The pavane was danced in the Spanish style, which had Farrell hopelessly adrift within a dozen bars. It was an unfamiliar air, a good deal livelier than the English paces he knew, and he wandered in and out of the measures in lonesome embarrassment. For all that, he went wistfully when Julie led him away to sit on the grass in the lee of the dark pavilion. “I was getting it,” he said. “It’s just been a while, is all.”
Julie did not answer him, but watched the dances, one hand plucking absently at clover stems. Speaking quietly, without turning her head, she asked, “Have you chosen a name yet?”
“Don’t need one. None but a king’s virgin daughter may know my name until sunrise.”
She turned on him swiftly then, saying, “Don’t be a fool. I meant what I told you about names being important. Joe, pay attention for once.”
Irritated himself, he answered, “Pay attention to what? Come on, Jewel, some fancy folk-dancing outfit calls itself the League for Artsy Amusements—”
“Archaic Pleasures,” Julie said. “Incorporated, with fourth-class mailing privileges.” Her eyes were on the pavane again, and her fingers had never left their blind work in the cold grass. “And they aren’t folk dancers.”
“Oh, right,” Farrell said. “They have wars over the queen’s garter belt. I forgot. What else do they do?”
“It was the War of the Queen Mother’s Boots—and it was a very serious matter.” She began to laugh, leaning against him. “They stage tilts,” she said. “Tournaments. That’s what that helm was for, and the chain mail.”
“You mean jousting?”
Julie shook her head. “Not jousts. Jousts are on horseback, and it just gets too dangerous. But they have all the rest of it—sword fights, quarterstaff matches, shooting at the wand, even mêlées.” The torchlight turned the dancers and musicians to slippery bronze shadows; the darkness made momentary candles of kirtles and plumes. Julie went on, “It isn’t all fighting, like Hyperborea. Some of the men never fight at all—they join for the music or the dressing up, they become bards, they do research on heraldry, calligraphy, court procedure, even on the way people cooked and the games they played. But there wouldn’t be a League without the tilts.”
Prowling gracefully by with a very young girl in a plain blue houppelande, Garth de Montfaucon looked over his shoulder at them. Farrell said, “Hyperborea?”
“That’s the Sacramento chapter. There’s another one in Los Angeles, the Kingdom Under the Hill. We are the Kingdom of Huy Braseal.”
She said the name with a slightly mocking flourish, but Farrell felt a sudden odd little shiver inside himself, a dainty tickle of ice under his skin. He had felt it earlier, in the moment when Garth’s sword had whimpered from its sheath. He asked, “Since when have you been mixed up with all this? How long have these people been around?”
“Ten or twelve years. Huy Braseal, anyway—the others started up later.” Two huge Afghan hounds, one black, one golden, lolloped among the dancers, their grinning loutishness and primrose eyes somehow turning the pavane altogether into a tapestry fragment glowing far away. Julie said, “I’ve been involved for a couple of years, on and off. Nancy got me into it, the Lady Criseyde. She’s in Graduate Admissions.”
Farrell said slowly, “The armor on your bed, that was real. What about the swords and axes and stuff?”
“Rattan, mostly. It’s like wicker, only heavier. A few people still use regular softwood, I think—pine and so on.”
“Not old Sir Turkish Delight,” Farrell said. “The boy with the trick mustache. That was a realie he was waving around.”
“Oh, that’s just Garth showing off,” she answered scornfully. “He always brings Joyeuse to the dances. They have very strict rules about all that. You’re not allowed to fight with anything that’ll take an edge, but it has to hit hard enough so that it would cut armor if it were sharp. The way it works out, the weapons aren’t quite real enough to kill you—just to break a hand or a rib now and then. It’s a touchy point with the Brotherhood of Swordsmiths.”
“I’ll bet,” he said. “What a thing. Are you a brother swordsmith?”
“No, I’m in the Artisans’ Fellowship. We’re the ones who make the clothes and the household banners, paint the shields, and whatever else people commission us to do. I don’t make armor anymore; I just did that when I began with the League.”
The owl was back, moth-gray in the moonlight, wheeling and stooping above the pavane, calling thinly in what Farrell was sure was anger at finding its hunting grounds so utterly occupied. Julie pointed King Bohemond out to him—a stocky, balding, youngish man wearing a long purple tunic and cope, both garments cut and heavily embroidered in the Byzantine manner. He was standing with three other men—the red Tudor was one of them—under a tree just beyond the clearing. Farrell asked, “How do you get to be a king in Huy Braseal?”
“Armed combat,” Julie said. “The same way you win your knighthood or become one of the Nine Dukes. There are a few rituals and trials to go through, but everything comes down to fighting. Bohemond’s only been king for a couple of months, since the Twelfth Night Tourney.”
The pavane ended with a bone-whistle trill of the crumhorns and a lingering sunset flare of cloaks and plumed caps. Farrell saw that Garth de Montfaucon made as long and deep a reverence to the musicians as anyone there; but the young girl beside him stood up in her blue gown with a slender, edged arrogance that seemed to make the kerosene flames bow down together. Farrell could not see her face.
“Who’s that?” he asked. The girl turned suddenly, saying something to Garth and brushing back a lion-colored wilderness of hair with her forearm. Beside him Julie said quietly, “Aiffe,” and the small sound was like the rustle of wings.
“Aha,” Farrell said. “Aiffe of Scotland.” At this distance, his only impressions were of the fierce hair, of skin tanned almost to the same dusty shade, and of a slight, long-waisted form whose step on the earth made him remember once watching a rainstorm coming toward him across a mountain lake. It was the most elegant motion he had ever seen—a languorous pavane over the water—and nothing could have stopped it. “I know that name,” he said. “There’s a story about Aiffe.”
The musicians had downed their instruments and were accepting paper cups of wine from all sides, as the dancers dispersed to seek their own refreshments in the pavilion. Julie shook her head and rubbed her arms. She said, “Her name is Rosanna Berry. She goes to high school. She’s fifteen years old.”
Farrell studied the taut, haughty figure, at once a princess and a skinny golliwog under the splendid splash of hair. “Mustn’t forget to give her Prester John’s regards. The very throne may depend on it.”
Julie stood up abruptly, brushing leaves from her gown, looking away from Farrell as he rose with her. “Let’s go home,” she said. “I shouldn’t have brought you here.” She spoke rapidly, almost mumbling. Farrell had never heard her voice so strangely dimmed.
“Why?” he asked. “Jewel, I didn’t mean to make fun, I’m sorry.” He took her hand, turning her to face him. “I’m just trying to pick up on the rules of the game,” he said. “Jewel, what is it? I’m really sorry.” Beyond her he could see Garth de Montfaucon making his way toward the musicians, towing the girl Aiffe after him. She trailed along serenely, smiling and shaking her hair.
Julie’s hand felt like Pierce/Harlow’s knife skidding distantly through his own. Still not quite looking at him, she said, “Of course it’s a game. Middle-class white people running around in long underwear, assistant professors hitting each other with sticks, what else could it be? Thanks for reminding me, Joe.”
“Do you forget?” She did not answer him. Farrell said, “Old Garth—I’ll bet it’s no game for that boy. I’ll bet Garth forgets a lot.” He wanted to ask her about Ben, but told himself that it could wait until they were home. Instead he asked, “Why did you bring me here? Because of the music?”