Beyond the Burning Lands (11 page)

A thought struck me. “If she is human at all! By the Great, she may be polymuf.”

•  •  •

The evening usually began in the King's parlor, a large square room whose walls were painted with scenes of men and women, in scanty clothing or none, being chased by weird polymufs, creatures human above the waist but resembling goats below. Even for polymufs they seemed improbable and I asked Cymru in what part of his kingdom they were found. He told me none—they were merely fancies of the painter, based on some old legend. An unhealthy fancy, I thought but did not say, and one that I would not care to live with.

But this evening instead we met in the throne room. It was much bigger and higher, with bronze doors leading in from an antechamber and a marble staircase, twenty feet across, rising to the floor above. The walls were painted gold and the ceiling was bright blue with realistic eagles soaring in it. The throne, against one wall, would have sat three men together. It was of heavy oak, magnificent in structure and carving, but spoiled, I thought, by the usual mass of cushions. When King Cymru took his seat I thought he might sink from view in multicolored satin.

He called me to a stool close to the throne. The fancy he seemed to have taken to me showed no sign yet of waning: they probably had fashions in companions as well as clothes. I took breath before I joined him. I was growing more accustomed to the scent but was still a long way from enjoying it.

He asked me fresh questions about my city and especially about life at court. Did the Prince hunt, he asked, and if so, what? I told him boar mostly and, on his further questioning, described the chase. He said with evident surprise:

“You mean, your nobles—and your Prince—ride after them on horseback and kill them with spears? Are they so tame, then, your boar?”

“No, sire. They run well, but they also fight well when brought to bay.”

“But surely this involves unnecessary danger?”

“Danger. I do not think unnecessary. There is no sport where there is no risk.”

He smiled. “A quaint thought.”

I had meant to tell how I myself had once lain at the mercy of a charging polyboar, and been saved from death only by my brother's alertness in my defense, but after that remark decided not to. He went on:

“We must arrange one of our hunts while you are here.”

“For boar? It is not the season.”

“The season?”

“At this time of year they are breeding.”

“We hunt when we choose,” King Cymru said. “I will have Snake see to it.” There seemed to be nothing, I thought with repugnance, in which the polymuf did not take a hand. “Tell me about your brother's palace. What sort of pipes do they use to carry hot water?”

I shook my head. “We have no such things, sire.”

“Then how is the palace heated in the winter months?”

“By hearth fires.”

“But do they keep you warm enough?”

I thought of the Great Hall with a blizzard beating against the windows and drafts everywhere, and said with feeling:

“Not always.”

“And what of your baths? How is the water provided for them?”

There was a bath in the room I had been given here, a thing like a stone coffin in which a man could lie full length. At the end it had two brass mouths and when one turned the handles above them water gushed out, hot or cold according to the mouth. It was a far cry from our tubs at home in which one must crouch with bent knees. I said:

“The servants bring water to fill them.”

He smiled again, incredulously. “And you tell me that anyone born with deformity of shape must be a servant in your land?” I nodded. “Even in so small a thing as having an extra finger or toe?”

“Yes.”

“So Snake would be a servant in your city, and be made to carry water for your bath?” He laughed in a high voice. “I must tell him so. He will find it very amusing. I hope to see your city one day, Luke. You have interesting customs.”

His tone, ambiguous before, was unmistakably indulgent. I realized with a quick flush of anger that Cymru—this prinked and perfumed monarch—was condescending to me, was regarding us as
barbarians.
The thought was bitter. I could not get up and go—the courtesy due from me as my Prince's representative forbade it—but I resolved that I would speak to Greene and see what could be done about cutting short our stay. This King, this whole place, sickened me.

My ears had grown used to the chatter and laughter behind me in the throne room. The Wilsh were always gossiping and laughing about trifles; the din, even in so large and high a room, was enormous. Now it broke and died into a hush, and the silence seemed like a sigh. I turned my head to see the reason.

She was at the top of the marble stairs and had just started to descend. All faces were upturned to watch her. These Wilsh were proud of their possessions and did not hesitate to boast loudly of them, but in the stillness I saw acknowledgment of their finest possession of all. There was pride and love in it.

It was easy to see why. She was utterly different from the women of the court. For one thing, where they wore gowns of clashing colors, heavy with gold embossing, and brooches and necklaces and as many as a dozen bangles on their arms, her dress was of white silk, simply cut. She had no other adornment but a necklet of gold which showed how much finer and softer was the gold of her hair. The Wilsh were a swarthy people with a few red-haired and still fewer blond. But these last, compared with her, would look dark and coarse. Her skin had a fineness, a delicacy of pink and white, such as I had never seen even in a young child. She was halfway down the stairs before my eyes could take in the details of her features. And be further dazzled: she was beautiful.

I understood why we had met in the throne room rather than the King's parlor. The staircase was a perfect setting for her entrance. It was what she would demand, from pride of beauty. I did not like her for that, but acknowledged it as just.

She came from the stairs and the crowd, still silent, parted to give her room. She reached the throne and curtsied to her father.

Then she turned to me. I smelled her scent—not cloying like the others but fresh and flowerlike. She put her hand out to me and I bent my head to kiss it, grazing its softness with my lips.

When I looked up she was smiling. She said, and even her accent was unlike the rest, more lilting and more musical:

“I have heard much of you, Luke. I am glad to meet you at last.”

I made some sort of reply, I am not sure what. Her smile held me. It was not proud after all, but warm and open. Her eyes were a deep blue, big and wide.

The chattering had started up again behind us. The Princess said:

“Come and sit by me, Luke, and tell me things.”

O
NLY TWO ROADS LED OUT
of Klan Gothlen; that to the east along which we had come and another that ran westward up the river valley. It was this we took when the court rode out to the hunt, postponed from the previous day because of the weather. There had been a little rain and some wind and it was cold, the King said, for the time of year. This morning there was patchy sunshine and the wind was less sharp. It blew into our faces, undoing the careful set of the King's hair and beard, and jangling the bells on the reins of the jennets.

Yes, jennets. Because in the hunts of the Wilsh as in their banquets the ladies shared the pleasure of their men. This deepened my contempt for their idea of sport but offered a compensation. The King was ahead, behind his outriders, deep in conversation with his Chancellor, Snake. Ten yards behind them rode Edmund and I, and Blodwen rode between us.

It was not that I was any more at ease in her presence than I ever was with girls. I could not think of things to say and stumbled in my replies when she put questions to me. It was Edmund now who kept up conversation with her while I, for the most part, stayed silent. And yet I was entirely happy to be with her. Not just because of her beauty, though the sidelong glances I snatched dazzled me. There was something else in her—a quality that I seemed never to have encountered before, made up of warmth and liveliness and gentle goodness.

She wore a black costume as Wilsh ladies did to the Hunt—the men, even the flamboyant King, were dressed alike in scarlet jackets—but her jennet was pure white. She carried a small whip, for ornament only I guessed. These ladies did not sit astride their horses but sideways, with both stirrups against the beast's left flank. It looked a poor way of controlling even a pony, but she handled hers well. Her small hands were firm on the reins.

In my concern with watching her I did not realize she had addressed a remark to me until she reached across, laughing, and tapped my shoulder with the whip.

“Woolgathering, Luke!” I looked at her directly. “Or brooding on some great project, from the fierceness of your gaze.”

“I am sorry, my Lady. What was it you said?”

She gently chided: “Not ‘my Lady.' Edmund must address me so, not being of royal blood, but to you I shall be Cousin. Or Blodwen. Since you are son of a Prince and a Prince's heir.” She looked from one to the other of us. “You are very different. How did you come to be friends?”

“Through fighting,” Edmund said.

Her brow creased in bewilderment. “Fighting?”

Edmund grinned. “Yes, my Lady. I insulted him and we rolled in the gutter together. And he beat me and after that we were friends. It is very simple.”

“But how
could
you fight when he was your Prince's son? And how dared you insult him?”

“Our customs are different from yours. Rougher, perhaps.”

“True,” I put in. “But he has not told you he was a Prince's son himself.”

Her eyes opened wider. “I do not understand.”

“Prince of the city before my father killed him in a duel and took his place.”

“Oh, no! Is that what happens in the south? Surely no one dare raise a hand against a Prince?”

“It is not usual,” Edmund said, “but it happens.”

“And after all this you are friends?”

“As you see.”

“I see,” she said, “but do not understand. It would not be so in our country. When a man makes an enemy it is forever.”

And what of friendship in this country, I wondered: was that as eternal as enmity? She had spoken seriously and I realized that many complexities must lie behind the masks of smiling faces which one saw all round one in King Cymru's court. But she herself was different in this also. I was sure there was no duplicity in those bright and candid eyes.

She laughed suddenly, a lovely sound.

“But I am glad you are friends! And since your father was a Prince, Edmund, it is proper that you too should call me Cousin.”

“Thank you, my Lady.” She laughed again and Edmund joined in. “I beg your pardon, Cousin!”

•  •  •

We rode ten miles at an ambling pace to a spot where the valley widened at the junction of two rivers. There was none of the discipline of our southern hunts, and none, I thought, of the excitement either. The King from time to time called people up to ride with him, and the whole procession seemed more concerned with conversation than anything else. I already knew what great talkers the Wilsh were. Gossip which in Winchester might have passed a few idle minutes was here mulled over, sifted again and again to discover new subtleties.

At the river fork we halted. We had been followed at a discreet distance by a caravan of servants, and now they came up and erected a tent for the royal party and trestle tables on which food and drink were set out. It made a fine show. The tent was lined with blue and yellow silks and surmounted by King Cymru's pennant, showing a golden eagle with outstretched wings against a field of azure. The tables were piled with a vast weight of dainties, or what the Wilsh called dainties. I allowed Blodwen to guide me through them but jibbed at some, particularly at what were plainly, by their shells, cooked snails. Edmund had some at her persuasion; he said afterward that they tasted of nothing much but required some munching.

Later there was entertainment from musicians. They had lutes not unlike the ones we knew but also instruments which were strange to me: some in which a stick was rubbed over strings fastened to a long curved box with a handle, and others which were blown. Their sounds were unfamiliar but sweet; and the singers, I was bound to admit, were better than ours. The Wilsh loved music, as they loved color and paintings and talking nonsense.

Then, with no hurry, the hunt was prepared. The valley was wooded, but for a stretch beside the river the land was clear of all but grass—so clear that I suspected men had done this and kept it so. From one of the carts which had followed the procession, contraptions of wood were brought and set up. They formed barriers, a little less than a man's height, covering front and sides. There were slits in them providing a field of vision and also a means of firing arrows from the crossbows which were placed two or three to a cover.

I was granted the honor of sharing the King's cover. To my astonishment rugs were laid on the ground and a soft quilted affair placed over them, to lie on while we aimed our crossbows. It seemed we must not dirty our knees by contact with the earth!

With the preliminaries completed the hunt began, though it was beyond me how such a term could be used to describe what happened. Beaters were sent into the woods, some on the far left and others on the right. Eventually, beyond our range of vision, the lines joined to form one that moved back toward us through the trees. On the way they created a great din to drive the boars out into the open space before us.

There was a shout as the first beast broke cover, followed by several more. At my side there was the clonk of the King's weapon being fired and the hiss of arrows through the air. I had my own aimed at a point close to a patch of thorn, and saw the thorn shake and a beast crash out from it. I had it in my sights with my thumb on the trigger ready to squeeze when I noticed something else: it was a sow heavy with young.