Lara (9 page)

“I see,” Lara said. This was the most amazing new world she was about to enter.

The trumpets sounded with a grand flourish, and they all turned their eyes to the arena. A dozen trumpeters in red and gold livery, the sun gleaming off their shining brass instruments, were standing at the knight’s entrance to the exhibition area. Several Crusader Knights and the new candidates galloped forth and did mock battle before the delighted crowds. When they had finished, a parade of the high officers of the Crusader Knights entered led by the Grande Knight. The five men who would be knighted this day and their opponents joined the great procession. Around the circuit they rode to the cheering of the crowds gathered.

Lara, Susanna and little Mikhail clapped wildly as John Swiftsword passed them wearing his fine armor. His horse was caparisoned in green and gold, and several ribbons of the same color flew from his lance. Finally the procession came to a halt. The knights all dismounted, their horses held by young pages. The Grande Knight took his place upon a raised dais, and each of the new knights came forward one at a time to kneel before him. They were bareheaded as they knelt, and each man clearly recited the oath of loyalty to Hetar before the Grande Knight tapped them with his sword of honor, and raised each one up to present the new member of the Crusader Knights to the citizens gathered.

Four of the men were known to come from Crusader Knight families. John Swiftsword, however, received the loudest cheers, for he was the everyman who had overcome obstacles to gain his rightful place among this high order of warriors. He was a popular hero today, and his companions were happy to allow him his moment. Each of the other men was secretly glad he had not been fighting on the first day of the tournament, for none of them was certain that they could have prevailed over John Swiftsword. He was a great asset to their group, and when it had become known that he was prepared to apply for this tournament the leaders among them had been greatly pleased, and were prepared to welcome him. It was not by accident he had fought the first day of the tournament.

The tournament was now officially over, and the crowds began to stream out of the arena and through the Tournament Gate which would, when all had reentered the City, be closed again for another three years. Lara told Gaius Prospero that she could easily share Susanna’s litter with her baby brother. “I do not need to be paraded into the Garden District before all. Some of the knights might one day come to my Pleasure House, and it could prove embarrassing for them, and for my father.”

He nodded understanding. “You will want to spend your last few hours with your family alone. I quite understand, my beauty.”

Susanna was quiet as the litter made its way through the gates, and toward the Garden District. Mikhail had fallen asleep in Lara’s lap, the slight rocking motion of the litter lulling him into slumber. “This is all a dream, but I hope I never wake up,” Susanna finally said. “I cannot believe that I am not returning to our hovel, but to a beautiful house with a real garden. My sisters will be so envious of me. How they mocked me when I prepared to wed your father, scorning him because he was a humble mercenary. Now they shall see! He has risen high, and I with him.”

Lara laughed. “Why, stepmother,” she said, “I have never seen this side of you!”

Susanna grinned back at the girl. “They were very mean, Lara. They never saw what a good man your father was. The matchmaker gave me the choice of three men, but I wanted only your father. They said a mercenary would amount to naught.”

“Do you love my father?” Lara wondered aloud.

“I do!” her stepmother said enthusiastically.

“I’m glad,” the girl replied. “It makes it easier for me to go away.”

Susanna sighed. “‘Thank you’ seems like two small words in light of what you have done for your father. For Mikhail and for me. I do not know if you will be permitted to come home once you have been purchased.” She stopped, and then her eyes filled with tears. “It is not fair,” she sobbed.

“Susanna, you are older than I, and should know that life is often unfair,” Lara gently chided her stepmother. “You were wise to suggest I be sold. We will all have a much better life because of it, especially Mikhail. He will never remember the Quarter, or the hovel in which he was born. My father’s soft heart will be the undoing of him but that you are there for him. I am glad for it!”

“I know I am five years older than you,” Susanna said. “But sometimes you seem so much older. Even than your father.”

Lara laughed. “I expect that is my faerie blood,” she said. “I am told they are different from…from…well, you know what I mean, Susanna. Being both faerie and human I have no idea really where I belong. I always thought I belonged in the human world, but now with all this fuss being made over what is called my faerie beauty, I do not know at all where I belong.”

The litter came to a halt and was set down. Immediately the curtains were opened up, and Nels helped Susanna from the vehicle.

“Welcome home, mistress,” he said. “Ove! Take the little master from the girl.”

“The girl,” Susanna said sharply, “is Sir John’s daughter and will be treated with courtesy, Nels. Help my stepdaughter from the litter.”

Grudgingly, the slave man obeyed his new mistress. The girl was known to be half faerie, and would be shortly entering a Pleasure House. Faeries were not to be tolerated. He was glad the girl would be gone on the morrow. He was startled when Lara thanked him for his service, and wondered if she had put a spell on him.

Inside her new house Susanna began giving orders. Her husband would want a bath when he arrived home. They were to begin their preparations immediately. Mikhail was to be bathed at once, brought to her for feeding and then put to bed. Dinner, a simple meal she had discussed with Yera the day before, was to be served in the first hour of the twilight. Wine would be served as well, for they would be celebrating.

The new knight arrived just before sunset. He was slightly drunk, for the order had been celebrating the induction of its new members. His bath was waiting, Susanna ready with her scrubbing brush. Mikhail was already in his bed. Lara smiled at the splashing and laughter she heard coming from the bathing room. From the first day of the tournament when he had won all his matches she had seen a great change in her father. All the weariness and care that had been weighing him down lifted from his shoulders. He looked young again, and in these past months with the scarcity of work he had looked so worried and worn.

Part of Lara was happy that her life was taking this new turn, but another part of her was slightly apprehensive. She was leaving her family. She was leaving everything she had ever known. And for what? The unknown. She would be a vessel for a man’s desires. Men, it seemed, got pleasure from putting their manroot into a female’s body. This knowledge was hardly a secret among girls her age. She had listened, secreting herself about the edges of groups of giggling girls in the Quarter, learning what friends, had she had any, might have shared with her. Susanna had been willing finally to answer all her questions with Gaius Prospero’s permission. Ignorance in such matters was not to be tolerated. Hetarian girls were supposed to be prepared to please their husbands and their lovers.

Finally her father and stepmother joined her in the garden where a table was set up for them to dine. John Swiftsword kissed his daughter’s brow. “I am glad that we can have this evening together,” he said as he seated her at the dining table.

“I have questions that I beg you answer me before I leave you,” Lara said quietly. “Questions about my mother, and my birth. You have never spoken on it, but you must tell me now, Da. Mistress Mildred said things to me today before we left the Quarter, and she told me I must ask you before I could not. Will you tell me?”

“Aye, I will tell you all, but let us have our meal first,” he responded. “And I will speak only with you, for Ilona warned me that should I ever speak of her before another woman I love, that woman would cease to love me, and so Susanna can hear naught of what I would say to you this night.” He turned to his wife.

Lara looked anxiously toward her stepmother.

“I will leave you after the meal,” Susanna promised. “I do not choose to hear of Lara’s mother,” she said. “But nothing you say, John, could make me stop loving you.”

“You do not understand faerie magic, wife” was his cryptic reply.

Nels served them the meal Yera had prepared. They began with a delicate cold soup of pureed peaches and plums topped with sour cream. Next came a salad of baby lettuces and herbs to be followed by a juicy capon that had been roasted golden, and a platter of ham slices as well as fresh warm small breads that had been twisted into graceful shapes. There was sweet butter on the table and a small dish of salt. Salt had always been a rarity in the Quarter. When the fine pottery plates had been cleared away smaller plates were placed before them, and a bowl of fruit was set in the center of the table. Lara had never in her life seen fruit other than oranges. Fruits were reserved for the privileged classes. Nels, to his credit, had explained everything to them as they ate.

The wine in their crystal goblets was sweet, and heady with the aroma of its grapes. Lara felt sleepy, but she forced herself back from the brink, remembering that Gaius Prospero’s people would come early for her, and she must speak with her father before she slept. “Da?” she said softly.

John Swiftsword was looking at his nubile wife, and considering how much he was going to enjoy futtering her in that fine new bed in their bedchamber very shortly. His first act as a Crusader Knight would be to get Susanna with child again. Another son for the order. And then his daughter’s gentle voice pierced his consciousness. “I have not forgotten,” he told her.

Susanna arose from the dining table. Walking around the table she kissed Lara tenderly. “Good night,” she said simply, and left the room. She could not bring herself to say goodbye.

“Let us walk in the garden,” the new knight said to his daughter. “What I have to say is for your ears alone, daughter.” He led her not to the inner courtyard, where someone might have secreted themselves in the shadows of the portico, but rather out into the small walled garden with its apple tree. There they sat upon a rustic wooden bench. “Now tell me what it is you would know, Lara, and I will answer.”

“Begin at the beginning,” she replied. “I would know all.”

“There is really not that much,” her father answered her. “It was shortly after my fifteenth birthday. Midsummer’s Eve. My friends and I were gathered about our fire flirting with the girls we knew, dancing and drinking, and lying about our adventures with those same girls. And then, for the briefest moment, it seemed as if the whole world was frozen in time, and I saw Ilona, standing in the shadows at the edge of a woodland. I remember my mouth falling open. I had never in all my days seen such beauty. The long golden gilt hair. The eyes as green as new leaves in springtime. A body so tempting and lush that I knew she was magic, and I was afraid. Then she beckoned me, and I could not help but go to her. Suddenly I could hear my friends behind me calling me back. I could hear the crackle of the fire, but I could not for the life of me turn away from the vision who called me so sweetly and so silently.

“I reached out to her, and she took my hand in hers, leading me away to her secret bower in the Forest. I should have been afraid, but I wasn’t. I knew the tales of those bewitched, and I had always wondered why they allowed themselves to be taken by the faerie folk. Now I knew. Ilona was utterly impossible to resist. I didn’t care what happened to me as long as I might be with her. You were conceived that very night, Lara. It amused her that I had never known a woman in the fullest sense before. At first she was tender and gentle with me. Then she began to teach me what pleased a lover. Later she said I was the best pupil she had ever had. It was because of my innocence that she let her guard down that night and conceived you.”

“I don’t understand, Da,” Lara said to him.

“Faerie women conceive children only when they want them, Lara. If they do not want them, they do not have them, unlike human women who conceive more often than not when their lovers mount them and spill their seed. Remember that, for I do not know if you have that ability of your mother’s. I pray that you do. I stayed with Ilona during the months in which she carried you. I thought not of the morrow, but only of how much I loved her—and I did, from the moment I laid my eyes on her. I love her still in spite of it all. But I love Susanna, too, and I am wise enough to know I shall never have a love like the one I had for Ilona again. So I content myself with my good wife, and am glad the matchmaker found her for me.

“When I was with your mother, everything I did, every thought I had, was for her and her alone. She consumed me entirely and I did not care what happened to me as long as I was with her. And then you were born. She birthed you quickly and easily, and once she had seen you she lost interest in you. I was stunned, for from the moment you entered the world I loved you. But for Ilona the mystery and the excitement was over. And she began to lose interest in me.”

“Where did you live during this time, Da?” Lara asked her father.

“In her bower in the woodland,” he said. “I can’t really describe it to you, for it seemed to have no walls or roof, but we were warm in the winter and the rain never touched us. Our bed was made of moss and covered in a downy quilt. You slept in a cradle that I made you, which hung from a tree branch.”