Plenilune (28 page)

“And you wonder,” said Margaret, when they were alone, “that people do not like you!”

“I never asked for them to like me,” Rupert said. “Liking is a small, dear door out which you pass in the night, unseen—but should any see you go out by it, anyone desirous of seizing your house knows by which little secret postern to come in and catch you unawares. I never asked for them to like me. I like, as to that, none of them.”

She looked hard into his cool, unblinking eyes. “Really? Not even Malbrey? not even Bloodburn?”

“Them less than most, because they will do what I ask—and yet for that very reason I strangely loathe them.” He pulled down his brows and his smile, which had been bitter and mirthless, ran from his face as he turned to look about him at the people in the room. “They are all little to me, silver and sanguine-coloured, petty in their finery like chanticleers in their barnyard runs. They have little thought for aught else. They have their pride. They have their stubborn self-wills which I will break—”

“But you will loathe them all the more because they break,” Margaret finished, finding, with a curious mingled horror and pity, that she understood.

“Yes,” he said, a sudden melancholy catching at his brows. “I will loathe them because of that.”

They went down then to the stables to fetch their horses. Margaret was quenched and quieted, but the early winter wind caught at her sharply and, blowing her skirts sideways, stung the colour into her cheeks. The yard was busy. Almost all of the men were turned out, seeing to their horses, checking a bit of sheeny spur-ring on a heel or hauling on a girth-strap there, the wind and pale, level winter light blowing all around them, catching up their cloaks and smiles and the high, daring light in their eyes. And though Margaret was afraid of the hunt she was suddenly glad—hard and fiercely glad—that she was riding out among them.

But then a little thing happened that destroyed her momentary pity of Rupert. She was standing at her mare Hanging Tree’s side, fiddling with the length of the stirrup, when a man in his thirties, honey-haired and pleasant looking, came up behind her to where Skander stood at his horse, a yard and a half from her elbow, and hailed him warmly.

“Why, Periot!” Skander cried. He struck the man on the shoulder and drew him close. “So word got through to you, after all. I had hoped you might come.”

“Gabriel dropped in on us on his way back in from scouting,” the man Periot explained. “So I came along.”

“But not Ely?”

“Nay, it is Ely’s rotation to the pulpit tomorrow. He wanted a quiet day to prepare.”

The smile, which Rupert had stamped on earlier, flashed up on Skander’s face again. “Is it that time already? How the time flies! But of course he will need today to study, and never mind that we’ll miss him keenly.”

Periot tugged at the buttons of his great coat and fished among the inner pockets. “I did remember to bring up that book you wanted, by the bye. It lies somewhere in these black holes…” And he drew out a dark-bound book, small and well-used with the coffee-pale inner skin showing where the binding had been worn off, and handed it over to Skander. Margaret looked over her shoulder just then, overcome by curiosity, and saw, clearly, the lettering flash up on the cover like a knife into her chest.

Songmartin
.

The catch of her breath was too small for anyone to hear, but it shook her whole body as the images of the books, the man’s words, the man’s life and his beliefs, flashed mutilated and burned into her mind, whipping away any pity she had felt a few moments ago for the man who held her captive. Something rose in her, something wretched and red-coloured, a ringing warning feeling, and she almost reached out to snatch the book from Skander’s hand before Rupert, who was standing only a few horses away, turned and saw the book himself. But the colder Norman part of her held her back, sure that a grab like that would draw more attention, would make her look like an unreasoning fool, and would make Rupert angry with her.

She turned her back on the exchange, the snap of blood in her ears drowning out the men’s conversation. With hot cheeks and unsteady breath she fumbled with the stirrup-straps, rubbing the old cracked leather hard between her thumbs and forefingers before, with an effort, she could force herself to tip the world right-side up again and go mechanically through the motions of preparing the saddle and mounting for the ride.

“Shee hee!” Skander whistled, his mood restored, ignorant of the blush of fear on Margaret’s face. “Come by, Twiti! Come by, Latimer!”

They went out by the curtain-wall gate north along the wooded fellside, dropping single-file by way of a narrow walking-path into the thick pine-woods. The land below was swimming in silvered mist: every now and then the stark bare black of orchards swaths of snowy pasture showed through, looking, at that distance, like the swells of the sea. It was beautiful, clean, and clear with a light dusting of snow everywhere, and Margaret’s spirits could not help being lifted on a tenuous upward draught of pleasure. They were a merry, handsome group in a fiercely bright, handsome land: a flicker-flame of a party, trimmed in gold and ermine, riding among the snow-laden pine-boughs, dressed in scarlets and greens, and blues as clear as Lord Gro’s aquamarine ring.

Margaret’s dark-dappled mare was frisky this morning and took the sloping path downward at a hard, jogging trot, vying for space with Witching Hour on her left and, she found, Periot Survance’s horse on her right. The horses’ breath steamed in the shadowy air. She took the reins firmly in hand, giving her mare little head to fight with. White breath streamed backward over her, pearling on her cheek and once, as her mare shook loose from a low pine-branch, she got a dusting of snow on her lashes.

The second time Hanging Tree bumped into Survance’s horse he said, “We seem to have lost the hunting line, haven’t we?” and pulled his horse back alongside her mare’s flank.

“We do seem to have bunched up a bit,” Margaret admitted. She swung sideways in the saddle and bent to avoid another branch—and to see what look was brooding on Rupert’s face to gauge his attitude. His mount had pulled ahead and she could see only his shoulder and the back of his head. “I am sorry: Hanging Tree is fidgety this morning.”

“No need to apologize. We all have fidgety mounts some mornings…Have we met before? I don’t believe we have.”

Margaret had been dreading the question, knowing when he had spoken out that it was only seconds away. She had wanted to like him, and had wanted him to like her—that was about to be over, now. “You haven’t.” She twisted and reached out, putting her hand in his. “I’m Margaret Coventry, from the Mares.”

“Ah!” said Periot. A smile, almost hard with sincerity, flashed across his face. “Is this your first time to Ryland—I mean, to Lookinglass? I don’t suppose you would come up this way just to see Ryland.”

“Yes, it is my first time to Lookinglass. Where is Ryland?”

“Just there.” Periot pointed to their left and downward. Through the ragged pine-tops Margaret could see the homely red roofs of buildings emerge from the mist. “I am Periot Survance. I am one of the shepherds there.”

“I can see that it is in the shadow of Lookinglass,” Margaret admitted, “but it looks pleasant from here.” She almost added that it must be good to have a home, no matter what grander shadow it was in, but she bit it back just in time. “I did hear your name when you spoke to Skander in the yard. You have a friend, I understand, who could not make it?”

The man—he must have been fifteen years her senior—put down his heels and leaned back to dodge another low-hanging branch. “Oh yes, Ely—I just finished my rotation in the pulpit and Ely begins tomorrow, so he stayed home to study. He will be sorry he was not able to meet you. He is fond of new people.”

“Well, perhaps another time,” Margaret heard herself saying. At that, Rupert turned his head and she could see his brow uplifted, the faintest, softest feather of a smile touching the corner of his mouth.

They passed over Ryland and left the track altogether, following Skander Rime and his huntsman Gabriel into the thick, scrubby ground of the wood itself, riding fetlock-deep in snow and leaf-muck, crashing over fallen logs after the leashed hounds, following the pock-marks that Gabriel had made going and coming back from locating the boar. They fell back into single-file. The wood afforded bare space for one horse to walk comfortably, and the ground was rough, more so than when she and Rupert and Skander had gone on their flurry of a fox-hunt. They went through clear wood for awhile, passing between empty maples and birch, but soon left those to fight with holly and heavy, ancient pine where the new morning light, which had been mounting in the air, was nearly strangled by the thick evergreen growth. Though the difficult ground made her uneasy, Margaret found herself enjoying it more than she had the fox-hunt, for though they went largely in silence, they were gaily-spirited and pleasant, even Gro—who rode in the unenviable position before Rupert, with Rupert’s eyes on the back of his neck.

Were it not for the bulk of fell which ran roughly north and south, Margaret would have lost sense of direction. They wandered at a walk and breaking trot after the hounds for the better part of an hour, worming and weaving through the harsh winter wood, keeping much together though, after awhile, the string broke up into a staggered pattern around her that worked into a crescent-shape. They pushed on northward and a little westerly, always going down a bit of slope so that the constant motion of leaning back and swaying from side to side began to make Margaret ache. The sun had got clear of Glassfell and was shining beautifully down between cloud-streamers and the crazy, pin-wheeling pine-branches, stabbing down into the snow and scrub and scouting hounds so that the images of them all showed up brightly and clearly on Margaret’s vision and seemed painfully, wildly dear—

The foremost hound raised his head and gave a strange exultant wail, like a howl and a scream at once, and quick as thought the others took it up, clustering, bunching in around the leader, straining their leashes almost to the breaking point. Imperiously Gabriel’s horn blared, shattering the crystalline beauty of the quiet wood—sending up a pair of partridges out of a thicket in a flurry of tawny wings—and the dog-boys stooped as one to let loose their charges. The motley crew of dogs, all big-boned, fierce beasts like Curoi, heavily-limbed and swift in motion, broke from the clustering group of horses. Yanking in their leashes the dog-boys ran after them, dodging Gabriel on his horse, trying not to be crushed underfoot as the huntsman kept flying pace with his hounds. His encouraging shouts and staccato horn-notes beat back on Margaret’s ears as she, too, lurched into the chase. It was just as before, only more dangerous with the uneven, half-hidden ground underfoot and a sudden rocky bed of a stream opening up before them, steep and cold as horror on her skin; one horse, a new-looking, lanky bay, gave a scream of shock as it went in and grumbled and squealed as its rider urged it up the opposite bank after the disappearing tail of one of the biggest of the dogs. Margaret clung on only because she had to; her mare did most of the footwork for her, following after Rupert and answering, as if it knew the language, to the call of the horn.

They turned uphill once and came into a roughly shallow piece of fellside that might have once been a cirque, but was now as wooded as the rest of the ride, and came flying up a damp, empty bit of streambed to what must have once, after the cirque, been a kind of pool at the foot of a low waterfall. There was a big, swift movement of black on the background which, in the confusion, Margaret understood intuitively to be the boar. In the flurrying motion she did not get a clear view of it.

The horn screamed again. The dogs all gave tongue, closing into a tight ring at the mouth of the dead stream to keep the boar from escaping. Most of the men, and even Woodbird, had flung themselves off their horses and were forming the tight, hesitant ring around the beast. Feeling somehow unsafe on the back of her hunter, though it stood patiently beneath her, Margaret unhooked her leg and foot from the saddle and slid to the ground, hanging back with a clear view of the fight. Against all better reason she did not want Rupert to think she was a coward.

The saddle had afforded her the best view of the boar, but even from the lower sloping ground of the old damp streambed she could see it clearly enough between the bunched ring of the hounds and the group of men. It was backed up against a low rocky fall which, in spring, would be gushing with snow-water, but now was littered with dead leaves and rattling pebbles. Plant-growth and dirt shunted upward in a brown spray around the boar as it dug its forehooves in, sheeny back bristled, its gargoyle face leering at them as it swung about slowly, this way and that, to take them all in. It was a wily beast. Even at that distance, and with no foreknowledge of the animal, Margaret knew it was awful and cunning, far more horrible than that thoughtless half-moment with the fox in the wood; this was a thing of brute and bloody strength, and her own blood ran chill in her veins to look at it. She tore her eyes from its gaze: there was something bewitching about its flickering red eyes that would be her death, she thought, if she met it and let it hold her.

“Hy! hy my!” someone cried, and as if the cry were an archer letting loose his fingers, three alaunts sprang forward at once, hurling their heavy bodies at the boar. Three of them was significant weight and fang to throw against anything, but the boar was waiting for them. Transfixed, Margaret watched the boar swivel its thick, craggy body like a corkscrew—it seemed not to be on the ground at all. A dog screamed, another snapped and howled; one got a good mouthful of bristling boar-hide before it was shaken off, with a hind leg torn wide open, to stumble across the bodies of its fellows. Margaret had come to know from watching Curoi that alaunts have little sense save blood-lust, and this one, like Curoi, clung to the fight as long as it could. It tried to regain purchase on the ground, slipping and sliding on the muck and its game leg, but the boar was too much for it. Like a wall falling on a crippled beggar it ran the dog down, crushed it, broke open its skull with its tusks, and trampled clean over it, racing for the break in the ring of dogs and hunters.