by Karen Miller
“He sent me a letter. At least Grefin did, at his father’s behest.”
“When?”
“Recently.”
“And how d’you know it comes from Aimery?”
“There was a signet ring sent with it, once worn by the last Harcian king’s son, Bannor. Or as we prefer to know him, Clemen’s first duke.”
He blinked. “A ring.”
“It’s genuine, Humbert,” Roric said, his voice edged. “I recognise the seal.”
“This letter. Have you replied to it?”
“I have. With caution.”
“Oh, you have. I see.” Now his shrivelled heart was pounding fit to burst through his ribs. “And you never thought to tell me?”
“I’m telling you now.”
“Roric!” He snatched up his goblet and threw it. “You–you–maggot-brained shite!”
Looking down at his red-splattered grey doublet, Roric grimaced. “And that’s a sad waste of good wine. No, Humbert, be quiet.” He lowered his hand. “I waited to tell you because I needed time to think. And I replied swiftly to Aimery because I’d not have Harcia’s duke stir this publicly before I’m ready.”
“You’re mad to think we can trust Aimery or his sons. Twice mad to hope they can row Clemen out of the weeds. This is a ruse, boy. They know we’re struggling and—”
“And it could be you’re right,” Roric said flatly. “Or it could be Aimery’s genuine. But even if he is genuine, Humbert, and even if I could persuade Aistan and the rest to hear him out fairly, and even if we could broker a peace… that will take months. So what choice do I have but to beg an audience with Cassinia’s regents?”
He felt so old, he could weep. “When would you go?”
“Soon.”
“And how—”
“Blane will help me.”
“And the council?”
“You’ll keep order until I return.”
“What of Lindara?”
“I’ll tell her. But not a soul else. Humbert—”
“I know, boy,” he said, and heaved a gut-wrenching sigh. “I know. You don’t have a choice.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
For all that Lindara’s chambers were in a thick-walled stone castle, still she’d made them elegant. Pale and delicate, like the inside of an empty egg. Pushing the door wide, Roric steeled himself to enter. He never failed to feel clumsy here, a brute man in a woman’s soft, scented world. Or perhaps it was Lindara who made him feel that. Six years of marriage and yet she so often seemed distant. Unreachable. A mystery he was destined never to comprehend. As children they’d been friends. But as husband and wife…
“It’s nearly midnight, Lindara,” he said, closing the door behind him. “The servants are abed, sleeping. Why aren’t you?”
Seated by the fire, her unbound hair flame-gilded, she set aside her embroidery frame. “I could ask you the same.”
“Humbert and I had much to discuss. We met with Blane, of the Merchants’ Guild.”
“And had a rowdy time, it seems,” she said, looking him up and down.
He touched fingers to the wine-stains on his doublet. “You mean this? An accident.”
Her chamber robe was luxuriously modest, the blue-dyed, pearl-sewn linen covering all her body, save her beautiful face and her swan neck and her pale, slender hands. He loved her hands. Loved the length and straightness of her fingers, the gentle shine of their narrow, neatly shaped nails.
He couldn’t remember the last time her nails had scratched his back in passion. When coupling was more than a desperate duty. An open wound beyond healing, or so it seemed.
“An accident, Roric?” In her glass-grey eyes, a cynical gleam. “Are you sure? Or did Humbert lose his temper and throw a goblet at you?”
He was so tired. So sad. Without asking, he sat on the edge of her bed. Their bed, when he joined her in it… but still. It always felt like hers. Because he’d not infect her with his mood, he dredged up a smile.
“Don’t tell me. You were hiding behind one of the tapestries.”
She picked up her embroidery frame again. Frowned over a loose stitch. “You shouldn’t let him bully you. He’s a great one for that, my father.”
“I don’t. He wasn’t. I did something that distressed him.”
“Then isn’t it fortunate he had no sword to hand?”
Roric let himself fall backwards onto the bed’s squirrel-skin coverlet. “You’re too sharp with him.”
“And you’re not sharp enough.”
“Oh, Lindara…” He rested his forearm over his closed eyes. “Must we quarrel?”
The sound of her steady breathing. The faint pop-hiss-pop of needle and silk thread passing in and out of her embroidery. Greedy crackling, as flames devoured dry wood.
“What did you do?” she asked, at last. “To distress him.”
She was his wife, and he trusted her, but not with every secret. He couldn’t tell her of Grefin’s letter. Or his reply. Not yet. “Lindara… I must go to Cassinia.”
“To see the regents? To make them relent in their slow strangling of Clemen?”
She was also her father’s daughter. She never needed him to explain.
“Humbert mislikes the notion greatly.”
“Humbert is wrong,” she said. “But of course he won’t see it.”
“Oh, he sees it. And he mislikes that even more.”
A soft chuckle. “I’ve no doubt.”
Ribboned through her amusement, the echo of a thin, sour bitterness. Knowing her so well, he thought he was the only one who ever heard it. Perhaps Humbert did. But if he did, he never said so. For himself, he often wondered if their marriage was to blame for Lindara’s wariness of her father. Wondered but didn’t ask out loud. What was the point of hearing the answer? Even if his wife chose to tell the truth, nothing would change. They were bound together, duke and duchess. And for his life he could see no safe way to break that bond.
“Who will you tell, that you’re going to Cassinia?”
He sat up. “No one else now, save Master Blane. I’ll use him to get me there, secret and safe.”
“You’re keeping it from the council?” Lindara wrinkled her nose. “That’s probably wise.”
“You think so?”
“Let me guess.” Setting aside her embroidery again, she joined him on the bed. “Humbert doesn’t.”
“He still disbelieves Berardine was betrayed by one of us.”
“Might’ve been betrayed,” she said. “You’ve no proof. And I agree with Humbert. No Clemen lord would willingly plunge us into the turmoil we’re suffering, thanks to the widow.”
Reluctantly, once they were married, because he feared she’d hear whispers regarding the reason for the regents’ sanctions, he’d told her about Berardine’s offer. Dismissed it as moondust and never mentioned the fire, or the stables, or Catrain’s heartstopping courage. He was sometimes foolish, even thoughtless, but never entirely dull of wit.
Catrain. Grief, stabbing like a dagger out of the shadows. Catrain is dead.
Lindara touched his shoulder, lightly. “Roric. You can’t let my father’s bearish moods distress you.”
“I don’t. It’s Blane who’s distressed me. I knew matters were difficult for us in Cassinia, but…” He rubbed at the needling pain in his temple. “Of late they’ve gone from difficult to dire. And if I fail with the regents, if I can’t convince them to forgive a crime we didn’t even commit, then—”
“You won’t fail,” she said, slipping from the bed. “You defeated Harald. You’ll defeat the regents.”
“I wish I could be so sure. Lindara—” Reaching out, he caught her by the wrist. Her pulse leapt beneath his fingers. “I’d stay tonight.”
Golden eyelashes lowered, she sighed. “Roric—”
“Can’t I stay?” he said, and pulled her to him. “I’m your husband, Lindara. Let me stay.”
He knew he was begging, and hated it. Hated knowing she’d never warmed to him
in her bed. In her body. She tried to hide it, but he knew. And so, because he wasn’t Harald, could never be Harald, he tried hard not to demand more of her than Clemen required. He’d not be begging now, only after Blane, and Humbert, he wanted to be touched. Needed badly to be touched. He was tired of grief and loneliness. He was tired of aching with fear. Why couldn’t he ache with passion, instead? What was so terrible about making love to his wife? And they might even make a son. But as his lips met hers, tasted hers, he felt her shrink. Felt her shudder… and not with pleasure.
He let go of her, anguished.
“Roric!” she said, as he fumbled blindly for the door. “Roric. Please. Wait.”
“For what, Lindara?” Pain hammered through his skull. “What would you have me do? Beg pardon, like a servant, for overstepping my bounds?”
“Of course not!” Pale as milk, her eyes tear-glimmered, she retreated to the bed. Tugged aside coverlet and blankets, revealing linen sheets and the long bolster pillow beneath. “I’d have you stay. I’ll feel better in the morning. I–I have a touch of quease now. But your company will be sweet.”
“Will it?”
“Yes! Come.” She patted the pillow. “Sleep. It’s so late, and you’re weary. Sunrise will see us both mended. We can sport then.”
He let her persuade him. Stood docile, like a child, as she fussed him out of his stained doublet, linen shirt and wool hose. Naked, he crawled into her bed and hardly felt her draw blankets and coverlet over his skin. He heard the damp sizzle, smelled the beeswax smoke, as she pinched out the chamber’s candles. In the fire-glowed darkness she slid beside him, rustling in a cotton shift. She wore her night clothes like armour, and he lacked the skill to strip her bare.
“When do you leave for Cassinia?” she whispered.
“As soon as I’ve arranged matters with Blane.”
“You and Humbert have a story to give out, for while you’re gone?”
“We will have.”
“Good,” she said, and kissed his uncovered shoulder.
Scant minutes earlier, the gesture would have excited him. Now, unstirred, he rolled onto his side.
She kissed him again, on the nape of his neck. “Sleep well, Roric. And don’t worry. All will be well.”
He wished he could believe that. He wished he couldn’t taste bile and bitterness at the back of his dry throat. But as he listened to her breathing slow, and deepen into slumber, and closed his eyes praying for the pain in his head to cease, he thought it more likely nothing would ever be well again.
“Quickly! Quickly! Down to the lake! Aistan’s dwarves are water jousting!”
Like a flock of screeching, multi-coloured Ardabenian parrots, Eaglerock’s exquisitely dressed courtiers abandoned their quoits and their skittle-bowling and the pouting challenge of the archery butts to flee across his lordship’s immaculately green lawn in search of rowdier entertainment.
Scowling after them, Humbert drained his tankard of foamy beer. Water jousting dwarves? What next? Zeidican monkeys on sheepback? Or perhaps a quartet of dancing mules. If this was a proper way for Aistan to celebrate his youngest daughter’s unexpected betrothal he’d row himself to Zeidica, find a monkey, and eat it.
Of course, the girl was about to marry Vidar. Perhaps dancing mules and drowning dwarves weren’t so far wide of the mark.
“More beer, my lord?”
Yes, indeed. More beer. How else to survive this nonsense until he could politely escape? “Don’t stint!” he ordered the helpful servant manning the impressive row of kegged beer barrels that marched along the edge of Aistan’s trampled lawn. “Not too much foam.”
Refortified, and beginning to wonder where Lindara had got to, he followed in the wake of the parroty courtiers and wound his way through Aistan’s bee-swarmed formal gardens, heading for the lake. Encouraged by the fine weather, marigolds and daisies and pansies and fetch-me-fancies bloomed colourfully riotous in their neatly tended beds. Elsewhere in Clemen the lack of rain had left fields and gardens alike parched. But Aistan had coin enough to spare for servants who were tasked to keep his gardens hand-watered. Scenting the warm air, the succulence of salt-packed beef roasting in the coalpits dug for the occasion on the gardens’ far side, near the clipped yew-hedge maze.
Breathing deep of a good feast’s promise, Humbert patted his blue velvet belly, and smiled.
Cloud-reflected and limpid, the estate’s small, ornamental lake sat like a mirror on the far side of the rambling country manor house Aistan called home–when he wasn’t resident in Eaglerock, attending council meetings and overseeing duchy matters. Usually there were black swans floating on the lake’s unruffled surface, looking down their red beaks like haughty Danetto courtesans.
But the water jousting dwarves had driven them away.
“Fuck,” Humbert muttered, heedless of the beer dribbling out of his tilted tankard. “Should ever a man live so long to see such trumpery goings-on?”
With the cultivated lawn sloping towards the lake’s muddy edge, he could see comfortably well over the heads of Aistan’s pointing, laughing guests. He thought Lindara must be among them, but instead of searching her out, as he’d meant, he stared with horrified fascination at the mumpery Aistan had decreed must entertain the day. Or perhaps his youngest daughter had decreed it, in which case Vidar, by marrying her, was about to be punished in a most satisfying way.
Since warhorses rarely swam, or came equipped with oars, the jousting dwarves–in two short teams of four–rode each in a long, narrow skiff barely more water-worthy than a hollowed out log. Sunlight dazzled on the jingling silver bells sewn to their silly, pointed felt caps, their puffed, striped sleeves, the striped hose covering their short, bandy legs and into their long, plaited beards. One team affronted the eye in saffron yellow and hunter green, the other sported garments of wincing puce and peacock blue. Three dwarves from each side frothed the lake with churning oars. The fourth dwarf stood in his skiff’s prow, a padded, beribboned wicker lance clutched hamfisted and defiant in hands no larger than a child’s. Urged on by the eager courtiers lining the lake’s shore, the skiffs wallowed towards each other with all the grace of drunken sows.
Shaking his head, Humbert noticed he’d spilled nearly half his beer onto the grass at his feet. With a ripe curse he tipped what he hadn’t wasted neatly down his throat.
“Huzzah! Huzzah!” Eaglerock’s courtiers cried. “Huzzah! An unseating!”
Startled, he looked again at the lake. Now there was an empty skiff rocking upon it, and four bedraggled dwarves in the water, waving green and yellow arms in the air. Floating forlorn beside them, four green and yellow felt caps stitched with silver bells too waterlogged now to make a joyous noise. The other team of dwarves, victorious, leant overboard in their dismay.
Humbert raised an eyebrow. So there was one question answered. It seemed dwarves couldn’t swim.
A rallying cry from Roric’s courtiers. Then five bold young men plunged out of the crowd and into the lake, splashing their way to the waving, spluttering dwarves. Cheers and laughter and hilarious advice accompanied the gallant rescue. Four of the courtiers thrashed back to shore towing a dwarf each behind him, safely anchored by his soggy, plaited beard. The fifth courtier pushed the other skiff in, loudly urged on by the dwarves who’d won the joust and in doing so appeared to have lost the wherewithal to row.
Jubilation as the rescued dwarves were carried unharmed to dry ground, as their triumphant, diminutive brothers joined them, as all eight little men were passed from hand to grasping hand and tossed overhead, to shouts of delight. And then the deep sounding of a gong from the ivy-covered manor house.
Time to feast the betrothed couple with salt-roasted beef and rich wine and every mouth-watering delicacy Aistan’s kitchens could devise.
Humbert at last found his elusive daughter as he took a seat at Aistan’s elaborately decorated high trestle, placed upon a makeshift dais in the manor house’s large rear courtyard. They’d travelled to
Aistan’s estate together, in the ducal coach, but no sooner had a servant handed her down its steps than Lindara had flitted off to mingle with the lords and ladies of the court.
“My lord,” she said, as he wrangled his way onto the low bench beside her. “Do you enjoy yourself?”
He grunted. “I suppose ’tis better than riding a hobbled horse through the Marches.”
“As excellent as that?” She laughed. “I’m sure Aistan would be glad to hear it.”
Aistan, flanked by his mousey daughter and lame Vidar, was playing his part as host, moving from trestle to trestle. Even though the groom-to-be was Godebert’s sour, crippled son, he seemed pleased enough the girl was about to wed. More pleased than she, if her sallow face were any guide. Those years spent in the company of pious women behind high exarchite walls had done her no favours. She looked thin inside her costly gown, as though the jewel-crusted violet velvet was a burden. The twined gold-and-silver circlet about her brow seemed too heavy for her to bear. And Vidar? He looked weary. Oddly sad behind his smile. Just as Roric looked, these days.
Reminded, Humbert frowned at his daughter. Lowered his voice and leaned close. “What are you doing, girl, that Roric is miserable in your marriage?”
Startled as though dagger-pricked, Lindara let slip the manchet she’d plucked from a passing servant’s tray. The soft white bread fell to her trencher, turning swiftly dark red with beef juices.
“My lord,” she said, teeth gritted, “this isn’t the time or place.”
Their long trestle was crowded with Aistan’s most important guests: his wife, his two older daughters and their lords, Roric’s other councillors and their wives. And of course that cockshite Ercole, still clinging leechlike to the small portion of power he’d inherited from Argante. Still not married, but rumoured to be wooing somewhere. Before them, crowding the courtyard, Aistan’s less favoured guests raised their voices in vigorous conversation and loud, bawdy amusement. There were no strangers here, no foreigners, no exarchites and therefore no restraint. After the tense and moody atmosphere at court, here was a chance to abandon dignity and push cares to one side. Added to their chorus, the polite murmurings of well-trained manor staff, the cheerful pipings of three boy squires, and the gaudy minstrelling of musicians hired to brighten the festivities.