The Privilege of the Sword (18 page)

“I’ll tell them, next time someone comes. Do you know how long you’ll be staying?”

It was the first time he had asked.

“I don’t know. I don’t think anyone does. Maybe he has forgotten about me.”

“I don’t think so. He’ll forget you for a few days, ignore you for a month, but he won’t forget forever.”

I had stopped thinking that the duke might send for me and drag me off to yet another life. I did not want to go.

I smothered the fire, while my master waited under the stars. He wouldn’t let me touch him to guide him in, but walked straight over the field, his staff before him to intercept surprises.

In the dark, my teacher saw almost nothing. But he liked the night. He would go out for walks, and return at dawn to sleep. Sometimes I’d wake to hear him practicing, stomps and shuffles and whipcracks of steel, broken rhythms in the night. The first time it happened I crept, frightened, to the top of the stairs with a candle. My master was below, in the dark empty room. He was nearly naked, sweating, spinning and dodging with blade in hand, like someone battling a nightmare. My little flame flung his shadow wild against the wall.

If he heard me he did nothing, just kept on with the attack, high and low, behind and before. I watched him do things I did not know a swordsman could do. I began to see the design, the opponent’s moves that his were counter to. I could never give him a fight like that. Neither, I was sure now, could the swordsmen I’d seen at the duke’s party.

I knew when the death came, a blow straight through the heart. In the pale rays of my candleflame, finally he turned to look up to where I sat. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I wasn’t thinking about you. I’ll try to be more quiet when you’re asleep.”

“Can you see in the dark?”

“Not at all. But night sounds completely different.”

He was quiet and I was quiet, listening. There was no birdsong, only the distant calls of hunting owls, and skitterings of small things in the brush. I almost felt I could hear the daytime creatures breathing their slow sleep in the night.

“May I practice with you?”

“I have the advantage.”

“I know. But you do anyway. It would be interesting.”

He wiped his chest with a towel. “Not tonight, I think. Another time, without a candle, yes.”

And I did that, once the days grew so short there was no light left after supper; standing so still, in the shadowed dark, waiting for him to move out of shadow or for one of the shadows to become him. We practiced with sticks. I never felt him move until he struck. Over and over, until I wanted to cry. My every attack beat off by one of his.

“Listen,” he’d say. “Be still.”

I closed my eyes. I stood still until my arms and legs ached. Then I heard him move.

I cracked him right in the head, and then I had to be sorry and get a cold cloth to put on it.

“Next time,” he grinned, “you’ll find the target. Although…in a street fight you’d be fine.”

“No one,” I said, “stands like a block of ice in the middle of the street after dark.”

“You’ll be surprised, when you get to the city, just what people will do.”

“Tell me about the city, then.”

The master shrugged. “It’s crowded. It smells. There are lots of things to buy.”

I snorted. “I’ve been there,” I said. “I know all that.” But I didn’t know the city, not really. I’d only passed through in a carriage, and spent my days in the duke’s house on the Hill. “Did you like it?” I asked.

“It was interesting.” He always said that about things another person would have strong feelings about. I knew there was a long story in him about the city and that he was hiding it from me.

“I expect I will have a house there someday,” I said breezily. “Perhaps you will come visit.”

“No. I would not like to go there now.” But his calm, sure voice was quiet; he sounded as though perhaps he would.

I repented of my relentlessness. “Does your head hurt very much?”

“Not very much. Help me roll out the bedding.”

The master staggered as he bent over to pull the pallet out. I had to make him sit down. “Oof!” he said, as I spread his bed on the floor. “It wasn’t such a bad knock. It’s funny; I was always sure I’d never live to be twenty-five. This all comes as a surprise, this business of after.”

I had lit a candle, being unable to find things in the dark as he could. In the rich light he looked pale, fine-drawn, neither young nor old. I wanted to give him a strong dose of poppy and make him tell me things before he fell asleep.

I heated some wine on the hearth instead. Twenty-five seemed terrifically old to me. I couldn’t imagine the time it would take to get there, let alone get past it. When I was twenty-five, my whole life would be decided. I’d probably be married, with children; at least, I hoped so. Unless I was killed by a sword, the way he had planned to be.

I put the wine into his hands. He drank it all, but did not ask for more. He wasn’t going to tell me anything. I should have known.

chapter
IV

I
T WAS ONLY A LIGHT FEVER.
A
RTEMISIA
F
ITZ
-L
EVI
had managed to hide it from her family and was now on her way to the Halliday ball, dressed and decorated and dazzling. In the chill of the winter carriage, it was a positive benefit that she felt so hot. The Hallidays were important, their ball was always one of the best of the season, and she was not going to miss it.

When she emerged into the ballroom, her eyes glittering, her face flushed, heads turned to admire her. Young men asked her to dance, asked if they could fetch her a cooling drink. She laughed and flirted with her fan, feeling her head floating high above them all, knowing that she could keep going forever, since if she stopped or sat down for a moment she would collapse. She accepted the dances, accepted the drinks, accepted the compliments and the jealous or inquiring looks of the other nobles’ daughters who were also there to attract a husband of worth.

Seeing that she needed no coaching, Artemisia’s mother had already gone off to find the card tables, her father to find a convivial crew to drink with and observe the gathered beauties. Her particular friend, Lydia Godwin, was traversing the floor with the scion of the house of Lindley, and seemed to be enchanted by the boy. Artemisia looked around for the next arm to take, the next eye to catch. She was relieved not to see the Mad Duke’s nephew, Greg Talbert, anywhere; he had turned out to be a bore after all, despite his ardent admiration and exotic connections. She knew better, now; weeks of experience had taught her that flowery phrases and passionate glances were a minnow a handful. Every man was full of them; it was what came next that mattered. Her eyes darted anxiously. If no one approached her again soon, she would have to make for the haven of Lydia, Lindley or no Lindley; it was beyond impossible for her to stand in the middle of the floor looking as if she had no one to talk to. She bent her head down, carefully adjusted a curl by winding her dark tress around and around her jeweled finger. When she looked up, she was surprised to find her cousin Lucius bearing down on her.

“Cousin!” Lucius Perry kissed her cheek. “My friend Dav has begged for an introduction to the beauty of the evening.”

She thought dear Lucius had had more than a little to drink; that accounted for the rose of his cheeks as well as the fulsomeness of his speech. But young Lord Petrus Davenant was a likely-looking man, with a jaunty eye and nice hair.

“Must all your friends beg you for favors, Lucius?” she teased. “You should be more generous!”

“You note,” her cousin said to Lord Petrus, “she does not demur at being called a beauty!”

“That is because I know how free men are with their compliments, when they cost them nothing.”

“Philosophy.” She felt a strange shiver when the back of Davenant’s hand swept her wrist as if by accident. She was wearing demi-sleeves, whose lace fell to just halfway down her forearm. The ruffles of his cuff had fallen back, exposing a broad hand tufted with wiry hair. “You did not tell me your cousin was one of those learned ladies, Perry.”

“Oh, I assure you, my lord, I never pick up a book except to throw it at my maid!”

Lord Petrus said, “A learned man is merely a bore, a learned woman an abomination.”

She tapped his sleeve with her fan. “You must not be cruel to learned ladies, for I fear they are so because they lack the power to charm and to delight.”

“Only the fair are free to know nothing, then,” observed Lucius Perry, and, bowing, “You will excuse me?”

His place was taken by Lord Terence Monteith, a man who managed to bore without being learned; but he seemed content to stare at her charms while Davenant attempted to delight her with his conversation.

The flashing jewels and fluttering fan, the rippling laughter and high-flung head were attracting other men. Artemisia Fitz-Levi found herself at the heart of a clutch of eligibles, saying anything that came into her head because it all elicited laughter and compliments from well-dressed, well-tended, well-jeweled men.

“The country!” she cried in response to Davenant’s friend Galing. “Don’t speak to me of the country! It is well enough for those who live to be milked two times a day!”

There was an edge to the laughter that surprised her; she must have said something really clever without realizing.

“I know some who do!” said Davenant.

“Well, don’t we all?”

“What does any of us know, compared to the wit and wisdom of this most excellent lady?” a voice said warmly.

The young men’s hilarity flattened out, and they turned like flowers in the sun in the direction of the speaker.

It was the older nobleman from the Godwin dinner who had so admired her spirit and told her so. Lord Ferris, the Crescent Chancellor of the Council of Lords, tall, commanding, still dark-haired despite his years, and dressed with elegant simplicity.

All the men were looking at Lord Ferris, but he was looking at her.

Artemisia felt her cheeks burning. She smiled brilliantly at him, tried to think of something to say that was clever and high-hearted, but her invulnerable feeling of a moment ago was suddenly gone. Her giddiness resolved into dizziness, and she reached out one arm. The crowd parted, and Ferris was miraculously at her side, giving her the support she needed.

“A breath of air, perhaps, my lady?”

“Oh, no—no, thank you. If I might just sit down for a moment….”

“Of course.” He kept up a stream of easy chatter as he guided her off the floor, past people and through them, keeping her on his right side, where he might see her with his good eye: “These endless parties are exhausting—not any given one, to be sure, for all must be equally delightful, but in the aggregate they are enough to send anyone reeling.”

“Oh, but I love parties!” Artemisia rallied.

“Because you are such an ornament to them,” he said smoothly, “as the jewel must love its setting, or the, ah, the pearls in your ear must love the place that shows them off to such advantage.”

His voice was low and silky in her ear. She wondered if he should be speaking to her so; but he was a great nobleman, and more than old enough to know how things should be conducted properly in society.

She tried to say something pertinent. “What can jewels know of love?”

“Indeed.” Lord Ferris seated her in an alcove. “They are love’s servants, and not the thing itself. A wise lady, to know the difference.” He seized a drink from a passing footman and offered it to her. “So you do not love the country, Lady Artemisia?”

“I had rather live in this city than anywhere else on earth.”

“Not everyone agrees with you. But I do. No, I cannot see you buried in the country, raising herbs and children, and waiting for your husband or your eldest son to come home from Council with bolts of cloth and news of how new taxes will affect the estate….”

She shuddered.

“Just so. You must adorn our ballrooms here for many years to come, I think.”

Artemisia smiled. “Thank you, my lord.”

She wanted to hear more, only her head was pounding so. He must have noticed something. “Will you permit me to fetch your shawl?” he asked, and she answered, “Oh, no, it is so very warm. I promised Lord Terence a dance, but I do not think that I could bear it now.”

“You must be protected,” the Crescent Chancellor said, “from such as Lord Terence, to be sure. Ah! Here is your mother. Lady Fitz-Levi is your surest bulwark. Madam, your daughter has given so much of her charm and beauty for the delight of the company, I fear she has little strength left to sustain herself.”

“Curious,” said her mother; “dear Artemisia is so seldom tired or weak. I assure you, my lord, she has never given us a moment’s worry.”