A Christmas delight

by Anthea Malcolm

  "We hadn't gone anywhere at all." Verity's voice held a touch of asperity. "Except that Blanchardyn had left home to be a knight."

  "Yes, so he had. And he comes upon a wounded knight whose lady has been carried off by a great villain, and Blanchardyn begs the wounded man to dub him knight so he—Blanchardyn, that is—can go off and avenge him."

  "How do you dub a knight?" David asked, his eyes serious with concentration.

  "You hit him on the shoulder with your sword," Verity said with the superiority of two years.

  "Something like that." Owen went hastily over this first adventure, which had an unhappy ending, and came to Blanchardyn's encounter with the Knight of the Ferry.

  "When does he meet Eglantine?" The younger Arnquist girl, who had heard of the story from Verity, had decided to join them.

  "Very soon. The Knight of the Ferry thinks Blanchardyn would make a very good husband for the Queen. Eglantine has refused to marry anyone, including King Alymodes of Cassidonie. The King has sworn to have her and is now besieging Tormaday, her capital city. The Knight tells Blanchardyn the Queen is out riding, and he should go after her and kiss her."

  David made a face. "That's stupid," Verity said. "He hasn't even seen Eglantine."

  "It would make her notice him/' said the Arnquist girl who was thirteen and had some understanding of these things, "but I think she'd be very angry."

  "So she is. She swears to have him killed, but she changes her mind when Blanchardyn decides to defend her city and she sees what a very good fighter he is. She says it would be too cruel to kill a knight for only a kiss."

  David grew impatient. "When does he fight the King?"

  "Right now." Owen embarked on an enthusiastic description of Blanchardyn's feats in battle, passing rather quickly, Amanda thought, over the slaughter that these entailed.

  "What about Eglantine?" Verity asked.

  "She is, I fear, more in love with him than ever. In those days, being gallant in battle was the way to a lady's heart. Unfortunately Blanchardyn is taken prisoner. King Alymodes refuses to ransom him and sends him off to Cassidonie."

  "And then?" said several voices when it was clear that Owen was going to say no more.

  Owen raised his hands. "Enough. We'll have the rest tomorrow."

  "Couldn't you tell us just a little more?" five-year-old Bella Lydgate asked wistfully.

  Owen looked at the circle of young faces and gave a reluctant smile. "Well, perhaps another quarter-hour," he said and proceeded to take up the thread of the story again.

  The children listened with rapt attention, but Amanda found it difficult to focus her thoughts on Blanchardyn and Eglantine's adventures. The yule log blazed in the huge TUdor fireplace with comforting, familiar warmth, and the scent of pine blended with the spices from the bowl of mulled wine on the sofa table, but for a num-

  ber of reasons, tonight was unlike any Christmas Eve in her memory. Though Amanda's mother had tried to preserve the traditions she remembered from childhood, Christmas at home had never been as lively and boisterous as it was at Ludlow. Amanda secretly suspected that her mother was depressed by the holiday. Christmas was a time for families, and the divorce had separated lone Berwick from her own family and from her firstborn child.

  Feeling a twinge of guilt because she was not more homesick, Amanda glanced at the piquet table where Senhor Ribeiro was playing a hand with Countess Arnquist. The lamps were intentionally low tonight, allowing the fire and Christmas candles to cast a holiday glow over the room, and Amanda was not at all sure she could have said whether the man playing cards was the first Raimundo Ribeiro or the second. Even if he were an imposter, she doubted if Lady Duffield, who had not gone within a dozen paces of him all evening, would have noticed the difference.

  Lady Duffield herself was still seated on the settee, and Aunt Isabel, no doubt having noticed her friend's isolation, was approaching on Lord Mulgrave's arm. Amanda was watching them when her attention was suddenly drawn back to Owen, not by the story, but by the change in his manner of telling it. He did nothing as obvious as falter or break off, but his voice became curiously flat. His attention had been diverted and Amanda knew where.

  Lord Mulgrave was now seated beside Lady Duffield, and Isabel had taken herself off and joined a group clustered about the pianoforte. Amanda was disposed to smile. Her aunt had tried her hand at matchmaking more than once in the past, though to Amanda's mind the kindly but rather staid Lord Mulgrave would be quite out of his depth with Lady Duffield. Still, it

  hardly seemed cause for Owen's obvious concern.

  Really, the two Senhor Ribeiros were the least of the mysteries at Ludlow this Christmas. Perhaps, Amanda thought, absently shifting Susanna on her lap to make room for David's younger brother, that was the real cause of her jealousy. Not Lady Duffield herself but the realization that Owen had a life of which she knew nothing, a life she could not share. It occurred to her that despite their friendship, she knew remarkably little about Owen Thorn. He was an engaging companion and much sought after by hostesses, but he took his work very seriously. Though he probably wouldn't admit it, Amanda knew he was viewed with respect by scholars at both Oxford and Cambridge. He had an independent income which allowed him to live in apparent comfort but seemingly no property. He lodged in the Albany, which was how he had met Charles, who had had rooms there before his marriage. He never spoke of his family.

  When the party at last drifted upstairs, Amanda found herself in a curiously pensive mood. The magic of the waltz had not gone, but there was a bittersweet quality to the feeling, and she could not have said whether the ache in her chest came more from sorrow or from joy.

  She awoke on Christmas morning to the sound of rain tumbling off the eaves and spattering against her window, and found her spirits much improved. There was a great deal to be done and no time for moping about. Steeling herself against the cold, Amanda splashed icy water on her face, pulled on a warm wool gown and worsted shawl, and ran a brush through her tangled hair. Then she opened a drawer in her dressing table, took out the hood she had put together yesterday in the short time between their return from Honiton and the dinner bell, and slipped into the hall. She had

  little more than half an hour before the maids would begin making their rounds with hot water. Even now there was a risk of encountering an early riser, but the first-floor corridors proved empty, and she was able to climb the narrow spiral stairs to the attic in peace.

  Amanda knew precisely what she was looking for: a long, loose, crudely made garment of rough fabric. She had come across it when she and Nicola were going through the trunks in the attic the week before, pulling out clothes which might do for the mumming. Nicola had laughed at the sight of the garment and said it had been thrown together for the character of Friar TUck in a long-ago theatrical.

  Bundling the garment up in her arms, Amanda ran lightly down the stairs and pulled her shawl about her for her dash across the gardens and stable yard. True to his word, Owen was waiting in the stable, a sleepy-looking horse already saddled. "I'm sorry," Amanda told him, rain-soaked and breathless. "I'm afraid you'll have a wet ride."

  "That," Owen assured her, "can be nothing to rising at such an ungodly hour. Do you know I haven't even had a cup of tea, let alone coffee?"

  Amanda grinned. "I thought knights thrived on privation."

  "Very likely," said Owen, taking the monk's habit and hood from her and wrapping them in a carriage rug he had ready. "I can't recall ever having had the smallest desire to be a knight."

  "Maybe not, but in the past twenty-four hours you've gone questing for the real Senhor Ribeiro and saved the local lord and lady from having their Christmas court disrupted by a blood feud between brothers. And, of course, through all this you've made sure the fair Lady Duffield doesn't suffer any embarrassment."

  Even as she spoke, Amanda knew this last was a mis-

  take. If she ever learned more about Owen, it would be because he decided to tell her himse
lf, not because she went fishing for information. Owen, who had been smiling until the reference to Lady Duffield, turned away and carefully fastened the rug-wrapped bundle behind the saddle. "Right," he said briskly, taking the horse by the reins and coaxing it toward the door. "If anyone asks where I am, say I wanted a bit of exercise before breakfast. No one who knows me will believe a word of it, but they're all too well-bred to ask questions."

  As it happened, Owen's absence was scarcely remarked. Most of the party went to church in the village, and when Amanda returned, she found Owen stretched out before the library fire, warm and dry and reading the latest news about the Lavalette affair in the London papers. The children were with her, so it was impossible to ask how his meeting with the first Senhor Ribeiro had gone, but he gave her a brief, warming smile which indicated all was well and asked if it was time to choose costumes for the mumming.

  Nicola, now busy with the preparations for Christmas dinner, had reluctantly turned the mumming over to Amanda. The garments they had selected last week, all sturdy enough to do withstand the vigors of holiday merrymaking or worn enough that it didn't matter, were assembled in the largest of the attic rooms. Leading the cavalcade, Amanda opened the door onto the smell of camphor and lavender, and set the lamp she had brought, to supplement the gray light from the windows, on a scarred table.

  Costumes from theatricals lay side by side with relics of long-ago Windhams: a crimson farthingale, a slashed doublet, a periwig in want of curling. The mummers — the young people and older children and one or two like Nicola's brother Jeremy who refused to let adulthood

  take the fun out of things —fell to with enthusiasm. Most were inclined to try on whatever was nearest at hand, but Verity moved about the room with customary precision, then carefully selected a sacque of dark green damask and a Tbdor hood of even darker velvet. "Pm going to be Maid Marian/ 5 she explained, holding out these garments for Amanda's inspection.

  "Not Queen Eglantine?" David asked, tipping back a tricorn hat which hung down to his ears.

  Verity shook her head. "Amanda's going to be Eglantine," she said, as if this was quite decided.

  "Who?" asked Caroline Lambton-Hill, fastening an embroidered stomacher over her striped sarcenet gown.

  "Eglantine," said Verity matter-of-factly. "And Owen's going to be Blanchardyn. We don't have a proper suit of armor, but there's a helmet somewhere. And he can have the doublet. It's almost old enough."

  To argue, Amanda decided, would only be to draw unnecessary attention to the suggestion. Owen was kneeling beside Bella Lydgate, trying to disentangle her from a voluminous wrapping gown, and he did not seem to have heard Verity's remark. Amanda resolutely turned away to see what the older Lydgates were up to, but as she threaded her way between the chests, her eye fell upon a white satin kirtle, yellowed and stained, with only a fragment of lace remaining at the square-cut neck. It would do admirably for Eglantine, Amanda thought, running her fingers over the delicate fabric.

  "There!" Verity's excited voice rang out suddenly over the whisper of fabric and creak of hinges and cries of discovery. With an air of great satisfaction, she dropped an ancient helmet, which looked far too ornamental ever to have seen battle, over Owen's carefully combed hair. "You're going to be Blanchardyn," she informed him.

  Owen pushed back the rusty visor and grinned at her.

  "Whatever my lady commands."

  Verity grinned back and didn't say anything about Eglantine. Amanda wasn't sure whether she was glad or sorry, but when they left the attic, she carefully gathered up the white kirtle. After all, she had as much right to be Eglantine as anyone else did.

  Verity's mention of Blanchardyn brought more requests for the story, and once the costumes had been safely stowed in bedrooms, they gathered in the library for the last installment.

  "Right," said Owen as the Arnquist girls slipped into the room. "Everyone attending? It's not the sort of thing one can tell twice." And it wasn't. There was the trip to Cassidonie and the great storm at sea which no one but Blanchardyn survived and Blanchardyn's walk to Prussia where he took service with the Prussian King and became good friends with his son Sadoyne and their fight against the King of Poland. "And in the meantime," Owen said, "King Alymodes's son — "

  "I say," David interrupted, "there are a lot of kings in this story."

  "There are," Owen conceded. "Alymodes is the king who's besieging Eglantine. His son is driven by a storm to Friesland where he takes another king, who is Blanchardyn's father, captive and carries him to a dark dungeon in Cassidonie."

  The elder Lydgate boy frowned. "I don't see why Blanchardyn is fighting the Poles when he should be rescuing his father."

  "And Eglantine," Verity added.

  "Ah, you have a point. The thing is," Owen continued, "Blanchardyn is a very great warrior, but he can't do it all on his own, and he has to get the King of Prussia to give him ships and arms and men to help him. But there's another storm, and they end up back in Cassidonie, where Blanchardyn finds his father and

  sets him free. And then, at last, off they go to Torma-day."

  Verity let out a huge sigh. "It's about time. I would think Eglantine would have given him up."

  "I'm afraid she's still desperately in love. There's a great battle which Blanchardyn wins, but his friend Sa-doyne is taken prisoner by King Alymodes, and Blanchardyn has to go off and rescue him, so he says goodbye to Eglantine once more. He leaves her in the care of Subyon, a knight who proves to be a dreadful rascal, for he vows to wed the Queen and take control of her kingdom. But Eglantine escapes to a castle and sends word to Blanchardyn to come rescue her. Which he does. There's another great battle and Subyon is killed and then—" He looked about him expectantly. "How do all stories end?"

  "They get married and live happily ever after," Verity said promptly. "But I dont see why Blanchardyn had to put the bad knight in charge of Eglantine. She could have been in charge of herself. Queen Elizabeth was."

  "And she was a very good queen. But I'm afraid for all his adventures Blanchardyn was a rather conventional young man."

  "What's Ventnal?" David's little brother asked.

  "Stuffy," Verity told him. "If you loved a queen, you wouldn't put someone else to rule in her place, would you, Owen?"

  "I wouldn't dream of doing anything so presumptuous." Owen was grinning, but Amanda knew that he spoke the truth. Owen would not be the sort of husband to object if his wife had interests beyond her home and children. Such as silversmithing, for instance. It would really be a tragedy if such a paragon remained a lifelong bachelor.

  The rain continued all afternoon, but the wind was only sporadically violent, and the road from Honiton

  should have been quite passable. If the first Senhor Ri-beiro did not put in an appearance tonight, Amanda decided, pausing to glance out the landing window as she climbed the stairs to dress for dinner, they would have to assume it was from fear of being exposed as an im-poster.

  Completely innocent of what lay in store for him, the second Senhor Ribeiro was at his most charming at dinner, exclaiming over the charm of English customs and complimenting Nicola on the roast goose and mince pie with a smile which seemed to have as much to do with her person as with her table. This, Amanda acknowledged, was all to his credit, for he had been taken aback by the presence of small children at the meal.

  In truth, the sheer size of the gathering was enough to daunt anyone. Earlier in the afternoon, the party had been supplemented by the Tarrington family, who were cousins of the Windhams and lived but a quarter-mile from Ludlow. In addition, the Harewoods, a neighboring family with two grown sons and a recently married daughter, had been invited to Christmas dinner, as had the vicar, Mr. Sedgwick, and his wife and children. To accommodate such a crowd, Nicola had thrown open the double doors between the dining room and breakfast parlor, using sprays of holly and ivy on walls and table to blend the gleaming dark paneling of the one with the bright white-painted walls of the other.

&nb
sp; Lady Duffield was seated beside Lord Mulgrave, far away from Senhor Ribeiro. Aunt Isabel, Amanda suspected, had enlisted Nicola's aid in her matchmaking scheme, and it seemed to be working. Mulgrave and Lady Duffield had been awkward with each other in the drawing room last night, but now they were laughing together like old friends. Amanda wondered if Mulgrave knew about Senhor Ribeiro, and if not, what would happen if he found out. The evening was seeming more

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