Dark Lord of Geeragh

by Veronica Geoghegan Sweeney

  “Arra, what now?” She gave her boys a light, fond push that almost sent them sprawling on the stairs. “Away with you now, and explain to Fen what needs doing - he’ll be taking over the duties that Loosestrife performed, so you lads won’t be worked so hard -”

  “Aye,” said Seablite darkly, “and we won’t have to suffer Lord Bress’s temper…”

  He had a taste of his mother’s as she reached out and clipped him over the ear, but she turned to smile at me so quickly that I would have wondered if I’d seen correctly, were Seablite not rubbing his ear and glaring at her.

  Poli said, her smile grown sad, “My boy that was lost to us in that wicked place of enchantment, Loosestrife - he kept Lord Bress’s clothes pressed and aired… was there to see him to bed each night and to wake him each morning -”

  “That’s my job, now!” Abruptly and heatedly from Scabious. “I’ll not give up that part of it!”

  His brother said, with great scorn, “You only want to take up the breakfast tray because Cook makes hot chocolate in the mornings.”

  “I won’t give up the breakfast tray! I -!”

  “You may take up the breakfast tray,” I said, hurriedly. I had never tasted hot chocolate - it was said to be delicious - but I did not want to make an enemy of this boy. He and his brother reminded me too much of the sons of Dougal the Blacksmith. Anger one, and they all set upon you as if of one mind.

  “Work it out between you,” came shortly from their mother. “Now take him to your quarters and find him your old livery, Scabious, you grew out of it so quick you didn’t have time to wear it out at all. Then show the boy his duties and come down to the kitchen for some luncheon.”

  There was no mirror in the room I was to share with Scabious, Seablite and three other pages. I was in the great bedchamber of the Dark Lord before I caught sight of my reflection in the large cheval mirror. I paused, stared.

  “Oooh, isn’t it a pretty boy!” And before I could react, Seablite boxed my ears.

  “I wasn’t thinking of that!” I said, hotly. But I had been taken aback by how fine I looked in the black hose and black velvet tunic with the small silver falcon emblazoned on the left side of my chest.

  I turned my attention to studying the rest of the room: walls of smooth, polished wood, cunningly carved to represent folded curtains, and real drapes, of red plush velvet, at the windows and about the great canopied bed.

  The boys showed me my duties, briefly and with scant grace: which clothes lay where in the carved chests and bureaux, the timetable of Lord Bress’s hours, how to empty the commode down the curtained pissing well in the outside wall of the corridor. Just as they were turning to leave the bedchamber, I paused to look out the window.

  There was a view of the sea to the left, and the city of High Geeragh, going about its bustling business within the castle walls - but directly below, my eyes caught vivid splashes of colour. Flowers? Flowers! Until now I had seen them only in books, tiny posies in the hands of heroines, or trailing up balconies of great houses. Nothing like this: scarlet and blue and yellow and burning orange, purple and mauve and - every shade and colour I could imagine, all crowded there within what seemed to be a not-over-large walled garden directly below. I was very high above it, but it seemed a wondrous place, with small, neat lawns shaded by green and graceful trees.

  There were no flowers around the cottage I shared with Mam, nor about any of the cottages in Clonmara: any arable land was set aside for a vegetable garden, or grazing for a cow or pig. I thought of my mother’s song, that Speedwell had echoed on our journey the day before, The Lost Rose of Summer. Could it be found down there, within those walls?

  I wondered how to enter the place, but when the boys paused in the doorway to call, “Come on, stupid!” I decided not to mention what I had seen. The garden was not, I had already decided, the sort of place one would take boys such as Scabious or Seablite. Was that what my Mam had meant when she said the words, Boys of Their Type? Scabious and Seablite were the sort of boys who pulled the heads off flowers. They were the sort of boys who pulled the wings off flies.

  Poli met us in the kitchen and served our meal before sitting down to eat with us. Luncheon for page boys was a far cry from the meal I had shared with the knights that morning, but since I was still full from that repast I ate little of the bread and cheese and drank only one goblet of the weak ale that was provided for us.

  Seablite and Scabious were arguing about the game of Stickball that the pages had played against the Guild of Lawyers’ Clerks the previous day, but I was not to be left alone with my internal debate on whether to remain or to try, once more, to escape. Poli showed great and kind interest in my previous life, and questioned me sweetly and long, until she had the whole story of my short and uneventful life from me. She finished, “You’ll find your way here, Fen. This is the beginnings of a fine career for you. You must stay and make your mother proud.“

  That chilled me.

  But what if I did go home? It was dawning on me that my mother would not forgive me, would not have me back, if I failed her.

  I was still wrestling with these thoughts when Burdock entered the kitchen. He turned a chair about and sat on it backwards and grinned. “I have a horse for you,” he informed me.

  “Whose? Which one?” from Scabious.

  “If it’s better than mine I want to swap - I’m the eldest!” Seablite sputtered crumbs over the table in his need to assert his seniority.

  “No,” Burdock said, carefully. “This pony’s come from the Duke of Cildoogh. He didn’t find it…suitable.”

  “For what?” scowling from Poli. “Don’t you get this boy killed, now. The Lord Bress says he talks to fairies - you take care of the lad, Burdock, none of your foolishness!”

  “Mam! Would I ever?” He grinned at his brothers and at me. “Come down to the stables and see if you like her, young Fen.”

  I knew a little about horses, spending as much time as I did about the forge of Dougal the Blacksmith of Clonmara. This little mare that one of the stable hands led out into the sunlight was one of the prettiest creatures I had ever seen, about fourteen-three hands, and solid through the chest and neck, which bowed delicately over the bit. She was the colour of rosewood, with a star of white fur in the centre of her forehead, and her mane was fully two feet in length. Her tail was thick, black like her mane, and trailed along the ground behind her.

  “Thundering stars, she’s beautiful!” declared Scabious.

  And Seablite said instantly, “She’s mine, Burdock - you can’t go giving her to this raw boy who’s not been in the castle even one night!”

  “She belongs to the boy,” said Burdock, calmly. “She arrived three days ago, from the Duke’s estate - she was bred there, for his daughter, but she found fault with her, so -”

  “A lady’s palfrey!” Seablite, having found he could not have the horse, immediately set about consoling himself by ridiculing the animal. “Well, I wouldn’t be wanting her anyway! A palfrey! All the boy could handle, I’m thinking! Give me my old Thunder anytime.”

  “Yah,” Scabious sneered at me. “You probably couldn’t handle anything more than this little lady’s hack anyway! Good luck to you!”

  “Would you like to ride her first, Scabious?” Burdock offered his brother.

  I already had my hand out for the reins, but lowered it, feeling hurt by Burdock’s insensitivity. My heart was beating with pure joy - this was a horse that would cost a farm labourer five years’ wages - probably more - and she was mine. How I wished my mother could see! How I wish Duggan, son of Dougal, could see!

  But Burdock gave first try of the mare to his brother, and that was only reasonable, I tried to tell myself.

  Burdock held the reins as Scabious mounted, and then let go and stepped back, and well it was he did. Straight up, she went, and if it could be said she had toes, why, she stood on them, balanced on the tips of her rear hoofs and the front hoofs waving away up there above our heads - and
down she came, and round she danced, to the music of her own beating hoofs, and up came the sturdy round rump, with a stiffening of her front legs and a lowering of that graceful little head that could have passed for a bow. Scabious landed in the dirt a good twelve feet from her nose, and did not move.

  It was a good while before his brothers could speak from laughing, and by then Scabious was almost able to walk straight, over to the fence, where he draped his lanky form and groaned. He took no further part in the proceedings.

  Seablite was next. The mare bit his hand as he took the reins, and when he punched her mouth she danced on the one spot like I have seen some travelling dancers do, and had her hocks beneath her and had planted a goodly kick into his stomach with one hind leg., before he could move out of her way. He pulled her around, swearing volubly at Burdock when he offered to help, and mounted.

  She stood there, and did nothing.

  Seablite thumped her flanks with his heels. She looked at the sky. He kicked her again - and she skittered sideways, bucking high at the same time, and kept bucking, her fat glossy rump going bounce-bounce-bounce long after Seablite was spread-eagled in the dust.

  The two younger sons of Poli put their heads together and complained, rubbing various parts of their anatomy and waiting for me to take my turn.

  Burdock said, “She’s tired, poor thing. Fen, take her back to the stables and rub her down - and watch yourself - she gives new meaning to the phrase, ‘swift of foot’ - and she has a taste for human flesh, also, as Seablite will attest.”

  I took the reins from him. “I’m not to ride her?” I was afraid, but I was also disappointed. I was aware, too, that if I didn’t take my turn being flung in the dirt of the yard that the boys would resent me, and I would not be one of them.

  Burdock did not seem to understand these unwritten rules of youth, Perhaps he had forgotten them, or perhaps, being no longer young, he felt he could dismiss their importance. I knew better.

  But he was insistent. “You’re to be her master, Fen. I don’t want her remembering that she made a fool of you as she did of those two,” he said with a jerk of his head towards his brothers.

  They quite naturally objected. Seablite shouted over the top of Scabious, “Let me at her! I’ll fix her! I’ll break her spirit! I’ll have her meek as a lamb, I will, so help me!”

  His claims earned him a good-natured fist across his ear. “You’re already too big for her, you fool. And do you think that Lord Bress hasn’t noticed that both of you have hands like iron? You think he wants this little beauty to be dead of mouth, and her fire gone? Get away! How do you think we found the boy in the first place? We asked in his village, and the blacksmith told us - ‘A smart boy with book-learning and a gentle way with animals - a good seat on a big horse and fine hands.’ Now you!” He held their two heads together as if he’d have liked to crack them like nuts, but used restraint, “were made to point a horse in one direction - down the lists or into the face of the foe - and you’ll die that way, you fools!” And he hugged them to his chest, with a kind of rough affection, then pulled them both back by the scruff of their necks. “This horse is gentry, and you’ll keep your hands and your arses off her, do you understand?”

  Who would have thought Dougal the Blacksmith had such a high opinion of me? he who had sneered at the fact that my mother had taught me to read, and who made clumsy jokes about my lame leg. But he had not mentioned, within this glowing description of me, that my knee would not bend. And I realised the truth of the matter, that for the knights of the Dark Lord to take the son of Liardin would mean that they did not take one of the sons of Dougal the Blacksmith.

  Again, I was struck with a sense of betrayal, of deep hurt. It seemed that nothing in my small world, nothing in my hitherto safe life, was what it had seemed.

  In the dimness of the stable, dodging the little mare’s teeth and hoofs, I wept a little against the thick, black mane.

  The mare had no name. On the way back to the castle, Burdock suggested I call her Dancer. Scabious said I should call her She-devil. Seablite, who had trouble walking, gave no suggestion at all, but kept referring to the mare as That Rotten Beast, and, for him, she would always remain.

  I decided Burdock’s suggestion suited her best, though I never called the mare by name. I came to hate that little horse. Burdock was a good teacher, and with more amenable, more intelligent horseflesh, he might have succeeded in making me a promising horseman. But I was always aware, with the little bay, that she hated me - hated everyone - and so there could be no relaxing with her; no sense of trust was built up, such as the knights and squires and even the pages, knew with their mounts. I even thought to complain to Lord Bress, to thank him kindly (which I did), but tell him that I did not think the mare and I suited each other (which I did not). How could a man - I called myself that, to myself, in those days - hand back a lady’s palfrey and say he could not handle her? So the mare brooded, and I brooded, and bled, often, but we rode out together, watchful, resentful, and hating every moment of our association.

  And Lord Bress had other things on his mind.

  I was truly surprised, in the days that followed, how predictable his life was, how hard he worked, and how boring that work was. All my life I’d heard tales of him taking away children - sometimes whole families - in the middle of the night, of how he tortured people in his dungeons, how he taxed the country to pay for his War, and to buy jewels and gold for his treasury.

  But Poli seemed to be in charge of money at the castle, and there never seemed to be enough of it. She was always running after Lord Bress and asking for the keys to the coffers to pay some farmer or merchant - and once I went with her, and several guards, and found the coffers to be one room filled with gold coins and some very dusty crown jewels. They weren’t even very attractive and looked mightily uncomfortable. Poli was always filling out forms, asking for or giving receipts, and writing dictated letters, which Lord Bress then had to sign, as well as writing letters of his own. It would have made me irritable, but he seemed to accept all this as part of his life.

  Once in a while there would be a fair, or a tourney, and I, as his page, was to follow everywhere he went to see to his needs. These times were wonderful for me to witness, but the Dark Lord would often leave half-way through, to go back to his study - a large, rather dark room off the throne room - or to the room which housed the Great Mirror, and I would follow, faithfully, but often quietly mutinous.

  I would have thought - I’m sure most of Geeragh thought - that the Dark Lord spent most of his time drinking and feasting and indulging in all manner of debauchery (the elder sons of Dougal the Blacksmith had been to High Geeragh and had told all us younger ones all about debauchery). But Lord Bress seemed to enjoy his own company best of all - if it could be said that he enjoyed anything. And he didn’t, much.

  And contrary to popular belief - including my mother’s - he did not enjoy the idea of the War. He spent a lot of time worrying about it, talking about it with Crorliss and Burdock and Speedwell and Groundsel and Poli - he especially seemed to listen to Poli, and I could see why, for she was a very sensible woman. Sometimes they all quarrelled amongst themselves, and Lord Bress was extremely tolerant, and let them shout and thump the table, and listened to everything they said, though he always went his own way in the end. Everyone had an idea that would bring the War to an end, but somehow it never happened. When he was tired of the meetings with Poli and Crorliss and the three knights, he would go off by himself to the Mirror Room, and sometimes, but not often, he would go to the Garden - everyone called it his Private Garden, and no one ever went there with him, so I was never brave enough to ask if I may visit it. I would have liked to, to see if any lost roses grew there; it would be something of interest to tell my mother.

  And one day, during an interminable meeting, when I had run up and down to the kitchen to fetch teas and ale and buns several times, and was becoming tired and bored, sitting on my stool by the window, I heard s
omething of real interest. The Private Garden was mentioned in a dispatch.

  “He wants to what?”

  “He says, My Lord,” and Crorliss adjusted his spectacles over his nose to read from an expensive piece of vellum, “‘I am a healer of some experience, and would like to collect a few samples of such plants as the Gold-Leaf Celandine, Rose-on-a-Cloud, Scarlet Yarrow and the blue variety of Love-in-Idleness, which, I have it from my father the King, grows in your own private garden collection. If I may be granted political immunity for this trip, I feel it may go far in the breaching of the rift between our two countries. We undoubtedly have much to discuss together, though I must state that I have no authority nor desire to discuss the War, nor terms for a peace that is longed-for, I am sure, by both our peoples. I see my visit as one of rapport and trust, and in this I remain, Your Sincere Friend, His Royal Highness, Amin of Foyrr.’” Crorliss looked up expectantly.

  All the adults in the room stared at each other, then Lord Bress had crossed the room and snatched at the piece of vellum; a little of the red wax of the royal Seal of Foyrr - I knew enough to recognise seals by now - fell off and bounced onto the floor. No one noticed. Lord Bress seemed to be devouring the writing on the page.

  “Who is this Amin? Do we know any Amin? Has old Tiarn adopted an heir? Could he have remarried?”

  No one seemed able to answer him, but Crorliss, of course, tried. “We have no spies at the Royal Court of Foyrr, My Lord, and rumour is slow in seeping through, with the borders closed as they are. King Tiarn was married, once, five centuries ago - his queen died in childbirth you might -”

  “My ‘Sincere Friend’…” Lord Bress looked particularly unpleasant, but quite lively, as he reread the dispatch. “And he has much to discuss with me, does he? To ‘breach the rift’ between our two countries.” He looked up, and gave one of his rare smiles. “The little crawler want to make peace.”