Worlds Seen in Passing

by Irene Gallo

  “I know what you’re doing.”

  Garrick’s lip was curled in disgust.

  “I’m returning my falcon,” I said. I hoped he wouldn’t notice that my hands had started shaking.

  “I should tell Father.” He came closer. “Tell him what you’ve been doing in the woods with that woman. Just like you told him about me and Gwen.”

  “I didn’t tell anyone about—” I stopped. A sneer spread across his face.

  “That’s not the part that you should be denying,” he said, and left me with my heart kicking in my throat.

  * * *

  The next morning, the first families arrived for the great Winterfest tournament. Pennants snapped in the wintry air; the lords and ladies of each house were followed by processions of men, horses, handcarts, beasts, and banners. They filled the courtyard with their clamour. My father formally offered the hospitality of his hall for the evening feast, and I had my hand kissed more times than I could count.

  The great hall throbbed with heat and noise that evening. By no accident, I am sure—I could smell my mother all over it—I was shown to a seat next to Lord Faxsly’s eldest son. He was a slight, unassuming boy a year my junior who seemed unable to sit still for nerves when he discovered that he was to cut my meat.

  “Lady Claire,” he said, sliding his blond hair out of his eyes. “I see your beauty has not been exaggerated. I’d be grateful if you called me Cecil.”

  “I should like nothing better,” I said distractedly, catching sight of Garrick glaring at me from across the table. I looked towards the kitchens in search of the servant who was to fill our cups. You can imagine my surprise, my love, when I saw you in her place. I suppose I should have guessed that Father’s kitchen staff would not have been sufficient to entertain so large a party unbolstered—yes, there was Hugh, bent over a knight’s wine cup—but the sight of you with your fine eyes lowered to the flagstones, your fingers wrapped around the handle of a wine jug, was enough to give me a jolt. Garrick followed the trail of my eyes.

  You came closer, oblivious to the danger, clearly intending to cross to my side of the table and serve us. I saw several ladies whispering behind their hands—Lady Cheal visibly shuddered as you poured for her. Garrick’s fist tightened around his knife. My stomach turned to water.

  “… wouldn’t you say so, Lady Claire?”

  I blinked and turned back to Cecil. “Forgive me,” I said, feeling panic climb my chest. “The heat…”

  “Of course.” He sucked nervously on his bottom lip and raised the wine cup to indicate that we needed serving. “I’m sure some wine will cool you. The fire is a little overpowering…”

  I felt you sidle in behind us—I swear your hair brushed my shoulder as you bent to pour. Wine lapped into the cup.

  “Thank you, Cecil,” I said loudly. I felt you straighten. I did not dare turn to look at you—I risked the smallest glance when you had crossed back towards the kitchens and saw your eyes flick in my direction. I tried to signal without moving that Garrick watched our every step.

  The wine seemed to settle Cecil’s nerves, and we soon fell to comparing libraries. Reading was something in which I had never managed to interest you, my love—you preferred the world beyond the page, I think—but he had grown up with the same poems and stories that had shaped my girlhood. His father’s castle, he told me, had an entire tower filled with volumes in every language. I made sure everyone at the table noticed how engrossed we were in conversation when you brought over the joint of meat we were to share.

  “You and my sister get on well,” Garrick said to Cecil as you laid the cooked flesh on the plate of day-old bread. “But I wouldn’t want to falsely raise your hopes—I think her eye has already fallen on another.”

  My mother’s food stopped halfway to her mouth. One of the other ladies coughed. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Lady Cheal glance up at you.

  “You must forgive my brother,” I said, loudly enough for everyone to hear. “He is so enamoured of his newly betrothed, Lady Lila Argeatha, that he imagines love in everyone around him. My eye has not yet fallen anywhere.”

  I took a breath and laid my hand on Cecil’s arm. “I hope we can be friends.”

  * * *

  After that it became impossible to see you: I could barely venture as far as the courtyard without hearing the tread of Garrick’s boot behind me. Father called a Justice Circle, ostensibly to purify his halls before the tournament, but really to demonstrate his trust in lords Cheal and Faxsly. I sat next to Cecil. Neither of us paid full attention: I was too busy combing the crowd for a glimpse of you, and he seemed unable to stop his eyes from dropping guiltily to my neckline or following my fingers as I fiddled with my dress. It actually seemed an interesting hearing. A secret lover came forward to provide an alibi for the accused at the last minute, her voice trembling under the council’s gaze. You were not among the crowd.

  I resorted to asking Hugh for news of you. He ignored me as long as he was able, staring directly ahead and prodding food into a falcon’s grasping beak, but my ladylike coughs eventually broke him.

  “She’s in the stables, seeing to riding equipment for His Grace’s tournament. Much good may that knowledge bring you.”

  And he was hobbling away before I could rebuke him.

  * * *

  You were working by candlelight, the stable hands having long since turned in, wearing down a strip of leather with a stone—for what purpose, I could not guess. Flex, rub, scrape, bend. The motion was hypnotic.

  After you had put aside the leather and turned those hard, strong hands on me, I tried to read to you. The book was one that Cecil had lent me on the Yovali. You listened for a while, your face betraying nothing, then went back to your work. I looked up every now and then when I came to passages about Yovali customs and the role of slaves, hoping to spot a reaction.

  Flex, rub, scrape, bend. I wondered sometimes if you even understood our language.

  * * *

  Tournament day came at last. Pavilions had been erected in the village, where hooves and boots had already squelched the fields to seas of mud. Stallions reared and snorted; children shrieked; squires buckled knights into their armour. The smell of cooked meat drifted on the wind. Cecil led me to my seat, managing to look vaguely handsome in a turquoise tunic trimmed with gold.

  “You are not competing?” I said as he helped me up into the stalls. My hair had been an undertaking for the maid that morning.

  “Not today,” he said. “I find my talents lie elsewhere. How did you find the book?”

  I must admit, my love, I found his conversation pleasant. He told me he had actually been to the Yovali lands, and I tried to probe for information that might help me know you. He was vague in some places and verbose in others: he had heard a lot about the slaves, he said, but never seen one; he had studied the construction of the temples, though, with their thick grey blocks of stone and carvings across every wall. His father had a haraad-kité, the ceremonial blade they used to cut out tongues, displayed above the hearth in his great hall.

  “That’s her over there, isn’t it?” he said, after a while. “The tongueless slave.”

  I followed the line of his finger. You were down near the front of the crowd, standing up and facing backwards, looking for someone. Our eyes met. A hot, dirty blush ran up my face.

  “She makes my skin crawl,” Cecil said, apparently not noticing my distress. “How do you bear having her around the castle every day?”

  I looked away and mumbled a reply.

  The tournament got underway. I had never derived much pleasure from jousting, or the mock battles and mêlées that were to follow, but with Cecil’s whispered commentary in my ear and a bright sky overhead, I found I was enjoying myself. My mother sat a few places down the row, smiling indulgently in our direction every now and then, and there was no Garrick in the crowd to make me uneasy—he was in a tent somewhere, being packed into a suit of mail. I avoided looking at you entir
ely.

  Garrick’s turn came: our house fanfare struck up at the far end of the field and he emerged, a mountain of plate mail on a soot-black horse. Even I had to admit he looked impressive. The De Rouchefort crest, an eagle with its wings held wide, blazed upon his shield. His horse cantered round the grass while his opponent weighed his lance.

  “I would not like to be the one to face your brother,” Cecil muttered. Garrick bounded to the middle of the field and raised his visor, ready to salute my father. His horse reared, his fist came up, he tugged the reins with his free hand—

  The leather snapped. His hand flew upwards and he fell out of the saddle, his foot caught in a stirrup. His helmet smacked into the mud. A lady screamed. The horse panicked, spluttered, and started running down the field, dragging Garrick behind it by his ankle.

  Pandemonium.

  Father sprang from his seat and roared for assistance. Lord Crawdank’s son clambered from the stands and began to chase Garrick’s horse around the field. There was only one head not turned towards the chaos that followed: you were standing facing backwards again, your eyes threatening to swallow me. It was not until much later that I considered that the leather strap you had been working on the night before might have been a bridle.

  * * *

  Garrick would recover, the physician told us, although several bones were broken and it took him two days to regain consciousness. I had never seen him so diminished. I didn’t have sympathy to spare for long, however: not three hours passed between my seeing him awake and my having an accident of my own. I tripped on the staircase to my chamber, on the same little malformed snag of stone that had tumbled Letia to her death that autumn. Thankfully I was ascending rather than descending. My shin crunched against the apex of a step and I felt something give within the bone. I was ordered to keep to my bed until it healed.

  Maybe that was when things changed. I felt the turn of winter into spring not in the taste of the air or the changing colours of the trees, as you must have, but in the minute variations in the breakfasts that the maids prepared for me. I saw nothing of you. What excuse could I have found, after all, for the falconer’s apprentice to visit the duke’s daughter in her chamber? I had already heard the maids whispering outside my door.

  The families who had attended the tournament left one by one, after each lord was satisfied that no blame was placed on him for Garrick’s injury. Cecil stayed behind. He came blushing to my chamber every afternoon, a different book under his arm, and he would read to me for hours, or we would play chess, or talk. The carved stone you had given me before Winterfest, which I had until then kept with me when I slept, began to dig into my flesh whichever way I lay. I put it on my dressing table, where it was soon hidden by gifts of books and fresh-cut flowers.

  Oh, my love! You must forgive me. I know that we had our own tongue, you and I—a language of glances and touches, heat and quiet—but I had forgotten how much real conversation could excite me. The novelty of having another voice to spar with mine, someone who could speak back when I spoke to him, someone who would spill himself to me—I grew giddy on it. Words, wonderful words! He admitted, after a week or two, that he was in love with me. I looked demurely at my hands and told him that his company warmed my heart.

  Eventually my leg grew well enough for me to walk around the castle with Cecil’s support, treading with the utmost caution down the stairs that had precipitated my injury. He did not complain of my weight upon his shoulder.

  “You are so perfect, Claire,” he said, on one of our evening walks. I leaned my head against him and thought of you, and how the nights we had spent together felt like someone else’s dreams. I saw you the very next morning, through my window. You were riding, and I witnessed for the first time how ugly and ungainly you were in the saddle: you kept your head forward, your neck tight, conscious of your half tongue bouncing in your throat. I turned back to my book and you were gone before I looked again.

  * * *

  “Your brother hates me,” Cecil said one morning, peeling fruit. Garrick had been up and limping around the castle for the past few days, roaring like a stricken bear. His head was still a mess of bruises. “And that tongueless slave,” Cecil said. “I’m sure she’s been following me.”

  “Garrick hates everyone.” I was fiddling with the stone that you had given me, turning it over and over in my hands. It refused to grow warm no matter how long I held it.

  “Kiss me,” I said suddenly, and reached for Cecil like I used to for you. The stone dropped onto the bedclothes as I slid my hand behind his neck. His lips were like a girl’s. I pushed my tongue inside his mouth, wanting to find his, but he broke away.

  “Wait.” He was breathing heavily. “Claire, we should wait until we’re married. Betrothed, at least.” He closed his eyes until he had regained his composure and went back to reading me a chapter on the Siege of Rhye.

  He glanced up every now and then as though he were afraid of me.

  * * *

  Father came to my chamber the day after, looking even greyer than he had done in the winter. It was obvious that there was a purpose to his visit, but he made sure to talk of nothing but my health and my reading until he could restrain himself no longer.

  “Claire.” He took my hand. “Lord Faxsly tells me that his son’s letters are of nothing but you. Tell me that you share his feelings. Tell me that there isn’t—that there wasn’t—” He stopped and rubbed his forehead. “Your brother has been … concerned for you.”

  I went very still. “You don’t need to worry,” I said slowly. “Cecil and I—we are betrothed.”

  Warmth rushed back into his face. My mother was fetched and told the news. The three of us shared an awkward embrace, after which I asked to see Cecil in private—I needed to tell him that he had proposed to me, after all. I heard the “good news” fanfare buzzing in the air below my window. I wondered where you would be when you were told of my betrayal.

  Someone knocked on my door a few minutes later. I sat up, expecting Cecil, but my heart went cold when I saw that it was Garrick.

  “Congratulations,” he said. He opened his arms as wide as they could go. I didn’t move. He limped over to me and grabbed me in a hug.

  “If you think you’ll go unpunished for the mockery you’ve made of me,” he said, “then you are very, very wrong.”

  * * *

  Part of me feared that Cecil might be angry, but I need not have worried. He said that the fact that it had been me who had proposed marriage to him was perfectly in keeping with my character, and that the sooner our families knew of our love, the better. I didn’t have to wonder long about when you would hear the news. The next morning, Cecil complained of being followed through the castle by “that tongueless witch.” There would be no one like you, he said, at Castle Faxsly.

  I had been foolish, I suppose, to think I would remain at Rouchefort when Cecil and I married—or that I might take you with me. Of course that was nonsense. We would be wed at Castle Faxsly, and would begin the journey west as soon as my leg was well enough to travel. I was up and walking within days of our betrothal.

  A stone struck my window on the eve of our departure. I put aside the book I had been reading and sat very still, trying to work out if it was an accident of the wind. When it came again, I slid out of the bedclothes and padded to the window. I cupped my hands and peered out through the glass.

  Below, in the darkness, I caught a glimpse of raven hair.

  I signaled for you to come up and retreated from the window. It was foolish to invite you up, I knew—what if a servant saw you climb the stairs, or Cecil came to say goodnight and found you with me?—but it didn’t seem to matter. I had to see you. I paced my chamber in my nightdress.

  You knocked. I answered, and there you stood: silent, looming, bewitching. The minutiae of your face had been lost to me while we were apart. You had a new scar, a tiny one along the bottom of your chin, and the peculiar shape of your lips seemed strange and wonderful
again. I drew you inside and closed the door.

  “I’m sorry.” Tears were already ripening in the corners of my eyes. “Oh, Aya, my love, I am so sorry.”

  You took my index finger in both hands and brought it to your lips.

  * * *

  I heard a distant cry halfway through our lovemaking. I ignored it, absorbed in you and confident in the bolt on my chamber door. A little later my ears picked out the tail of a scream, and then the sound of footfalls coming closer. Someone battered the door.

  “Lady Claire!”

  “Hide!” I hissed to you, and you slid out of my bed and began to squeeze in underneath it. I threw my nightdress on as the knocking increased in fervour.

  “What is it?” I flung back the door. “I was aslee—”

  “Oh, Lady Claire—it’s Master Faxsly. That tongueless witch has—she’s—oh, my lady!”

  “What is it?” I grabbed the fat flesh of the servant’s wrist. “Speak clearly. What’s happened?”

  “Master Faxsly, my lady. Your brother found him at the bottom of the stairs. Your brother said—he said—”

  “Said what?”

  “That the tongueless witch pushed Master Faxsly down the stairs, my lady!”

  My heart fell through my stomach.

  “You may go,” I said, hearing myself say the words as if from the other end of a long corridor. “I’ll be right down.” I made sure she was all the way down the stairs before I shut the door. I leaned against it, too faint to stand. Would it give you any sense of triumph, to know that it was you I worried for, and not Cecil?

  This, I realised, was Garrick’s plan. Kill Cecil, and have you take the blame for it. Rob me of both of you at once. I stared at you as you climbed out from underneath the bed.

  “Run,” I said, after a breathless minute. “For the gods’ sake, run!”

  You obeyed.

  * * *

  I don’t know how far you got. I wasn’t witness to your capture, although I have imagined it a hundred times: the ring of soldiers spreading out around you, breath frosting on their swords; your hair catching the moonlight as you turn. Did you try to fight, my love? To escape? I hope they did not hurt you.