The Swan Maiden (14 page)

“It's romantic as an old ballad!” Cecilia said. “‘The Shepherd and the Sorceress.' Perhaps Lord Luquet will compose us a tune.”

“Would you really go with him?” Azelais lowered her voice, but the comtesse had heard the question.

“Doucette will go nowhere with that—that—gaudy jester!” Lady Sarpine said in freezing tones. “Cecilia's display of magic was vulgar enough. Completing three tasks for Doucette's hand, the idea's nonsense. Gross effrontery. I'm astonished you let it go so far, Husband.”

“On the contrary.” The comte stroked his beard. “This simple fellow should prove amusing.”

“But, but—” his wife sputtered. “The low-born villain dared—” her voice rose in a shriek.

“Calm yourself, Sarpine, lest
you
provide the court with an unseemly display.”

The comtesse quieted, though rage smoldered in her eyes.

Unconcerned, the comte sipped his wine. “If the weather's fine, we'll hunt tomorrow. That should provide entertainment, if the other palls. Eh, Doucette?”

“Yes, Father,” Doucette said absently. Her mother's outburst echoed in her head. Why hadn't her father dismissed Jaume and forbid the match outright? Why give a low-born countryman the hint of a chance to win her hand?

Unless … unless Lord Pascau saw the trial as a way to get around the promise he had made to his wife, to deny their youngest daughter her Aigleron birthright. Indirectly, he might be honoring a sorceress's freedom to choose her companion.

Hope kindled within her, though Doucette knew better than to rely on her father's support. A chastelaine didn't contradict her husband in public, but if the comtesse thought her husband was encouraging Jaume's suit behind her back, her anger would encompass them all.

Lady Sarpine had been born a de Brochet. And, like the razor-toothed fish her family was named for, she relied on the surprise attack. Pikes waited to dart from ambush and fasten sharp teeth in an opponent's most vulnerable spot, ripping and tearing until their foe was too weak to resist. Words, not teeth, were Lady Sarpine's potent weapon, wounding where blows could not.

Doucette had often suffered her mother's criticism and seen the comtesse reduce her serving women to tears. Lord Pascau, too, knew the damage his wife's sharp tongue could inflict. And he had sacrificed his daughter's sorcery once already on the altar of domestic tranquility. Doucette had no assurance that her father would make a different choice, if his wife pressed him.

At the time, Doucette had been a small child, ignorant of her powers. Now, she had a swan skin, a wand, Tante Mahalt's instruction, and Jaume's love. So armed, she might prevail.

But when she looked at her mother's face, Doucette's resolutions felt hollow.

How far would Lady Sarpine go to have her way?

Chapter Seventeen

The next morning, castle folk began gathering in the lower courtyard while it was still dark. Servants moved through the crowd, offering cups of hot mint tea, baskets of pears or pomegranates, and fresh bread slathered with honey. Ladies yawned behind well-kept hands, their sleepy eyelids veiling the anticipation of cats at a mouse hole. Knights and nobles crushed pomegranate seeds between their teeth and licked the scarlet juice from their fingers.

Doucette had descended the tower stairs before her sisters finished dressing. Inconspicuous in a hooded cloak over her swan skin, she leaned against the wall and listened to the conversations that swirled around her.

A richly dressed woman nibbled a pear slice. “Why'd he want the youngest?”

“A shepherd, can you imagine? I thought the comtesse would have him stripped and whipped before our eyes.” Lord Luquet's fleshy lips stretched in a sneer. “A gold piece says the lout runs away before midday, the trouble he's fallen into.”

“Done.”

Sighing, Doucette backed away from the wagering courtiers and into her oldest sister.

“There you are,” Azelais said. “Father sent us to fetch you.”

“Good morning, Sieur.” Cecilia fluttered her eyelashes at Lord Luquet and fell in on Doucette's other side as Azelais led them to the courtyard gate. “What will Father make the fool do?”

“Great feats, no doubt.” Azelais arched an eyebrow. “A peasant!”

“But such a good-looking one,” Cecilia cooed. The prospect of scandal seemed to have restored her spirits completely.

Doucette bit her lip and said nothing.

“Here are my beautiful daughters! The raven, the lark, the gentle dove.” Lord Pascau drained his cup and handed it to a servant while Azelais, Cecilia, and Doucette curtsied to their parents.

The comte wore close-fitting leathers and carried a game bag slung over his shoulder. Despite the early hour, Lady Sarpine made a picture of equal elegance. She had coiled her fair hair tightly at the back of her neck and pinned a linen coif over it. Split riding skirts fell in correct folds under a crisp tunic; a pair of gloves were draped at a precise angle on her belt.

Lady Sarpine acknowledged her elder daughters with a nod, then frowned at Doucette.

Guiltily, Doucette reached up to straighten the braids that had tangled under her cloak hood. “Good morning, Mother.”

“That's better, my treasure.” Lady Sarpine smiled, serene as if the brief exchange had returned their relations to a more usual footing.

As if, Doucette thought, her inconvenient magic could be dealt with as easily as her wayward hair.

The comtesse toyed with a glove. “How long must we wait for this yokel?”

Lord Pascau lifted his wife's hand and kissed it. “When the sun rises, I promise the finest sport your huntress heart could desire.”

Azelais, Cecilia, and the courtiers standing nearby all laughed. Doucette felt cold. Lady Sarpine nodded toward the gate. “Then let us begin,” she said.

“He is prompt,” Cecilia murmured. “Care to share his other virtues?”

“Stop it.” Doucette tried to step away from her sisters, but Azelais caught her sleeve.

“You're not running, Doucette.” Azelais exchanged a meaningful look with Cecilia. “Father has cast us all in his little entertainment.”

Tall and broad as a tree, a giant walked through the gate.

Doucette blinked into the sudden brightness. The sun had risen. When she looked again, the menacing shadow had gone, and she saw only Jaume. He had given up the jester's black-and-red garb for his shepherd's hat, brown tunic, and leggings. In the crowd of colorfully dressed knights and ladies, his clothes looked plain and poor, though he wore them with the confidence of a man who knows his work and does it well.

Doucette could tell the moment he spotted her, tucked between her sisters. When she read relief in the quick sweep of his eyes over her face, she straightened proudly. She intended to stand by Jaume's side, no matter what trials her father had devised or how her sisters tormented her.

Jaume took off his hat and bowed.

Lady Sarpine stared over his head. The comte smiled. “Ready for your first test, Jaume of Vent'roux?”

“Oh, aye, Sieur.”

“Follow me.” Lord Pascau took his wife's arm and strode through the gate.

Nose in the air, Azelais sailed forward. Towed along in her sisters' wake, Doucette couldn't think of a word to say. She smiled helplessly at Jaume, who motioned the three young women to precede him.

“What pretty manners your friend has,” Cecilia said. “I do like that in a man.”

Azelais coughed repressively. Doucette gritted her teeth and wished Cecilia would find another target for her barbs.

Outside the castle gate, the comte did not continue straight into town, but turned hard to the left and skirted the castle wall. Scrubby brush and brambles covered this side of the ridge, making walking difficult.

The comtesse struggled to keep her flowing skirts clear of thorns. “What is the meaning of this excursion?”

“Just a little farther,” Doucette heard her father say. When the comte stopped, the rest of the courtiers trooped up to stand as close as they could manage.

The rising sun brought a blush to the tangled weeds and gilded the brambles' red-bronze leaves. Under a thick carpet of thorns, dotted with oak trees and hardy purple wildflowers, the hill sloped toward cliffs overlooking the river valley, with its shearing pens and wheat fields beyond.

Lord Pascau gestured broadly. “A fine view, don't you think?”

“Aye, Sieur,” Jaume said.

Doucette glanced at her mother, but Lady Sarpine did not appear to share the comte's enthusiasm for the vista. Someone would pay, Doucette thought, for the many tears in her mother's riding skirts.

“A pity the thorns prevent us from enjoying it,” the comte said. “Since you're an able-bodied lad, I've decided your first task will be to clear this entire hillside so that a lady—our Doucette, for example—might stroll from the castle wall down to the cliff edge, barefoot, without bruising her delicate skin. Finish by sunset, or the trial is forfeit.”

The courtiers whispered.

Doucette swallowed. It would take a company of laborers many days to clear the whole hillside.

Jaume bowed his head. “As you command, Lord Pascau.”

“You'll need a suitable implement.” Doucette's father opened the game bag on his shoulder and pulled out a child-sized tool, which he held high.

The sight of the little mattock's red-painted handle made Doucette's palms sweat with remembered terror. “Is that the one you Animated years ago?” she hissed at Azelais.

“I told Father you'd recognize it,” her sister replied. “I'd completely forgotten. Father took it away after—”

“I remember.” Doucette shuddered.

With a ceremonial air, Lord Pascau gave the tool to Jaume.

Jaume clasped his fingers around the handle and ran his thumb over the tool's flat edge. “Thank you, Sieur.”

The comte slapped Jaume's shoulder. “No time to waste, young man,” he said cheerfully. “Wield it to good effect.”

But instead of using the mattock's blade to hack at the brambles, Jaume set the tool gently on a rock. He reached down for the nearest thorn bush, closed his bare hands around its spiky branches, and jerked it out of the earth.

The courtiers murmured in disappointment. “We got up for this?” one muttered to another.

“Where's the sport, if he won't use the mattock?”

Lord Pascau's genial expression didn't change. “We'll leave the man to his labors. Until sunset, Jaume of Vent'roux.”

Jaume bowed. “Until sunset, Lord Pascau. Lady Sarpine.”

The comtesse pulled her torn skirts close and stalked back along the wall toward the gate. Courtiers parted before her and the comte, then followed, casting disappointed looks over their shoulders.

Cecilia pouted. “Not very adventuresome, is he?”

“Not stupid, you mean,” Doucette said.

Azelais rolled her eyes. “Time will tell.”

“So.” Doucette tucked up her skirts and planted herself on a flat rock. “I'm staying.”

Azelais waved a dismissive hand at the children who had come running from town. “You prefer brats and yokels to civilized company?”

“Na Claro's sitting under that oak tree,” Doucette retorted. “She'll want someone to wind her yarn.”

Cecilia peered at the servant, pulling a spindle from her wool sack. “What's the old bag doing here?”

“Mother likely sent her.” Azelais pinched a thorn from her shoe and let it fall to the ground. “She'll make sure the shepherd doesn't cheat.”

“Cheat?” Doucette said hotly. “This isn't a true test of Jaume's worth. It's a mean trick, and you know it.”

“I think your devotion is sadly misplaced.” Cecilia poked Doucette in the ribs. “What good is a man who won't use his tool?”

“Cecilia,” Azelais said, “that's enough.”

“Just because
you
can't think of anything amusing to say.…”

As her sisters walked away, bickering, Doucette set aside her hooded cloak and folded her hands in her lap.

Clump by clump, Jaume yanked the brambles from the rocky soil and stacked them together. She didn't like to imagine what the thorns must be doing to his hands.

A thin scrim of clouds filtered the rising sun. The air heated, intensifying the sharp scents of low-growing herbs, the acid smell of bruised bramble canes. The patch of cleared ground grew, slowly.

At this pace, alone, Jaume couldn't possibly finish before winter set in. Doucette picked wild lavender and ran it through her fingers until the stalks came apart in sticky, aromatic threads. She wiped her hands on her skirt and picked more.

Jaume labored on.

Boys dared one another to leap over the piles of brambles. Under a bush, a bird whistled in warning, and high in the hazy sky a falcon soared, waiting for some unwary creature to show itself.

Doucette shifted on the rock. Her stomach growled. She hadn't been hungry at dawn, but now the hard knot of apprehension inside her was fraying into tendrils of worry. She picked her way over to the oak tree and sat beside the old servant.

Na Claro's wrinkled hand rose and fell with the rhythm of her spinning. “Hard worker, that young man. Might surprise us all, come sundown.”

“Lady Doucette!”

Anfos ran up to them and slung a sack half his own size to the ground. The contents rattled. “Na Patris sent a jug of water and some food.”

“Thoughtful of her,” Na Claro said approvingly.

“Please do convey our thanks,” Doucette added.

“I will.” The boy ran along the castle wall, turned the corner, and disappeared from sight.

Doucette poured a cup of water and walked through the cleared patch to Jaume. Bushes had been pulled up, but loose thorns caught at her shoes. The ground would never pass the “barefoot” part of her father's impossible demand.

Up close, it was clear Jaume had been working hard. His tunic stuck to his body in big sweaty patches, and his face was flushed.