Nobody's Son (10 page)

Janseni was deathly pale. “Why?” she whispered, unable to meet Lord Peridot’s lazy eyes.

“Come, come, girl. Your music is a hit! See the merriment it brings before the Court.”

Countess Malahat laughed, bright as sun on ice. “I must admit that something in this music took my hand, and led me where I’d never been before.”

Two tables over, a young knight flung back his chair with a crash. The flutes faltered and the crowd fell silent as he strode over to their table. “Lord Peridot?”

Peridot glanced up at him. “Deron, is it not? Count Berkeley’s son. The passing of your father was a wound this kingdom will not easily survive.”

Deron’s handsome young face was white with rage. He was the fellow who’d been mooning at Janseni all night, Mark remembered. How horrible, to see the woman you loved so humiliated. “Sir, you are no gentleman. This music is a work of great passion, by a lady of unparalleled artistry. To demean, to sabotage it with these antics I would have thought too low a thing for even you to do.”

Peridot shrugged. “A matter of opinion, sir. You are free to yours.”

“He’s giving you an out,” Janseni said in a low voice. “Take it, Deron.”

Deron stood a moment longer, jaw working. “I do not think I can,” he said at last. And then he slapped Lord Peridot so hard it snapped his head around.

Peridot rubbed his cheek thoughtfully with his right hand, displaying his missing finger. His voice was light, but he gazed at Deron with serpent’s eyes. “Is it now in fashion, striking cripples? Or is it only old Count Berkeley’s son who is so brave? Well well, ‘tis clear I am no man of arms. A sword I will be forced to borrow. Your Majesty,” he called, turning to the throne. “I hate to bother you, but this young man has challenged me, cripple though I am. I must petition for Sir William’s loan.”

Deron swallowed, glancing up at William, the King’s champion, but said nothing.

“Sir William!” Gail cried. “Father! Letting Lord Peach-blossom mock my wedding is one thing, but giving him the satisfaction of murdering Deron in the bargain is too much!”

“Be quiet!” Astin roared. “This squire before us all did willfully challenge Lord Peridot while knowing him to be unfit for combat. It was a churlish act, and if Duke Richard’s trusted man begs of us the service of our champion, he shall have it!”

Janseni’s head sank into her hands. “There Deron, what did I tell you?” she said listlessly. “With one night’s work he’s killed us both.”

Chapter Four
Gail

The following evening Mark and Valerian were talking in Mark’s chambers. Valerian was hunched before the fire, peering at an embroidered cushion through a large disc of glass that made small things look bigger. He clucked in admiration. “To think of sewing all those stitches! Women’s work would drive me mad. What clever fingers, what knowing hands!” He frowned at his own hands: soft, pale, plump.

Mark paced the flagged floor. “Why would Peridot stick his knife in Janseni? Had she jilted him or summat?”

Valerian pocketed his seeing glass. “If you can’t cut down the tree, you may at least collect its fruit,” he observed.

“What?”

Valerian stroked his beard and ventured a smile. “Shielder’s Mark grasping Court intrigues is like a man clutching at a cloud. Well, you’ll learn… The ancient theologians wrote that bodies were mere husks for souls. Within the orbit of the Crown a like phenomenon may be observed, for people here are pails to carry power in, each face and heart but boots, cloak and breeches for the true political reality. I cannot see Lord Peridot’s heart, assuming that he has one, but it isn’t hard to make a guess or two. Janseni is a brilliant newcomer, a challenge to the status quo. Thus she threatens Avedut, music-master of the Court for many years.”

“Now I follow you,” Mark breathed. “Peridot was drawing swords for his friend Avedut!”

“I do not think the men acquainted,” Valerian said briefly. “In truth, I never prior to last night had heard Lord Peridot reflect upon a single note of song, nor take pleasure in the art. The point is that the patron of Sir Avedut is the honourable Councillor Anujel.” Valerian blinked meaningfully at Mark, as if this made the whole matter quite plain.

Mark’s shoulders slumped. “And so… ?”

“Anujel gave Richard his support for Gail’s hand, and the Consortship, of course. For Peridot to attack Janseni is for his master, Duke Richard, to support Avedut and thus Anujel, his ally at the shoulder of the King. This much is clear as glass.”

“But Anujel’s support doesn’t matter now that I’m going to marry Gail, does it?”

“Well, no, but it mattered when Peridot originally commissioned the song. Going ahead with the parody at a feast in honour of the engagement was a mistake, though: pure viciousness on Peridot’s part. Richard will be displeased with him for that, I think. After all, were you to suffer an… accident, then Gail’s hand would once more be free, and Richard wouldn’t want to have burned any bridges.”

Mark gulped as Val had begun to muse. “For Peridot it was a lucky chance that Deron loved the lady. He is Duchess Fenwold’s nephew; eccentric as the horse-faced Duchess is, the taint of his hot-headedness will surely mark her. Fenwold is hers, not her husband’s; she is too great for even Richard’s arm to shove aside, but she can be pushed out of the lists and into the stands, if he is shrewd about it. Had she interceded with the King for Deron’s life, she would have put herself in debt to him, and so reduced her influence. Thus would there be one fewer Power with whom Duke Richard must contend…”

Val trailed off and shook his head. “Too complex for me! Divine Lissa, that angel who attends upon your bride-to-be, could give you deeper reading. In matters such as these her mind is like my scrying-glass, that makes the tiny clear. If a duke were plotting for the Crown, she would sniff it in his wife’s perfume, or read it in the trimming of his beard.”

Mark paced from the fireplace to the window. It was dark out, and cloudy: all he could see in the glass was his own faint reflection, pale and powerless and angry as a ghost.

“At least Deron was not badly maimed,” Valerian observed.

Mark grunted. “Sir William let him off easy.”

Oh yes, that bloody duel was an education, wasn’t it? Intrigue’s not the only thing you don’t understand. You thought yourself a warrior. But watching Deron and Sir William was the end of that little fancy
. Soldiers, real knights, fought sheathed in steel from boots to helm. “Bastards wear a bloody smithy on their backs, and feel it no more than a fish his scales,” he murmured, awed and angry.

“Any knight can dance a galliard in his plate, my friend. The years that you spent stooking corn or plowing fields or shearing sheep these men spent at tilts and butts and buffets, with masters for the sword and lance and bow. Every noble’s son can make a warrior, if he wills it.” Valerian winced, glancing wryly at his own soft belly and white uncalloused hands. “I never took to it, myself.”

“They’re so bloody good,” Mark said, shaking his head. “I thought I was neat, but even Deron could take me to pieces.”

Valerian grinned at him. “You’re lucky then you had such mercy on Sir William’s creaking bones, to forswear beating up old men and let him have your precious Sweetness.”

Mark shuddered. “Aye. I would have had my coxcomb trimmed, and deserved it. He probably would have killed me by accident, thinking I was half his match.” He paced back to the window and stood, head bowed before the night.

“Don’t decide to carry millstones, Mark: the world is heavy as it is,” Val said kindly. “These men had tutors, time and money; but it was Shielder’s Mark who did what no knight had done in a thousand years of trying: broke the spell that lay upon the Ghostwood.” Valerian took a brass-handled poker from its hook on the mantle and stirred up the fire, which hissed at him, spitting sparks. “Why do you say Sir William let young Deron off? I thought he fought well.”

Mark shook his head. “Deron’s blows came fast and hard, like darts. Sir William cut one moving line: he even picked up speed from Deron’s blocks.” Mark stopped, trying to phrase what it was that made Sir William special. “For three springs I worked as a shepherd, with an awd man who’d done it all his life. It was a big flock, and every time we moved the sheep, I’d have to count them out by rhyme. But’t’awd man never counted a lick: he could tote up that weight of sheep wi’ one glance, and know if it were light or heavy. It was the same today. Deron sees blow, parry, step, strike: but William sees all one thing. When he parries, he doesn’t just block a blow, he changes the shape of the whole fight… God, Val, I’d give my right hand to be his squire.”

Valerian glanced sideways at Mark with the ghost of a smile. “You are eloquent.”

“I’m an idiot,” Mark said gloomily. “I can see it, but I can’t do it.”

“I feel that way about Janseni’s music.” Valerian sighed. “Sad it seems to me, that Deron risked his life for one who does not love him.”

“She doesn’t!”

“Of course not. Did you not observe? He wore no favour. I do not blame Janseni; no more can she command her heart than can the rest of us. But it seems hard, that such a love as Deron bears could leave her heart untouched.” Valerian peered down, frowning at his toes, speaking as much to himself as to Mark. “But women seldom love the men that love them best.”

“Not if the men are sappy about it,” Mark said absently. “Look, Val, remember what you said yesterday, about the Ghostwood changing my life?” Valerian nodded, peering solemnly at Mark through his spectacles. “Well if you had asked me about my life a month ago, I would have said it had been pretty good. My dad left when I was young, but I was too little to really remember him.”

Mark walked to the window, looking out through his own reflection at the night. “But something did happen in the Ghostwood. At least, ever since I left the Red Keep I’ve been thinking about my childhood. Things I’d forgotten for years, like how it felt to dive into a pile of autumn leaves and how they smelled when… when my Dad burned them one time and it started to rain. Once I even remembered my Grandma the day before she died, the exact way she looked and the sound of the fire and the way the embers glowed when I blew on them to keep her warm…” Mark trailed off, then turned to his friend. “And the funny thing is, now I don’t know if I was happy or not. Isn’t that queer? If you asked me now if I was happy as a boy, I wouldn’t know what to say.”

Reluctantly, Val said, “All spring I too have been thinking of my father.”

Mark tapped his finger on the butt of the black iron dagger at his hip. “Was I happy?—It seems like the sort of thing I ought to know.”

• • •

Later, after Val had gone, Mark put another faggot on the fire and sat hunched before the grate, hooking his boot heels on the rungs of his stool, thinking again of the duel between Deron and Sir William.

So you aren’t a warrior after all.

That hurt. All that sweat, all those lonely mornings practising with sticks in the Commons, dreaming of fame and honour, kindling every muscle with slow fire, hammering himself into what he thought was a hero’s shape. But if you weren’t Somebody’s Son, it didn’t matter.

Mark looked at the backs of his hands. He had strong wrists, very strong; he could take a calf over with a quick jerk, he could crack walnuts with his fingers. He remembered how he used to love the swing of the scythe, twisting at wrists and belly, knowing that what was a chore for every other boy was training for him. His mother walked behind, bundling the cut, and each bundle was another enemy slain, another harvest of future glory.

A web of veins and tendons ran over the backs of his hands.
Don’t see those in Val’s hand, in Peridot’s. Theirs are smooth. Smooth petal flesh that smells of rosewater, sheathed in kidskin gloves
.

A faint white welt ached in his right palm, a seam of frost lying under the flesh.
Must have got it when you grabbed the iron dagger from the Prince. Best be ware about showing that around, or bloody Astin will find some reason to steal it too
.

“Aye well: sword for daughter’s not a bad bargain.”

Mark laughed at his own audacity. He had reached out with his dirty hands and grabbed the chief treasure of the kingdom from its King.
Stared’t’awd bastard down
.

Well, all right: that wasn’t all of it. The girl chose him as much as he chose her. What a strange, proud, fierce, fox-faced woman! Quickness in her small hands, her narrow gold-brown eyes.

His hands were stained by wind and sun:
but she’ll be used to hands as pale as fresh-cut pine
.

Mark’s heart sank.

He’d heard people say that before, but only now did he feel it, feel something sag in his chest, just beneath his breastbone; turn sick and hollow inside. She would want white hands, soft fingers—

Mark spat on the floor.
No. No! She picked you out where you stood wi’ the stink of the road still on you. She’s seen what you are. She’ll not turn her back on you for that
.

But what about Deron, risking his life for a lass who didn’t love him
? And a cold little voice said,
How can you know her reasons? P’raps the Princess thought you were Somebody’s Son, aweary from your labours. After what you’d done, how could she guess you were nowt
?

An even if she knows you’re dirt, how can she know what that means? All her life she’s seen only gentlemen: she’ll want things, expect things… and you’ll never guess what they are until she’s gone, and someone like Val tells you, and says it was clear as glass she’d leave you from the start.

Angrily Mark jumped up from his stool.

How exactly d’you… do you swive a Princess? You don’t have to court her, thank God. But afterwards, on the wedding night…

Mark had swived a girl or two before. He went at the thing with as good a will as anyone, and liked to see his partners laugh: they seemed to like it.

But you’re no expert
. He’d kept his pizzle tethered, for the most part. If you didn’t get out fast enough, the girl might have a baby, and if she had a baby you ought to marry her, and if you were married to someone you should never leave them, and if he was going to the Ghostwood he might very well not come back. So he had tried not to think about girls, and made love to his fist when he had to.