That Way Lies Camelot (14 page)

'The pigs take the knife better when you're there, Trionn,' the butcher reproached gruffly. 'You want them not to suffer. Well, if they're held still, the cut is fast and clean.'

But it was not at all the matter of the pig's dying; had Trionn been asked his own wish, he would have let the animals stay alive. His oversensitivity was no simple affectation. Where others in Silverdown's service might lament upon the waste, and curse the Lord's lavish feasting that saw a surfeit of scraps thrown to the hounds, Trionn woke up each night in cold sweats, apologizing in half-smothered whispers to the dead beasts needlessly sacrificed.

Today's pig would haunt his dreams no less for the fact he had not bloodied his own hands.

Left at last to his duties, Trionn hauled water to the washtub and started to work the dirtied pots. Cats curled around his feet, knotted together in contentment, while the speculative gossip of the servants came and went through the rattle of plates and crockery.

Enith, as always, was most outspoken. She did not sigh over her new romance with the war captain, but turned sharp-tongued invective against the master. 'Chased the linen maid as if she wasn't married, and never mind the tart he worships in his next breath is this highborn daughter of a duke.'

'She may well be Silverdown's next Lady,' interrupted the page. 'You should be careful what you say of her.'

His comment was ignored.

'She's small, and no beauty, it's said. All dark hair and wide eyes, and hips too narrow to bear a child.' This from the cook, who had a brood of eight, and his wife once again near term.

'Never mind looks,' the butcher ventured his opinion. 'It's the lass's dowry that's at issue. She'll bring three chests of gold to her bridegroom, and if we're to have candles for the dark nights this winter, better all of us pray Silverdown wins her.'

Trionn reached for another pot, and a gob of wet sand for scouring. Behind him, watched by the lazy eyes of his cats, the Lord's steward hurried in, looking harried. 'Another five bottles of the red wine, and quickly, before there's trouble.'

'Man's brought his horsebreaker to table,' the cook grumbled. 'Those kind always drink.' He wiped greasy hands on his sleeves. 'Enith, take down the lantern and go for more red!'

'Been to the cellar twice already tonight,' she howled back. 'More big spiders than bottles left, that's certain.'

'No help for that.' Still mournful, the cook added, 'Do you suppose the horsebreaker's here to handle that murdering dun stud? If so, he'll want the wine. It's the last drink he'll have before he's dead.'

The pageboy took umbrage at this. 'Khaim's better than that. I once saw him break the neck of a colt who tossed him. Hit it a blow that knocked it sideways, and it couldn't stand up afterward.'

'No man's that strong,' the cook objected over the creak of the hearth chain as he dragged a kettle off the fire.

'Horse had to be a weak, spindly thing, maybe,' ventured the butcher.

The page insisted not.

Trionn let his scouring sand sink to the bottom of the wash water, sickened all over again. Though he strove over the noise and the chat to picture the stallion at his flat, free run across the meadow, instead he was poisoned by visions: of blood in the grass and the air split by a scream that might have been a woman's. Except that a horse in agony will make the same shrill sound. Trionn doubled over and shivered.

A hard hand cuffed him back upright. 'Get back to washing, boy,' snapped the cook. 'There's barely a clean pot in the rack yet.'

Half dizzied, Trionn groped for a ladle. His hand stopped still in midair. He could not touch the gravy that seemed suddenly the same color and sheen as congealed blood, nor could he look at the wash water clinging to his skin, so much did it shine like salt tears. The cook saw his stupefied pallor, and cuffed him all the harder.

'Oh, no, lazy boy. Though you're sick clean down to your boot-tops, you'll stay and scour, until all this stack of washing is done and dry.'

Trionn nodded dully. Midnight came. The lanterns and candles all burned down, leaving darkness cut only by the struggling wick of a tallow dip. Alone in the cavernous kitchen, he finished his appointed chores. When he stumbled out at last to find his cot, the mists had hidden even the moon.

* * *

Banners snapped, and dust blew. The new Lord had invited two friends and all of his companions at arms to watch the dun stallion's breaking. Once again Trionn had shirked his part in the slaughter pen, since a calf roast was to finish the occasion. Hidden in the crowd of Silverdown's servants, he stood in cap and apron, only one cat by his shins; the commotion had driven all but the
boldest and most determined tom
away.

The stallion on whom all this interest centered galloped the far fence line, ears tripping backward and forward, and nostrils distended in deep-chested snorts of alarm. Trionn could not watch him. He could not be as the others, and admire the glossy silver coat, nor the high, black tail that cracked like a flag in the wake of his thundering run. Trionn could not bear the sight of the creature's eye, rolling white, nor could he forget the dreams that had repeatedly broken his sleep: of blood in the grass, and the stallion's ringing neigh of distress.

And yet, unlike the dragging of animals to the butcher's knife, here, he could not be absent. Tormented by a sickness of fear that ate at his spirit from within, he could not run, but only stare down at the worn-through leather of his boot toes, his shoulders as hunched as though he expected a beating; as if he carried upon them a burden that could bend and break, as finally and carelessly as grass stems were trampled under the feet of today's thrill seekers.

The scullion knew when the horsebreaker climbed the fence by the scream of the dun stallion's challenge; second and without importance came realization that the onlookers had ceased conversation, even the cordwainer's apprentice, who was said to jabber in his sleep. The slap of a rope shaken out of its coil reached Trionn's ears, eerily and evilly distinct over the drumroll of the stallion's charge. The scullion bit his lip. He felt through his feet the shake of the ground, and his sensitized nerves seemed to shudder at the step of the man who paced the greensward, eyes narrowed and line poised to toss.

The stallion came on like thunder, like storm. The crowd sucked in a taut breath. The horsebreaker poised with slightly bent knees, admiring, though his life stood endangered. He was confident when the dun snapped up short from his run and towered into a rear. The man's hand on the rope did not tremble as black forelegs raked out to strike. He tossed his loop then, supremely, recklessly sure that his lifetime of skill would not fail him.

The throw missed.

Too fast for the eye to follow, the loop collapsed in a whipping slide off the stallion's knee as his head snaked down, and he whirled.

Not off his guard, nor yet shaken, the horsebreaker shouted and snapped the rope. This horse, like a thousand others, would be bound to shy from any movement, half
-
seen where equine vision was obscured by the length of his muzzle. Stallions could be predicted. Their forehooves came down, then their head, with ears pricked to assess the threat to their footing; the shy ones would often whirl and run.

The dun stud twisted instead. He landed, still spinning, his ears pinned flat. The horsebreaker shouted to drive him back to a gallop, his hands swiftly reeling in rope. But the stud had done with running. His silver-blue quarters bunched, and one hoof flashed back in deadly perfect accuracy to hammer the man where he stood.

Bright blood flecked the green grass. The horsebreaker lay unmoving, while a woman screamed, and men on all sides started shouting, most jostling back from the fence, but others pressing forward. The stud danced a half pirouette, some swore, in celebration of his unholy victory. The grooms and the stable hands disagreed; the horse was a killer, but not so driven by rage that he ever once stopped thinking. The blue dun was far too crafty to mire his pasterns in a corpse or a tangle of rope.

Solitary, unmoved to any human commiseration, Trionn crouched with his hands laced over his face. He alone had not exclaimed in shocked sympathy as the Lord's men reached beneath the lower rails, and dragged the horsebreaker's body beyond reach of further mauling. The victim was wounded beyond solace, if not immediately dead, and the tears of Silverdown's scullion were shed only and completely for the horse.

His terror-inspired visions did not leave him. There was blood on the grass, but a man's, and the beast's, for a surety, must follow.

* * *

The talk in the kitchens after sundown encompassed nothing else. Trionn scrubbed his pots in his corner, and took no solace from the cats, who were thicker than usual about his feet. They might not have speech, but as he did, they could sense when trouble was afoot.

Enith was shrill in her complaints, as she tapped chilled butter from the molds. 'What if the Lord sends his captain to do the killing? Waste of a fine piece of manhood, did that happen, and our champion took a kick like that horsebreaker.'

'Won't,' grunted the butcher, who recalled just short of a mistake that the cook would run him out for spitting in contempt on the floorboards. 'The captain's a bastard for pride. He'd scarce soil his sword on a job better suited for my flensing knife. Though, mark, if
I'm
asked to cut that devil creature's throat, I won't, unless he's tied down.'

'Who's to tie him,' Enith snipped back. 'No man but my captain has the courage.'

'Your captain?' muttered a stable hand, in to grab dinner between seeing the guests' horses harnessed. 'Man's owned by nobody, least of all any one lass. He tumbles anything in skirts, every chance he gets.'

His muttering tangled with the voice of the cook, who offered, 'T'were mine to say, I'd use poison. Why take chances, when a bit of tainted feed dumped over the fence could do the job just as well?'

The Lord's page overheard, as he entered with an emptied platter. 'The horse won't be killed,' he called clearly. 'He's much too valuable for that.' Heads turned, all wearing hostile expressions, except Trionn's; he stared fixedly at his hands, immersed to the wrists in grease
-
scummed water, while the cats butted heads against his ankles.

'The Lord has already decided,' announced the page in crisp arrogance. 'He's sent for a gypsy horse-caller. It's broken for saddle he wants that stud, not dead.'

The cook slammed his cleaver upon the cutting board. 'Magic,' he said in contempt. 'Where's the coin to pay for such? Gypsies with the caller's gift come dear.' His thick, sure hands did their task slowly as he heaped steaming meat on the platter the Lord's page held ready.
i
t's the girl he wants to impress.' Enith sniffed. 'Silverdown will be beggared ere his Lordship wins her.'

'That's not your trouble,' the Lord's page sniped back, out of sorts because he was no longer entrusted to wait upon his master's table. With Duke Tanemar's daughter expected to accompany her father when the stallion was presented as a gift, the Lord had borrowed a page of higher station, and presumably more refined manners, from his brother's household in Tanley. Appointed to serve the lower hall until a gypsy could be found to tame the stud, the displaced page made his resentment felt at every opportunity. Only Enith was exempt, since the boy yet held out hope he might win her favours from the captain; to any who would listen, he bragged that soon it might be he who tumbled her in the hayloft over the barn.

Crouched over the washtub until his hands shriveled and his cuticles chapped and split from the unending mess of dirtied kettles, Trionn reflected sourly that he lost nothing from his disinclination to speak. What were words after all, but winds that blew here and there to no purpose? The cats had better sense, to express their contentment through purring. They yowled only for misery, and met daily disaffection in dignified, unblinking silence.

The slaughtering continued the next afternoon, yet Trionn was excused. The master commanded, and for fear of his Lordly displeasure, every servant not required for other duties set to work in the sun, pulling out briars by hand. Trionn was given the noisome task of raking dirty rushes from the hall. The wooden boards underneath were to be sanded and cleaned. Enith, between frequent sniffs, claimed carpets were sure to follow. When the last wheelbarrow filled with beetle-infested straw was carted out, Trionn set to with sand bucket and rags. As cats scattered back from the spatter of his scrubbing, he reflected that Enith was spiteful. The rushes had been spread at the behest of a lazy house servant, and only after sickness had confined Silverdown's doomed cripple to his bedchamber. The floors before then, back to the old Lord's rule, had been shiningly kept oiled.

Trionn was still at his work, mopping up sand in the shadows of a back corner, when the gypsy horse-caller arrived. She proved to be a woman, to the surprise of all; tiny, raven-haired, and wearing a patched mantle of greens and browns that might have been pilfered from a minstrel. The tassels at the hem were worn to a ragged motley of threads, and though her hair was braided and clean, her skin was the ocher of mud baked dry in the sun.

Trionn recognized her gift when the cats at his heels fled her presence. Silent as shadow, they stalked off in stiff-backed irritation. The scullion watched their retreat. A chill brushed his skin; as if he, too, sensed the power over beasts that this gypsy sorceress could command, and his spirit raised hackles in protest. The hounds did not run. Fickle creatures that they were, bred over generations to subservience, they converged in a pack of wagging tails, tongues lolling in canine enthusiasm. They reacted as if the strange woman in her dusty, faded finery had been the mistress they had obeyed since their whelping; as indeed she could be, if she chose. No dumb beasts, and few men, were proof against a gypsy caller's craft. But unlike humans and cats, dogs set small value on independence. Like whores, they flocked in unabashed eagerness around the woman's boots, begging and whining to be dominated.

Trionn threw down his rags, oblivious to the fuss as servants and guests, and at last the Lord himself took loud-voiced notice of the intruder. The scullion unseen in his corner did not follow the woman's words as she announced herself, but heard only the silvery timber of her voice. The pitch set up echoes inside him that no amount of clamor could still. He saw courtiers eagerly joining the circle of dogs, who were now belly down and begging. Yet Trionn's senses gave back false sight. In place of hounds and gentlefolk, his mind could not throw off the vision of the silver-dun stud with his grand neck bowed in submission.

Sudden tears stung Trionn's eyes. His stomach heaved. The blood on the grass had not been the horse's; better by far that it had been. The Lord who had died a cripple had insisted many times that death held the keys to final freedom.