A Princess of the Chameln

by Cherry Wilder

  The long Maplemoon was done and the princes were gone indeed, and the whole of Kerrick looked like a banquet chamber when the feast was over. The wheel of the year turned; by the time of the Lamp Lighting the visit was fading into memory. The kedran went about their duties. Telavel took a stone that festered and had to be poulticed by Sergeant Fell, the old horse doctor. Aidris would have taken another mount but Megan Brock sent her into the stores to help with the winter reckoning. She had more free time and sat on the hill and told and retold the story of her meeting with Prince Ross to the scrying stone. The Lady spoke, once or twice, her voice wonderfully clear and distant.

  One morning Moss, Gerr’s manservant, met her as if by chance at the door of the muster hall and told her she might care to step up to the hall again. She bade him go to the nearest dunghill and roll in it. Yet that same day, Gerr himself burst into the stores, his face white about the lips.

  “Venn . . . you must come! She is sick!”

  She felt the color draining from her own face and flung down her inventory book and went with him, without asking leave.

  “What is it?”

  They were passing through the north court and up to the balcony; the newly married pair lodged in the south wing.

  “You will see,” he mumbled. “Venn, I . . .”

  “Hush,” she said. “I was rude to your man, to Moss . . . I did not know.”

  Then they came to a bedchamber. Sabeth lay in the huge bridebed, her red-gold hair spread out upon the pillows, her face whiter than the bed linen. Lady Aumerl stood at the foot of the bed, and there was the midwife from Garth, a tall woman in a green cloak, for the service of the Goddess. The waiting-woman, Therza, wept in a corner, and Genufa held a tray of cordials. Aidris hardly saw them. She felt a hard, rending pain in her chest. She ran and knelt by the side of the bed and took Sabeth’s cold hand.

  “Are you there?” Sabeth searched her face with a wide wandering gaze. “The forest is dark. It will be lost. It will be lost.”

  “I am here. We have come out of the forest. We are in Athron. Gerr is here, your husband.”

  “Yes . . . my true knight. . . . Oh Aidris, help me, you are so brave, you went to the witch stone. . . .”

  Sabeth breathed deeply and shut her eyes. The midwife, whispering with Lady Aumerl, came and knelt beside Aidris.

  “The child was past praying for,” she said. “It is miscarried. We must hope and fight for her life. She answers to you, her friend. Her color is better. You must stay beside her, and the young knight, too.”

  “Mother,” said Aidris, “we must use a healing magic. Something stronger than Carach leaves. Is there not a thing called cloak-of-sleep?”

  “Wheesht!” The midwife rolled her eyes. “You are well versed. I wonder if these hall folk would allow it, Kedran.”

  “Send all away but myself and Sir Gerr. I can find out the charm if you bring me a bleached cloth, newly blessed.”

  “Find out the charm?”

  “From my scrying stone.”

  “Ah, you are Mother Mora’s little witch from the old mill.”

  Then she saw nothing else but Sabeth’s pale face; the room was becoming dark. Everyone had been drawn away by the midwife who sat at the door having handed in a bleached cloth. Across the wide bed knelt Gerr of Kerrick.

  “Sir Knight,” said Aidris, “we will do magic, and you must help me. The midwife agrees. It is for her life.”

  He could only nod. Sabeth stirred a little and moaned. Aidris turned aside and looked into the scrying stone.

  “You see what is played out here,” she said urgently. “Cloak-of-sleep . . . it is in a tale in the book.”

  On the table in the stone there lay a doll, a poppet, woman-shaped with a fall of golden hair. The doll was wrapped this way and that in a kerchief and the passes were made over its body. She watched, concentrating with all her might, then turned back and stripped off the bedclothes. She expected the bed to be soaked with blood, as such a bed had once been, but there was not so much. She ran out the cloth and Gerr, teeth set, helped her lay it over and around Sabeth in her stained nightgown. Then she took the scrying stone that blazed blue and made the passes up and down the limbs. She shook Sabeth awake so that she might gaze into the light of the stone; she pressed it to her forehead.

  Sabeth uttered one sighing word: “Gerr,” then she was deeply entranced. Her limbs moved, her body in the bleached cloth seemed about to float up off the bridebed. Gerr made a wild sound, like a sob.

  “It is the charm taking hold,” said Aidris softly. “See how she sleeps. . . .”

  Sabeth’s head had turned gently to one side and lay among her golden hair. Aidris bent over and moved the locks away, then drew up a single coverlet. They sat for a long time simply watching her charmed sleep.

  “We need not watch so closely,” said Aidris. “Come, Sir Gerr . . .”

  She found dark, sweetened wine in a flagon on the mantelpiece. She poured two beakers of it and brought one to him where he stood uncertain in the middle of the chamber, unable to take his eyes from Sabeth.

  “Please,” she said, “keep up your strength and your spirits.”

  He sat hunched over in a chair by the fire, and she took a chair opposite. Presently he looked up at her, his eyes hard and bright.

  “You serve her well,” he said. “You are some kind of witch or healing woman. Venn, we must speak. You must trust me. What is your real name?”

  She saw dimly where he was going, and she was angry and afraid, not only for herself.

  “I cannot tell you,” she said, very low. “I have told no one. You swore an oath . . .”

  “Do you remember?” he said eagerly. “Do you remember what was said that day on the road to the hospice, by the Wulfental?”

  “I think I do . . .”

  “You will say perhaps that I lied to you, but I did not, I did not. I simply used the form of your question. Venn, I know all . . . I have known from the first. Why, I know more than my dear lady seems to know. Have you put a spell on her to cloud her wits?”

  “Stop!”

  She put her hands over her ears like a child. She saw his face darken.

  “I cannot speak of that time,” she said quickly, “and we must not quarrel. It will disturb the working of the healing spell upon Sabeth. Please, let us be quiet.”

  It was a flat lie, a way of putting him off. He settled moodily in his chair, and she did the same, curled away from the fire, watching Sabeth as she slept. She thought of Gerr and his long courtship, of the closeness she knew must exist between married persons. Yet all this long while Gerr had clung to a false belief. Perhaps he had hinted and questioned and explained away Sabeth’s innocence.

  They sat in silence for some time, and then Gerr called her name and smiled.

  “Forgive me, Venn,” he said. “I see that you are bound to play this out to the end. We need your magic. Let us be friends.”

  “You will always be my true friends,” she said earnestly. “Pray you, believe it!”

  He went on in a dreaming voice to confirm her worst suspicions.

  “Prince Ross must know the truth. He called her Golden-Hair, like the Chameln lady who made that unfortunate marriage with the upstart house of Menvir. We received many signs of his favor and indulgence. I might say we have expectations: a title or a manor. He is a generous . . . kinsman.”

  She could not look at him. There was no way out of the thicket. It was all her fault. She went to Sabeth’s bedside again. The midwife came in and looked at Sabeth and sent Moss to them with a supper tray. They sat up all night, speaking little, dozing in their chairs and building up the fire against the first chill of winter that seeped in from the long gallery.

  At last Aidris slept deeply for an hour or two and woke in the thin, grey light of morning. Gerr had measured his length on the settle before the fire and still slept heavily. His face, relaxed in sleep, was fine and young and straight-featured. Perhaps dreams of royal ambition filled his sl
eep. She knew, suddenly, that Prince Ross would disappoint Gerr and Sabeth; they would get nothing from him.

  She went to the bedside, and Sabeth stirred in her constricting cloth and opened her eyes.

  “Ah,” she breathed, “you are here! He let you come to me at last. I thought it was part of my dream.”

  “Are you comfortable? Is there any pain?”

  “Not any more.”

  She stared at Aidris, and her blue eyes brimmed with tears.

  “The child was lost. It was not even half-formed. I was so full of joy, thinking of his child . . .”

  “Hush. You are young. The midwife said that you will surely bear more children.”

  Aidris poured a sweet cordial and let Sabeth drink from the lipped cup.

  “I have had a strange dream,” said Sabeth. “I wonder what it means.”

  “Tell me . . .”

  “I think it was in the Chameln lands,” said Sabeth in a faint echo of her old “story-telling” voice from the campfire. “I saw three riders upon grey horses. I think they were kedran. They came through a light snowfall and turned down into a deep valley. A small manor house, not much more than a farmhouse, stood in the bottom of this valley; and as the riders came down into the valley, I knew in my dream that the place was called Zerrah. There were lights in the house, and servants came out with torches. They knelt down in the courtyard.”

  “There is such a place,” said Aidris softly. “We spoke of Zerrah on the night of your bride-calling.”

  “I had forgotten,” said Sabeth. “The dream changed and became happier. We were all in this place, Zerrah—Gerr and I and you were there too, and some others that I loved. It was summer. The valley was full of wild heather.”

  “It is a hopeful dream,” said Aidris.

  Sabeth drifted into sleep again, and Aidris sat wondering about the dream. It was plain that Zerrah, which she had always thought of as a pleasant spot but not so dear to her as Thuven, was a chosen place. It even explained Gerr’s wild talk about the oath that he had not broken in the mountains. She thought of Zerrah and of those others who had stayed there: Sir Jared Wild and his kedran, Mistress Quade. She forced herself to go back to that moment when she, when Aidris, not even a true kedran, demanded of the young knight: “Did you hear, today, from the troopers, the name or rank of any persons they were seeking?” And he, not lying, but using the form of her question, replied that he had not. In fact he knew very well who was sought: he had heard it from Sir Jared or from others at Vigrund. He had expected a princess of the Chameln.

  She had held back then, and now she must still be silent. She wondered if there was prophecy in Sabeth’s dream as well as a scene from the past. She had come once to Zerrah by night with her two kedran; perhaps she and Sabeth and Gerr would all be happy in that place together, in the future.

  The grey morning began to grow into a grey day; the midwife came and tended to Sabeth and was pleased to find her so well. Her fever had gone; her sleep had given her strength. The sadness because of the child that had been lost was echoed in the stillness and greyness of the autumn weather turning at last to winter. Aidris left the midwife to watch and stole away back to barracks before Gerr of Kerrick was awake.

  Chapter Six

  I

  In four years as a kedran Aidris had been no further from Kerrick Hall than Benna in the southwest; but in her fifth year, she travelled clear across Athron and back again. The New Year came in with freakish warm weather; then in the Willowmoon, snow and wind. There was a gift of horses from the Kerrick stables to be delivered, some way off, and the journey was put off several times. Then at the last possible moment, Grey Company took the duty and set off for Wildrode Keep, in the far northeast, beyond the Ettling Hills. The two colts and two fillies were a splendid gift: one pair were thoroughbred of the Athron stock; the others were of the new Kerrick breed, taller and stronger, the colt red-roan, the filly bay, sired by the great stallion, Fireking. Sir Jared Wild of Wildrode was to be married in the first days of the Birchmoon to the young daughter of a neighboring lord.

  The going was easy in spite of the wet and the unseasonable cold, and the hills were passed almost before Aidris knew they had been climbed. The party stayed at an inn near the sacred spring where the river Flume had its beginning, and all the kedran made wishes at the spring. Aidris, looking towards the mountains that rose a handspan above the horizon in the northeast, knew her wish, and it happened she knew Ortwen’s too. A new suitor had appeared at New Year in Cashcroft, and Ortwen, heir to all her father’s acres, thought she would take this handsome fellow and stop soldiering.

  They came to the old black-browed, mouldering keep in good time; but here in the border country, the order and the quiet magic of Athron did not seem to have so firm a hold. Their lodgings were poor, the local kedran and men-at-arms all curst and sad. It was, as Sergeant Lawlor said, more like a wake than a wedding. Aidris singled out the quartermaster, who was more approachable than his companions, and spoke to him of a person who had been in her mind during the journey.

  “Where is Mistress Quade?”

  They were in a little snuggery beside the stores with a few younger kedran and kerns clustered round a brazier against the cold. Master Roon grinned at her mildly.

  “Friend of yours, Kedran Venn?”

  “Yes,” she said. “We met lately at Kerrick.”

  “Poor Jess Quade has her bower at the top of this tower we’re now in. She will be glad to see a friend.”

  “Master Roon,” said Aidris, “what is her estate?”

  “Quade was the steward of the keep,” said the quartermaster. “Young Jess was brought up as book-sister to the young lords, Garl and Jared; she was older than they were by four, five years.”

  “Was Jared the younger brother? Not the heir?”

  “Not at first. Our young lord, Garl, died on his wedding day. That is one reason you find us a little cast down and fearful before this wedding.”

  “And Mistress Quade was the kedran serving Sir Jared . . .”

  “Just so. They went on many a quest. They might have married. Then Sir Jared became the heir, and from their last quest together, Jess Quade brought him home wounded. At least she bore him no bastards.”

  The bluntness and cruelty of it surprised her. She climbed the stairs of the dark tower they were in and came to a room beneath the battlement, with only a faint glow of light under its door. Her knocking brought no answer, but the door was not latched. She went in and found Mistress Quade, pale and handsome, in a gown of crimson velvet, seated in a great chair before the fire.

  “Kedran?” Her voice was faint and cold.

  “Aidris Venn of Kerrick Hall.”

  “Oh my friend . . .”

  It was a cry of pain. She tried to rise but fell back in the chair half-fainting. Aidris went to her; there was no water in the room, the jug was dry and dusty. She lit a candle.

  “Forgive me,” said Mistress Quade. “I do not know how long I have been sitting here. I had not imagined I would be so weak and foolish when the time came.”

  “Dear Mistress Quade, you must eat and drink. Let me call the servants.”

  “They will not serve me,” she said. “I should go to the buttery myself. It is close by.”

  “I will go.”

  Aidris went out, wondering how to wangle food and drink in a strange household, but at the buttery hatch servants were coming and going with laden platters. She helped herself to wine, bread, butter, broken meat and cheese, mumbled to an old woman that it was “Quartermaster’s orders for the Kerrick visitors” and carried her booty up to the tower again.

  “Forsaken,” said Mistress Quade. “I made him do it. There was no other way.”

  She ate and drank, slowly at first, then with more appetite.

  “What will you do?” asked Aidris.

  “I am not the first woman whose lover married elsewhere,” she replied. “I could wait a little and then busy myself with his life, their lives
again. He would even take me to his bed again. Or I might keep some rag of honor and be elder sister to the married pair, teacher to their children. The bride is sweet and sensible; she will do her best to care for him.”

  “You could leave the keep.”

  “Where would I wander? I have no spirit to take up arms again.”

  “The world is wide,” said Aidris.

  “Not for a woman alone, without means,” said Mistress Quade. “Would I go to Lien where they flay women as whores? To the Chameln lands or Mel’Nir? To Eildon?”

  “Go to Varda,” said Aidris. “Prince Terril knows your story. He owes me a favor, and this will be it . . . to find a place for you. I will write a request to him.”

  “A favor, dear Aidris?” asked Mistress Quade slyly.

  “Not for anything you might imagine,” said Aidris, just as sly.

  “The Prince was very taken with you, anyone could see that. Did he make you some offer?”

  “To be his rune-mistress.”

  “How quaintly phrased. And you refused?”

  “He is still my friend,” said Aidris, “but there were reasons why I would not do it.”

  “Oh, child,” said Mistress Quade, “you almost give me hope to try again. Turn down a prince . . . there is something princely in the gesture. But what would he find for me?”

  “A place as teacher or steward or scribe. Perhaps . . . a husband.”

  “Even that,” said Mistress Quade sadly. “But it would have to be an old man. I am barren. I could nurse and care for an old man as I have cared for . . . my liege.”

  “Mistress Quade . . .”

  “My given name is Jessamy . . .”

  “Jessamy,” said Aidris, “how came the knight to such a pass? I saw you both, once, from a window in Achamar. I thought it strange that any persons should ride abroad seeking adventure. There had been too much change and violence in my life.”