He laughed. He seemed surprised that anyone should speak to him that way.
‘So you read histories, my lord?’
‘There are some histories in the castle. And other works. Yes, I read. My intent is to understand how the Kingdom has come to the state it is in. Why is it that we, who are more numerous and better armed than all the wretched tribes around us, have warred for so long among ourselves and never sought to open up the lands that must exist beyond our borders? I wish the hillmen no ill. Yet it is a marvel to me that the strength of our people is turned so ruinously against ourselves. Surely our kings should rule us better.’
‘I should like to see your books.’
‘Everything I have is yours.’
Which was true, or seemed to be. A few hours ago she had been shown to a room and found a wealth of objects waiting for her – books, combs, mirrors, clothes, ornaments … A maid had been there – an elderly woman called Orani, who had a narrow face and that bird-like look that Phaedra was beginning to associate with the hill people. And already messages had been issued, to a dressmaker in Baer, the largest town in the March, and a jeweller in Watermane, to present themselves at the castle on the earliest date possible.
Best of all was the beautiful, beautiful writing desk, of wood so dark that it was almost black, with thin legs carved in the shapes of sinuous, scaled creatures. Running her fingers over its surface had made her want to fall in love with him all over again.
‘You have been very kind. And I must ask for yet more.’
‘Of course. What is it?’
‘Pen, parchment and wax. I must write to my father and bring him to accept what we have done. Also I have no signet ring as your wife.’
‘Pen, parchment and wax you shall have at once. And I should write to your father too, for I have done him an injury and it must not become an insult. A signet ring will be more difficult. You could use mine—’
‘For other letters, yes, but this …’
‘Of course. And it will take any jeweller a week to prepare one … Wait.’ He seemed to hesitate for a second, and then drew something from an inner pouch.
‘There is this. It belonged to my younger brother. I had been wondering whether to give it to you, but – I think he would have liked you to have it.’
It was a signet ring, too large for her finger. On the boss was a single letter ‘P’ upon the moon of Tarceny On either side of it letters – a ‘c’ and a ‘u’ – were carved into the outer surface of the ring. The ring itself was silver, shaped like the body of a tiny dragon that wove round and round on itself like rope, so that the boss of the ring was borne by its head, and its eyes peered out beneath the letter of her name.
‘The dragon for eternity’ she murmured.
‘Among our kind, of course that is true. But for the hill people his name is Capuu, the worm that lies along the rim of the world and binds it together; and he means faithfulness. You see him in jewellery and totems and even’ – his finger touched the stonework – ‘carved upon the rim of this fountain. There were three of us, my brothers and I, and each with a ring like this bearing the letters of each other's names alongside our own. Now they are fled, and dead, and I am the master of the house.’
She said, ‘It is perfect, Ulfin. I will take care of it, I promise. What was his name?’
‘Paigan.’
‘A strange name.’
‘An ancient one. And it should have lived on in him, but did not.’
‘You must have loved him very much.’
He nodded. She waited, but he was looking firmly into the bowl of the fountain, and did not speak. So she stood in silence beside him, and looked at the steep roofs and towers of Tarceny around her.
The place was still bewildering. It seemed far larger than Trant, although not, of course, the size of the King's castle at Tuscolo. Its towers were taller, and thinner, and had looked almost graceful when her eye had first met them. She had ridden out of the forest and found herself on the lip of a broad, level valley in the hills, with the castle rearing from its steep and lonely spur opposite. The floor of the valley was covered in olive groves and had looked, from above, much like a huge garden. The afternoon light had played on the walls, and on the masses and masses of white flowers that grew in the tangled briars of the castle spur. As the cavalcade had poured down towards the trees the hills had rung with horn music.
Her hand traced the curves of the vast and sinewy beast that was carved around the rim of the fountain. She reached out to the jet of water that arched in uneven spurts from the centre. It was cool, but not cold. The droplets danced from her skin in the last of the sun. Somewhere, unseen, an ass or donkey must be turning the pump that made the water play, and a man must watch her do it. Perhaps they were in the base of the little turret on the corner of the court, which jutted into the inner bailey. Surely they would not have been there all day. Ulfin would have commanded them there from other duties on his arrival, to add this little stroke of beauty to her welcome.
She turned, and with the base of her spine to the bowl, leaned back to look up at the sky. It was pure blue on this mid-January day, framed by the towers and battlements of Tarceny Beside her, Ulfin stirred from his memories. She could feel his leg pressed against hers through the thickness of cloth. His hands were on her shoulders. Her skin rushed with blood, and he bent to kiss her neck as she had hoped he would.
Right revered and worshipful father [wrote Phaedra]. I commend myself humbly to you and desire earnestly to hear of your good spirit and well-being, as swiftly as your message may reach me. From the letter of my lord that accompanies this, and from the mouth of our messenger, you will learn that I have taken the hand and name of the lord of Tarceny I write to tell you that I have done this of my own choosing and with great joy, for I never met a man more noble, wise, nor kind to me, save only, sir, your honoured self. Lest you think me of inconstant mind I tell you that this love has come upon me in no sudden wise, but has grown over time to a greatness that truly I cannot describe to you. Never did I feel more blessed than now, and it wants to me only your own blessing as father on this marriage to let me be the happiest woman that ever lived. This I pray earnestly that you send me as swiftly as you may give it. Right worshipful sir, you have cared for me and endured much for me. If I have ever caused you grief, lately or in my whole life, then I grieve in equal measure. I pray now that you will rejoice with me, for in this marriage you are rewarded with a great ally, who will be as strong and true to you as ever chance may need, and this because the love that my lord and I bear for one another shall mean that he will love you as I do, with all heart and duty that my self can afford.
Written this thirteenth day of January at Tarceny and signed with my hand.
She wrote it carefully, with many crossings out and insertions, and she was still not satisfied with it. It should have been longer, and yet she could not think of anything more to say that would not repeat what she had written already. She had great difficulty trying to explain when she had fallen in love. She did not want Father to think that in the end she had married on a whim. But she could not possibly tell him how, or for how long, she had known Ulfin before she had left Trant.
She had also wanted to copy the whole letter out neatly herself, so that all the page would be in her hand. But she took so long over drafting it that there was no time. Ulfin was waiting for her at the stables, to show her the new horse that he had acquired for her. So she gave the draft to one of Ulfin's clerks to copy onto a blank page that she had signed. Father, who could not write well, would in any case rely upon Joliper or someone to write his reply for him. And now that she had clerks in the house, she might as well use them like the great lady that she had become. The same thought led her to amend her opening greeting to a more neutral ‘Right worshipful sir’, and to delete the word ‘humbly’ from the first sentence. Then she hurried down to the stables.
Later, she regretted making those changes. And she thought, too, that she should have offered Father
more apology than ‘If I have ever caused you grief, lately or in my whole life’. (If!) But by then the letter had gone.
The towers looked out across wave upon wave of steep and wooded slopes, ridges sharp-backed and ragged with outcrops of rock, fading into the mists of the great mountains beyond. In the deep clefts streams rushed unseen, and roads the width of rabbit-tracks wound among the valleys, climbing and falling steeply. The villages were small, and far apart. In the day and a half of slow riding from Aclete they had passed no castles or manors. The first midday rest had been at a group of four huts by the roadside; the second, at a fork in the road.
It was an empty place, after the close, busy world of Trant: empty without and within. There was no priest – a thing which should have been shocking and which Phaedra knew she must change before Father and the others of her world learned about it. Apart from that, Ulfin's household was larger than the Warden's, but it was quieter and more ordered. The big rooms imposed something of their stillness upon the humans that moved between them. The hall rose three storeys to its high rafters, with the door to the upper bailey halfway down its length and a hearth spaced evenly either side of it. White steps ran up to the black-stained wood of the gallery, beyond which lay their sleeping quarters, and the floor alternated squares of black with white marble paving in a pattern that was almost regular – but not quite.
‘Someone has been careless, sir,’ she said one afternoon. ‘For here there are three – no, five – black flagstones adjoining one another all higgledy-piggledy at this hearth. I am surprised you permit this disarrangement.’
He did not seem to be in a mood to be teased.
‘The black stone comes from quarries beyond Baer. But the white is from Velis. At the time the stones were damaged, rebellion was beginning in the Seabord. Nothing passed south from the coast. We did what we could, and I have grown used to it.’
Phaedra had not seen a room designed around a single combination of colours before – not even at Tuscolo.
‘Black and white are far more than the colours of my house,’ said Ulfin. ‘They are the colours of truth. They are clear, precise, and without decoration.’
‘Like a chessboard?’ (Aun had always referred to his board and pieces as ‘black’ and ‘white’, for all that they had been different shades of brown, and irregular at that.)
‘You are still trying to tease me. But yes. Do you play chess?’
‘I have begun to learn in the past year. My favourite piece is the queen. What is yours?’
‘You should not have a favourite piece. You should use them all, as the game requires. When the time comes you must sacrifice them without mercy. Except the King, which you must guard with your life.’
So they began to play chess in the evenings. They played on a large, beautifully made board with pieces the colour of coal and pale ivory Ulfin was skilful – far better, she judged, than Aun had been. He thought many turns in advance. His game was more subtle too. He loved to move a piece to a position of advantage, to let her worry about it until her hand was hovering over a knight or pawn for the counter-move. Then his head would shake just slightly, and she would look at the board again and see for the first time the bishop or castle his move had unmasked, its baleful threat lancing across to the heart of her defence.
She fought. She harnessed her own growing awareness of the game, of its complexities and tempo. She forced him into sudden exchanges in order to remove some piece that she thought his plans rested on. And so they played, sometimes game after game, in the early spring evenings in the hall at Tarceny where the air moved through the long, slit windows and there was no sound but the clack of the pieces and the faint stirring of the hangings, rich with history, above them. And when her defences were swept away, and her king fell for the last time, she would grimace ruefully and take his outstretched hand, and together they would climb the marble stairs to the velvet dark of the sleeping quarters, where the moon gleamed on silk sheets and their hearts pounded within their cases of skin.
So Phaedra's idyll endured into the early days of February, when the first rain for weeks was spitting lightly into the dust, and the answer from Trant arrived to shatter the dream.
… Reckless, wilful and unnatural … Your father bids me write that he should give you the Angels' curse and his too, for you have shamed this house before the King and all the Kingdom … all the blood that he and his knights have spent is set at naught … that he has sworn he shall bring you home, and trussed if need be …
The War Room of Tarceny was lit with torches, and by the windows that looked out on the afterglow of sunset under a mass of cloud. The walls were whitewashed, the furniture was dark polished wood, which gleamed fitfully in the torchlight: a big table with benches on each side of it, and a huge chair, like a throne, carved with fighting scenes at its head. The only ornament on the walls was a portrait of a young man, with the long face of Ulfin's family and a sad look in his eyes.
Phaedra looked round at a dozen men, some unknown, others half-known, but to whom she could still not put a name. Hob, Ulfin's butler and close aide, was there. He occupied a low position at the table. The rest would be knights, each with several farms and manors and a dozen or more armoured men in the saddle. Some wore mail. In Tarceny men went geared for war even on their own lands, it seemed, and for the trodden road to their lord's gate. Most were older than Ulfin by a number of years. And these were none of the homely, if valiant, faces of Trant. They were the men who had followed the old count, hard and silent. They had done what he bid them do.
Now they waited for his son to speak.
‘You know,’ said Ulfin to them, ‘that I have written to my lady's father, offering friendship, waiving dowry, and asking nothing but that he should be pleased to call me son. I have received no answer. My lady has also written, and has received some kind of answer, but little that gives us hope or encouragement. It is chiefly for that reason that I have asked her to sit with us while we discuss these things.
‘There is also the news that Abernay has brought me, which I shall ask him to tell us shortly. Lastly I have some news myself, which we should all consider and then decide what is best to do.
‘First I shall say again, lest there be any doubt, that my lady consented to marry me of her own will, on March ground and under March law. There is no doubt of this case.’
His right hand, as he spoke, rested on Phaedra's arm. His left lay on a wooden chest, carved with intricate snakes and figures, which stood upon the table like a totem of authority. His language was formal, like a priest's. Phaedra could see the men round the table guessing what they were about to hear.
‘My lady’ said Ulfin, turning in his chair.
‘Sir,’ said Phaedra, and her voice was a whisper. She tried to clear her throat, and spoke again. ‘Sir, my father caused it to be written that he does not own us married, nor would he answer your letter in words.’
Someone grunted. It might have been a laugh, but the sound was too brief for Phaedra to tell if it were rueful or scornful.
‘I do not think we need doubt his meaning,’ said Ulfin.
‘He cannot hope to win,’ said Orcrim, the white-haired knight who was Ulfin's war master. ‘We are five or more to his one.’
‘If that were all, I would agree,’ said Ulfin. ‘However, let us think that, raging though he was, he seems to have delayed eight or ten days before replying to us. That is time to send other messages, and receive answers. We know the Warden is the King's man. And it seems to me not impossible that a certain royal prince may hold himself offended in this.’
There were one or two smiles around the table. Septimus did not command the respect of the March-knights, it seemed.
‘Abernay where is the King now, and who is with him?’
A knight – one of those in mail – leaned forward. He had a narrow face, with a pointed chin and black hair cut in a circular crop.
‘I spoke with a merchant who had been sent across from Bay to make cer
tain purchases for the King's coming. The King set out from Tuscolo on the last day of Christmas. He is now at Baldwin, but will be at Bay by the end of the month. Both princes are with him, as is the Lord Develin and others. They would be at Trant for a fortnight in mid-March, and would arrive at Jent for Easter.’
‘That was his plan,’ said Ulfin. ‘Now I think it will have changed – at least about where he spends Easter. My piece is this. That an order over the royal seal has gone down all the eastern shores of Derewater, for every ship and boat that may be commanded to be at Trant by the fifteenth day of March.’
There was silence in the room again. Phaedra could hear the flutter of the torches on the wall. At the end of the table, Hob was looking thoughtful. His eyes rested on the little chest beneath Ulfin's hand. Beyond the windows it was almost full night. Rain spat lightly on the sills.
She shuddered with sudden cold.
… that you have communed in secret with enemies of his house … that until he received your letter he knew not if you were alive or dead … daughter of a loved mother, who is dead, sister of loved brothers, who are dead, and should yourself be dead to him from this day on …
In the sleepless hours of misery and rage she had told herself that she could hardly be dead to him if he were about to set out across the lake to bring her back by force. He never meant the things he said in anger. If she were in Trant she could have faced him, and won. She could have told him that Tarceny was only an enemy if he chose to make it one. She might have made him see that this was the only way for her, and so have been forgiven. It was because she was here that she could do nothing.
But there was little comfort in such thinking. The truth was that she had fled because she was powerless, and that she had hardly asked herself what he would think or say. It had been a long time since Father had raged to her face. A part of her had forgotten what it was like. Written in reported speech, by a man trying hopelessly to soften what his lord had hurled at him to say, the words had hurt her in a way for which she had simply not been prepared.
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