The Bitterbynde Trilogy

by Cecilia Dart-Thornton

  Viviana and Caitri sat in the window niche, busy at embroidery and whispers. Edward had consented—with a distracted wave of his hand as though they were may-flies he brushed away—to their remaining seated in his presence. A roseate glow silhouetted the demure profiles of the two girls. Beyond the embrasure, the sky seemed slashed and split like a ripe persimmon. The red light of sunset streamed in, clear shafts; elongated crystals of ruby. The uncrowned King-Emperor, Edward, stood resting an elbow against the mantelpiece. Moodily, he ran the toe of his boot along one of the fire-irons. Beside him stood Ashalind.

  ‘Prithee look at this, Edward,’ she was saying. ‘What is your judgement? Do you think it will be to my lord’s taste?’

  Edward turned his attention to the small, glittering circle in her upturned palm. He took it between thumb and forefinger. The outer wall of the band was worked cunningly with a pattern of eagles’ feathers entwined with seabirds’ plumes. On the inner side were engraved the words ‘I love thee’.

  ‘It is a noble thing,’ the young King-Emperor commented, examining it closely. ‘Excellent work. One would expect no less from the Royal Goldsmith.’

  ‘I gave him my white bird bracelet to be melted down,’ explained Ashalind, touching her wrist where the ornament used to encircle it. ‘“This gold is only twelve carats,” said he to me. “When it is purified there will be less metal to work with.” “Enough for a ring?” I asked. “In sooth,” said he.’

  ‘But your bracelet!’ protested the scion of D’Armancourt, handing back the ring. ‘Did you not tell me ’twas your father’s gift?’

  Ashalind slipped the ring into a small pouch of green velvet, tied with gold ribbon.

  ‘Yes, but you see, Edward, it was the only article in my possession which my lord has not given me. My father would not think it amiss. To me, the value of the bracelet extends far beyond its material worth. I desired some rare thing to give my betrothed in token of our vow. And the ring possesses a secret. Pressed snugly within an internal conduit are three strands of my hair.’

  ‘How inventive,’ said Edward, scrutinising the flames.

  The harp stilled. An unfamiliar silence stalked the solar.

  ‘Play,’ Edward said over his shoulder. Instantly the musician’s hands found business.

  ‘Your birthday approaches so quickly,’ said Ashalind, finding cheery words to dispel the discomfort which seemed inexplicably to have arisen. To gain the age of sixteen and to be crowned King-Emperor on the self-same day—what a momentous day for you.’

  Good sooth! she thought. I myself am not much older. There is no great number of years between us. Or maybe a thousand …

  ‘Have you seen your latest gifts?’ she continued hastily, hoping to smooth his furrowed brow with lively chatter. ‘There are so many, they have been forced to store some of them in the Upper Wardrobe.’

  ‘People are generous,’ he murmured. ‘As we speak, a gift that I have commissioned for you is being crafted. ’Twill be something else not given you by Angavar.’

  ‘What is it? Tell me, prithee!’

  ‘A gift to suit you perfectly. A looking-glass …’

  She caught her breath, coughed discreetly behind her hand to cover it. There had been that in his tone, and in the way he lowered his head, darting a quick glance at her, which suggested some hidden meaning. But then he looked away.

  ‘There he is,’ squeaked Viviana, letting her embroidery fall and pointing out the window. Both maids craned forward to look into the grounds below. A captain of the Royal Guard strode past. Glancing up, he saluted briefly, giving a wry smile.

  ‘Your heart’s out the window, Vivi,’ said Ashalind. ‘You may follow it if you wish, but use the stair.’

  ‘May I?’

  ‘Of course! You too, Cait.’

  The two damsels curtsied gracefully and exited the solar. As they did so, a page in Royal livery entered, dropping to one knee in front of Edward.

  ‘Speak,’ the young man said brusquely.

  ‘Your Imperial Majesty, I bring greetings from Lady Rosamonde of Roxburgh, who awaits in the antechamber.’

  ‘Gramercie, Griflet. I shall call for her anon.’ Edward waved the page away. ‘Anon.’

  ‘Pray excuse me, Edward,’ said Ashalind, clutching the green velvet bag. ‘There are matters to which I must attend.’ She curtsied.

  ‘Queens do not curtsy,’ he said. A roughness edged his voice.

  The blood rose to her cheeks.

  ‘I am not yet a queen. You, now, are my King-Emperor, my sovereign.’

  He did not reply, but took her hand, kissed it and nodded. As she went out the door, he turned back to the fireplace.

  Ashalind descended the spiral stairs and followed a darkening hallway. Her footsteps seemed to echo, which was odd, because rich carpets covered the wooden floors. The echoes slowed, although her pace did not slacken. She stopped in her tracks. Something familiar lurked nearby. She could smell it.

  The silence was utter.

  Neither the buzz of conversation from the Great Hall, nor the soft-footed shuffle of pages lighting the lamps and flambeaux came sifting down the corridor. From the courtyard, not the creak and scrape of the well-winch, nor the dusk cooing of doves in the dovecote, nor the barking of hounds in the kennels, nor the clatter of hooves on the cobbles—none of the normal sounds of the palace could be heard.

  ‘Come out,’ she pronounced into the quietness.

  Nothing altered.

  ‘Come out, you,’ she insisted, more loudly. ‘I know you are there.’

  The hallway remained dark and still.

  Impatiently she cried, ‘If you do not show yourself, I shall have you squeezed out, like whey from a cheese!’

  A small figure slid from a wall niche. It stood twiddling its thumbs nervously.

  He always made her irritable. She pitied him, he with his pathetic sidling about in dark places, his abstruse fears, his club-footed limp: pitied him, fearing him the while.

  ‘Well,’ she said at last, ‘good luck be with you, Pod of Isse. I see you stowed away after all.’

  Pod twiddled his thumbs faster. His face was blank as an unwritten page.

  ‘Why did you come here?’ she asked. ‘Do you seek me? Or a cure, perhaps—do you seek the High King of the Faêran, to cure you of your deformity? He will do so if I ask him—’

  ‘No!’

  The lad had shouted. The shout crashed off the walls, cuffing Ashalind’s ears. She took a step back.

  ‘Well, what then?’ she snapped, hiding her discomfort with peevishness.

  ‘I wanted to see the palace. Wanted to get away from Heligea.’

  ‘Heligea too came hither, simple gull. And I’ll warrant she does not know you exist.’

  ‘Does.’

  ‘Does she not like you? Why? Did you tell her something she would rather not have heard?’

  Pod’s lip trembled.

  ‘Don’t be vexed,’ he said. ‘I’m hungry.’

  Ashalind softened. ‘That’s easily dealt with,’ she said. ‘I’ll show you the way to the kitchens. Come.’ But he held back.

  ‘Too many people.’

  ‘Oh. I understand. You and I, we avoided company, we never cared for the staring, did we? Come down to the kennels. The hound-boy will give you bread and meat. Only he and the hounds shall see you. Howbeit, you can be healed, like I was. He can heal you, and maybe you will grow up to become a great wizard or the like. You have a gift—’

  ‘No,’ said Pod vehemently. You shan’t take it!’ He stared at her in horror, or hatred.

  ‘Nobody can take away your gift. Who should wish to do so?’

  ‘The henk, the henk I mean, you holiday fool!’

  It came to the damsel, now, that he believed his club foot was connected with his random capacity to prophecy, much as a carlin’s sacrifice of faculties was a prerequisite for power.

  ‘Should you be healed, your gift would remain with you,’ she stated.

  He thrust
out a sullen lip.

  ‘If you do not believe me, hear it from my lord, who cannot lie!’

  Pod remained obstinate.

  ‘You stupid boy,’ she cried at length, exasperated. ‘Why do you refuse help?’

  ‘Don’t want your help,’ he blurted, looking wildly about as though she had trapped him and there was no escape.

  ‘Then I will offer it no longer! In any case, you are not as clever as you thought. Your predictions are not worth a pinch of snuff. They are fickle and maggoty. You said that he and I should never find happiness together—you were wrong. Wrong—do you hear me? I am to wed my lord in the land of Faêrie, and no thing shall ever come between us!’

  An inexplicable feeling of dread came over her as the words left her mouth. Fervently she wished that she had never spoken them. Once, she had heard Thomas of Ercildoune quoting, in a rare moment of pessimism, ‘At man’s moment of utmost happiness, that is when the axe is about to fall. Some contend that great joy is in fact the harbinger of great sorrow.’

  Ashalind waited without breathing. Pod’s eyes glazed over. He opened his mouth. ‘Such as you and he—’

  ‘Hold your tongue!’ she cried, her hands jammed over her ears. ‘I will not listen to you. I will not!’ She turned and fled. So that the dire words would not penetrate, she began to sing a ditty Caitri had been warbling that morning before breakfast—a silly love song in an outmoded tongue.

  ‘Sweven, sweven, sooth and winly,

  Blithely sing I leoth, by rike.

  Hightly hast thou my este,

  Mere leofost.’

  Down the passageway she hastened, sweven, sweven, and around a corner, sooth and winly, blithely sing I leoth. But even through thicknesses of stone, and filtering between her trembling fingers, the last intoned words of the warped boy came trickling—‘… shall never find happiness together …’

  ‘Sorrow take you, lying wretch,’ she sobbed. ‘Sorrow take you!’

  But already, it had.

  The coronation of the new King-Emperor, Edward IV of the House of D’Armancourt and Trethe, High King and Emperor of Greater Eldaraigne, Finvarna, Severnesse, Luindom, Rimany and Namarre, King of His other Realms and Territories—this investiture took place on a bright day in Gaothmis, the Wind-month. Contrary to its usual wont at this season, the wind was not strong or gusty, for it had been prevented from becoming anything but the lightest breeze, merely enough to send a sparse confetti of leaves wafting through the mild air to shower as lightly as kisses on the procession. Blue were the skies, as acres of cornflowers. Billowy clouds piled up around the horizon in opaque puffs edged with silver.

  The quality of the daylight was notable. It poured from the skies like clear water, sparkling with the lustre of crystal. Nightly, the sky was an ebony shield lavishly pitted with silver, and the air wafted in mild currents, exceptionally balmy for the time of year.

  Kings and nobles gathered from every corner of the Empire to swear their fealty to the new King-Emperor and do him homage. Six thousand guests attended the coronation festivities, which lasted for three days and nights. Each day as the sun westered, open-sided pavilions were set up on the tourney field. Upon the high embankment at the northern end, the Royal Pavilion stretched the width of the field, glorious in purple and gold. In the glow of afternoon, the entire site bloomed with colours like a flowered meadow, forested with tall poles from which streamed flags including the Banner of the Fair Realm with its eagle, crown and hawthorn, the Empire Standard, the Royal Banner of D’Armancourt, the Eldaraigne Jack, flags of the other countries of the Empire, the Standard of the Royal Attriod and numerous standards and banners of the Dainnan, Wizards, Stormriders and other nobility; Windship flags; tattered oriflammes from ancient battles; pennons; a hundred and twenty pennoncels three and a half yards long, charged with shields of the Royal Arms; four and eighty streamers thirty-two yards long, of red worsted, charged with gold lions and white lozenges; fifty streamers forty-five yards long, decorated with swords and lilies; fifteen hundred small swallow-tailed flags called gittons, with swans, stags, greyhounds, watch-worms and falcons; hundreds more gittons striped red and white; and three hundred streamers thirty yards long chequered gold and white, sprinkled with green and red roses.

  The Coronation Festival of Edward IV became known as the Festival of Wonders, for with discretion, the Faêran had influenced every aspect of its organisation. At the nightly feasts, courses were served in number and deliciousness far surpassing any feast in history. Never had roasted meats tasted more succulent or worts more savoury, never were sweetmeats more fragrant and appetising. None could recall wobbling jellies which towered higher on their dishes without collapsing, whipped cream that melted more agreeably on the tongue, or richer truffles, or more plentiful.

  A hundred tuns of purple grape wine from newly broached casks was pronounced the best vintage ever. In addition there flowed sarceal, paxaretta and topaz, three hundred tuns of ale, one pipe of hippocras and a cordial of wine and spices.

  A partial inventory of the food included fifteen hundred quarters of bread, one hundred and four oxen, six wild bulls, twelve boars, nine hundred sheep, three hundred and four calves, three hundred and four herons, two thousand geese, a thousand capons of high grace, two thousand pigs, a hundred and four peacocks, assorted pigeons, pheasants, grouse, hens, rabbits and curlews, eleven thousand eggs, five hundred stags, bucks and roes, fifteen hundred hot pasties of venison, six hundred and eight breams and pikes, twelve porpoises and seals, a hundred and twenty gallons of milk, twelve gallons of cream, thirteen hundred dishes of jelly, two thousand cold baked tarts, ninety gallons of hot and cold custards and countless Sugared delicacies and wafers. The variety of dishes was improbable. Each pie was made with forty-eight different kinds of meat, except for the largest. When it was opened it proved to contain twenty-six live musicians, who, on being revealed, struck up on their instruments. The tourney field was filled with harmonies played on sackbut and serpent, on ophicleide, gittern and lute.

  Such divertissements took place between the courses as were discussed by the guests for years to follow. Every entertainer performed his act flawlessly—even a novice juggler who, awed by the multitudinous and splendid company, allowed his concentration to lapse for an agonised instant, found the dropped bottle somehow back in his hand and immediately whirling through the air with its fellows as though naught had ever been amiss. Not one of the musicians plucked or blew a wrong note.

  By virtue of the sight conferred on her by the green ointment, Ashalind perceived more than did the other mortals at the feasts. It took some time for her to be able to differentiate between the sights visible to all, and those visible only to herself and the Faêran. The first time she spied a Faêran lady passing among the guests and taking food from their plates, she was scandalised.

  ‘Oh, why should Lady Lindorieth be thieving so brazenly?’ she whispered to Ercildoune. ‘The guests will object, and then she may become angry and put some spell on them. Is there nothing to her taste at the tables of the Faêran?’

  The Duke frowned and looked blank.

  ‘Your reference eludes me, Ashalind,’ he said.

  Angavar sat so close by Ashalind that his hair caressed her shoulder when he moved, and each time, a tingle ran right through her skin. He now raised one eyebrow. Only a whisper was necessary.

  ‘Lindorieth takes what she wants, where and when she desires it,’ he murmured. ‘As is her right. Some among us choose to waive that right. Others do not.’

  Ashalind saw then that none of the diners whose plates had been looted seemed to notice their lack. The Faêran lady, exquisitely lovely, was taking only the toradh of the food, leaving its semblance still on the dish.

  ‘But she mostly removes fare from the platters of the lean guests!’

  ‘Which is why they are lean.’

  ‘There is no logic in this.’

  Angavar bent his grey gaze on her. ‘Thou hast much to learn of our ways, Goldhair,’
he reminded her.

  ‘I believed that the Faêran habit was to penalise overeaters.’

  ‘Dost thou note the way that those singled out by Lindorieth wolf their fare? They eat and yet wane, never waxing.’

  ‘They do not appear hale. Yet others look enviously at them, for being able to consume so much rich fare and remain as slender as reeds. Is taking their toradh a punishment or a reward? It is a mystery …’

  ‘To thee.’ Her lover appeared amused by her perplexity. ‘Look there!’

  He indicated a table lined with bejewelled courtiers. The face of the Marquess of Early—whose waistline threatened to split the gorgeously embroidered silk of his doublet—bore a look of pain. He had pushed his gilt and velvet chair back from the table and was using a lace-edged satin handkerchief to mop his brow. A lithe young Faêran lord had just prodded his bulging abdomen with a crosier, in passing. Another, without breaking stride, casually trod on the toes of the gouty marquess. The elderly gentleman groaned, picked up his foot and massaged it.

  ‘The Marquess suffers for being an overzealous trencherman,’ remarked Ercildoune, following the line of Ashalind’s stare.

  ‘No, no,’ she protested indignantly. ‘’Tis Faêran mischief.’

  ‘Thomas speaks only the truth,’ said Angavar. ‘The man is a glutton. He requires lessoning.’

  ‘These laws of thine are hard,’ sighed Ashalind. ‘If Early can be persuaded to change his habits, wilt thou cure him of the gout?’

  ‘He will then cure himself,’ said Angavar with a laugh.

  The sound of his laugh, and the look of him, promptly drove all speculation about the Marquess of Early from Ashalind’s mind. Angavar’s Faéranness dizzied her with an inebriation of the mind she was hard put to resist. With an effort she marshalled her thoughts, blinked and focused her attention once more on the tourney field.

  Every evening, as the trestles and pavilions were being disposed, Feulath—now Royal Wizard in place of Sargoth the Discredited—would put on a show of fireworks so spectacular as to disgrace all his former displays as a bonfire makes pallid a candle. After the fireworks were over, pastel-coloured orbs of light would spring up around the revellers, lining the edges of every tent and flag, lying strewn upon the grass. They could not be picked up, and vanished when anyone tried, only to reappear later.