The Truth-Teller's Tale (25 page)

I shook my head. “No. I understand what you're saying, but no. I can't explain it.”

He hitched his chair closer. “I think I've figured it out, though,” he said. “You're halves of the same whole. Night and day, sun and shadow, earth and sky. Most people cannot stand perfect truth, you know—and very few people can truly keep a secret, and even then, it's usually only one that matters to them personally. Most people are a mix of the two of you, in some degree or another. They tell a polite lie when the situation requires—they speak out if justice is called for. They cannot adhere so fanatically to one course or another. It's beyond them. That's why we have Safe-Keepers and Truth-Tellers—to make sure ordinary folk see the proper examples, even if they can't live up to the model.”

This was giving me a headache. I didn't care much for philosophy at this point. I was wondering why he'd kissed me last night and avoided me today. “Then, I suppose, like most people, you're as happy with the fiction as the truth.”

“Lord, I am so sick of lies,” he burst out, and his voice blazed with grievance. “At court, it is nothing but equivocations and half promises.
I will do this for you. I will do that for you. No, you misunderstood me. I never said that. I never meant that. I have too much honor to agree to such a scheme.
Bah!” He waved a hand as if to sweep all the intrigue away. “I told myself if I ever met an honest man, I'd go into business with him, and if I ever met an honest woman, I'd marry her.”

Now my eyes snapped to his, but I had absolutely nothing to say.

He leaned back in his chair and stretched his legs out under the table. “So what do you envision?” he said. “For the rest of your life? You'll live in Merendon forever? Travel? Raise horses, raise a garden, raise children? What do you want, when you look ahead?”

My voice was small. “I want not to be unhappy.”

He shook his head. “That's no wish. Everyone's unhappy at some point. Dreams go astray, people you love die, war comes, or famine comes, or drought or plague. But what do you hold on to through all that? What keeps you going?”

I shook my head. I had never thought to put it into words. I had just always thought happiness would make itself known to me when it arrived, introduce itself like a long-awaited guest. “I suppose you could answer the same question if someone asked it of you,” I said.

Now he tucked his legs back under him and leaned across the table, intense. “Can you keep a secret?” he demanded.

I just looked at him for a moment. “Not really, no.”

He laughed. He looked delighted. “Then you can repeat it if you like,” he said. “I don't think I'll be going back to Wodenderry after all. I'm falling in love with you.”

Heat coiled through me as if spiraling up through a spring. The same energy drove me to my feet and I stood there, my hands in fists at my sides, my face damaged with a blush. “I don't know about love,” I said very rapidly. “I don't trust it. It would be easier for me if you went away.”

He settled back in his chair and smiled up at me, seeming in no way perturbed. “You think it would be,” he said. “But you're wrong. You're not lying—you're just mistaken.”

“I don't want to love anybody,” I said in a subdued voice.

He tilted his head to one side. “Then tell me this,” he said. “Have you had any luck at keeping yourself from falling in love with me?”

I could not possibly give him a truthful answer to that. With shaking hands, I gathered up the dishes on the table and carried them to the counter to be washed in the morning. There was a laugh outside, and then a set of footsteps, and my mother and father came in through the back door.

“Oh! That was a lovely night!” my mother exclaimed, tossing her hair back and smoothing her skirt. “Eleda, Gregory, did you see the jugglers when you were out yesterday? I swear, they were throwing fifteen plates into the air at once. Never dropped one of them!”

“I liked the acrobats,” my father said. “Can't understand why they're not all dead, though.”

Almost exactly what Gregory had said. I forced a smile. “Yes, the acrobats were wonderful.”

“I liked the dancing best,” Gregory volunteered. “And the food.”

“Oh, well, food, you can get that anytime,” my mother said. “But those performers, now, they're worth waiting for a whole year.”

“I'm going to bed now,” I said, rather abruptly, edging toward the door.

“Is your sister back?” Mother asked.

“No. Not that I've seen,” I corrected myself. Adele could have come in through the front door if she wanted to avoid any questions I might have.

“Then we'll leave a candle downstairs,” Mother said through a yawn. “Gracious, but I'm tired, too. And tomorrow the longest day yet! Come on, Bob, up to bed with us.”

Gregory preceded us up the stairway, turning off on the landing to the second floor while we all continued up another story. Adele was not in her bed when I entered the room, and I was asleep within minutes of lying down. I did not hear her creep in during the night, but she was there in the morning, appearing to sleep peacefully on her side of the room. I supposed it was possible I would never know whether or not she had spent the evening with Micah. Then again, I had not exactly given her all the details of my outing with Gregory.

I sighed. It was Summermoon, and a sigh seemed like the most appropriate greeting for the day.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Adele and I arrived at Karro's mansion a little before noon on the day of the ball and expected to be there till almost dawn. We had brought two changes of clothes, in case we spilled things or encountered other mishaps, and our most comfortable shoes. The round, red-cheeked cook greeted us with devout thanks and instantly set us to doing chores. Five other women worked beside us in the kitchen, and even so I wasn't sure we could possibly finish everything that needed to be completed.

Making cakes, baking bread, basting turkeys, chopping vegetables, folding pastry, filling pies, frying meat, churning butter, melting cheese . . . and more tasks that I cannot even call to mind. There was no end to it. I was used to cooking for anywhere from four to twenty-five people, but I was not accustomed to making a meal for a hundred. No, preparing a
feast
for a hundred. It was a different enterprise altogether.

Roelynn came dancing down an hour or two before the first guests were due to arrive, when we were at a fever pitch of activity and could not spare five minutes to talk to her. But her face was so alive with mischief and her hands on our elbows were so insistent that we put down our knives and our platters and followed her to the far corner of the kitchen.

“What have you done?” I asked with some misgiving.

She giggled and leaned forward to whisper. “Alexander and Gregory are coming to the ball.”

I had edged forward to hear her, but now I jerked back. “No! As—as who? Itinerant dance instructors?”

She shrugged. “As friends of one of the noble couples who have been invited by my father. There will be so many people here, my father cannot possibly speak to all of them. And Alexander and Gregory are so well mannered that they will seem to fit right in. Even if my father happens to run into one of them, they'll talk about horses or commerce, and my father will never know that they weren't supposed to be here.”

“That seems like a dangerous charade,” Adele commented.

Roelynn lifted her chin. “I don't care. I want Alexander here. It's Summermoon, and I want to dance with him. Yes, and I wish both of you were at the ball as well, instead of laboring back here in the kitchen like hired help. Next year, I swear to you, you'll be in formal gowns on the arms of handsome men when my father holds his ball. All of our dreams will come true by next year.”

“I don't know that that's exactly my dream,” I said dryly.

Roelynn laughed and kissed me on the cheek. “It's my dream for you,” she said gaily. “I wished it for you, and so it must come true.”

“Tell Melinda that,” Adele said with a smile.

“Oh, I already have.”

The cook called our names impatiently. “We have to get back to work,” I said. “Come down and show us your gown when you're dressed.”

“Oh, there's a place you can watch the ballroom and not be seen,” Roelynn said, waving at the cook with an impatient hand. “I'll show you.”

So we stole another five minutes to follow Roelynn down a servants' hallway, up a half stair, and into a small pantry that overlooked the dance floor. Indeed, a few perfectly placed eyeholes permitted an excellent view of the room, where even now servants and hired decorators were hanging banners and arranging vases of flowers. “Micah and I used to come here all the time when we were children, before we were old enough to dance,” Roelynn whispered. “Back then, it seemed very exciting to watch grand parties!”

“Now it's more exciting to attend them,” Adele said.

Roelynn gave her a mischievous look. “Well, this year it will be more fun, when Alexander's here.”

“Adele! Eleda!” The cook's voice came again, slightly frantic.

“We have to go,” I said. “Your father's paying us high wages for our skills. Have a wonderful time.”

And we both hugged her before hurrying back to the kitchen. Where we worked without another moment's pause for the next four hours, preparing and serving the banquet. In truth, Adele and I did not carry the tureens and platters into the dining room; other, more experienced girls had the responsibility of serving the guests. But we filled the bowls and plates, and we put the final touches on the cakes and cobblers while the guests were eating the main portion of the meal. And then we began stacking and cleaning the dirty dishes as they were brought back into the kitchen—mountains of them, so many dishes I thought we might as well take them down to the harbor and wash them in the big tub of the sea. It would be dawn before all this china was scrubbed and dried.

We were still piling dishes around the counters when we heard the music start from three rooms over. Adele and I exchanged one quick, smiling glance. It was a waltz we recognized from Gregory's music box, though as performed by a full orchestra, it sounded almost nothing like the tinny little tune we were familiar with. Daintily, Adele extended her right foot and tapped out the first few measures of the dance. I sketched a curtsy as if to a noble partner. Then we both turned back to the dishes and smothered our sighs.

About an hour after the dinner had ended and the music had begun, the intense pace in the kitchen slowed down. All the used plates had been brought in from the great dining hall, and a light snack had been laid out on the sideboard in a smaller dining room adjacent to the dance floor. There was still a great deal to do but less concern about deadline, and the cook and her assistants all collectively relaxed. People took a moment to eat, sampling an untouched turkey breast or the hind end of a crusty loaf of bread. I was starving, so I ate scraps from almost every serving platter, and all of them were delicious. The cook seemed quite pleased when I complimented her on several recipes.

I was finishing a bite of pigeon pie when a change in the music signaled another waltz we knew. “Oh, let's go watch this,” Adele said in a low voice.

I glanced at the cook for permission. She hesitated, then smiled and nodded. Wiping my fingers on my apron, I followed Adele down the hall and up the stairs to the lookout room. We each found a convenient eyehole in the wall and bent over a little to gaze out.

What a magical sight the ballroom appeared to be right then! It was hung with great swaths of green and yellow silk, and ropes of bright flowers were twined over every doorway and window frame. There must have been a hundred candelabra spaced around the room, and overhead three wheeled chandeliers held another thirty or forty candles each. In this warm light, Karro's guests danced and talked and laughed and moved like a restless and colorful painting. A hundred people had been invited to the dinner and another hundred to the ball, but it seemed as if twice that number swirled around through the gorgeous room, a living pageant of beauty.

I observed the dancers eagerly, looking for the people I knew. There was Micah, holding what looked like a stilted conversation with a very beautiful young lady; her flaming red hair was exaggerated by the striking color of her emerald green gown. There was Karro, dressed in black, standing in a circle of formally clad men who all appeared to be discussing commerce. There was Gregory, dancing most elegantly with Melinda. He was laughing, of course—the man always laughed—but Melinda appeared to be delivering a very serious lecture. Interesting. As far as I knew, she had not met our dancing master or his apprentice since she had been in Merendon, and she had not seemed to recognize their names when I described them. One rarely lectured complete strangers, however.

I remembered something that I had stupidly forgotten during these last wonderful weeks: Gregory was here under a pseudonym. Perhaps she knew him very well under his proper name.

I was still considering what this might mean when Adele gasped and reached over to grip my arm. I instantly tore my gaze from Gregory and looked around for the source of her astonishment. It wasn't hard to find. The crowd of dancers had parted a little, just enough to show off the couple on the center of the floor. Roelynn and Alexander. She was dressed in a magnificent gown of deep rose, square-cut at the neckline, hung with falls of lace at the sleeves, the bodice, and the hem. Her hair was swept back and knotted on top of her head, braided with snippets of more lace and pinned here and there with diamonds. More diamonds glittered around her throat. She looked like a princess or perhaps an apparition—the very incarnation of a fairy-tale enchantress.