Nobody's Son (19 page)

“I know the feeling. Believe me, Mark: you alone have-less aptitude for politics than 1.1 only ask you to be slower in your judgements. I think, where Lissa is concerned, you find it hard to value what you cannot understand.”

“That’s funny,” Mark said. “I’ve thought the same thing about you not liking Richard.”

Valerian laughed. “You may be right. I hope so.”

For a time they trotted on in silence. The track they were on crested a ridge and began to slope down. On their left, lichen-covered rocks bulged from the steep hillside; a field of grass and blue-trimmed heather swept down upon their right. Far below, the road wound among a garth of apple trees, foaming with white blossoms. Beyond the orchard was the Pension; Mark could just see a stable-hand bringing a horse in from pasture. Overhead, clouds quarrelled with the sun, sending waves of shadow rushing across the vale.

Val brought out his telescope and looked around. The copper barrel lingered last upon the woman ahead of them, then slowly sank to his side. “She loved Gail, you know.”

“Lissa?”

“Not just like… sisters, you know. Loved her like… Was in love. With Gail.”

Far down the track they were: Richard and Gail ahead; Lissa, as always, a little behind. Her hair was bound in a heavy yellow plait that swayed as her horse moved. Mark remembered it, hanging loose and thick over Gail’s arm, their eyes turned away from him, sitting together on the bed, each long slow delicate brush stroke one of a thousand, a thousand thousand that had gone before, that were still to come. He remembered the looks that went between them, full with their two tangled lifetimes. He remembered his sure heart-knowing, that Lissa had touched things in Gail that he would never know.

So Lissa had loved her. Loved her. “I believe it,” Mark said. He glanced at his friend. “That doesn’t mean she won’t love a lad too, you know.”

“We were talking, in the garden at High Holt. I knew not what to say. I babbled on about the properties of licorice, and the seven kinds of elder. God, what magic is in women that simply sitting by them can turn a man into an ass?” He looked at Mark, all his wisdom fled, leaving his grey eyes baffled, blinking behind his spectacles. “You think she could love a man?”

“Mmm.” Mark wisely let the grey mare pick her own way calmly down the slope. “I think so. Men look to cleave apart, women to cleave together. That’s what Smith’s George used to say.”

Val blinked and sighed. “Who ever could imagine I might feel jealous of the Princess!”

Ahead of them, Gail laughed, a clear, ringing, merry laugh that carried faint and clean as far-off bells. Duke Richard had made a joke; Mark saw his dull red hat bend in mirth until it seemed to brush Gail’s own. “O, I can imagine it. Feeling jealous of the Princess doesn’t seem hard at all.”

Chapter Eight
Grandfather Days

Ostlers were rubbing down the other horses by the time Mark and Val trotted through the Pension’s high gate. Richard, Gail and Lissa were talking to a thin old man with hair and eyes the colour of steel. Richard presented them, saying, “This worthy is Valerian, Sir Owen’s son, and this is Duke Mark, the storied hero of whom you must have heard.”

“I hear no tales but what you send me,” the old man said sharply. “How pray you could the world’s news float up to my cell? Do you think the eagles whisper in my ear?” He turned, standing with his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his long grey tunic, and eyed Mark’s clumsy dismount. “I am Gregor’s Henry’s Violet’s Stargad’s Deron’s Marleth’s Parker’s Jervis—and of course my son’s ghost until I die.”

“My father,” said Richard curtly. “He maintains an eccentric reputation, which, as you can see, it amuses him to reinforce at every opportunity.”

For an instant their eyes met, father and son, steel on stone.

The old man’s gaze dropped, and the moment passed. With a shrug he turned inside. “Well then follow me,” he said. “You might as well be fed, and welcome.”

Dinner was quickly served and swiftly eaten. Duke Richard and his father, sitting at each end of the table, both proved to be pleasing hosts, as long as they spoke only to their guests. When addressing one another, their words ranged from the coldly civil to the warmly rude: Mark could only guess what they would have been like without company present.

He was glad when it was time for bed. He bade their servant good night, closed the door behind Gail, and sighed with relief. They were alone.

At the same moment they saw there was only one bed.

“Ah,” they said.

“Very well,” Gail added, a moment after. “I’ll take the far side and you can have the near.”

“Would you like me to, uh… Should I swear not to, to… ?”

Gail laughed. “Don’t be stupid. I’d slap you if you tried anything.” She flopped down on the edge of the bed and tugged at her shiny riding boots.

Mark gasped as he sat beside her.

“Feel like your butt’s been caught in a mill-wheel?” Gail said sympathetically. “The second day of riding is always the worst. You learn fast, though! Richard’s right about that.”

“Is it true Lissa doesn’t—ugh!—trust him?” Mark asked, pulling off his right boot.

“Lissa doesn’t trust anybody.”

“That’s just what I said! Valerian said that was her job, and I should shut up and follow her lead.”

Gail laughed and rolled over to the left side of the bed. She lay on her back and wiggled her black-stockinged toes.

God she’s beautiful.

“You have to understand, Mark: stewards believe in, well, stewarding people. It’s the way they see the world.”

“What about—ugh!—you? Do you think Richard can be trusted?”

“Who cares?”

Eh?

Mark looked at her in such puzzlement that she burst out laughing. “If he’s up to something devious, Lissa will deal with it. It pleases her to be suspicious of him, because it makes her more important. But every scheme involving me must come down to my actions, sooner or later: at which time I shall do just as I please. And nobody, not Richard or Lissa or his Majesty my father, can make me do otherwise.”

“That’s a pretty straight furrow,” Mark said, frowning. “Lissa and Valerian make it sound much more… subtle.”

Gail grinned. “One of the privileges of being a Princess is that you don’t have to be subtle. In fact, even if you aren’t a Princess you don’t have to be subtle, unless you care about power.” She turned on her side to face him so her body made an S, her head propped on her elbow, the line of her side sloping down to her waist, the swell of her hips. “Look: Richard meant to marry me in the hope I would be chosen Queen and the Crown would pass to (ugh!) our child. But what Richard doesn’t know, and Father does, is that I wouldn’t be Queen for all the reeds in Fenwold. Anyway, let’s imagine Richard is angry and disappointed. Who cares? What can he do about it? Nothing.”

“He could try to have our marriage annulled,” Mark suggested.

“Father and I would tell him I would never be Queen, and that would be that.”

“What if he were just a sore loser, and got the annulment and made your father give you to him?”

“I wouldn’t marry him. I’d rather beg in the streets. If I had to, I could make a scene on our wedding day that would destroy his reputation forever.” She smiled. “Isn’t it simple? No matter how many schemes he has, and counter-schemes, he hasn’t a hope, because
I don’t mind settling for less than I’ve already got
, while he has to try to get more than he has. At the very worst, my father could disinherit me: we’d be on our own, your life would be no worse than it ever was, and I would never have to wear a ball-gown again!” She closed her eyes and shivered. “Bliss!”

Mark turned to sit with his back to her, unrolling his stockings. “I hope you’re right,” he said doubtfully.

“Parker’s Jervis is a character, isn’t he? He used to terrify me when I was a child.”

“Should I blow out the candles?”

“Mm.”

Mark felt his way back to the bed in the dark. “You impressed me, in the High Holt. For a girl wh—”

“Woman!”

“Er, right. For a woman who says she can’t stand Court life, you sounded like, like—”

“Like a real Princess?” In the darkness Gail giggled. “My sister Teris does it the best. Willan and I just parody her, but hardly anybody gets the joke. You have to see her sometime when she’s really trying to be impressive. She oozes regal power, even now that she’s pregnant. We think she’ll be Queen. Father doesn’t like Duke Gerald, though; says he can’t be trusted. And he sweats too much.”

Mark felt the bed rock as she swung her legs over the left edge. There was a sound of rustling cloth, and she pulled a dark shadow up over her head. He sat on the right edge, looking the other way, and pulled off his tunic.

“Lissa tells me I have a tendency to prattle,” Gail said seriously. “If it bothers you, let me know, would you?”

“It doesn’t bother me.” The darkness loosed Mark’s heart a little, he felt a rush of longing take him. “Don’t stop talking. I… I like to hear your voice,” he said, greatly daring.

Gail laughed. “I think you may be alone in that preference.”

“Lucky I married you, then.”

“… I guess it is.”

The bed bucked and her small feet slapped on the tiles. A moment later she shook back the coverlet, and he did the same on his side. They stood there for a moment, facing one another in a darkness barely paled by moon and starshine. A tension curled in Mark, like fear and yet not like, as if he was listening for Gail, listening with his ears and eyes and skin for any touch of her in the darkness, for the warmth of her body, the sound of her heartbeat.

Between any pair of lovers there come moments when the rules change, or are broken, and both know it, and let it happen. So it was then. They looked at one another, naked under their nightshirts, pretending the darkness was so dark that this moment was chaste, though both could taste of something wild in it, and sweet.

Gail stood before the window, across the bed from Mark, a shadow next to deeper shadows. The line of her neck showed against the window, topped by a tiny glimmer that might have been an earring, or a star. It was the sense of her that made Mark’s heart drunk, her nearness in the darkness, how close she was, his wife. His feet were naked on the floor and he knew hers were too, and the coverlet hanging off the bed must brush her thighs as it brushed his.

She could see him as he saw her.

Don’t go.

Mark stood still, tension stringing his gut like a bow. They were close, then; close as two drops of rain on a pane of glass, breathlessly waiting for the instant when they must touch and fuse and run down the window like a streak of wet lightning.

Don’t

… go.

Gail took the coverlet and turned it down, her slender wrists curiously slow, as sure as they had been stroking Lissa’s hair.

Then, almost reluctantly, she climbed into bed, making the linen hiss and rustle where it touched her skin.

Damn.

The moment had passed.

Mark crawled in beside her. His muscles squeaked and gibbered as he tried to get comfortable. “I don’t think I’ll be going out tomorrow,” he gasped.

“If you think you’re sore now, wait until morning! We can beat the southern bounds tomorrow without you, and then you can come with us the day after to do the west and north. We’ll have to decide where exactly the Border becomes ours. Fishing rights and so on.”

“Great.” Fishing rights.

The moment had passed. They were no longer lovers.

Mark’s body fell asleep again, turned dull, no longer tense and waiting, but grumbling instead with bruises and sore muscles after two days of riding. His backside ached and his mind swam. Was Richard as kind as he seemed? If not, why not? Did it even matter, or could they ignore him as Gail seemed to think? And what should Mark do with his own castle and the Ghostwood, which made most of his duchy?

Why did his hand still hurt, six weeks after leaving the Red Keep? And what were ghosts doing on the battlement of the High Holt? If the ghosts weren’t real, why were people suddenly talking about them? Why did the Red Keep seem so much like High Holt? What meant the serpent-charm Queen Lerelil had given him?

Husk’s lean-to, rustling with squirrels, their quick dark eyes aglint with firelight. The past creeping in like black water through the boughs, making his fingers wet with memories; a day—so long ago!—when the moon fell like a cherry blossom onto a spire of red stone and the boy within him began to wake…

“Mark?”

“Wh-wh-what? What?”

“Are you awake?”

“O God. Ugh. I am now.”

“Sorry.”

“Mark?”

“What? What!”

“Have you had any… dreams?”

“O God, Gail.”

“… I was just wondering. Ever since we talked to Janey at that inn, the Ram, I’ve been having the strangest dreams.”

“What kind of dreams?”

“Oh, just… strange.”

“What kind of dreams?” Mark asked again.

But Gail had drifted into sleep and did not answer.

For a long time Mark lay unfairly awake, staring up at the ceiling, cherishing a secret feeling in his heart, and breathing her faint scent, that stole from the pillow next to him.

Mark woke the next morning feeling as if his body were made of scorched planks and haywire. His hips ached and his hams burned and his butt was sore. He moaned and winced his way through breakfast. No one was surprised when he decided not to beat the southern bounds with them.

In truth, he could have gone. He hurt like hell, but then he was used to it: a man who gets up before the sun to make a warrior of himself, and then spends all day in the fields or before the forge or in the cooper’s workshop is no stranger to sore muscles. Mark had been a long time ‘prenticed to pain; he was pretty much a master of it now.

And he wanted to see his borders, dammit.

… But not enough to take another day with the gentlefolk. He could grit his teeth and bear the riding, but not another day of gaffes, quiet laughter, gentle corrections, shame.