Nobody's Son (14 page)

Her childhood, awake with ghosts, cupped in his hands like a butterfly.

‘Til death do us part
, Mark thought. For the first time he felt the years before him, piled in drifts as deep as those behind.

‘Til death do us part.

Chapter Six
Lullaby

The next day they prepared to set off from Swangard. Gail stalked around her old rooms, badgering the servants to be careful with her brushes and bottles. Her knives and hunting gear she packed herself.

Mark’s duty was to stand by and look as if he were really in charge, even though everyone knew that it was neither the Duke nor the Duchess, but Lissa who ran the show.

Mark’s only slip came early on, when four servants moved to take out Gail’s huge panelled bed, and he started forward to help them heft it.

The lightest brush against his arm held him in place. “I never cease to wonder at the canniness of craftsmen,” Lissa remarked. As she spoke, a pair of cabinet-makers’ ‘prentices began to take the massive bed apart.

Mark, who’d slept on straw pallets and never seen a wooden bed, laughed out loud. “That’s bloody clever!” he marvelled. And ignoring Lissa’s wince he crouched down beside the ‘prentices to see how the cunning bed had been made, that it could so easily be moved. By the time the whole canopied-monster had come down, Mark’s carpenter curiosity was well-satisfied, and two patches of wear showed on the knees of his new silk breeches.

Someone snickered as he brushed them off. “I hope you find yourself improved by study,” Lissa remarked coolly.

Uh oh. Let me guess: the Duke is not supposed to muck about on the floor and rub shoulders wi’ the servants
. He risked a quick glance at his wife. The embarrassment Lissa managed to conceal was clear on Gail’s face.

Shite.

“I like, uh, a neat bit of woodwork,” Mark mumbled. A blush was crawling up from his lacy collar.
You’re a Duke now, not a handyjack. Now you’ve shamed us all again, even the servants. What are they to make of their master sweating onside of them
?

For the rest of the day he nodded gravely, said as little as possible, and kept well out of Lissa’s way. He was relieved when the endless parting ceremonies drew to a close and they left Swangard at last.

On their first night out of the capital they stabled their entourage in a pair of inns along the road. After dinner Gail summoned the steward in charge of the movables and informed him that on the morrow she, Mark, Lissa and Valerian would walk ahead. “I do not want a wagon closer than two hours behind,” she warned. “I mean to walk unheralded and unattended, without horses to fuss about or servants underfoot at every step.”

“But Princess! You won’t be safe on the road alone!”

Gail snorted. “Pshaw, Davin! You sound like an old woman. Will I not be travelling with the man who broke the Ghostwood’s spell, the greatest hero of our time?”

“Oh.” The steward nodded. “I had forgotten,” he said, bowing deeply to Mark. “Of course you will be well. Forgive my impertinence.” Gail sent him off with a flick of her fingers.

“Gail!” Lissa hissed. She didn’t sound convinced that the Hero of the Ghostwood could shield them all from harm.

She’s bloody right too
, Mark thought unhappily.
O Lord
.

But Gail could not be swayed. The next morning she got them up before dawn and marched them from the inn before their retinue was stirring.

A first pink seam ran along the eastern horizon; overhead stars still glittered in a night-blue sky. “I never knew how cold this hour could be in spring,” Valerian remarked through chattering teeth. His breath steamed from him. Fog gathered in the ditches on either side of the road.

Mark smirked. “Bracing, isn’t it?” It was nothing new to him to be up before the sun, but Valerian kept Court time.
I’ll bet every swan I own he’s been up for hours, primping an’ preening, knowing he would pass the day wi’the Divine Lissa
.

Indeed Val was a picture of elegance, with a charcoal-coloured cloak draped easily over a dove-grey doublet and breeches. His copper tube was sheathed at his side, and on his head he wore an excellent felt hat with an emerald-green plume that just matched the stone on his ring. His beard was neatly trimmed and his fingernails gleamed.
Pity he can’t keep from yawning
, Mark thought gleefully.
And every time he looks at owt too long his little glinty eyes go wide and bleary. Makes him look like a well-dressed owl after three beers too many
.

Wouldn’t be so bad, if it weren’t for the one bit o’ landscape he can’t keep from staring at.

“Your pardon, sir,” Lissa snapped. “Is there a stain upon my dress, or mud upon my cheek?”

“Er, n—!” Val squawked.

“If so I beg you, tell me like a gentleman so I may fix myself, and leave off this, this staring.”

“Oh!” Val squeaked. “O, O no! Your habit is perfection, your countenance divine! My eyes are but a trifle weary from too little sleep, and as a tired man would rather rest on heather than on rocks, so these orbs of mine without my thinking sought the gentlest bed on which to take their rest.”

Gail snickered. “Now now: let’s not have anything bedding on my Lissa.”

Lissa glared at Gail and Val in turn. “Indeed,” she said frostily.

Valerian gulped; fluffed; pushed his spectacles higher up his nose.

“Nice nip in’t’air,” Mark said quickly.

“O Lord it’s barely
light
,” Lissa groaned.

But despite the hour she was her perfect self in a rich blue swallow-tailed jacket and knee-length walking skirt, gold tights, and calf-high boots, also golden. Her long blond hair was triple braided; a gold hairpin held it gathered just above her neck. She wore a pair of fine silk gloves: gold, of course.

Gail had whipped Mark out of bed with barely time to tuck in his shirt-tails. He looked at Lissa in awe, wondering when she managed to achieve such stylishness.

The Duke and Duchess don’t measure up at all
, he decided. Gail was dressed all in royal black, thinking to be dramatic, but in the pre-dawn light the effect was rather drab, and spoiled by the dirty brown cloak and boots she insisted on wearing.

And as for you, Shielder’s Mark, you look like a slaughtered sheep
. Gail had laid out a white shirt and pants, with blood-red boots, cloak, belt, and scabbard. Any style he had was completely shot by the monstrous pink leather hat he had clapped upon his head.

Ah well; you’re a Duke now. You can do what you bloody like. Besides, you don’t want to look like the breed that whelped a cur like Peridot.

“Come on!” Gail cried impatiently, stumping ahead of them all. “Do you want our baggage to catch us on the road?”

“Captured by a feather bed,” Lissa muttered morosely. “God send me so cruel a fate!” But when the sun began to climb into a vast blue sky dappled with white clouds, even she had to admit it was a fine day for walking.

It was hard for Mark to believe that just one month ago he had left the Ghostwood and come trudging up this very road. Then he’d been a filthy, common man, breaking ice in the ditches to drink each dawn. Now he was a Power in the land: monied, landed, wived.

The barren land was under plough now; the slanting early sunlight glistened on black clods slick with dew. Every third field was unploughed, a tussocky meadow of long grass and frogcalls. “What are they doing out here?” Gail asked, pointing at a farmwife wandering the fallows with her two young daughters.

“Herbing,” Valerian said. “Shepherd’s purse, this time of year, and sweet violets, from which the herbwife brews a remedy for coughs. They also say it helps to clear a clogging in the chest.”

Mark gaped. “How the hell would you know village simples?”

Val blinked. “Um, well. It’s, er, a hobby of mine.”

Prompted by Lissa’s questions he went on to talk about other spring medicines: broom tops to strengthen sluggish hearts, Black Willow bark for fevers and pain, and elder flowers, which made the best brew when you had a cold.

Unfortunately Val was not so good at chatting as he was at lecturing. When the talk turned away from herbs, he remembered all at once it was Lissa he was speaking to, and his eloquence failed. Mark sighed.
What a pudding
.

Gail stumped beside Mark, her short legs eating up the road, straight bangs going swish, swish, swish.

Running from Swangard to the High Holt, the West Road was banded with hoary poplars. Their pale leaves were still damp from the bud, delicate as butterfly wings. Larksong rustled from between their boughs, or soared up out of the farmlands beyond. The road was one of the principal highways of the kingdom, and they passed many people as they walked. Carters who would have kicked Mark out of their way a month before bowed as he passed, and touched their forelocks.

A brace of young women went by, curtsied to Mark, then burst into giggles once they were past.
Damn hat
, he thought, regretting that he’d ever sworn to wear the pink monstrosity.

Instantly he was shamed to have thought badly of Gail’s gift.
And what care you what a canty lass thinks, eh? You’re a married man now
. The thought surprised him.
And your eyes aren’t to dawdle below a girl’s neck no more neither
.

Gail stumped on beside him, tireless.

They passed inns like mile signs: the Prodigal Son, the Jolly Carter, the Green Ghost, the Cob and Cup. As the sun sank slowly in the west, each one seemed more bewitching to Mark: his nose tingled to the scent of bacon frying, and his mouth was parched for a pot of cool brown ale.

In the early evening Lissa groaned as the Dancing Duck receded slowly behind them. “It’s turning cold and cloudy, Gail. You know what rain will do to my boots.”

“That’s
Adventure
,” Gail grinned. “The wind, the sky. Look at the sunset! And the way our shadows stretch out behind us, like giants.”

“I never knew a shadow was so heavy,” Val complained. “The bigger mine grows the wearier I am.” A great yawn came over him, and his spectacles slid down his nose. He pushed them up, blinking, and smiled. “With luck when darkness falls I’ll feel much lighter.”

Lissa laughed. “That’s a pretty paradox.”

Beneath his soft brown beard, Val smiled a small pink smile.

Sic ‘em
, Mark thought.
Atta boy
!

“There, Lissa,” Gail cried. “Let the wind of adventure fill your sails!”

“Wait a minute,” Mark complained. “I’m with her. I’m a Duke now. I don’t have to sleep outside any more.”

“What sort of hero are you?” Gail demanded.

A cool wind came up as darkness fell, muttering among the poplar leaves. Empty fields stretched around them, and a line of low cloud came in from the west, bringing nighttime and the smell of rain. They were a clopping of pony’s hooves then, a creak and sway of saddlebags in a tunnel of hissing poplar leaves. The road had emptied with the coming of nightfall; of other travellers they saw only a single lantern swaying in the distance. Then it too swung off to the left, headed for a lonely farmhouse.

Val fumbled with their lantern and got it lit at last. The bull’s-eye threw a swaying yellow shadow down the road before them. “The miles squat heavy on my feet and shoulders,” he grumbled. “I pray we reach a tavern soon!”

“If we don’t find one we can always sleep outside,” Gail said cheerfully. “That’s why I set aside bedrolls for us.”

“Ah,” said Lissa. “Bedrolls. Yes.” She sighed. “It happened that I saw them, Gail, and thought they were misplaced. I sent them back to Steward’s Davin last night. It had not occurred to me—and for this I take all blame—that you would wish for us to bed down in the ditches overnight. Really, it was thoughtless of me.”

Gail drew a deep breath. “No bedrolls?”

“None.”

A long silence followed. The wind seemed suddenly colder, and the night more dark. Warm yellow light spilled from the windows of a farmhouse far away across fields of mud; it might as well have been on the other side of the moon.

The wind turned damp. Mark felt a tiny cold kiss on his brow. Then another on his hand, his neck, his cheek; and the sky began to stream in earnest.

“It’s raining,” Val observed.

“The tent? The tent didn’t make it onto our pony either?”

“My apologies, Princess.”

“Ah.”

They walked on through the rain.

“It’s strange,” Gail said at last. “What the darkness does. It’s as if the whole world has dwindled down to just us four, and the pony of course. As if nothing else exists: only us, walking down this road…”

“Which has no start or ending,” Valerian said softly. “And we always have been walking, and the world’s a cage of leaves around the wind, and footsteps mark the only time, each washed away as swiftly as knife-cuts in a river.”

Gail shivered and smiled. “How different it is from balls and dinners and a palace full of lanterns! Only Lissa’s cloak rustling and the pony’s hooves, and our voices…”

A strange mood had come upon Mark, melancholy and yet distant, as if he stood in a high place and looked back along his life, a path stretched far behind him, and far below. How many times had he walked alone, in rain and darkness? Feinting and lunging and dodging in fields soaked with rain until he was a man of mud, too tired to move, his whole body shaking with cold and wet. Each day another patient hammer-blow, forging himself into Shielder’s Mark, Hero. Legend.

At the palace he had been a ‘prentice again; Gail and Lissa and Valerian had been his masters. But here, out with the wind and the rainy night, what seemed so strange to them was like a child’s secret hiding place to him; as achingly familiar. As full of memories. “The world seems small because you listen to nowt but yourselves,” he murmured. “Pull down your hood, Gail. Hear how big the darkness really is.”

Slowly she raised her hands and drew back the hood of her battered old cloak, so her pale face emerged from its shadow like the moon sliding from behind a cloud.