The Bitterbynde Trilogy

by Cecilia Dart-Thornton

  ‘No, I do not play.’

  ‘Do you then dance? One would suppose that you dance blissingly! We should like to see it,’ said the one referred to as Calprisia, taking her cue. Her dainty face was framed by a steeple headdress delicately painted with black lacework, from which trailed a starry veil.

  ‘I am sorry to disappoint you—’

  ‘Oh come! Do not be so modest! Hide not your talents—we only wish to encourage, in good sooth,’ said False Scallops.

  ‘I can only applaud the talents of others.’

  ‘La! What must they do with their spare time in the Isles!’ Dianella exclaimed. ‘One can scarcely begin to imagine!’

  ‘And do they all wear their hair like yours?’ asked Calprisia. ‘’Tis a most intriguing style, so simple yet so … ah—’

  ‘Simple!’ said Dianella innocently, and to the amusement of her friends.

  Rohain sensed credibility slipping like sand from her grasp. How should she respond—should she meet affront with austere civility? Exhibit disdain or try to match them at their game?

  ‘Of course you likely find us complete scoundrels, here at Court,’ added Dianella. ‘No doubt you think us utter reprobates! What brings a polished lady like Rohain Tarrenys to our midst?’

  ‘My business is with the Duke of Roxburgh.’

  That set her tormentress back, but the respite was only temporary.

  Turning to the lord beside her, Dianella said, ‘Athal selevader chooseth sarva taraiz blurose.’

  ‘Fie! Aura donna believeth sa mid-uncouthants es,’ he replied, laughing.

  ‘You must know I do not understand your slingua,’ said Rohain, flustered. ‘Why then do you speak it in front of me?’

  She knew at once that she had erred again. Dianella’s smile dropped from her face like a mask. She arched her eyebrows in a look of exaggerated surprise.

  ‘Marry, because we are not speaking to you, that is why! La! Is the lady endeavouring to eavesdrop on our conversations? How churlish! Selevader taketh baelificence, Lord Percival.’

  ‘Dianella, really …’ The droop-eyed lord protested halfheartedly.

  ‘Pash com grape-melt es—sildrillion et gloriana. May aftermath sault-thou, et storfen-thou!’ responded the other tartly. The rest went off into hoots of laughter. Lord Percival sulked throughout the remainder of the meal. Rohain sat drowning in misery.

  ‘The Roast Beef!’ roared the Master of the Dining Hall. The third course arrived. The Carver, a comely man with his knives in hand, walked into the Hall followed by the Taster, the Assayers, the Cup-Bearer, the Head Butler, and the Head Panter, all flanked by torch-bearers. For the diversion of the company, he carved the meat in front of them, performing with the dexterity and flair of a juggler. He divided the beast into sections and speared entire joints on the carving fork, before lifting them into the air and shaving pieces off with a keen knife. Thin slices of meat fell to the trenchers in organised patterns, slightly overlapping. Swiftly, he used the knifepoint to place final touches to the arrangement. Salt was sprinkled over the dish before it was presented to the potential consumers. The courtiers served themselves from chased oval chafing-dishes of vegetables, side dishes and pates up and down the tables, and boats of thick sauces and gravies. Some allowed themselves a sprinkle from the personal nutmeg-graters they carried at their belts; small silver boxes with a steel rasping-surface and a hinged lid at the top and bottom.

  Through the croon and purr of shallow conversation pricked by the tinkle of crystal and artificial laughter, a far-off, eldritch howling sent sudden shivers through the assembly. Then a deeper note growled, so deep that it was felt, not heard. The bass vibration rumbled up through their feet and set the wine to rippling in the goblets. The small table-dogs about the floor began to yap. The pet cats bristled. As exclamations of astonishment flew like angry wasps around the tables, the tall windows snapped alight with a white blaze. Cries of alarm pierced the air, followed by laughter.

  ‘’Tis only the beginnings of a natural storm,’ the courtiers reassured one another. ‘I heard the cry of the Howlaa.’

  But what a storm.

  It was as though some great pent-up anger had been unleashed, which threatened to pound the city to rubble and shake the palace to its very roots. The wind sang in a multitude of voices, like the keening of women lamenting lost lovers and the deep groaning of old men in pain, like the yowling of wolves baying at the moon and shrill pipes whistling in the chimneys, or the boom of some monstrous creature of the deep oceans. The banners and standards atop the palace had to be hastily lowered, for fear that they would be ripped to tatters. Slates tumbled from the roofs, smashing in the courtyards below. The trees in the gardens bent low, moaning. Their boughs whipped and cracked. Sudden whirls of leaves gusted by.

  In the Royal Dining Hall, servants covered the light-stabbed windowpanes with heavy draperies, but no fabric seemed thick enough to banish those incandescent flashes. Bolts came hurtling out of the sky, one after another. The trio of musicians increased its volume, trying to be heard over the rain, the wind, and the thunder.

  A fire-eater and a stilt-walker endeavoured to attract attention. A juggler performed amazing feats with plates and balls and sticks and flaming brands to while away the next entremet. He was largely ignored, except when he dropped something on his foot and hopped about clutching it, squawking. The Court thought it the best part of the act and applauded.

  The fourth course, a pair of swans, was brought into the Hall on a silver dish by two comely young serving-girls in plumed costumes. The birds had been flayed carefully so as to leave their feathered skins intact, then stuffed and roasted before their feathers were sewn back on, their heads replaced complete with jeweled collars, and their feet gilded.

  Visualizing the swan-girl at the cottage of Maeve One-Eye, Rohain recoiled in horror, then tried to disguise her reaction, dabbing at her mouth with a tiny kerchief presented by her lady’s maid. But wights cannot be slain, she recalled with a rush of relief.

  The counterfeit swanmaidens presented their dish to the elderly marquess and it was then expertly divided up into modest morsels by the Carver.

  During the dispatching of the swans, Dianella and her friends conversed with each other almost exclusively in slingua. Their eyes frequently flicked over the stranger among them. Sometimes they giggled behind their hands. Rohain toyed with her food, pretending to eat, sick to her stomach. She could think of nothing to say and only wished to leave the Hall and retire to the solitude of her suite.

  Out beyond the dominite walls, thunder rolled its iron ball along the metal tunnel of the sky. Wind laid both hands on the palace roof and tried to wrench it off.

  In readiness for dessert, the last layer of the sanap was removed to reveal the chaste tablecloth. Now the ladies of the heart of the Set, bored with each other, flung an occasional retort at the shrinking violet in the midst of their convivial bouquet—sweet words, sharp-edged and biting, liqueur laced with poison, swords beneath silk. Airily, they tossed her dignity from one barb to another, until it hung in shreds.

  Lucent jellies, glossy syrups, smooth creams and blancmanges, cinnamon curds, glazed pastries, and fruit tartlets followed the last entremet. Rohain pictured the oleaginous scenes necessarily taking place in the sinks of the palace sculleries.

  ‘When are we permitted to depart?’ she murmured to her handmaiden. She felt nauseous, but not due to fancy’s images.

  ‘Not until my lord the Marquess of Early has left the table.’

  ‘I hope he lives up to his name.’

  ‘Won’t you tell us what you are whispering about with your maid?’ entreated False Scallops, the Lady Elmaretta.

  ‘Yea, prithee, tell us!’ chorused others, eagerly, eyes shining as they scented a further delicious opportunity to savor somebody’s discomfiture and win one another’s approval.

  ‘Naught of importance.’

  ‘Oh, how provoking!’ they cried in tones of astonishment.

 
‘Fie!’ Elmaretta wagged a gilt-nailed, admonitory finger. ‘You must out with it. No whispering at table!’

  ‘And besides, Dear Heart, everything you say is of importance to your friends!’ added Dianella sweetly.

  ‘Well,’ said Rohain boldly, ‘I was merely telling Viviana what the fox said to the ravening hounds.’

  ‘Oh? And what was that, pray?’

  ‘When you have devoured me, let the weakest among you look over his shoulder.’

  The ladies exchanged glances.

  ‘Is that intended for a joke?’ queried Calprisia. ‘Marry, ’tis not very amusing.’

  ‘No, it is not amusing,’ her friends agreed. ‘What a very odd thing to say!’

  ‘Are you sure you’ve not partaken of too much wine, Dear Heart?’ said Dianella.‘Or maybe not enough! Look, she’s scarcely touched a drop. Butler! Fill up my lady Rohain!’

  Several people laughed bawdily.

  Rohain held her temper in check. To lose it would be the final humiliation. Having scored, Dianella appeared to lose interest and turned away.

  After distending his bloated belly a little farther by way of the inclusion of frumenty, the gouty old Marquess of Early was helped to his feet and made his exit with ceremony. Dinner, mercifully, was over.

  Outside, the storm raged on.

  The wattle-gold rooms were a haven.

  ‘The lords had not such viperish tongues as the ladies,’ muttered Rohain wearily. ‘Not one of them said a word to degrade me.’

  ‘The lords have their own reasons for courtesy, my lady.’

  Rohain climbed the steps of the bed and sank into the feather-stuffed mattress.

  In a small voice, Viviana said, ‘Your Ladyship ate very little. To be of modest appetite is considered chic.’

  ‘You are kind,’ returned Rohain, ‘and supported me as best you could against overwhelming odds. But I know how it is. I have failed. I shall never be included now. I am Out before ever I set foot Within.’

  It seemed a terrible disgrace, as though the world’s weight had been set on her shoulders.

  Having helped her mistress to bed, Viviana went to dine on the leavings, with the other maids of the lower ranks.

  A pair of inhuman eyes, red coals piercing the gloom of a drain.

  A stench of rotting matter and feces, stifling. A skittering and a chittering and a squeaking in the shadows, which were alive, running, slithering clumps and humps, black shapes climbing over one another and surging forward in a terrible, living tide. They were everywhere, in increasing numbers—under the bed, in the folds of the curtains and the canopy, falling with soft, heavy plops from the damask pelmet and the frilled valance like malignant raindrops, jammed, wriggling in corners, swarming up the elegant brass legs of the firescreen, smothering the matching firedogs, crawling up the gold-inlaid piers of the lacquered table, upsetting the bowl of oranges upheld on its silver pedestal by four winged babies.

  They were rats, and they squeaked.

  Their stealthy, filthy claws scratched and scratched. As they drew near, she saw that they wore the spiteful faces of courtiers. Soon they would come running up, in long black streams, up the steps of the bed and across the embroidered eiderdown, along her arms to her face. Then they would cover her with their warm, stinking bodies and begin, with those needle fangs, to gouge, to gnaw, burrowing through the newly emptied eye sockets into the brain, until her flesh was devoured and blood gouted all over the silken pillows and ran down to pool on the meadowy carpets and all that remained was a sightless, staring skull.

  Screaming, Rohain woke up.

  Pale, pearly light suffused the windows. The pillars of the wattle-tree bed grew protectively all around. Her eyes roved the chamber. The fruits in the dish were not oranges but pears, onyx pomegranates, pastel-dyed marzipan plums, enameled porcelain apples, amethyst grapes.

  Of rodents, there was no sign. Her hand brushed her forehead. Her breath came and went in shallow gasps, her skin felt damp with perspiration.

  Viviana ran in, full of concern.

  ‘My lady, what is it?’

  ‘’Tis naught. Only a dream.’

  The windows rattled. Viviana went to them and pulled back the lace curtains. Bright sunlight streamed in. The storm had cleared.

  Outside on a green hill near the garden wall, albino peacocks swaggered, unaware of their status in the eyes of the Royal Carver. Nannies monitored overdressed children freed from the Palace Nursery, frolicking with their wooden hobby-horses, their whipping-tops, their pet dwarfhorses the size of small dogs. Citizens of Caermelor peered in through the bars of the iron fence, past the shoulders of the Royal Guards, hoping to catch a glimpse of royalty. The sequestered children stared back, equally fascinated. A diminutive son of an earl drove past the window in a child-sized carriage drawn by sheep. Savagely he wielded the whip.

  ‘What do you fear?’ Rohain asked suddenly.

  ‘I do not understand my lady’s meaning,’ the court-servant parried uncertainly.

  ‘I have a fear of rats,’ explained Rohain. ‘A fear most intense and unreasonable. After all, they are only small animals, relatively harmless, easily slain by foxes and lynxes. Why I should hate them so is beyond guessing.’

  ‘My cousin Rupert is in dread of the sound of tearing cloth,’ said Viviana.

  ‘How strange!’

  ‘Methinks it is not strange, m’lady. When he was but an infant, Rupert had a crooked hip. They used to bind it tightly so that it would grow straight. The binding was most painful for him—he used to wail when they did it. They would rip long pieces of linen to use as bandages, and this was the signal for his terror. So his fright remained, despite that he has now grown to manhood. My mother used to say everyone harbours at least one unreasonable dread, for it is human to do so. Mine is fear of spiders.’

  ‘Spiders? But they are lovely creatures, so clever, so delicate …’

  Viviana shuddered. ‘Even to speak of them, ma’am, sets me atremble.’

  ‘Why must we have these fears?’

  ‘I know not, m’lady, but it is said they begin early in childhood.’

  ‘Then,’ whispered Rohain to herself, ‘my childhood was troubled by rats.’

  Viviana glanced again toward the window. ‘Was that not the most fearful storm last night, my lady?’ she asked. ‘It has weakened now, but the wind’s still with us, although it is past noon.’

  ‘Past noon? I have slumbered too long. I would have been better off without those last moments.’

  ‘It is well that Your Ladyship woke now,’ Viviana said, with the air of one who has hitherto suppressed exciting news for the purpose of surprising her listener. ‘The Duke of Roxburgh’s footman came here earlier, with a message, but I would not waken you. The Duke has already boarded a Windship bound for the north, but he left a message bidding my lady be ready to depart from Caermelor at sunset.’

  ‘So they are casting me out already?’

  ‘Nay—my lady is to be taken aboard a Dainnan patrol ship, a swift craft of the air, for a voyage to the Lofty Mountains under the protection of Thomas Rhymer, Duke of Ercildoune. I have been instructed to attend Your Ladyship on this voyage.’ Her voice rose with exhilaration. ‘My lady, I have never travelled on a Windship before. This is the blissiest thing that’s ever happened to me!’

  ‘I am glad of it.’

  ‘Your Ladyship, I am utterly delirious to be accompanying you from this palace. I will be well away from the clutches of the Dowager Marchioness, at least for a time.’ The servant-courtier bobbed a small but exuberant curtsy.

  ‘For longer than that, perhaps,’ smiled Rohain. ‘I will not give you up easily! Let us prepare.’

  ‘My lady, you shall require several changes of attire, as befits your rank,’ Viviana informed her. ‘I have taken the liberty of notifying the Court tailors, who even as we speak are altering several ready-made garments in accordance with my estimation of m’lady’s measurements. It will be necessary, nonetheless, for y
ou to summon them to a fitting-session at the earliest opportunity.’

  ‘Well done, Mistress Wellesley!’ said Rohain in admiration. ‘Have they told you the price?’

  ‘Of course, m’lady! And ’twas not over-high, either. I haggled somewhat,’ she added modestly.

  ‘I shall straightway give you the money to pay these tailors.’

  Despite the frenzy of preparations that day, visions of the rats did not crumble away for hours. Rohain knew it had not been a dream, but a snippet of memory.

  The Dainnan frigate clove the air at speed, with a following wind strong from the west, at around twenty knots. Her timbers creaked. The decks rose and fell, lifted by rising currents on the windward slopes of the foothills and tossed by turbulent downcurrents on the lee slopes. The sweet fragrance of wet leaves rose from below, and the twitterings of a multitude of roosting birds. Behind the vessel, across the sea, penduline clouds blackened the long, infernal forge-fires of the guttering Winter sun. The sails’ shell-scoops glowed fuchsia for an evanescent moment before graying to somberness, scoured out by the raw and grudging westerly. Soon the stars would appear.

  Clutching the lee rails in one hand and her taltrystrings in the other, Rohain of the Sorrows stood on the open deck. She was looking back through the lower rigging at the dwindling lights of Caermelor on the hill: the buttressed dominite palaces, dark and massive on the heights, their crenellated shapes squatting among their battlement-crowned turrets and spangled with many eyes; the fragile, latticed columns of Mooring Masts like a forest of webby trees; the spires; the sudden skyscraping upthrust of Caermelor Tower, the fortress of the First House of the Stormriders.

  In the darkening courtyards and gardens of Caermelor, fountains would be tinkling unheard. Indoors, out of the cold, lords and ladies would be drinking mulled wine by their fires, serenaded by bards with harps and lutes. The watcher’s heart ached with an abstruse longing—but not for them.

  The ship having just entered an airflow of a greater velocity, the wind—traveling faster than the ship it drove—swept the dark tresses from Rohain’s face. Long strands fluttered out on the airstream. Aloft in the rigging where shadowy sky-blue canvas cracked taut, Dainnan aeronauts called out to one another. The sails were constantly being trimmed. The men working them from the decks were standing in a snakepit of hemp and manila. The aeronaut on watch at the bows stood by the bell ready to sound warning of any ships sighted to port or starboard, ahead, above, or below. Crewmen coiled rope on the decks, checked gear and rigging for chafing, and often, in the course of their duties, strode past the two passengers at the taffrail; the only women aboard. Others of the Brotherhood voyaged aboard the Windship; a thriesniun, a detachment of seven-and-twenty Dainnan under their freely elected leader, Captain Heath. Thorn was not among them, and Rohain feared to inquire after him lest she besmirch his name by association, or appear to be brazen. And what would she do, should she be brought into his presence? Confess her passion? He had protected her and Diarmid on their journey across Eldaraigne, as was his duty. As a Dainnan he must safeguard the lives of citizens. The journey was over, the task done. The entwined cords of their lives had split and unraveled. But each time a tall olive-green-clad warrior strode by, her heart lurched like a ship windhooked. From sheer habit, the Lady of the Sorrows pulled her sumptuous taltry closer around her face.