After the translation, the stranger gave a great shout of laughter, as startling in that formal room as a rampaging bear, followed by a short speech.
The translator said, “The Chieftain says that, of course, his men will camp beyond the island, and he with them.”
I thought of the villages that surrounded the island, each with its own neat cottages, its little green, its sheep and chickens and pretty girls. These savage warriors—so many of them! and perhaps even more outside—were the roughest-looking men I had ever seen. They scarcely looked like men at all, with their shaggy fur tunics, huge cudgels pounding like hoofs on the floor, feathered capes, and twig-topped helmets. And what were those metal sticks each man wore on his shoulder?
The queen said, her voice now lowered so that even I, closer than anyone except Lord Robert, had to strain to hear. “Eammons . . . is there a polite way to tell him that the village cottages—and the village women—are not available to his men?”
“No,” Eammons said sourly. “There is no way. It would be a gross insult.”
Lord Robert said to the translator, “These savages will be of no use to us if they defeat the Blues but turn the queen’s own subjects against us!” His voice held a strange satisfaction, which in turn angered the queen.
She rose from her throne and descended the steps. Immediately all of us—but none of the savages—fell to both knees. She stood beside the chieftain in her green gown, its train spreading up the steps behind her, as the translator hissed, “Don’t take his hand, Your Grace! For the sake of heaven, do not touch him!”
She did not. Beside him, she looked tiny, although she was not a small woman. In a low, intimate voice she said, “Translate what I say exactly, Eammons.
Exactly
, word by word. ‘Lord Solek, I will speak frankly. Please forgive my ignorance of your customs. Your soldiers are manly and strong. My villagers are gentle. Do your soldiers’ discipline and restraint match their strength and their ability in war? ’”
“Your Grace—”
“Translate!”
He did. Lord Solek’s blue eyes darkened and his face went hard. I took a step backward, away from that look. Lord Robert’s hand went to his sword, but the queen did not flinch. Instead she looked up at him with a look I had never seen on her face—helpless, naked, feminine appeal. And then she curtsied.
A gasp went up from the advisors, the courtiers. Lord Robert put out one hand, as if to yank her upward from obeisance to anyone—she, the queen! But she had already straightened, her curtsy done but her beseeching look going on, eyes fastened onto Lord Solek, until he threw back his head and again gave that huge, rough laugh. He turned to his captains and gave a long speech. When he was done, each captain raised his left fist aloft for a moment before letting it drop.
“He said,” Eammons reported, “that his men will stay away from your villages.”
Lord Solek had said a great deal more than that. The promise of punishments if his savages did not obey? Of rewards if they did? And what had Queen Caroline promised in order to bring Lord Solek’s army here in the first place?
She said, “Tell Lord Solek that he is bid to come to dinner in my rooms at sunset. With whatever of his chiefs it is customary to bring. We have much to discuss.”
And still her dark eyes held his blue ones, and neither looked away.
18
THE BUSTLE OVER
the dinner was enormous. It turned out that before the siege began, the queen had planned ahead and ordered certain foodstuffs sequestered for this entertainment. But it was only the beginning of spring and there were no fresh vegetables or fruit, only dried. No fresh meat, only salted or smoked. And the appalled cooks had only a few hours to prepare. “What do they even eat?” one wailed. “They are savages!”
“I heard they eat roasted rocks,” quavered a frightened kitchen maid, and the cook slapped her.
The queen had sent me to the kitchens on an errand. She was closeted in her privy chamber with Lord Robert and her three most important advisors, none of whom looked happy. Lord Solek had marched out with his men, singing and pounding cudgels on the floor as when they marched in. The pages had all been commandeered by the frantic steward, who was trying to have tables set up, entertainments arranged, and precedence established in the same few hours that upset the cooks. Ladies, courtiers, and musicians went from victims of siege to performers in a masque that must be instantly created. The palace seethed with hectic activity and with terrified conjecture about the “savages.” And I had been sent to the kitchens to tell the head cook that the translator, Eammons, had a delicate stomach and could eat only a few slices of chicken and a little thrice-ground bread.
“Chicken! There are no chickens left, boy! And where am I to get thrice-ground bread?” She reached out to cuff me, presumably because she could not cuff Eammons. I danced away from her and went to find Maggie.
She was frantically pouring wine over dried apples while kneading biscuits with her other hand. “How am I to make a dessert without sugar?”
“You’ll manage. Did—”
“Go away, Roger, I haven’t time for you. No, wait—what news? No, wait, why are these apples so
mealy
?”
I knew more about girls than I once had. Lady Cecilia was responsible for that. Deftly I elbowed Maggie aside and began kneading the bread myself, freeing her to concentrate on adding spices to the apples. I said, “The savages are camped on the north bank of the river, in Fairfield and beyond. All the villagers have left Fairfield, the soldiers on the ramparts saw them flee. So far the savages have not harmed anyone. The Blues are camped on the plain beyond Darton Ford, they can barely be seen from even the top of the tower, and nobody thinks there will be any more fighting until tomorrow morning at the earliest. What of your brother?”
“With the Blue army.”
“Have you heard any more than I just said?”
“Don’t knead so hard, Roger, it’s bread not stone! I heard only that the first ‘battle’ hardly deserved the name. The savages marched in and when the Blue archers let loose their arrows, the savages used their fire-sticks and—”
“Their what?”
“Don’t stop kneading! Have you never before made bread? The savages have new weapons. Fire comes from the end of their metal sticks—fire and small fast projectiles they call ‘bullets.’ A few men died and then the Blues ran away.”
I had never heard of such weapons. From her face, neither had Maggie. She whipped sweet cream as if it had sinned, her face pulled taut with wonder and fear. But, being Maggie, she kept talking.
“The Blues will regroup, everyone says so. Now, you tell me—what has the queen promised the savages in return for their help in securing The Queendom?”
“I don’t know.”
She looked at me straight. Her fair hair straggled down her face, and her gray eyes were serious. She looked pretty. Not as beautiful as my Cecilia, of course, but still . . .
What was I doing thinking about girlish beauty
now
? I said, “I really don’t know what the queen promised. But I’m to be at the dinner, and perhaps I’ll find out then.”
She stared at me. “You’re to be at the dinner? The dinner for the savage lords?”
“Yes.” And then it was all between us again, what I had told her about crossing over, about my mother dying on Soulvine Moor. She did not trust me. I could feel her withdrawal, sure as a swift tide.
“I have work to do, Roger.”
“I’m going,” I said coldly. Damn her—I was doing the best I could. And now I knew why Queen Caroline had looked so serene all the days of the siege. She knew what powerful new weapons her savage allies would bring. I wanted to go up on the ramparts, or even climb the bell tower, to see the situation for myself, but I didn’t dare. I still must go only where the queen sent me. I was still the queen’s fool.
The dinner for Lord Solek and his captains took place in the queen’s new presence chamber, which had been transformed. Gone were the cool blues and grays of Queen Eleanor. The stewards, rushing around shouting and cursing all afternoon, had remade the royal chambers. Green cloth hung on the walls, where cloth had never been before, gathered into draperies and festoons tied with jeweled green ribbons. Lest the place look too feminine, shields hung between the velvets and satins. The high table was draped in green damask, and at it sat the queen, Lord Robert, her three most trusted advisors, Lord Solek and three of his chieftains, and a translator. Also, to my surprise, three-year-old Princess Stephanie. Purple was the princess’s color and her gown was a miniature of her mother’s, but with a much higher neckline. She sat pale and grave, and on her lank hair was a small golden circlet set with a single amethyst.
The rest of the court sat at lower tables in the chamber, all below a hastily constructed platform on which the masque would occur. I, with the Green guard, stood behind the high table, reconciled to being unfed. “I shall want you tonight,” the queen had said. “Listen to everything.”
As it happened, there was little information to listen to. The queen and her advisors began by offering the usual compliments to the visitors, all through Eammons, but compliments seemed to make Lord Solek and his chiefs uncomfortable, and no compliments were offered in return. So instead the queen fell into a game, asking the names of things in the savage language, repeating them prettily, and teaching Lord Solek our words.
“And what do you call this, my lord?” She pointed to the wine in her goblet, turning the stem slightly to make the wine swish and the candlelight flash fire from her jeweled rings. The bud of her sixth finger she kept curled under, hidden in her palm.
“Kekl.”
It was like the grunt of a boar, and just as wild. Lord Solek had eaten and drunk prodigiously, but he did not seem affected by the wine.
“Kekl.”
From her, it was music. He gave his great laugh. The advisors smiled, with strain. Lord Robert did not smile. He had not smiled all evening.
“And this?” A soft hand fingering the goblet suggestively.
“Vlak.”
“Vlak,”
she repeated.
“Kekl in vlak.”
He was charmed, almost against his will. The heat that I had felt between them from the first glance had been no more than that, the heat of man and woman. But now he gazed at her, almost puzzled, and I wondered what the women of his own country were like, in that unknown place far to the west across the distant mountains.
Lord Robert drank more.
“Wine,” Lord Solek repeated, making the word guttural. “Queen Caroline.”
“Yes,” she said, and their eyes locked, watched by her uneasy advisors and his wary chieftains. It was a relief when the entertainment began.
Lady Cecilia was in it, and it was shocking. Not to the visitors, who watched in polite incomprehension, but to the court. Gone were the stately dances that the old queen had insisted on. Cecilia, Lady Jane, Lady Sarah, my lords Thomas and George and Christopher—all of them performed
village dances
, as if they were peasants. They sashayed and roistered and kicked jeweled slippers and polished boots. The women swished their skirts with abandon so that ankles and even knees were revealed, and the men swung the girls so high their feet left the floor. The musicians played the lively village tunes, although without the bawdy lyrics. There was supposed to be a masque, too, but the players never got to it because after the second shocking dance, Lord Solek leapt from the high table to the floor below and bellowed something.
Eammons choked out, “He says he will . . . will dance with Your Grace.”
Dead silence.
No one asked the queen to dance; it was her prerogative to do the choosing. Not even Lord Robert could transgress that rule. But that had been the old dances, the old court. And the savage chieftain stood on the polished stone floor, his hand outstretched toward the dais, his brilliant blue eyes both an invitation and a challenge.
Queen Caroline gathered her train over her arm and descended to the floor. To the musicians she said, “Play.”
They were almost too shocked to obey. The piper’s lips were stiff with horror; they could barely curve around his instrument. But somehow a tune was started and taken up. The queen and the savage danced.
He was quick, with an athlete’s grace, and the peasant dances were, of course, much simpler than the endless complicated figures of court dances. Lord Solek did not do too badly. She flowed like water around him, looking small next to his bulk even in her high-heeled slippers, and when he swung her high at the end of the dance she seemed to float toward the ceiling. Then she was sliding down against his body until her feet were again on the floor, and again there was silence. No one dared move or speak.
“All dance,” the queen said.
Panic, but controlled panic. More courtiers and ladies scrambled up from the tables, down from the masque platform. The savage’s three chieftains leapt up and each seized a lady, all of whom looked terrified. Lady Cecilia cowered in Lord Thomas’s arms, as far away from the savages as she could get. And so they danced.