Summers at Castle Auburn

by Sharon Shinn

  THE CHAPEL WAS full to overflowing. Before we began our ceremonial procession down the center aisle, I peeked in through the back door to get a glimpse of the throng. The audience was arranged by rank, all the great nobles sitting in the front pews and the lesser gentry behind them. You could have done a genealogy chart of the eight provinces just by writing down who sat where to observe the wedding.

  Bryan, Kent, and Holden of Veledore were waiting for us outside the chapel door, as were Roderick and Damien. Greta reared back in dismay when she saw the latter additions to the party.

  “What are they doing here? This is a wedding, not a brawl.”

  “My personal guard goes with me everywhere,” Bryan replied coolly. “What better time to make an assault on the prince than when he is at his most happy—and his most unguarded?”

  “Fine, very well, then, at least he gives you some consequence. But this little man—your taster—”

  Bryan regarded her out of very measuring eyes. “The ceremony is sealed with wine and sealed with water,” he said. “I do not put anything in my body that has not been tested first.”

  I wondered, not for the first time, if Bryan had any idea how many slow-acting poisons were available to do him in long after Damien had survived the first few bites. Now did not seem like the time to bring it up.

  “You arrogant boy,” Greta hissed. “You will make a fool of yourself and my daughter before every noble of the eight provinces if you do not even trust yourself to take a drink of the wedding wine.”

  “I will not, however, make a fool of myself before you, if you make one more comment,” Bryan said suavely. “My guard will be happy to escort you from the chapel if you feel you cannot observe my actions.”

  At that, Greta blanched and fell silent. This was the grandest day of her life, and even to prevent Bryan from disgrace, she would not say another syllable and run the risk of missing it.

  “Mother, it’s fine,” Elisandra said, patting Greta kindly on the back. “Damien will taste for both of us. He protects me as well.”

  Greta turned huge eyes her daughter’s way. You could just see the words shouting in her head: But you do not need protection in such a setting! But not for the world would she utter the words.

  “So, my bride, are we ready?” Bryan said, addressing Elisandra for the first time, and in a jaunty voice that was somehow very disturbing. It was as if he had, within seconds, laid aside his icy mood and assumed a jocular one. It made him seem unstable—a little frightening.

  Elisandra did not seem put off. She nodded serenely and laid her hand upon his crooked arm. “Ready, my prince,” she said.

  And, two by two, we entered the chapel.

  First, Greta and Lady Sasha entered, signaling to the musicians and flower bearers before hastily taking their seats in the back of the chapel. They would be the first ones out, rushing to the kitchens to give instructions to the cooks. Once the music started, and the flower bearers had tossed rose petals down the center aisle, Bryan and Elisandra entered. Kent and I followed, and Angela and Holden came behind us. Damien and Roderick formed the last pair, an unconventional couple to trail behind this grand procession.

  The ceremony itself seemed endless. I had been to my share of weddings—most of them, it is true, the rough-and-tumble, three-quick-vows affairs that you would most often witness in the village—but none which was as interminable as this one. The four attendants were required to speak up at various points during the ceremony, stating our belief in the rightness of the marriage and the fidelity of the two people most involved. I managed to say my pieces on cue without choking on the lies, despite the fact that my mind had not taken in a single word the priest said before he looked at me and asked, “And do you, Lady Coriel, affirm this?” Beside me, Kent’s responses were solemnly spoken. Bryan and Elisandra answered every question with clear voices that must have carried to the back of the room.

  Three times the union had to be sealed with wine and water. I was alert enough to pay attention to these interludes, which Bryan obviously had discussed beforehand with the priest, for they were handled very smoothly. Beside him on a small, lace-covered table, the priest had set a pitcher of water and a bottle of wine. As we watched, he recited each of the three vows, pouring the liquid from the containers to the silver goblets. He asked Bryan and Elisandra to swear their fidelity. They did. Then he sipped from each goblet.

  “True in water, true in wine,” he said. “So let the witnesses attest.” He handed each goblet first to Damien, who took a shallow swallow from each. Angela and her partner next were proffered the drinks, then Kent and me. Elisandra drank from the cup after I did. The priest took his time making the circuit, so that perhaps seven minutes had passed between Damien’s taste and the time Bryan brought the cup to his lips. That was a shorter lag than the one that occurred at every meal, but evidently long enough, for Bryan did not hesitate to take the cup and drink from it.

  Elegantly done, I thought, and admired the priest for his diplomacy. Then I drifted into my haze again, unable—unwilling—to focus on the events unfolding before me. My back ached from standing so long. My feet hurt in the new, tight shoes. I wanted this hour to be done with, this day to be erased from the calendar. I wanted to be anywhere but here.

  “And do you, Lady Coriel, affirm this?” the priest asked me.

  “Yes, Holy Father, I do.”

  Once the ceremony finally proved to be finite, the bride and groom made the traditional parade up and down the aisles. I had not thought that, in a wedding of nobles, the audience would observe the ritual of throwing gifts at the newlyweds, but I was wrong. The air glittered with tossed diamonds and lesser jewels; I heard the sweet clink of gold as bags of coins fell to the floor and spilled onto the stone. Had I known, I would have brought another sachet with me, to untie and sprinkle at my sister’s feet. I would have liked to seed her fortune with the treasures I had given to Cloate and his wife.

  Finally Bryan and Elisandra exited the chapel, arm in arm, on their way to the great ballroom which, for a few hours, would be the scene of their reception. Greta and Lady Sasha had already hurried out, but I felt no need to rush. The next few hours would be deadly dull, as the prince and princess sat upon large thronelike chairs and every single guest came forward to offer congratulations. Nothing for the rest of us to do but mill about and sip from the wine that the servants would carry through the room.

  This in fact was what we did for the next three hours. Angela and Marian and I found a place in the back of the room to watch the currents of the crowd and make admiring or spiteful comments about the gowns the other women were wearing. Megan of Tregonia, for instance, was dressed in a daring gold dress that showed off both her complexion and her figure, but the three of us chose to find it ill-suited for her on counts of color as well as cut. The fact that she attached herself to Kent early in the afternoon and looked like she might stay sutured to his arm for all eternity did not endear her or her clothing choices to me, either.

  It was not to be hoped that we could entirely escape notice for the whole afternoon, which was intended, after all, as a social gathering. In fact, Angela left us for a good half hour to flirt with Lord Jude, while Marian and I endured the company of Ordinal of Wirsten for even longer. He had been stalking the room when we first arrived, clearly hunting for someone, and I had had to go to extreme shifts to keep my back to him for as long as possible. But, as I expected, he eventually tracked me down.

  “A fine business, this,” he said, after greeting both of us with brusque, insincere compliments. “A wedding’s a good thing. Ties everything together.”

  “A good wedding’s a good thing,” I said.

  “Every wedding’s the same,” he said. “You may bargain for more or less land when you arrange the marriage portions. You may marry a girl with connections to the squire or connections to the king. That’s your own business. But once you’re home in your house, no difference. A man’s a man, a woman’s a woman. Every marria
ge is the same.”

  I wanted to contest that hotly—surely a union for love brought more joy to it than one for position—but he was far more experienced than I was in this arena. For all I knew, he was right. Maybe there was neither magic nor mystery. Maybe there was only an exchange of properties and the sober, unexciting business of begetting heirs.

  I forced myself to smile. “Well, you have been married three times yourself, Lord Ordinal,” I said, for I had learned this bit of information during our first conversation. “You should be the expert.”

  He looked surprised. “Nothing to be expert about. Everyone’s born the same way, knowing the same things. Not something to make a fuss about the way all those”—he seemed to search for a word opprobrious enough to convey his meaning—“those poets do.”

  I tried a flirtatious glance, just to see if he’d notice. “Sometimes women like all that fuss,” I said. “Sometimes they like to think their lives are a little more—poetical.”

  He gave a sharp crack of laughter. “Yes, that’s a woman for you. Nonsense to the core.”

  I couldn’t stop myself. “And have you never been nonsensical? Just the tiniest bit? To make someone else happy?”

  He finally seemed to understand my game, and he gave me a close stare. “Oh! Well. I can’t write a poem, if that’s what you mean. Can’t get out one of those harps and play a song on it.”

  “Could you pick flowers from the garden?” I hazarded. “Bring a lady a gift of rubies just because they were her favorite gems?”

  His gaze was unnerving. “I could do that. Do you prefer rubies?”

  I gave a light laugh and turned my head away as if I was embarrassed. “Oh! Me! I wasn’t talking about myself. I just wondered how you might be moved to treat some young lady—if you cared enough to win her heart.”

  “We have extensive gardens at Wirsten Castle,” he said seriously. “More flowers there than you could pick in a year.”

  “You see?” I said, trying to keep the teasing note in my voice, though I was finding this conversation exceedingly tiresome. “You could be romantic if you wanted to.”

  Fortunately Angela drifted back to us a few minutes later, looking a little misty-eyed from her own, much more prosperous flirtation. She liked Ordinal; he reminded her of her father, and she knew much better than I did how to entertain him. So, I let the two of them talk while I spent a few minutes watching the activity in the room.

  Nothing had changed since I had last paid attention. Bryan and Elisandra still sat on the two heavy, ornate chairs set up on a small dais at the far end of the room. The line of greeters was perhaps a hundred people long and moving very slowly. Every person in the eight provinces, or so it seemed, wanted to personally wish the prince and the new princess the very best. From this far away, I could only see Elisandra’s coiled black hair; I could not make out the expression on her face. But I knew what it would be: tranquil, gracious, unwearied. She would thank everyone as if she meant it, and she would remember everything anyone said to her.

  I could not see Bryan’s face clearly, either, but even from this distance he looked flushed and overexcited. While I watched, he signaled Damien to bring him a glass of wine, which he drank in a few quick swallows. I wondered how many glasses he had already finished off. I wondered if Matthew, or Kent, or anyone else was paying attention.

  Well, better perhaps if he drank himself sick this afternoon and at the banquet. Better if he slept and belched his way through his wedding night, through every night he shared his bed with Elisandra. No doubt she felt the same way.

  As the long afternoon dragged to a hot close, I finally tugged Angela’s arm, and she and Marian and I joined the reception line. We were nearly the last three to pay our respects to the newlyweds, first Marian, then Angela, then me.

  I rose from my curtsey and went up on tiptoe to kiss Elisandra on the cheek. “Best of luck,” I whispered. “You’re a beautiful bride.”

  “Thank you,” she said. Her smile seemed completely normal, but she did not lavish it upon me for long. She was already greeting the nobleman in line behind me.

  I turned to the groom, extending my hand. “Congratulations, Prince Bryan. You have won the very best of your kingdom.”

  He caught my hand in an unexpectedly rough hold and pulled me unceremoniously toward him. I almost tumbled into his lap, and had to brace myself with a hand against his shoulder. “That’s too tame a way to say hello to your brother-in-law!” he exclaimed. “Come, give me a kiss.”

  He tugged me into his arms and kissed me full on the mouth.

  I did not struggle or scream, but I wanted to do both. He smelled like wine, he tasted like it. I could feel the heat of his skin through the plush pillows of his lips. I lay against him for a moment, so that my disgust did not immediately show, then I laughed and pushed myself away.

  “No, no, brother Bryan, you do not want to ruin my chances with the other eligible men here,” I said, freeing myself completely and stepping back. “What would Lord Ordinal think to see me flirting with the prince?”

  “The prince flirts with all the pretty girls,” Bryan said grandly. “That is why it is good to be prince!” He laughed loudly and took another swallow of his wine. I smiled, took a step backward, and then turned away as quickly as I could without appearing to run.

  The first thing that caught my eye was the still, silent figure of the prince’s personal guard, standing a few feet away from the throne and watching me, watching Bryan, watching Elisandra with an unwavering and unsmiling attention.

  I turned away from him to see the prince’s cousin also watching me, also wearing a stony, unreadable expression. I wondered who had displeased Kent—Bryan or me—and I walked by him without bothering to ask.

  THE NEXT EVENT in the simply unending day was the banquet. This had been in preparation for more than two days, for there were literally thirty courses. Six kinds of meat, ten types of vegetables, fruits, cheeses, breads, pastries, cakes, pies. There was no way to sample even a small bite of everything that the servants brought around. The main dish—if one could be singled out from such an array—was a venison stew that was Bryan’s favorite meal. He himself had hunted the deer that had been dressed and cooked to provide the basis for the stew, and Elisandra had stayed in the kitchen, at Bryan’s instruction, to make sure that the recipe was properly followed. I knew she had fretted for days over the preparation of this particular entrée, knowing how carefully Bryan would taste it as his first meal as a married man. I had worried with her—until I saw him at the reception, drinking so much wine that he would be unable to taste even the most flavorful combination of spices. Excellent or awful, Bryan would have no way of gauging the success of his favorite meal.

  I was right about that. As always, Bryan was offered the first taste of the new course—which naturally ended up on Damien’s plate, in Damien’s mouth. Elisandra took a helping next, and the venison stew was presented up and down the high table before more dishes were brought around to the rest of us. I noticed, not to my surprise, that more men than women took large portions of this delicacy; it was a fairly hearty stew, with a gamy taste that some women could not abide. But I was a country girl and had grown up on such meals; I took a portion and ate it with relish.

  There was more to come, of course—pigeon pie, baked chicken, pork in orange sauce, lamb and veal. Bryan (and Damien) took helpings of all of these as well, though Elisandra only tried the chicken. I was saving room for dessert, so I passed on all the other meats.

  “An excellent pigeon pie,” Ordinal commented to me, for, of course, he was seated beside me. “My cooks don’t understand game birds—the meat’s always overdone. This is just right.”

  “I believe there’s a sauce specially made for the pie,” Greta interposed helpfully, for, of course, she was seated across from us so she could supervise our romance. “I could ask our cooks for the recipe.”

  “Do that. Make sure Lady Coriel has time to study it,” he said, and addressed
himself again to the pie. Greta had to hide a smile of satisfaction. I had to hide an expression of disbelief.

  “I’ll certainly do that.” Greta almost purred. “And just let me know if there’s any other dish you particularly like.”

  “No, so far everything else has been ordinary enough,” he said. “But I do like that pigeon.”

  Eventually we had all stuffed ourselves beyond the point of rational thought, and the servants had begun to clear away the dishes. More bottles of wine were brought out and set on every table; ewers of water were refilled. Matthew came to his feet and clapped his hands for silence.

  “Friends—loved ones—noble gentry—I thank you all for coming here today to witness one of the greatest events of our times,” he said in annoyingly pompous tones. “The wedding of a prince! The beginning of a new dynasty! The crowning of a new princess and the guarantee of new life and hope for our eight provinces!”

  The crowd cheered. I thought perhaps Matthew himself had had a few too many glasses of wine. Once the applause died down, he proceeded in this vein for a few more fulsome sentences, then he raised his water goblet in a dramatic gesture.

  “Long life and health to Princess Elisandra! Sealed by water!”

  “Sealed by water!” the crowd roared back.

  “Sealed by wine!”

  “Sealed by wine!” the audience shouted. We all gulped down the appropriate liquids. Bryan, I noticed, raised his water glass politely when everyone else did, but did not bring it to his lips. The wine, however, he drained from the glass, which he then switched with the glass in Damien’s hand, full except for the single sip taken by the taster.

  Matthew was not quite done. “And to Prince Bryan, shortly to be our king! Long life and health to him! Sealed by water—sealed by wine!”

  The regent proposed a few more toasts to lesser mortals, then Kent rose to his feet and made a few speeches of his own. After that, it was anybody’s guess who would leap to his feet next, calling for the prosperity of Tregonia, the fertility of the Cotteswold farmland, the safekeeping of travelers who would be on the road tomorrow, the continuance of pleasant weather and the well-being of all our souls. After the first few toasts, I gave up on the “sealed in wine” part and only made my affirmations in water, because I knew one more swallow of alcohol would send me keeling over into Ordinal’s lap. Many of the other ladies, Elisandra included, had reached similar conclusions and barely touched their wine for the rest of the evening. Most of the men, however, seemed to have no problem emptying their glasses for one toast and filling them for the next. Kent, I saw, was not one of them; he tasted his wine every time a new pledge was made, but the level in his glass barely dropped.