Mai snorted. “And I suppose you don ’t.”
She had a barbed wit sometimes.
“Well, has she a hope?” Mai asked.
I forced a smile. “None. False hope in plenty, though. I’m sure she thinks there will be ballads written about the two of them.”
“Oh, there are. You’re not about the Marchfield much anymore, or you ’d have heard them. The first made Sire Galan out to be a dupe for the price he paid for a bag of bones. But now there’s a new song that couldn’t have been bettered if Sire Galan had written it himself—and perhaps he did, at that, or paid a rumormonger to write it. Shall I sing it for you?”
“I’m sure you sing like a crow.”
“Not so,” she said, with her rumbling laugh. “I’m a very sweet singer. Sire Torosus himself likened me to a goose, last time I sang for him.” She began to honk out a song and I covered my ears and cried mercy.
She left off and lowered her voice. “You have been missed. You promised Naja an ointment for her chilblains, remember? And old Mullen—the one who sells clay amulets—she has a cough like to burst her bellows. The concubine isn’t the only one ailing in the Marchfield.”
I shrugged. “I’m afraid to leave her. She’s still weak—she has yet to sit up on her own.”
“I thought she was supposed to be better. Mark this: she’ll need to be shown off, and soon, or the hotspurs will learn a new tune.”
“She is better. See for yourself.”
Mai put her hand on my arm. “Be forewarned: I’ve brought a little charm for her, something to keep her in hopes.”
“And what will it do to Sire Galan, your charm?” I asked her.
“Not a thing, dear heart, not a thing.”
When Mai went to the sickbed, Consort Vulpeja took her hand and kissed it, which I never expected to see. But then I thought of how Mai must have looked to the maiden as she lay sickening: Mai braving the wrathful eye of the aunt, bringing charms and hints and warnings.
Consort Vulpeja said, half weeping, “Mai, I’m so very glad to see you!”
Mai looked down from her great height, made greater by her wooden soles, and said, “I’m pleased to see you so much better.”
The concubine pressed Mai’s hand to her cheek and wouldn’t let go. “I wouldn’t be here if not for you. And yet I can’t show you my gratitude as I should. My clan has left me without the means.”
Mai tugged her hand away and went to sit on the linen chest nearby. She lowered herself with a grunt. Her gown wrapped tight around her belly and the skirt rode high in front. Her ankles were swollen, and thick blue veins had risen under the skin. “No matter,” she said. “It’s enough for me to see that you live, that you’re cared for well. And how’s the food? Better than your aunt served, I should think.” She grinned and flicked a glance at me.
Consort Vulpeja would not admit so much. “It’s not tasty, and besides, it makes me sick,” she complained.
I said, “It’s just that her stomach is still tender.”
“The food is wholesome,” Mai said to the concubine firmly. “You must eat as much as your bowels can bear.”
“I do try,” she said, and tears ran fast as snowmelt. Then, through gulps and sniffles, she lamented that Sire Galan would never desire her again—how could he?—she was hideous, she was withered. Better that he had never seen her again than to see her so—and he’d given so much for her and she’d never please him—and he made her weak with just a look, made fire run through her (and here she tugged at the bedclothes as if she felt the heat)—yet a look of pity was not what she craved.
I winced, not wanting to know so much. It reminded me of the way I ’d wailed over Sire Galan in Mai’s ears. Is that how I’d sounded?
Mai leaned forward and patted the concubine’s hand, saying, “Soon you’ll be yourself again. He’ll not remember you as you are now. A man’s desire feasts on what’s before him, not what he saw yesterday—isn’t that our usual complaint?” She laughed. “But here it’s all to the good.”
“You’re right, I’m sure,” Consort Vulpeja said, wiping her face with the bedclothes. “He sent for me, after all. I must take heart from that.”
“I’ve brought something for you,” Mai said, taking a cloth-bound packet from the purse on her low-slung girdle. “If you bathe in this daily—just a pinch in the bathwater—you’ll be desired. But you mustn’t expect it to work right away. It will take some little time.
Consort Vulpeja said, “What can I give you for all your help? It’s a heavy weight to be so beholden. Look in my chest, the one you sit upon. Take anything you want and still I’ll owe you more, for I owe you my life and my place.”
Mai said, “It was Firethorn who saved your life,” but the concubine didn’t seem to hear. She wouldn’t rest until Mai had taken a gift—anything—everything, if she wished, as much as she would take.
Mai was at last persuaded to open the chest. She bent over it with one hand on her back, as if stooping pained her, and the other hand fingering what she found inside. A rose-colored gown, two muslin shifts, a rough woolen cloak that a jack might wear, a wimple, hose and garters, a leather girdle with an empty purse, two fur cuffs (merely rabbit), a tippet of fox, a small wooden box containing a comb, a silver chain, a few loose pearls. Mai looked at me, cocking an eyebrow at these paltry possessions; we both knew harlots and handmaids who owned as much. Nevertheless, she straightened up with the cloak in her hand.
After we left the tent, I asked Mai, “Are you my friend?” I had begun to wonder.
She grinned and rested her heavy arm on my shoulder. “Coz, you invited the cuckoo to your nest; are you so amazed, now, to see what hatches? She’s here and you must make the best of it, and the best you can do is mend her and send her off to Galan’s keep and out of your way, as quick as can be.”
Tobe came running and buried his head in Mai’s skirts. She hoisted him up to sit on one hip and he tugged at her dress, wanting to nurse. She gave his hand a little slap. Sunup came and stood by my side, watching the two of them, solemn again. Mai tossed her the cloak she had gotten from Consort Vulpeja, saying she’d done well, and when she came home—and that would be soon, she hoped—she’d make her an overdress from it against the winter winds.
I said, “Mai, can you give me some of what you gave Consort Vulpeja?”
“You think you have need of it?”
I nodded. I would not wail like Consort Vulpeja. I would not.
“Why, has Sire Galan’s dangle lost its prick?”
“It’s not that.”
“So you’ve quarreled, I suppose. It’s nothing. You’ve bound him and he’ll not get far before he feels the leash. Besides, I told you the charm would not move Sire Galan. It’s to ease her mind, for the desire she needs is the desire to live. I’ll send you something better if you like, but I still say that if you’d whistle, he’d come to heel.”
This made me laugh; it was a bitter jest that she supposed Galan was on the leash when I felt the collar tight around my own throat.
That same day Consort Vulpeja had another visitor: Sire Farol’s wife, Dame Hartura. Though she lived just across the common yard, I hadn’t seen a hair of her hide for days. She only left the tent to go to tourneys and I’d stayed away from those since Galan was injured. She came carrying a gift and sly reminders that she was a wife and Consort Vulpeja wasn’t. The gift was handsome: enough fine lawn to make an underdress, with an edging of white embroidery over white. It’s true there was a stain on it, but nothing to trouble a good seamstress.
Consort Vulpeja made me prop her up in bed for the visit. I stayed at hand, fearing she might faint. At first they went back and forth to determine if they had kin in common, which they did, of course, somewhat distant. The Blood parse blood ties to a fine degree and to many generations, whereas we mudfolk reckon just enough to keep from coupling with those we shouldn’t.
Consort Vulpeja got a pinched look about her nostrils when Dame Hartura mentioned Sire Galan’s son, a stout boy,
a very healthy babe—he had the exact stamp of his sire—whom she’d seen before she left Ramus for the Marchfield. Consort Vulpeja hardly needed to be told there were two sides to a bedsheet and any boy Galan begot of her would be born on the wrong side.
As for the gift, she took it hard but hid it well. She drooped her head and said she was humbled by Dame Hartura’s generosity; she was unworthy to wear such fine cloth, unworthy to receive it, and from such a very gracious hand at that! She praised the gift as highly as if Dame Hartura had brought her cartloads of velvets and miniver, and belittled herself, saying she was beneath the notice of her exalted visitor. All this was properly said and to be expected, as it was expected that, in turn, Dame Hartura would say the gift was nothing, was less than a token, she didn’t mean to insult her with it but it was the best she could give from her poor linen chest. Then she added that Consort Vulpeja’s beauty was spoken of widely and she was grateful to be given the chance to adorn her. This last jab, it seemed, she couldn’t resist.
After this visit Consort Vulpeja’s temper came untethered and she raged at me and everything I did, from afternoon till evening. She struck me too, but with such feeble blows I made nothing of it, thinking it was no wonder she was tender from Dame Hartura’s show of charity. But when she screamed at Sunup and frightened her, I swore I’d sit on her if she didn’t quiet down, and I turned my back on her and set about brewing a tisane to bring on drowsiness.
Sire Galan came home while she was shrieking that I was a hoof-handed sow, a clumsy, verminous, stinking drudge, and moreover a slut with a cankered sheath as big as a harbor, commodious enough to berth three ships at once—too loose a fit to please a man. He pushed aside the curtain and stood looking at her from under the visor of his helmet. When she caught sight of him, she stopped short and her reddened face blanched.
He said nothing to her. To me he said mildly, “Firethorn, come and help with my armor.”
I ducked under his arm and he let the curtain fall behind us. He sent his varlets off to the armorer to have a new grip put on his buckler and the dents in its face hammered smooth again. They all had to go on every errand because of the feud.
There was a multitude of fastenings, buckles and points and latches, and just as he was armored from foot up to head, he was undressed the other way, from head to foot. He pulled off the helmet himself and untied the padded cap. The smell of sweat was sharp.
He wore a grim face. “Is it her custom to revile you so?” he asked, as I worked at the buckles of his neckguard. “I never thought to hear such foulness from her mouth—it’s like the stink coming from a privy pit.”
“She’s out of sorts today. She had a visitor and it was too great a strain.”
“What visitor?”
“Dame Hartura. She gave her a fine length of cloth for an underdress. Can you afford a seamstress to have it made up?”
I kept my voice cool. His was colder. “Call for a seamstress if one is needed and don’t trouble me with it. And don’t trouble yourself over my money; what I have left will suffice, and if it doesn’t, I’ll borrow against what the war will bring me.”
“Then shall I have the seamstress make a velvet gown, as well, and a brocade surcoat? And a warmer cloak too, I think. The clothes your concubine brought with her are not fit to be seen. Besides, she lacks anything in your colors.”
At that he grew heated. “Is your heart made of flint? How can you ask and ask and ask in such a … such a stony way, when she repays all your care with ill use? How can you ask it of me? I never wanted her in my charge, and I’ll not have her wearing my colors.”
If my heart was flint, it was as quick to strike sparks as his. I said, “You wanted her enough, once.”
“As you remind me at every chance. I tire of this dispute, of you instructing me in my obligations with a tongue as keen as a mercy dagger when you are apt to forget your own duties. I’ve not found you so trustworthy of late.”
I didn’t protest. How could I? I applied myself to the fastenings of his brigandine, under his left arm, and kept my face averted.
He put one hand over mine to stop me working. “Most of all,” he said, and his stare scorched even though I didn’t meet his eyes, “most of all I tire of you sleeping by her side instead of mine.”
I looked at him. “I didn’t think I was required there any longer.”
“‘Required’? Must you be required? Do as you please,” he said bitterly. “I’ll not require you.”
One word misplaced and offense was given yet again. “I meant-you didn’t seem to want me there.”
“Well, you were mistaken. Not for the first time.”
Off came the brigandine and the scaled kilt and the greaves. The quilted underarmor came off too, in more haste, and he was down to his bandage, and we didn’t stop there, not until he had untied my headcloth and undone my laces and pushed the dress off my shoulders and down over my hips. When he felt the raised welts on my back, he grew gentler. He lay on the pallet and pulled me down to him, but I was not so gentle. I sat astride and rode him hard and spurred him on. I scratched him a few welts to remember me by, as I’d remembered him these past nights.
We tarried too long and were asleep when Galan’s men came back with the repaired buckler. Spiller and Rowney woke us when they came in and lit the lamps. Galan rose and dressed, in no hurry, and went out to take his supper with the other cataphracts. Spiller waited until he was gone, then made a show of sniffing the air and said, with a sly grin at Rowney, “Say farewell to sleep. She’s in rut again and will be caterwauling every night.” Rowney looked at me sidelong.
I was in no mood for Spiller’s japes but couldn’t let it pass. He was the kind to tickle a bull with a switch until the bull gored him. I finished knotting my headcloth and said, “If Rowney can sleep through your snoring, he can sleep through anything, for you bray like a donkey.” Noggin snickered and I turned on him. “As for you, Noggin, your snore is more of a whinny-all mixed with snorts. Sometimes I’d swear there was a horse in the tent.”
Noggin maintained that he never snored; if he did he’d wake himself up, for the slightest noise disturbed him. This was such a bald lie that Spiller and I got to chaffing him, and there was some hooting and loud laughter. But Rowney didn’t laugh.
I made Consort Vulpeja’s soup of broth and coddled egg and took it in to her. The only light in her chamber came from behind the curtain. Sunup had dozed off on her nest of rags and forgotten the lamps. When I went to light them, Consort Vulpeja said, “Leave it dark.”
“I have your supper,” I said. “You must see to eat.”
She turned her head away and said, “Leave me be.”
I recognized the sound in the concubine’ s voice and the unyielding line her lips made pressed together. It had taken no longer than the hour of dusk, while the light colored and faded from the sky, to undo every gain she’ d won in the past days.
Galan did not rise as early as usual the next morning, for when he woke, there I was next to him. I was in his bed again after a long exile, but by the ardency of his welcome, you’d think he was the one who’d been banished. He was not a man to forgive an insult; it seemed he meant to forget, instead, that I’d taken him for a man of dubious word and tarnished honor. Not that we spoke of it. And I’d forgive him anything to be home. He was all the home I had.
In time he got up and put on his armor and left with all his men except Noggin.
Consort Vulpeja wouldn’t take a morsel of food, not even from Sunup’s hand. Her courage had failed, but her stubbornness was steadfast. Mai told me once that she never yet saw anyone die of desire. What of despair, then? For Consort Vulpeja seemed fixed on dying.
All morning I wheedled, and she replied with silence and a glare that spoke loud and plain. In the afternoon I prepared a bath for her with a pinch of the herbs Mai had brought, which smelled sweet and a trifle musky. She knocked the basin from my hands and screamed that I’ d exchanged Mai’s herbs for some which would do her
harm—make her skin blister, likely—and used Mai’s on myself. This raging left her with red cheeks and a white circle around her mouth. Then she fell into a stupor and spoke no more.
I had not one true word of comfort for her. She’d overheard Galan say he’d never wanted her. She’d overheard more than that. I kept on offering her food and drink and something to ease her rest, with a coaxing voice and soothing hands, but all the while there was this buzz and thrum all through me, an exultant—even vaunting—singing in the blood. I was dismayed to feel it, but I did, nevertheless. I did, forgetting the sting of the cloth rubbing against the welts on my back. Is this what a man feels when his enemy lies in the dust with the sword at his throat and he savors the question: whether to bear down or no? Jealousy is wont to give no quarter.
CHAPTER 11
Armiger
here was a cold, dry wind that afternoon, blowing down from the Hardscrabble. Gusts rattled the canvas against the poles and made the ropes creak. Noggin had gone off with a few of the Crux’s kitchenboys to gather fuel. These days a stick of wood wasn’t to be found, and charcoal from the mountains was so dear it was sold by the handful, not the sack. We burned dried horse dung, gorse twigs, and salt hay, and plenty of each, for the chill in the air and all the sheets that needed boiling. It was as if Ardor Hearth-keeper had withdrawn her favor from the Marchfield, making our hearth fires flare and stink and sputter out too quickly. Or she warned us not to take her for granted.
I would gladly have traded errands with Noggin, to be outside and let the wind blow through me, but I stayed in the dim tent close to Consort Vulpeja. Was this the change of weather they said the king awaited? There had been good omens in the Heavens, according to the Auspices of Crux, such as lances of geese heading west across the Inward Sea instead of south, and a raven, struck dead by a fish eagle, that fell at the king’s feet during a tourney.
I’d looked for signs myself, casting the bones again for Consort Vulpeja. But in three throws they had pointed every which way and might as well have been mute, for all I could hear them.
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