Nobody's Son (9 page)

“Power is rarely simple,” Valerian replied. “At least, not here.”

As Mark digested this unpleasant thought a bell rang to announce dinner, and they were seated.

How do the lasses sit while wearing those hoop-skirts
? Mark wondered, mystified. But manage it they did, and flawlessly.

The King and Queen sat at the head table, along with their daughters, Duke Gerald, Count Laszlo, and the horse-faced woman Mark had seen earlier, whom Val identified as the Duchess of Fenwold. “Heavier than lead and tougher than mutton,” he whispered.

The rest of the company was arranged six to a table. Mark and Valerian were to dine with the Countess Malahat; Talyard Cirdon, the Bishop; a sharp-featured young woman named Janseni (”Brilliant musician!”); and Lord Peridot, dressed in a peach doublet with blueberry lace and hose. “He looks like dessert,” Mark muttered as they sat down.

Val stifled a smirk.

If nothing else about Mark’s reception had been what he had hoped, the dinner at least lived up to expectation. Seven magnificent courses, punctuated with excellent wines and ices; truly a feast worthy of a hero.

And the hero needed it. Still, after the turtle soup and the wildflower salad, the stuffed quail and the braised peacock in mustard sauce, Mark began to slow down, trying to savour the glorious food.

You might eat like this the rest of your life, you lucky bastard!

Never go hungry again. Never wake up wi’ belly snarling at darkness, knowing there isn’t a mite for breakfast. Never hammer your face into a smile and shake your head at someone’s charity while your legs feel like willow-wands from hunger. Never forage for sloes and fiddleheads to throw in the pot because you have neither bread nor grain
. At the thought, a looseness spread from his belly to his back, as if his stomach had been clenched around hunger all his life and only now relaxed its grip.

He spied on his tablemates. They had smooth skin and soft hands that had never known a plow or scythe or hammer. They did not know how special, how holy a wonder this dinner was that their servants set before them, platter after plate.

Lord Peridot controlled the conversation at their table, Mark soon saw, always ready with a well-placed question to start someone talking, or a well-placed thrust to finish them off. As the butlers served the fifth course, pheasant braised in garlic butter on a bed of watercress, Peridot was asking Janseni her opinion of Sir Avedut, composer to the Court and songmaster in the employ of Councillor Anujel.

“His work is… well-proportioned,” she said cautiously. “It always gives the ear what it expects, which satisfies an audience.”

“But can, perhaps, not move them?”

“Precisely my thought too, mi’lord,” Janseni said with some relief. The musician leaned forward with increasing passion. “Is it the place of art to merely give the people what they want? Or should we teach them to want more, expect more, hear more! Art, real art, something more than balance and proportion must possess. It must have fire, and passion. Art must have a vision, a challenge and a lesson to bring before its audience.”

“I like a challenge too: but not at dinner!” Lord Peridot remarked. The Countess Malahat smiled, half
for
him, half
at
her.

“Not a challenge then; I mis-spoke myself. Say rather, I would hope my music held a hand out to its listeners, and led them to a place where they had never been before.”

Valerian nodded. “Or seen once long ago; or dreamed; but thought they had forgotten.”

“Exactly,” Janseni said. “Just so.” She coloured, and abased her eyes beneath Peridot’s amused smile. “Of course I cannot promise that the piece your Lordship asked from me will reach these lofty goals; perhaps at least it will amuse.”

“Oh, it will at least amuse, dear girl. Have no fear of
that
.” And though Peridot’s smile seemed kindly, Janseni blanched. After that she spoke seldom, and reluctantly.

All dinner long, Mark noticed, Janseni was constantly watched by a young man two tables away, whose wan face and ardent gaze told everyone in the hall how desperately he loved her.

The Countess Malahat was what Mark’s friends called a Rain-in-April Woman: one who could stir even the deadest root.
Must use wire in the bosom of her gown to push ‘em up
, Mark thought.
You want to knock ‘em with your knuckles to see if they’re ripe
.

He chatted a little with her, and then a little more, kindled by the sparkle in her eyes. There was a moment, as their glances met and tangled over the remains of the cold snipe, when he found himself thinking wistfully that if only he had known about the amiable Countess, he might not have been in such a hurry to dicker for Astin’s strong-willed daughter.

The Bishop was going on at length about angling, a passion of his, and Mark tried to pay attention. Much better to think about fish, than to let his mind wander in the dangerous direction of the Countess Malahat’s bewitching green eyes. Mark caught the Bishop looking at him, old eyes cold and bright with lazy amusement. Mark blushed and looked at his hands, twisted together on the tabletop, his muscled fingers monstrous by the delicate dessert spoons.

“I lust for trout,” the Bishop remarked. “The cunning lures, the careful seduction of a teasing fly or wriggling spoon; the strike’s fierce consummation!”

Like soft fingers Mark felt the Countess’ eyes running over his back, his neck, his arms.

“—And the desperate, hungry battle between the angler and his prey… Ah,” the Bishop sighed, eyes glittering like frost. “Nothing like it.”

“Ha! The Queen is tristeful,” Val said suddenly.

All eyes darted to the head table. The Queen was frowning at a butler, but just as Mark looked up, Gail happened to be looking at
him
. Her brown eyes were fierce and alarmed.

Her look ran through him like a crossbow bolt; his nerveless fingers went numb upon the table.

Valerian blinked blandly at him. “Remember something?”

Sharply Mark drew in a breath, tried to smile, shook his head.

Steady on, steady on. You and Princess Gail were meant for one another, lad
. He remembered that afternoon, the feeling just before he asked for her, taking his life into his hands like a jug of ale he meant to drain at a gulp. He sat, stricken to the heart that he could have thought of turning from her.

She won’t be easy, I guess: but to shy from her would be base treason, breaking faith wi’ all that’s fierce and proud and free in both of you.

A silence dragged out for quite some time before he realized everyone was waiting for him to speak. “Beg pardon?” he gasped.

“I asked you your opinion on the Ghostwood’s game,” the Bishop asked, “and if there would be hunting there, now the spell is ended.”

“Uh, well. Squirrels, of course. Good hunting if you like squirrel pie.” The Bishop’s nose wrinkled.
You’re babbling, lad
. “Some nice trout in the Boundary though.”

“A fine little river,” the Bishop reflected. “Fine trout I had there, three years ago, and carp, too, if you can believe it. But as for game, now, I should like to try the Wood itself. Picture it! To hunt a glade no man has swept with hounds before!”

Countess Malahat shuddered provocatively; Mark watched the shiver travel from her closed eyes down past her ripe mouth, her soft throat, her silky shoulders, and some long time later, down into the folds of her plum-coloured gown. When he looked up he found her watching him, and smiling. “Would you not think it dangerous,” she suggested, “to seek your sport in a—forbidden place?”

The Bishop chuckled. “Not after what our friend has done. We sportsmen all owe him a debt, for making good another great preserve. The spell is broken, the Wood is safe.”

“Think you so?” Janseni said softly. “I think so long a song of mourning must an echo leave.”

Mark nodded. He did not believe that sunlight soon would gladden the Ghostwood’s eaves. Too much lay buried under dry needles there. Too many years lost. Too many lives.

He shuddered.
By God you let some loneliness out when you broke that spell, Shielder’s Mark, and it’s followed you home. No great deed without its consequences, good and bad
, he thought, looking at Valerian. For the first time doubt blew into his heart like a puff of wet spring wind, damp and cold and cloudy.
Could he have been wrong to break the spell? ‘A mad quest to wake the dark’
—
that’s what Stargad said
. Under the table Mark touched the cold black handle of the iron dagger. ‘
Stay the dagger must, or the heart will bleed
.’

The Bishop chuckled. “It is a woman’s place to shiver at a name, a past, or anything which local legend has invested with an awe and sense of dread.” He smiled at the Countess, reaching for his wine glass. “This curse was laid in grandfather days. The Time of Troubles, of ghosts and magic chained by Aron, Duke of Swans, has long since passed. From out of superstition’s dusk to daylight have we come since then. How runs the ancient adage? ‘Faith is a candle, where Reason is the sun.’”

“I have heard it,” the Countess said, smiling and widening her eyes. “But I never thought a Bishop said it, Father.”

The Bishop smiled again and swallowed his wine. “That I do not know.”

“Ask Valerian,” Lord Peridot suggested. “He knows everything.”

Valerian frowned warily. “Why tease me, cousin? Never have I made that claim, nor never will. My moiety of wisdom exceeds not by one drop the portion held by any at this table.”

Peridot grinned. “Of course! You surpass us all in all, including modesty… And you
do
know whom the Bishop quotes, I wager.”

“Well, yes,” Valerian admitted. “It was Aredwyth the Sage, a theologian of Duke Aron’s court.”

Lord Peridot raised his hands to the rest of the table. “You see? I told you he knows everything.”

“Not a fraction of a fraction of it,” Valerian protested. “Theology by chance is one of my amusements, and Aredwyth a writer not easily ignored.”

“He can’t be
that
important if the Bishop didn’t know him,” Mark pointed out.

There was a long moment of silence around the table as everyone but Mark looked away from Bishop Cirdon, who was studying something at the bottom of his wine glass with great care.

Oops.

Shite.

As Mark began to blush, Valerian dove into the silence. “The passage, though obscure, is interesting because nobody remembers the second half. In full, the famous lines of Aredwyth should read,

‘Faith is a candle where Reason is the sun;

No one needs a candle: until darkness falls.’

You see, the meaning of the adage changes considerably in the context of the whole.”

“Yes,” said the Bishop at last, turning to signal a steward for more wine. “I see that.”

As the remains of the seventh course were being cleared away and a last round of lemon ices served, the King stood to make a speech. It was about the dawning of a new age, and seemed to take one. The lemon ice was consumed, the bowls removed and replaced with salvers of rosewater. Heads were nodding by the time the King announced that before the wedding Mark was to be knighted and given charge of Borders, the Keep that stood across the river from the Ghostwood. He would be made a Duke, and the Wood itself would be his preserve, including the Red Keep, should he choose to restore it. Of course the King’s men would first sweep through the Wood and the Keep, to make sure all things lost there were restored to their rightful owners.

Mark leaned over to Valerian. “That means they’re going to loot it before they turn it over, right?”

Val nodded.

The King then congratulated Mark upon his title, his land, his heroism, and his choice, if he did say so himself, in brides-to-be. Everyone sipped from their glasses, and there was a scattered round of polite applause.

Lord Peridot clapped the loudest. Pushing back his chair he stood and bowed. “Your Majesty! Allow me to present a present to the Crown.” The King nodded; Janseni tensed. “In honour of your daughter and your new-found son-in-law-to-be, may I present the first recital of a song commissioned from Janseni, the wonderful young woman whose tunes propose to teach us all a lesson!” Turning, he signalled to a far archway.

The sound of flutes wound into the room, two of them, laughing and quarrelling. Finally, a kind of harmony emerged from their strife; the same notes that had struggled the moment before were now part of a beautiful melody, merry and haunting at once, like children seen playing from a distance.

It was strange music. At first Mark thought it odd for oddness’ sake, and ugly at that: typical of the Court. But when the melody popped out, he realized it was a tune he’d known all his life, sung by the children in his village. Only here it was richer and more complex.

He glanced over at Valerian, who smiled and shook his head in wonder.

Two flutists entered and stood on either side of the archway leading into the hall. Marching in behind them, dressed in sombre robes and grave expressions, came three midgets. They waddled, trying their best to keep in step. As the flutes began their melody for a second time, the dwarfs began to sing. Or rather, to croak.

Midgets Two and Three looked frankly scared to be parading before so glittering a company; their voices faltered.

Their leader kept grimly at his task, but he was hopelessly tone-deaf, and each note was agonizingly off.

A nervous titter started from the back of the Hall. The lead singer frowned, but his juniors, clearly trained as clowns, clutched for that laughter like drowning men. They began to caper, bellowing their parts and making droll faces.

The laughter grew, and their antics with it, until soon the flutes were lost, and all that was left of the song was the first midget’s part, yelled above the crowd.

The clowns clambered up onto a table, dancing together. The aristocrats of Austin’s Court laughed until tears streamed down their cheeks.
Twice as funny because the bastards were embarrassed first
, Mark thought, revolted.