by Dave Duncan
She welcomed her daughter with a smile verging on the blissful. “Come and sit by me, dear. Would you like to read something? How are your Italian lessons proceeding?” Embroidery lay forgotten on the table nearby.
“Slowly, I fear.” Most of the trouble, although Lisa was not about to say so, was that her Italian coach had an abrasive Scottish accent and restricted her studies to poetry with a vocabulary consisting largely of amore, bella, carina, appassionato, and similar terms. She brought a stool and set it near. “Mother, it is time you and I had a serious discussion.”
“Oh, no!”
“Oh, yes. What do you mean?”
“Nothing, dearest. I was afraid you meant … never mind. What do you wish to discuss?”
Giving her mother a puzzled glance, Lisa folded her hands and began. “Every day we hear new rumors about the huge army the Fiend is gathering.”
“Yes, dear.”
“Everyone agrees that, having been balked once, Nevil will make absolutely certain of success this time. Panic will ensue, as it always does. And there is a limit to how far a coach can travel southward in Italy, you must agree. Consequently, I believe it would be prudent for us to take ship while the going is good.” She had not yet discussed this with Hamish, but if he meant a tenth of all the lovely things he whispered in her ear, then he would jump at the chance of escorting the two ladies. He would make a wonderful bodyguard and likely much more than that in the near future.
The countess pursed her lips. “And where exactly are we to sail to?”
“Malta,” Lisa said. “Or Crete. Malta belongs to the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and Crete belongs to Venice. I don’t like the sound of Egypt or Algeria or any of those Moorish lands.”
“Nor I. We should both of us end up on an auction block.”
“Mother!” That outrageous remark caused Lisa to lose control of her prepared speech, which threw her off and galloped out of sight. She dithered, at a loss for words.
Worse, her mother seemed not at all repentant. There was a rare gleam in her sapphire eyes. “Nor do I fancy an island. I should feel trapped, confined.”
“You mean you are just going to wait until the Fiend arrives?”
“No, I am waiting for the Fiend to be defeated. I believe he is heading for his downfall. I think the scourge will soon be lifted from the back of Europe, and the clouds will lift before a new dawn.”
Mothers could make speeches also, however muddled, and reverse previously unquestioned behavior patterns. Lisa stared at her in bewilderment. “What reason can you possibly have for thinking that?” It was an idea at variance with her entire life experience.
Maud smiled serenely at the blue sky twinkling through the olive branches above her. “Nothing goes on forever, dear, although we mortals often forget that and behave as if it will. The demon that possessed your father managed to turn the world upside down, but the world has a habit of roiling back again in its own good time. I am convinced that Rhym has met its match at last.”
“Are you referring to that horrible Longdirk?”
Maud flashed a glance of maternal amusement at her daughter. “You don’t usually take such dislikes to people, dearest. Yes, I am referring to that truly remarkable young man. I have met kings and dukes and lords aplenty, and at best they were merely stars. Sir Tobias is a rising sun.”
“He is a boor! A great ox with no culture or breeding or manners whatsoever.”
Her mother took no offense at being so blatandy contradicted. Indeed, she positively smirked. “Not an ox,” she murmured. “A doughty warrior, yes. A splendid figure of a man, certainly. His background is undistinguished, I admit, so we must make allowances for his lack of polish, but his accomplishments to date are worthy of note. Think of the truly great shapers of history—Julius Caesar, Genghis, Charlemagne, Alexander the Great. Had you met any one of those men at Longdirk’s age, could you possibly have predicted his future greatness?”
“At twenty-three Alexander had conquered the Persian Empire.”
Maud dismissed Alexander with a wave of the hand. “He was born to the purple. All those men I mentioned were of much higher rank than Sir Tobias’s.”
“There is certainly none lower.”
“He has promised that you will take your rightful place on the throne of your ancestors. No, we shall not go to Malta, Lisa. We shall follow the triumphant armies of a Europe reborn as they roll the Fiend back into the darkness, as they reestablish the ancient freedoms under a suzerain rightfully appointed by the glorious Khan. There has never been a female suzerain, of course, but who knows? Since you will be one of the very few monarchs with an undisputed right to—”
“Mother! You are dreaming moonbeams! You are hallucinating!”
“Not very much, dearest. Once the Fiend is exorcised, everything will return to normal very quickly. Wait and see! We must find you a husband.”
“Husband?” Lisa’s squeal came out at least an octave higher than she had intended. Hamish! Hamish! Hamish!
“It is tricky, because there are so few princes left. Ah, Lisa! When you were born I made a list of all the eligible royal bachelors of Europe younger than ten. Of course, I assumed that your father would summon me to court eventually, or at least visit me from time to time, so we should have other children; I never guessed you would be the heir. Alas, all those boys— there were seventeen of them, I recall, although only five or six were credible contenders—I fear they are all dead now. You will need a strong man at your side, dear. England is in a state of ruin and anarchy. All Europe is in a state of ruin and anarchy!”
Lisa could hardly believe her ears. Maud had never raved like this before.
“So I may have to wed a mere noble, you mean? Even, perhaps, a commoner?”
Her mother favored her with a very knowing smile. “I did say the Fiend had turned the world upside down, dear, didn’t I? Yes, I do believe that I could even see my way to arranging your marriage with a commoner. He would, of course, have to be a very outstanding and accomplished foreigner.”
Not Hamish. She didn’t mean Hamish. Oh, demons! She couldn’t possibly mean… could she?…
“Longdirk? That oaf? You are seriously thinking—”
Lisa sprang to her feet and spoke three words that she had never spoken before and had heard only rarely. She was not at all clear what two of them meant; they just sounded appropriate. Apparently her mother did not know them at all, for she merely frowned at the tone.
“Do sit down, dear. You said you wanted a serious discussion, so a serious discussion you shall have. Listen carefully. I have given the matter much thought. If Sir Tobias drives the Fiend’s armies back over the Alps, as I am confident he will, then there is no doubt at all that Europe will rise against the monster and rally to the Khan’s banner he bears. He may be a commoner now, my darling, but he will not be one for long under those circumstances. The Khan will—”
“I wouldn’t touch Toby Long—”
“… at least a duke and probably a sovereign prince. He is, of course, greatly smitten with you!”
Lisa almost fell off her stool, having to grab at the edge of the stone table for balance. “He is what? Mother, he is the most insulting man I have ever met. He snaps at me, treats me like a child, orders me around. I assure you he likes me no better than I like him, which means utter revulsion. Repugnance!”
Her mother chuckled. “You think so? You should see the way he looks at you. Oh, Lisa, I know longing when I see it, and he craves you mightily. If he seems a little brusque at times, then that is merely because he is struggling to contain his feelings. Realizing how far above his own station you are, he is being careful not to embarrass you by revealing his great affection and desire. His worship must be unspoken and distant. Understand the strain this places on his self-control.”
Awrrk!
Lisa drew a very deep breath. “He told me himself that he is celibate because he has no choice in the matter. When I said ox, I meant ox!
T
he countess knew what that word meant, and her fair cheeks colored. “I doubt it very much! If he suffered an injury of that, um, description, then the story would be general knowledge. Your Master Campbell has a reputation as a libertine and lecher, but Sir Tobias’s is above reproach.”
Oh, worse yet! Humiliation! “You have been making inquiries?”
“Certainly. Women of the lower sort have thrown themselves in his path and he, er…”
“Steps over them?”
“Exactly. Are you quite sure of your own feelings in the matter, dearest? I have seen how you, in turn, regard Constable Longdirk when you believe you are unobserved. He is, of course, a magnificent figure of manhood, Hercules himself. Any young girl can be forgiven a certain fascination with such an Atlas.”
“Atlas?” Lisa said hoarsely. “Don’t you mean Grendel? That side of beef? Let me tell you, Mother, that all his stupid posturing as comandante is going to end very shortly. Even Hamish admits that he was lucky at Trent—that he was only elected commander because they couldn’t agree on anyone else. And now the Khan has sent one of his sons to rally the opposition, so that problem will not arise again. Prince Sartaq will appoint a suzerain, and the suzerain will send Toby Longdirk packing, right back to the Highland bog he crawled out of in the first place!”
Even those harsh words failed to ruffle her mother’s maniacal serenity. “Will he really? Princes don’t discard warriors who win wars, Lisa, they promote them. I think,” she added, fixing her daughter with a reproving eye, “that you had better face up to cold reality, dearest. Everyone is now talking as if your father is dead, which legally may be true. Under English law an underage heiress becomes a ward in chancery, and Tartar law or Florentine law won’t be much different.”
Lisa opened and closed her mouth a few times … “Or even the laws of chivalry,” Blanche continued. “As heir to the throne of England you are a ward of your father’s overlord, the Khan, or his suzerain, or perhaps this darughachi prince. One of them, certainly. Not the Florentine courts, I hope. Whichever it turns out to be, he will choose a husband for you.”
This was ghastly! Even Hamish had never mentioned anything so grim. Talking Mother into something was a matter of persistence and hard work. Tartar princes might be much less malleable. “Mother… ?”
“You bring a kingdom as dowry, dear. If the Khan wishes to confer royalty on a commoner, the easiest way is to marry him to a queen, you understand? Now the outstanding military figure in Europe at the moment is Sir Toby. I foresee a great future for Longdirk.”
“Foresee anything you like for him as long as you don’t include me in it!”
“Lisa, Lisa! Don’t deceive yourself. Oftentimes we foolish women fail to understand our own desires. Many a highborn maiden has fallen in love with a man of inferior social station and exaggerated his rough qualities in her own mind to deny the stirrings in her breast. A certain amount of animal sensuality is a virtue in a man, alarming though it may seem to a virgin. I remember how terrified I was when my own parents informed me that they had chosen a man barely older than myself to be my husband. I quite—”
“No! No! No!” Lisa clapped her hands over her ears and fled howling from the courtyard.
25
Although the banquet had lasted late into the night, Toby had been out riding Smeòrach since before dawn. Between times he had slept, but poorly—too many things to do, too much to think about. Drumming had wakened him. He heard drumming often now, and the fact that others did not made it no less real to him. He was convinced that the darughachi had set shamans to spy on him, but if the Tartars could do that, then so could the Fiend’s hexers. It was past time he found a replacement for Maestro Fischart.
Dusty and bleary-eyed, he strode into the courtyard. Hamish was there already with a pile of reports and correspondence. He looked up and frowned. “Did you come to bed at all?” At times he mothered Toby infuriatingly.
“You were asleep. And still snoring when I left.” Toby sat on a stool and enjoyed a long yawn. The one bright note in the morning was that the Company had money again and could hold a pay parade at long last. He leaned his arms on the stone table and scowled at the heap of paper. “What bullguts have you got for me today?” He took a harder look at that face he knew so well and spoke more gently. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. There’s a letter in from—”
“Tell me.”
Hamish sighed crossly and laid a pottery paperweight on the heap, although there was no wind. “You tell me what you think of Lisa.”
A tiny demon of temptation told Toby to scream at the top of his voice, grab Master Campbell up by the throat, and wave him like a flag. Here they were preparing for a war that would decide the fate of Europe for centuries to come and his chief helper and closest friend—his only friend—was obsessed by an animal fire in his crotch. A fire that could never cook anything. Why couldn’t he lust after some two-lire bawd who would drag him into the bushes and quench the blaze for him? Twenty minutes’ rollick and he would be the old Hamish again, at least for a day or two.
Lisa? Toby scratched his unshaven jaw. “If you like statuesque blondes, she’s one of the greatest beauties you’ll ever meet. She has a wit like a whip, a mind like a rapier, and nerves of steel. She is also totally spoiled, completely self-centered, and as devious as an Italian. Not,” he added, seeing the storm clouds roiling in Hamish’s eyes, “that she can be blamed for all that. It goes with the royal blood. She had a bizarre upbringing, and her mother is nine-sixteenths madder than a March hare. As a king’s wife she’d be magnificent, but never as a ruler in her own right. Not for another ten years anyway. I can’t imagine her grinding meal or milking the goat. Why do you ask?”
The storm clouds had not dispersed. “Her mother thinks you are in love with her.”
Toby said, “Oh, demons!” under his breath.
“You do not deny it?”
“I have told you what I think of her. If I could have dreams, old friend, they might well include a Lisa in them.”
“She says you make eyes at her.” Hamish bared his teeth. “Her mother is plotting to marry Lisa to you! You are going to destroy Nevil’s army, reconquer Europe, marry Lisa, and become King of England.”
If a ditch-born bastard was a suitable match for the future queen, then why wasn’t a schoolmaster’s son? Toby was aware that Queen Blanche had taken to smiling at him excessively. He snapped at both her and her daughter as much as he could to keep them away. Apparently that strategy was not working.
“She’s even madder than I thought. Marry? I don’t dare even smile at a girl, you know that!”
His suffering friend was not convinced. “Are you sure? How long since you lost control of the hob? It didn’t escape you even at the Battle of Trent. If you can stay master in a turmoil like that, with gramarye and demons loose, then you can stay master anywhere!”
Toby sighed, shaking his head. “Believe me, it’s different. I know.” He shuddered, remembered the dozens of innocent people who had died in Mezquiriz. “Remember Jacques, at Montserrat, who tried to be a saint and failed that test? He started with an elementary, not a hob, and yet it became a demon.” It had taken most of him with it when it was exorcised, and left a human cabbage. “Have you bedded her yet?”
“No!” Hamish glowered at the papers on the table.
“Do you plan to?”
Without looking up, Hamish mumbled, “You think I couldn’t? If I wanted?”
“Sorry. Yes, she’s lovely. If I give her sheepdog looks behind her back, then I’m sorry about that, too. I didn’t know I was doing it. I probably ogle lots of women—didn’t you tell me once that that was why men’s heads could turn?” Briefly Toby considered ordering his chancellor to report to the camp brothel, but discretion prevailed. His troubles were too serious to cure that way. “Old friends should not squabble over a prize that neither of them can ever hope to win.”
He ought to be more sympathetic. Things were easier fo
r him, who was forever denied love. Time had dulled the pain of Jeanne and that terrible night in Mezquiriz, and yet he still dreamed of her sometimes. He wakened weeping.
“It does seem irrational.” Hamish was too upset to smile. “It’s the thought that she’s going to have to marry someone, and probably very soon. Demons, Toby, I’m crazy about her! I’ve never felt like this about a woman, never. At times I want to burst out laughing, yelling, ‘Lisa loves me!’ so the whole world can know. And then I remember that some man is going to drag her off to bed to breed a pack of royal brats, and I want to kill myself. It’s driving me insane! I can’t eat or sleep or think straight.” He pounded his fists on the table.
Man chooses woman, woman accepts man, society forbids the match—it happened all the time, but that made it no less tragic.
“Flea farts! You slept like a millstone last night. You’re also doing the work of three men and managing to squire Lisa at the same time. Let’s get started here. What have…” A flash of movement on the roof of the villa…
“What?” Hamish looked where Toby was looking.
“My keeper is back.”
Hamish’s eyes grew almost as wide as the owl’s. It was a white owl, a large one, staring fixedly at them. “It’s the same one. Can you hear drumming now?”
“No. Can you?”
“No.”
This was new. Drumming with no owl, yes, but never owl without drumming.
Before Hamish could comment further, Don Ramon de Nuñez y Pardo came striding out of the villa with a couple of squires at his heels. He paused long enough to wave them away before advancing on the table like a stalking leopard. What would he say to tales of invisible drummers? He probably heard them all the time, and bugles, too. Toby and Hamish rose and bowed.
He sat down without inviting them to. He was even more resplendent than usual in a dazzling new military doublet that Toby had not seen before; he had his silver helmet on his head and carried his captain-general’s baton. Although his blue eyes shone inhumanly bright, he did not seem especially mad this morning, neither angry nor crazy. Time would tell.