Lord Bloodburn and his lady passed through and, not a moment later, as Margaret was just turning away, the flickering gold and brown of Darkling’s representative showed at the lower gateway and she looked back to see him riding in alone, unattended. Centurion, who was a good man and a seasoned warrior, came clipping lightly up the path, the face-guard of his helm thrust back, a fair and cheerful face revealed beneath. He struck up whistling as he came, idly, pleasantly, some pretty song that Margaret liked the sound of, and a second later he spotted her. He flung back his head, still whistling, face-guard clanging, and gave her a raised hand in salute. Almost instinctively she replied, stretching out a level, silent hand—and flushed afterward with embarrassment: as if
she
were in a position to welcome anybody to Lookinglass!
She felt it was time to go down, but before she went to the stair she looked once more at the bridge and beech-wood to know if any more comers were in sight. All was still, hazed with the sidewise blowing of someone’s fire-smoke, and turning light-saturated as the sun rose higher and morning wore on. Still she hesitated, lingering on the far horizon, wishing in vain that she did not have to go down, knowing that in a moment she would have to. The cowbird called again, liquidly and beautiful, and the song stung her cruelly.
”Margaret!”
She did not think she showed it, but she felt a jump of shock inside as the voice snapped on her senses. She shut her eyes tightly, recovering for two heartbeats, then turned and with deliberate movements made her way down the stairs. Rupert was waiting for her, having materialized as darkly and as persistently shadow, and was standing by Lord Bloodburn. Bloodburn had turned away and was busy with other things; she thought that for the moment she might avoid making his acquaintance.
She said nothing to Rupert, nor did he speak again to her, but she felt his high, cold gaze following her as she stood at his side and turned to watch the newcomers, felt the icy paleness like an almost unbearable pressure on her senses. But she bore it because she had to, and because she was English.
With a flutter of brown and a bound Centurion sprang off his mount, leaving it in the hand of a stable-boy. After a moment’s bewildered look about, he spotted her with Rupert and came striding over, a hesitant but sincere smile on his face. On foot he proved to be tall and lean—rather like leather, Margaret thought—but he had a cultured look in his eye and, as he came up to her, acquitted himself by bowing largely, as sincerely as his smile. The sun flashed with a violent whiteness off his helm as he straightened, blinding her with its fierce pure colour, and it seemed that, in the faintly downward gaze he gave her, warm and supercilious—was there anyone in Plenilune who was not supercilious?—that same fierce pure white was in his eye as well.
”A good morrow to you, my lady!” he said in a warm, husky voice which made her think of autumn nut-gathering. He looked to her feet and back to her face, eyebrows rampant under the embossed rim of his helm. ”And sure I know all the pretty faces of Plenilune, but here is a fair one I have not seen—passing fair, I think. Is there a price on your face, stranger, that you hide it from the other girls and have not come out till now?”
It was with supreme effort that Margaret kept from thoroughly blushing, though she felt the colour creep into her cheeks and the chill go out of the edge of the wind. She did not quite know what to say so, holding out her hand, she said truthfully, ”I am but lately come to Marenové, and Skander Rime was kind enough to extend an invitation to his gala to me.”
For the flicker of an instant something dark and suspicious winged across the Lord of Darkling’s face and his eyes, swifter still, darted to Rupert’s. It was barely a moment, and so coolly done that if Margaret herself had not been so keenly conscious of the matter she might have missed it. But there it was, and when Centurion returned his gaze to her she felt he understood. He understood perfectly. Yet the warmth in his countenance did not diminish.
”Is there any possibility,” he asked in a gentle tone, ”of procuring a dance with this lady?”
He spoke with a sort of high pity and boyish earnestness, as if it were only he and she, quite alone. But even if he could ignore, for the present, Rupert’s iron-dark figure, she could not: the figure made the pink cut on her lip sting anew, and the cut got in between her words and jostled them. ”There m-might be. I’ll beg your pardon in advance for I am new to these steps.”
Centurion’s brown eyes winged with a violent stab of smile. ”And I!—used to making four legs dance, not two. We will be quite the couple on Rime’s dance floor, you and I.”
With that he bowed again, still lower, still more flashingly, and took a polite leave of her. She noticed that he gave Rupert no other glance. She watched, without turning her head, the retreating brown-and-gold flutter of his cloak across the courtyard.
”I wish you had not accepted his invitation to dance,” said Rupert morosely.
”Why?”
De la Mare, too, was watching the Lord of Darkling, his eyes narrowed so that either the sun could not get in or the fullness of his displeasure could not get out. ”His gallantry has too much of the feel of illusion. He gives himself too readily. I do not trust him with the ladies.”
”And you trust yourself?” she asked back before she had thought about her words.
The barb had stung. The eyelids flickered open on the pale, hypnotic eyes and they looked at her, into her, with the pain of one driving in a surgeon’s knife. She shuddered.
”
You
,” he said coldly, ”get to your room. And do not come out until it is time to be introduced for the gala.”
”Oh, you do a wonderful job at winning a woman!” Margaret wanted to retort—but she did not dare. Smarting, furious, and not wanting to admit just how terrified she felt, she picked up her skirts and dodged him, carefully masking her face so that no one would know the rage and torment that was crushing all the organs in her chest.
”And don’t you dismiss Rhea!” Rupert called after her.
A sob nearly escaped. Hurriedly she climbed the stairs and plunged into the busy traffic of the nave, losing herself in it, anonymous in the crowd. She bumped against someone, felt someone catch her elbow to steady her, but she moved on at such a pace that she tore herself from the person’s grasp, only hoping that, whoever it was, her face had not been seen.
I despise you. I despise you!
In a blind rage she mounted the stairs, lost her way once along the corridors, and finally found her little high room. It was empty, for which she was glad. She knew she would have dismissed Rhea just to be alone, despite Rupert, despite everything. She locked the door with a quiet, deliberate thrust and threw herself into the corner chair. It rocked with a bang on its legs under her force, then the silence of the room was like a leaden sheet dropped over her. The only noise was her hot breathing, and even that seemed smothered.
Presently her breathing evened, though she still gripped the arms of her chair in a strangle-hold, staring intently at the gap under the door. Now, very quiet, like the pulsing rush of the ocean, she could hear the bustle outside and below. In a flash she remembered herself as a little girl sitting in her room on a summer’s afternoon, alone, her door locked. She could not remember what she had done—she felt she had deserved the punishment—but she could remember the sounds of the other children outside, shrieking and playing and enjoying themselves while she, like some German fairy princess, was trapped in her high tower.
Eyes stinging from dryness, Margaret clamped them shut, straining her hold and slowly relaxing again. It seemed the height of unfairness, the bitterest of twists, that her only hope of a hero was Rupert. She did not think even Skander would cross him decisively enough to help her.
With a start she came aware of a presence in her room and looked round, seeing her room as if for the first time. It was her dress, the only real bit of colour in that lime-washed place, set up on a manikin at the head of the bed, defiantly scarlet, defiantly real.
8 | The New Ivy Gala
Candlelight splintered off countless rubies and the rushy red contours of her gown. It was like wearing fire, fierce and sullen fire. Pale blues and crystal whites mingled and glinted off the gem-facets on her breast and hip whenever she moved, striding at a conqueror’s pace across the high nave corridor. Yellow light seemed to well up around her like an ocean. Sounds, cheer, the clink of mercury-glass and silver, and a warmth like wine overwhelmed her on either hand. Her shadow, an immense shadow such as live only in the farthest corners of a nightmare, was Rupert, and she linked to that shadow with a hand on his arm. She did not seem linked to her heart anymore. She could feel it pounding, but only as one might feel the reverberations of a hammer: a dull calm like that of horror lay on her.
They turned at the head of the stair together and paused by the blue-jay figure of Skander’s manservant. Margaret looked down past the poppy-glitter and ember-rose of her own image, past the dull horror, to the multicoloured, shifting sun-field below her. There were countless people, all of them gaily decked in richness and candlelight, in gems and velvet and the easy pomp of station.
“Rupert de la Mare, Lord of Marenové, and Lady Margaret Coventry!”
He did not seem to raise his voice, yet the blue-jay man was heard all across that thunder-seethe of noise. Faces turned and looked. They were all familiar with Rupert but they did not know her. Margaret felt the collective surge of their curiosity rise up the stairs. She felt, through the numbness, something like a hand gripping her throat. Breathing was impossible so, to save herself, she went beyond it to a light, fierce, shining kind of feeling that was in some confused way much like the falcon on Skander’s ballroom floor.
With a red flutter she descended the stair on Rupert’s arm and began picking out faces in the crowd. She saw the familiar harsh gold and auburn figure of Darkling’s war-lord: a tall, laughing figure which seemed carefree and distant. He was speaking with a laughing kind of condescension to Bloodburn and Bloodburn was taking it with light patience. At a farther distance Margaret saw Mark Roy and a woman who seemed to belong to him, standing close side by side, conversing in a friendly way with someone she did not recognize but who wore a garment of holly-green and golden trim and a jaunty mask to match. She looked away and around, colours blurring on her vision, countless strange faces shifting all around her. More than ever she felt like an alien in a strange place.
With a looming suddenness, completely silent in that thunder-roaring room, Malbrey appeared in front of them. Margaret halted with a shock: the man was enormous, like a bear. His badger-coloured beard was curly as a ram’s fleece and bristled with emotion—whether from impatience or pleasure she could not tell for the beard obscured his features.
“Here you are,” said Rupert quietly. He let go of Margaret and reached out a hand for the other man, who took it in a great paw and squeezed.
“I came up this morning.” Malbrey’s voice was soft, almost perversely pleasant. “I made an attempt to find you. Where have you been hiding?”
Rupert smiled with regret. “I was working in my room. Frezen went out last night and it seemed ill to my mind.”
Puzzled, Margaret flicked a glance to the big man’s face. He seemed surprised, almost unsettled. “Frezen has gone out? Out? Gone?”
“Gone, man,” replied Rupert tersely.
Malbrey looked away but whatever he was seeing, Margaret thought, it was not the pressing crowd around him. “It seems strange, almost impossible, that it should have gone. To think that every generation has always looked up and seen Frezen and the Sparrow—and now Frezen is gone and the Sparrow lacks its brightest star, and our children, our children’s children, will never see it.”
De la Mare nodded but the sentiments did not seem to move him so much as they did Malbrey.
Malbrey laughed mirthlessly: a beautiful, spine-tingling sound that was almost like the laugh of a woman. “Does a sparrow fall out of heaven and you don’t notice, de la Mare? Does it still seem ill to your mind?”
“I don’t think so, but we will see.” Then, as she knew he would eventually, he turned aside and placed his hand under her elbow, drawing her forward a step. “I would like to introduce you to Lady Margaret Coventry. Margaret, this is Baron Malbrey. You have heard me speak of him.”
She heard herself saying politely, “I have,” while her eyes were fixed on Malbrey’s eyes as a bird is fixed under the serpent’s glare. She felt with a horrid tingle the feeling of her hand slipping into his. His hand was rough like leather cool and living, and she wished strongly to step away and to avoid looking at him further.
“Enchanted,” said Malbrey.
“Likewise,” Margaret said in a careful voice. Then, “I did not realize you were a baron. Rupert has told me you hold the manor for him beneath the Marius Hills.”
Malbrey beamed expansively, the badger on his face shaking and spreading ominously. “You speak our language already!”
Margaret smiled back with patient coldness. “Your language is not too unlike my own.”
The baron nearly went on when, with a note of bemused surprise, Rupert said, “Why, physic! I had not expected your little pony-trap to make this journey,”—and both Margaret and the baron looked round to see a little wizened bird of a man striding carefully by them. The little man shook constantly and he did not seem able to help it: even the force of Rupert’s voice, taking him by surprise, seemed enough to topple him over, but he managed at the last moment to regain his balance. He squinted pale, watery eyes up past them to the ceiling. The white wings of his hair were ruffled and perturbed. He held out one claw of a hand as if expecting Margaret to take it. Disturbed, she pretended not to notice.
“I left everything in his care,” the ancient physic wheezed. “He minds how everything works. He minds how everything works. He minds…I left everything in his care. I put my faith in him.” His hand still outstretched, he turned away, eyes on the ceiling. “I wonder where he’s got off to…”