Thornspell (7 page)

From talk of fencing, their conversation turned to Flor’s life in the palace, which was similar to Sigismund’s routine in the West Castle but without so many lessons. Flor pursued the same training in the arts of war, heraldry, and the hunt, but he laughed when Sigismund mentioned Master Griff’s lessons in philosophy and law, mathematics, history, and languages. “You may have to learn that stuff,” he said, “since you’re going to be king, but I’m a lighthearted second son. My sole duty, besides serving my King, of course”—he nodded at Sigismund—“is to find and marry a great heiress. So the only other lessons I pursue are dancing, a little practice on the lute, and the fine art of dalliance.”

“But when you marry this heiress, what then?” asked Sigismund, laughing and protesting at the same time. “Won’t you have to manage the great estates she brings with her?”

Flor shrugged. “Isn’t that what stewards and factors and even chamberlains are for? Who knows, the heiress might even want to manage her own fortune, if I’m really lucky. But that’s all a long time away, fortunately, since no one at court gets married off before they turn eighteen. And for now, my main aim is to have fun.” He got to his feet, lithe and lazy as a cat. “It’s not so easy for you, of course.”

“What is not easy?” asked Balisan from the door. He had opened it so quietly that neither of the boys noticed, and now they both jumped. Flor, Sigismund noticed, studied the master-at-arms carefully, but remained quiet while Balisan watched them both, one eyebrow raised in question.

“Balisan,” he said, standing up, “this is Flor—Florian Langrafon. He was saying that it’s easier for him to have fun than me. He thinks I have too many lessons.”

“Does he?” Balisan’s tone and expression were neutral. “You appear to be short one today.”

Sigismund explained that the fencing master appointed by the chamberlain had not turned up, and Balisan raised his eyebrow again, but only very slightly. He seemed more interested in Flor, who bowed in response to his salute and answered a few questions about life at court. But he made no objection when the two boys arranged to meet again.

“Is this Balisan your bodyguard?” Flor asked Sigismund the next afternoon, as soon as they were comfortably established on the stone terrace. He proffered the bag of apples that he had brought to share. “He looks like the engravings of infidel warriors out of the eastern lands. And his sword is like the ones that they use too, shorter than ours and curved at the tip.”

“He’s from the Paladinates,” Sigismund said. “Although he’s not one of the hero-knights,” he added, as Flor turned to him with quick interest.

The other boy looked disappointed, but after a moment his face cleared. “All the same,” he said, “there’s something about him. I should not like to take him on, lessons from an Italian fencing master or not.”

No, thought Sigismund, but Flor had already moved on to what they should do with their afternoon, suggesting a game of tennis or hunting in the woods and open fields across the river from the city.

Sigismund quickly learned that his new friend pursued all forms of sport with enthusiasm and skill but was passionate about the hunt. “It gets you out of the palace, for a start,” Flor told him, “and the city too. I don’t know about you, but they both make me feel hemmed in—like being kept in a hutch.”

Sigismund agreed about the palace, but was less sure about the city. The chamberlain still disapproved of his leaving the palace at all, but Balisan thought it would be good for Sigismund to see and be seen, and the King, when appealed to by letter, agreed.
“The people must learn to know their prince,”
he wrote by return dispatch,
“and their prince them, as much as seems prudent.”

Prudence, Sigismund found, meant being accompanied by a detachment of palace guards at all times, and Flor and at least some of his new friends usually insisted on coming along as well. It made everything very formal, but at least Sigismund got to ride through the main streets and see the two great markets with their color and noise. He liked to observe the teeming life of the docks as well, where river barges discharged people and produce from throughout the kingdom. But Balisan shook his head when he asked to explore the narrow twisting wynds where the silversmiths and armorers had their premises, or the backstreets where the new printing presses operated.

“Stick to the open thoroughfares for now,” he said, “where your guards can see while still letting others see you. The printers and smiths can climb the rock to the palace and bring their wares to you.”

Flor still thought exploring the city was poor sport, but he enjoyed the way a small crowd gathered wherever Sigismund went and the blessings that many of the older people in particular would call down upon their heads. “Although all this is no more than your due, of course,” he told Sigismund one afternoon when a group of apprentices gathered as they rode past, cheering for the Young Dragon.

Sigismund raised an eyebrow. “Even,” he said, “if they don’t know anything about me yet, other than my name?”

Flor laughed. “You’re their prince, Sigismund. That’s all these commoners need to know.”

Sigismund looked at him, thinking that even the common people might expect something more of those who ruled them than just making a fine appearance. He kept this view to himself, however, content for the moment to get to know Flor and his companions, who quickly became his own. Flor was the natural leader of their group, not just because of his easy manner and physical aptitude, but also because he had already fought and won several duels.

No one had died, he assured Sigismund, laughing when asked about these passages of honor. “I know the King forbids dueling—but what can you do when someone throws down the glove of challenge? Honor demands that you pick it up.”

But all the young men were passionate about sport, including games of chance in the evening. They would sprawl before the open fires with cards or the dice box, a glass of wine at every elbow—and like Flor, they sympathized with Sigismund over the round of lessons that Balisan and Master Griff insisted be maintained.

Sigismund noticed, though, that their noisy commiserations always died away when Balisan came within earshot. There was something in the turn of his head and the expression in those tawny eyes that checked even those who regarded a master-at-arms as just another class of servant.

They were arrogant, Sigismund thought, observing their behavior, but there was no doubt that their companionship, particularly that of Flor, made his summer in the palace a great deal more pleasant than it would otherwise have been.

Sigismund’s West Castle followers finally arrived at the tail end of summer, but it was as Sigismund had suspected: they were all housed in the outer circle of the palace, in a maze of stables, kennels, and mews. The easygoing West Castle ways were frowned upon by the chamberlain and palace servants alike, and it was difficult for Sigismund to even see the people he had once spoken with every day. He still practiced archery with Wat and Wenceslas, but he could see that they were unhappy. The palace servants made it clear that they despised the newcomers, and they mocked their country accents and manners. It made Sigismund angry, but there was little he could do without major changes to palace etiquette, and as always Master Griff cautioned patience.

If only, thought Sigismund, my father would return—for if he does not come soon I will start making those changes myself, regardless of what anyone thinks.

But the business that detained the King continued into the autumn, and Sigismund began to wonder whether he would ever stand in the same room as his father again. They had not been together since the King brought him to the West Castle for safekeeping, and the only memory Sigismund had from that time was of a stern, formal man in armor, with a short beard and a deep voice. The beard had been golden, he thought, or brown gold, but he could not recall the color of his father’s eyes or any other detail of the face above the beard.

There was a portrait gallery in the old palace, which contained a picture of the King as a young man, and Sigismund found himself visiting it with increasing frequency as the months passed. He studied the portrait with the intensity of a scholar deciphering some ancient codex, and wondered what he and his father would find to say to each other after being apart for so long. It even occurred to him, one gray autumn afternoon, that they might not like each other at all.

That would make things difficult, Sigismund thought, frowning up at the portrait. He went to stare out the narrow window at the end of the gallery. The day had been particularly bitter, with everyone agreeing that winter was just around the corner, and the garden below looked dreary and neglected. It reminded Sigismund of the sunken garden in the West Castle, except that it was laid out in the neat borders of a herb parterre rather than a lilac walk.

The sky was gray as iron when he stepped outside, the wind snatching at the last leaves in fitful gusts and tossing them to the ground. The earth was dark and bare, and most of the herbs had died back to brown, withered clumps, although the rue bushes were still green against a sheltered wall. Sigismund bent and plucked a sprig, rubbing it between his fingers, and shivered as the wind gusted again, swirling brown leaves around his head.

He turned away, kicking through a deeper drift, and saw that there was a girl standing beneath the bare crown of an elder tree. A sparrow fluttered into the branches, followed by another, and then a third, until there was a small flock of them preening and fluttering their feathers above her head. Her chemise and skirt, brown as the sparrows, blended with the dreary colors in the garden, but Sigismund was still surprised that he hadn’t noticed her before.

She looked like a servant, he thought, a girl from the scullery or laundry, with the ragged hem of her skirt stopping a few inches clear of bare brown ankles. Her feet were thrust into the wooden shoes worn by the lower servants and her hands were scratched, her hair a snarl of brown curls. She had a leaf caught above one ear and was looking at him sidelong beneath a tangle of dark lashes—a shy look, he decided after a moment, rather than sly.

“Who are you?” he asked. “What are you doing here?”

The girl pointed to her mouth and shook her head, and after a moment he guessed that she must be mute.

“All the same,” Sigismund said, a little disconcerted, “I don’t think you should be here. You’ll get into trouble if anyone finds you.”

It did not occur to him that he had already found her; he was more concerned with how she had found her way into the garden in the first place. Until now, he had thought that the only access to this particular plot was through the corridors and formal rooms of the old palace, but he didn’t think that a kitchen girl would be permitted to come that way. He almost smiled, thinking of the chamberlain’s outrage, but the girl shook her head and pointed to the herbs.

“You were sent for the herbs,” Sigismund said, his expression clearing. “Although that still doesn’t explain how you actually got in,” he added under his breath.

The girl seemed to understand him, even though she could not speak herself. She drifted along the path in a cloud of brown leaves, the wooden shoes making no sound on the beaten earth, and stopped where the castle wall curved away from the garden. The brown hand pointed, and Sigismund saw that there was a narrow door set into the wall, just out of sight of the gallery window.

It would be concealed from every other window that looked down into the garden as well, and Sigismund wondered what Balisan would think about that. He was not sure he liked the idea himself, given the ease of access from the herb garden into the old palace. The door was ajar, and when Sigismund peered through he saw a narrow lane winding between high walls. Weeds were sprouting through broken cobbles and a variety of castle refuse had clearly been abandoned there over a period of years.

“Is this the way you came in?” he asked, but the girl had drifted away and was standing by the clumped rue, the sparrows pecking and darting at her feet. She was still watching him, though, with the same sidelong look, wisps of hair blowing across her face.

She reminded Sigismund of someone; he felt the memory would come if she only turned her head another way or shifted the position of her body. “I wonder what your name is?” he asked, taking a step toward her.

Her smile was small and crooked, but it lifted the gravity of her expression and let a flash of mischief in. She raised one finger, indicating herself, then pointed to the herb growing against the wall and then back at herself again.

“Rue?” he asked, and she smiled. It was not quite a yes, Sigismund thought, watching her expression closely, more of an indication that he could call her that. She would answer to it, but he would have laid a wager that Rue was not her true name. He knew what Flor would have said if he was there, which was that there were more important things to wager over than the names, true or otherwise, of serving girls. “Wench” or “you” would be good enough for Flor, if he called her anything at all.

The thought must have acted like a summoning charm, for Sigismund heard Flor’s voice calling out to him from the gallery. A moment later he appeared on the steps, his golden hair bright against the dullness of the day.

“Oi, Sigismund!” Flor said, and then paused, his eyes narrowing. “I thought I heard you talking to someone?”

Sigismund looked around, but the girl must have fled as soon as she heard Flor’s voice. “There was a kitchen girl here,” he said, “gathering herbs. But I think she took fright when she heard you.”

“Here?” Flor looked as though he had just smelled something unpleasant. “I’m surprised the lower servants are permitted to even come here—she should’ve known to take herself off as soon as you appeared.” He shook his head. “A kitchen wench, presuming to talk to her prince!”

“She was mute,” Sigismund said, a little shortly. “So it would be more correct to say that I was talking to her.” But it occurred to him that she had not seemed at all afraid; she had stayed until Flor called out. “Were you looking for me?” he asked, changing the subject.