Violet spoke with grave formality. “I see. I can see why you were so … exercised about it, Jemis, as a man of Ragnor Bella.”
I jumped up and went to stand before the other window embrasure.The cool night air blowing through the broken panes was refreshing. My face felt hot and tight. Thankfully the priest-cote, though dusty and full of cobwebs, did not seem to be full of anything to make me sneeze uncontrollably. I tried not to clench the handkerchief too tightly.
Mr. Dart rolled his shoulders. “Now that we have settled that matter for the moment, let us turn our attention to the present day. Miss Violet: I am Mr. Dart of Dartington, lately, as I said, of Stoneybridge. I am afraid that while you and Mr.—uh, Jemis, are obviously well acquainted, I have not had the honour of your name?” Violet stared at him with much the same astonishment I felt. “Come,” he said a touch impatiently, “we are a small town, and not on the road anywhere; we will be able to find out where you are staying if you do not tell us.”
“If we were to enquire,” I muttered, but my heart wasn’t in it.
“I’m staying at the inn down the road,” Violet said, after a long and thoughtful moment.
“The Ragglebridge?” I said, at the same time Mr. Dart said, “The Green Dragon?”
She picked up the dirk from the table and replaced it somewhere beneath the cloak, then stood, muscular and as tall—or as short—as me, with her crinkly brown hair braided back from her face and the hood puddled about her shoulders like a very old-fashioned yoke.
“Jemis,” she said softly, “I am truly sorry I attacked you. I’m sorry about this spring. I’m sorry for … everything. But I’m not … in so many ways I’m not what you think I am. I don’t think it wise we see each other again.” She glanced at Mr. Dart. “I am sorry we met under such inauspicious circumstances, Mr. Dart. I don’t expect to see you again, but I am … I am staying at the Green Dragon.”
“Even the Green Dragon would require a surname of some description.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Very well: Miss Redshank.”
He didn’t say anything; neither did I. It wasn’t a name of note that I could think of, though something about it rang a very faint bell of familiarity. Some story I had heard long ago, perhaps. Possibly a tale Mr. Dart had told me, his interest in history being well-established even when he was a boy and we sat at my father’s knee begging for stories of adventure.
Violet lifted her hood again, then stopped again at the door to look back at me. “While we are being so formal … Jemis, by what name should I remember you?”
I twisted my lips, but merely said, quite quietly, “Mr. Greenwing.”
She froze, mouth parted, in almost comical surprise. I couldn’t read whether it was faked or real; somehow didn’t care. I didn’t watch her go up the hill.
I suppose I should have mustered concern for a young woman walking alone at night—to the Green Dragon, no less—but she’d been the one to choose that house of mixed repute, not us, and … I sighed.
Violet Redshank, even so.
Chapter Ten
“What a corker!” said Mr. Dart as he came back to the table. “Frankly a bit terrifying.”
I quirked a smile. “She is at that. She came First at Morrowlea.”
There was a bit of a silence. I cast about for several things to say, then just gave up and said what I was thinking. “It was against the university statutes to give one’s surname or home barony at Morrowlea. They wanted everyone to come in as equals. Everything was the same level for everyone, professors to freshmen.”
“Radical,” he said. “You must have loved that Lark woman, to tell her about your father.”
I made a shrug to show I really didn’t want to talk about it any further. “So. What’s all this about picking mushrooms in the dark of the new moon?”
“Oh … it’s not that …”
“Of course it’s not. Come on, give. Are we going poaching, gambling, carousing, or cock-fighting?”
“A secret society is having a meeting in the woods tonight. I thought you might like to go with me.”
“What, you belong to a secret society? What I missed by going on my walking tour of Rondé!”
“I can see why you didn’t feel up to coming back right away,” he muttered. “I don’t belong to it, I just overheard people talking about it …”
“Well, there wasn’t much else to talk about. Before I came home, that is.”
“True. Well, last month I was out—picking mushrooms—with an acquaintance of mine up the Rag, and …”
“Come, come, Mr. Dart.”
He leaned back on the table and grinned at me. “You’re too suspicious by half, Mr. Greenwing. All right then, we were poaching salmon from the Baron’s upper pools. As we were on our way back towards the Hall, we came up behind several men on their way home. We thought that they might be the Chief Constable’s men, and, well, since we’d been reasonably successful in our fishing, we thought we’d best not draw attention to ourselves. We were close to the fork between Ragnor Bella and Dartington, and they stopped to make their adieus to each other there. One of them mentioned as to how he would be away for the next meeting, and a second said that they would see him at the new moon, then, and that they should meet the third at the crossroads—you know, where the old Astandalan road crosses the east highway, just before you get to Ragnor Parva—and they could go on together to the meeting-place at half past eight.”
“What made you think it was a secret society, and not just an appointment for, say, mushroom picking?”
“They had a special sort of handshake and were discussing passwords.”
“No! People don’t actually.”
“I shouldn’t have thought young women of obvious good family would lay in wait for perfect strangers out of an alleged sense of boredom, but yet! Today has been far more educational than I expected. And here I was merely hoping for something exciting to come of the secret society when I decided to spend the weekend in town.”
“Doesn’t your brother need you? Isn’t it harvest-home?”
“That’s in a fortnight. Tor thinks I’m trying to avoid our local Corn Maiden’s practice run.”
I laughed. In the silence that followed I heard that the wind had picked up, and shifted to come round from the west: the bells of town were audible. I shook my head. “Only eight o’clock! It feels much later.”
“It does at that,” Mr. Dart said fervently. I was about to ask why he’d set our rendezvous for seven o’clock if his secret society members didn’t have theirs until 8:30, but before I formulated the question he went on. “Is … What do you think of Miss Redshank’s story?”
I shifted position and winced as some bruises became evident. “Ugh. I’ll be sore the morrow. Violet—well. She is a very loyal friend.”
“I’ll say. Violently so.”
I chuckled wryly. “Yes. Um. Her account for why she was laying in wait for someone was perhaps …”
“Absurd? Though I hesitate to give the lie to her.”
“I’d not give the lie to Violet if you value your life.”
Mr. Dart stared at me. “If you say so.”
“She’s one of the best blades in Morrowlea. And as you have no doubt determined, she would also put loyalty over honesty any day.”
“There are worse priorities.” He hesitated again, no doubt realizing how that sounded.
I didn’t have the energy to make a fuss of it. I was feeling battered from the sudden strange contretemps with Violet, whom I’d never thought—or hoped—to see again. And despite Mr. Dart’s fine words, the reaction of everyone else in town to my return had made it clear how easy it was for Lark’s and my uncle’s view of things to be taken as historical truth. It had been a lot easier for her to argue for treason than for me to argue for honour; my only weapon had been the pitiful attempt to criticize her lack of generosity and thought.
And what had that won me? A lost degree, a stay in the hospital ward for a relapse of the illne
ss (and bruises from the stones), and when an abashed Marcan had come to warn Hal and me that Lark had riled up the university even more, a hasty exit from Morrowlea for an unplanned walking tour of the kingdom. And the return to Ragnor Bella, where the only good things so far were Mr. Dart, Mrs. Buchance, and Mrs. Etaris.
I decided to just have it out. “Why did you ask me tonight? Really, Mr. Dart. Why me?”
He was turning down the lamp, and stopped with it just a glowing spark at the end of the wick. “Why wouldn’t I ask you?”
“Because although Lark may have put the worst possible skew on my family history, nevertheless I am not properly of your class anymore, and outside of Morrowlea’s experiments that matters.”
I’d seen how much it mattered, as my remaining friends from Morrowlea added surnames and titles. Tover was a baker’s son, and Isoude a yeoman peasant’s daughter. The rest … Marcan the Count of Westmoor was not the only man of high estate. They had put loyalty over truth, too, not believing me about the disastrous viva voce examinations or why I’d been so dead-set against Lark—and I, as much a coward as Violet when it came to it, had not been able to tell them how much Lark had betrayed me, how ill she had used me, how thoroughly she had played me.
Once we left Morrowlea, Marcan and Hal were quick enough to forget Lark and her passions in favour of returning home with a high degree and the whiff of dangerous politics that brought
acclaim and adoration. I’d been grateful for how easily they’d forgotten Lark—or pretended to—though of course they hadn’t been the ones intending to marry her.
I made my thoughts go back to the current day. “The Baron will shun you for gallivanting about with me; so will the other gentry. Dame Talgarth’s already given me the cut direct. Your brother won’t like it.”
“My brother,” he said, turning down the lamp the rest of the way and starting to set it in its travel case, then burning his finger on the chimney and cursing slightly. “I love and respect my brother very much, Jemis, but I will not let him choose my friends for me! Besides, he was great friends with your father.”
“My father shamed himself and us,” I said sharply. “My mother was made a bigamist, my father’s honours were stripped from him—his title, his fortune, his land. My mother’s people disowned her, my father’s people—oh! They continue to spread calumny, as if my father hadn’t already died of shame and dishonour long ago. They dare suggest my mother had relations with Mr. Buchance while she was still married to my father—”
I stopped, shook my head. “Of course, she did, because my father was reported dead—twice over!—from the wars and she remarried before he came back to discover his disgrace. The Arguty Greenwings have been slighting me for years. You should have seen my uncle in town today—he told me outright I should leave. I can just imagine what ammunition they will have when they hear that I destroyed the reputation of a fair young lady of Morrowlea. I will be run out of town like my father, to commit suicide in penury and shame.” I shuddered with frustration. “Perry, Mr. Dart, you should not be seeing me.”
There was a pause. He said, “They ran your father out of town?”
“I am fortunate Mrs. Buchance is a kind woman, and that Mrs. Etaris is polite.”
“Your father was a war hero!”
I tried not to laugh harshly, and sounded like Violet as a result. “Only in his first wars, Mr. Dart. Lark wasn’t totally wrong about that part, alas.”
He was arrested suddenly. “I mentioned at my aunt’s that I’d seen you. … Jemis … she managed to insinuate that you came back so late after the funeral because …” He looked down. I couldn’t see his expression now that he’d turned down the lantern, but his voice was embarrassed and annoyed. “Because you were banned by Mr. Buchance from returning because of refusing to adopt his name.”
“How dare she,” I said frigidly.
“I’m just telling you what she insinuated. Jemis—”
“How dare she.”
“You have to admit it’s an odd situation.”
“My life is one odd situation after another!”
“Jemis. I want to hear your side of the story. I’ll be hanged if I’ll be upstaged in loyalty by a woman calling herself Violet Redshank! The Emperor! There’s more stinking here than that fish pie. Your uncle can’t believe your father was actually disgraced—he’s on the lists of distinction. What could he possibly gain for believing him dishonoured?”
“Only the entire estate.”
There was a brief pause. Then Mr. Dart said, in a strangled voice, “I beg your pardon?”
I was glad he had turned out the lantern. It was easier, somehow, to speak in the dark. “Sir Vorel Greenwing is my father’s younger brother. My grandfather, Sir Rinald Greenwing, had three sons and a daughter: Rinald the younger, my father Jakory, Vorel, and Jullanar who married the Honourable Lorkin.”
“Yes, our Sir Hamish’s parents.”
I nodded. Sir Hamish, the painter, was Mr. Dart’s brother’s lover, though presumably he didn’t know about all this mess to tell Mr. Dart about it. Or else he agreed with Sir Vorel about my father’s disgrace, and thus Mr. Dart would not find a good reception of our friendship from that quarter, either.
“Sir Rinald the younger inherited the Greenwing estates when old Sir Rinald died. Jakory was my father, and joined the Astandalan army. Vorel married an heiress from west Fiellan. Jullanar’s story you know. My father eloped with Lady Olive Noirell during one of his leaves, much to the disgruntlement of her people—and his, for although it was a good match, it was felt over-hasty. I was born while my father was away on campaign.”
“The Voonran campaign.”
“I … yes, I suppose that would be the one.” I sneezed uncomfortably. “When I was about ten he was called up to fight in the east Alinorel campaign.”
Mr. Dart shifted position, and I recalled he’d studied history. I went on. “I don’t know all the details. I was ten, my mother was expecting another child, and the Greenwings were … difficult, even then, especially when she lost the child.”
“We used to run through their lands, you and Roald and I,” said Mr. Dart.
“Yes. Until my uncle Rinald fell off his horse fox-hunting and broke his neck. Since he was without issue, my father should have inherited, except for the small matter that a few weeks before Sir Rinald’s death, my mother had received a letter stating that my father was the traitor of Loe and had been shot running away from the court-martial.”
“But then—”
I laughed roughly. “Oh, there’s always a but then in my life. But then there came the next letter. The one stating that Jakory Greenwing had died in honourable circumstances while on a scouting mission, and awarding him the posthumous Medallion of the Lady’s Grace as a result.”
“Did your mother not write to the authorities?”
I shrugged; my shoulders felt painfully tight. As I moved a thorn pricked me. I extracted it from my waistcoat and started to play moodily with it. “I think she did. But then the Fall of Astandalas interfered …”
“Your mother should have fought for you—you ought to have inherited the Greenwing estates. I hadn’t realized.”
The thorn slipped into my fingernail. I bit back a curse. “She had just lost a baby, been disgraced and made the scorn of the barony, lost her husband in dreadful and mysterious circumstances, and she wasn’t a strong woman at the best of times. She ran through most of her inheritance keeping us alive during the Interim. When Mr. Buchance began to court her she was disowned by her people, but I think she desperately wanted someone to take care of her. She was that sort of woman. Mr. Buchance wasn’t wealthy enough at that point to take on the Greenwings—not for a mere stepson. My mother looked forward, moved to town, and of course had Lauren the year after they married. I think she was sick of all the Greenwings by then.”
“But then—” He coughed. I smiled wryly. He went on: “But then your father reappeared. Not having died either time—nor being the one
who’d betrayed the Army, either, from what I’ve read in the history books.”
I nodded assent, frowning at the shadows. How bewildered I had been—and how happy—not being old enough then to know that sometimes it is easier for the truth not to come out.
So much easier, sometimes, to sit back and let the sophists weave their nets.
“That was the talk of the barony,” Mr. Dart said.
“Still is.”
He made a gesture of wry acknowledgement. “How old were we? Thirteen? Fourteen?”
I swallowed. “Something like that. It was just before the end of the Interim. The arguments … oh, Perry, the arguments. My father was not well, and there was so much that was strange about his story, why he’d disappeared for years, and Sir Vorel was putting it about that he’d deserted and that was why he hadn’t come back before, and if he’d deserted then he still couldn’t inherit. My father had brought back nothing—there wasn’t any money for legal fees or anything.”
Nothing but one book of poetry, my mother’s marriage-gift to him, which he’d held onto through all his tribulations. That was in one of my inheritance chests, all by itself.
“I don’t remember all this. My brother’s not mentioned the legal wrangles.”
“He might not have known about them. Wasn’t he at university for his second degree while Sir Hamish was at court? And the Great Pestilence swept through about then. My father … he was very ill, and the situation was so hard on my mother … he did love her very much, I think, and wanted her to be happy, and here she was made a bigamist and the talk of the barony and shamed—and she was a shy woman—he went walking one day, and … Sir Vorel’s gameskeeper found him hanging in the woods, and … and that was that. After the Pestilence had cleared, Sir Vorel was firmly ensconced in Arguty Manor, and my mother was … she was happy to be Mrs. Buchance.”
“How can Sir Vorel not acknowledge your claim?”
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