Authors: Gael Baudino
Mad enough.
“Master,” said Pytor, “it was Lady Anna's. It escaped shortly before she died.”
Christopher stifled a bitter laugh. The monkey had escaped. He had not. “Well, have someone catch it. It's throwing fruit about.”
The eyes that were turned towards him—young and old, male and female—were wide.
“And have someone fetch me some breakfast when you're done,” he added. “I'm tired of gruel. Get me some black bread.” He turned for the door, stopped, turned back. “The kind with beans in it.”
Leaving the startled congregation behind, thwarting with a single gesture Pytor's desire to follow him, Christopher made his way back across the courtyard. His legs were shaking with fatigue and his vision was blurry, but he did not return to his room. Rather, he climbed, doggedly, step by step, up to the top of the great keep. The startled watchman made as if to kneel to him, but Christopher told him brusquely to stay on guard.
Turning away, the baron rested his elbows on the parapet and stared out, first at the horizon where distant Furze and Belroi were smears of soot and smoke, then at Malvern, gray and flecked with snow, and finally at the castle itself: towered and walled with the ponderous efficiency of the most belligerent, prideful, and arrogant family in all of Adria.
Generation upon generation of delAurvres. And then his grandfather . . .
He had the Free Towns in his pouch and let them go again!
. . . and then himself.
A flash of movement. The monkey scuttled across a roof, bounded along a gutter, and then went hand-over-hand up a drain pipe, losing itself amid the rank of buttresses along the south edge of the chapel.
Christopher watched. “Don't let them catch you,” he said softly. “Don't ever let them catch you.”
Christmas at Shrinerock was splendid. Of course it was. It had to be. It was always splendid. The fireplace roared with the trunks of whole trees, singers came from as far away as Castile to sing the elaborate
villancicos
that made everyone want to get up and dance to the quickly syncopated rhythm, the tables were covered with food and wine and subtleties. Laughter. Songs. Acrobats.
Outside, where the open tables were laid in invitation to any, haughty or lowly, who would come to share in the celebration, firelight flickered on the courtyard walls late into the night, and even the dusting of snow that fell seemed no more than a layer of frosting on a particularly delightful cake. Tenants who had flouted the estate laws and guards who had clapped those same tenants into leg shackles and marched them smartly before the bailiff got gloriously drunk together, sang together, commiserated together about the cruelties of life that caused one to break the law and another to enforce it . . . and their wives gossiped and exchanged recipes for spiced wine.
Paul delMari liked that. Though a fortress, Shrinerock was a house. His house. He liked his house to be happy.
But though it seemed at times that there were smiling faces enough in Shrinerock to populate a kingdom and set it alaughing with the infectious merriment of the season, there were some faces missing, faces that had been absent at these celebrations for a long time. True, those who bore them had never come openly, and their laughter and healing and harping had always been confined to the private chambers of the castle, but Christmas was not Christmas without them, and because of their absence, Paul, as usual, found a touch of sadness in the merriment. The shadows between the candlelight and the firelight seemed darker, and the sparkles of flame that scintillated in the snowflakes held the accents of tears.
Youthful faces, faces touched with a light that was more than mortal. Some he would never see again. Others he hoped to see perhaps once or twice more, but he was afraid that he would not. The world was a darker place than it used to be, and it was growing darker.
And then, after Christmas, came a new year that, inevitably, would bring more losses, greater darkening. Jehan had left years ago and had never returned; and now, in a few months, Martin would be leaving. Living with such loss, expecting yet another, Paul did not have the heart to take in any more lads for training and nurturing: soon it would be just himself, Isabelle, and Catherine.
He wondered: what happened to humans with such memories and friendships and losses? Did they fade, too?
Still, outwardly, Paul was all smiles and cheer, going about the duties of a baron with the genial smile and bland good nature that had given him the reputation of being a trifle daft. His smiles were a lie—everybody lied in one way or another—that allowed him to pass off some of his stranger actions and opinions as mere eccentricities. The Inquisition had no sense of humor, but being quite mad itself, it understood madness.
But it was hard to be daft when one felt so sad, harder still to remember to keep one's tears confined to the shelter of one's bed and the arms of one's sister and wife.
Today, he was forgetting his smiles. He had the shutters in the west tower open to the cold air, and he was staring out the window at the lands that fell away beneath the steep, rocky precipice upon which his castle had been built. From below came the liquid sound of the waters of Saint Adrian's spring, as much a part of Shrinerock as the wood and stone. Off in the distance,t hough, was Malvern Forest, bare and gray and patched with the white of two-week-old snow. Not that far away, really. Mirya and Terrill and Natil could come for a visit if they wanted. The world was not yet that dark, and the hidden passage that led from the spring to the castle well was still open and unguarded.
He wished that he could hear Natil's harp . . . just once more. . . .
“Lord Baron.”
Quick. Tears dried, Paul? Grin firmly in place? All right, then.
“Hmmm?” he said, pulling back from the window. “Oh, Nicholas! And how are you today, sir?”
The steward of Shrinerock was as outwardly solemn as Paul was bubbly. That too, Paul supposed, was a lie. So many lies!
“I am quite well,” said Nicholas with a deep bow that silently acknowledged his firmly held belief that mighty men like Baron Paul had no business being at all concerned about the health or circumstances of their subordinates. “You have a visitor, my lord. Lake of Furze Hamlet. He indicated to me that it would please you to see him.”
“Lake . . . hmmm.” Paul pretended to be thinking deeply, though he knew quite well who Lake was. “Lakelakelake . . . ah, yes. Lake. I did say that I would see him, didn't I? Ha-ha! Where is he?”
Lake was in the lobby, but Paul instructed Nicholas to bring him up to the library. Nicholas moved off solemnly, an important man doing important work. Paul, for all his forty years, bounded off in the direction of the library like a boy with a piece of sugar waiting for him. Lies, he reflected, had their advantages. Another noble might have steered his way through the castle like a Venetian galley and therefore would have missed the utter joy of vaulting over an astonished serving girl who was scrubbing the corridor floor and sending her pelting away with a sustained shriek.
In the library, he settled himself in the big chair by the fire and waited; and a short time later, Lake entered alone with his cap in his hands. He gave Paul a heavyset bow, his eyes downcast. Today the farmer, too, seemed to be wrapped in a lie.
“Well, my man, what can I do for you?” said Paul. “Not wanting to indenture yourself for more land, I hope. If you work off any more contracts as quickly as you did your first, I'm afraid I'll be calling
you
baron before too long!”
Lake looked uncomfortable. He was a hard worker. Almost inhumanly so. Always the first out in the fields, always the last to go home. Thirty-five years ago he had come to the estate with nothing but a bundle of clothes and a knife. Now he owned his own land, employed his own men to work it, and paid not fees but taxes to Shrinerock. If sweat and labor could ennoble a man—as Abbot Wenceslas and his monks always insisted that it did—Paul could indeed imagine Lake working himself up tot he baronage.
But Lake was reserved by nature, and a bit solitary, too. He was uncomfortable about people, especially important people, and Paul sensed that today he was uncomfortable for other reasons, too. “It's na an indenture, m'lord,” said Lake. “It's my daughter, Vanessa.”
“Vanessa. Ah! I remember her.” Paul had, in fact, never met her. “Lovely girl, simply lovely. Is she going to marry? You know as well as I, Lake, that you don't need my permission for that.”
“Nay,” said Lake. “It's na that.” He fidgeted. His gaze, downcast until now, involuntarily rose to meet Paul's, and for a moment, the baron wondered whether Lake's eyes were reflecting more light than they should have.
It was possible, he supposed. After all, his own mother, Janet Darci, had possessed a bit of elven blood. But Paul pretended not to notice. Though the current fashion had declared Elves to be a legend and belief in their existence to be heretical, it was dangerous, even for a daft baron to notice such things. “Certainly you can't be having any trouble with a suitable dowry, Lake.”
“Well . . . ah . . . that is . . . me and tha wife want sa'thing a little better for her. Vanessa is a . . . bright girl. I think that sa'day she could . . . ah . . .”
Yes, Lake had his lies, too.
“We thought,” said the farmer laboriously, “that maybe a position would be best for her. Perhaps in a trade. She could better herself.”
Paul nodded slowly. He understood. And Jehan had wanted to better himself, too. And Jehan was gone. “Ah,” he said brightly, “very commendable of you, Lake.”
“We thought you might be able t' help, m'lord.”
“Well . . .” Paul stared at the ceiling with eyes that he occasionally suspected showed a little too much light of their own. “I have the personal acquaintance of some artisans in Furze—they made the new hangings in the hall, Lake: have Nicholas show them to you on your way out—weavers and embroideresses . . . affiliated with the Béguines, you know.” Feeling Lake's increased discomfort, he winked. “They behave themselves, don't you worry a bit! My lord bishop doesn't worry about them. Actually, I suspect that he worries more about the Ypris benefices he lost to Benedict than about the Béguines, ha-ha!”
Lake was not reassured. “Please, m'lord,” he said. “Not Furze. We were thinking o' . . . ah . . . Saint Blaise.”
“Oh, the Free Towns.” Lies, lies, lies. Lake was plainly dissembling, but Paul could not help that. Lake did not pry into the delMari family and its visitors and customs, and Paul would not pry into the motives of his hard-working and talented tenant. “Very prosperous, the Free Towns.”
“Aye, and Saint Blaise is friendly.”
“Well, yes,” said Paul. “Quite friendly, especially since my father married the mayor's daughter.” Paul felt a genuine smile well up. What a couple that had been! Charles: courtly, amorous, studious; Janet: bright, practical, and intelligent, with a spark of immortal blood that made her every word and gesture a joy. Such a birthright he had received from them! With a pang, he wondered what kind of birthright he had given Jehan.
I want to play at tables,
the boy had said in his last letter home,
not do accounts on them.
Barons like Christopher delAurvre went off on crusades. Barons like Paul delMari, it appeared, stayed at home and gave parties. But Paul kept his smile. “Can't get much friendlier than that, can we?”
“Nay, m'lord.”
“Hmmm . . .” Paul examined Lake's request, found nothing amiss. Lake, father of two sons and three daughters, could well afford another dowry, even if Vanessa were exceptionally ugly, which, given the light in her father's eyes, Paul knew she was not. But Vanessa's inclinations might have been towards independence, and the Towns, though their legendary tolerance had been slipping for some years, still at least understood independence. A young girl with ambitions for more than marriage or a nunnery could do much, much worse than make her way to the Free Towns.
“I think it can be managed, Lake,” he said. “We can find her something in Saint Blaise. She's an intelligent girl, isn't she? Ha-ha, I knew it! She'll want something quiet, I'm sure. Can she read? Yes? Bonnerol doing his job, then? Good. How soon did you want to do this?”
“Please, m'lord: as soon as possible.”
Lake was anxious, eager. Lies. Everybody lied in one way or another. What was Lake's way?
Paul nodded slowly. “Yes, that would be for the best, wouldn't it? But . . .” He got up and went to the window. He knew what he could do for Vanessa. Simple, really. But that brought him straight back to Martin. And Martin made him think of Jehan. “But won't you miss her?”
Lake bent his head quickly.
The glass window gave a distorted and wavy view of the landscape below. Paul could see it, and yet much remained hidden, obscure. Just like that. Just like Paul delMari.
He had sent his son away, and now he was gone. He had to try to tell Lake about what might be the results of his request. “I miss my Jehan,” he said. “Just about ten years ago, he went off to Saint Blaise to be fostered with Mayor Matthew. The mayor's son, Martin, came here.” He shook his head sadly: even the daft could be melancholic upon occasion. “Jehan never liked people he deemed below his status. Manly little chap.” He laughed softly, but Jehan was gone. He had no son, only a much loved fosterling and a few memories. And Martin was leaving. “He left the household there after only a few years. Wandered off to make his own way. He'll turn up someday, I imagine, but Isabelle and I both miss him. He was our only child. . . .” He turned back from the window. “Are you
sure
you want to do this, Lake? Saint Blaise is a good distance away, and it's a big city. Quite a change from Furze Hamlet. Are you sure you don't want something closer and . . . smaller? Saint Brigid is only two days' ride form here. It's a nice little town—”
But he broke off at the sight of Lake's tense, frightened face. The farmer was shaking his head violently: short, abrupt swings as though he were palsied. “I'm sure, m'lord. I think it's for tha best. An' it ha' better be Saint Blaise, too.”