The Given Sacrifice (35 page)

The hall of the manor was a little more finished, when they descended to dinner several
hours later in formal garb, an hour before the summer sunset. The building itself
was essentially an E-shape; the hall occupied most of the central arm with archways
on either side filled with French doors, now open to the cooling evening breeze. Normally
the whole household from baron to garden-boys and laundresses would dine in the hall;
that was old Association custom, with the ceremonial golden salt cellar marking the
transition from the gentry on the dais at the upper table to the commons below. Tonight
it was a more intimate affair, since most of the staff and garrison had been given
leave to join the celebrations in the village; at the upper table were the nobles,
and the gentlefolk among their retainers, and Edain as commander of the High King’s
Archers. He kept a pawky eye on the detail standing against the walls.

Delia resolutely steered the conversation away from Tiphaine’s wound, duels or anything
connected to them; evidently she was embarrassed at her lapse by the train station.
The closest she came to the subject was after the salmon bisque had been replaced
by a salad of summer greens and cherry tomatoes garnished with slices of melon wrapped
in paper-thin envelopes of cured ham.

“And Heuradys wants to be a knight,” she went on, rolling her eyes.

“I don’t see why she shouldn’t,” Tiphaine observed. “Lioncel and Diomede are both
well above average for their ages and they’re going to be very dangerous as adults.
And don’t give me that
but she’s a girl
. I’m a knight. Her Majesty is a knight. Yeah, it’s harder for us, but it can be done.
It involves beating the crap out of a lot of assh . . . contumacious persons, but
that’s a perk, not a drawback.”

“I think Órlaith will be a warrior,” Rudi observed thoughtfully. “She’s got the doggedness,
she’s naturally active, she’s worked hard at the basics this last little while as
much as we’ve let her, and from her hands and feet she’ll have the heft—she’ll be
taller for a woman than I am for a man, or I miss my guess, which means that she’ll
have more reach than most men, and as much weight or nearly.”

And to be sure there’s that vision I had at Lost Lake, at the Kingmaking, but let’s
not put a chill on the occasion. It bothers me, and others understandably more so.

Aloud he finished: “And her balance and reflexes and situational awareness are excellent
for her age. As good as mine were, folk who knew me then say. But if Lady Tiphaine
says Heuradys has the potential—”

“She does,” d’Ath said decisively.

“Then there’s no better judge.”

Delia frowned slightly. “Well, Órlaith’s a princess. Crown Princess, at that. And
Your Majesties spend a lot of time elsewhere in Montival, outside the Protectorate
where customs are, ah, different from those of Associates. It
will
be . . . hard for Heuradys if she takes that road. I mean . . . you know.”

Tiphaine grinned sharklike as she broke open a roll and buttered it. “Sweetie, I
do
know. Abundantly.” To Rudi and the rest: “Heuradys is eight, and it’s obvious she’s
going to take after her father—”

She inclined her head to Rigobert.

“—as far as her build goes.”

Delia nodded. “Her coloring’s more like my mother’s.”

“Or my father’s,” Rigobert said. “She has his eyes.”

“I think she’s serious, too, and she’ll have the talent,” Lady Tiphaine went on. “Whether
she wants it badly enough to take the crap involved is another question. Time will
tell, but I don’t think we should discourage her. Just make it plain how difficult
it’s going to be.”

Mathilda frowned. “Well, there’s no actual religious prohibition, I mean, look at
me. Or legal ones; there were some women knights even in my father’s time.”

Maugis put in: “Weren’t you knighted by the first Lord Protector, Lady Tiphaine?”

“No, by Sandra; but Norman was right there and he’d have done it if she hadn’t claimed
the right as my patron. Just as well; when he gave the
colée
, Norman always hit hard enough to draw blood.”

“That’s right,” Mathilda said. “I was there, I remember, I think. It’s just custom
that knights are largely men.”

“That and it’s hard to combine with small children,” Lady Helissent said.

“Oh,
tell
me!” Mathilda said, and they all chuckled. “Heuradys is eight . . . how’s this, Delia?
If she still wants it in two or three years, she can come to the Royal Household as
a page. That’ll give her the best possible tutors, she can train with Órlaith, and
we can keep an eye on her to make sure there’s no absolutely outrageous bullying.
I know what kids can be like at that age.”

“Thanks,” said Tiphaine. “And I can train her until then, and when she’s home after.”

“And I,” Rigobert said.

“No better examples,” Rudi said sincerely; Tiphaine had trained
him
, and if de Stafford wasn’t quite at her level he was still very good indeed.

Delia sighed. “We’ll see in a few years, then.”

The salads were removed, and followed by roast suckling pig with honey chipotle glaze,
florets of baked potato with flecks of caramelized onion, steamed colored beets with
a delicate cream sauce, and new asparagus. . . .

Let’s let everyone get comfortably full and into what the Dúnedain call the filling-up-the-corners
stage before we get on to the more dramatic part, for all love,
Rudi thought.

•   •   •

“Did you hear that, Herry?” Órlaith whispered. “You can be a knight!”

She whispered
very carefully
, because the gallery around the hall hadn’t been furnished yet, not even with rugs,
and it echoed. They lay on their stomachs side by side, only their eyes over the marble
lip, below the carved screens of some pale hard wood that made up the waist-high balustrade.
It was densely shadowed now, since the chandeliers hanging from the hammerbeam rafters
overhead weren’t lit, only the lamps on the table.

“I knew it,” Heuradys whispered back, or lied. “I’m going to work
twice
as hard now! I’ll be
your
liege-knight, Órry, and fight by your side and everything!”

Órlaith nodded solemnly. “Like Da’s companions were, on the Quest,” she said.

Heuradys put a hand on her shoulder for a moment, then said: “Shhh, I want to hear
the rest, too. We’re
scouting
. And it’s funny . . . Dad never
talks
about his parents.”

Órlaith put her finger to her lips; she wanted to hear everything.

“Your harvest looked good,” Órlaith’s father said; the hall was built so that sound
travelled well, for during feasts musicians would play up here.

“Thankfully,” Tiphaine said. “Developing this place has been swallowing money, fencing
alone costs the earth. About time we got some return.”

Delia nodded. “Sixty bushels of wheat to the acre on the demesne land this season
and nearly as well on the tenant strips in the Five Fields, and very well on the barley
and lentils. That’s better than we do on Barony Ath out west, though of course there
we have the vineyards and orchards and we’re closer to the market in Portland. Fruit
trees grow reasonably well here with some watering but there just
weren’t
any, they didn’t do anything but wheat here apparently in the old days, so we have
to start from scratch and you need to find the right varieties just to begin with.
I
think
we can have vines if we select the ground carefully for aspect and frost drainage.”

“We manage in Tucannon, and it’s only a little south of here,” Maugis said. “The Boiseans
didn’t damage the vines at St. Grimmond-on-the-Wold, thanks be to St. Urban, though
the winery was a wreck.”

“Vines will take a while,” Delia said. “Sheep are much faster and we’re getting twelve
pounds per fleece. The bunchgrass here is just fabulous for livestock in general and
flocks in particular. It’s a pleasure to watch them eat.”

“Merino?” Mathilda asked.

“Corriedales. The wool fetches nearly as much and the yield is better and they make
better mutton carcasses,” Delia said.

“The sheep actually make most of the returns so far—don’t judge the rest of this estate
by St. Athena manor, we started here,” Tiphaine added. “Most of the land is still
native grazing.”

“I resemble that remark,” Rigobert said. “We’re running six thousand head in our flocks
on Barony Pomeroy this year.”

The silent Sir Julio spoke for virtually the first time: “You haven’t worked as hard
at your grant as Lady Delia has on this.”

“I’m leaving something for Lioncel to do, now that he’s a belted knight and his father
can put him to work,” Rigobert said. “When he gets back from visiting Huon Liu at
Gervais. He’s there to attend his friend’s knighting vigil.”

“When he gets back from mooning over Huon’s sister Yseult, you mean,
Rigoberto mio
,” Julio said dryly.

“She’s a nice girl, well-dowered, and beautiful. Smart, too,” Rigobert said.

“She is. She is also too old for him, she has an acknowledged lover who carries her
favor in the tournies and whom she will almost certainly marry soon, and she does
not squash his tender young heart like a bug beneath her shapely foot solely for her
brother’s sake because Huon is Lioncel’s brother-in-arms.”

“Hopeless passion is good for a knight’s soul. They say,” Helissent de Grimmond said.

The adults all found that funny, for some reason.

“Lioncel and Huon both did very well in the war as squires,” Mathilda said, and Lady
Tiphaine nodded. “And afterwards in the San Luis expedition—that was more diplomacy
than fighting, of course. It’s a pity about Yseult in a way, but there you are.”

Maugis de Grimmond spoke: “I’m surprised at how much both of you have gotten done,
starting from nothing with land mostly abandoned since the Change or at least since
the Foundation Wars or the border skirmishes with Boise back in the old days. We’re
only now getting back to where we were before the Prophet’s War on Barony Tucannon,
and we brought nearly all the people through, which is the important thing.”

“We moved some younger peasant families in from our manors in the west,” Delia said
briskly. “One’s not in line to inherit holdings if we didn’t assart land from the
waste or common, which we’re not doing there for obvious reasons.”

“And there were broken men, refugees from the interior, looking for a place where
someone would lend them the price of the tools and seed. That’s drying up, now,” Rigobert
added. “Lioncel really
will
still be working on this when he’s my age, particularly since we can’t neglect Forest
Grove.”

“And Diomede will be working here,” Delia said. “At least when Yolande and Heuradys
come of age they’ll have manors on the estates. That will make it easier for them
whatever they decide to do. A girl who’s heir to three manors is in a different position
from one with an annuity.”

Órlaith’s father leaned back and cleared his throat as the desserts were brought out;
she wiggled a little and nudged Heuradys with her elbow, knowing that was something
he did before he surprised people.

There was an ice-cream cake carved into the shape of a ship, which she knew was deliciously
studded with hazelnuts and fruits; a smaller but identical one had been served at
the children’s dinner earlier. She had gotten an extra two servings to bribe Yolande
to watch John while they were supposed to be
playing quietly
in the nursery—Yolande was nice, but she didn’t like sneaking around as much as Órlaith
or her own older sister did.

“You’re both of you”—the King nodded towards Lady Tiphaine and Lord Rigobert—“doing
the Protectorate and the High Kingdom well here. Still, this County is mostly a wasteland.”

“Tell me,” Tiphaine said.

“There are still bandits, too,” Rigobert said. “I think some of them may even be deserters
from the Cutter army still at large, at least the core of them. There aren’t enough
people living here to keep eyes on all the likely pockets where the scum can hide.
And you can tell Fred Thurston from me that his patrols
don’t
do enough in the hill country east of here over the old border. There are jurisdictional
bunfights over hot pursuit
both
ways all the time, and there have been what, four Crown castellans at Campscapell
since the war? As soon as one learns his business and the country here he gets reassigned.
I’ve lost livestock, and we had a shepherd killed last year.”

Rudi nodded gravely. “It’s a puzzlement to find a Crown castellan who’s both able
and not needed more urgently elsewhere. Which is why, Rigobert, you’re going to spend
your old age working harder than you want. Here.”

He slid a parchment he took from the wide trailing sleeve of his houppelande across
the table. Rigobert glanced at it and choked on his sip of brandy.

“Congratulations, Sir Rigobert de Stafford, Baron of Forest Grove . . . Baron of Pomeroy . . .
and Count Campscapell. We’ll have the ceremonial investiture later in Portland—Matti
will be appointing you, strictly speaking.”

There was a lot of noise for a moment, and Lord Rigobert stopped gaping and coughing;
his friend Sir Julio pounded him on the back.

“And as for a Castellan and second-in-command, well, that will be your responsibility.
I’ve heard good things of a certain Julio Alvarez de Soto, though.”

Wow,
Órlaith thought.
Campscapell is a
big
castle.

There was a murmur of congratulations from below. Heuradys sighed very slightly, getting
a bit bored, but Órlaith loved to watch her parents being King and Queen, even if
she didn’t understand it all yet.

Delia stopped with a snifter halfway to her lips. “And Lioncel . . . Lioncel will
be a Count!”

“Only when I’m
dead
, Delia,” Rigobert grinned, and she blushed. “I might point out that you are now a
Countess. Don’t be alarmed, I think I can handle it without demanding Baroness d’Ath
give up her Châtelaine.”