by Laila Blake
They reached the door to her bed chambers and Moira refused to look at her father.
"As you wish... my Lord."
With a small gesture, she loosened the hold of the jacket around her shoulders, slipped it off and handed it to him. Her face was blank except for a certain tightness in her jaw and around her temples - frustration she tried her hardest not to show, as another hard shiver made her upper body twitch.
"Would you like me to call for your maid? To draw you a bath, help you get dressed, build your fire?"
"No. Thank you," she answered after a pause, fingers on the door handle. "I will call for her myself when I have need for her."
"As you wish."
She looked tired and white, where Lord Rochmond wanted her to be lively and happy, red-cheeked and smiling. Even the peasants found reason enough to smile, so why couldn't his high-born girl with her dresses and her suitors and the dances her mother arranged?
His girl was pale and her spirits hung low. Her eyes never looked quite alert -- quite settled -- in the world anymore, except when they flashed in anger from time to time. He had consulted physicians, even self-proclaimed seers but to no avail. She just didn't sleep; not at night, at least, and the few hours she sometimes took to lying down during the day didn't seem enough to keep her mind rooted in the present.
Lord Rochmond was still holding the guard coat, but for the moment he didn't have the heart to ask her from whom she had borrowed it; the captain, he assumed.
"Just remember, you promised to spend time with the young Sir Lisle today. This is not negotiable anymore, you already put him off yesterday."
Moira opened mouth, but then decided against saying anything and closed the door on her father's face. The sun had hardly even begun to crawl up over the eastern horizon but the calming, sustaining effect of her night with the wind and the lake felt already spent.
Chapter Two
The sharp smell of hemp tickled Moira's nose, made her nostrils flare against the bowstring. It was still too rough and inflexible and it detracted from her focus. She had left her bow with the arms master to restring after it snapped just above the knock point a few days before, but wished now that she'd done it herself, had spent time massaging oil into the hemp and gently rubbing it to a finer touch like the master bowyer in town did. The arms master up in the castle was a coarse man who dealt in swords and the occasional crossbow. He also had little patience for a woman who played with weapons.
Her biceps quivered as she held the bow drawn, the tight string just touched the curve of her lips. She breathed slowly and calmly, forcing her mind to release all tension into the bow. There were days where she managed this almost easily, where the pathways forged by years of practice allowed her to let go of all concerns, but as hard as she tried, she couldn't find that place of clarity that day. Her lack of sleep had sapped strength from her muscles, made them shiver and shake uncontrollably - and she was too angry, too enmeshed in feeling miserable to balance it out.
Squinting, she released the arrow and she didn't have to check to know that her aim wasn't true. It had lodged itself somewhere in the padded wall behind the circular target and this time, Moira's nostrils flared in anger. Her shoulder twitched and the remaining arrows rattled in her quiver. In a swift motion, she drew again, this time releasing without attempting to quiet her mind. The arrow connected with the outer rim of the target and Moira threw her head back to look up at the gray autumn sky.
She didn't make a sound, not here in the courtyard where anyone could hear, anyone could see, but she tensed and spread her fingers, then tightened them to fists. One more time, she straightened her spine. She set her foot carefully on the rough grass mat, laid out to allow for purchase on the usually muddy ground.
Nocking the arrow, she drew it back, took aim and stared at the bright red spot at the center the target. From where she stood, she knew the angle she had to assume, had studied the arch of flight in long sessions that had left her arms sore. Tilting the tip of the arrow two finger's breadth upwards, she released a breath through puckered lips. She was still grasping for focus when she heard the sound of shuffling steps on the courtyard behind her.
"I wonder," the old man said, "are you imagining Sir Lisle's face on that target or your own?"
Not turning around, Moira loosened her hold on the string for a moment as she relaxed her bow arm, and then drew it back and released.
Bull's eye.
The old man behind her cackled quietly. His white hair blew in the wind and his face was a maze of wrinkles when he smiled like that. Moira regarded him, looked him up and down from the tattered leather shoes to the top of his head, where his hair had thinned enough to reveal a pinkish-yellow spot of skin. Old Brock was her tutor, the castle's physician and generally regarded as a person of wisdom. Anyone else would have been punished for a comment such as that, but nobody else would have dared it and that seemed to render her response moot. He was right, as always.
"What have you heard?" She asked, slinging her bow onto her back and pulling at her archery glove.
"Nothing, my Lady." As so often, the formal address rolled over his tongue with a sense of sarcasm. During their lessons, she was his pupil and he called her by her given name but outside of them the address varied. "Would you like me to hazard a guess?"
Moira narrowed her eyes at him, but then shook her head. She turned to walk back inside, but slowed her feet enough for him to fall in step beside her, hobbling over the empty courtyard.
"He is leaving, what else is there to say?"
"Did you want him to leave?"
Moira shrugged. It was a dishonest gesture, though. Of course she'd wanted Sir Lisle to leave, she wanted them all to leave. The thought of dying an old maid had scared her once, but she lad long learned that there were more frightening visions of her future. She shivered and it wasn't from the chill in the dusky air.
"What was wrong with this one?" Brock asked. Moira thought she heard resignation in his voice but she couldn't be sure. Maybe the resignation was her own, her parents' and it had suffused her ears so deeply that it tinted everything she heard in its grayish hue. She felt compelled to draw her shoulders up again, but didn't. She just fidgeted with the braided belt around her hip that gave the simple woolen dress any semblance of shape and bit her lip.
"He..." she stopped in her tracks just as they were about to pass through the heavy entrance into the hall. Brock opened it and when she was sure that none of Sir Lisle's household were in sight, she went on: "His voice is so loud and harsh, it hurts when he speaks and... he has fingers like sausages."
Her eyes wide, the muscle over her cheek-bone flinched and she quickly moved her face to cover for it. "He doesn't read, he doesn't think... his older brother was raised to lead and he was raised to fight. And now he thinks he can change his destiny by marrying an heiress, but he's unkind and loud and I wouldn't have married him even if he'd asked."
Brock watched her as they were stepping up the broad staircase into the family's living quarters. He didn't ask how she had gleaned so much from a single lunch with the man, nor did he argue or challenge her. He just sighed and shook his head behind her back.
"Brock, Sir?" A high, boyish voice called from the bottom of the stairs. They both turned around to see the page hurry up behind them and bow low. "Milady. Please excuse the interruption."
Moira waved it away. She leaned against the wall, trying not to give into the weakness her body succumbed to at this time of day. If she slept a little now, she knew she wouldn't get a moment's sleep all night, and that was when the desire to be alone under the stars became almost impossible to fight.
"Brock, Sir, his Lordship wishes a word with you in his study," the page rattled off in his hurried tenor. Brock nodded, excused himself to Moira and then wobbled back down the stairs.
***
He found Lord Rochmond pacing up and down the length of his study. His hair had the ruffled quality a garden rake could have achieved, and he lo
oked even more tired than Moira had.
"You wanted to see me, my Lord?"
Lord Rochmond turned to the old man who stood bowed, his spine bent by the ages. He nodded and then gestured to a chair. Old Brock had served his family for as long as he could remember, had even taught the young Lord Rochmond himself, and especially now that he could feel his own advancing years, he had grown gentle and protective of the old man. He watched him hobble across the room, and didn't speak until he was sat down on the cushion, watching his Lord expectantly.
"I want to talk about my daughter," he said at length. Brock nodded. There was no surprise in his gaze, nor had Lord Rochmond expected to find any. "You have taught her in the history of our realm, in the responsibility of her position, in the sciences and the great philosophers."
Again Brock nodded.
"Yes, my Lord. Much as I taught you before her."
Lord Rochmond ignored this. He took to pacing the room again. A measured man, Lord Rochmond had always taken pains to express himself well, to find the right words even towards servants.
"I wonder, Brock, if you couldn't amend your lessons to be more suited towards... her future role. She will be a wife and a mother. Surely, she has no need for politics or more than the broadest understanding of history."
Brock didn't answer immediately. He watched Lord Rochmond until he came to a halt by the window and added: "I am well aware that you have been acting under my instructions and I do not blame you. But something has to change."
"She has a governess to teach her etiquette and obedience." Brock answered slowly. "She has a mother. I don't know what I could teach her about a woman's place that they could not."
Huffing slightly, Lord Rochmond turned around. The worry stood as clearly on his face as if written upon it in ink.
"May I ask what happened today?" Brock went on. This time Lord Rochmond sunk into a chair opposite him and rubbed his face.
"What always happens." He shook his head, narrowing his brows. For a moment Brock thought he might continue, but Lord Rochmond seemed to prefer not to list his only daughter's failings, not even to his oldest adviser. It mattered little, Brock had seen it many times: the way the sensitive, strange young woman turned into something cold and dark, a flinching, twitching creature that spoiled any man's appetite, any man's desire. A few still stated their intent, offered her the marriage that would stabilize the fief and provide the man needed to take over affairs after Lord Rochmond would pass away. Most left without doing so.
"May I... offer an opinion, my Lord?" Brock asked, treading carefully.
Lord Rochmond grunted his assent.
"Unlike his Lordship, I have never known the joys of fatherhood, nor it's challenges. But I hope his Lordship will permit me to say that in my advanced years, helping to raise young Lady Rochmond has given me a sense of affection for her that I cannot deny. She is a sweet, sensitive girl of obvious intelligence."
Lord Rochmond gave a small, proud smile but he added in a grumble: "You forget obstinate."
Smiling Brock let that comment pass and continued: "His Lordship intended to do her a kindness by allowing her to choose her husband. And I believed it was, myself. But now I can't help but think that it might not have been. There is a reason why women need to be married young - every year that passes marks new eccentricities and ideas, as she - grown and not longer a child - is seeking for a new sense of safety in her life. It might simply be too great a responsibility to put upon her tender shoulders, to choose not only a man for herself, but the heir and future Lord of this fief. Women have gentler sensibilities, this is why they do not rule - maybe she should not be the one to make this decision, my Lord."
Silence fell over the room as the two men regarded each other. It had always felt to Lord Rochmond that with each passing year, they approached each other in age, as if Old Brock would be Old Brock forever and only by aging could he, Lord Rochmond, approach his wisdom on a more equal footing. His comment was a setback, and he wanted to scowl, wanted to defend his choice. And yet, he couldn't find the words.
"Thank you, Brock," he said instead, more curtly than before. "I value your advice and I will consider it."
This marked the end of the conversation, but Brock did not leave. The silence spanned a few moments longer until Lord Rochmond raised his brows.
"Is there anything else?"
"My Lord - your daughter tells me that you have sent for a Blaidyn to employ here in the castle."
Lord Rochmond stared back at his old tutor unflinchingly.
"What of it?"
Brock opened his mouth to speak, but then closed it again. It was the look in Lord Rochmond's eyes, that made him stop. His benefactor was a kind man, a gentle ruler, but he had a limit to the criticism he allowed at a time. Brock got up from his chair; his knees creaked.
"It is nothing, my Lord. I was simply curious."
***
From one of the Bramble Keep's tower rooms, through a small window, Brock stared into the distance; the cornfields and orchards, the rivers, the mountains and the plains and always dominating the view: Lake Coru, dark, bone-litered and deep.
The fief of Rochmond was vast in size but mainly uninhabited with its high mountain ranges and thick forests. Down in the lake valley, it was largely agricultural and had a reputation for being a little uncultured, far away as it was from the population-heavy western coastline of the kingdom. The Bramble Keep and the small town of Rochmond -- an hour's brisk walk from the Keep -- were the only places the royal map painters usually deemed important enough to deserve little dots in the area between the eastern mountain ridge, Lake Coru and the western borders to the neighboring fiefs.
There were villages -- merely a few farms in size, a few woodchoppers' camps and miners' quarters in the mountains -- but humanity was sparse here, just the way Brock liked it.
He could see farmers bringing in the autumn harvest in the mild, greyish sunshine. Clouds in the distance were promising rain. They were always caught by the mountain peaks to wring out their load in the valley below. It was high time to bring in the wheat, before a single storm could flatten the stalks against the muddy ground. So there they worked, tiny figures in the distance with their carts and their horses and their scythes. A sleepy village, another harvest, another ship in the lakeside harbor that took the produce, the timber and the ore back into the capital.
Brock knew what he had been searching for, when he spied a solitary figure in the distance. It was a man; distinctly so from his build and walk, even from so far away. He was traveling on foot, fast and in no apparent hurry all the same.
Brock's eyes narrowed and he leaned forward into the window case. Strangers were rare in Rochmond, but this one was expected. A frown grew on the old man's face as he watched the figure wind his way up the paths, coming closer with every step.
By the Light of The Moon will be rereleased in May 2014.
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