Tristen did not attempt the press about Cefwyn, himself, and the cold dissuaded him from lingering. Lusin and the others had found his banner in the confusion, and he had two of them at least with him as he and Uwen went toward the steps that led into the keep. The courtyard had grown crowded with the wives and daughters of the lords, women in finery who had come out into the chill and damp, a lighter set of voices momentarily surrounding them. A gust brought drops of rain and squeals and orders to go inside.
He should have felt elated, he thought, to have pleased everyone and to have gotten through the ceremony; but before they were quite inside the rain began to pelt down. Lightning whitened the yard, and the brightly clad ladies and the courtiers alike cried in alarm and pushed and shoved to be indoors.
Cefwyn and Ninévrisë, however, and their guards, had first claim on the steps and the doorway, leaving the barons in the rain arguing about precedence. An argument broke out after Cefwyn had gone in, everyone at the steps disputing their rights, standing in a downpour to do it.
Tristen chose not to contest with the barons and their entourages, and stood there, his cloak wrapped about him, he and Uwen and Lusin and the rest, with the rain coming harder and harder, dripping off his hair and wetting the stone cobbles until dirty water flowed from the roof.
“Sins won’t burn in this,” Uwen said. It was a joke, Tristen was sure, but it rang with unusual force in the bitter wind, above the squabbling of the barons.
CHAPTER 7
It were a fine occasion, all the same,” Uwen said when they reached his apartments. Tassand met them to take their dripping cloaks, eager for news and hoping, perhaps, that their lord, rare in his outings, had had a success. “Not a trouble at all. M’lord did right well.”
Other servants brought towels warm from the fire. There was a fine, even an extravagant late breakfast set out for him and for Uwen, Tristen was delighted to discover, on a festive table decorated with oak leaves and apples. After that, comfortably fed, he gave the staff their pennies, so that they might at whatever drier and more convenient time go make their offerings themselves.
But then the holiday became like all other days, and Tristen took himself to his reading—curious, cautiously searching Efanor’s little book of devotions for hints of purposeful entrapment of the dead as an activity of the priests, or any persuasive reasons for the mismatch of lines in the Quinaltine, but he found nothing that led him to any hint of understanding.
Meanwhile Uwen had gone somewhere, perhaps down to the stables in spite of the rain, where he spent a great deal of his free time—currying his horses, braiding and combing and talking to them when he thought no one was listening—courting Liss, and asking himself for the dozenth time could he afford another horse?
Uwen talked to horses: his lord read. By afternoon the sun had come out, brightening the roof slates. A bar of light from the window glass crept across the little codex, making his study easier: the hand that had copied it had spared no ornament. It was fine, and beautiful, but difficult in dim light. He meditated the nature of gods and the servants came and went, keeping the fire in order, arranging things in his bedchamber all those myriad mysterious things they did that meant the household was far less dusty than Ynefel had been, and the candles miraculously renewed themselves when half-burned.
He wearied of the gods’ little book and sought the Quinalt in the Red Chronicle—a history Cefwyn had lent him, a tale of betrayals of the Sihhë, of murder and fire, and the raising of the Marhanen standard for the first time with royal honors.
Toward sundown the clouds came back and stole the bar of light from the far wall. Rain spattered the glass again. He chased memories that eluded him, and Tassand came in as thunder thumped and boomed above the town.
“M’lord. It is certain you will not attend in hall tonight.”
That was a question. “No, I shall not,” he agreed, and turned his thoughts for a moment to the staff, flexed shoulders weary of leaning forward. “Tassand, the staff should go down to the square, to dance or drink as they please, tonight. I should wish they did, except for the rain. How does the sky look?”
“Dark to the west, m’lord. The staff is thinking of the staff quarters on account of the weather, to open a keg there, by Your Grace’s goodwill.”
“Please do.”
“M’lord.”
Tassand went off pleased—Tristen never refused his servants, and Tassand had had no doubts of being granted the indulgence, Tristen was certain. He went back again to his reading of Efanor’s little book, now by candlelight, having found nothing all day long of deliberate entrapments, except an exhortation to the gods to preserve our souls from harm.
Might the priests believe the souls of the Quinalt dead were safer in that jumble, that endless maze, offering doors and taking them away with the next mismatched line of Masons? They were mistaken.
The little codex talked of a hell of punishment, too, for the wicked. Was that, instead, what the lines supplied?
Uwen came in at last, rain-damp, as a murky sunset stained the sky beyond the windows.
And from some small commotion in the servant’s quarters, flush-faced servants under Tassand’s command brought in an especially fine supper for him and for Uwen, food Tassand said was from the king’s feast downstairs, especially the ham, which Tassand highly recommended, showing him into the little hall with a flourish.
“Have we leave to take these things?” he wondered. His staff was zealous for his sake. But he well knew how his servants were concerned, indignant, even, for his sake, that theirlord was not welcome in the king’s hall, and Tristen had at least a niggling suspicion that Tassand might have done something desperate and daring and treading on the edge of the king’s good grace—certainly that of the king’s kitchen.
Somehow Tassand failed to answer his question, and several of the servants were a little the worse for ale, but they all seemed very happy. They spread the little table at twice its ordinary length, set more oak leaves about the dishes (perhaps some captured from the window ledges or searched out of the yard: no oaks grew on the height of the Guelesfort), and brought in a fair supply of festive braided bread thickly topped with poppy seed, intricate constructions which he found almost too delightful to eat.
Uwen, however, showed him how when he was a boy (strange to think!) they had used to unbraid the bread as they ate it, and how one braiding meant prosperity and how another meant long life, and how one was for a good harvest and why they baked a whole apple into one kind of bread.
“So’s there’s plenty all year long,” Uwen said.
“And does it make it sure?” was his question. It seemed to him it was a good start, at least. And Uwen unbraided a bit of poppy bread and wrapped it about a bit of ham as a new muttering of thunder foretold rain on the celebration outside.
“Sure’s anything in this world,” Uwen said, as from the servants’ quarters there was an occasional burst of undecorous merriment and a hissing of hush, hush, hush, as Tassand and the staff brought out the next course.
It was not the dancing he regretted, which might not now take place in the square, if the rain that spattered the glass fell much harder. It was not the feast in the great hall he regretted, where Cefwyn and Ninévrisë would be; thanks to his servants their food was as fine. But he could easily grow melancholy this evening, remembering with fondness his days in Amefel. He knew he had no business feeling sorry for himself. He had a fine supper, the regard of his staff, the favor of the king… but on thinking of the ladies, the bright-gowned ladies, who glittered and flashed so beautifully in the candlelight as they danced, he began thinking of the festivities downstairs and imagining the music he could not hear—remembering how on such a remarkable evening in Amefel a lady had come to him, the darkly reputed duchess of Amefel herself.