Plenilune (19 page)

In silence they watched the head of the long cavalcade make its way over the bridge and pass out of sight among the lower levels of Lookinglass. The cavalcade continued trailing out of the beech-woods and over the bridge. Margaret saw one horse shy wildly as a gust of wind, wedged down hard along the side of the fell, sent a long spray of water out from the fall across the arm of bridge stonework. She held her breath but the rider got his mount under control, nothing was upset, and no one was sent over the edge.

”It will take more than water to wash Gro FitzDraco off a horse’s back,” said the blue-jay man. ”Three riders there are in all Plenilune no other man born of woman can match—”

Flicking a look upward, Margaret found the blue-jay man gazing down at her again, as though she were a child, as though he were at any moment expecting her to give back the answer to some question he had asked.

”—Lord Gro FitzDraco of Orzelon-gang, my own Lord Skander Rime, and Dammerung War-wolf.”

Something swift and bright and awful passed across the manservant’s face, something which at once chilled her and fired her blood. ”Will we meet the third here come this evening?” she asked.

The look passed—clouded by thought or shadow, she could not tell—as the blue-jay man turned away. ”Nay, my lady, unless you have passage through the gates of horn.” He was silent a moment longer, while she stared bewilderedly at him. ”The War-wolf has run his last. He runs no longer.”

And it did seem as if a shadow had passed over them, for the fire went out of her blood and the wind seemed chill, chillier than ever; she pulled her shawl close, but what good was a shawl when one’s spirit was suddenly benighted?

With an upward flutter, as if to rouse her and himself from gloomy thoughts, the blue-jay man raised both arms, one out to nearly rest a hand on her shoulder, the other pointing away over the garden and lower curtain walls.

”I see a neighbour of yours. Sure as I am that is Malbrey.”

Margaret leaned over the wall. ”He, there? The one on the cream-gold horse?”

The blue-jay man nodded.

She watched the distant individual that was coming out of the beech-wood and following after Mark Roy’s train across the bridge. From that height and distance she could not possibly discern his face, nor make out much of the features of his clothing save that he seemed to be wearing armour, but she had a vested interest in him ever since Rupert had mentioned his old Manor. She had liked the Manor with a liking that hated, and while the liking-hatred still wrestled inside her she wanted the man who held the place to be a good sort of man. She felt intuitively that the odds were not in the Manor’s favour.

”Is it that you know the man?”

She jerked back from the edge, realizing how close she was to the drop. Skander’s manservant was looking at her expectantly.

”No?” he queried gently. ”It is just the wind, then, that brings the angry colour to your cheeks.”

”Yes,” she murmured, turning away. ”It is only the wind.”

Malbrey passed out of sight and after him came two other neighbours, landowners from the south of Marenové House whom Margaret had never heard of before, and whose names she promptly forgot. But she was interested when a rider in red livery came through, quite fast, and the blue-jay man grew disdainfully quiet for a few moments, watching him. Margaret watched him too, as he skirted the metalled road and tore past the other caravans, plunged in through a flock of sheep, and disappeared out of sight in the lowest terrace.

”He must think very well of himself,” she remarked.

The blue-jay man laughed mirthlessly. ”Oh, he does. And come not long I will have to long-suffer his well-thinking of himself. That is Lord Bloodburn’s man, riding as the vanguard to make sure we know he is coming.”

”Lord Bloodburn?” She turned sharply upon him, frowning.

Even his smile was mirthless. ”
That
is a name you know, by the look of your face. Lord Bloodburn is a close friend of my lady’s lord. Hol is beyond the Marius Hills—some dales beyond. Likely as not he came up with Darkling; we should see them presently. There,” he added, ”is Hol himself.”

In a tunic of red and a cloak of sullen thunder-colour Lord Bloodburn emerged from the beech-wood. He had a woman beside him on a grey palfrey, but Margaret could not distinguish any features, only that she was blonde and wrapped up in some kind of grey fur so that she appeared to be attached bodily to the horse. The man himself sat like a rock in the saddle, the horse moved with trained precision, and the whole image gave Margaret a strange prickling feeling along the bare parts of her skin.

”It is an ill name,” she remarked with a carefully flippant air.

”It is an ill face,” rejoined the blue-jay man.

With a sudden abandon she threw back her head, giving a soundless laugh at the manservant’s frank improprietous comment. ”For shame,” she said.

He folded his blue wings behind his back. ”Is it? Sure as I am it is true—and my Lord Skander made me promise to get a laugh or two from you, for your health’s sake.”

She nodded. ”And that is very considerate of your master, I am sure. Who is this now—Darkling?”

A gentleman-looking fellow in aquiline gold and brown rolled at a canter from the woods, standard-bearers flanking him sporting smart yellow and green pennants. The wind of their going made the pennants look like the flame-work of leaves in spring.

”Centurion of Darkling-law,” said the blue-jay man, leaning close, ”politely behind Bloodburn though he has rights enough to be first. He is a good man, Centurion, and a seasoned warrior.”

”Is that the measure of a man?” asked Margaret with a faint edge in her voice. She watched the figure of the neighbouring lord drawing closer. A numbness, a disinterestedness, was stealing over her.

The blue-jay man, having straightened with his arms still tucked behind the small of his back, said nothing, though his brows looked askance, and for some time he seemed to respect the distance to which she had withdrawn inside herself.

You would be a queen,
she thought,
and you would be cold
.

She stood on the open parapet, the wind making a flurrying brown-and-tawny figure of herself, watching from aloft as the broken trails of horses and their dusty riders made their way across the bridge and through the levels of Lookinglass. Already Mark Roy was entering the gate on the terrace below them, his train much smaller than before, having shed at various levels his retainers which would not be honoured with entrance to the House itself. His purple and gold, splintered by the bare boughs of the garden trees, flickered peacock-like back at Margaret from below. His horse, a masked creature, leggy and of great height, pranced up the garden path; the
ta-ta-tock ta-ta-tock
of its hooves on the cobbles was a warm, persistent sound in an atmosphere which trembled with chaotic noise. Once out of the overhang of trees Margaret saw it give its head a mighty shake, antlers and tassels flying, caparison snapping like purple wings, and it belled furiously as only a stallion can bell.

From within the courtyard came the answering scream of another horse, tell-tale defiant, and the blue-jay man laughed as if he knew the joke in the horse-language.

”Unhappy Altai-tek,” he said, grinning down at Margaret as they turned to watch Mark Roy enter the yard.

Even Skander Rime’s horse, she mused, was inhospitable. Now the sun was in her eyes and she had to cup her hands over her brow to see. Below them the train was filing in, unusually tidy, each rider pulling his or her horse up in three smart lines before dismounting. In all Margaret counted nine: Mark Roy, someone who appeared to be his wife, their manservant and maid, and five men of soldierly bearing she guessed held land for the Lord of Orzelon-gang.

She pulled her shawl tight cross-wise over her chest and wore her chin high, wishing keenly that she were a mere falcon on the blue-jay man’s fist. Sketched against the skyline, it would take nothing for one of those below to turn and see her—and know her. More than anything, save Rupert, she dreaded their censure. Unlike the fox she could not so lightly pass off the opinion of others. She was here for the express purpose of impressing them. She felt small and paper-thin on the parapet, as if the gilt-edged knife of the wind cutting out her figure against the sky might at any moment slip and slice right through her. With everything that weighed on her shoulders it took some effort to keep them rigid.

The blue-jay man’s sleeves fluttered a little with his sudden bird-like movement: his master had come out of the House, stumping good-naturedly down the steps to greet his guests. He was dressed simply this morning, as though he had just been round to the mews and kennels and had not stopped to put on something more formal: the only elaborate piece of clothing he wore was a saffron-coloured cloak, which the wind took and made into an angry leaping flame behind him.

And Rupert? Margaret looked upward at the bulk of House, wondering where he was, and whether or not he was the shadow cast by Skander’s flaming cloak, or the shadow which the flaming cloak drove back. But he was not to be seen.

There was a soft thunder-splutter of talk in the yard. Skander she could hear clearly, but most of the communication was lost in the bustle of horse-boys and horses. Her eye fell on one horse, a grand, skittish thing of dun-colour, a bold stripe of black down its spine, and recognized its rider as one of the three best riders in Plenilune. He was talking in a low tone to one of the horse-boys, so low his voice was completely drowned in the surf-sound of the others, but Margaret could see his gentle, condescending face in profile. He even looked horse-ish, his complexion long and grey and brown-freckled beneath his dark forelock of hair. It seemed the conclusion of the matter was that he would put his mount up himself, though the horse-boy appeared, at the end of the conversation, not at all sure what to do with himself.

The boy was just turning away, and Lord Gro FitzDraco was just attending to his dun, when suddenly he looked up and around. Margaret’s heart contracted in her chest. She did not have time to look away: he knew she had been watching him. He saw her, full in the sunlight, standing overhead on the guardhouse parapet, watching him. His grim horse-ish face showed little emotion, but it did not seem particularly unfriendly. She endured that light, emotionless gaze for almost longer than she could bear before Lord Gro nodded, just once, as though some communication had passed between them, and turned away to lead his horse off.

Why
, she wondered,
do I always feel as though I were in the middle of a conversation between people, a conversation which I can neither hear nor understand, but people seem to assume that I can?

Mark Roy’s attendance was all but squared away by the time Malbrey and his retainer, clattered through the gate. Drawing back against the parapet lest she have another silent interview with a newcomer, Margaret got a good look at the man’s face. He was big, built like a bear, and had a thick beard which was brindled like a badger’s coat. Contrary to his appearance, Malbrey was quiet-spoken: she could not hear what words were exchanged between him and his host when they greeted each other. Contrary to his appearance, he moved dextrously across the yard after dismounting, the
jinkeh-jink
of his metal accoutrements a sweet sound in the hoof-churned air.

Malbrey had barely made it to the foot of the House stairs when Lord Bloodburn’s man came tearing in, dropping his horse to such a halt that it nearly sat down with a startled squeal and grunt, to spring up again, shaking its head as if with embarrassment at such an entrance.

The blue-jay man turned aside to Margaret, hands spread as if to catch up the whole scene within them. ”If my lady would excuse me, I think I must tend to this matter.”

She gestured him off and stood alone on the parapet, listening to the soft scuffling of his boots on the narrow stairs, watching his tall, thin, blue apparition blow across the yard toward the hot-faced manservant from Hol. Even among that press he strode like a heron cutting back the water around his legs: everything seemed to give way for him and wash back together again bewilderedly in his wake.

Alone on the parapet, Margaret turned from the milling scene in the yard to the wind-swept prospect of the garden. Though the light and the colour of the fells were autumnal, winter had nearly got its hold on the garden. The holly trees were in red regalia and the elms, which had been splendid, were bare save for a single blackbird that was trying to sing above the noise. Abruptly it broke off, falling through the air with the military-red cap on its shoulder blurring with a sudden sullen thunder-red of movement on the level just below. Margaret remembered in time that it was Bloodburn; she moved instinctively into the shadow of the guardhouse.

The singsong dog-snarl of the lord’s red clothing trembled through the garden as he came in by the lower gateway and passed at a collected trot up the path. She could not get a clear sight of his face until he was nearly beneath her—his horse seemed to hang a moment in hesitation at the upper gateway—and then she could see as clearly as if they were on level ground, face to face, what sort of face he had. It was a fleeting moment, one in which he was not on guard, and she saw him nearly perfectly as he was. His hair was thin and pale grey, cropped close, his brows thick but pale grey too; his features were all heavily hung, and yet strangely empty, as if they had been big and full once, but time had sucked the life from them and left them cobweb-bare. Scarred, grey, wrinkled and haggard, but with a cold and ruthless spark in his eyes that would make Rupert look warm and rustic, Margaret thought that if Julius Caesar had lived a long life, he would have looked like this.

The inspection passed in a moment, as fast as the sidewise dart of a swallow. No sooner had she seen Bloodburn then Margaret moved on to the grey-shrouded figure at his side. The woman was entirely swathed in wolfskin and no features other than a fine-boned, ivory-coloured face and two long plaits of golden hair showed through. She was beautiful, but in her beauty she seemed oddly lifeless. Margaret, aloft on the parapet, cool and collected, felt a spark of pity in her own cold heart for that cold, lifeless woman.