The Swan Maiden

by Heather Tomlinson

  How far would Lady Sarpine go to have her way?

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  Chapter Seventeen

  ***

  T he next morning, castle folk began gathering in the lower courtyard while it was still dark. Servants moved through the crowd, offering cups of hot mint tea, baskets of pears or pomegranates, and fresh bread slathered with honey. Ladies yawned behind well-kept hands, their sleepy eyelids veiling the anticipation of cats at a mouse hole. Knights and nobles crushed pomegranate seeds between their teeth and licked the scarlet juice from their fingers.

  Doucette had descended the tower stairs before her sisters finished dressing. Inconspicuous in a hooded cloak over her swan skin, she leaned against the wall and listened to the conversations that swirled around her.

  A richly dressed woman nibbled a pear slice. "Why'd he want the youngest?"

  "A shepherd, can you imagine? I thought the comtesse would have him stripped and whipped before our eyes." Lord Luquet's fleshy lips stretched in a sneer. "A gold piece says the lout runs away before midday, the trouble he's fallen into."

  "Done."

  Sighing, Doucette backed away from the wagering courtiers and into her oldest sister.

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  "There you are," Azelais said. "Father sent us to fetch you."

  "Good morning, Sieur." Cecilia fluttered her eyelashes at Lord Luquet and fell in on Doucette's other side as Azelais led them to the courtyard gate. "What will Father make the fool do?"

  "Great feats, no doubt." Azelais arched an eyebrow. "A peasant!"

  "But such a good-looking one," Cecilia cooed. The prospect of scandal seemed to have restored her spirits completely.

  Doucette bit her lip and said nothing.

  "Here are my beautiful daughters! The raven, the lark, the gentle dove." Lord Pascau drained his cup and handed it to a servant while Azelais, Cecilia, and Doucette curtsied to their parents.

  The comte wore close-fitting leathers and carried a game bag slung over his shoulder. Despite the early hour, Lady Sarpine made a picture of equal elegance. She had coiled her fair hair tightly at the back of her neck and pinned a linen coif over it. Split riding skirts fell in correct folds under a crisp tunic; a pair of gloves were draped at a precise angle on her belt.

  Sarpine acknowledged her elder daughters with a nod, then frowned at Doucette.

  Guiltily, Doucette reached up to straighten the braids that had tangled under her cloak hood. "Good morning, Mother."

  "That's better, my treasure." Lady Sarpine smiled, serene as if the brief exchange had returned their relations to a more usual footing.

  As if, Doucette thought, her inconvenient magic could be dealt with as easily as her wayward hair.

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  The comtesse toyed with a glove. "How long must we wait for this yokel?"

  Lord Pascau lifted his wife's hand and kissed it. "When the sun rises, I promise the finest sport your huntress heart could desire."

  Azelais, Cecilia, and the courtiers standing nearby all laughed. Doucette felt cold. Lady Sarpine nodded toward the gate. "Then let us begin," she said.

  "He is prompt," Cecilia murmured. "Care to share his other virtues?"

  "Stop it." Doucette tried to step away from her sisters, but Azelais caught her sleeve.

  "You're not running, Doucette." Azelais exchanged a meaningful look with Cecilia. "Father has cast us all in his little entertainment."

  Tall and broad as a tree, a giant walked through the gate.

  Doucette blinked into the sudden brightness. The sun had risen. When she looked again, the menacing shadow had gone, and she saw only Jaume. He had given up the jester's black-and-red garb for his shepherd's hat, brown tunic, and leggings. In the crowd of colorfully dressed knights and ladies, his clothes looked plain and poor, though he wore them with the confidence of a man who knows his work and does it well.

  Doucette could tell the moment he spotted her, tucked between her sisters. When she read relief in the quick sweep of his eyes over her face, she straightened proudly. She intended to stand by Jaume's side, no matter what trials her father had devised or how her sisters tormented her.

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  Jaume took off his hat and bowed.

  Lady Sarpine stared over his head. The comte smiled. "Ready for your first test, Jaume of Vent'roux?"

  "Oh, aye, Sieur."

  "Follow me." Lord Pascau took his wife's arm and strode through the gate.

  Nose in the air, Azelais sailed forward. Towed along in her sisters' wake, Doucette couldn't think of a word to say. She smiled helplessly at Jaume, who motioned the three young women to precede him.

  "What pretty manners your friend has," Cecilia said. "I do like that in a man."

  Azelais coughed repressively. Doucette gritted her teeth and wished Cecilia would find another target for her barbs.

  Outside the castle gate, the comte did not continue straight into town, but turned hard to the left and skirted the castle wall. Scrubby brush and brambles covered this side of the ridge, making walking difficult.

  The comtesse struggled to keep her flowing skirts clear of thorns. "What is the meaning of this excursion?"

  "Just a little farther," Doucette heard her father say. When the comte stopped, the rest of the courtiers trooped up to stand as close as they could manage.

  The rising sun brought a blush to the tangled weeds and gilded the brambles' red-bronze leaves. Under a thick carpet of thorns, dotted with oak trees and hardy purple wildflowers, the hill sloped toward cliffs overlooking the river valley, with its shearing pens and wheat fields beyond.

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  Lord Pascau gestured broadly. "A line view, don't you think?"

  "Aye, Sieur," Jaume said.

  Doucette glanced at her mother, but Lady Sarpine did not appear to share the comte's enthusiasm for the vista. Someone would pay, Doucette thought, for the many tears in her mother's riding skirts.

  "A pity the thorns prevent us from enjoying it," the comte said. "Since you're an able-bodied lad, I've decided your first task will be to clear this entire hillside so that a lady--our Doucette, for example--might stroll from the castle wall down to the cliff edge, barefoot, without bruising her delicate skin. Finish by sunset, or the trial is forfeit."

  The courtiers whispered.

  Doucette swallowed. It would take a company of laborers many days to clear the whole hillside.

  Jaume bowed his head. "As you command, Lord Pascau."

  "You'll need a suitable implement." Doucette's father opened the game bag on his shoulder and pulled out a child-sized tool, which he held high.

  The sight of the little mattock's red-painted handle made Doucette's palms sweat with remembered terror. "Is that the one you Animated years ago?" she hissed at Azelais.

  "I told Father you'd recognize it," her sister replied. "I'd completely forgotten. Father took it away after--"

  "I remember." Doucette shuddered.

  With a ceremonial air, Lord Pascau gave the tool to Jaume. Jaume clasped his fingers around the handle and ran his thumb over the tool's flat edge. "Thank you, Sieur."

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  The comte slapped Jaume's shoulder. "No time to waste, young man," he said cheerfully. "Wield it to good effect."

  But instead of using the mattock's blade to hack at the brambles, Jaume set the tool gently on a rock. He reached down for the nearest thorn bush, closed his bare hands around its spiky branches, and jerked it out of the earth.

  The courtiers murmured in disappointment. "We got up for this?" one muttered to another.

  "Where's the sport, if he won't use the mattock?"

  Lord Pascau's genial expression didn't change. "We'll leave the man to his labors. Until sunset, Jaume of Vent'roux."

  Jaume bowed. "Until sunset, Lord Pascau. Lady Sarpine."

  The comtesse pulled her torn skirts close and stalked back along the wall toward the gate. Courtiers parted before her and the comte, then followed, casting disappointed looks over their shoulders.

 
; Cecilia pouted. "Not very adventuresome, is he?"

  "Not stupid, you mean," Doucette said. Azelais rolled her eyes. "Time will tell."

  "So." Doucette tucked up her skirts and planted herself on a flat rock. "I'm staying."

  Azelais waved a dismissive hand at the children who had come running from town. "You prefer brats and yokels to civilized company?'

  "Na Claro's sitting under that oak tree," Doucette retorted. "She'll want someone to wind her yarn."

  Cecilia peered at the servant, pulling a spindle from her wool sack. "What's the old bag doing here?"

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  "Mother likely sent her." Azelais pinched a thorn from her shoe and let it fall to the ground. "She'll make sure the shepherd doesn't cheat."

  "Cheat?" Doucette said hotly. "This isn't a true test of Jaume's worth. It's a mean trick, and you know it."

  "I think your devotion is sadly misplaced." Cecilia poked Doucette in the ribs. "What good is a man who won't use his tool?"

  "Cecilia," Azelais said, "that's enough."

  "Just because you can't think of anything amusing to say...."

  As her sisters walked away, bickering, Doucette set aside her hooded cloak and folded her hands in her lap.

  Clump by clump, Jaume yanked the brambles from the rocky soil and stacked them together. She didn't like to imagine what the thorns must be doing to his hands.

  A thin scrim of clouds filtered the rising sun. The air heated, intensifying the sharp scents of low-growing herbs, the acid smell of bruised bramble canes. The patch of cleared ground grew, slowly.

  At this pace, alone, Jaume couldn't possibly finish before winter set in. Doucette picked wild lavender and ran it through her fingers until the stalks came apart in sticky, aromatic threads. She wiped her hands on her skirt and picked more.

  Jaume labored on.

  Boys dared one another to leap over the piles of brambles. Under a bush, a bird whistled in warning, and high in the hazy sky a falcon soared, waiting for some unwary creature to show itself.

  Doucette shifted on the rock. Her stomach growled. She hadn't been hungry at dawn, but now the hard knot of

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  apprehension inside her was fraying into tendrils of worry. She picked her way over to the oak tree and sat beside the old servant.

  Na Claro's wrinkled hand rose and fell with the rhythm of her spinning. "Hard worker, that young man. Might surprise us all, come sundown."

  "Lady Doucette!"

  Anfos ran up to them and slung a sack half his own size to the ground. The contents rattled. "Na Patris sent a jug of water and some food."

  "Thoughtful of her," Na Claro said approvingly.

  "Please do convey our thanks," Doucette added.

  "I will." The boy ran along the castle wall, turned the corner, and disappeared from sight.

  Doucette poured a cup of water and walked through the cleared patch to Jaume. Bushes had been pulled up, but loose thorns caught at her shoes. The ground would never pass the "barefoot" part of her father's impossible demand.

  Up close, it was clear Jaume had been working hard. His tunic stuck to his body in big sweaty patches, and his face was flushed.

  "Lady Doucette." He took off his wide-brimmed hat and saluted her. Brown hair curled damply at his ears.

  She offered the cup, wishing she could soothe the angry red scratches that covered his muscular arms.

  "Thank you."

  Doucette surveyed the expanse of hillside as he drank. Town children straggled home for their own midday meals. Insects buzzed undisturbed among the brambles. "You can't do this."

  "No?"

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  She folded her arms across her chest. "It's impossible."

  "Maybe."

  Worry--mixed with shame that he was suffering on her behalf--spilled out into words. "Why didn't you take my swan skin that night? You could have married me without my parents' blessing or a hillside of thorns to clear. Those leggings will be rags, and your arms are scratched bloody!"

  "I told you already." Jaume sounded insulted. "I won't live in fear that my wife finds her coat and flies away, leaving me worse off than before. Sorceress or not, you deserve to be wooed properly." A callused finger stroked one of the gray-tipped feathers that curled over her neck.

  Doucette shivered, feeling the caress the length of her body. "Why don't I Transform us both into birds? I don't care whether Father's tests are finished. They're not fair."

  "I asked for your hand like an honest man. I'll face the consequences." Jaume studied her over the cup's rim. "Unless you think a shepherd's honor of no account?"

  Caught by that dark gaze, Doucette couldn't speak.

  He smiled, as if her silence were answer enough. "Besides, winning a woman like you should be impossible."

  "Me?" The word came out in a squeak. "Why?"

  "You know why. We're for each other." Jaume drained the cup and closed her fingers around it.

  Doucette's hands tightened on his. "Yes," she said urgently. "But if your honor won't let you marry me without clearing this field, you'll have to use that mattock. And it's cursed."

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  Chapter Eighteen

  ***

  True," Jaume said.

  Doucette blinked. "You knew?"

  "Oh, aye. Besides herb lore, my countrymen don't hold much with sorcery. More honor in a job done by your own hand than by waving a little stick, that's our feeling." He dusted his hat on his thighs and settled it on his head. "Plenty in Vent'roux town live happy without magic of any kind, but we can recognize it, if need be."

  "Wish I had," Doucette said. "Azelais made the thing and Animated it years ago. Promised it would finish weeding the herb garden."

  "And?"

  "It did. She just neglected to mention that it would drag me along like a cat shakes a rat. The courtiers thought it hugely funny." Doucette kicked a knot of brambles. "Azelais and Cecilia were always giving me toys that wouldn't stop playing."

  "And you wonder why Donsatrelle folk don't meddle with sorceresses?"

  "Jaume." Doucette seized his arm, though she could as easily have shaken sense into an oak. "Listen to me! There's no other way to complete Father's task. But if that mattock drags you

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  over the whole hillside as it dragged me through the garden, it will kill you!

  "Your father shares your sisters' sense of humor, I take it." Jaume dropped a kiss on her head. "Let's see the thing."

  They left the cup by Na Claro, who was dozing in the oak's circle of shade. The mattock lay on the rock where Jaume had set it long hours ago.

  Doucette pulled her swan skin close to keep the trailing feathers from touching the nasty thing. "Once you swing it, the mattock won't stop until the task is done."

  Jaume squatted by the rock. "Will it work without you hanging on?"

  "By changing the Animation spell, you mean?" Doucette thought hard. "We can try. Pick up the mattock, but don't swing it."

  Jaume took the tool.

  Doucette laced her fingers through his, aware of each bit of skin where their hands touched, his, scratched and work-roughened; hers, sticky with lavender. With an effort, she cleared her mind of distraction and, as Tante Mahalt had taught her, pictured what she wanted the mattock to do.

  Mattock, good mattock, touch not the useful plants, but clear weeds and thorns and brambles:

  root and branch

  spine and seed from wall to cliff-top.

  And when the task is done,

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  return with our thanks.

  The painted tool quivered, then leaped from their hands.

  Doucette muffled a shriek of surprise as the mattock took flight. Jaume jumped in front of her, his hands spread protectively. Startled birds whirred away. Doucette craned her neck. "Look at it go!"

  The mattock flashed through the air, diving and swooping like a demented dragonfly.

  No match for the tool's relentless attack, bramble bushes were torn by their ro
ots from the ground and rolled into heaps. Flurries of loose leaves and thorns drifted over them. Without warning, the piled vegetation sparked into flame, burned with a fierce, smokeless heat, and dissolved into gray ash.

  Doucette danced behind Jaume. "It's working!"

  He mustered a smile for her. "Without you to command it, yon mattock would have led me a deadly ride indeed."

  "Your idea," she said.

  Jaume spat in the dirt. "I'm no sorcerer."

  "Maybe not to Animate the tool in the first place." Doucette remembered what Tante Mahalt had said about magic. "But to change the spell required an observant eye, a clear mind, and a strong will."

  "If you say so."

  The mattock raced up and down the hillside. Avoiding the wild herbs, flowers, and oak trees, it ranged back and forth until the last prickly bush and bramble root had been scoured from the ground and consumed by flame. Then it flew straight

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  to the rock where it had started and landed with a satisfied little wriggle.

  Doucette let out a deep breath of relief. Jaume knelt and sifted a handful of dirt through his fingers. "Soft as sand," he marveled.

  "Not a thorn left," Doucette agreed.

  They grinned at each other.

  "Well done," Jaume said. Doucette favored him with her deepest curtsy. Arm in arm, they returned to Na Claro, still napping under the oak tree.

  The servant rubbed her eyes and yawned. With a start of surprise, she beheld the altered landscape. "Good job, lad. Expect you've worked up an appetite, eh? How about some roast chicken?" She rummaged in the sack Anfos had brought. "There's Patris's excellent bread, and pears, and cheese. Then perhaps you'd give us a tune?" She winked at Doucette. "Never yet met a shepherd without a flute or a drum by him."

  "My pleasure," Jaume said.

  "Yes, please." Doucette unfolded a napkin's careful wrapping. "Ooh, honey cakes!"