“Venn . . . I don’t know what you did on your long leave, but your horse is in foal!”
Sergeant Fell was distressed.
“Dear Goddess, Venn . . . did a farm horse get to her? Or a donkey? Would you breed a mule with this lovely Chameln grey?”
Aidris held her peace. Telavel rounded out slowly, but in the new year she would have to be quartered with the stud mares. Aidris would have to change her life; she would have no horse to ride, grey or otherwise. When the feast days came, Megan Brock spoke to her in quarters over a glass of good wine. She agreed to do the ensign’s test in the new year and ride a certain black house gelding in New Moon Company. A recruit had come with a new grey to take Telavel’s place.
The feast days were very quiet. Lord Huw and Lady Aumerl did not keep their usual state. Then at New Year the bells rang and fires were lighted: the Lady Sabeth of Kerrick had borne Sir Gerr a healthy girl child. Aidris was able to watch the birth customs of Athron, and she did not find them so very strange. They were more kind than those of Lien, but not so ancient as those of the Chameln lands.
There was the “long vigil” before the birth—and with a young mother it might be very long—during which she might have comforters in her chamber, a man, a mother and a maid. She sat the vigil with Sabeth and so did Lady Aumerl and Sir Gerr. It was plain from what the midwife said that she was already regarded, at the beginning of her twenty-second year, as an old maid. There were jokes about certain landowning families where a maiden aunt was kept expressly for this purpose. Sabeth was in good spirits, and her comforters got along well enough together.
“This was never my thought,” confided Lady Aumerl to Aidris at the fireside. “To sit the long vigil at all would have bored and frightened me as a girl. I longed to be a true kedran and ruler of my own house.”
“Who sat vigil with you, my lady?” asked Aidris.
“For Niall, the firstborn, it was Huw, of course,” said the lady, remembering fondly, “and my old Aunt Drusse, come out of Mel’Nir, as a maid, and for a mother I had my friend Margit, the reeve’s daughter of Parnin, who married a knight, Sirril of the Green. I travelled there to sit vigil with her in the following year, and she bore a dead child and the next year so did I. We should not speak of it, I suppose. But all has not gone badly: she has two daughters and a son and I have my two boys and now I have Sabeth, for my daughter-in-law. Will you come to it too, my dear? If all goes well in the Chameln lands? Sabeth has told me you are betrothed.”
“I must,” said Aidris. “For a matter of inheritance.”
She watched the Lady Aumerl stretched out warming her feet at the fire while Gerr sat by the big bed murmuring to Sabeth. She realised just how discreet and kind the lady was, an excellent mother-in-law. She wondered about that Chieftainess of the Nureshen, Gezi, Bajan’s mother, who had dressed her in the ceremonial lodge long ago and who would help her give birth.
Then the time was ripe, and the comforters went away and their places were taken by three mid-wives: the Garth midwife who was in middle-age, her young daughter and a very ancient creature from Stayn. This triad proved the rank of the mother, a lady of Kerrick Hall. The Garth midwife bade Aidris stay and watch the birth; she wanted her magic, her scrying stone close at hand. So she went to the head of the bed where Sabeth, rosy-faced, panted and asked what time it was.
“Lamp-lighting time,” said Aidris, smiling. “And it is snowing again. Tomorrow is the New Year.”
“So long . . . we have been so long in Athron . . .”
Then Sabeth’s breath was caught, and the mid-wives held and instructed her and with a last struggle and a cry that was hardly a cry of pain, it was done. The crone held a rose-red, wrinkled newborn child that moved all four limbs like a reluctant swimmer and let out a gusty shriek. The three mid-wives cried out in triumph.
“There now, a girl,” said the Garth midwife. “But it was well done, my lady, well done. See there . . .”
Aidris watched, she could not help watching, the art with which all was staunched and cut and the afterbirth carried away. She hated the bright blood that had been spilt. The child, in its blessed cloth, was laid on Sabeth’s breast, and she showed it to Aidris. They stared and laughed. For the creature, with quantities of black hair and wide-open eyes, looked exactly like Gerr of Kerrick. For the first and last time, the look of the young knight was stamped upon the face of his infant daughter.
“Ah,” cried Sabeth, “how will she be called Imelda, as her father wishes, if she has this black hair?”
“Pff . . . it will fall out, my lady,” said the old woman. “Depend upon it that is falling hair, pillow hair. By the time she is two years old, she will have your own lovely golden locks.”
“Run along,” said the Garth midwife to Aidris. “Bring the word, Kedran . . .”
So Aidris bent to kiss Sabeth, who lay in a dream, cradling the child.
“Wait,” said Sabeth, “it is snowing. Take your cloak, your beautiful fur cloak, from the press . . .”
“I will,” said Aidris, “but you must not weep . . .”
She saw that Sabeth’s eyes were suddenly brimming with tears.
“I remember when I was cold and afraid and you gave me the cloak,” she said. “And now I have so much. I have all that I could wish for.”
“Hush,” said Aidris. “Rejoice. We all rejoice with you. One day, one day I swear to you, our children will play together in a garden!”
So she ran and brought word to Gerr in one bower with his male companions and to Lord Huw and Lady Aumerl in another and to the company in the front courtyard who rode into Garth. Then, slipping on her cloak, which smelled of sweet Athron herbs from the press, she crossed the north court, calling the word to any who were about, and climbed the hill to the Carach tree. She came to the top of the hill and called to the men at arms who waited there, beside a brazier and the unlit pile of the bonfire.
“Light up! Light up! The Lady Sabeth has borne a daughter, and all goes well with them both!”
There was a cheer . . . the men had had something to keep out the cold . . . and the cover was reefed from the heap of dried branches and a torch set to it.
“Kedran Venn!”
A tall muffled figure lurked by the trees; Crib, the black dog, bounced over the snow to Aidris and leaped up cheerfully.
“What then?” she said to the dog. “Do you like my cloak?”
Niall of Kerrick looked at the winter sky covered with low-hanging snowcloud.
“In this new year I will travel to Eildon,” he said.
The flames of the bonfire cast strange shadows on his face.
“Have you come so far in your studies?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said. “I have not your natural gift for magic, but I have applied myself.”
“You make too much of my gift,” she said.
“Do I?”
He smiled and flicked his fingers at Crib, the black dog, who stood looking expectantly at his master. For an instant the dog was gone, it had vanished away, leaving only its shadow on the snow. He flicked his fingers, and the dog was back again. Aidris laughed.
“Chance has played a part in all my workings,” she said.
“Will you come to Eildon then, as part of my escort?” he said lightly. “Or does chance bind you to Kerrick Hall?”
“It is the place where I can be found,” she said. “When the time comes for my return.”
“And if the time never comes?”
“I will go anyway,” she said. “In two years or a little longer.”
“I would rather Gerr and his lady had had a son,” said Niall suddenly, “to inherit this manor.”
“What, will you never marry? Never have sons?”
“I may never inherit,” he said. “I may give my brother the right. How is it with inheritance in the Chameln lands, Kedran Venn?”
“A woman may inherit in her own right, as first born,” she said. “Surely you know that? I am sure that your brother knows it,
although he has not made much study of Chameln life.”
“I know something of his foolish notions,” said Niall, “but we are not as close as brothers can be, and he cannot confide in me. I know that someone bound him harshly with an oath, more than one. He may not question, so he is driven into all kinds of imaginings. His fancy fights with his honor. For a nature such as his, these oaths are plain cruelty. What would drive anyone to demand them?”
Aidris stared at him angrily.
“Fear,” she said. “Your brother was already full of foolish notions when I first set eyes upon him. He deceived me and deceived himself. And I was afraid, Master Kerrick, afraid for my life.”
She turned her back on the bonfire, and the pale winter shape of the Carach tree, and strode off down the hillside.
“Wait!”
He ran after her, and the dog Crib danced ahead of him and sat in her path.
“Kedran . . .” said Niall. “Aidris! My dear friend! You were unprotected then and you were very young, I know that. But to come as a kedran is one thing, to marry into our family is another. What have you brought to us? Who is the lady Sabeth? What manner of person is she, if she is not . . .”
“She is an orphan out of Lien,” said Aidris. “And you see very plainly what manner of person she is. She is most true and lovely and kind.”
“I do see that,” said Niall, “but her estate . . .”
“She is my friend,” said Aidris, “and so is Gerr.”
“This is all you can offer?” He smiled.
“My friendship will be enough!” she said.
He stared at her where she stood, wrapped in her cloak, and she saw that he had begun to unravel the long, tangled thread. She turned again and walked off down the hill.
Chapter Seven
The wheel of the year turned; she rode out in the first days of the Willowmoon as Ensign of New Moon Company under Lieutenant Yeo. They came to Varda with the lord’s tribute, and Aidris saw Nenad Am Charn again. The city was as strange to her as before; she felt again that sensation of being in a foreign land as she looked up at the tall house with the sign of the double oak. It was Mid-week, a market day in Varda, and at this time, early afternoon, the trading room was busy. A party of Varda ladies were buying furs; there was at least one customer, tall and burly, who might have come from Mel’Nir. As she waited at a dark table for one of the shopmen, there was a commotion upon the stairs. A party of people were descending with much ceremony, and she saw that they were all from the Chameln lands.
A thin elderly man came briskly down the narrow stairs of this townhouse; he wore the beaded tabard of a page or cupbearer, slightly motheaten, and had a Chameln lute, a tarika, slung over his back. At the bottom of the stairs, together with a younger woman, he unrolled a strip of woven carpet. Aidris did not know whether to laugh or cry: they were performing the old and uncomfortable task called “smoothing the way.” She had last seen it done when she was nine years old and walked through Achamar with her mother in the Fir Moon to lay branches upon the sacred stones in the south wall. A score of citizens, sweating in their furs, had unrolled and unrolled the heavy leather-backed carpet, stiffened with wooden battens and embroidered with birds and spring flowers, where their feet touched.
Now the carpet strip was unrolled for an old lady, stiff as a poppet in her long beaded robe and her “star-maid” headdress, with its two thick plaits of horsehair trimmed with brilliants. Her face, under the coif, was lively and proud, with snapping black eyes and a nose like an eagle’s beak. She cried out in the Old Speech, “Are those two Athron lackeys come with our carriage?”
A middle-aged waiting woman soothed the old dame, and her progress through the trading room continued. At the door, the lady and her retinue stood still, and the elderly page or minstrel called in a strong voice for a cheer. The double cry rang out “for the two oaks, the Daindru and the blessing of the Goddess” and then, the Athron lackeys having arrived with the carriage, the old lady was laden in with her servants and driven away.
Aidris saw that Nenad Am Charn stood upon the landing of the stairs with a lady in a plain Vardan cap. She stood looking up at him and saw his quick movement to take the arm of his wife. So she came up to them, smiling, and he bowed and his wife sketched a curtsey.
“You have visitors who stand on ceremony,” said Aidris, unable to keep from smiling.
“Exile is hard for them to bear,” said Nenad Am Charn. “Our house is honored by your presence. My wife, Lallian Am Charn . . .”
“Come up, Dan Aidris,” said the envoy’s wife in a low voice. “Come Nenad . . . let us get off the stairs . . .”
So they went up and stood at the door of a room with books and papers where Nenad had been receiving the strange visitors. A young man was inside gathering together a heap of parchments. He came out briskly, his Firnish brows twitched together in a frown, which hardly lifted when Nenad Am Charn presented him.
“My son . . . Racha Am Charn. Kedran Venn, also from the Old Country.”
“Ensign Venn,” said the young man. “Isn’t that an ensign’s shoulder knot?”
“Yes, I have made ensign,” said Aidris.
“Bravo!” said the young man. “How pleasing to see an exile who does not look for charity.”
“For Shame,” said Lallian Am Charn. “You must forgive my son, Ensign Venn. His manner is too harsh.”
“I am an Athron lackey, Mother,” said Racha Am Charn as he hurried off down the stairs.
The living rooms of the house were full of music and cooking smells, and she glimpsed young girls in Athron dresses. Nenad led her into the study and shut the door.
“I must say again ‘forgive my son,’ Dan Aidris,” he said. “He knows nothing. I have confided only in my dear wife.”
“Who were those people?” asked Aidris.
“Exiles,” said Nenad Am Charn heavily. “The Countess Palazan Am Panget, relict of a southern lord, has gathered about her a little court of loyalists. They live in House Imal on Goose Lane in a pleasant quarter of Varda.”
“And they are poor? They make demands upon your charity?”
“They are indeed . . . pensioners.”
“Are there other exiles from the Chameln lands?”
“Not too many,” said Nenad. “Some mining families from the Adz, who have settled in the south by the Grafell Pass. A trickle of folk from the Chameln lands always crossed the mountains, Dan Aidris, seeking their fortune . . . going away to Cayl, to the sea. The number more than doubled for a short time after the fall of the Daindru, even though the borders were closed. Now things have settled a little; some exiles have simply gone back home, others have found a place in Athron. I send what help I can to any who need it: the miners for instance and that household in Goose Lane. My son does not understand the ways of the Chameln and the claims of hospitality.”
“I have heard of the old lord Panget,” said Aidris. “Perhaps I saw him and his lady at court.”
“Dan Aidris,” said the Envoy most earnestly, “do not be tempted by these people!”
“I would not fail in my duty to any folk of the Chameln,” she said. “I have left you to carry all the burdens, good Nenad, while I was far away at Kerrick.”
“It has not been a heavy task,” he said. “Do not trouble yourself, my Queen. It would be reckless for you to mingle with these people here in Varda. They live out their lives in a dream of the old ways . . . as you saw from this ridiculous procession. Oh, you might have been Queen in Goose Lane and kept a maimed court in exile, with empty ceremony and intrigue to pass the time, but you have chosen a better way, however lonely. You are still young; you will come into your kingdom.”
“If I hold fast to my hope,” she said, “it is because of the great joy it will give me to reward those who have been as faithful and steadfast as yourself.”
“I must not give you any false hopes,” he said, “but I have heard that the Chameln lands will have a rising, an insurgence . . . more than one. I wil
l be travelling this year to Achamar for the first time since the troubles. Be sure I will find out all I can.”
“Pray take care,” said Aidris.
“I will.”
“Has there been any word of Nazran Am Thuven and the lady Maren?”
“None, Dan Aidris.”
“I pray you, do not spare me the truth. I know that their manor house was destroyed and they were rumored to be shut up in Ledler.”
“That is all I know myself,” he said. “Hope cannot be too strong in this case. Old Nazran wrote once, and his letters were smuggled from the fortress. Since then there has been no word. But there was a disquieting whisper over your aunt, the widow Micha Am Firn . . .”
“So disquieting that you did not tell me?”
“It is better so, my Queen. You have chosen silence . . . it is better so, believe me. If I repeated every foolish tale . . .”
“You are right.” She sighed. “But tell me now. What has been done to my poor aunt?”
“Not any usual form of torture,” said Nenad Am Charn with a grim smile. “Werris would have married her.”
She thought of Lord Werris, handsome, correct, civilised, a dry and distant man when she knew him.
“We have all underrated Lord Werris,” she said. “He has shown decision, now he shows ambition. What of my aunt? Did she take his offer? Was she brought to it?”
She remembered the quiet, dark, pleasant-voiced little woman, going about in her stone rooms, stricken by her widowhood. How long ago? Eight years?
“We do not know,” said Nenad Am Charn.
Varda in early spring was bustling and pleasant. As she walked the streets, invisible, she tried to recall Achamar but could only remember bright pictures like illuminations from a book of seasons. At the palace of the princes, when they left the tribute, the kedran troop were entertained well below stairs. She had no glimpse of Prince Terril. The news of the royal household was that the heir, born to poor Princess Josenna after the royal visit to Kerrick Hall, was dropsical and did not thrive. So New Moon Company rode back, with Aidris riding second on Dusk, the handsome, ill-natured black house nag that Megan Brock had given her to manage.
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