Plenilune

by Jennifer Freitag

  In time he broke off to take a drink and move away from the sideboard to the wall where there were several hangings. Margaret had not noticed them in detail before, but de la Mare drew up before one and gestured toward it with his glass. “Come here, my dear,” he said. “I want to show you something.”

  With a weary incuriousness Margaret got up, smoothed out her skirts, and rustled down to join him before a large faded print. It was a map, framed in heavy wood, supported by wires from the head moulding. The light from the candles cast sharp shadows from it; the pale yellow light danced across its pane. She moved away from the glare and saw the boundary lines on the map, unfamiliar with their unfamiliar names of cities and towns, mountains and valleys, rivers and seas. For a while she gazed at the map, feeling de la Mare’s eyes on her, but saw only the unfamiliarity of a strange place. She shook her head and turned away.

  “Very pretty. Did you draw it up yourself?”

  “No,” he said lightly. He leaned in, touching her shoulder with two fingers extended while he still clasped the tumbler, his free hand pointing to a mark on the map. “We are here, in Marenové, and this—” he swung his finger over a wide area in which Marenové occupied the western corner “—is Mare.” He took a step back. His fingers still rested on her shoulder. “It is a poor example of power, a tract of land, as if power were somehow measured in acres, a potentate judged by how straight his oxen plough the furrow. There is some truth to that,” he admitted, dropping a heavy gaze on her, “but we strive for better things, you and I.”

  “You might at least try to be a gentleman,” said Margaret hotly. She jerked away from his touch. Her cheeks burned.

  “Might!” said de la Mare in a low, terrible voice which somehow stopped her in her tracks. “Come here, Margaret. I am not finished yet.”

  She loathed the man, but turned back and stood rigidly beside him, fixing her unwilling gaze on the hateful piece of map.

  He spread his hand over the territory of Mare, encompassing it between thumb and index finger. To the southeast of his palm was what she understood to be ocean. Under the fan of his fingers, north, northeast, and northwest of his thumb and index finger were other territories whose names she leaned in to read: Capys, Thrasymene, Orzelon-gang. Below his palm were the names of Hol and Darkling. She read them and they were senseless to her, and with each word a pang of homesickness, even for her mother, wrenched in her gut. She wanted Leeds and London, Aylesward and the Avon. She wanted the bleak prospect of the Channel running riot under an October sky. This uncanny darkness that pressed against the windows of de la Mare’s house made her ill.

  His signet ring, a thick band of engraved gold clasping a fiery topaz, clinked softly against the side of his glass. “Margaret, do you know why I have brought you here?”

  She continued to stare at the map, unwilling to meet his gaze. More so than she had felt under her mother’s hand, she felt like a pawn, a piece to be moved about by de la Mare’s hand, a piece to gain power. Her eye roved over the territories with their strange names. And how, precisely, did she fit into this chess game? He wanted her to marry him—to what purpose? To fix for himself an heir? She shuddered.

  “I think that I have an inkling why,” she replied.

  He said warmly, “That is my girl. Margaret,” he mused, and frowned thoughtfully to himself. “It is a good name—a strong name, respectable, well-fitted to a Queen of the Mares.” He was quiet for a while, presumably listening to his own thoughts which stayed hidden behind the motionlessness of his eyes. Presently he said, in a tone altogether different, “They have set me at a foolish wager, but I will play the game. They cannot be without their Overlord for long, and they will soon see reason. You,” he turned to her, “will help them see reason.”

  “Who is this that I am enlightening?” asked Margaret delicately.

  His fingers snapped against the map again. The candlelight danced wildly on the glass as the picture rocked under the force of his blow. “Capys my cousin and Darkling, ever bedfellows in their schemes, Thrasymene and her triumvirate sisters—I might have picked a wife from one of them, the cows!—the Lord of Orzelon-gang and all his countless provinces. All their territories, provinces, duchies, estates and all their petty lords—you will show them reason. You, my dear, for there is a woman’s cunning which no man can play at.” He smiled a devil’s smile. “They wanted me to play their game, not knowing what pieces I brought to the table.”

  If she looked at that map another minute Margaret thought she would hit the bottom of de la Mare’s glass and dash the contents up into his face. She turned away, content with the image of his fine face drenched in brandy. She tried to breathe evenly and pace out her thoughts as she walked the length of the room. De la Mare remained by the picture as if knowing she needed to think. It worried her that he did not follow: she felt as if she were still walking into his hand.

  Passing another picture she glanced up, catching a glimpse of de la Mare’s distant reflection in it. He was leaning against the table, glass in hand, gazing at the map with a grim countenance. He is being elusive. Get the truth out of him, even if it takes you all night. How long, she wondered, looking to the window, will this moon-dusk last?

  “De la Mare,” she said, turning.

  “Rupert.”

  She pursed her lips. “Rupert, what is the game that you are playing? What is at stake? What are you after? What stands in your way? I will do nothing until I know.”

  “Hmm!” he purred, pushing off from the table. His thin-set lips had curled into a smile. With a little sidewise gesture he slid himself onto the corner of the table, perched an inch or two above the floor, foot swinging idly. “The stakes are these: that one must be Overlord of Plenilune. And the game is that I will be he.”

  She watched his glass resting on his knee, swinging to his motion, casting wild amber light.

  “I am best suited to the task. The Overlords have time out of mind come down out of the House of Marenové; we are bred to it, raised with the shadow of its mantle across our shoulders. Now on the eve of my taking office Capys would dare to sow dissension among the ranks and declare me unfit by my arts to rule—as if they did not know that the men of Marenové have always tossed magic from their fingertips as a child might toss away so many pebbles.” His voice grew hard and hateful. “Capys adjourned the gathering, and when they returned had made up their minds that I must fix for myself a wife, and prove that I had some humanity to my soul before I could rule.”

  Margaret laughed softly, bitterly. “You are fit to be a king,” she said, lifting her eyes to meet his gaze. “But you would be a tyrant.”

  His face was an unsmiling mask.

  Unable to long hold that wretched gaze she went back to the window and sat looking out across the lawn. It was lit very dimly by the aura of light shining from the disk of earth’s rim. In the distance she could see the edge of the park and the lift of hills, covered over in trees. Which way did she look? Without earth she had no sense of direction. The taste of nightmare rose in her mouth.

  Where was true north?

  There were stars, more stars than she had ever seen before. The skies of Aylesward had become murky of late, competing with the overspill of smoke from neighbouring mill towns. English skies were changeful, and she had never been inclined to look at the night sky when it had been clear. Sometimes in the summer, when the nights of northern England were long twilights lingering into twilights, she had lain awake at night watching the purple play on the horizon, but had never thought to look for stars. And now she did; each star was a perfect glowing pearl fixed above her head, ringing round the haloed earth, distant and distinctly mocking. She suppressed another bitter laugh. They mocked her and she loved them.

  She looked back at Rupert. He had finished his brandy and was putting up the flask, setting aside the soiled tumbler for someone to fetch and clean. It struck her that he had not eaten yet. This sudden night made everything feel as if a full day had come to a close. What
time was it, really?

  “De—Rupert.”

  “Yes?” He slid a flask back into the cabinet and shut the glass door with a little click.

  She got up with a voluminous rustle. “I am going to bed. I am not used to this eclipse and I want to sleep while it is dark.”

  “Pull the curtains well shut. They are thick, and made to keep out the light.” He turned back to her. “I will be in my room next door, should you need anything.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him. “My door will be locked, should you need anything.”

  With rampant brows and a short little laugh he stood at the dining room door and let it open for her, nodding deferentially to her as she went past. She met two servants by the stair and another in the upstairs hallway; she could feel them all looking over their shoulders at her as she went by. She soared up the stairs and down the hallway with grim determination and they all got quickly out of the way, but once inside her own bedroom her grimness faded. She leaned against the door, listening to the soft footsteps and hushed voices of the servants without, her hand gripping the lock until her knuckles turned white. Unbidden and unwanted, their unfamiliar faces and searching glances conjured up in her the notion, You are all alone.

  It was strange how hollow those words echoed in her soul. She had always been alone, even before the train at Leeds. Her whole life she had stood alone, trying to be something better, never quite attaining this goal. She remembered her mother’s face, she remembered her sisters’ faces—so very like to her mother’s, it was no struggle to call them up. She looked on them as they fell under her mind’s eye, looked on them as from a great height, raised above and apart so that a gulf seemed to open up between them. She had always been alone among people who disliked and used her, and she had borne it like a queen; only in those parting moments when she had hurled her mother’s visceral emotion back in her face had she descended to their level.

  “I would be fit to be queen,” she murmured—her voice caught and broke, and she hated herself for that. “But I would be cold.”

  Empty, but with her head held high, Margaret turned from the door and entered the room, going patiently and methodically through the motions of undressing and getting into bed. They were small, bright, familiar things that she clung to fervently. As she lay under the warm blankets, staring up at the darkened ceiling, she almost said the old familiar childhood prayers solely for the sake of their being old and familiar, but somehow they were too earth-like, too far away, too unattainable and, somehow, hopeless. She thrust them aside and turned over, hiding a face which was suddenly damp in a velvet pillow.

  It was still dark, though that meant nothing to her, when Margaret was brought up with a start out of a twisted dream. She had been standing on the Leeds train station platform, watching a dragon-coloured train coming in with the rain falling all around. Instead of her carpet-bag she carried a falcon, and it kept turning about and digging its claws into her arm while she struggled to keep the umbrella over it. The train came in, shrieking and growling and howling until her ears throbbed. Then, with a jerk, the howling separated from the dream and pulled her to waking.

  The pictures on the walls were rattling as though a real train were coming through. Something was howling, the howl echoing round and round the house until the whole building seemed to shake. Margaret clapped her hands to her ears and stumbled out of bed, staggering against the moonquake-shudder of the floor. It was like a cannon going off, off and off and never ending. The roar went on until her head seemed ready to split with the noise. Reeling through the dark she crashed against the door and fumbled with the lock, one hand over her ear, the other ear pressed into the upward crook of her shoulder.

  She had got the door unlocked when she hesitated. It was still dark, she was in her nightgown, and God knew what that howling was. Did she really dare to go out and investigate? For all she knew it could be Rupert himself. For all she knew it was some hell-hound he kept in his possession with which to go hunting.

  Margaret wrenched the lock back into place and stumbled into bed. The blankets welcomed her with their residual warmth and there she lay for some time, ears blocked but still hearing the tide-rising surge of howling. The sounds roved about the house like ghosts looking for something, desolate, anxious, lost. She knew that feeling, and though she loathed the unknown, wretched noises, they called up something deep within her, and she knew that feeling.

  At last the howling died away, a door slammed far off, and she managed to go back to sleep.

  3 | Skander Rime

  She ventured into the garden the next day. The sun was shining and the ever-present earth loomed gleaming overhead. There was a flutter in her chest as she stepped off the rear threshold and stood under that vast naked sky. It was so clear that she felt nothing was stopping the earth from plummeting and crushing her out of life forever. But the earth did not plummet, a bird struck up a pretty tune from somewhere down the path, and Margaret walked out across the porphyry gravel with a slight wind tugging at the thin white fabric she had draped over her head. Ginger-coloured flowers danced in the beds, stoked up to a fierce burning by the wind and sunlight so that she felt she could warm her hands at them. She followed their glow down the path and into the long grape-vine arbour where the wind was chill and the shadows were deep. She moved among them as one of them, dressed in another black gown.

  In one place the arbour crossed a stream by way of a bridge, and there she paused, looking out through the leaves at the estate of Marenové. She could see the hills and their fur of trees; she could see the gentle slope of the land as it made a shallow valley for the stream; she could see what appeared to be farms in the distance. I must be looking east, she told herself. Marenové is in the extreme west of Mare.

  She lingered only a while longer, noting the muted blues in the distance and the way the farthest horizon was limned with orange as if it were a cat’s eye, catching the light and throwing it back in fantastic angel-hues. She went on until she reached the end of the arbour, and there stood at the head of a little timber stair, looking down on a long perpendicular avenue of grass bordered on its far side by the long, high slope of hill and its trees. She had come to the end of the garden and almost turned back, ready to explore the rest, when she drew up, hearing on the wind the familiar throb of hooves on turf. She listened for the sound of hounds and pulled herself back within the vine-shadows as she did so, but she picked out only a single horse’s feet, drumming lightly, swiftly, but catching once or twice as if the mount were laboured. Brow furrowed, she looked out between the fanning leaves and spied a horse coming into sight, swinging down out of the woodshore to turn up the grassy aisle.

  To her surprise, it was not Rupert. She almost mistook the one for the other, but realized as the rider approached that he had a stockier build under his sullen red cloak and, though he wore hawking gloves and bore a discontented, flapping hawk on one fist, he was not Rupert. A hawking hunter yes, but this was not Rupert. The face was too open even in its grimness.

  The hunter loped by her, foam dripping from its lips, turf-clods flying from its hooves. Margaret flinched, avoiding one such clod as it flew past her. Tail uplifted, splayed in the wind under the cloak, the horse went on past her. She watched it go, perplexed, noting the tired but strong form of the mount. But at the turn its rider suddenly reined it in, jerking round to cast a look over his shoulder. Margaret froze, her foot halfway out into the path. She could not imagine he had seen her; was it possible he had felt her looking at him? She held perfectly still, inexplicably afraid.

  The rider turned the hunter about and came back slowly. Unflappable, the horse shuffled big-boned along, snuffling softly to itself while the falcon, perturbed in the extreme, squealed and bated on the man’s fist. Margaret could see the man’s lips moving, speaking quietly to the bird in an effort to calm it while he peered among the hedge and trees and grape foliage, clearly suspicious. He was bare-headed, dark-haired, but his eyes, too, were dark, which ruined the
look that was so similar to Rupert’s. The ride had cast his cloak askew, revealing a mud-spattered jerkin of leather beneath. The man was dressed for travel, but there was something in his look and bearing which was not messenger or soldier.

  His eyes slid past her, stopped, and jerked back to her face, narrowing against the sun’s glare and the shiver of shadows in the wind. Only a moment, only a heartbeat, and she saw that he was sure. With a little sharp laugh that was completely mirthless he reined in at the foot of the stairs, looking up at her.

  “Madam!” he said, clearly surprised. “I did not realize Rupert had visitors. I might have come in better state.”

  “We will overlook it, just this once,” she said, feigning a supercilious air. “I don’t believe I know you.”

  “I don’t believe I know you, either.” The man switched his reins to his hawking hand and leaned forward, free hand outstretched. With the briefest of hesitations, she leaned down and took it. It was a rough paw that closed over her long, lean one. “Skander Rime.” His tone was one of hesitant warmth.

  “Margaret Coventry…Have you come to see Rupert?” She let go of his hand and straightened.

  “After a fashion,” said Skander, which Margaret thought was an odd and unsatisfactory answer. The man was looking at her scrutinously. It dawned on her with a little jolt that this must be Capys, Skander Rime of Capys, who had dared his cousin to find a wife, if he could win one, and prove thereby that he was human enough to take the overlordship of Plenilune—whatever that might be. No wonder she kept seeing Rupert in his face. For a moment she was at a loss, her wits shattered. Did he loathe her as much as she loathed Rupert? Was he surprised and hopeful for his cousin? How on earth—no. She winced inwardly. How did she address him?