An Embarrassment of Riches (19 page)

“Dear Royal,” he said, and held out a small white-leather pouch. “Something to brighten your spirits, I hope.”

“You’re too good to me, Comes; you have adorned me with riches beyond any other but the Konig himself, and always with grace and courtesy,” she said in Bohemian with a strong Magyar accent. “What have you hidden in here?” She pulled on the silk cords that held it closed, releasing their knot and holding up the pouch so that she could look down into it. “Ah. What stones are these?”

“Amethysts and rubies: three of each, and a single peridot,” he said.

“You’re too generous to me. I don’t deserve such tribute, though I am thankful to you for your generosity.” She handed the pouch and its contents to Milica of Olmutz without a second glance. Again she gazed at Rakoczy, lacing and unlacing her fingers. “They tell me that beyond your pretty gems, you’re to sing to me. Are you going to do that?”

“If it would please you, dear Royal, I will,” said Rakoczy, rising and touching the strings of his lyre so lightly that only the ghost of a sound issued from them. “Tell me what you would like to hear and I will try to summon just such a song for you.”

“That’s most acceptable,” the Konige said without enthusiasm. “You really are most kind to me, kinder than many who would have more cause to want my good opinion and my … I have never been so … I shall not forget you in years to come.” She spoke by rote, her eyes on the middle distance.

“What do you want me to sing, dear Roy—” he began after she had remained silent for some little time.

“Something new!” she said in a burst of brittle petulance that seemed almost on the brink of weeping. “Everyone sings the songs I’ve known all my life. For the love of Hungary, Comes! sing me something
different.
I
know
the Hungarian songs.”

“Would another language than Magyar suffice?” he asked, for he knew songs in all five languages spoken in Hungary.

She laughed once, deeply sad. “Do you know anything from far away?”

Melodies from Pharaonic Egypt, from China, from the Asian Steppes, from Hispania, from the north of Gaul, from Tunis, from Cyprus, from Roma, rang in his memory; he considered them all, trying to decide which would serve the Konige best. Finally he lifted the lyre. “Here is something Greek, from long ago. It was sung in Corinth when I heard it, by a market-slave who said he had it from a country youth.” That had been more than fourteen and a half centuries ago, but the plaintive song remained alive in his recollections. He touched the lyre and began in the ancient dialect of the region:

Morning is coming, the stars vanish from the sky,

The lambs are calling on the hillside and birds waken,

Their songs blending with the bleating sheep.

I will follow the flock through the mountains

To the place where my heart longs to be:

Woe to those who do not know the call of love,

Alas to those who deny the rites of Aphrodite.

Tonight I shall lay with my beloved in sweet grass

And drink the wine of our joy; nothing will keep us

From each other, and nothing will break our happiness

But the lure of sleep and the charms of Morpheus,

My only rival and my greatest friend.

As the last few notes plucked from the lyre’s strings faded, Konige Kunigunde nodded her approval. “That was very pretty, Comes. What did it mean?”

“It was the lament of a shepherd who longs to be with the one he loves. He expects to see his love soon.” He noticed the Konige wince, and he went on as smoothly as he could. “Is there something else you would like to hear?” Rakoczy saw that Imbolya of Heves was bringing him a goblet. “This is most gracious, but it is not my custom, as you know—I do not drink wine. I am sorry to refuse so mannerly a gift, but for those of my blood…”

“So you have told me,” Konige Kunigunde said from her couch. “I was hoping you might change…” She sighed. “Very well, Imbolya, present the wine to Hovarth Pisti, with my thanks for the progress he and his apprentices are making on their tapestry.”

“Dear Royal,” said Imbolya with a courtisy. She carried the goblet to the four men in the far corner of the pavilion.

Konige Kunigunde looked up suddenly, her face brightening for the first time. “Can you sing me a children’s song, one I have never heard?” She pointed to Rakoczy. “You say you have traveled a long way and learned many things. Surely you must know a children’s song?”

He knew several, but he took a little time to answer. “I know one from the Eastern Realms that might please you.”

“Then play it for me, Comes.” She stretched and did her best to smile at him. “If I like it, you may teach it to me.”

“As you wish, dear Royal.” He ducked his head, positioned his lyre, then began in the Chinese of the Old Capital, of seven centuries past:

One rat, two cups of rice

One hen, two eggs to brood

One dog, two lambs to guard

One fish, two flies to catch

One pig, two wallows to lie in

One horse, two apples to eat

One man, two sons to follow him

Happiness is everywhere.

“What does it say?” the Konige asked when he moved his lyre aside. “It sounds like nonsense to me.”

“It is a counting song,” said Rakoczy, aware that several of the courtiers inside the pavilion had disliked the unfamiliar Chinese melody.

“What manner of tongue was that?” asked Pader Stanislas, approaching Rakoczy. “Why did you sing such a dreadful thing to the Konige?”

“It is a song for children in the city of Lo-Yang, in distant China.” He thought back to the Year of Yellow Snow and all that had happened during his return to the West in that desperate time, and how few children had wanted to sing during those hard years.

“It isn’t Christian,” Pader Stanislas pronounced, and turned toward Kunigunde. “You should not ask for such entertainment, dear Royal. You do not know what is being said. Foreign songs could open your soul to the devils that every day seek for ways to ruin Christians.”

The Konige crossed herself. “I hadn’t thought a children’s song, no matter where it came from, would be so dangerous.”

“You have only his word that it is a children’s song. It might be anything from a curse to a spell, since only he can tell you what it says.” The priest glowered at Rakoczy. “Konig Bela exiled you to the Konige’s Court for some serious reason. I believe it would be fitting to learn what it might be.” He lifted his head, his ragged beard standing out from his chin like an accusing finger. He sighed explosively. “I may have to make inquiry.”

“You may do as you like,” said Rakoczy, “but I swear to you on my … on my soul, that the song was nothing more than a children’s song.”

“A potent oath,” said the priest, measuring Rakoczy with his eyes, seeking for flaws. “If you have endangered your soul in this oath, then it will be the worse for you when the Last Trumpet sounds.”

One of the dwarves, a squat man of possibly twenty years with short black hair and a hooked nose, came up to Pader Stanislas. “Your pardon, Pader,” he said with a deep bow; his speech was flavored with the accent of Antioch. “I have traveled with jugglers from China, and their children sang just such a song.”

Pader Stanislas regarded the dwarf suspiciously. “Do you swear by the Holy Trinity that you speak the truth?”

“By the Holy Trinity, by the Cross, by my hope of Heaven, I swear,” he said, his face angled up so that Pader Stanislas could see him clearly as he crossed himself.

“I must be satisfied, then, and I thank you for your vow. You have done a charitable act in telling me,” Pader Stanislas declared, giving the dwarf a severe look. “I will accept that the song was free of malign intent, and that it poses no harm to the Konige. There is a severe penalty for false witness, and if I should learn that you dishonor Our Lord…” He left the threat hanging and looked from the dwarf to Rakoczy. “And, Comes, see that you sing no more songs to the Konige that are not in Magyar, Bohemian, or Latin.” He made the sign of the cross over the dwarf but did not bless Rakoczy; returning to the small table next to the largest brazier, he pointedly ignored the foreigner.

“Thank you, Tahir,” said Rakoczy softly in the Antioch dialect.

“I am glad to be of service,” said the dwarf, turning away.

“Did you really travel with Chinese jugglers?” Rakoczy asked him before he moved off.

The dwarf laughed aloud. “No. But that kind of sing-song melody with much repetition is in children’s songs everywhere.”

Overhearing this foreign exchange, Pader Stanislas was rigid with disapproval. “More curses,” he exclaimed.

“Not curses, good Pader,” said Rakoczy. “That is the tongue of the city of Antioch.” He bowed to the juggler. “Tahir does me honor to converse with me in so elegant a language.”

Pader Stanislas folded his arms. “I am going to pay close attention to you, Comes. You are too knowing.”

“As you wish,” said Rakoczy with a fleeting smile.

“Foreigners can be dangerous,” Pader Stanislas said.

“So they can, as can those native to this place,” Rakoczy said, feeling more isolated than he had felt since he returned from the Land of Snows, more than fifty years ago. As this desolation went through him, some portion of it must have showed in his eyes, for Pader Stanislas leaned toward him.

“How have you been touched by retribution? Is that what makes you so haughty in your ways?”

“Not in the way you suppose.” He paused, recalling SGyi Zhel-ri in the distant Yellow Hat Bya-grub Me-long ye-shys lamasery. “In my recent travels I met a most learned youth, a boy who appeared to possess great knowledge and compassion. He had much wisdom.”

“A holy child?”

“A monk,” said Rakoczy, careful not to fall into the doctrinal trap Pader Stanislas was setting for him.

“Ha.” The priest shook his head. “Vanity, it is vanity to suppose that any child but Our Lord could have those attributes.”

“I said appeared to possess. I do not know enough of faith to judge these things.” He averted his gaze and saw that Konige Kunigunde was weeping. “Your pardon, Pader, but I believe the Konige needs—”

“I will attend to Konige Kunigunde,” Pader Stanislas announced. “Such grief requires Christian care, and the consolation of religion.” He went to the Konige’s couch, his hands clasped in the anticipation of prayer. Everyone in the pavilion watched him silently as he knelt down. “My Konige. Tell me what causes you to weep?”

It took the Konige a little time to gather her thoughts. “Erzebet died. I should have been the one. Why did God take her and leave me to this misery?”

“God does not give us to know all His reasons, just as a father does not tell his children his reasons for his rules; acquiescence is required of us, His children, though His purpose may be beyond our understanding.” Pader Stanislas blessed her. “My daughter, my Konige, you must not doubt that God’s Will is in all that happens. God has claimed your lady-in-waiting. You have a second daughter, though you sought a son, yet it is essential that you submit to His mission for you. Your daughter will show her purpose in time. For now, resign yourself in true faith to your circumstances, for it is fitting that you are obedient to Him.”

Konige Kunigunde continued to cry. “I cannot, Pader; I ask God to restore me to contentment, but He has not answered my prayers.”

“This melancholy is a sin, Konige. It shows that your faith is in danger of failing. I exhort you to restore your piety before you endanger your immortal soul.” He rose to his feet, although she had not given him leave to do so. “Your obstinacy will bring about your damnation if you cling to your perversity.”

Rakoczy watched the two, growing appalled at the eager excitement in the courtiers’ faces. So many of them would rejoice if Kunigunde were declared a heretic. He knew that if he interrupted Pader Stanislas’ incitation, he would find himself under more intense scrutiny than he had been before. After a moment, he began to play the
Pie Jesu
on his lyre, the sound so quiet that at first it was barely audible.