Just at the instant she expected it to break, she heard Forzan Paoul speaking again. His voice was reason itself, blandly courteous and kind, seamlessly impenetrable to any suggestion of bad feeling or hurt pride. “If my lord will permit, I will show him where he is going wrong.”
Hothen had been disarmed, dumbfounded. Rian could not believe her eyes. Neither, it seemed, could Yseld. As for Ika, she was too surprised to react.
Forzan Paoul was holding out his hand, ready to receive the scharan, which, meekly, and to Rian’s continuing amazement, Hothen passed across the dais.
The young priest easily and naturally adapted the long-necked, big-bellied instrument to his grasp and, producing a few sample notes, adjusted the pegbox to his satisfaction. In this he was quite absorbed: it was as if the other people in the room had ceased to exist. Then he looked up. “The first thing, my lord, is to make sure it’s in tune. Next, you must hold it properly, not bent over it, not crouching or tensed, but like this. Your scharan should be part of you. Its music should come as easily as thought. You cannot think straight if you are uncomfortable. So: left hand like this, the elbow free, the right hand held here. Do you see?”
Hothen nodded.
“Let us take the first phrase of your song. You were careless with your fingering. You must touch the strings lightly, but precisely. I’ll play the opening chords slowly so you can see. There. And again. And again. Now a little more quickly. Now more quickly still.”
In Hothen’s eyes was growing an enthusiastic light Rian had never seen before. He was following the instruction with an intentness of which she had not imagined him capable. Until now his scharan-playing had been regarded in the household as yet another bad joke. No one had suspected that he might have a real feeling for music or that through music he might be reached. Yet it seemed that Forzan Paoul had already discovered Hothen’s vulnerable point. The notes he was playing bore only a skeletal resemblance to the sounds Hothen had made. This was a fragment of real music, pure and serene, and Hothen knew it.
“Now you try.”
Hothen’s first eager effort, however, although an improvement, was not good. Forzan Paoul moved to his side, took the instrument, and demonstrated again. He corrected Hothen’s grip and posture and, at the second attempt, Hothen managed to produce some chords that were a passable imitation of his teacher’s. He grinned in delight, and Rian was fleetingly reminded of the little boy she had once sat up with and cared for. Her vigils then had occasionally been rewarded with just such a flash of pleasure. “That’s good,” he said, as Forzan Paoul resumed his place.
“You’ve made a promising start, my lord. I’ll show you the next phrase tomorrow, and with it the rest of the tune.”
“No. Show me now. I want you to show me now.”
“You are forgetting the ladies, my lord.”
“What?”
“This is not the time for a music lesson. I fear we have already trespassed on their patience more than we ought. We have been most discourteous.” He turned to Yseld. “Do you accept our apologies, my lady Yseld?”
He had addressed her first, naming her, giving her precedence – the legal precedence to which she was entitled – over Ika. There could be no doubt about it. He had thrown down the challenge. He was prepared to make an enemy of Ika, if that was what it was going to take to help her son.
Yseld did not appear to know how to answer.
Rian had already decided as much, but now she was resolved to do what she had planned earlier: to put a beautiful arrangement of dried flowers in the Forzan’s room.
“And my lady Ika?” he said. “Do you forgive us?”
“Yes, of course,” she said, peevishly. “What is there to forgive?”
“Never mind about them,” Hothen said. “If they don’t like it they can go to bed. I want you to show me now.”
As if he had not heard, Forzan Paoul arose. “I have had a long day,” he said. “With the permission of the company, I will go to bed. It is late, my lord, and I suggest you do the same. That is, of course, if you want to be up in time for the morning’s music lesson.” With that, acknowledging Yseld, Ika, and the speechless Hothen, and looking in turn at Rian and the two servants, he retired.
3
“I beg your pardon, my lady,” Paoul said, on finding Yseld alone in the ground floor day-room where he was accustomed to giving Hothen his morning lessons. “Is my lord not yet here?”
Until this moment Paoul had kept alive the hope that he was mistaken about her. He had hoped that her avoidance of him, which during the last four weeks she had developed into an art, was engendered by dislike rather than a reciprocation of the feelings which, although he had tried to deny the fact to himself, he now realized had been growing steadily in his heart.
Since that first evening, when he had been all but struck dumb by the shock of seeing her again, he had thought of little else but Yseld. She was no longer the Yseld he had met so briefly and inconclusively in the homelands and on whose image he had built such a flimsy and elaborate construction of adolescent ideals; but each addition to his sparse stock of seconds and minutes and hours spent in her company – from chance meetings on the stairs, in the corridors, in the gallery, or, where he could drink his fill of her presence, at the nightly meals – had confirmed that, at their first meeting two and more years ago, something had been exchanged that was in essence both durable and true.
She was seated by the window, where she had been looking out into the early spring rain, listening perhaps to the blackbird that was pouring out its song from a wayfaring tree in the garden of the inner enclosure. In her lap, forgotten, lay a circular frame with a half finished embroidery in muted colours. Paoul guessed that she had been sitting here for some time, anticipating his arrival, deciding what she would say to him. She looked round. Her face, pale and anxious, divulged everything and he knew there could be no further hope of self-deception.
“He has gone hunting, Forzan Paoul. He did not ask me to, but I have come to offer apologies on his behalf.”
Paoul came farther into the room, the floorboards creaking. His hearing told him that no one was about. This was a rare moment in the residence, rare on the ground floor, and virtually impossible upstairs, where slaves or servants were always present and there could be no such thing as a truly private conversation. Yseld had picked her time and place most carefully. Paoul thought he already knew what she was going to demand of him, and he was already prepared to give it.
She began. “I am afraid you are not helping my husband very much. At first it looked as if you were, but just lately he appears to do as he pleases. This is the second time in three days that he has gone hunting without your permission.”
Still she was avoiding him, avoiding his eyes. Her hands, holding the embroidery frame and peeping out from the sleeves of her ochre and russet robe, were minutely trembling.
These were not the reactions of the flirt he had once imagined her to be. Her behaviour at her father’s banquet had anyway become understandable when viewed from the perspective of her marriage to Hothen. Her father had been unable to snare Lord Mond, but she had seen it as her duty to help him try. She was not free, but a marketable commodity. Her conversation with Paoul, the lamp-bearer, had been a mistake, a lapse, a foolish impulse to which, for one reason or another, she had given way. The attempt to buy her into Lord Heite’s immediate family having failed, Bohod Thosk must have been compelled to set his sights lower and her dowry had ended up here.
In theory she was the future Lady Brennis. In fact, as Paoul had observed, she was subordinate to her husband’s mother, and had been relegated to the guests’ quarters. At first Paoul had believed – listening at night from his own chamber, which nearly adjoined hers – that she was Hothen’s wife in name only and that Hothen was content with the services of the two concubines who singly or together visited his bed. On the fourth night, though, Paoul had heard her summoned to his room.
Paoul had never known sexual je
alousy before. Despite all his training, it had affected his attitude towards Hothen: there was no doubt of that.
At first Paoul had found Hothen a pitiable creature, dominated by a mother who only made his difficulties worse. He had seemed more stupid than cruel, constantly baffled by the workings of a reality he would never be able to understand. Within a week, though, Paoul had come to share the view of the slaves and servants. Rian, in particular, had unwittingly revealed how much she detested Hothen and sympathized with his lady. What Rian would never know, and what Paoul had not been certain of until now, was that his own continuing presence here would make Yseld’s position not just worse, but intolerable.
“This afternoon, my lady,” he said, sparing her from having to broach the subject further, “I am due to see the Vansard and General Teshe. We will be discussing my place as Lord Hothen’s tutor. Today marks the end of my month’s probation.” This, he was sure, she already knew. The subject had arisen the other night at the meal. She had appeared inattentive at the time, but must have been listening: why else would she have come here this morning? “If I so request,” Paoul went on, “I will be relieved of my duty and sent back to teaching at the village school. I can tell you now, my lady, that I have already decided to make that request.”
“Indeed.” She did not raise her eyes to his. “That is rather a shame, Forzan Paoul, but in the end I think it is probably for the best. My lord is getting too old for a tutor. He has never responded well to discipline.”
The blackbird stopped singing. In the unexpected silence, unbroken even by the soft descent of the rain outside, Paoul realized he was in all likelihood speaking to her for the last time. In the future, if he saw her at all it would be in company, at some official function. He would never have the opportunity to be with her like this again.
But, as she had said, it was probably for the best. He was a red priest, and a red priest was not allowed to feel this way. He was not allowed to ache when he looked upon the girl whose memory he would for ever carry in his closest thoughts. He was not allowed to long to touch her or even simply to call her, just once, by her unadorned and birth-given name.
“Does my lady know where he has gone?”
“To the woods at Lavant, I believe. They left about an hour ago.”
“If you will excuse me, then, I ought to go and seek him out.”
With a small and somehow fatalistic movement of her head she indicated her acquiescence and Paoul, trying to remain calm, passed through the door and left her alone, still sitting at her place by the window.
* * *
“Kar Houle is worse,” the Vansard said, from behind his desk. “Did you know?”
“No, Phede Keldis, I did not.”
Paoul could not really comprehend what was being said. It was all he could do to maintain his composure in front of the Vansard and General Teshe. His request to leave the residence and get away from Yseld, to leave her and go back to the village, had just been refused.
They had said that the remarkable improvement in Hothen was directly attributable to him and could not be allowed to end. They had praised him and urged him to reconsider. Then, when he had pressed the point and tried to insist on his right to resign, the Vansard’s manner – veiled, as always, with the punctilious correctitude that was one of the most effective weapons in a red priest’s armoury – had become less pleasant. He had all but accused Paoul of acting against the interests of the empire. The penalty for that was invariable and swift.
Paoul was shocked. He could not believe that such a trifling dispute should immediately have called forth the full weight of the Vansard’s authority. But he was even more surprised by the Vansard’s lack of scruples. He had not imagined any red priest, least of all a vansard, capable of this kind of behaviour. The Vansard had been supported in his dishonesty by the silent, worldly approval of General Teshe, massive in his grey armour and cloak, legs crossed, fingertips meditatively raised and touching, observing Paoul and from time to time pursing his lips as if mildly amused. Cynicism, lies: these were his stock in trade. He cared nothing for the integrity of the Order. If one of its priests did not willingly bend, he would have to be forced, no matter what damage that did to him or to his future development.
In these few minutes, Paoul had grown up. Just as he had clung to the belief that he was mistaken about Yseld, so had he been clinging to the last remnants of his vision of the priesthood as something noble and fine. Between them, General Teshe and the Vansard had broken his hold. They had revealed the Order for what it was, an integral part of the world of politics and expediency. The laws of that world applied to him too. Somehow he had believed himself immune. Somehow he had not expected to give an account of all the years and resources they had invested in his training.
They had made him. Now, for the sake of the few remaining months of Hothen’s education, they were prepared to break him. No matter that Hothen would never be what they wanted: it was the will of Lord Heite that the effort should be made. No matter that Paoul was capable of higher service, no matter that he had been selected as a potential Prime. If he were ruined, disillusioned, rendered unable to aspire, there would be plenty of others to take his place.
“Kar Houle?” said General Teshe. “‘Worse’? Do you mean he’s ill?”
“He has been ailing for some time. A fortnight ago he collapsed in the refectory. Kar Vever diagnoses no particular cause; the real culprit is age. Kar Houle is a very old man indeed.”
Paoul said, “Is he comfortable?”
“Yes, I believe so.”
“Is he receiving visitors?”
“Certainly, Forzan Paoul. He would be pleased to see you, I’m sure. But check with Kar Vever first.”
“Yes. Yes of course.”
As Paoul was about to rise from his seat – for, plainly, he had now been dismissed – a fanciful idea which had occurred to him after a difficult morning with Hothen a week ago returned to him in a more serious guise, not as a means to deal with Hothen’s problems, but as a chance of being reunited with the only person in whom Paoul felt he might, at last, be able to confide, and whose advice, for the sake of friendship, would perhaps be impartial and sound.
“Phede Keldis,” he said. “I have been giving further thought to the question of Lord Hothen.”
The Vansard raised his eyebrows. As far as he was concerned, the subject was closed.
Paoul prepared himself for a rebuke, but pressed on anyway. “Before leaving the citadel, Phede Keldis, I chanced to hear about some remarkable work the kars are doing now. I have a friend who has been appointed an assistant to the Chief Herbalist. We took the tattoo together.”
“And?”
“He told me about a treatment they are developing for disorders of the mind. It uses new herbs, brought from the east. In certain cases, the results are said to be spectacular.”
The Vansard glanced at General Teshe.
“I do not know whether Lord Hothen might benefit, but it seems possible, even likely. I wonder if Kar Vever … I wonder if he is aware of it.”
“We receive all the usual bulletins from Hohe. I imagine Kar Vever is fully conversant with the latest developments in his art.”
“The treatment is very new, Phede Keldis. It may not have reached the bulletins yet.”
“What is the name of your friend?”
“Kar Enco.”
“Are you suggesting that I ask for him?”
“He is very highly qualified, Phede Keldis, but the final choice would of course be Hohe’s.”
Phede Keldis gave an icy smile and Paoul wondered whether he had gone too far. “I will speak to Kar Vever about this.”
Paoul arose.
“Thank you, Forzan Paoul. Your suggestion may well prove helpful – whomsoever Hohe chooses to send. And thank you for agreeing to continue with Lord Hothen. It will not be for ever.”
Not for ever: but it might as well have been. Hothen would be twenty, officially, on the first day of the eleventh m
oon, seven months hence. That meant he would not come of age until at least two hundred more days had elapsed, or, as Paoul calculated on the way to Kar Vever’s door, some one hundred and seventy working days, each of which might produce any number of encounters with Yseld. He did not know how he would manage even the first. What could he tell her? How could he explain what had happened? She would surely never believe that the Vansard had gone back on his word.
But, once he had gained permission to see the patient and was on his way to Kar Houle’s room, Paoul became aware that the source of his agitation was not simply anxiety for Yseld’s sake, but this mixed with pleasurable anticipation and fear. He was ashamed to discover that he was secretly glad to be returning to the residence.
Of course, absolutely nothing could come of it. Not the least hint of his feelings could be allowed to escape. It would be too dangerous, disastrous for them both, a crime not only of the grossest and most unthinkable impropriety, but a capital offence. And they would be certain, eventually, to get caught.
And yet – was it not possible, even now, that he was wrong about her feelings? Was it not a great presumption and conceit to imagine that his presence or absence could make any difference to her? What, after all, did he know about matters of the heart? What had he learned about men and women, except for the austere, factual teachings of the kars and the ill-informed sniggerings of his classmates?
Even so, he felt ashamed. He had broken his promise to her. Through cowardice, he had not resisted the Vansard as strongly as he ought. For the sake of honour, he should have refused outright to continue, no matter what consequences that brought on himself.
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