by Kate Forsyth
Fèlice smoothed back her glossy brown hair complacently. ‘Straight hair is all the rage now,’ she said. ‘The Banprionnsa Bronwen’s hair is straight, ye ken, and black as night. Edithe is cross as cats, for she’s quite out of fashion now with her blonde curls. Even if she irons it in the morning, it’s all frizzy again by lunchtime, while look at mine, still dead straight by evensong.’
‘How do ye iron hair?’ Rhiannon said, feeling both bemused and amused, which was the effect Fèlice usually had on her.
‘Same as ironing a skirt,’ Fèlice said. ‘Ye canna do your own, o’ course. I ironed Edithe’s and she ironed mine, this morning. I swear she almost scorched it! All the lassies in our dorm iron their hair. Unless, o’ course, ye’re a real curly mop like all the NicCuinn girls. They havena a hope o’ ironing out their curls. Happen that’s why the Banprionnsa Olwynne wears it back in such a tight plait, to hide her ringlets.’
‘I doubt she cares,’ Landon said dryly.
Fèlice opened her eyes wide, as if to say how could she not, but she said nothing more for Landon had turned to Rhiannon and was asking her awkwardly how she was. Rhiannon wished he had not. She had almost forgotten her prison cell, listening to Fèlice chatter away, but now her situation rushed back upon her and she felt her gloom and fear and frustration with greater force than ever.
‘Och, I’m grand,’ she said lightly.
‘How’s the food?’ Fèlice asked. ‘It canna be any worse than the slops they serve us up at school. I’ve had naught but porridge and stew since I’ve arrived.’
‘We must share the same cook,’ Rhiannon responded.
‘At least ye get a room to yourself. I’m sharing a room with six other girls and I swear they all snore. I havena had a wink o’ sleep.’
Rhiannon stared at her. She looked fresh enough. ‘I’m sure ye slept better than me,’ Rhiannon said coolly.
‘Better than I,’ Fèlice corrected her.
Rhiannon scowled.
‘That’s the right way to say it. “Better then I”, no’ “better than me”.’
‘Me, I, me, I, who cares?’
Fèlice said defensively, ‘Ye said ye wanted me to teach ye to speak properly.’
Rhiannon’s scowl deepened.
Landon said quickly, ‘Rafferty and Cameron would’ve come to visit ye too, Rhiannon, but ye’re really only meant to have one visitor at a time. They’ll come another day, they said.’
‘I’m surprised no’ to have seen Edithe,’ Rhiannon said sarcastically.
Fèlice giggled. ‘Edithe has her nose completely out o’ joint. She’s a country clodhopper compared to all the lairds and ladies all over the place here, no’ to mention the prionnsachan and banprionnsachan. And after the last few days o’ school, well, she’s realised she’s not the powerful sorceress she thought she was.’
‘But what happened to her nose?’ Rhiannon asked, puzzled. ‘Did someone punch her?’
Fèlice pealed with laughter. ‘Nay, ye gowk! I mean she’s disgruntled.’
‘She’s grunting?’ Rhiannon was more puzzled than ever.
‘Nay, nay! She’s peeved. Cross. Miserable. Because no-one pays her any attention.’
‘But what about her nose?’
‘It’s just an expression,’ Landon said. ‘It doesn’t mean her nose is really dislocated.’
Rhiannon frowned. It was a constant struggle for her to decipher the language of these apprentices. They had so many odd phrases and figures of speech. She wondered if she would ever come to know them all.
‘I wouldn’t be surprised if someone did end up punching her in the face,’ Fèlice continued. ‘The airs and graces that girl gives herself! Just because she’s a NicAven o’ Avebury. Just about everyone here has some famous witch in their background, and half o’ them are related to the Rìgh somehow. And the way she licks the boots o’ anyone she thinks is important –’
‘Does she really lick their boots or is that just another expression?’ Rhiannon demanded.
Fèlice giggled. ‘Och, ye are a clown. O’ course she doesna really lick their boots.’
‘Then why did ye say …?’ Rhiannon gave up.
‘I think it’s going to be an awful lot o’ fun, being here at the Theurgia. Did ye ken the students are given passes to go out into the city at night? I’ve never been allowed to go into town by myself afore, I’ve always had to go with my maid and groom. And we share classes with the boys! And eat with them! I’ve already had three very nice-looking lads stop and welcome me to the school, and one has asked me to go to one o’ the city inns later tonight, to hear this new singer they say is really something special.’
‘Ye aren’t going, are ye?’ Landon was scandalised.
Fèlice pouted. ‘I do no’ see why no’. I willna go by myself, o’ course. I thought I’d see if Maisie wants to go, or maybe one o’ the other girls in my dorm. They all seem awfully nice.’ She recollected herself, and turned to Rhiannon with all the warm impulsiveness that was so endearing, and yet so exasperating. ‘I wish ye were in our dorm too, Rhiannon, and could come with us. I’d feel totally safe if ye were there.’
‘Are ye no’ afraid I’d say something to embarrass ye?’ Rhiannon said, trying to speak lightly but not entirely succeeding.
‘O’ course no’,’ Fèlice answered. ‘I like the things ye say, I think they’re awfully funny. I’m no’ easily shocked, ye ken.’
Rhiannon said nothing.
Luckily Fèlice did not require too much encouragement to keep a conversational ball rolling.
‘Besides, I do no’ reckon anyone here would be too badly shocked by ye,’ she went on cheerfully. ‘They’re all frightfully sophisticated, ye ken. There are all sorts o’ faeries here, even a Celestine! She’s the daughter o’ the Stargazer, which makes her a kind o’ banprionnsa too, I suppose. And there are corrigans and tree-changers and cluricauns everywhere, and someone told me there’s a company o’ satyricorn soldiers among the Greycloaks, so really ye would no’ be so odd. And the witches are much less stuck-up than normal people. Even the Banprionnsa Olwynne is no’ allowed a maid or any ladies-in-waiting while she’s at the Theurgia, she has to look after herself like we all do. It’ll take some getting used to, I tell ye what! I keep looking around for someone to frown at me and tell me to sit up straight and mind my manners and what degree of curtsy to make, but there’s no-one!’
She laughed in glee. ‘And I tell you what else! During class everyone seems absolutely deadly serious. My heart quite sank. We had mathematics, alchemy, history and basic spell-work, all on our first day! Ye’d think they’d have given us a chance to settle in. And everyone with these long serious faces, scribbling down every word the teachers say. I was quite dismayed. But then, once school was over, well! We had some fun then. After dinner everyone played games, and there was an impromptu dance in the hall, and some o’ those lads and lassies can sing! We had a ball.’
Rhiannon thought about what she had been doing while Fèlice danced and flirted, and felt rage rise in her like nausea. She gritted her teeth and clenched her fists, and said nothing, though it hurt her badly to think Fèlice could have been so carefree while she was caged up in Sorrowgate Tower.
Fèlice did not notice her silence, though Landon regarded her with keen, anxious eyes, and a deepening look of trouble. After a while, he said, ‘Have ye heard any news, Rhiannon? About your trial, I mean.’
‘No’ much,’ she said just as abruptly. ‘I have to wait two moons or more afore they even have it. Two moons, locked up in here!’
‘Och, that’s terrible,’ Fèlice said, sobering hurriedly. ‘Two whole months! I thought it’d be a day or two, and then ye’d be coming to join us at the Theurgia.’
‘Unless I’m hung, drawn and quartered,’ Rhiannon said coldly.
‘What? I mean, ye’re joking, aren’t ye?’
Rhiannon shook her head, feeling an easing of her unhappiness at the obvious shock and horror on Fèlice’s pretty face.
&n
bsp; ‘That’s the penalty for treason, I’m told, and apparently killing a Yeoman is treasonous.’
‘But it was self-defence, or something, wasn’t it?’
‘No’ exactly,’ Rhiannon answered, then, mindful that Fèlice may well be called as a witness, said with a show of deep regret, ‘He was going to kill my mother. If I had no’ shot him, she’d be dead now.’
‘Och, well, that has to mean something, hasn’t it?’ Fèlice said, quite innocent of the fact that Rhiannon had always hated her mother.
‘But why do ye have to wait so long?’ Landon said. ‘Two months is a long time to be kept locked up without a trial.’
‘They do all the trials together, once every quarter,’ Rhiannon said. ‘The high courts only sit four times a year.’
‘Och, ye poor thing,’ Fèlice said. ‘Dinna Nina tell the Rìgh how ye saved Roden?’
‘It made no difference,’ Rhiannon said, and was suddenly overwhelmed by tears. She stopped, cleared her throat, and went on rather unsteadily, ‘I do no’ think he cared, really. He insists the courts have to hear all the evidence, and decide what is to be done with me.’
‘I’m sure they’ll find ye innocent and let ye go,’ Fèlice said uneasily.
‘Are ye?’ Rhiannon answered.
‘I’m writing a ballad about ye,’ Landon said suddenly. ‘I’m calling it “Rhiannon’s Ride”. I’ll print it up, and then everyone will ken about how brave ye were.’
Rhiannon did not know what to say. She had already seen just how little everyone thought of Landon’s poetry. The girls had laughed about him behind his back, and the other boys, Rafferty and Cameron, had done so to his face. Even Iven, who loved to sing and tell jokes and stories, had rolled his eyes at some of Landon’s efforts. The young poet was looking at her with such earnest and worshipping eyes, however, that she managed to say some kind of thanks.
‘Once they ken the whole story, everyone will say ye must be freed,’ Landon said solemnly. ‘I’m sure o’ it.’
‘Well, that would be grand,’ Rhiannon said, and found herself wishing they would go and leave her alone again. She felt sick and weary, and perilously frail.
Landon understood her sigh. He stood up, saying unhappily, ‘We’ve upset ye. I’m sorry. Fèlice, we should go.’
‘But why? I havena finished cheering Rhiannon up,’ Fèlice said indignantly. ‘I wanted to tell her all about Maisie and what the healers said about her face, and I ken she’ll want to hear all the gossip about the Banprionnsa Bronwen …’
‘Another day,’ Landon said, and rapped on the door.
The young guard opened it.
Fèlice gave Rhiannon a warm, sweetly scented hug and kiss, and told her to keep her chin up, an odd piece of advice that puzzled Rhiannon but was accepted without comment by everyone else. Fèlice then turned to the guard and asked him, very sweetly, what his name was.
‘Corey, miss … I mean, my lady,’ he answered bashfully.
‘Well, Corey, ye’ll take good care o’ my friend here, won’t ye, and no’ let her mope too much?’
Corey glanced at Rhiannon and looked away, scarlet mounting his cheeks.
‘Sure,’ he answered after a moment.
‘Thank ye so much. I’ll see ye again soon, Rhiannon, dinna ye fear!’ And Fèlice went smiling out of the room, leaving her bunch of flowers on the table to spread its faint sweetness into the air.
Landon nodded his head at the guard and went out, looking awkward and unhappy.
The guard hesitated at the door for a moment, then said curtly, ‘I have a message for ye. Lewen MacNiall came to see ye, but the captain wouldna let him in, seeing how ye had so many visitors already. He … Lewen … he said he would come again tomorrow, if he could.’
Rhiannon jerked her head in response, determined not to let him see how disappointed she was.
The guard glanced at her shyly. ‘He was very sorry,’ he said, then suddenly flushed, as if ashamed to have shown her any kindness. He clanged the door shut, and Rhiannon heard the bolts shot home.
She sat back on her bed, looking up at the window. Already the light was beginning to sink low. Rhiannon dreaded the coming of darkness. Even though she told herself they had only been dreams, the strange hallucinatory flights through the darkness she had taken each night, she could not forget the terrible icy glow of the ghost’s eyes, the feeling of freezing hands clutching at her.
She got to her feet and paced up and down the room, her arms wrapped over her chest. Then she sat at the table and drew Nina’s books towards her. She opened the biggest. It was sumptuously illustrated with paintings of beasts and faeries, all surrounded by margins of leaves and flowers and butterflies, and edged in gilt, with great swirling letters in crimson followed by neat flowing script in black. Rhiannon turned the pages, absorbed. Then she came to a page with a great black horse leaping into an azure sky, its violet-tipped wings unfurling behind it. Rhiannon’s breath caught. She stared down at it in longing, then was suddenly overwhelmed with scorching-hot tears. She put her head down on her arms and sobbed aloud, the sound harsh in the silence. She was still weeping when the last of the light faded away into darkness.
Lewen leant his head on his elbows and tried to concentrate on what his teacher was saying. Normally he enjoyed Cailean of the Shadowswathe’s class. Like Lewen, the young sorcerer had a strong affinity with animals and could speak fluently with most beasts. His most profound connection was with dogs, however, and he had as his familiar a great shadow-hound named Dobhailen. The dog stood waist-high to most men and moved as silently and sinuously as smoke, his eyes glowing softly green. Although Cailean was a thin, gentle-mannered man, with Dobhailen by his side he commanded the unswerving respect and attention of all his students.
But not Lewen. Not these past few weeks.
Lewen had found it very hard to adjust to being back at school, after his adventures in Ravenshaw. Nothing had changed at the Tower of Two Moons. Apprentices still spent the days studying with their various teachers, practising ahdayeh every morning and meditation every evening, filling in their rare spare time with games of chess or trictrac or dice, if their habits were sedentary, or football, archery and wrestling, if they were of a sporting nature. Lewen still spent most of his evenings at the palace, with the Rìgh’s other squires, running messages, serving His Majesty at the high table, or cooling his heels and playing cards as they waited for the MacCuinn in one antechamber or another.
Last year Lewen had enjoyed his life very much. He had looked forward to another four years of it, until the day he would graduate from school and join the ranks of the Blue Guards. Now everything had changed.
It was Rhiannon who had changed it all. Since the first time he had laid eyes on her, his world had been tipped topsy-turvy. He had not realised just how much until he was back here, in the familiar halls and corridors of the Theurgia. In the weeks since he had arrived back in Lucescere, Lewen had not been able to interest himself in his lessons, nor in any of the silly, childish games the other students wanted to play. Everyone knew that he had got himself entangled with a satyricorn girl, and many eyed him askance. He had always been very friendly with the palace guards, since all knew his father had been one of the Rìgh’s general staff during the Bright Wars. Now, however, they were cold and distant. No-one joked with him, or asked after his parents, or teased him about his dream to be a Blue Guard. They stared over his head as he passed them, answered his greetings with nothing more than a jerk of the head, and if forced to respond to a direct query, were curt in their answer.
Only his closest friends treated him the same, and he could tell it was an effort for them. Connor the Just, the Yeoman Rhiannon had killed, had been a favourite of everyone’s. He had served the Rìgh from a very young age, rising from his page to his squire to one of the officers of his general staff, a path Lewen had hoped to follow. He had been a handsome man, fair-haired and blue-eyed, and well liked by the ladies of the court. Known for his fairness and integrity
, Connor the Just had gained a reputation as an excellent arbitrator and had been sent many times by his Rìgh to settle arguments between lairds or merchants.
His untimely death had been a shock and, once details of the manner of his death had begun to circulate, an outrage. The satyricorn girl had shot Connor in the back, it was said, and then hacked off his finger and wrenched out all his teeth for trophies. She had stolen all his clothes and weapons and then tossed his naked, mutilated body into the river.
If Lewen had been able to deny these rumours angrily, his life would have been much easier. He knew they were true, however, and he was unable to explain to anyone’s satisfaction how Rhiannon could do such a thing, nor how he could overcome his horror and revulsion for her acts and abide by his declared love for her. They all knew he was in love with her, everyone at the Theurgia and the whole court. Some thought he must have been ensorcelled into love, like Jaspar, the previous Rìgh. Others thought it was mere bestial lust, and were variously repulsed, scandalised or amused.
Certainly lust for Rhiannon was a driving force in Lewen’s emotions. He found he could think of little else, day or night. He was tormented by his desire for her, and the difficulties in acquiring ease and fulfilment. Although he had managed to snatch the time to go and see her every day, he was not always allowed in, and when he was, he could never stay for very long. The guards were vigilant too, and did not give them much time unobserved. Only twice had Lewen and Rhiannon been able to couple, and the last time had been in desperation, fully clad, up against the stone wall. It had been over in moments, and had done nothing but fuel his hunger for her.
Sometimes Lewen feared he had been ensorcelled, so overwhelming were his feelings for her. Sometimes he wished he could be free of this mad passion, and go back to his pleasant life as a student and squire, the whole of his life mapped out neatly for him. Mostly, though, he longed for Rhiannon, fretted and feared for her safety, dreamt of a life entwined with hers, and spent long hours remembering every detail of every encounter with her and imagining doing it all again.