A Princess of the Chameln (23 page)

“You know him then?”

“Let it be, child, let it be,” said Prince Ross with a sad tremor in his voice. “I know him. I should know him. He is my bastard son.”

They sat in silence, and when she dared to look at the prince again, he gave her a long smile.

“Choose for yourself,” he said.

She bent forward, staring into the dying fire and considering.

“The messengers,” she said. “They must fly into the Chameln lands and bring comfort to the people. They must tell it far and wide: the Heir of the Firn and the Heir of the Zor are not dead; they will come again, and the Daindru will be restored. And the messengers must visit Ledler Fortress and bring greeting and succor, even rescue, if this is within their power, to Nazran Am Thuven and his wife, the Lady Maren, who lie there imprisoned.”

She said, as an afterthought, “If they still live.”

“You choose very modestly. Is that all?”

“I would send a ring to my betrothed, Bajan Am Nuresh.”

She was cold and sad. It was painful to be known after so long and to send these few poor tokens.

“It will all be done, so far as it lies within the power of the messengers,” he said, “and word will be brought to you.”

“No!” she said. “I must remain . . . invisible, here at Kerrick. I will wait until my own people come to bring me home again.”

She began to tug from her hand a silver ring with a yellow stone, the only one she wore beside Bajan's gold band with the turquoise stones. It was a gift from Lady Maren; she remembered how she had given a similar one, Nazran's gift, to the old woman, the horse doctor, by Aldero, the forest village.

“Wait,” said Prince Ross.

He spoke in Chryian, and the woman, Nieva came in at once. At the prince's word she brought a leather box from a press and went away again like smoke and left them alone. Prince Ross opened the box, and the firelight blazed on the jewels, jewels of Eildon with heavy settings of dark gold, with rubies, sapphires, sea pearls, cairngorms and garnets.

She thought of the jewels of the Firn and of the Zor, treasures that she had never cared for or coveted, the ancient square crowns of gold and bronze lit with huge yellow diamonds and round emeralds, the lake-pearls, beryls, zargons, sardonyx and turquoise, the opals, jade, and lazulite woven into garments, all her birthright of jewels fallen into the hands of Werris and the rulers of Mel'Nir.

“Choose for yourself and for your betrothed,” said the Prince.

“Only for him,” said Aidris, tenderly. “These are jewels too fine for a kedran.”

She stared into the box and found a ring with a band of oak leaves worked in silver set with a black pearl. It fitted her thumb and would be large enough for Bajan.

“You are gifted,” said Prince Ross. “You choose well. That is the ring of Tamir, the Sea Oak Prince, and has a strong link to the Chameln lands.”

“Will you spare me such a treasure?” asked Aidris.

“It is yours,” said the Prince. “It will be sent into the Chameln lands to Bajan Am Nuresh before the new moon. I will charge the messengers.”

The fire burned blue and green. She wondered if time had altered as it had done in the old mill, if she would leave the fireside and find that the whole night had gone. They walked out again onto the balcony and she was glad to see that it was still dark. They were alone; down in the courtyard a few determined revellers still reeled and sang.

“Go well, Aidris Am Firn,” said Prince Ross.

He raised his hands and gave her a blessing in Chyrian.

She ran down the stairs again and came back to Hot Commons. It was the scrag end of the banquet; guests lay about, the tables were disordered, the princes had gone and so had the musicians. She gathered up cold capons, fruit and an unopened stone bottle of good wine and carried them back to the barracks in a cellarer's basket. She put this offering by the pallet where Ortwen snored away and woke in the morning to find that the Varda Benefit was already a legend, a byword for drunken horseplay, rich food, lost maidenheads and every kind of scandalous behavior.

The long Maplemoon was done and the princes were gone indeed, and the whole of Kerrick looked like a banquet chamber when the feast was over. The wheel of the year turned; by the time of the Lamp Lighting the visit was fading into memory. The kedran went about their duties. Telavel took a stone that festered and had to be poulticed by Sergeant Fell, the old horse doctor. Aidris would have taken another mount but Megan Brock sent her into the stores to help with the winter reckoning. She had more free time and sat on the hill and told and retold the story of her meeting with Prince Ross to the scrying stone. The Lady spoke, once or twice, her voice wonderfully clear and distant.

One morning Moss, Gerr's manservant, met her as if by chance at the door of the muster hall and told her she might care to step up to the hall again. She bade him go to the nearest dunghill and roll in it. Yet that same day, Gerr himself burst into the stores, his face white about the lips.

“Venn . . . you must come! She is sick!”

She felt the color draining from her own face and flung down her inventory book and went with him, without asking leave.

“What is it?”

They were passing through the north court and up to the balcony; the newly married pair lodged in the south wing.

“You will see,” he mumbled. “Venn, I . . .”

“Hush,” she said. “I was rude to your man, to Moss . . . I did not know.”

Then they came to a bedchamber. Sabeth lay in the huge bridebed, her red-gold hair spread out upon the pillows, her face whiter than the bed linen. Lady Aumerl stood at the foot of the bed, and there was the midwife from Garth, a tall woman in a green cloak, for the service of the Goddess. The waiting-woman, Therza, wept in a corner, and Genufa held a tray of cordials. Aidris hardly saw them. She felt a hard, rending pain in her chest. She ran and knelt by the side of the bed and took Sabeth's cold hand.

“Are you there?” Sabeth searched her face with a wide wandering gaze. “The forest is dark. It will be lost. It will be lost.”

“I am here. We have come out of the forest. We are in Athron. Gerr is here, your husband.”

“Yes . . . my true knight. . . . Oh Aidris, help me, you are so brave, you went to the witch stone. . . .”

Sabeth breathed deeply and shut her eyes. The midwife, whispering with Lady Aumerl, came and knelt beside Aidris.

“The child was past praying for,” she said. “It is miscarried. We must hope and fight for her life. She answers to you, her friend. Her color is better. You must stay beside her, and the young knight, too.”

“Mother,” said Aidris, “we must use a healing magic. Something stronger than Carach leaves. Is there not a thing called cloak-of-sleep?”

“Wheesht!” The midwife rolled her eyes. “You are well versed. I wonder if these hall folk would allow it, Kedran.”

“Send all away but myself and Sir Gerr. I can find out the charm if you bring me a bleached cloth, newly blessed.”

“Find out the charm?”

“From my scrying stone.”

“Ah, you are Mother Mora's little witch from the old mill.”

Then she saw nothing else but Sabeth's pale face; the room was becoming dark. Everyone had been drawn away by the midwife who sat at the door having handed in a bleached cloth. Across the wide bed knelt Gerr of Kerrick.

“Sir Knight,” said Aidris, “we will do magic, and you must help me. The midwife agrees. It is for her life.”

He could only nod. Sabeth stirred a little and moaned. Aidris turned aside and looked into the scrying stone.

“You see what is played out here,” she said urgently. “Cloak-of-sleep . . . it is in a tale in the book.”

On the table in the stone there lay a doll, a poppet, woman-shaped with a fall of golden hair. The doll was wrapped this way and that in a kerchief and the passes were made over its body. She watched, concentrating with all her might, then turned back and stripped off the bedclothes. She expected the bed to be soaked with blood, as such a bed had once been, but there was not so much. She ran out the cloth and Gerr, teeth set, helped her lay it over and around Sabeth in her stained nightgown. Then she took the scrying stone that blazed blue and made the passes up and down the limbs. She shook Sabeth awake so that she might gaze into the light of the stone; she pressed it to her forehead.

Sabeth uttered one sighing word: “Gerr,” then she was deeply entranced. Her limbs moved, her body in the bleached cloth seemed about to float up off the bridebed. Gerr made a wild sound, like a sob.

“It is the charm taking hold,” said Aidris softly. “See how she sleeps. . . .”

Sabeth's head had turned gently to one side and lay among her golden hair. Aidris bent over and moved the locks away, then drew up a single coverlet. They sat for a long time simply watching her charmed sleep.

“We need not watch so closely,” said Aidris. “Come, Sir Gerr . . .”

She found dark, sweetened wine in a flagon on the mantelpiece. She poured two beakers of it and brought one to him where he stood uncertain in the middle of the chamber, unable to take his eyes from Sabeth.

“Please,” she said, “keep up your strength and your spirits.”

He sat hunched over in a chair by the fire, and she took a chair opposite. Presently he looked up at her, his eyes hard and bright.

“You serve her well,” he said. “You are some kind of witch or healing woman. Venn, we must speak. You must trust me. What is your real name?”

She saw dimly where he was going, and she was angry and afraid, not only for herself.

“I cannot tell you,” she said, very low. “I have told no one. You swore an oath . . .”

“Do you remember?” he said eagerly. “Do you remember what was said that day on the road to the hospice, by the Wulfental?”

“I think I do . . .”

“You will say perhaps that I lied to you, but I did not, I did not. I simply used the form of your question. Venn, I know all . . . I have known from the first. Why, I know more than my dear lady seems to know. Have you put a spell on her to cloud her wits?”

“Stop!”

She put her hands over her ears like a child. She saw his face darken.

“I cannot speak of that time,” she said quickly, “and we must not quarrel. It will disturb the working of the healing spell upon Sabeth. Please, let us be quiet.”

It was a flat lie, a way of putting him off. He settled moodily in his chair, and she did the same, curled away from the fire, watching Sabeth as she slept. She thought of Gerr and his long courtship, of the closeness she knew must exist between married persons. Yet all this long while Gerr had clung to a false belief. Perhaps he had hinted and questioned and explained away Sabeth's innocence.

They sat in silence for some time, and then Gerr called her name and smiled.

“Forgive me, Venn,” he said. “I see that you are bound to play this out to the end. We need your magic. Let us be friends.”

“You will always be my true friends,” she said earnestly. “Pray you, believe it!”

He went on in a dreaming voice to confirm her worst suspicions.

“Prince Ross must know the truth. He called her Golden-Hair, like the Chameln lady who made that unfortunate marriage with the upstart house of Menvir. We received many signs of his favor and indulgence. I might say we have expectations: a title or a manor. He is a generous . . . kinsman.”

She could not look at him. There was no way out of the thicket. It was all her fault. She went to Sabeth's bedside again. The midwife came in and looked at Sabeth and sent Moss to them with a supper tray. They sat up all night, speaking little, dozing in their chairs and building up the fire against the first chill of winter that seeped in from the long gallery.

At last Aidris slept deeply for an hour or two and woke in the thin, grey light of morning. Gerr had measured his length on the settle before the fire and still slept heavily. His face, relaxed in sleep, was fine and young and straight-featured. Perhaps dreams of royal ambition filled his sleep. She knew, suddenly, that Prince Ross would disappoint Gerr and Sabeth; they would get nothing from him.

She went to the bedside, and Sabeth stirred in her constricting cloth and opened her eyes.

“Ah,” she breathed, “you
are
here! He let you come to me at last. I thought it was part of my dream.”

“Are you comfortable? Is there any pain?”

“Not any more.”

She stared at Aidris, and her blue eyes brimmed with tears.

“The child was lost. It was not even half-formed. I was so full of joy, thinking of his child . . .”

“Hush. You are young. The midwife said that you will surely bear more children.”

Aidris poured a sweet cordial and let Sabeth drink from the lipped cup.

“I have had a strange dream,” said Sabeth. “I wonder what it means.”

“Tell me . . .”

“I think it was in the Chameln lands,” said Sabeth in a faint echo of her old “story-telling” voice from the campfire. “I saw three riders upon grey horses. I think they were kedran. They came through a light snowfall and turned down into a deep valley. A small manor house, not much more than a farmhouse, stood in the bottom of this valley; and as the riders came down into the valley, I knew in my dream that the place was called Zerrah. There were lights in the house, and servants came out with torches. They knelt down in the courtyard.”

“There is such a place,” said Aidris softly. “We spoke of Zerrah on the night of your bride-calling.”

“I had forgotten,” said Sabeth. “The dream changed and became happier. We were all in this place, Zerrah—Gerr and I and you were there too, and some others that I loved. It was summer. The valley was full of wild heather.”

“It is a hopeful dream,” said Aidris.

Sabeth drifted into sleep again, and Aidris sat wondering about the dream. It was plain that Zerrah, which she had always thought of as a pleasant spot but not so dear to her as Thuven, was a chosen place. It even explained Gerr's wild talk about the oath that he had not broken in the mountains. She thought of Zerrah and of those others who had stayed there: Sir Jared Wild and his kedran, Mistress Quade. She forced herself to go back to that moment when she, when Aidris, not even a true kedran, demanded of the young knight:
“Did you hear, today, from the troopers, the name or rank of any persons they were seeking?”
And he, not lying, but using the form of her question, replied that he had not. In fact he knew very well who was sought: he had heard it from Sir Jared or from others at Vigrund. He had expected a princess of the Chameln.