“You have a name for your guitar?” she asked indulgently.
“Please, Azalaïs is a lute, of noble lineage and herself a lady. She’s named for a great poetess and composer, Azalaïs de Porcairagues, who lived long ago in the land of the troubadours.”
Playing the lute was an accomplishment so common among Associate knights as to be virtually a stereotype. Few people objected to hearing a good musician; it wasn’t as if you could just summon up music at will, apart from what you made yourself. Wind-up phonographs just weren’t the same, and anyway cost the earth.
“Well, as long as you don’t drive the other customers out,” she said.
Then she folded her arms with a skeptical expression, waiting to hear if his music was music only in his own mind; there were far more not-so-good players than really competent ones. He tuned the instrument quickly, then touched the strings with delicate precision. After a moment the sounds became an old tune, somber and rhythmic and somehow sparkling at the same time; perhaps the chance encounter that afternoon on the way from the train station had prompted something in the back-rooms of his mind. He sang:
“He turned and looked upon them, and he wept very sore
As he saw the yawning gateway and the hasps wrenched off the door,
And the pegs whereon no mantle nor coat of vair there hung.
There perched no moulting goshawk, and there no falcon swung.
My lord the Cid sighed deeply for such grief was in his heart
And he spake well and wisely: ‘O Thou, in Heaven that art
Our Father and our Master, now I give thanks to Thee.
Of their wickedness my foemen have done this thing to me.’”
Her arms unfolded. After a moment she pulled up a chair.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Barony Ath, Tualatin Valley
(Formerly northwestern Oregon)
High Kingdom of Montival
(Formerly western North America)
July 5th, Change Year 46/2044 AD
We’re good here and the Professor is agreeable, the message read. Having a great time, see you soon with full details.
Órlaith read the note from John again and smiled as she and Reiko walked to the north of the manor-house a few hours after sunrise. There was a pleasant allée of ancient oaks there along a graveled roadway that led down to the rose-grown buildings of the winery, big trees whose branches met overhead at eighty feet or better, with iron brackets to hold lanterns at twice head-height. Saplings ten or fifteen feet high stood midway between each, which was what they called grandparent thinking—you planted oak trees for your children’s children to get the full benefit. The big ones here must have been old before the Change. Blue jays flitted between them, their voices loud.
There was a dense fresh smell in the air, slightly diluted with woodsmoke, and as they approached the winery the faint ghost of old must and spilled wine and fermentation tanks. A muted sound of mallets on wood carried through the brick walls—there was a big barrel-making shop there as well as the stemmer-crushers and vats and cellars. They stopped halfway and sat on a stone bench, leaning their swords against it close to each right hand; the rough limestone of the seat’s edge was cool against the backs of Órlaith’s knees. Two of Reiko’s Imperial Guard samurai took stance on her side of the bench, just beyond the range that would let them overhear casual conversation; two crossbowmen in half-armor and unvisored sallets were on that of the Crown Princess.
“The game begins,” Órlaith said, holding up the folded note in two fingers.
She got an odd glance from Reiko as the Nihonjin took the paper and read; she suspected that the Heika found her slightly frivolous at times, and her brother John most of the time.
“Ichiban,” Reiko said when she’d read it: excellent.
Órlaith took it back and tucked it into her sporran and nodded. Without a ship and funds . . .
Well, just trying to walk there is definitely not a good idea. That would avoid the ruins of LA, but the distance . . . no way we could cover it without a recall order coming up. I’m not going to openly defy a direct order from Mom. I’ve got to avoid getting the order.
Behind them the terraces fell to the little lake and the salle d’armes, with the wooded hill behind it and Castle Ath on the next rise northward. Ahead, eastward, vine-clad hills rolled down towards a roadway. On the far side of it was the manor’s village, with its roofs and the church steeple peeking from among the trees. Beyond that fields and orchards dreamed green and quiet, roads stretching white between their rows of beeches, with a twinkle off the polished brass fittings of a carriage as it curved around a plodding oxcart. Detail faded into blue distance. It teased vision and mind with castles and towns of the imagination, until the line of the High Cascades put a wall on the edge of sight, sweeping southward from Mt. Hood’s white cone along a line that floated ghostly against the sky.
“The calm before the storm,” Órlaith went on.
“Or that instant between the arrow leaving the string and hitting the target,” Reiko said.
“I’ll be glad to be out and doing, but until then I’ll soak it up,” Órlaith agreed.
“Hai. This is . . . soothing. Very pretty, the contrast of the fields and then the mountains in the distance.”
“The view from here is even better a month from now. The wheat is just turning golden then. Then there’s the harvest, and the celebrations—nearly everywhere has one, all different.”
Reiko nodded. “We have a great festival at the rice harvest, some parts very old, others new since the Change. The Emperor harvests the first sheaf and offers it, nobody may eat of the rice of the new harvest until that is done, and then there is a great procession with dancing and drumming, Sado was always famous for its drummers—”
She described it, and Órlaith fought to keep her brow from rising; apparently part of the celebration involved Shinto priests pulling giant vividly-painted wooden phalluses and vulvas through the streets while sake flowed like water, among much else. Not totally unlike what the followers of the Old Faith did at that season, but not what she’d have expected from what she’d seen of Reiko’s people here and now.
It wouldn’t do to think all these folk are always as I’ve seen these with Reiko, she reminded herself; it was unwise to generalize from a small sample. And anyway they’re human; they can’t be solemn and grim all the time.
She went on aloud: “We have something similar. Christian rites here in the Protectorate, and different ones everywhere . . . down among Mackenzies, the Chief of the Clan takes the first sheaf and a special bread is made from it. Then at the end of the harvest they take in the Queen Sheaf, it’s shaped into the form of a woman and set up above the table, and the Chief breaks the loaf at the feet of the Queen Sheaf in sacrifice before the feast.”
They laughed as they compared details, and then Reiko sighed. “But always a little . . . sad at those festivals, neh? As at the Moon Viewing. A feeling of . . . how we come and go, but the earth remains. And the cycle of the seasons, that takes no account of the briefness of human lives. Spring always comes again, but for us, never the same twice and in the end there is a last.”
Órlaith looked up at the arch of leaves overhead, frowning a little as she summoned the memory of verses by a poet her mother was fond of, and whose work had struck her as well. More so as she grew past childhood, and more still as she felt now in the wake of her father’s death.
“There’s a poet . . . he lived in England three generations before the Change . . .”
Then she recited:
“On Wenlock Edge the wood’s in trouble
His forest fleece the Wrekin heaves;
The gale, it plies the saplings double,
And thick on Severn snow the leaves.
’Twould blow like this through holt and hanger
When Uricon the city stood:
’Tis the old wind in the old anger,
But then it threshed another wood.
The
n, ’twas before my time, the Roman
At yonder heaving hill would stare:
The blood that warms an English yeoman,
The thoughts that hurt him, they were there.
There, like the wind through woods in riot,
Through him the gale of life blew high;
The tree of man was never quiet:
Then ’twas the Roman, now ’tis I.
The gale, it plies the saplings double,
It blows so hard, ’twill soon be gone:
To-day the Roman and his trouble
Are ashes under Uricon.”
Reiko had listened with keenest attention. When Órlaith finished she sighed.
“Ah. That is very good, the sense of transience. The style is more . . . more ample, more spread out than ours, but that one is very good. I have read poetry in your language before, a little, but . . . for poetry, you must be able to hear it in your head even if you read silently, neh? The flow and the rhythm of the speech; the sounds are as much a part of it as the meaning, like music. Now I can hear it a little.”
Órlaith’s mouth quirked and she touched the hilt of the Sword. “I’d . . . so much rather that this hadn’t come to me yet . . . but there’s good in every happening. Now I can really appreciate your verse, which I suspect would have taken more time and labor than I can afford, otherwise.”
Reiko nodded. “The records say foreigners found our language very difficult.” Then: “Do you . . . do you think there will be something similar for me, when we recover the Grass-Cutting Sword?”
Órlaith shrugged ruefully and raised a hand palm-up. “I have absolutely no idea, Reiko,” she said. “I’d be surprised if it did all the same things as the Sword of the Lady, sure and I would. The Powers don’t work that way, I think. As They shape the lands and folk . . .”
“So They are shaped in turn,” Reiko said. “At least, the faces They show to us are.”
“Like a dance,” Órlaith agreed.
“But there should be some similarities. Because the kami have made them both swords, neh?”
“Exactly,” Órlaith said. “And . . . my father said that he thought that . . . the Change made some things that had been only . . . potentials . . . grow. So that myths now walk openly among us, the Change bringing them to the light of common day as water makes a seed sprout and burrow up through the soil, not all at once but gradually and . . . inexorably. There’s a place there, beyond the mountain . . . I can’t tell all I know, the details are a secret of the Royal kin, but it’s where the Kingmaking is done. I’ll have to go there when it’s . . . my time.”
Reiko nodded. “Strange to think that Mt. Hood is so very far away from here,” she said meditatively, shading her eyes with her fan. “It seems as if I could reach out and touch it. So tiny and perfect.” She murmured in her own language:
“The evening clears—
On the pale sky
Row on row of autumn mountains . . .
“. . . I would very much like to visit it someday. When the . . . other things have been attended to, if they ever are. Giri, ninjo.”
Órlaith nodded; giri meant duty, in the sense of fulfilling obligation to others—very much the way an Associate thought when he said honor. Ninjo she couldn’t really translate into English at all, though human feeling and heart’s desire were part of it.
“There’s a hunting lodge on Mt. Hood we visit often—Timberline, it’s called,” she said instead. “That’s a Crown possession, with a very great deal of forest attached. Lovely country for hunting, or just to enjoy. The fruit orchards in the Hood Valley are worth a trip by themselves in blossom time too, and they’re on the way. So is the Columbia gorge, where the waterfalls come down the cliffs, when you come up to Hood River from Portland by riverboat to the Duchy of Odell.”
“I would like that. And someday you may come to Sado-ga-shima in April, and see the cherries in blossom at the festival, and then the wild yellow licorice on the hills against the blue sea.”
They both smiled at each other, then sat and watched the view and the patterns of shade moving over the landscape as the clouds drifted.
Órlaith was wearing kilt and plaid and loose shirt and Scots bonnet; one of the advantages of being half-Mackenzie was that you had a really comfortable set of walking-out clothes in your repertoire. The downside, of course, was that this was just about all Mackenzies wore, except for the robes of the Old Faith’s rituals, and arisaids for women on very formal occasions. The only real difference was that you left the plaid off in very warm weather; otherwise the same or very similar garments did for work, war, the hunt, or a dance, with different accessories ranging from a burlap apron to armor to a Montrose jacket and lace. You just used your newest kilt for the fancier things.
Reiko was in a gray kimono with a design of black flowers and branches, one of Lady Delia’s collection, hastily and heavily modified by the Châtelaine’s tirewomen. A simple two-crest open black haori jacket went over it. Órlaith cocked an eye at the ensemble.
“That looks different,” she said in Japanese.
“Oh, it’s altered to a modern walking-out style now, what gentlewomen wear since we went back to wakufu for everyday,” Reiko said, touching her fan to the sleeve.
Órlaith’s Sword-trained ear rendered wakufu as real clothes or our own style as well as Japanese clothing in a more technical sense. It had overtones of warmth and belonging and coziness that she didn’t quite follow.
Reiko went on with a graceful gesture of her fan: “Delia-gozen has some beautiful, beautiful work in her collection but nobody wears those really broad, very stiff obi with the cords anymore except on the most very, very formal court occasions, or the really big bow at the back either. We use these instead.”
She touched the sash that held the robe together, which was soft black satin about eight inches broad, tied in a complex but not very large knot at the rear, and went on:
“I think because we just couldn’t make them after the Change, not for a while, the ones we still have were all done before then. And we don’t make quite such a big difference in the length of a man’s and women’s kimono anymore—of course, you wear a shorter one with hakama over it; men wear those more often, but it’s not . . . not like hose. For men, very formal always has hakama, for women not, many things in between. The sleeves are still different, though. And a farm woman would wear a shorter robe and mompe, trousers, and perhaps an apron. Or tuck the ends of the kimono up under the obi for work.”
Órlaith nodded. Reiko’s face was more relaxed and animated, as they chatted of things harmless and interesting and beautiful.
Not grim at all, she thought. Charming, in fact.
One of the estate cats came stalking down the allée, a big orange tabby, and looked at them a little suspiciously. Órlaith bent over and extended a hand, avoiding a stare—cats and Nihonjin had the same ideas about that, which wasn’t the only point of resemblance she’d noticed—and murmured:
“Mi-mi-mi-mi.”
Her Nonni Sandra had told her that meow was a compound word in feline, made up of mi for hello and eow for keep your distance. She didn’t know whether that was right, but a lot of cats seemed to like it when you went mi-mi at them, particularly if you weren’t one of their familiar people. Cats that knew you preferred mrrrrp.
The beast came over, sniffed her hand and consented to a scritch on the head; its ears were rather tattered. Reiko chuckled; that died at the scrutch of feet.
A man was approaching, in the dress of a manor-house servant: neat brimless felt hat with the d’Ath livery badge, breeks and charcoal knee socks, with a laced hip-length jerkin. The varlet uncovered his short fair hair—with a slight twitch of the eyes towards the bodyguards, especially the samurai—made a leg, and spoke:
“Your Highness, there’s a Royal courier,” he said.
Órlaith raised an eyebrow. Generally a message for her here would simply be sent over the heliograph net to Castle Ath—with a skilled operator mo
dern fixed models with four-foot triple mirrors could transmit fifteen words a minute, and over distances up to a hundred miles with favorable geography and weather and powerful telescopes at the receiving end. From here to Todenangst was a single stage, and as near instantaneous as no matter; John’s had probably taken about twenty minutes from Corvallis, faster than the time required to write it down up at the castle and have someone trot over here.
“Not a message?” she said.
“No, Your Highness; a riding courier in the High King’s . . . my apologies, the High Queen’s livery, the Crown Courier Corps. And looking like it’s been a long hard ride too.”
The varlet bowed to Reiko as well as to her, she was glad to see; the d’Ath household servitors were well-trained, and just as important they really wanted to please. There were usually plenty of applicants for jobs like his in the Association territories; it was a lot easier than what a peasant did, and while you didn’t get the same things served at the foot of the lord’s table as they did above the salt, there was always plenty of it and you didn’t have to grow it yourself. On the other hand, not all commoners liked being around nobles all day, without much time to call their own, especially if the lords in question were bad-tempered or hasty. That wasn’t a problem here.
“Send him through, thank you, Dicun,” Órlaith said with a smile.
He coughed discreetly into a hand. “The courier is a lady, Your Highness. A Sioux lady, I believe, the one who came here some time ago.”
“Ah,” Órlaith said, feeling a quick thrill, the sort you did when the bushes moved against the wind on a boar-hunt.
The game begins indeed.
Beside her Reiko stiffened, an infinitesimal motion that still made silk and linen rustle.
“Well, send her along, then. And have some refreshments sent up here as well, she’s probably had a hard ride.”
“We’ve already sent for that, Your Majesty,” Dicun said, confirming her guess.
She didn’t offer him a tip, which would be gross and insulting, though she did smile and nod. She reminded herself to leave a vail for the staff when she left, though; normally the senior Household servant along with her would handle it.
The Golden Princess: A Novel of the Change (Change Series) Page 34