The Black Swan (30 page)

He slid out of bed and dressed quietly in the same clothing he'd worn yesterday so as not to wake Arno. He was of a mind to slip away alone, and indulge in a somewhat plebeian pastime that he seldom enjoyed at the palace, which didn't precisely fit into the concept of the “noble hunts” his mother proposed.

He intended to go fishing, by himself; with no attendants to bait the line and hand him the pole, or fetch the fish he caught so that he would not get splashed.

There was a fine trout stream near the inn, and trout fishing required little in the way of equipment, but a great deal in the way of skill. Siegfried left his room so quietly he didn't wake anyone, and when he descended to the common room, he found only a couple of early risers there, breakfasting on fresh bread and butter. He borrowed fishing tackle from the innkeeper and slipped away without even the escort of a single servant.

This early in the morning, the trout were cooperative, rising eagerly to his fly, and he returned to the inn before even Benno was awake with a fine catch for breakfast. It gave him an odd little surge of pleasure to devour the freshly fried fruits of his own labor at a sun-dappled table beneath the enormous oak tree in front of the inn, and share them with his sleepy-eyed friends. It was even better to see their astonished faces when he told them who had caught the fish they'd just eaten with such relish.

When the remains were cleared away, Siegfried and Benno had a stable boy bring their horses around, and mounted up. It was time for one of the official hunts: hunting with falcons while the day was still early. Wolfgang elected to remain behind, not being of a mind to hunt with the rest.

As they walked their horses toward the encampment, Benno glanced at his friend with an odd expression. Finally Siegfried laughed and shook his head. “Out with it, friend,” he chuckled. “Just what are you thinking?”

“That it would be an odd thing to see you wedded,” Benno said mournfully. “I cannot imagine you, who have never been without a half-dozen wenches at your call, tied down to a single woman. The very idea seems preposterous, and yet here you are, and you'll be picking out a bride within days.”

Siegfried laughed even harder at Benno's long face. “And why should that change my life?”

“But—” Benno looked at him askance.

Siegfried sobered. “My friend, of the six beauties that my mother has assembled here, there are two whom I do not care to wed, four I am considering, but
none
whom I love—or could love. Nor do I believe that I have struck such a spark in any of their hearts. The only way I would sacrifice my habits would be in the unlikely event that I found a true love to wed; acquiring a consort to please Mother and her advisers is not a powerful enough reason to make me change. My bride will be an ornament to the court, and comely enough to make siring a son a pleasure, but that is all.” His smile turned a little cynical. “And I rather doubt that any of them see me as anything other than a way to a crown. No, Benno, nothing will change very much in my life.”

“But what about—” Benno began, “—I thought you'd
been
changing!”

Siegfried had no intention of trusting Benno with his dream-visions. “Not because of any plans of my mother's I assure you,” he retorted. “I just found some ways to make my life more pleasant. No longer waking up with a pounding head was
certainly
more pleasant, and I decided to let the wenches approach me rather than pursuing them, that's all.”

Benno sighed, but with relief rather than regret. “And here I thought you were smitten with Angelique,” he teased.

Siegfried shuddered theatrically. “I fear that one is too talkative for my taste. I would never again be able to hear the sound of my own voice. On the other hand, my friend, if you have a taste for her—”

“Not I!” Benno exclaimed, and laughed. “No, the lovely Angelique should only wed a man who is deaf and mute; that way they will both be happy for the rest of their lives! Now, the lovely falconer, on the other hand, never speaks but what she has something intelligent to say.”

“Indeed?” Siegfried raised an eyebrow, and urged his horse into a pace slightly better than the lazy amble it currently wanted to take. “Did you speak of aught but falconry with the lady? I did not.”

Benno nodded as his horse moved to keep up. “She has some Latin, though no Greek; she has not read the Roman philosophers, but is learned in other areas.

She has read the
Confessions
of Saint Augustine, for instance.”

Siegfried made a face and flicked a fly away with his riding crop. “It would be difficult to make love talk out of Saint Augustine. Still, it is something. Do sound her out further for me, and see if she is
opposed
to reading the works of pagans, would you?”

“Surely—what is toward for the morning hunt?” Benno asked. “I can contrive to partner her, if you like.”

“We hunt the fields with falcons—at which she will shine, as
you
will not,” Siegfried teased, and Benno flushed. In that form of hunting alone, Benno did not excel; he had no rapport with the birds of prey, and after an unfortunate experience with a goshawk that left him with a scarred hand, no longer even tried to man them.

“Then I shall serve as her beater, and flush the game,” he said staunchly. “So long as she does not ask me to take up her bird from its quarry.”

“I doubt you could offer her a costly enough jewel to give that honor to you,” Siegfried replied, as they came within ear shot of the camp. “She allows no one to handle her birds but herself.”

The camp was abuzz with activity, as the hunt formed up. The queen was not taking part—no great surprise there, as she had no greater liking for falcons than Benno. About half of the nobles would remain in the camp with her, the other half going out into the field with Siegfried and the princesses.

Some of the nobles had brought their falconers and half their mews—far too many hawks, in Siegfried's opinion. They couldn't possibly put all of them up, and it would frustrate the ones left in their hoods to be taken out and not allowed to fly. He had already left orders with his falconer that he would hunt only with his gyrfalcon, and if he did not find prey worthy of her, he would work her with the lure to give her exercise. Of the princesses, four either had dainty little sparrowhawks on their gloves, or were followed by a servant with one. Honoria, as he had expected, had the gos she had praised so highly on her fist, her falconer following with a fine peregrine.

As Siegfried rode up, he signaled to his falconer, who brought him a glove and his gyr. As he took the bird up, he was pleased that it did not bate and embarrass him in front of Honoria, whose goshawk sat so quietly on her fist that it might have been stuffed.

“Well, my lady,” he said, as the hunting party formed up for the ride out to the mown fields where birds would be foraging on the gleanings left by the reapers. “You only spoke the truth of your bird, I see.”

“Better still, I can carry her unhooded, if I choose,” Honoria replied demurely, astonishing him by gently stroking her hawk's breast feathers and even scratching it beneath its wings. Any goshawk
he
had ever owned would have rewarded such caresses by sinking a talon into his hand. “Valeria is a bird worth more than all the rest of my mews put together, both for steadiness, and hunting spirit. I would not carry her unhooded in company, however,” she continued, with a subdued twinkle in her eyes. “It would not be fair to her to tempt her with all the savory little merlins and sparrowhawks about us.”

Knowing that a goshawk would happily make a meal of any bird that was smaller, and a good many that were larger as well, Siegfried grinned. “I think we should let the other ladies fly at wood-pigeon and starling until they are tired, which should not take long, and then we true hunters can take the field.”

As Honoria chuckled, Siegfried gave the signal to form up the hunting party, with the riders at the front, followed by the beaters and the falconers with cadges of birds. The cadges were unwieldy creations, a square perch of padded wood surrounding the falconer, carried by straps over the shoulders and holding at least one bird on each of the four sides. Siegfried never used a cadge unless he was hunting close by, for they were an infernal bother, in his opinion. He tried not to hunt with more than two birds at a time, but sometimes in duck season the peregrines tired before he did, and he had to fly several over the course of a day.

But he and his men had already planned this hunt well—the nobles who only wished to show how many birds they owned would stop at the first fields and remain there for the morning, leaving the farthest tracts to the real hunters. The gamekeepers had already scouted the best fields for pheasant and grouse, and those would go to Siegfried and those who actually flew their birds, rather than watching their falconer do the work.

“Sound the call!” Siegfried ordered, and the huntmaster wound his horn, signaling to the entire party that it was time to get into the field. The very sound of the hunting horn made Siegfried's spirits rise, and with a grin, he led the way out under a brilliant sun, and a sky so blue it could not presage anything but fine luck.

As Siegfried anticipated, the ladies tired in less than an hour, and retired from the field with game bags of rock-dove and wood-pigeon. Those that were not made into a pie for the high table tonight would go to feed the birds themselves. Siegfried and Honoria unhooded their birds and took advantage of their rank to claim the privilege of the first flights. When a fine hare was flushed by the beaters, Honoria cast her gos without blinking an eye or hesitating a moment. Hare wasn't a good quarry for a gyrfalcon, but it was perfect for a goshawk. Honoria urged her bird on with eager shouts of “Ho! Ho! Hawk!”

Honoria's gos performed every bit as well as she had claimed; the hare zigzagged and doubled back on itself in a vain effort to evade the pursuing talons, but it was all to no avail. When it doubled back, it found the gos waiting for just such an attempt. The hawk hit its quarry so hard that they both tumbled over and over together into the grass, ending with the hawk atop the twitching hare, clutching its quarry and panting in triumph. In a flash, Honoria was off her horse and walking slowly up to the bird, who allowed herself to be taken up off her downed quarry without even a token protest, tearing into the tidbit Honoria offered as readily as if the bit of meat had been its proper quarry all along.

Honoria's gos took two more hare before she declared the bird to be tired, and gave it a leg of the last catch as a reward. She hooded the gos and traded it with her falconer for her peregrine, and it was Siegfried's turn to hunt.

Falcons meant pheasant and grouse, for falcons were the best at hunting other birds, and the beaters and huntsmen were ready to supply that quarry as well. They sent in the dogs to find and point the game, allowing the falconers to get their birds into the air and in position for a stoop. Siegfried was first, of course; he put his gyr up into the sky to wait-on, soaring in tight circles above the field, then signaled to the beaters to flush the first pheasant.

The bird came up out of the bushes in a rush; the gyrfalcon plummeted out of the sky in the lightning dive that falconers called a stoop. The pheasant hardly got airborne before the falcon was on it, hitting it with a hard
crack,
binding to it with its long talons and going down into the grass with it. Siegfried wasn't about to let himself be shown up as a poor falconer by the princess, so he slid down off his horse and went into the brush after the bird. When he found her, she hadn't yet broken training by “breaking in,” or trying to eat the catch herself; with a little mantling, she allowed herself to be coaxed onto the glove to devour her own tidbit reward, and one of the beaters got the pheasant for the game bag.

Although Honoria's peregrine wasn't the paragon of birds that her goshawk was, it performed well, and the two of them declared themselves satisfied when the bag reached three birds apiece. Then it was the turn of the others, who went out into the field eagerly, falcons on their fists. Honoria and Siegfried, however, had more care for their birds than to subject them to hours of clinging to the glove of a rider with no more hunting in the offing.

“My lady, is it your intention to return to the camp?” Siegfried asked politely.

“Immediately,” she responded. “Valeria and Melisande will be wanting to bathe and sun. May I borrow the services of your falconer as a guide?”

“I will do better than that; we'll all escort you as far as the camp; it is the least we can do for such a fine huntress and her birds,” the prince told her with satisfaction, and was amused to see a little high color in her cheeks at the compliment.