The Black Swan

by Mercedes Lackey

  The Vesper service was soon over; silence fell again, interrupted only when the servant returned, took away the empty pitcher and left a new one.

  The priest didn't celebrate all of the offices in the chapel, only one Mass in the morning and Vespers in the evening. The others he held in his own quarters, for he had learned long ago that no one ever attended them. This left the Chapels, Old and New, empty, so that anyone who wished to pray in silence and privacy in between services could do so. That meant Siegfried would have the place to himself until dawn, when the priest would free him from his vigil, and grant him absolution.

  It was going to be a very long night. He reminded himself that it was no worse than many another night he'd spent, in many more arduous circumstances, and at least he wasn't cold, wet, or otherwise miserable. Once again, he fell into a trance of repetitive prayer, a fogged state compounded by the fact that he hadn't had any sleep to speak of last night, a state in which he couldn't tell if the time passed slowly or if it even passed at all. . . .

  Finally, it was over. The sky lightened, the first rays of sun painted the wall to his right with a square of pale light, and the priest came in. A few moments later, he'd been granted the blessing of complete absolution, and was assured of the fact that (until he sinned again, which would probably be sooner rather than later) if he died, he would go directly into heaven. More to the point, God would now protect him from the gypsy witch and her curse.

  Siegfried was dizzy with relief when he returned to his rooms; he hoped that Arno would be there as he climbed the stairs, and it was with pleasure he saw the familiar face as he entered the door.

  "Food and drink, and plenty of both," he ordered, throwing himself down into a chair and gesturing to one of the servants to remove his boots. Arno didn't ask where he'd been, but he probably already knew. The priest's servant hadn't exactly been sworn to secrecy, and what one servant knew, they all learned within hours. Arno returned with a page laden with a heavy tray. Siegfried was happy to see manchette bread and meat, hot and dripping with juices, sliced fruit, and a good, strong wine. He did ample justice to everything on the tray, while Arno directed the servants in turning down the bed, knowing without having to ask that Siegfried would want to sleep once he'd eaten.

  As for Siegfried, he wasn't in the mood for anything but slumber. He staggered from his chair to the bed and fell into it without undressing.

  He passed from groggy wakefulness into slumber immediately, with no intermediate drowsing—

  And found himself frozen in a place of mist, the gypsy girl approaching him with her mirror.

  He stared at her in confusion; this wasn't what was supposed to happen! He wrenched his gaze free of the witch, and looked around frantically.

  This time, he wasn't alone.

  Looming out of the mist to his right came a shining being with the glowing shadows of vast wings rising behind his shoulders, and a golden aura all about him, haloing his figure.

  Siegfried's terror melted away beneath a flood of gratitude; his prayers had been heard, and God had sent him a rescuer in the shape of one of His very own angels!

  An angel! Incredible! This more than made up for the fact that no heavenly beings had appeared at his knighthood vigil!

  As the gypsy neared, apparently oblivious to the angel's presence, he waited breathlessly. What would the angel do? Would he destroy her with a touch? Would he blast her with his gaze? Would he simply spread wide his huge, white wings and dissolve her with his light?

  The gypsy finally stopped; a look of vague confusion on her dead, gray features. She turned her unseeing eyes toward the angel, who continued to walk toward her, one slow, smooth step at a time, unfurling his wings, which stretched into a span of thirty feet or more. The angel moved between them, with his back to the Prince, until Siegfried could no longer see the witch, only the snowy plumes of his wings.

  The angel stopped.

  Slowly, he turned, pivoting in place, wings still spread; the gypsy turned to face him, and he looked over his shoulder at Siegfried so that for the first time the prince saw his face clearly. Siegfried felt an emotion at that moment that was deeper than fear—awe was the only name for it. That face had such a terrible beauty to it, so perfect, so pure, that now Siegfried understood why, in the Bible, the first thing that angels said when they appeared to mortals was "Fear not." The sight of such a visage could only inspire deep emotions, and the likeliest was fear— fear that the being possessed of such a state of perfection must find a mere mortal an inferior and loathsome creature.

  The angel turned away from him and gave all his attention back to the gypsy. As she stared into his eyes, he gently closed his wings around her, wrapping her in them and hiding her and himself from view.

  Siegfried stared, unable to imagine what would happen next.

  Just as slowly, the angel opened his wings again, and furled them behind his back, holding them close against his body.

  The gypsy still stood in the same place, but she herself was transformed.

  No longer the gray-visaged horror he had come to know all too well, now she glowed with the same incandescent beauty as the angel, and behind her shoulders were the glowing suggestion of something like wings ... as if they had not yet appeared, but were materializing out of the mist. She still held her mirror, but loosely, as if it no longer concerned her.

  The angel held out his hands; with a bow of humility, she placed her mirror in them. The glow about her brightened, intensified, until Siegfried couldn't bear the growing light and had to close his eyes. Even then her brilliance scorched him, burning her fiery silhouette through his closed lids, as the light of the midsummer sun would.

  He cried out in incoherent pain.

  The light vanished; he opened his dazzled eyes again. She was gone, but now it was the angel who approached him, bearing the mirror toward Siegfried exactly as the gypsy had. He neared the prince, with reproach and pity filling his eyes, a pity so profound it stabbed Siegfried to the heart, holding him in place more surely than terror had before.

  Now the angel stood directly before Siegfried, mirror cradled in his hands as carefully as if it were a holy relic. The mirror glowed, catching Siegfried's gaze and trapping it; it filled his vision. Then the mirror itself grew, becoming larger with every passing second, until the glowing mirror became his entire world.

  The glowing light that filled the mirror faded, became silver, became a reflection. He saw himself; not just his face, but all of him this time, his entire body, held suspended in the mist like a fly suspended in amber—and it was all of him that changed this time.

  The change was worse, more horrible than when it had just been his face that changed. He watched himself become a beast, his body writhing and twisting, deforming, but he was not any of the animals he had been before. This time he became something much, much worse.

  Neither man nor beast this time, but a horrible combination of the most detestable, the lowest aspects of each; he watched the creature—which still retained his eyes—as it lumbered through a parody of his own world.

  More beasts, or bestial humans, shared that world with him. Clad in his own clothing, the beast fought with more of its own kind, laughing as it defeated opponent after opponent, slaughtering them with unholy joy. It ambled through a travesty of Court life, greeting other monsters only to stab them in the back once they turned away. It swaggered into a church, overturning the altar, and catching up the sacramental wine to guzzle it with another laugh.

  Then it was in a garden, trampling the flowers with heedless feet, until it came upon a clutch of young women. Most of them fled, but one froze, and it seized the hapless girl, draped her with gold and gems—then raped her, and left her bleeding and weeping, cast aside in the ruined garden, as it chased after yet another maiden.

  He wanted to scream, to vomit, to at least turn away! A single word managed to struggle up out of his paralyzed throat.

  "No!"

  He woke.

  L
ying flat on the floor of the Lady Chapel, his face pressed against the cold stone, he felt as if he'd been beaten to the floor and left there. He suppressed the nausea in his guts and turned over onto his back. Then he looked up at the star-filled east window to see that the moon still hung in the sky—in fact, it was barely halfway to the zenith.

  He hadn't completed the vigil. He'd barely begun it. He must have fallen asleep as soon as evening Mass was over.

  But most importantly, it was painfully obvious that this vigil wouldn't save him. In fact, he began to have the dim notion that nothing this particular priest would assign to him as a penance would come close to absolving him of a very real guilt.

  He rolled over again, pushed himself up off the floor into a kneeling position, and felt his head; there was a lump on one temple where he'd hit the stone floor. He ached with chill, and his head throbbed painfully; his stomach churned, and his mouth tasted foul and sour. But none of that compared with the weight that burdened his soul at this moment.

  Without looking at the altar, he got to his feet and staggered out of the chapel into the darkness of the night. It was no darker there than in his heart.

  He hadn't chosen a direction, but his feet took him into the garden, where he walked in circles for at least an hour before sitting heavily on one of the benches beneath a tree.

  I have done something—unforgivable. It wasn't that the girl was a witch, and it wasn't a curse that afflicted him. There was only one answer to the vision that chilled him to his marrow and left him feeling sick and poisoned. The ancients held that mirrors reflected the truth, even when the eyes were blinded by illusion. The mirror that the angel held had only reflected the true state of his own soul.

  Am I so vile a creature? The presence of the angel gave him no other answer, and if he told himself otherwise, he knew he would be telling himself a lie. He would not add that, trivial though it might be, to the long list of the other sins burdening his soul.

  For a long time he held a very different vigil in the garden, groping his way toward an answer, for an answer he had to have, if he was ever to find his way out of this darkness.

  The moon had gone down by the time he worked his way to a possible explanation that left him a shred, at least, of dignity.

  There is no doubt that my behavior to the gypsy was every bit as bestial as I've been shown, he thought miserably. No matter that she was a peasant, and a gypsy, and not a highborn lady. No matter what the priest said. God clearly does not see it his way. And he had probably been just as guilty in the past of similar behavior with some of his leman. But not all.

  Selfish, self-centered, but not entirely bestial. What I was shown is what I could become, but not yet what I am.

  There were things he could do to change, and things he should do to make amends. He could do nothing for the poor, dead gypsy—the angel had already seen to her—but there was another woman he had almost wronged, and probably would have pursued with the same selfish single-mindedness had he not been visited by those dreams. He could do something about her case, right now.

  With heavy, aching head and unsettled mind, he made his way up to his rooms; not even Arno was awake, which was all to the good, the way he felt. A single candle still burned, and he took it to his writing desk.

  He pulled a piece of parchment toward himself and dipped a quill in ink; the easiest part was the beginning, a formal salutation to his mother. Now, how to phrase this?

  I beg to call your attention to an addition to the Court, Sir Hans' sister-in-law, the Lady Adelaide, he wrote. From my understanding, she has been left a widow without support, and Sir Hans is now responsible for her keeping. I believe she would make a good addition to your ladies; in addition, placing her in your service would ensure both her gratitude and loyal service, and that Sir Hans would not attempt to find a less worthy disposition for her.

  There; that struck the right note—reminding his mother that impoverished noblewomen made undemanding and grateful servants, and that she herself frowned on even lesser members of her court disposing of their penurious relatives by making leman out of them. It would be up to the girl to prove that she had skills his mother could use, of course—but at least he had put the opportunity for an honest life in her path.

  He folded and sealed it, and left it on the tray outside his mother's chambers. She'd get it with her other household missives in a few hours.

  As for Trinka, his light-of-love at the inn—he had an idea or two about her, as well. But those could wait until afternoon. For now that he had made the initial steps toward redeeming himself, he felt a modicum of relief, and with that relief all the exhaustion of the last day was catching up with him.

  He undressed himself without waking any of the servants, fell into his bed, and knew nothing until afternoon.

  Chapter Eight

  Queen Clothilde had grown accustomed to the dull routine of her morning household business, so the letter from Siegfried that she found waiting for her came as a complete surprise. She read the astonishing note from her son for a second time, trying to fathom what was behind it.

  There had to be an ulterior motive; she couldn't imagine Siegfried making this request just because he had noticed this poor little sparrow lurking about the Court, picking up whatever crumbs fell her way. It wasn't possible that Siegfried wanted to take this Adelaide as a lover himself—he knew better than to try to place such a woman within her personal household. Clothilde closely supervised her women and her few fosterlings; this was not the sort of loose household where ladies and female foster children could get into escapades, and everyone knew it. Her son also knew what her wrath would be like if he tried to meddle with her ladies.

  Still. He'd all but declared that her brother-in-law was open to such immoral suggestions—by all that was holy, he'd all but accused Sir Hans of being open to auctioning off his sister-in-law to the highest bidder! Could it be that some young friend of his had an eye to the woman with honorable intentions, but couldn't get his family past the lack of dowry?

  He can be generous, so long as his generosity doesn't cost him much in the way of personal exertion, she reflected, lips pursed, and scanned the lines about the girl's expected loyalty and gratitude. Well, that was certainly true—and was why she preferred to get her ladies from among those in much the same case as Lady Adelaide. When you couldn't get a husband because you had no dowry, and very few holy orders would accept you for the same reason, the promise of a comfortable life in exchange for much the same tasks that you would be doing anyway was very enticing.

  And if you had to put up with chastity and the queen's temper—well, that was no worse than being in a convent, and at least you didn't spend most of your time on your knees.

  In the rare event that a man was willing to brave the queen's gaze long enough to properly court a lady in her household, then was bold enough to ask her for permission to wed the lady, she actually had given her permission—provided, of course, that the lady in question was still going to be free to continue most of her services to the queen. If one of his friends does wish to wed this lady, I'm sure he'll provide a dowry, without my saying a word. She nodded; clearly she had already made up her mind, provided that the girl had the proper skills.

  "Send a page to find the Lady Adelaide, the sister-in-law of Sir Hans," she ordered one of the others. "Bring her here to me."

  The woman went off to find a page; the queen had made the deliberate decision not to reveal why she wished to see Lady Adelaide, for if there was something underhanded going on, the girl's behavior would likely reveal it.

  There was nothing else on her plate concerning household matters this morning, and as she waited for Lady Adelaide to appear, she reflected that there actually was plenty of room in her household for another set of hands. This was particularly true if the woman had skill with the needle. In fact, it was possible that taking her in would solve an ongoing situation before it actually became a problem. . . .

  The page entered an
d bowed, interrupting her thoughts; he was no more than seven or eight years old, but clearly took his duties very seriously. "Lady Adelaide, Majesty," he said, in a piping soprano, and the lady herself hurried in at his heels, flushed and shabby, to sink to the floor, skirts spread about her, into a formal court curtsy before the queen.

  Well, she knows her manners, at least. Clothilde surveyed the woman dispassionately for a moment. Too young and too pretty for her own good. Far too easy for her keeper to find someone willing to take her off his hands, as long as marriage isn't involved. I wonder how she feels about that?

  "You may rise, lady," she said aloud, "And as we are not in formal court, you may take a seat."

  The girl did so, properly taking the lowest stool in the room for her own chair, and waiting with her hands folded gracefully in her lap, her large, blue-violet eyes fixed on Clothilde's face. Clothilde fingered her son's letter, and decided to come straight to the point, "The prince has seen fit to bring you to my attention, and recommend you to a position in my household," she said bluntly. "Have you any notion why he should do so?"

  The surprise in the guileless blue eyes told her that this was not something that the two of them had brewed up between them. "Why—no!" Adelaide stammered. "I c-cannot imagine why he should take such trouble—I have not so much as spoken to him—n-not that I would dare to—b-but—"

  Clothilde, waved her hand, cutting off the flood of words.

  Siegfried knows that pretty women with insufficient protection are vulnerable," she replied casually, watching the girl out of hooded eyes. "Especially if their male relations consider themselves to have been—how shall I put this gracefully?"

  "Burdened with their keeping?" the girl replied a touch bitterly, having recovered her composure, and showing more sense than Clothilde would have given her credit for. "I am dowerless, Majesty, and my good brother-in-law has made no secret of the fact that he wishes that Rolf had never wedded me. He would be far happier if his brother had died a bachelor. And—he has given some hints about the prince's possible interest that I chose to believe were merely a coarse jest—"