Quintana of Charyn (21 page)

 

 

W
hen five sacks of barley arrived on the mountain on a horse and cart from Lord Tascan’s river village, it caused more interest than Lucian cared for. At first, one or two of the Monts stopped their midday work to watch the sacks being offloaded outside
Yata
’s residence, but then Lucian’s kin began arriving in clusters of interest and intrigue, and by midafternoon there was no more work to be done on the mountain, just a whole lot of observations and opinions and rubbish.

‘Enough now. Back to work,’ Lucian ordered.

‘It’s a dowry,’ Jory said.

‘A what?’ Potts asked.

‘A dowry.’

Everyone turned to look at Jory, who was nodding with certainty, his stare fixed on Lucian.

‘Lord Tascan is offering you five sacks of grain as a dowry for Lady Zarah. That’s what this is.’

‘And what do you know about a dowry?’ Lucian asked, irritated because suddenly everyone was fascinated by what Jory had to say.

‘Phaedra,’ Jory said. ‘She explained them to me. The way I understand it is that if I want to betroth myself to a girl, her family will offer me something to take her off their hands.’

Lotte sniffed. ‘Oh, sweet Phaedra,’ she lamented.

‘Which I didn’t understand really, Lucian,’ Jory continued, ‘because wouldn’t Phaedra have been enough of a gift?’

Was there a challenge in his young cousin’s stance? Had Lucian been as obnoxious and bursting with all that thumping boy-blood energy when he was fifteen? He was sure he hadn’t. All that pent-up emotion that pointed down to one area of a lad’s body. Thankfully spring was coming. The Mont boys had been confined too long.

‘He’s right,’ Cousin Alda said.

‘I’m going to have to agree,’ Lucian’s uncle said.

Hmm. Yes, yes. Everyone had to agree.
Everyone.
Nothing better than a good death to create such affection for a Charynite.

‘Enough,’ Lucian snapped, well and truly sick and tired of it. All this talk of Lady Zarah and the two visits she had paid to the mountain had driven him to madness. Or was it Phaedra in the valley who had driven him to madness?

‘Let’s just agree that Phaedra was a gift and maybe I could have treated her better and kept her on this mountain and taken care of her like she deserved to be taken care of, the way men take care of women in all … ways, but the past is the past and we move forward!’

The Monts were gaping. Even
Yata
. Had he revealed too much?

‘No, I mean I agree about the fact that the sacks of barley are Tascan’s attempt at a dowry,’ Alda said.

Lucian watched Jory hide a smirk.

‘You can’t accept the barley, Lucian,’
Yata
said practically. ‘Finnikin has chosen you as judge of the crop for market day and
to accept five bushels of barley at this point from one lord over another will cause a feud.’

Wonderful. Now Lucian was going to be responsible for civil war in Lumatere.

‘But sending it back will seem an insult,’ Potts pointed out. Potts always pointed out facts with no good solutions.

‘A humiliation of Lord Tascan,’ one of the aunts said. ‘Imagine the sacks arriving back on his doorstep for the whole kingdom to see. The river lot don’t know how to keep their mouths shut.’

‘True, true,’ Lucian said, ‘and the gossip will spread like plague.’

‘Sweet Phaedra,’ Lotte cried. ‘Taken from us by a plague.’

‘Lucian! Respect.’

Perhaps a wrong choice of word.

‘If Lord Tascan is insulted, there goes our exchange of pigs for crops,’ Alda said, irritated. ‘Don’t ruin this, Lucian!’

Everyone agreed that Lucian would ruin this.

‘Diplomacy is needed,’ Jory said.

‘You know what that means, do you?’ Lucian demanded. It was Jory who had started all this talk of dowries.

‘I didn’t,’ his young cousin said, ‘until Phaedra told me about it. “Diplomacy is better than war,” she would say.’

‘Phaedra’s not here!’ Lucian shouted.

Lotte cried into her apron and Lucian was the target of much headshaking and disgust.

The sacks of barley and Lotte’s crying and Jory’s smugness haunted Lucian all the night long.

‘So what would you do?’ he demanded out loud, as if Phaedra was in the room.

I’d be diplomatic, Luc-ien. And I’d do the right thing.

He fell asleep to those words and woke to them the next
morning and found himself at
Yata
’s, where the sacks of grain were exactly where he had left them in the courtyard. He fought himself not to kick them hard for being the cause of a sleepless night.

From her kitchen,
Yata
knocked at the window and beckoned him in.

‘You are so hard on yourself, lad,’ she said when he was seated at her table drinking warm tea.

He could see outside the window where the mountain looked sublime with its crawling fog. On the slope close to his cousin Morrie’s home, Lucian saw a goat’s black face among the sheep. Beyond that were Leon and Pena’s vineyards. Sometimes Lucian forgot the beauty of his mountain, but here in
Yata
’s kitchen he truly understood why his ancestors had built the compound on this slope. So they could see their people.

‘Every decision I want to make hurts someone I love,’ he said. ‘Every decision I don’t make hurts someone I love. Fa never had doubt.
Never
.’

Yata
sat before him. ‘On the day Saro decided to take us down that mountain and outside the kingdom walls during the five days of the unspeakable, he wept at this very same place you’re sitting now. Some of the Monts were furious. They weren’t going to leave their homes and Saro had to decide whether to stay or leave them behind. I asked him what his heart said and he didn’t hesitate. “Keep the Monts together, regardless of anger and resentment. Keep them together.”’

And his father did just that.

‘What does your heart say, Lucian?’
Yata
asked. ‘You’re not torn about the barley. It’s more than that.’

Lucian and Isaboe and any of the cousins would agree, they could hide little from
Yata
. He sighed.

‘Half of my heart says it would be so simple to share what
we’ve got here with the Charynites in the valley. But the other half of me says I don’t want to share it with the enemy and then I have to work out who the enemy is. I mean, look at what we have,’ he said, pointing outside at the lushness of their mountainside, even in this winter haze. ‘And look at how little they have down there. And why don’t I care?’

Yata
gave a laugh. ‘Well, from where I’m sitting, it looks as if you do care, Lucian,’ she said. ‘Too much in one place, not enough in another, and wouldn’t it be simple if we shared? It’s that way across this land and it’s been that way since the beginning of time. Yes, it would be so simple to share. But there’s no place for being simple when blood has been shed and the people we love have been torn from us.’ She took his hand across the table. ‘But forgiveness has to start somewhere, Lucian. It
did
start somewhere. It started with Phaedra. The Monts learnt not to hate all of the Charynites because of her. I learnt.’
Yata
had tears in her eyes. ‘Because you may not have seen it, my darling boy, but I hated with a fierceness I can’t describe. And do you want to hear something that was breaking my heart, day after day? I forgot the faces of my granddaughters in all that hatred. Hatred smothers all beauty. Beloved Isaboe has little resemblance to her older sisters, but your Phaedra … she made me remember those precious, precious girls and I wasn’t angry anymore. I just missed them, and it’s the beauty in here,’ she said, pointing to her chest, ‘that made me remember them. Her beauty.’

He could see the truth in her words.

‘You know she lives,’ he said softly.

Yata
nodded. ‘Constance and Sandrine have sworn me to secrecy.’

He felt the strength of her hands.

‘I don’t want you to take those sacks of grain,’ she said firmly. ‘They’ll tie you to someone who will bring you regret and
dissatisfaction all your life. It’s not what your father would have wanted for you.’

He swallowed hard. ‘I’ve made my decision.’

She made a sound of frustration, shaking her head, but he held up a hand to stop her. ‘I’m going to write a note to Lord Tascan and thank him for the grain, but explain that it will compromise my role as a judge at the fair to accept it. I’m going to emphasise just how humiliating it may feel to him if anyone in the kingdom sees that I returned the grain, in case he doesn’t realise it’s humiliation he should be feeling, and then I’m going to suggest that I send the grain down to the valley where the Charynites are in need of it. I’ll promise him that no one in Lumatere will ever be able to say that flatland or river barley was consumed by a Mont judge, nor will they be able to prove that the grain existed in the first place.’

Yata
smiled. ‘Oh, you’re a clever boy.’

‘It’s not enough, of course,’ he said. ‘The grain will run out eventually.’

‘Then we have weeks to think up another plan.’

He travelled to the valley with Jory, who insisted on coming along.

‘Do you want to know what I think?’ his cousin asked, as they passed one of the farms midway down the mountain.

‘No, I don’t actually, Jory. I want peace and quiet.’

‘I don’t think Phaedra’s dead,’ Jory replied. ‘And you know she isn’t.’

‘Really.’

‘Yes, really,’ Jory said, imitating his tone. ‘’Cause sometimes I come up to your cottage, you know, Lucian. You hide up there, all closed up, and everyone wishes you didn’t. At first, I’d see that small shrine you had to Blessed Lagrami and how you’d lay
petalbane beside it every day. For Phaedra. Because petalbane is the flower for grieving the dead. But then weeks ago, after Cousin Isaboe left the mountain, you stopped. So the way I see it, something happened in the valley that day and you know she’s alive and you know that it’s bad luck to bring petalbane to the living, and you don’t want to curse Phaedra.’

‘It’s been some weeks since her death, Jory,’ Lucian said, his voice practical. ‘We all have to move on. That’s why I stopped laying the petalbane.’

‘The mourning season for Phaedra ends mid-spring. I know that because Cousin Cece was seen drinking ale and Alda, well, she blasted him. “How dare you?” she shouted.’

‘Funny that all of a sudden Alda cares for Phaedra,’ Lucian said.

Jory looked surprised. ‘I don’t think Alda cares that much for Phaedra. She hardly knew her. But Alda, she said to Cousin Cece, “You show respect for Lucian. He’s our leader.”’

Lucian had never heard one of the Monts acknowledge that before.

‘You know what my father says?’ Jory said. ‘He says you weren’t born to lead, Lucian. That you were made to. But regardless, Fa says Monts couldn’t have asked for a better man to get us through this time.’

Lucian stared at him, overwhelmed. ‘What are you all of a sudden?’ he demanded gruffly. ‘An ancient wiseman?’

Jory pointed to himself.

‘Look at me, cousin. Did ancient wisemen have shoulders like mine?’

The valley dwellers wept when they were told about the barley and crowded around Lucian and Jory as if they were gods. Lucian’s attention was on Harker and Kasabian. The men cut a
sad picture working on the vegetable patch that Cora had planted. Jory worked alongside them for a while and Lucian couldn’t stay angry at his young cousin for too long. Then they followed Kasabian to his cave and Lucian saw Rafuel and Donashe watching carefully from their place by the rock face, Rafuel’s expression tense and questioning. Inside the cave, Lucian removed the bottle of ale Lord Tascan had given him from his pack and handed it to Harker to take a swig.

‘To my wife and my daughter,’ Harker said, his voice a hoarse whisper. Lucian winced to think of what he kept from him. Harker handed the bottle to Kasabian.

‘To my sister Cora.’

The flask was back with Lucian and the men waited. Lucian realised he was to drink to the memory of his wife. Jory watched him, questioningly.

‘To Phaedra,’ Lucian said.

Jory held out a hand and Lucian reluctantly gave it to him. The lad took a confident swig, but then choked, not so grown-up after all.

‘Arm us,’ Harker said quietly.

Lucian sighed.

‘I can’t do that, Harker. You know that. Whatever happened to the women was not at the hands of Donashe.’

Harker’s stare was hard. More than once Lucian had come to realise this man would have been a leader much like his own father. The type of man born for it.

‘My actions are not just determined by my sorrow,’ Harker said. ‘Donashe and his murderers are going to bring a bloodbath to this valley. I’ve seen this before.’

As if they knew they were being spoken of, Rafuel and Donashe and a third man entered the cave. There was an arrogance in the way they stood in Harker and Kasabian’s dwelling,
but Lucian and the others refused to acknowledge their presence.