The Privilege of the Sword (21 page)

“He does have melting eyes.” Lydia returned to her current obsession. “Like Fabian’s trusted Tyrian, now I think on it.”

“I wonder if he is as steady.”

“I begin to doubt it.” Lydia tossed her head. Artemisia greatly admired her pearl drops. The earrings were Godwin heirlooms, and perhaps should not have been worn on an afternoon visit, but Lydia was so proud of them that she wore them whenever she could. “Oh, Mi, what shall I do? I was sure, when he sent those flowers the next morning, that he had enjoyed the dance as much as I did! He pressed my hand, as well.”

“Many men send flowers; but when they press your hand, what else are you to think? No, he loves you, it’s sure.”

“But then why did he not call yesterday? I made certain he knew I would be at home! No, no man who sends flowers and then fails to call can be said to be in love.”

“What kind of flowers were they?”

“Roses, I told you.”

“Roses…all roses, or mixed?”

“Roses with carnations. White and red.”

“Mixed, that’s bad. Though white and red is good. It could mean your complexion, or even heart and soul. Was there a note?”

“Of course.” Lydia slipped it from her reticule. “Here, see what you think.”

“‘To the most adorable of all the Godwins,’” her friend read. “‘With the fond admiration of her devoted Armand Lindley.’”

Lydia shrieked and fell back on the sofa cushions. “
Fond! Devoted!
Oh, Artemisia, I shall perish! How dare he so trifle with my heart?”

“What I wonder about is
adorable
,” the other girl considered. “
Fond
and
devoted
are well enough, true, but is
adorable
what a lover says? It sounds—forgive me, Lydia—rather
papa
-ish for a lover.”

Lydia fished a handkerchief from the reticule as she began to sniffle. “Oh, no. I cannot bear for him to mean it so.”

“Of course, it might mean something else entirely, my sweet.”

“I do think it must. After all, he is not old enough for a papa. And,” she twinkled, “I do not feel at all daughterly when Armand leads me onto the dance floor. In fact, it makes me feel quite like Stella. After the ball.”

“‘I was a girl before tonight,’” Artemisia quoted with half-closed eyes; “‘I am a woman now.’”

“Yes,” Lydia breathed. “I fear I must have him or die. But how can I let him know, when he does not come to see me?”

“I expect he is delayed on business, or ill. Only think, there may be a letter waiting for you at home right now.”

Lydia jumped up. “Oh, do you think?”

Artemisia patted her hand and pulled her friend to her on the window seat. “Very likely. You must tell me the moment you hear from him!”

“Oh, yes! But—what if Papa does not let me answer him?”

“Why should he not? If you may receive Lindley’s flowers and visits…”

“Well, a letter is more serious, you know. Of course I show all mine to Papa and Mama—”

“
All
of them, Lydie?” her friend teased.

“Well…” she admitted, “yes.”

“Even the ones that might be, say, hidden in a bunch of flowers?” Artemisia wriggled with pleasure. “Those are the very best.”

“My maid is instructed to shake them out before she gives them to me. It is because of Papa’s position. Now that he is to assume the post of Raven Chancellor and be back in the Inner Council, we must be very careful again.”

“What a good girl you are, to be sure. We should all strive to imitate you. But what possible objection to your suitor can Lord Godwin have? Armand Lindley will most likely inherit the estate and become Lord Horn after his uncle’s death. I think it a very good match indeed.”

“Of course it is. But I have heard Papa say that all the Horns have evil tempers and goatish dispositions….”

“He cannot mean Lord Armand! He is thinking of someone else. Have you told him how you feel?”

Lydia blushed. “I dare not tell Papa. He has a very poor opinion of all young men. Why, just the other day he said at breakfast to Mama, quite loudly, so I could hear, ‘The thought of any of them coming near our Lydia chills my blood. I know what they’re made of. Perhaps we’d better’—oh, Mi, it was so awful—‘Perhaps we’d better lock her in a tower until she is old and ugly!’”

Artemisia shrieked and hugged her. “He cannot mean it! What did your mama say?”

“She just gave him a look and sighed, ‘Oh, Michael,’ the way she does. Perhaps they had one of their little talks together; they left the table shortly thereafter, and I did not see them again until past noon, when he was much better-tempered.”

“I am sure she will set him right. Your mama is such an angel.”

“As are you, dear Artemisia.”

D
AYS PASSED.
I
ATE AND DRANK AND SLEPT.
I
CRIED A
lot, and my head ached and I missed my mother; kind and careful as she was, Betty did not have the cool hands and sweet voice I loved when I was ill. I tried not to think about it, and I tried not to cry when Betty was there. It wasn’t her fault, any of it.

As soon as I could stand up by myself, I went to the window to look out. The window was made up of little squares. The glass was thick and greenish; the little square panes had circles in them. The murky view was of snow and the corner of a roof. I didn’t think much of Riverside so far.

When Betty saw that I was well enough to get up by myself, she made me try on all my clothes so she could have them altered. I had gotten taller, thinner in some places and thicker in others. There were new clothes for me in the wardrobe, town suits for winter: one bottle-green fustian with gold piping, one a deep blue wool with threads woven into it that made it almost crimson in the light. I supposed the new clothes meant the duke was pleased with me. But I didn’t believe they meant I would be going back to Highcombe any time soon. So I didn’t much care.

At first I was only well enough to sit up and walk about for a few hours each day. The rest of the time I was amazingly tired, and, as there was nothing to keep me from sleeping, I slept. Betty sat with me and told me servants’ gossip about the household: Cook was a dear, but the steward down here, Master Osborne, thought altogether too highly of himself! If she had been drinking before she came in, she never drank while she was with me. As I thought I was doing her good, I tried to keep her by me. I heard all about Riverside, too, and so I found out at last who my master at Highcombe really was.

Of course I should have known. Even I had heard of St Vier, the greatest swordsman of our time, some said of any.

Everyone knew that he had dueled in the streets of Riverside and killed men in taverns and alleys to protect and amuse a mysterious runaway student, who later became the Duke Tremontaine.

“You wanted to watch out,” Betty reminisced, “when those two were around. Riverside then wasn’t like Riverside now: you had to be clever to live here, or stupid, or brave. We lived by our wits in those days, and took our luck where we could find it.”

“Did you know them then?”

“Not know them like you’d
know
them, exactly,” she slurred. I waited for her to untangle herself. “But I saw the pair of them, along with everyone else. Hard to miss.
Him
towering like a raggedy scarecrow in that flapping black scholar’s gown, and the sword always quiet next to him, sweet as honey, and poison with it. Taverns would quiet when those two came in. Where would the fight be, and how would it start? Sometimes there wasn’t a fight at all, and sometimes the night ended in blood. Real blood, not like now. But that was Riverside in those days. You didn’t care so much how you died, as long as you did it well.”

No one knew where St Vier had gone, not even Betty; some said he’d been killed in a fight—or poisoned, because he couldn’t be killed by steel. Some said he’d found another lover, far away, where even the duke couldn’t touch him, unless it was that the duke had killed him when he’d learned of it. Betty had also heard that St Vier had been wooed away by the Empress of Cham, to rule at her side in her palace over the sea. But she didn’t believe that.

The man at Highcombe had not seemed like a legend to me, not while I was there with him. It was hard to imagine my teacher here, in this house, in the city, doing the things Betty said he had done. But back when it was different? When Riverside was the forest he’d stalked through, and he a young man who thought he would not live to be twenty-five?

At least it explained why I could never even come close to winning a fight with him.

T
HE ONE THING
B
ETTY COULD NOT DO WAS READ TO
me; like the swordsman, she had never learned how. The duke’s Riverside house boasted a large library, but it seemed to be heavily stocked with modern, scholarly works.

“Ask the boy,” Betty said. “That Marcus. He goes where he likes, goes back and forth. Does what he likes, too. Yesterday Cook caught him eating cream from the pot, bold as you please. Complained to His Grace, but duke said he’s a growing boy, let him alone. You’re growing, too, but you don’t take liberties. Better brought-up, you are.”

I wasn’t sure how I felt about being compared, even favorably, to a Riverside servant. But I only said, “He’s the duke’s man, not mine. Why should he do anything for me?”

“If you didn’t still look like something the cat dragged in, my lady, I’d say he’d taken a fancy to you, always hanging around here when he should be off keeping His Grace from jumping off roofs and his other fool nonsense. Not that I’m complaining; working for Tremontaine is being in Seventh Heaven next to…but never mind about that. Just tell that boy what you need; you’ll see.”

So I asked Marcus to send to the Hill for picture books and lighter matter.

He brought them to me himself: a book of birds, and one of poisonous plants, some poetry, an illustrated geography called
Customs of Many Lands,
and, tucked in amongst them, a surprisingly familiar little worn volume of soft leather.

I did not thank him for it, nor ask him how he had found it, just slipped it directly under my pillow to examine when I was alone.

It was my very own copy of
The Swordsman Whose Name Was Not Death
. I recognized the stain on the third page, where I had dripped apricot juice. I opened the book at random, expecting now to find it silly stuff. But it opened to Stella’s escape from the city, right after she’s lost the child and thinks Fabian’s betrayed her, with Mangrove hot on her heels. No one could find that silly.

Stella wants to despair, but Tyrian won’t let her.
You have done tonight,
he says,
what ten thousand men could not. Now show your great enemies what one woman alone can do.

I am not alone,
she says, and is about to make Tyrian very happy indeed when the hunting cats appear on the rooftops.

I did not read the book straight through. I read my favorite parts, and then the bits between them. Fabian still never practiced. Stella still nearly ruined everything by keeping secrets from those she should have trusted. But it didn’t seem to matter. If anything, I knew now that people were even stranger and more unpredictable than that, and that when we don’t know the truth about someone, we will make it up ourselves.