Count Scar - SA (8 page)

The duke's guards met us at the gates while I stood staring in at the fountains and arbors of the courtyard. "All swords and knives to be surrendered," they told us briskly. "The duke keeps the
peace within his walls."

The half dozen knights I had brought along did not seem surprised and indeed started unbuckling their sword belts immediately, but Bruno and I looked at each other in amazement. I had never
been unarmed in a public place since I was a boy. Well, the emperor did practice something similar on his high feast days, but as a member of his trusted guard I had always been one of those few
who retained his weapons.

"Knives, too," a guard insisted as I reluctantly handed over my sword. The guards were giving out velvet gloves in return, in a variety of different colors and embroidery patterns that I presumed
would help them identify our particular swords later. But I would feel very foolish in the meantime trying to defend my life or honor with a velvet glove.

"Without my knife, how am I supposed to cut my meat?" I demanded.

"Dinner knives will be provided."

Brother Melchior handed over his knife; he of course did not wear a sword. I was interested to note that he thrust the crimson velvet glove he received in return deep in a pocket of his cassock, as
though embarrassed to be seen holding anything so gaudy.

The duke himself came across the courtyard to meet me as soon as we were through the gates. Not all the fountains were running this time of year, but there was a constant background sound of
tinkling showers and a hint of sandalwood essence in the air, masking the cold, dry scents of February. Faint but lively music played somewhere in the distance. The paths between the shrubbery
of the courtyard were not gravel but slabs of marble.

The duke was resplendent in silk and velvet, the pointed toes on his shoes twice as long as the ones the seneschal had hastily bought for me here in town the other day. Around his neck he wore a
wide, tightly pleated ruff; no one had told me anything about the fashion in ruffs. "My dear Caloran!" he cried, clasping my arm. "How delighted it makes me that today you shall become my
man!"

Since the price of Peyrefixade seemed to be swearing myself to a duke I didn't quite trust, I pulled back my lips in an accommodating smile. I noted that Argave himself was wearing a sword.

"I shall introduce you to some of the others before the ceremony," he said, leading me into his hall. Bruno, Melchior, and the knights came behind. Here, too, marble had been used enthusiastically,
pink marble for the floors, with just a slightly rough texture, and green marble for the walls—wherever the walls showed amidst the hanging tapestries—polished until the stone seemed covered
with a layer of glass. Here I spotted the source of the music, a little group of men playing on lute, recorder, and krumhorn. Out-of-season flowering plants stood on small tables throughout the
room, and braziers tucked discreetly into corners warmed and softly perfumed the air. Men and women in brightly colored clothing stood in groups around the room. Most of the men, I noticed,
had velvet gloves thrust in their belts. Light came from glittering candelabra suspended from the high ceiling.

The duke introduced me to a half dozen young women, all of whom wore silk dresses cut much closer to the body and much lower over the bust than anything my sister-in-law had ever worn.

Without my sword I felt awkward and half naked myself. Their smooth white necks were encircled with strands of gold and pearl. All smiled to meet the new master of Peyrefixade and averted
their eyes politely from my scar, but they gave no immediate sign of "flocking around," as my servants seemed to expect they would. None of them were the duke's daughter Arsendis.

And then I saw her on the far side of the room, recognizable at once from her portrait. She was fully grown, perhaps a year or two older, I would have thought, than the age at which a duke would
normally marry off his daughter. Rather than having her curly black hair decently covered—as even the ladies I had just met did—she wore it loose around her shoulders, covered only by a thin
gold net set with tiny pearls.

She was deeply absorbed in conversation with a middle-aged lord, smiling up at him, keeping her dark uptilted eyes intently on his face. A few yards away, looking at the man just as intently but
scowling instead of smiling, was a knight about my age. Arsendis ignored him pointedly. Jealousy, I thought. It looked as though the duke's daughter already had two suitors even without me.

Brother Melchior, at my elbow, surprised me by whispering, "The young ducissa refused the count whom her father chose for her two years ago. Three men so far have been killed in duels over
her."

She left the current suitors readily enough, however, when her father called her, and crossed toward us with a swirl of blue silk, giving a saucy smile over her shoulder to the knight she had been
ignoring.

"My daughter Arsendis, Count Caloran," said the duke formally. "I trust you will welcome him warmly for my sake, my dear."

I went down on one knee—careful not to trip myself on my new shoes' long toes—to kiss her hand gallantly, as Bruno had informed me he had heard southern men used to do when visiting the
countess at Peyrefkade. This put my eyes level with her breasts, very full for a woman so slim, and apparently on the verge of breaking out through the low neck of her dress. Flustered, I scrambled
back to my feet and fixed my eyes on her face.

A definite look of mischief lurked at the corner of her red-painted mouth. Back in the north, only the loose women who welcomed merchant travelers to town or who followed the armies painted
their lips. Amusement glinted in her dark eyes, as though she understood very well why I was flustered.

It did not help that she pressed herself briefly against me, standing on tiptoe to plant a kiss on my right cheek— the cheek without the scar. "Welcome to our home, Count Caloran of Peyrefixade.

We are very glad to have your addition grace our company," she murmured, the polite hostess, then glided away without giving me a chance to answer, to speak again with her middle-aged lord.

For a second I stood stock still, expecting the duke to challenge me for daring such intimacy with his daughter. Bruno would back me up, but I wasn't sure I could count on my knights in a
situation like this, and Bruno and I would not get far opposing steel with velvet.

But Duke Argave only smiled. Perhaps that was how young ladies normally greeted special visitors here in the south. I shook my shoulders, thinking I could get used to this quite easily. My
sister-in-law, I was sure, had never kissed a special visitor in her life. A laugh I had to suppress fought upwards as I wondered just how many times she had even kissed Guibert.

"And I wish you to meet Lord Thierri, husband of the late Countess of Peyrefixade." The duke spoke perfectly easily, but his eyes met mine for a second, narrow with a warning to remember all he
had told me of this man.

"I would be in all ways delighted," I said, trying for the same courtly tone but having it come out more awkwardly than I intended. The duke steered me across the room with a hand on my sleeve,
the hand with the emerald ring. Around us I could catch scraps of conversation in what sounded like the local Auccitan tongue. I really was going to have to learn it.

Thierri, no longer Count of Peyreflxade, turned toward us, and the duke performed the introductions. In a court in which almost everyone was dark complexioned, Thierri had hair red as a fox and
sharp green eyes. His neck ruff was as wide and as elaborately pleated as the duke's.

"Really, the new count?" he said with a hint of a drawl as he looked me up and down. "What a fine jest, my lord Duke! I confess you completely took me in. I had thought this one of the beggars
from the gate dressed up in silks to entertain us, so what a surprise to discover he is instead a scarred soldier fresh from the uncivilized backwaters of the north. Fell in the fire when he'd drunk too
much for his weak head, I'll venture. Is this what you chose to sleep in my bed at Peyrefixade, Argave?"

All conversation around us came to an abrupt halt, though the musicians kept on playing. I closed my fists slowly, looking at the duke from the corner of my eye. If someone in the emperor's
court had insulted me like this, I would have drawn my sword at once—or, if it was someone the emperor didn't want dead, have knocked him down and sat on his chest to pummel him until he
begged for mercy. Both of those alternatives seemed out of the question in this elegant hall.

But he had insulted the duke as well as me, and Argave was waiting to see what I would do. I deliberately pulled out the ridiculous velvet glove I carried instead of my sword and slapped Thierri
across the face with it. The music stopped short, and everyone in the hall seemed to draw a sharp breath together. Thierri winced at the blow but did not retaliate—I was almost sorry he didn't.

"Outside, in the courtyard," I said between my teeth. "There I shall give you one opportunity to withdraw those words."

Duke Argave stepped briskly between us. "First the ceremony, and then dinner," he said loudly. Everyone else in the room was staring at us. But after only a second the musicians found their
place and began again. "I cannot risk losing my new count even before he gives his oaths! But then, if you two hotheads still insist on imperiling the ducal peace of my court, you can walk in the
chill of the outside air until your tempers have cooled." But he gave me a quick sideways look, lifting his eyebrows and the corner of his mouth as though very well pleased.

The ceremony of my allegiance to Duke Argave went smoothly. The duke's capeuanus hovered in the background—his cassock was cut just like Brother Melchior's, though of finer material, and I
guessed that he too was of the Order of the Three Kings—but Melchior himself presented me the relics on which I swore. Bruno and the knights who had been mine for only a week all went on
their knees at my back as I put my hands in the duke's and promised to be his liege man, giving him good counsel and good aid, thwarting his enemies and never turning against him, forsaking
the allegiance of all other lords.

He drew me up then and kissed me on both cheeks, not flinching from the scar. "Thierri's a coward at heart," he murmured in my ear as he turned me around to present me formally to all his
other sworn men.

A separate dining chamber, adjacent to the great hall, had already been prepared, and we all proceeded in. White candles flickered, sending light dancing across silver serving platters. The duke's
chamberlain moved unobtrusively among us, directing each toward the tables chosen for us. I ended up at the high table with the duke and his daughter Arsendis.

Brother Melchior brushed against my elbow again. He seemed able to move quickly and quietly even in a crowd. "I shall not stay for dinner," he said in a low voice. "I have had more than enough
of the duke's court over the years and shall spend the night at the little priory my Order

maintains outside the castle walls." I glanced up and saw the duke's own capellanus at the door, apparently also ready to leave. Melchior started to turn away but then turned back. "Thierri is
deliberately trying to provoke you. Do not give him the satisfaction of it, but turn the other cheek."

Though I was pleased at his concern for me, I was not worried about Thierri. We would both be weaponless out in the duke's courtyard, but I was, I judged, much stronger than he. Instead I turned
my attention to the duke's excellent dinner.

There were as many courses as at any dinner I had ever eaten at the emperor's court, beginning with roast geese, their feathers reassembled around them to make them appear lifelike on the platter,
and proceeding through fried eggs, baked garlic and leeks, lemon sherbet, boiled beef with turnips, roast pork—the meat again reassembled into the body's original shape, a glaze of honey and bits
of lemon peel providing the appearance of skin and bristle and the boar's head itself glaring at us from the end of the platter—milk pudding, spiced honey cakes, and chestnuts.

Arsendis, seated at my elbow, entertained me while we ate with highly moral tales from antiquity, similar to the stories taught me as a boy in the emperor's court, and inquired graciously how I
was finding fife at Peyrefixade. Although she was attentive, there was none of the warmth in her manner I thought I had seen her show to the older lord, but then he was seated just a short
distance away and watching us.

The duke had indeed provided his guests with dinner knives—sharpened only along one side—and even with dinner forks, small versions of serving forks such I had never seen used before, but
which enabled one to immobilize the meat while cutting it, far more gracefully than using one's fingers. The tiny dish from which Arsendis and I dipped salt with our littlest fingers was plated
with gold. There were no dogs under the table or even rushes on the floor, but by watching the duke I discovered that one of the plates was specifically meant for the bones and gristle, removed
regularly by the servants. With each course came glasses of wine, both white and red. By the time the servants were gathering up the chestnut shells and bringing us basins of warm water in
which to wash our fingers, I was full and a little drunk and had almost forgotten Thierri.

But he had not forgotten me. The musicians began playing again out in the great hall as the duke rose to his feet. Several couples hurried at once to begin dancing among the flowering plants. But
Thierri sauntered up to me, his green eyes glittering, and asked, "Are you still interested in accompanying me on a little promenade in the courtyard, Count Scar? Or has this excellent meal
slaked your need to avenge your honor?"