“Durer said you were the one who stacked the dishes last night,” Johanna said, appearing suddenly beside Alec for the first time that morning. “Thank you,” she added.
“I’d have cleaned them, but I didn’t know where the tub and water were,” he replied. He wondered where she had slept, but didn’t ask.
“Here, we can just place them in this tub since we’re going home today, and the servants will take care of them for us,” Johanna said casually. “We won’t need them again for anything.” Alec lifted the heavy tub into the wagon for the girl. “Most of the boys here can’t lift that themselves,” she said appreciatively. “Thank you for your help.”
In just a few more minutes the campsite was empty as people climbed on horse and wagons and began moving east towards their home in Stronghold. Alec fell in next to Brandeis, who had taken a dose of his cure earlier. “Alec, thank you ever so much,” the slightly foppish boy said gratefully. “I already feel like I didn’t drink a drop last night, which is an unusual experience for me, except for church holidays with my mother,” he said lightly.
The two fell into an easy conversation as they rode along, Brandeis carrying the vast majority of the conversation as he spoke whatever witticism came to his mind during the ride. Alec learned a great deal about the others in the traveling group as he lagged in the back with his happy-go-lucky companion. “Why are you back here with me when you could be up front wooing the beautiful Johanna?” Brandeis asked suddenly. “She came looking for you last night, but you were already asleep. She stood by you for several minutes, until Reuchlin came and talked her back to the fireside. You could’ve had her – she’s pretty, rich, nice, even bright – what more does a wandering minstrel need?” he laughed.
“What more, indeed?” Alec asked. “Now we just need to go find a minstrel. You heard my voice last night, didn’t you?” he laughed.
“Point taken,” Brandeis agreed with a grin.
“How long will it take us to reach the city?” Alec asked.
“So you want to change the subject,” Brandeis observed. “So be it. We can come back to your love life some other time.
“Durer will let us stop for a bite of midday food, and then we’ll be back at the city walls two hours later and back in the family palace an hour after that,” Brandeis explained. “Where are you going to stay?” he asked as an afterthought. “Do you have a place to spend the night?”
“Well, no,” Alec admitted, suddenly hoping that something improbably fortunate was about to happen.
“Then you must come to the Locksfort palace and while away your life in indulgent luxury,” Brandeis proposed. “They’ve let me do nothing for years; I’m sure you’ll be good for several months, at least. If you hand out that hangover cure judicially, you may never have to leave!”
“Durer! Durer!” Brandeis shouted. “I’ve just had a brain storm. It’s absolutely brilliant!”
“Let’s stop for midday,” Durer shouted back from the front of the group. “I need to be standing on solid ground if I’m going to hear brilliance from our resident cousinly jester.”
The group stopped and dismounted. “What stroke of genius have you had?” Durer asked as he walked back to where Brandeis and Alec were watering their horses.
“Let’s have >
“Well of course he can stay at the Palace,” Durer replied with mock disgust. “We’ve been waiting for someone to come along to replace you, and he is so much better… and useful to boot.”
“Let me rephrase my suggestion,” Brandeis replied glibly.
“You want someone who can cure your hangovers on a regular basis, don’t you? And what could be handier than having a healer right down the hall?” Brandeis mockingly replied.
“Alec, you are welcome to be our guest in our home. You’ll lack for none of the comforts you crave, and you’ll be a much more pleasant addition than any of the sycophants Brandeis usually imposes on us,” Durer said, turning to face Alec with a grin. A scream sounded from behind Durer, and he whirled to face the group. “What the…?” he mumbled, and started back towards the front.
Reuchlin was standing over Johanna, who was kneeling on the ground with her face in her hands. “Your cousin is already salivating at the prospect of the new wonder boy roaming the halls of our home,” he snarled at Durer. “She’s disgraceful.”
Durer took Reuchlin by the arm and moved him quickly into the woods away from the rest of the group, speaking in a low voice as they moved out of earshot.
“Reuchlin should be Durer, and Durer should be someone else, if family bloodlines run true,” Brandeis said quietly, dropping the merry tone he usually portrayed. “Reuchlin is just like Durer’s father, Judos. A bull, and a bully, always running through and over everyone to get what he wants, and sometimes it seems just for the pleasure of being cruel. He and Aunt Mooreen drove Noranda – Durer’s sister – away, simply to be mean,” Brandeis said with a catch in his voice that caught Alec’s attention.
“You loved her?” he asked his new acquaintance, an insight coming upon him that was only a guess, but more than a guess based on the tone of Brandeis’s voice and the mobility of his features.
“Everyone loved her, just as we all love Johanna,” Brandeis replied. “You should have seen her; they were two peas in a pod. Yes, I loved her. But her parents promised her as a child bride to some old crony for business purposes, like she was just an object to be bargained away. Reuchlin taunted her endlessly, tastelessly, graphically, about her wedding night and marriage, to the point that she could do nothing but cry all day. It took a lot of the joy out of her life, and she ran away.
“Then she turned up again in Goldenfields of all places, and ends up being murdered by an ingenaire in Oyster Bay,” Brandeis finished.
Alec was doubly stunned into silence, both by the revelation of Brandeis’s infatuation, as well as the blame for murder assigned to an ingenaire, probably him, he suspected, when she wasn’t even truly dead yet.
A muffled sob from Johanna broke through his distraction, and he walked over and knelt by the girl, who was being tended by two other girls in the gp. Without pause or consideration, Alec reached in and tilted her chin up so that he saw the reddened mark on her cheek, then he slid his fingertips lightly across the smooth skin, healing away the pain and the injury altogether.
The girl who had played the organ the night before gasped and Johanna’s startled eyes pierced Alec’s own. “He took the mark away!” the organist exclaimed. “Just rubbed his fingers over it, and it was gone!”
“I just brushed some dirt off,” Alec said calmly, glancing from Johanna to the other girl. “It just looked like a mark, but there was only some dirt there. Does it hurt?” he asked Johanna.
She didn’t speak, but only shook her head slightly. “There, see, just dirt,” he emphasized, and stood up offering his hand to help Johanna stand.
She took his hand to stand, then let go and failed to face him before she walked off with the organist and another girl.
Alec too walked away, returning to Walnut and standing on the side of the horse away from everyone else, using his steed to shield him from the eyes of the others in the group. Their attention was shifting from Alec to Johanna to where Durer and Reuchlin had entered the woods. Brandeis silently moved away from Alec, giving him the privacy he wanted.
The group was frozen into inaction by the tableau that had broken out in its midst. No one made any move to begin preparing the meal until the two men returned to the camp. At that point several people simultaneously bustled about the food wagon preparing the food for the group to eat. Durer and Reuchlin acted as though nothing had happened, and in short order everyone was back to light-hearted banter as they began eating.
Alec and Johanna remained silent however. Alec found his hands absently running over the newly short hair on his scalp, the bristles still feeling unusual to him. He lowered his arms and walked over to the food, gathering a few morsels to chew on.
Soon the g
roup was done and on its way again, Alec and Brandeis again riding together in the rear. “Do you want to discuss what happened back there?” Brandeis asked with more diplomacy than Alec had expected from his flippant companion.
The directness of the question caught Alec off-guard. “I just hate to see cruelty. I wish people would treat each other the way they want to be treated; we’d all get along so much better,” Alec said hesitantly.
“I have a notion that in some ways you’re not as young as you seem, but then you say something so refreshingly naïve and I’m happy to resume believing that you are simply an innocent abroad,” Brandeis replied with a grin. “Enough of that for now. Very soon we’ll be emerging from the family forest, and then you’ll see Stronghold not too far away. We’ll merge right back onto Dominion Road and join all the traffic heading into town, and then…
“And then we’ll take you to our family warren, a place of intrigue, duplicity, power and wealth: a place where you’ll never have to worry about being treated as you’d like to be treated, especially now that Reuchlin perceives you as a threat to his dynastic plans with cousin Johanna,” Brandeis commented. “You’ll need to finish your wooing of her quickly.”
“Johanna?” Alec exclaimed loudly. The heads immediately ahead of them turned to look at the two riders on the tail of the entourage. He lowered his voice. “I’m not wooing Johanna.”
“So you’re claiming that the fair lady is simply wooing you then, is it?” Brandeis said with a return of his sense of humor. “You think so highly of your young, valuable self that you expect pretty, rich heiresses to swoon over you.”
Alec grinned. “I can’t win if I say anything one way or the other to you, can I?”
“See, you are more perceptive than someone your age should be,” Brandeis laughed. Not too long after, the forest ended in an abrupt line of demarcation between the protected Locksfort domain and the lands of others, where the public road swooped back to its proper route after detouring. Other travelers were present, and the Locksfort contingent continued its gay chatter as it arrived at the massive gates of entry into the city.
Alec stayed within the privileged circle of youth, who the local constabulary helped along by ordering traffic out of the way. As they arrived at the entrance to the family compound, which towered far above the lower city, a few cousins turned away to go to other places, while the rest entered past sentries and headed to the stables to place their horses.
“Let me show you to your rooms,” Brandeis suggested to Alec as he handed his horse’s reins to a stablehand. Alec was at a momentary loss.
“I’d like to tend Walnut for a moment to see where he’ll be,” Alec said after a moment. “Let me see his stall and make sure he’s settled, and then I can head up,” he asked hoping that his request wasn’t eccentric among the ways of these pampered young people.
“Certainly. I’ll be out in the fresh air,” Brandeis said with no indication of complaint.
Alec walked with the stablehand who took Walnut, and asked about the feed and other matters while he helped remove the saddle and settled his horse in, noting with approval the cleanliness of the stables and the fresh bedding provided; this family certainly took good care of its stock. He promised to return for a visit and then found his way back to the stable gates.
Brandeis was on a shaded bench, outside the gray stone building, talking with Johanna, who apparently had also lingered, carrying her small sack of belongings with her. “I told her the servants would take care of that,” Brandeis said smiling, pointing to Johanna’s sack, “but she came down to tote her bag personally. I suspect she has either brandy or murder weapons hidden in the bag and doesn’t want the help to gossip.”
The girl smiled, but said little. Brandeis led the way up a series of staircases and corridors that climbed the hill the compound was built upon. The complex route baffled Alec, who followed with Johanna behind him.
“May I carry that you?” Alec asked, gesturing towards the bag.
“Thank you,” she replied, handing it over. “And thank you,” she added in a lower voice. “I don’t know what you did this morning, but thank you. I appreciated your kindness.”
“No cooing back there,” Brandeis turned to the two whose heads were bent close together. “At least not in public.” Alec immediately pulled slightly away from Johanna in embarrassment.
“I’m going this way; I can take my bag,” she said, and took the bag from Alec in order to turn down an adjoining hallway.
“That’s not her way,” Brandeis observed, but Alec wasn’t sure if he spoke literally or figuratively.
Minutes later after climbing higher, Brandeis opened a door and led Alec into a room. There was a doorway to an adjoining room, but the visitor was drawn to the window, where the waterfall and both banks of the city, including the abandoned Millershome docks, were part of a panoramic view.
“We came from out there,” Brandeis pointed to a dark forest on the horizon. “I’ll go tell the housekeeper you’re here, and a maid will be in soon to see what you need. Feel free to explore the grounds, gardens, stables, but don’t try to enter the business area. There’s nothing interesting there anyway, but the managers don’t like to be annoyed.
“I’ve got a couple of errands to run, but then I’ll be back to find you and we can go out for dinner. Tomorrow we’ll meet some of the aunts and uncles to be polite. Enjoy yourself, and welcome home!” Brandeis finished his comments and shut the door as he left, leaving Alec alone with his thoughts.
Alec was now a guest, above suspicion, in the place he most wanted to be. He marveled at how fate had contrived to serve him so well, and wondered how God could have made so many coincidences occur so conveniently. He drew away from the window and opened the door that led to a second room, where a bed and desk were the only furniture, and the window offered the same view as the sitting room. He heard a sound and returned to the sitting room to find his saddle pack had been dropped off by a servant.
Alec lay down on the mattress to test its comfort, and closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again the shadows were long, and Brandeis and Circh, a pale blond girl from the forest party, were lying on either side of him, their grinning faces just inches from his head. He shot up to a sitting position in surprise and embarrassment. “I just lied down for a moment to remember what a mattress felt like…,” he tried to explain.
“Since you’re rested up, we’ll just expect you to have the energy to enjoy a night out in the city even more,” Circh smiled as she sat up too, leaning in towards him.
Alec had a sudden memory, a strong, powerful recollection that carried him from the here and now. He remembered the group of ingenairii and warriors who had ridden hard across the desert between Goldenfields and Bondell. There had been no nights out on the town, no spoiled indulgence in an easy life. The group had ridden at an exhausting pace and goneto battle; but the days and nights of companionship were rich in memory compared to how these people lived, he thought silently, coming back to the present.
The three left the room and walked down the stairs, carrying a torch to wash away the shadows in their path through the convoluted construction of the Locksfort home. “How did this come to be built as it is?” Alec asked Brandeis.
“It was built one generation at a time, and we’re the twelfth generation to live here, or are we thirteenth, Cir?” he replied. “One year someone builds what they want, and ten years later someone else decides to extend it a different way. We’ve been here all our lives, so we can find our way, but no outsider can work through here. The home would defend us as much as muscle and metal, if we were ever attacked,” he concluded.
“Blah, blah,” the white-haired girl impishly answered. “Let’s just get down to the wharfside for some fun.”
They reached a wide plaza, the largest open space Alec had seen in the family fortress. “You two go ahead,” Brandeis called to them as he started in a different direction. “I’ll join you at the Oak Table. I won
’t be long.”
“You’ll need to put your arm around me to protect me and guard my honor down there,” Circh told Alec as they passed out of the compound gate and entered the city. “Otherwise the river sailors will take me for something I’m not.” She reached over suddenly and pulled Alec’s arm over her shoulder.
Alec suspected he was being taken advantage of, but allowed it to happen as Circh guided him down narrow lanes that led towards the riverfront. After a few minutes, they entered a tavern with a bright orange door, and Circh was greeted by several voices. “Let’s join them; most of the gang is here already,” she raised her face to speak up to Alec’s ear. Noisy conversations all around made quiet comments impossible.
They turned right, Alec removing his arm from his companion, and the two sat down in the middle of a long table of people just older than Alec. Most were not familiar to him from the forest party, and he tried to remember the names that were mentioned to him as men and women introduced themselves. Circh already had a pint of some beverage before her. “Let’s go down to Schama’s now,” a voice suggested. Several voices spoke up in support, and many started to stand.
“Shouldn’t we wait for Brandeis?” Alec asked Circh loudly.
“Oh, he’ll know where to find us,” a nearby man said.
“Where did you lose him?” another asked Circh.
“Oh,” she rolled her eyes, “you know perfectly well. He’s been gone for four days and needs to go visit her. It gives me the creeps,” she added.
“You don’t think he opens it up and sees her, do you?” asked a girl sitting on the other side of Alec.
“I doubt it. That would raise such a ruckus if he got caught, and he’s already fold to leave her alone,” the first man in the conversation answered
The Lifesaving Power: Goldenfields and Stronghold Page 8