by P. J. Fox
Rudolph, flanked by his friends, waved his bow around and boasted about all the deer he’d kill. It didn’t seem possible that her sister’s betrothed was a full grown man; Asher seemed older. But Rowena admired him openly, waving whenever he glanced in her direction and offering various tokens of good luck. She’d already given him her second best handkerchief, as well as a ribbon from her veil. Isla had suggested tying it to his codpiece, maybe in a little bow. Rowena had glared at her.
Isla wondered where Cariad was at this moment, and what she was doing. Until a fortnight ago, Isla’s only true friend. She’d known Cariad since she was a child and now the witch had turned her back on her. Isla still didn’t know why; Cariad’s explanation had made no sense.
Almost unconsciously, she found herself watching Tristan.
Although revelry swirled around him he, as usual, was immune. She was always vaguely surprised to see him during daylight hours, as though he should be a creature of the night. She had to admit to herself, at times like these she half expected him his flesh to catch fire and for him to shrivel up into some kind of blackened husk.
But there he stood, as human as Rudolph, explaining something to his page. Asher listened attentively, asking the occasional question. Which, Isla saw, Tristan listened to equally attentively. She couldn’t hear their exchange, she was too far away, but she could read their movements and expressions easily enough. Tristan nodded, responding seriously to whatever it was that Asher had asked. Asher flashed a very small smile, too small for a child of his age but there nonetheless. Isla wondered, again, what the boy’s life was like. She supposed, she realized with surprise, that she’d find out.
The idea that she was actually going to go and live with these people still struck her with surprise every time she thought of it. She kept encountering the idea, too, in the strangest places: like encountering a mountain lion behind a wardrobe, or at the latrines. She shook her head slightly, to clear the thought. Beside her, Rowena waved to her beau again.
“Isn’t he handsome?” Beaming, she waved again.
To this question, there could be only one response. “Oh, very,” Isla agreed.
“He’s much handsomer than Tristan.”
“I’m pleased that you think so,” Isla said genuinely.
“Tristan is so cold.” Rowena sniffed. She was pretending now that she’d never found Tristan the least bit attractive and that they’d never been engaged. Which, in her mind, could be entirely accurate: Rowena changed her mind so frequently that she must on occasion confuse even herself.
She hadn’t wanted Tristan and then she had; she’d run from him, and then flirted with him. She’d demanded that Rudolph come and save her and, when he’d finally arrived, rejected him, too. Rowena had been, she claimed, in love with Rudolph since she was twelve—a very long time in the life of a girl with just sixteen winters. Isla was momentarily glad that she’d never been in love. Until now.
She’d been unsure of her reception with her betrothed despite, or perhaps because of, what had happened the previous night. Tristan’s suggestion that she relax and enjoy it still rang loudly in her ears. The truth was, she knew what she felt; she knew nothing at all about what he felt—if anything. Did demons feel?
She also remembered Cariad’s warning, that she’d be gravely remiss in assuming that his words and actions meant the same things they’d mean coming from a genuine, human man. But Isla had grown up in an atmosphere of deception and knew that one didn’t need to be a demon to lie. Apple lied to her father every day, when she told him she loved him. The contempt in her eyes told the true story. And someone had killed Hart’s mother. And maybe even her own.
Moreover, her own father had told her he loved her, that he’d go to the ends of the earth to protect her, and then abandoned her to her fate at the hands of Father Justin. Who must smell quite ripe by now.
No one had come from their neighbor’s estate and Tristan’s offer had as yet gone unanswered. They’d have to do something soon, or the ground would freeze solid. Maybe then they could burn him on the river, as she’d heard the northern tribes did.
She frowned slightly. Tristan hefted his bow, demonstrating something about the draw to Asher. Asher had a bow of his own, sized perfectly for a boy of his height. He was tallish for his age, but young and still far short of even Rudolph. He strung his bow, frowned, and tried again. Tristan, who along with his page was clad in the dark green of the forest, knelt down and demonstrated.
Isla and Tristan hadn’t spoken, not since he’d walked her back to her room and given her a final kiss goodnight. He’d greeted her politely enough at the beginning of the hunt, but they hadn’t been alone and he’d made no attempt to secure such an assignation. She tried to tell herself that that didn’t mean anything.
“Isla!” Rowena patted her elbow. “I’m speaking to you!”
“Oh.” Isla shook herself out of her reverie. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s alright, sister.” Rowena smiled indulgently. “You’re no doubt distracted by thoughts of your own wedding night.” A glint of evil humor lit Rowena’s eyes. “I don’t blame you,” she added. “I’d be horrified, too.”
“Rowena!” Isla’s exclamation was one of surprise and shock that her sister would say such a thing.
“I wouldn’t want him touching me.” Rowena glanced over at Tristan. “His skin is so…corpse-like. And he never smiles. And they say he practices cannibalism.” There was no explanation offered of who they was. Probably Rudolph, or his mother. She, like Tristan, seemed little keen on the association between their houses.
“I haven’t seen him eat anyone yet,” Isla replied.
“I let Rudolph take…liberties last night.” Rowena giggled.
Isla glanced around to see if anyone could hear them. Luckily, no one was close enough. Everyone seemed occupied with the hunt, which was theoretically commencing shortly. The ladies would stay behind, lounging around on blankets, drinking and gossiping, while servants saw to their needs, as the gentlemen tramped into the forest. Then, after several hours’ worth of unsuccessful questing, they’d return for a late lunch. If anyone felt up to it, there’d be another round of beating the bushes for deer before the drunken trek home.
“I let him kiss me,” Rowena continued, “and…touch places.”
Places? Isla smiled feebly. “That’s nice.”
“And look, he gave me this necklace!”
Isla barely stopped herself from asking, as payment? Rowena wouldn’t find such a remark humorous. Even a little. Lately, Rowena seemed to find very little humorous—while Isla herself had begun to find everything humorous. There was no other choice; it was laugh, or sob. Isla examined the trinket, a cabochon of amber set in what appeared to be silver. A piece of ribbon slid through the bale, which Rowena had tied about her neck.
“It’s a fine present,” Isla said, pleased that her sister seemed so happy.
“He knows that I wouldn’t want something extravagant,” Rowena commented.
Isla nodded. A piece of amber that large, and set in so much metal was more than extravagant by Highlands standards. She tucked an errant strand of hair behind her ear and glanced over at Tristan again. He was deep in conversation with a group of men who’d arrived for the hunt, neighbors of theirs to the east. Isla knew them by sight only; their neighbors visited but rarely, and most men didn’t waste their time chatting up young girls with no marriage prospects. Enzie Moor was an isolated place, and growing more so with each passing year as the harvests failed and mismanagement sent them further into debt.
“I’m not a perfumes and gold kind of girl.” Rowena stroked her pendant, a smug look on her face.
“Neither am I,” Isla said absently.
Rowena’s smile became a scowl, and she sniffed. She was about to respond, and no doubt unpleasantly, when a shadow fell over them. Isla looked up, her hand shading her eyes against the sun. It was Tristan. “Good morning, ladies.” He smiled pleasantly. Behind him, Asher looked bo
red.
“Good morning,” Isla said.
Tristan dropped to one knee, managing to make what on anyone else would have been an awkward movement seem graceful in the extreme. “Rowena.”
She nodded, her expression wary.
“That’s a lovely pendant you’re wearing,” he complimented her.
“Rudolph has excellent taste.”
“Indeed.” Tristan’s tone suggested that he wasn’t referring to the pendant. But where from another man such a remark would have been complimentary, Tristan made it sound like an insult. Like Rowena was, herself, a pretty item to be bought or traded. Or given as a gift.
He turned to Isla. “Darling.” The greeting was unemotional, and yet managed to convey a wealth of meaning. He kissed her on the cheek. It was as if Rowena had ceased to exist. Isla blushed, pleased. Her lips curved into a small smile, which she hid from her sister.
Rowena stood up, brushing at imaginary grass. “I’m going to talk to Apple,” she announced.
Apple, who had mostly avoided Isla since Tristan’s arrival. Apple was both a religious woman, and a fearful one. Isla didn’t believe that she had a hand in what had happened with Father Justin, or would have condoned such a thing if she had. But she’d been convinced from the first that Tristan was nothing he claimed. And on that score, of course, she’d been right. Isla looked over to where she was sitting and smiled. After a moment, tentatively, her stepmother smiled back.
“I trust that you’re enjoying this pretense of a hunt,” he said.
“Oh, indeed.” Isla’s tone was dry.
“Did you sleep well?”
“Yes.” Isla wondered if he slept at all.
“Soon, we’ll be retreating into the glade to shout for deer, in the hopes that some might complyingly appear.” He smiled slightly, the expression carrying more than a hint of derision. Isla doubted very much that Darkling Reach hosted many of such hunts. Her betrothed was, she suspected, the sort of man who only hunted with purpose. “Hoping to effectuate such an event,” he continued, “or, at least, convince themselves that it’s happened, a good many of the men are bringing liquid courage.”
“At least then, if they drink themselves into a stupor, they can tell themselves that the hunt was so glorious as to be scarcely contained by memory.”
“The fruits of which were stolen,” Tristan suggested.
Isla giggled.
“I doubt that we’ll return for some time.” He gestured at Asher. “And so, to that end, I’ve brought you a companion.”
Asher made a face, distinctly nonplussed at having been offered up as a glorified lap dog. “You think I’m not old enough for a real hunt,” he said petulantly, revealing a glimmer of the boy he still was. Isla was pleased to see it. Asher, usually, seemed far too old—an old man, almost, trapped in a child’s body. His eyes were so knowing, the eyes of one who’d seen too much too soon. But now he stuck his lip out, every inch the boy of seven.
“Hardly.” Tristan’s face was a mask, as some dark thought crossed his mind. “I question only who is being hunted,” he said obliquely. “Besides,” he added, addressing Asher directly, “you’ve come under my care to learn how to be a gentleman. And part of a gentleman’s job is to entertain the ladies of his acquaintance, however dull he might find the procedure. It’s really quite hard work, I can assure you,” he added seriously, “so you’d better start practicing now. I’m certain that the Lady Isla will prove a most forgiving audience.”
“I don’t need a forgiving audience.” Asher glared.
“Just so. I suggest you begin by bringing the lady a drink.”
“Is there lemon squash?” Asher asked hopefully.
“No. They don’t have lemons here.”
“Lime squash?”
“No.”
“Well what do they have? This place is terrible.”
Isla stifled a giggle. She and Tristan exchanged a look. There was something of humor in his eyes. Humor, and something else. She felt her heart beat just the tiniest bit faster.
Tristan stood. Behind him, the hunt was gathering. “I trust you’ll manage.”
“A gentleman,” Isla added, “is resourceful.”
THIRTY-SEVEN
Asher and Isla sat across from each other on the blanket, enjoying the surprisingly warm autumn sun. A chill, overcast morning had given way to one of those few handfuls of truly glorious autumn afternoons. The leaves were just beginning to change in earnest, but the breeze was soft like summer. Isla sipped her cider, poured from a barrel of the previous season’s stock, and regarded the page.
He, in turn, regarded her. His gaze was solemn. He was a handsome little boy, or would be if he smiled.
His skin was pale, not as pale as hers but still unusual in most of Morven. His hair, though, was the same mousy brown that most Morva had inherited from their tribal ancestors. He could have passed for a Southerner, indeed, except for his eyes: they were a depthless pale gray, and marked him as having at least some northern ancestry.
Isla recalled now that there had been rumors, at the time of his uncle’s capture, about who Asher’s father really was. His mother, obviously, was his uncle’s niece and, more to the point in Isla’s opinion, no woman ever looked at the child she’d just borne and questioned whether she was in fact the mother. Asher’s father was ostensibly the so-called true heir to the throne, one of the few scions of House Terrowin to survive the civil war. He was gone now, of course, which she supposed rendered the question of Asher’s paternity moot.
But Isla recalled too that his ostensible father, Brandon Terrowin, had had brown eyes.
“It’s very good of you to keep me company,” she told him.
“I want to go home,” he replied.
“Oh?” she asked, confused about what he meant.
“At home I have my own pony and hawk and chess set and the food is better.”
Isla barely concealed her surprise that he apparently considered Darkling Reach to be his home. He was Tristan’s captive, although Tristan referred to him as a page. That a boy of Asher’s age and station would serve as a page was a given; but families chose the other families with which their children would take service.
A page was an apprentice to a knight, taking service in his household around the same time that a boy of a lower class would apprentice to a tradesman. And while the kingdom’s future blacksmiths and bakers learned their trade, the future knight learned his. Knighthood was a class of the lower nobility, in that any man could be knighted for valor and thus raised above his humble beginnings, but it was also a title in and of itself that had nothing to do with lands or ranks and everything to do with military prestige. A knight was a soldier, and a leader. Most, but not all, of the higher nobility were knights, having gained the distinction through years of training. A title was hereditary, whereas a knighthood, like a certification as a master craftsman in any art, was earned.
Isla’s father was not a knight. Although he’d served as a page and, eventually, as a squire, he’d returned home shortly thereafter and never taken the holy orders that both granted him special privileges and obligated him specially to the king.
Tristan was a knight, as well as a duke, although Isla had no knowledge of the specific order to which he belonged. There were several, some created by the king and some created by the church. Some, too, were more prestigious than others. Tradition held that a boy entered the same order as his father, but with Asher’s father having died in disgrace Isla doubted very much that such would occur here. Perhaps he’d take Tristan’s order.
Knighthood and, indeed, the foundations of Morvish society were founded on the ideal that to earn the service of others one must first serve. A boy who’d one day inherit a title and thus rule over others was expected to learn, first, how to be ruled. Only then would he truly understand the mind of his subjects, and govern them successfully. At least, so was the thought. And but for the corruption, laxity, and disinterest that pervaded their system it might even
work. Few knights showed the keen interest that Tristan did, an irony that was not lost on Isla and that she doubted was lost on Asher.
Until the age of about seven or so, sons of noble families learned at home. They received training in manners and basic literacy from their mothers, if their mothers were literate, otherwise manners from their mothers and literacy from their tutors. And then, at the age of eight, and sometimes earlier or later, if the boy in question were particularly precocious or particularly dense, he was sent to another estate to complete his training.
The host was usually a friend of his father’s, or at least an acquaintance; sometimes, as was the case here, the host was a jailor. Although Asher, staring morosely into his cider as he told Isla all about his horse, didn’t seem to regard himself as particularly jailed.
The boy would then serve as a page for the next seven years. His duties consisted of running messages, serving his master at table, cleaning his garments and weapons and performing the hundred other little chores that daily life required. He would also learn the basics of armed combat, as well as receive some degree of further schooling. Not all houses were equally keen on this idea; some regarded reading and writing as womanish activities, suitable only for those who couldn’t or wouldn’t fight. Personal service of this nature wasn’t considered demeaning to the page, as it occurred within the context of their shared noble status. A page was not a servant, and was not treated as such.
“When I’ve reached fourteen winters,” Asher said, “I can become a squire. And then I can have a destrier. I’ve already decided that I’m going to call him George.”
“But you might meet him,” Isla replied, “and realize that he doesn’t seem like a George. Perhaps he’ll seem more like a Fred, or a Thomas.” Isla had never heard of a horse—of any description—with such a name, but then again she had no idea where the page had come up with George. Here comes George was hardly designed, as a warning, to strike fear into any heart. Perhaps Asher was hoping that his enemies would run off the battlefield laughing.