The Black Swan

by Mercedes Lackey

  There's no way to force your bird to do anything, she reminded herself, unless you are a sorcerer, and there isn't a magician in the world who would dare to challenge Father. Not even an eagle is going to make a stoop at us, not when there's easier prey about. Besides, you have to fly eagles from cliffs, and there aren't any cliffs below us.

  What was bringing on this sudden spate of worries? She'd never been like this before; she'd always followed the baron's orders, blithely certain that he would take care of everything—

  That must be the answer. He'd actually granted her equal responsibility this morning—not just implied that she was expected to take care of some limited tasks. Once again, her spirits lightened, and she was only sorry that swans had no ability to sing, for she would have enjoyed being able to carol like a lark.

  Father's plans will all end as he wishes, and I will be there to help him, she told herself, with renewed confidence. He already sees how much I can do—and-purely, soon, he will realize just how much more he can accomplish with me to help him! He'll realize that all I've ever wanted to do was to please him.

  After that—no, she wouldn't think of what would happen after that. She would concentrate on what she needed to do now, and all else would follow.

  With that firmly resolved, she concentrated on the task at hand, with one eye watching for trouble from above or below, and the other keeping track of the flock.

  Chapter Seven

  Terror ruled Siegfried's night.

  Once more, the ghost-gray gypsy girl approached him as he stood rooted to the spot, sweating with fear. Once again she held up the mirror to his face; he looked for a moment into his own eyes, to see his face replaced by that of a monster—a maddened boar this time, rather than a wolf, a boar with bloody tusks and a mouth dripping foam. He saw his eyes in the boar's face, eyes that glared back at him with insensate rage. With a shout of terror, he wrested himself free—

  Choking with fear, he sat bolt upright in his bed, entangled in the bedclothes, staring into the darkness. Sweat soaked, heart pounding, shaking in every limb, it took an act of will to lie back down again; he kept expecting to see the girl's horrible, blue-gray face staring at him out of the darkness. Worse, at any moment, he expected to feel her cold hands seize him.

  What was wrong? The girl had been buried at the crossroads, staked into the grave, exactly as he had ordered. She should not be able to night-walk and haunt him like this!

  This was the fourth night in a row that the same nightmare had sent him plunging into horror; no matter what he did, how much he tired himself out, the nightmare returned. The only change was in the beast she showed him—wolf, boar, bull, mastiff—all with his eyes, but with the light of madness in them. The only comfort he had was that once the dream was over, he was through with it for the night, and so far it had not returned to haunt him twice in the same night.

  I can't go on like this, he told himself, raking his sweat- drenched hair out of his eyes. I can't. Who knows what she's going to do next?

  There should be one way to be rid of the ghost, one he'd been reluctant to pursue until now, and that was to go to the priest, make confession, perform penance, receive absolution. He didn't like the priest, whom he suspected of telling tales to the queen, but things had gone far enough that he was willing to bear the brunt of his mother's lectures in order to be free of the vision.

  With that resolution, he managed to get back to sleep, and woke again just after sunrise. He surprised Arno by hurrying into his clothing, after accepting the first suit that was presented to him, and going straight from the hands of his servants to morning Mass.

  His mother and her ladies always attended morning Mass in the New Chapel; much of a lady's day was spent in devotions. It wasn't often that the young men attended the service, however, unless they were interested in one of the queen's women. Older men, who had reason to be concerned with the state of their souls, visiting dignitaries, the most pious of the servants, and those with religious ambitions would be there as well, but very seldom were any of the men of Siegfried's circle to be seen. This did not particularly please his mother, but there wasn't a great deal she could do about it. Nevertheless, the queen had made a prominent display of her piety from the beginning; along with her improvements in the castle had come an entirely new chapel, attached to the old one in a way that left the original chapel as an annex just off the much larger building. The New Chapel boasted colored glass windows (not just painted glass), hanging lanterns, a carved marble altar, and a magnificent carved altarpiece behind it. There were even pews with kneeling stools for the queen and those of rank. The old chapel, now relegated to being the Lady Chapel, had only two plain glass windows and an equally plain altar, with a clumsily carved Virgin and Child behind it and no place to sit or kneel. The queen had hoped these improvements would bring the young men to daily services, but they had not.

  Nevertheless, this morning Siegfried was there, head bared and bowed, in the last rows with the older men. He suppressed his yawns as the priest droned through the service and homily, but managed to look reasonably alert through the entire service. When the service was finally over, he performed his final genuflection with relief, and hung behind as most of the worshipers left, chattering and gossiping, taking care to linger in the shadows so that the queen wouldn't spot him and stop to question him. He waited with some impatience until the priest entered his side of the handsomely carved confessional, created from inch-thick planks of black walnut, and was the first to enter the other side of the box and pull the black fustian curtain closed behind him.

  The carved screen and the darkness of the box was supposed to keep his identity secret, but he knew very well that the priest would know who he was immediately. He kept up the charade, however, and without identifying himself in any way, hurried through the forms, and the priest on the opposite side of the screen surely sensed that there was something wrong just by the nervous quality of his words.

  Finally, with the formalities over, he let out his breath, and voiced his real difficulties. "Father," he began, feeling awkward, "I committed a sin with a woman."

  "Fornication, I presume," the priest said dryly, his amusement patent. "That is a serious sin, but surely it is not the first time you have committed it nor confessed to it."

  "No, but ... it might have been against her will." He swallowed, finding it difficult to confess what had happened. "And later, after, she drowned herself." There. It was out. The priest would know who and what the girl had been—there had only been one girl drowned around here. He waited, heart pounding, to hear what the priest would say. Would he be outraged, blaming Siegfried for the girl's death?

  "Might have been against her will? How is that you aren't sure?" The calm voice might have been asking about a child stealing a sweet. Siegfried was surprised; he thought that the fact that the girl killed herself—and everyone knew about the body in the millrace—might have called for more concern.

  "She ran away from me—and she just—" he felt himself blushing, embarrassed at relating intimate details to a priest. "—when I had her, she just lay there, didn't say or do anything, wouldn't look at me afterward. She didn't fight me though—if she'd fought me, of course I would have let her go."

  Maybe. He really didn't know if he would have, not in the high heat of passion.

  "And what made you think she would welcome you in the first place?" the priest asked, as if it were a matter of mild curiosity.

  "She was bathing naked in the river, in broad daylight—I thought her running was just being coy—" His ears burned, and the back of his neck, and he hotly defended himself. "Father, I saw her swimming, and if she'd really wanted to get away, she would have swum out into the middle of the river where I couldn't get to her, not go running off along the shore."

  Wouldn't she?

  "So. Tell me if I understand this correctly. You come upon a lowborn gypsy wench, alone, bathing naked in the river, making no attempt at modesty. You pursue her, and r
ather than effectively fleeing, she makes what you consider to be a token attempt. When you have your way with her, she remains mute and unmoving, although she does not repulse you. Is that correct?"

  "Yes, Father," he replied, wondering what was going through the priest's mind.

  "Did you have any reason to believe she was a virgin?" came the unexpected question. "Either before or afterward?"

  "Not. . . really," he said slowly, then burst out with, "No virgin would be flaunting herself naked like that! She was probably there waiting for a lover!"

  "And when you left her, what did you do? Insult her? Abuse her? Beat her because she didn't please you?"

  "No!" Siegfried said, with such indignation that the priest coughed. "I just threw her a few coins and I left."

  "So when you left her, you left her rather better off than she had been before you pleasured yourself with her." Since that was a statement, not a question, Siegfried wasn't sure if he was supposed to answer it, but when an expectant silence followed the words, he decided he should say something.

  "I suppose so. She had a handful of coins, I didn't hurt her, and I hadn't—ah—taken anything from her." This line of questioning had the effect of putting him back into the state of mind he'd been in when he'd ridden away; annoyed and a bit resentful that the woman had been such a disappointment.

  "Or if you had, it wasn't anything that wouldn't have been lost eventually anyway," the priest said dryly, with unvarnished scorn. "Sooner, rather than later. Even peasants are like dogs in heat; they fornicate as soon as they are able and as often as possible, and the gypsies are impossible, pagans at best, witches at worst, with no sense of morality."

  Since that was very nearly the way Siegfried thought, he felt a burst of fellow feeling toward the priest, who at least knew what were the rights of a man of gentle birth.

  "So why are you here, confessing this to me?" the priest continued. "There is something more than a casual fornication here, to make you seek the confessional with such agitation in your voice."

  "I'm being haunted," Siegfried whispered, almost ashamed to admit it. He described the dreams—or visions, whichever they were—and the terror he endured every night since the girl died. There was silence on the other side of the confessional, as the priest pondered his tale. Siegfried waited on the edge of the bench of the confessional, tense with anticipation.

  "Well," the priest said at long last. "It seems that the witch has cursed you. With a curse, the—ahem—extraordinary actions taken in her disposal would not protect you." His voice assumed the lofty tones Siegfried usually associated with him. "Your state of sin has left you unprotected, and God cannot protect you unless you undergo penance. In order to have the curse exorcised, you must first perform a fast and penance to show the Almighty that you are worthy of Divine help." He then rattled off a penance that didn't seem all that strenuous to Siegfried. He'd have to fast all day, then spend the night in the chapel at a vigil on his knees before the altar, telling over the rosary until dawn. This was no worse than the vigil he'd undergone for his knighthood, and actually less uncomfortable than some nights he'd spent out in the forest while hunting. It was a small price to pay for freedom from nightly terror.

  He got the priest's blessing with a sense of profound relief, and left the confessional feeling a great weight lifted from his mind. He hesitated at the threshold of the New Chapel, and decided to go the priest one better, and begin his vigil at once.

  Why not? I haven't anything in particular that needs doing, and if I'm going to fast, I'd just as soon be where it's quiet.

  He chose the old chapel for his devotions, just off the main sanctuary, for his stint. No one came in here anymore except for the priest (to see that the Presence Lamp stayed lit and that there were devotional and altar candles ready for lighting) and the priest's servant (to keep it clean). No one would see him or bother him here—or report what he was doing to his mother. He knew that the priest would probably tell Queen Clothilde everything sooner or later, but with luck it would be after he'd gotten the vigil over with. At that point, no longer hag-ridden, he'd be able to face her reproaches with equanimity.

  He wasn't in the habit of carrying a rosary (very few men were except for those in Holy Orders), but there was a form of rosary inlaid in the floor of the Lady Chapel—large and small stones of a paler color than the rest of the slate floor, for the benefit of those who hadn't their own beads with them. Kneeling behind the altar rail, he kept his gaze on these stones, clasped his hands, and launched into his whispered recitation.

  It was chill and quiet in the chapel, with nothing more than the vague murmur of voices coming from the confessional behind him. Soon enough, even that ceased, and he sensed he was completely alone. In the silence, every little sound he made echoed with unnatural volume-, the thick stone walls kept sounds from outside to a minimum. He shifted his weight from time to time, as his knees began to ache; this entire task made him acutely self-conscious.

  The last time I did a vigil like this was—four years ago! I was a bit more innocent then. He'd been excited, nervous, and full of the certainty that something holy and wonderful was about to happen to him. The solemn speeches by the older knights as he'd readied himself for the vigil had prepared him to experience wonders up to and including the appearance of angels—

  Well, nothing had happened, other than a very long and intense session of prayer interrupted by desperate attempts to stay awake. That just might have been the beginning of his realization that God seldom paid a great deal of attention to individual mortals without a goodly amount of ecclesiastical prodding.

  A shaft of sunlight coming through the window to his left and falling in a warm patch right in front of the altar gave him something to mark the time. It crept across the floor as the sun rose, then disappeared; it was midday. His stomach growled, reminding him that he hadn't eaten today. He sternly reminded it that he was supposed to be fasting, and went on with his prayers. The repetition began to put him into a dull kind of trance, and when he finally found a position where his knees stopped aching, he fell even farther into a state of half-awareness. Behind it all was the plaintive hope that this would be enough to attract God's attention to his difficulties.

  The patch of sunlight appeared again, coming from a beam originating from the window on his right. It, too, crept across the floor, marking the passage of time, and seemed to his blunted senses to take an eternity to do so.

  Finally, a bit of change entered his vigil. The priest's servant came into the Lady Chapel in the late afternoon, and did not seem surprised to see him there; in fact, he completely ignored Siegfried's presence. The old man tidied up the altar, carefully dusting each surface and polishing the silver candlesticks, the Presence lamp, and the Crucifix. He chased cobwebs out of the corners, and swept the floor without so much as brushing the prince with his broom. He surveyed his work, then departed with slow, reverent footsteps. Siegfried gave no more thought to him until he heard the footsteps returning.

  The servant said nothing as he approached the prince, but Siegfried saw, out of the corner of his eye, that the servant had brought something. He watched the old man stoop down and leave something beside him, an object that gave a soft chink of metal as he set it down. The servant said absolutely nothing, and left as he had arrived, in silence; Siegfried waited until he was gone before turning to the side to see what he had left.

  There was an empty goblet and a flat kneeling-cushion, and a metal pitcher of watered wine (which would not technically break his fast). He smiled a little to himself; the priest must have seen him in here when confession was over, and ordered his servant to see that Siegfried's vigil was not unduly arduous. No servant would have brought these things on his own initiative.

  Siegfried took the opportunity to get up and walk about a little, stretching his stiff limbs, for there was no vow or rule that required him to pray without pause, and he knew from experience that he wouldn't be able to concentrate on prayers until he'd sa
tisfied the thirst that the mere sight of the pitcher had awakened. When his blood moved less sluggishly, he settled back in his chosen place, then poured himself a goblet of wine and drank it slowly, savoring every cool drop. After hours of nothing, it tasted like ambrosia and felt heavenly on his dry throat. As the patch of sun left the floor and began to climb the wall, growing reddish in color as sunset neared, he arranged the flat cushion and knelt on it instead of the stone.

  That alone was a great relief; evidently the priest didn't see any need to make this penance into an ordeal, since he'd already taken it upon himself to start early. There's the mark of decent breeding, he thought to himself before he started again on his round of prayers. The priest was nobly born, of course; most likely a second or third son of someone of rank—the queen would know who—and Siegfried revised his estimation of the man upward. He might carry tales to Queen Clothilde, but he knew how to treat one of higher rank.

  The patch of light faded and vanished; the windows darkened from blue to indigo, and the chapel filled with shadows. Siegfried stopped again to drink while he could still see, then returned to prayer as total darkness replaced mere shadows. With no illumination except the Presence Lamp, and that sheltered behind thick, red glass, it was impossible to see anything but the top of the altar.

  The priest and the servant came in to prepare for the evening services, which normally were attended by fewer people than the Morning Mass. The servant came quietly into the chapel and lit a pair of vigil lamps on either side of the altar, giving Siegfried the first real light he'd had since the daylight faded.

  A few people filed in; he heard their shuffling footsteps and the murmur of quiet voices as they assembled. The priest recited evening prayers, his voice echoing in the near-empty New Chapel; the uncertain mumble of the celebrants giving the responses followed his clear, crisp tones. Siegfried varied his prayers by giving his attention to the service and reciting the responses himself in a whisper.