Read A Company of Heroes Book Two: The Fabulist Online
Authors: Ron Miller
“That would be fine,” answers the baron.
“Very good!” The duke presses a button at the edge of a table and almost instantly a pair of servants, male and female, appear. At Mathias’s instructions, they lead the trio through a door at the end of the big room. Bronwyn is taken by the female servant in one direction, Thud and the baron in another.
She follows the maid down a long, irregularly angled corridor and up steps that evidently lead into one of the corner towers of the castle. Here she is presented a largish room lined entirely with spotless white tiles, relieved only by repetitions of the ducal seal in mosaic. Broad, diamond-paned windows flooded the room with light that reverberates from the immaculate walls. Bronwyn finds a shower-bath and lavatory, soaps, oils, powders and piles of thick towels. Left to herself, she gratefully strips away her dusty clothing, climbs into the shower and allows water as hot as she can bear to pummel her from all directions from a battery of strategically placed copper nozzles (once she finally puzzled out the operation of the more than half-dozen valves). Sufficiently reddened, she turns off the water and lathered herself luxuriously, from scalp to toes, rinses, lathers and rinses again. Stepping into the steam-filled room, she towels herself dry, rubs a finely-scented oil into her glowing skin and powders all over with a feather brush. She discovers that while she had been bathing, a dress, stockings and underthings had been left hanging on the inside of the door.
A simple summery frock with white stockings: it is obviously a young woman’s dress. Bronwyn wonders who it belonged to and rather hopes it is some sister or cousin of the duke’s. No one has yet mentioned the existence of a duchess. The costume’s very simplicity and youth serve Bronwyn well, as it only emphasizes and complements her maturing beauty. She allows her hair to go unbound and it frames her face and shoulders in thick, russet waves. Her skin had acquired a gilding from the sun and set within the golden face are beryl eyes, of exactly that shade that radiates from deep within the ice of an ancient glacier. The fine fabric and simple lines of the dress emphasize her great height, its waist the length of her legs and slimness of her torso, the decorative yoke the breadth of her shoulders.
Looking in the still-foggy mirror, she is not altogether displeased.
Opening the door, she discovers the maid patiently waiting for her, sitting in a wooden chair, absorbed in reading (to Bronwyn’s vast amusement) one of the baron’s dime novels. What would she do if she learned that the fabulous baron himself is a guest in the castle? The girl carefully folds her book into one of her apron pockets and quietly leads the princess back to the salon. She never once said a word.
Neither Thud nor the baron are there; only the duke, who leaps to his feet at her entrance.
“Ah! Princess! Well! You look lovely!”
“Well, thank you,” she murmurs, not knowing how to honestly respond to something she really did not believe.
“Did you find everything you needed? I don’t always get such charming company . . .”
“Everything is fine. I feel quite refreshed, thank you. You’re very kind.”
“Not at all: the pleasure is really mine. Please,” he says, gesturing toward a chair, “would you care to sit? Some wine or sherry? Piotran vineyards are unequalled, if you’ll allow me to speak for our chamber of commerce, of which I am director-general.”
“Thank you. Actually, I have much experience with your wines, and your description is not even remotely hyperbolic.”
“You’re too kind! Now, my impatience cannot be further restrained: I must ask: to what am I indebted for this charming visit?”
“I wanted to ask about that. You didn’t know we are coming?”
“No, not really.”
“What does ‘not really’ mean?”
“I didn’t even suspect you are in my duchy until an hour before you arrived.”
“You didn’t get the baron’s letters until then?”
“Letters? No, I’ve gotten no letters from the baron. No, it is . . . someone told me that I’d be expecting you sooner or later this week.”
“General Praxx?”
“Why, yes. You knew?”
“I saw him leave as we are coming in. May I ask you something that may sound impertinent?”
“You may ask me anything.”
“Did you tell the general we’d be here this afternoon? We’d left introductions with your guard captain this morning, so I imagine you knew we are in the city at the time the general is here.”
“True, but I didn’t feel I is under any obligation to supply him with that information.”
“What did he want?”
“The general? He seemed pretty certain that you’d be showing up here sometime. . .”
“How did he know that?”
“I’ve no idea. He wanted me to contact him immediately upon your arrival.”
“Have you?”
“Of course not. Who’d trust
him
?”
“You know him, then?”
“I know
of
him, which is quite sufficient. Let me tell you something that might answer your questions and put you at ease. Lesser Piotr is a semiautonomous state of Londeac. Our ties, however, are strictly political and traditional. Economically we are and always have been independent; we are, for all practical purposes, an island nation, attached to the mainland by only the slightest of isthmuses. Although we’re virtually independent and have a policy of isolationism and neutrality, Lesser Piotr is, perhaps just for those very reasons, very interested in and aware of what’s going on in Tamlaght. Although I’ve not met the man before, I’m perfectly aware of Praxx’s function and reputation. In fact, I suspect I know a great deal more concerning your own recent history than you may imagine.”
“How?”
“Many of my family are, or are,” he amended bitterly, “members of the old baronage of Tamlaght.”
“I see. I’m sorry.”
“Thank you, but you mustn’t be personally sorry. I’m very grateful for what you’ve tried to do. I’m sure I don’t know but a fraction of it, but I’m conscious that you’ve been through some terrible experiences.”
“Not that they’ve done any good.”
“They must’ve done something. Else why would they still be so anxious to locate you? Praxx is clearly concerned. There’s a perfect example for you: why is Praxx
himself
here, personally?”
“That’s a good point. But what possible danger could I be to them now? They have everything they want.”
“I’ve an idea about that, but, if you don’t mind, it’s something I’d rather discuss later.”
“If you wish.”
“Let me put this conversation back onto a more pleasant course. As soon as I got the message that you are in Diamandis, I looked forward to seeing you.”
“Yes?”
“Or, to be more accurate, I’ve been looking forward to seeing you again from the moment I met you in Toth, at the ball. Your letter is the harbinger of the happiest news I could’ve imagined.”
“I can’t imagine why.”
“Princess . . . look, may I be so presumptuous as to ask if I may call you Bronwyn?”
“Of course you may. I haven’t felt like a princess in some time.”
“Thank you, Bronwyn, very much . . . although I must say that you look every inch the princess as you sit there.”
“Well, thank you!”
“
I
should thank
you
,” Mathias replies, seriously.
At this more or less inopportune moment, Thud and the baron reenter the salon. The duke rises to greet them.
“Gentlemen! I hope that you’re suitably refreshed?”
“Yes, very much so,” replies the baron. “Thank you very much.”
“Thank you,” says Thud, whom the duke, knowing he would not fit within any of the castle’s bathrooms, had thoughtfully ordered to be taken to the garage where he had been hosed down with the equipment normally reserved for washing the coaches. Thud had enjoyed it immensely.
“Tea? Sherry?” offers the duke.
“Tea, please,” replies the baron.
“Me, too,” replies Thud, who is handed a translucent cup and saucer that he holds in the palm of his hand like a pearl in the midst of an oyster. The massive forefinger and thumb of his other hand hovers over the crockery uncertainly. The thought makes the short trip across his mind that he might better surreptitiously eat the cup and saucer in a single bite than risk the embarrassment of trying to drink the tea daintily.
“Baron,” says the princess, “the duke . . . Mathias . . . has told me that our arrival is completely unexpected.”
“Really?”
“But you wrote to him from almost every post office, telling him we are coming.”
“Well, perhaps there is just a mix-up.”
“It
is
strange,” says Mathias. “Mail delivery in the duchy is normally faultlessly reliable, especially if the mail concerns myself. And Bronwyn tells me you wrote almost every day? That
is
very odd.”
“Well,” replies the baron, to Bronwyn’s eye a little uncomfortably, “it’s of no matter now that we’re here.”
“I will look into it nevertheless.”
“If you feel you must, but not, please, on our account.”
“What are your plans now?”
“I think that depends,” says Bronwyn, “on the reason General Praxx is here.”
“You know of the recent events in Tamlaght?” asks the baron.
“We are just talking about them when you came in. I think I’m fairly up to date on the situation: you originally came to Londeac to beg help from King Felix, but King Ferenc is able to force the Church to put pressure on Felix to extradite you. So once again you are forced to flee. Now you’re here.”
“That’s it,” says Bronwyn.
“What can I do to help you?”
“I don’t know. I think all we’ve been looking forward to is sanctuary. We’ve not looked further ahead than that. I least I haven’t.”
“Well, at least you’re safe here.”
“To tell you the truth, this morning I’d decided not to pursue this nonsense any longer. With your permission I may stay in the duchy.”
“What is this?” says the startled baron.
“It’s true,” she replies. “What’s been the point of all of this, anyway? I haven’t been more than a minor nuisance to my brother or to Payne, yet look at everything we’ve been through. It’s been out of all proportion. Why go on with it?”
“I’m surprised,” says the baron. “Your singlemindedness has been one of your most outstanding features.”
“Well, I’ve decided to put common sense ahead of stubbornness.”
“It may be for the best, after all. What about Thud?”
“What about him?”
“What does he want to do?”
Bronwyn looks at the baron uncomprehendingly, as though he had just said something outrageous, nonsensical, or both. Taking advantage of the princess’s nonplussedness, the baron turns to Thud and asks, “Tell me, my friend, would you like to stay here in the duchy?”
“Here?” replies Thud, a little taken aback at suddenly being made part of the conversation, crunching something quickly and swallowing so he can make an unimpeded answer. “Is the princess going to stay here?”
“She’s thinking about it. What do you want to do?”
“I’d like for you to stay with me, Thud,” she says.
“Do they use sarcophaguses here?” he asks.
“Pardon?” says the baron.
“Do they use sarcophaguses here?” the big man repeats.
“I don’t know. Do you?” he asks the duke.
“Well, yes, I suppose we do, now and then. I had an uncle who is buried in one. Why?”
“I need a job. It’s all I know how to do.”
“What’s that?”
“Make sarcophaguses.”
“I see,” says Mathias. “I’m sure we could find something to employ your talents. Don’t worry about that.”
“All right.”
“Look, don’t get too excited, everyone,” urges Bronwyn. “I really haven’t positively decided one way or the other yet. But I really don’t see any purpose in going on. There’s nothing I can see the two or three of us effectively doing against the forces that Payne has available, that’s all.”
“You’re probably right,” agrees the baron.
“There’s certainly no hurry,” says Mathias. “You’re my guests here for as long as you like. Whatever you need, simply ask one of the servants.”
“What about Praxx?” asks Bronwyn. “He’s sure to learn that we’re here.”
“So? What can he do? Let me explain something. There’s little love lost between the people of my duchy and either Londeac or Tamlaght; culturally, economically, racially, geographically and historically we’ve always considered ourselves a separate nation in spirit if not in fact. Even our church is different, so the Church of Musrum has neither power nor influence here. The duchy has its own army, in a fashion, as I’ll explain later, and even a small navy.”
“What are you saying?” asks the baron warily.
“Not that I’d necessarily go to war with Londeac, but only that the gains would not be worth the effort. Defense is another matter. As far invasion by land is concerned, we’re separated from the mainland by the Dark Forest and a narrow, easily defended isthmus, and since neither Londeac nor Tamlaght maintains more than token naval forces in the North Mostaza we’re safe from attack from the north.”
“Still, Praxx is here and may decide to take no chances.”
“Don’t worry, Bronwyn. Diamandis, like the duchy, is a small community. Praxx’ll find no accomplices here. You are quite safe.”
“I hope you’re right.”
CHAPTER NINE
SURPRISES
Castle Strelsau, occupying the northwest quadrant of the rough circle that forms the city of Diamandis, is constructed atop a bare outcropping of granite in a loop of the narrow River Wonthaggi. The structure in truth is more château than castle for it was never intended for serious defense any more than the city wall was. Both are elaborately turreted and castellated, but these are merely romantic decorations. Their unstrategic placement, with an eye more to aesthetics than utility, and the liberal use of large windows and gates rendered the castle functionally useless, at least as any sort of defendable fortress. This is a decision necessitated partly by aesthetics, partly by an era of general peace and a great deal by the invention of superior gunpowders and breech-loading rifled cannons firing armor-piercing high-explosive projectiles.
Like the city, Castle Strelsau is cheerily brilliant with its white exterior and red-tiled roofs, though the former color is achieved in town via whitewash or plaster and on the castle via a marble veneer. The castle’s grounds, paths and carriageways are lined with gardens, lush and meticulously attended. The town, too, is beflowered everywhere, if not in the many public parks and gardens then by way of the window boxes that decorate every façade. The cumulative effect is extremely cheery, at least in relatively small doses.
Bronwyn came and went as she pleased, and enjoyed the freedom of the sunny, scrupulously clean town. Diamandis had a permanent population of no more than ten or fifteen thousand souls, mostly shopkeepers, merchants, craftsmen or businessmen and their families, and it seemed that after not too many weeks she knew them all. At least everywhere she goes she is greeted with a friendly “Good morning, Princess,” or “Good afternoon, Princess,” as the occasion demands.
Diamandis is a relatively new city, scarcely a century old, built upstream from the original seaport town now known as Diamandis Antica when the silting of the small harbor made it more or less dysfunctional. Diamandis’s main occupation now is as a market town, a distribution center for the many and varied agricultural products of the peninsula, particularly its justly famous wines. A short canal still connects the new city with the old and is used to transfer goods to and from Diamandis Antica for transshipping to the little harbor traffic that remained. Though, as we’ve seen, Diamandis is relatively new, its architects have employed considerable imagination and energy toward making the little city look far older than it really is. The result, to some degree unfortunate, is a kind of aggressive quaintness that all too often strays across that admittedly ill-defined border separating good taste from kitsch. Diamandis consequently resembles, in its studied perfection, more an illustration from a book of faerie tales than a real town. Pretty as Diamandis is, then, with its gleaming plaster buildings stitched together by endlessly overimaginative and often functionless half-timbering, it ultimately is a little too much, and Bronwyn grows a little homesick for the plain, homely architecture of Blavek in almost exactly the same way that one might crave a boiled potato after eating a half-pound of maple sugar.
Bronwyn sees little of her two companions. The baron spends most of his time in his chamber busily writing what he claims are his memoirs, though Bronwyn suspects they are actually plots for new dime novels. They are neither, as she eventually learns. Thud has found work restoring one of the castle’s walls and his assistance is as appreciated by his coworkers as if the duke had purchased them a new steam engine.
With her friends preoccupied, the princess finds herself sharing more and more of her time with the duke. She never questions the coincidences, that are becoming more and more unlikely, that so often bring the two of together.
Duke Mathias Strelsau is Bronwyn’s senior by fewer than ten years. He rules his duchy alone. His mother the duchess had died when he was still a young boy and his father, the old duke, had died, coincidentally, within a month of Bronwyn’s father. Mathias had been his father’s secretary for a dozen years and
de facto
ruler during the months before the old duke’s death. Although an adept and conscientious administrator, Mathias has little enough to do in keeping the industrious, prosperous, self-sufficient little duchy running smoothly. His lifelong and deep interest in military history and strategy has resulted in his commanding various armies abroad, the only activity about which his people are outspoken in their disapproval. It is, however, his only vice and his only outlet for a well-developed if largely stifled sense of adventure. Although widely traveled, and known throughout the continent as a cosmopolitan, suave, intelligent and handsome young man, the duke has managed to remain single, the single flaw his parental and romantic citizens hold against him. This is a feeling Bronwyn discovers she does not share.
Eventually, the time spent together becomes overt. The duke invites the princess to accompany him on tours into the countryside, where elaborate picnics are always found waiting, served by discreet and retiring attendants, or on horseback along the sinuous loops of the River Wonthaggi, or perhaps nothing more elaborate than drifting in a boat on a lily-strewn pond with Bronwyn, all in white, shaded by a translucent parasol, one hand languorously stroking the cool surface, watching the duke through celadon eyes as he works the oars with arms bared to the elbows and shirt unbuttoned at the neck; she could see the fasciae of muscles bunched in his forearms and the bright sparks of perspiration dewing the dark hairs of his chest, like the eyes of tiny predators in a scale model veldt, or as he reads to her while the boat drifts in a lazy orbit beneath the cool dome of a willow’s waving garlands. She watches his dark eyes, the irises almost black within the milky sclera, as they follow the printed lines, his thick brows bent with seriousness, his tongue as it occasionally wets his lips, darting out and back like some shy sea-creature peering from its den, the complex movements at his temple and neck as his jaw works and the slippery bobbing of his larynx as it keeps time with his speech.
Bronwyn discovers that she experiences much the same feelings toward Mathias that she had once felt when Gyven is present . . . except now she knows how to interpret her physical responses, whether or not she thanks Spikenard for the education. The sensations are not
entirely
the same: now there is a mellowness, a blurriness, a bluntness to what Gyven had made sharp and violent. She likes this new version, generally, though in some ways she did not. Once when she could not understand what was happening to her, when she felt that she was being subjected to forces whose origins were mysterious and over which she had no control, the mutinous autonomy of her own body frightened and even disgusted her. Now that she recognizes the fountainhead of her emotions, she wants to be able to enjoy them at their fullest, strongest and sharpest level, especially now that her knowledge gives her some measure of control. It is as though she has just gained mastery of some powerful engine, and now has no track on which to run it.
Still, she is daily growing fonder and fonder of Mathias, who in turn seems to everyone but the princess to be thoroughly smitten by her. There is little, she comes to believe, that he would not do for her . . . far more than she would ever be bold enough to ask, in any case. She thinks she will probably never be able to test that suspicion since he seems to anticipate her every need and desire even before she is aware of them herself. Never in her life has anyone, with the sole possible exception of Thud, treated her with such attentive gentleness.
Yet, for all of this, Bronwyn refuses to admit that anyone, let alone Mathias, would be capable of actually falling in love with her.
Some weeks after her arrival, the princess and the duke are lingering after a picnic, reluctant to allow the day to come to a close. They are on a shady bank of the Wonthaggi, where the grass slopes right down to the water’s edge beneath the cool umbrella of an ancient, twisted walnut tree. The day has been a hot and sultry entry into early summer. The river is shallow and transparent, bulging and rippling like a sheet of molten glass where it flows over submerged but perfectly visible rocks. Nearer the bank, long, graceful pennants of emerald grasses wave ponderously in the heavy fluid. Dragonflies dart through the air as though some wealthy enthusiast of lovers-to-be is tossing jewels at the young man and the younger girl who lay on an embroidered rug desultorily nibbling at bits of fruit and sipping the last of their wine. Mathias sits with his knees drawn up while Bronwyn half reclines on an elbow.
“It’s lovely here,” he says, knowing it is a trite thing to say.
“Yes,” she answers with a sigh, “I could stay here forever. You’ve no idea how far away Tamlaght and all of its problems seem to me right now.”
“You’ve really forgotten them?”
“No, I suppose not. It just doesn’t seem so important anymore. That sounds terrible?”
“No. You tried, and no one can do more than that.” He is amazed at his store of vapidity.
“It’s hard not to think that I’ve failed, or that I’ve not tried hard enough.”
“What more
could
you have done?”
“I don’t know. But it’s not just that. That may not even be the most important thing. It’s that I feel as though two contemptible people, the two people who I loathe more than any fifty others combined, have managed to beat me. I can’t stand the thought that right now they may be sitting somewhere gloating.”
“You can’t keep dwelling on things like that.”
“I know it.”
“You must still worry them, you know, if that’s any comfort, since Praxx went to all the difficulty of coming here to find you.”
“That’s true. What happened to him, anyway?”
“Praxx? I had him watched. He went directly back to Antica where he reboarded a Tamlaghtan ship that took him, I am told, to Glibner. I presume he returned to Blavek from there.”
“I hope so.”
“Did you mean what you says?”
“When? What?”
“That you’d like to stay here forever?”
“It’s so tempting . . . everything’s so peaceful and gentle and beautiful.”
“Then why not stay?”
“What do you mean?”
His hand bridges the short distance between them and, for the first time in all those weeks, touches her; his fingers cocoon themselves in her hair; he loosens them and the chestnut waves flow through, emulating the Wonthaggi as it frictionlessly passes around its obstacles.
“You’re very beautiful, you know.”
“No, I don’t know that.”
“Surely you’ve been told before?”
“Even if I had, why would I believe it?”
“Would I lie to you?” he asks, seriously.
“No, but your truth could be awfully biased.”
“I’ll admit that, but has it occurred to you that my bias must have some basis?”
“So?”
He rolls until he arches over the princess, with one arm holding him over her, his face just above hers.
“I do think I may be falling in love with you.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“I know what I’d like you to say.”
“I imagine I do too. I don’t know if I can, though.”
“You don’t have to say anything, not just yet.”
His face descends and his lips brush Bronwyn’s tentatively. A shiver descends her spine like an elevator whose cable had just slipped its moorings and she only says, “Mmm.” Pressing both his advantage and his lips, Mathias kisses the princess again and she not only allows it but encourages him. Her arms wrap around his neck and draws his face to meet her own.
A few minutes later a pink and breathless princess sits upright and attempts to reorder disheveled hair and mind, the fussing buying her a little time to think.
“There’s no hurry to do anything,” says the duke, rising to his feet. He offers his hands to the girl, saying, “Come. We’ll go back to the castle and meet the others for dinner.”
They only have to walk a few yards to where their carriage had been left . . . their picnic paraphernalia would be taken care of by the invisible servants of whom they never give a thought. Bronwyn says little on the ride back to the city. She slumps into the corner of her seat where she can simultaneously watch both the road ahead and Mathias. The duke wisely does not try to draw her into conversation nor does he prattle to simply make talk; in fact, he barely looks at her; instead, he drives the team with a grin and a vivacity that accounts for volumes in themselves.
My stars and little fishes! thinks the princess
. What am I getting into? I know that weeks ago, when I first arrived, I wanted nothing better than to stay here where it’s so lovely and peaceful and where I’d be out of harm’s way. But now that it’s been offered to me, I just don’t know. I wanted to stay, and perhaps I still do, but now I think there’s been a price attached. Do I want to pay it?
She looks at the duke, his square-jawed face looking like a brick of gold in the lowering sun.
He’s the second most handsome man I’ve ever met; Musrum! It’s not fair to compare him with Gyven, but to fall in love with Gyven, even if I
could
do that, would be like falling in love with a god or a statue or, or a volcano. If Mathias falls a little short of the superhuman ideal that Gyven sets, he more than makes up for it by doing what Gyven would not possibly be capable of: caring for me. It’s so clear that Mathias would do anything for me. I don’t even have to ask: he seems to anticipate everything I want. So what do I want? Musrum! I know what
he
wants and what he’s hoping for, and life here with him would be so perfect . . . why don’t I just react to him, give him the encouragement he’s after?
She could invent no answer to this last question.
It is a quiet and thoughtful Bronwyn who arrives back at the castle just as dusk is turning the white buildings into a purple cluster of grapes. She thanked Mathias for the pleasant afternoon, politely but not with unnecessary warmth, and goes directly to her rooms. It is getting late and supper is approaching, so she washes and changes into her dinner clothes. She prepares herself in a mental silence that ignores everything not immediately occupied with her toilet. Yet, when she looks into her mirror, she discovers that she has been crying and is furious with herself.