Bee Sting Cake

by Victoria Goddard

  I PRESUME SAVELA UVARA fulfilled her promise to let us out, but we had already gone.

  We did not want to be late for church.

  It was a very long tradition that the Dartington Harvest Fair contests were announced, and competitors’ names taken, at the White Cross after the Sunday morning service the week before the Fair.

  Mr. Dart abruptly remembered this fact—or pretended to—after I had finally composed myself to see that the golden light had faded into the pale grey light of dawn. The bees, he said, had all streamed up out of the ceiling aperture. Their departure revealed a door on the wall halfway between the entrance we’d used and the Sun-in-Glory. We tried the handle and were surprised to find that, although stiff, it wasn’t locked.

  It led us into the castle courtyard, which looked thoroughly washed-clean. We decided with unspoken accord not to waken the castle and instead sought out the stables.

  “I’m glad to see the horses were cared for,” Hal said when we found them. They had all been fed and groomed, tack cleaned and neatly laid out on racks near the stalls.

  “Better than we were,” Mr. Dart agreed.

  I felt strangely stung. “I’m sorry.”

  Hal paused in the midst of lifting down a saddle pad. “Really? Why? It’s hardly your fault your estranged grandmother is mad as a Toulornie diver and lives in a cursed castle.”

  “Besides, whatever she lacked in hospitality you more than made up for in entertainment.”

  I gave Mr. Dart an ironic bow. “In that case, I am much relieved.”

  There was no sign of a groom, so we saddled our horses ourselves, opened the gate (“Somehow,” said Hal, “I doubt that they are in much danger from anything outside these walls”), and rode down the hill towards the village.

  “Hey ho,” said Mr. Dart as we reached the road, “I think you’ve lifted the curse.”

  THE VILLAGERS WERE not far removed from their earlier poses, but now they were looking around in befuddlement. We walked the horses down the highway through the centre of the village. I was tired from the sleepless night, my mother’s old song lingering in my mind, the bees in the lime blossoms above and around us sounding loud enough indeed to be heard across the Border.

  The villagers were talking madly to each other, or at least they were until we started to ride through the centre of the village. Then they stopped and stared and followed us silently to the little open green where the villagers presumably held market-days and meetings. There did not appear to be anything like a town hall; ordinary houses formed three sides of the green, with the fourth largely occupied by a substantial sprawling building whose sign proclaimed it The Bee at the Border, once an inn noted in poems of travellers on their way to Astandalas. It was the last place to stay in Alinor, a week’s journey—once upon a time—from Astandalas the Golden.

  The inn was not so prosperous as it once had been; several of the wings looked as if they’d been boarded up for a while, though an attempt had been made to disguise that telltale sign by window-boxes and barrels full of flowers, and the plaster was brightly white-washed.

  In front of the white inn was a beautiful and intricately carved stone well-head. If you drank from it—so those travellers’ poems said—you were destined always to return to the Woods. It was dry now, the water-moved bees stationary, the carved patterns blurred with neglect and dust like the runes on the Sun Gates.

  A couple came out of the inn. They were middle-aged and respectable; the wife was the one who looked as if she were from St-Noire, with the curly brown hair and heart-shaped face visible in various iterations throughout the village—along with a wider range of ethnicities than practically anywhere else in south Fiellan. Her husband was ethnically Shaian, brown to Hal’s black, his hair silky rather than wiry. A sign, again, that once upon a time most of the travellers from Alinor to Astandalas passed along this highway, called at this inn, were caught, perhaps, by the eye of a local.

  I reined up in front of them, curious about their experience with the curse, aware they must have questions for us—for me. “Good morning,” I said cheerfully, glancing at them both, liking their faces, wondering if it would be so unseemly if the Viscount became friends with the innkeepers. “Are you the innkeeper?”

  “Yes, sir,” she said, with a curtsy. “I’m Sara White. My husband, Basil.”

  Here I am, I thought, evidently the Viscount St-Noire, if dragon and curse-breaking and Savela Uvara and Hal were to be believed. One of a list of claimants, if the Marchioness were. Decidedly uncomfortable, whatever the case. I opened my mouth to introduce myself, but before I could do so an older man stepped forward out of the throng. He glanced at Hal and Mr. Dart, then focused on me.

  “Who are you?” he demanded without preamble. “You look like the old March.”

  I bowed. “Jemis Greenwing, at your service, sir.”

  “The Viscount St-Noire,” put in Hal, not quite in his ducal voice but not far off it, either.

  The crowd murmured, nothing quite loud enough for me to decipher. Above and all around us the bees were thrumming loudly. The air was heavy with the Tillarny limes. I felt very sleepy.

  The speaker frowned at me. “We heard you were dead.”

  I bowed again. “There appears to have been some misunderstanding with the Marchioness.”

  “Wouldn’t be the first time,” someone muttered.

  I cleared my throat. “My father was Jack Greenwing, of the Arguty Greenwings. He died nearly seven years ago now. My mother was Lady Olive Noirell, who died when the influenza hit Ragnor Bella.”

  “That was when the problems began,” a woman said. Others nodded. “All through the autumn the bees were slow and sad and then this spring they didn’t come awake at all.”

  More nodding. I stared at the speaker, wondering if my sudden wild thought was correct. Before I could formulate the question—how did you ask whether people knew they’d been enchanted for over three years? It was not a nice surprise, as I could attest—someone else pushed through the crowd.

  “I’m Ben Horne,” he announced, his hard gaze going from me to Mr. Dart. “I know you—but you look older than you should. And who’s this? He looks like that Perry Dart.”

  Mr. Dart bowed. “I have that honour.”

  Mr. Horne did not seem appeased. “What is all this? Why are the limes blooming? It ain’t their season!”

  I opened my mouth, but Hal dismounted before I spoke. “If I may? My friends, you have been under an enchantment or a curse of some form. When we came through the village yesterday on our way to the castle you were still as statues. Last we night, when we found the bees in the stone hive under the castle, they too were still as statues. Jemis, the Viscount, woke the bees and broke the curse—but as you have noticed, it is now autumn. The bees are working the limes, and the Dartington Harvest Fair is a week away.”

  “It’s Sunday,” Mr. Dart said, “and I’m afraid we must away if we wish to reach the White Cross in time.”

  Several people smiled at this, though most were looking confused and perturbed.

  “It’s been three and a half years,” I blurted. “My mother died in the autumn. She always used to sing an old song to dance the Lady in, autumn and spring—the last time was that autumn. And I didn’t know—I’m so sorry—I didn’t know it was significant—I didn’t know. I will do what I can to make up for it, I promise you!”

  Everyone looked at me. After a moment Mr. Horne said, “Your grandfather used to follow along behind the Marchioness apologizing for her, too, when it wasn’t his fault.”

  “Come along now,” Mr. White added. “You lads had best be off to put your names in for the Fair—and we had all best see to our homes and get ready for the bees when they bring their honey home. Everyone who wants can come to the parlour for a drink this evening—the last batch of mead should be well matured by now, I guess.”

  He looked at me, as I watched, astonished, while everyone else nodded and started to stream into the inn. Mr. White smiled
slowly, a little like Mr. Inglesides, a little like Mr. Dart. “Next time you’re by, lad, we’ll have a good long talk. You need some of my honey-wine to perk you up afore the winter.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Hal has an Idea

  “YOU’RE LOOKING PENSIVE again,” Hal observed as we rode along the winding curves of the highway. The bees were extraordinarily loud in the trees above us, around us. I couldn’t imagine that one ever quite got used to them.

  “I was feeling sleepy, truth be told,” I replied. “Perhaps a bit melancholy, thinking so much of my mother. Confused.”

  That slipped out. I bit my tongue, hoping they wouldn’t jump on it, which they didn’t—or not out loud. Hal looked off, ostensibly at the bee-laden blossom above us, and Mr. Dart shifted his sling slightly so his stone arm sat better across the pommel of his saddle.

  “Damn you,” I said without heat. “I’m worrying about where to sit at church.”

  THERE WERE SIX HOUSES of worship in Ragnor barony, seven if you count the small chapter-house of the Premonstratensians in Sowter’s Circle. As best as anyone could make them out, these were a group of monks from Ysthar who had gotten very lost once and now preached about their god to the shepherds of the Gorbelow Hills and mostly kept to themselves; I had never spoken to any of them, though had once seen the monks marching barefoot along the road chanting in a foreign language.

  Leaving the Ystharians aside, there were sundry shrines (such as the one to the Emperor we’d passed on our way to the Castle Noirell), whatever the cult to the Dark Gods got up to when not sacrificing cows at the Ellery Stone, and the six churches of the Lady.

  The Little Church at the Lady’s Cross had been destroyed in the Fall, and no one but the Woods folk went to the lady-chapel in the Heart of the Woods. As far as I knew no one but highwaymen and panicked travellers went to the Wild Saint’s chapel near the Wells in Arguty Forest. This left the Big Church, Dartington Church, and the one outside Ragnor Parva in the Coombe.

  “So why do you not go to Dartington church?” Hal asked as Mr. Dart recounted this list.

  “Ah,” said Mr. Dart, looking uncomfortable.

  “We used to go there, when we were little—both the Darts and my family, I mean. I always liked the building, and the old priest was lovely.”

  “But very old, I take it?”

  I grimaced. “Yes. Even after my father was reported dead as the traitor of Loe, he welcomed us ... but then he died.”

  “And the new priest, when he came from Nên Corovel, was—” Mr. Dart scowled. “He’s Charese. Violently opposed to anything that is not strictly male-and-female wedded bliss.”

  “Ah. A fool. Your brother doesn’t hold the living?”

  “For various convoluted reasons, no. It’s held by the Baron of Temby, up past Yellem.”

  “I like very much how Temby is ‘up’ from here. So, in retaliation—”

  “Everyone goes to the Big Church, and the vicar of Dartington spends all of his time off in Temby toadying to his relations.”

  It occurred to me, as Hal nodded judiciously at this, that possibly Mr. Dart’s lack of a sweetheart—and apparent dearth of close friends—from Stoneybridge had something to do with the Charese prejudice. It made about as much sense to me as the Baron rejecting the Earl of the Farry March as a husband for his daughter because the Earl was a practitioner of magic, but I couldn’t deny that that rejection had been made, and upheld. And the Charese prejudice was deep-seated. Mr. Buchance had never quite been able to be comfortable with Ragnor Bella’s easy acknowledgement of the Squire and Sir Hamish’s relationship, though he had never done more than show a faint discomfort at my friendship with Mr. Dart.

  We rode around another curve and were suddenly at the edge of the Woods. The green-and-gold trees framed a brilliant opening, the morning sunlight pouring in long shafts from our right. The bees had reached here: the air hummed with their working. With one accord we paused at the sun gate, but nothing happened: no knight or white deer or gnomic-utterance-uttering peasant. After a moment I nudged my horse into a canter, and we rode silently for a while.

  When we slowed back to a walk, on the crest of a rise that permitted us a glimpse of Ragnor Bella’s roofs, I could still hear the bees.

  “Tell me about this Big Church,” Hal said. “Who are its main patrons?”

  Mr. Dart and I looked at each other. I shrugged. Mr. Dart said, “The Baron; the Talgarths; the Woodhills; Jemis’ uncle Vorel.”

  “Not your brother?”

  “No, the funds had already been raised when the new priest came and proved odious enough to drive us to the Baron’s church.”

  “Hmm,” said Hal.

  I was half-listening to the bees. I could believe they were audible across worlds ... or I wanted to believe they were, had been once. Once upon a time the Red Company rode along this highway one late moonlit night, heading for Astandalas to make one certain party immortal, and Fitzroy Angursell saw my mother at the window of her bedroom in the castle tower, and wrote a song about her.

  Where stood at the window

  White stone and ivy

  The silent watcher

  In her high tower

  As we rode the high way

  To the golden city

  Down the white way

  To the city of roses

  “The easy thing to do,” I said, “would be to sit with the Darts.”

  “Your voice suggests that you don’t wish to take the easy route?”

  Mr. Dart frowned at me. “You’re not worrying about whether you’re unwelcome or unworthy again, are you? We’ve discussed this.”

  “Your aunt may disagree, viscountcy or no. But more ...” I sighed, shook my horse’s reins, realized the ceaseless thrum was fading into something like a low hum at the back of my throat. “I think last night ...” They waited while I tried to formulate inchoate thoughts into words. “Last night, first my grandmother and then the bees ... and my mother ...”

  I trailed off again, lifted my face into a breeze that blew from the north, carrying wood-smoke with it. Sneezed half-heartedly, like an ordinary person. Tried to capture my feelings obliquely.

  “If I sit with the Darts—if we, you and I, Hal, sit with the Darts—nothing changes.”

  “It’s no declaration,” Mr. Dart said quietly, with a strange edge to his voice I didn’t understand. I looked quickly at him, but his smile was open and cheerful as usual.

  I dismissed its a a trick of my ears, confused with straining after the fading beesong. “Yes. That’s it, exactly. If life is a game of Poacher—”

  “Is life a game of Poacher?” Hal asked quizzically.

  “I suspect it is for Jemis.”

  “If,” I repeated, “life is a game of Poacher, now is the time to lay down the first hand and let the tales start to unravel the way we want them to.”

  Hal and Mr. Dart exchanged glances, quite as if they had years of friendship behind them, and for a moment my heart rejoiced in the rightness of the moment.

  Hal said: “You’ve already exceeded my knowledge of Poacher.”

  Then he grinned. “I am, however, very good at the game of social one-upmanship. Tell me some more about our options.”

  WE UNSADDLED OUR HORSES and left them to the ministrations of the Baron’s groom. Mr. Czizek was a staunch imperialist, a former soldier from somewhere far away in the Empire, and he worshipped his gods alone and at some other time than Sunday morning. We spent a few minutes assuring ourselves that our appearance was respectable—more or less—then entered the church just before the bells finished ringing.

  Mr. Dart nodded affably and strode off to the Darts’ pew near the front of the church, while Hal and I, accompanied by a noticeable increase in whispers, made our way to the pew on the right hand side and five up from the back, where Mrs. Buchance sat with my sisters.

  Mrs. Buchance looked briefly startled to see us join her, but Sela squirmed under a protesting Lauren so she could sit beside me. To
halt Lauren’s continued complaints I lifted Sela over to sit between Hal and me. She asked him in a loud whisper what the design on his buttons was.

  His reply, that it was his ducal crest, fell into the silence between the final toll of the bells and the first notes of the choir’s hymn. I was quite sure that Sela was not the only one very impressed by this piece of information.

  I was much less sure whether that nonchalant explanation had been so clearly spoken on purpose. I thought I knew Hal very well: but then people were always essentially a mystery, I reflected, as Mrs. Etaris, three pews ahead of me, half-turned in her seat and winked.

  Hal was reasonably devout, and Marcan very much so, so we’d attended services during our travels. Hal liked sitting on the right-hand side so he could see the priest in the pulpit, and towards the back so he was not overwhelmed by incense. My poor abused system was grateful for this preference, though I had been a bit puzzled at his insistence until the discovery that the ducal pew in the church in Fillering Pool was front and centre and got the full brunt of incense and holy water and flower-petals and all the other elements of a Lady-Day service.

  Ghilousette’s churches had felt deeply wrong to me—or possibly my malaise had made me feel deeply wrong—and after the first Sunday service in the duchy I had not gone again. Then last week, my first back home, well, I had been somewhat overwhelmed by the Fifth Imperial Bastard Decadent dinner party I’d attended under false pretenses the night before, and had not even tried.

  It was lovely, all things considered, to be home.

  Prayer succeeded hymn, litany and hymn again, the familiar orderly sequence of the seasonal prayers as the Green Lady of Summer began to hand over her duties to the White Lady of Winter. The actual autumn cross-over day was on the night of All Souls; in the spring it was on my birthday, the come-and-go last day of February in the spur weeks between winter and spring.

  No wonder I was muddled so often, I thought, standing for a hymn, sitting again for the homily, thoughts drifting as Father Rigby launched into the same sermon he gave every year on the Sunday before the Dartington Harvest Fair. I was child of neither winter nor summer, White Lady nor Green; I was born on a crossover come-and-go day, the 29th of February, the day of All Fools.