working outside, where it’s cooler?”
“Because it keeps threatening rain. It’s a fair job to haul everything out just to haul it back again.”
“Oh, of course. I should have thought of that.”
As she went back to the broch, Branna kept watch for Gerran, but since the men were planning their tourney, she managed to avoid him for the rest of the day. She did see Neb, however, as she was carrying a tin candle lantern up to her chamber after dinner. She’d just gained the second floor when Neb came down from his chamber on the floor above.
“We meet again, my lady,” Neb said.
The words were utterly simple and ordinary, yet Branna felt as cold as if she were standing in a winter doorway. Neb took a step back, began to speak, then merely stared at her. All around them Wildfolk materialized, solemn gnomes clustering upon the floor, sylphs flickering in the dappled light from the lantern.
“There’s somewhat we need to talk about.” Branna pointed at the Wildfolk with her free hand.
“There is, truly. I don’t know why we haven’t.”
“I was frightened. Were you?”
“Somewhat. I don’t suppose it would be seemly for me to come to your chamber.”
“It certainly wouldn’t! We could go up to the roof.”
Like most Deverry duns, the main tower had a flat roof, reachable from the top floor. Neb went up the ladder and through the trapdoor first. Branna handed him the candle lantern, then followed, scrambling up to find herself in the midst of pyramids of heavy stones, stored there in case of attack.
“Oh!” she said. “The air’s so lovely and cool!”
After the heat of the day the night breeze felt like a caress. In the clear air the stars hung close and thick, as if the sky were a pierced lantern, and the stars’ light shining through from the home of the gods. They picked their way through the heaps of stones to the edge of the roof, guarded by a waist-high crenellated wall. In its shelter Branna found a wooden chest, wrapped in oiled leather and no doubt containing bundles of arrows. She perched upon it, and Neb sat down on the roof facing her.
“Here,” Neb said, “you’d best blow that candle out. Someone might think the broch’s on fire or suchlike.”
Branna opened the lantern’s little door, blew out the candle, then put the lantern down beside her feet. Gnomes materialized to join them, and sylphs, glowing like moonlight, gathered in the air and gave them enough light to see each other. Branna’s gray gnome climbed into her lap, squirmed like a child, then leaned against her whilst it sucked one of its bony fingers.
“Very well,” Neb said. “We both see the Wildfolk, even though we’ve always been told that they don’t exist. It must mean somewhat, somewhat beyond our seeing of them, that is. Do you think so, too?”
“I do,” Branna said. “I keep feeling like there’s a secret I know, or I should know, but I’ve forgotten it.”
“I keep hearing riddles in my dreams, and they always seem to have you for an answer.”
Once again Branna felt the peculiar cold, sheeting down her back. She shuddered with a toss of her head.
“Have you ever dreamed about me?” Neb leaned forward.
“Well, not precisely.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Oh, well, you see.” Branna let her voice trail away. “It’ll sound so foolish.”
“Naught that you’d say could ever sound foolish to me.”
He sounded, he looked so urgently sincere that for a moment Branna couldn’t speak. Her heart was pounding, and she felt her face burning with a blush.
“My thanks,” she said at last. “All my life, I’ve had such vivid dreams. They carried over from night to night, too. I’d go to the same places and talk with the same people. And one of them was an old man with your eyes, and his name’s much like yours. Nevyn, it was.”
“But that means ‘no one.’ ” Neb started to laugh, then let his voice trail away.
“It means somewhat to you?”
“It does, but cursed if I know how or why.”
By sylph light she could see him frowning; then he shrugged the problem away.
“What sort of things did you dream of? Besides the old man, I mean.”
“Oh, well, childish things, I suppose. Like dweomer. I could work dweomer in my dreams, and even turn myself into a bird and fly.”
“I wish I had dreams like that. Most of mine are dull. That’s why I can remember the ones with you in them. They stand out, like.”
“What are—” She broke off, turning to listen, and Neb rose to his knees.
Down in the ward someone was calling for Neb—a high-pitched boy’s voice.
“My brother,” Neb said wearily. “Here, we’d best go down.”
“I suppose so, but can we talk more some other time?”
“My lady, I’d like naught better.”
They stood up, and Branna retrieved the lantern, its candle dead and cold. “I shouldn’t have blown that out,” she said. “It’s going to take a bit of doing, getting down that rickety ladder in the dark.”
Neb held out his hand and snapped his fingers. The candle wick glowed, then caught, leaping into golden light. Branna gasped aloud.
“How did you do that?” she said.
“Ye gods.” Neb sounded terrified. “I don’t know.”
In the lantern’s dappled light they stared at each other. Branna wanted to speak, to acknowledge and discuss what had happened, but she could see the raw fear in Neb’s eyes.
“Neb!” It was Clae’s voice again, yelling at the top of his lungs. “There you are! What are you doing on the roof?”
Neb trotted over to the edge and held the lantern up high. “Just getting a little air,” he bellowed. “Oh, very well, I’ll come down.”
Neb helped Branna down the ladder from the roof, escorted her to her chamber, then took the lantern and hurried down the stone staircase to the great hall. He was wondering if Clae would tell everyone that he’d seen his brother with Lady Branna, but Clae was so full of his own news that it seemed he’d never noticed. He came running over the moment Neb stepped off the stairs.
“Guess what?” Clae was grinning, his eyes bright and wide. “It’s about the tourney.”
Neb could have cheerfully strangled him. “The tourney?” he snapped. “You brought me all the way down here for some news about the stupid tourney?”
Clae shrank back, the smile gone, and raised a hand as if he feared Neb would slap him.
“Well?” Neb snapped. “What is it?”
“I’m going to get to be in it, that’s all. I suppose it doesn’t seem like much to you.”
His voice ached with so much hurt that Neb’s anger turned to shame. “Oh, here, I’m sorry,” Neb said. “It’s the wretched hot weather. It’s making me as nasty as a springtime bear.”
Clae shrugged and looked down at the floor.
“Tell me more,” Neb said. “Surely Gerran’s not going to have you facing off with the warband.”
“He’s not.” Clae looked up. “Coryn and I are going to get to fight. Coryn’s been practicing for years, and I’ve only just started, but the captain says that I’m good enough already that we can fight in the tourney.”
“Ye gods! Well, that’s an honor, indeed.” Neb thought of their father and of what he would have said. “You must be blasted proud. I know I am.”
The grin returned like a blaze of sunlight. “I sort of am.” Clae’s voice trembled against this forced modesty. “The captain says I’ve got a cursed lot left to learn.”
“Most likely, but I don’t doubt that learn it you will.”
When, at the end of the evening, Neb went to bed, he was hoping that he’d have another dream about Branna or the most beautiful lass in all Deverry. Perhaps his expectations made his dreams tease him, because he dreamed nothing he could remember in the morning but a few scraps of images, revolving around tallying up the dun’s taxes, and a voice saying, “now they’ve all been paid.” And yet, as he went down to breakfast, he found himself remembering the things Salamander had said in Cengarn, about gratitude and wyrd, and realized that they and the dream were—somehow—all of a piece.
Lady Branna was sitting near a window inside the great hall. Gerran, standing just outside in the bright morning light, could see her in silhouette as she leaned onto the table on one elbow to study the game board lying between her and Mirryn. Carnoic, probably, Gerran thought. She plays well for a lass.
“And just what are you staring at, Captain?” A woman’s voice, and it came from behind him.
Gerran spun around to find a stout woman—a widow, judging by her black headscarf—standing nearby, glaring at him with her hands set on her hips.
“And just who are you?” Gerran said.
“Lady Branna’s maidservant.” Her dark eyes narrowed as she looked him over. “I’ve tended her from the time she was a tiny baby, and I shan’t be letting any harm come to her, not from the likes of you, my fine lad, or anyone else in the wretched warband either.”
“I’ll not be doing her the least bit of harm, you old scold!”
The woman snorted. “I know how much honor you lads have around women. I warn you, I won’t have my lady harmed even if I have to go to the tieryn himself to stop it.”
With that she pushed past him and strode off. Gerran mouthed a few curses after her. It seemed that everyone was warning him off Branna these days. The little talk that Cadryc had given him, telling him in no uncertain terms not to cause trouble in the dun, still rankled Gerran’s soul. I’ll wager Lady Galla put him up to it—that thought wasn’t much comfort. With a few more curses Gerran turned back to the window.
Much to his annoyance, he saw Neb, sitting down next to Branna as easily as if he had the right to be there. Gerran was hoping that Mirryn would send the presumptuous scribe away, but instead, Mirryn stood up, smiling, chatted for a moment or two, then walked away, leaving the game and Branna to Neb. Gerran jogged round the broch. He was planning on going inside to join them, but Mirryn met him in the doorway.
“We’d better exercise the warband’s horses,” Mirryn said. “Round up the lads, will you?”
Once the warband had left the dun, Mirryn decided that they should take a good long ride out in the open air, and Gerran could think of no reason that they shouldn’t. By the time they returned, noon had come and gone, and Branna was keeping her aunt company in the women’s hall.
Over the next few days, every time that Gerran saw Branna, Neb was right beside her, except of course at meals, when she sat at the honor table and Neb sat with the other servitors. Gerran began to regret his own stubborn insistence on eating with the warband rather than taking a place with the family. He took to hanging around the broch in hopes of catching her alone, but if he saw her walking out to the garden and followed, there would be Neb, waiting for her. If he came into the great hall of an afternoon, she would be sitting with Neb and watching him write letters. At times in the evening she would disappear, and he could find her nowhere, not even the women’s hall. At those times his suspicion that she and Neb had gone off somewhere together would turn him surly.
How could she prefer that milksop scribe to him? The question vexed Gerran more and more as it became more and more obvious that she did. He pinned his hopes on the tourney. Despite his attempts at modesty, he knew that he was the best swordsman in the western provinces. Other lasses had found his skill and flair impressive. No doubt Branna would, too.
Soon enough the answers to Tieryn Cadryc’s invitations came back in the form of messengers from the duns of his vassals. Standing beside the table of honor, Neb read them out that evening. Lord Pedrys would be delighted to attend, but Lord Samyc’s wife had just given birth, and he had just received the p
romised riders from the gwerbret; he felt he needed to stay home on both counts, particularly the latter, in case the Horsekin came raiding again.
The invitation had just missed Lord Ynedd’s parents, who had left their dun to visit kin two days before the message arrived. At this news, little Ynedd burst into tears and ran out of the hall. The child had been desperately hoping to see his mother, Gerran knew, and coldhearted as it was, he was glad she wasn’t coming. Ynedd would need to forget her coddling sooner rather than later. That left Lady Marigga, regent for her elder son, Coryn’s brother. Since no one had expected her to come, no one was disappointed or slighted when she pleaded pressing duties.
“It’s just as well that we won’t have many guests,” Lady Galla remarked at that point. “The harvest wasn’t all it might have been, and I was rather worried about the food.”
Two days after the messengers came home, Lord Pedrys, the riders of his warband, and his wife, Lady Omaena, arrived with their pages and servants and provided Gerran some relief from his brooding. Once they’d found places for Pedrys’ warband in the barracks, Gerran and Pedrys’ captain, Tidd, whose graying hair and mustache showed his age and experience in these matters, went down to the meadow behind the dun to mark out the contest ground. Their arms full of wooden pegs and ropes, Coryn, Ynedd, and Clae trailed after, chattering and laughing in excitement.
“I can remember being that young myself,” Tidd remarked. “A tourney seemed like the best fun in the world then.”
“It doesn’t now?” Gerran said.
“Oh, here, Falcon. You know what we’re practicing for.” Tidd looked absently away. “Too many friends have ridden to the Otherlands for me to take much delight in tourneys.”
“True-spoken.” Gerran felt a sudden chill, as if a cloud had passed over the sun. “Well, the pages will learn that lesson one fine day, and probably too cursed soon.”
Branna helped her aunt settle Lady Omaena and Lord Pedrys into their guest chamber, which sported the second-best bed and some fine tapestries. Pedrys glanced around the chamber, bowed to Galla, and hurried off to go drink with Tieryn Cadryc. Their personal servants carried up their bundles of clothes and the like while Omaena fussed until everything was stowed away to her liking. The lady then retreated with her fellow no blewomen to the women’s hall, where she lowered herself into a cushioned chair with a sigh of relief.
The Gold Falcon Page 21