“The fabric seems hardy enough.” She gave the ivory skirt a smack with the flat of her hand. “I’ll lay it on the trunk. If it needs pressing tomorrow morning I am sure Aikaterine can take care of it.”
“Speak of the devil—” he turned swiftly at the sound of an opening door. Margaret came quickly behind him and saw Aikaterine and the blue-jay man come in, followed by their master. The maid and manservant between them carried the supper—which smelled as if it would do justice to Dammerung’s promises..
“Where had you gone?” Dammerung demanded of his cousin. He pulled a chair out from under one of the narrow windows and sat down horsewise on it, his arms draped across the back. “You did not go to see
her
, did you?”
Skander remained standing until Margaret took a seat. His face, angled in firelight and shadow, was less tempestuous and more resigned. “Yes,” he admitted, “I did go, but I did not see her. Not for want of courage,” he added, looking with a painful clenching of his brows toward the fire, away from the room, “maybe for excess of pride…I could not have persuaded her. I had tried before and failed; should I try now, on the eve of her wedding, and spoil what pleasant feeling she might have?”
“Perhaps not,” admitted Margaret. She had found she had been nursing a secret hope that he had gone to see her and had prevailed against her sisters’ judgment. “I know it will not make anything better, but the fact is that you are too good.”
“And so the world is unfair to you!” Dammerung took a cup of wine from the blue-jay man and held it between his chilly hands. “Be less charitable and upright and life might go more smoothly with you. No matter what the end of the wicked may be.”
The mockery touched Skander. Margaret saw him smile faintly, introspectively, and shake his head at his cousin. “
Touché
,” he murmured.
“A’come, have a bite to eat. They stuff these beasts with peppercorns, I think.”
For an hour a thin film of Dammerung’s idle chatter and pleasant mockery lay over the sting of Black Malkin’s slight. Margaret watched Skander gamely join in conversation with Dammerung and herself, but she knew—and the other two knew—that as soon as the doors were shut and the candles snuffed out, with nothing but the empty dark between himself and the world, Skander’s pain would redouble. He bore it bravely, his smile genuine. If his eyes were distant and preoccupied his conversation was on the mark, his attention given to his companions, and Margaret felt that she could pity him no more than she had let him pity her.
When they finished supper it was late, the early winter dark full upon them, and the fire was a rich roaring tapestry of colour in the hearth that beckoned a melancholy cheer from Margaret’s heart. She rose stiffly from her chair, put away her empty cup, and bade good-night to the two gentlemen. Dammerung murmured something in reply—she did not quite catch it—but Skander looked up from out of the ring of dark, his face flashing in the light, a small, sweet, sharing smile on his face. Margaret saw it and it hurt her, as much as her forced smiles had once hurt him, and she went away with the gold memory of it burning in her heart. For some time she lay awake in the strange dark, listening to Aikaterine’s quiet breathing in the bed beside hers, listening to the exiled wind howling coldly over the Thrasymene plain outside.
The wedding day dawned wretchedly cheerful. Margaret had only just grown accustomed to waking up in her bright bower at Lookinglass; waking up in a low little room in a narrow doeskin bed, listening to Aikaterine running the bath so that it roared like a train, disoriented her for several moments before she could crawl up out of her confusion and grope for her bearings and her bathrobe. The one little window in their bedroom, which looked out over the knoll of Thwitandrake and the bleak plain below, let in a spread of cold white morning light which fell full across Margaret’s bed and the kist between the two bunks, lighting up the gown that was waiting for her. With its interwoven threads of electrum and gems of apricot-coloured topaz and sheer crystals, the gown imaged forth thunderbolts upon her dazzled eyes.
“I have made a mistake,” she cried, flinging herself out of her bed into the bare cold of the stark air. She grabbed the gown. It had been an innocent, darkened thing of rough ivory last night in the small, dual light of the candle and the mirror.
Aikaterine turned quickly from the bath. “My lady?”
She turned on the maid, thrusting the dress at her. “I cannot wear this! I cannot wear this—it is too beautiful! What will they think of me? This is Woodbird’s wedding day!”
The mousy brown brows drew together. Aikaterine made no move to take the dress away. “Yes, and she is not marrying my lord Skander Rime. We did not bring another dress, my lady. It is the one you must wear—unless you would wear your riding clothes from yesterday, which I have not washed…”
Margaret stared at her, knowing she was defeated and yet caught in an irrational panic, desperate for a way out. Her eyes, startled and wide, dropped from Aikaterine’s face to the chancy, beautiful, shapeless thing in her hand. She should drop it. In a moment she would drop it, if only she could unlock her fingers…
Aikaterine moved softly; her hand closed over the gown’s folds, extricating it gently from Margaret’s strangling grip. “You will start a new fashion with all this goose-bump skin,” she fussed quietly. She put her hand under her lady’s elbow and moved her toward the steaming bath.
“I should almost rather go naked,” said Margaret. “What was I thinking? I am so ashamed!”
“No one,” Aikaterine said finally, “will be looking at you.”
There was no way out of it. Miserable, knowing that in any other circumstance she should have been glad to wear such a gorgeous outfit, Margaret folded herself up into the bath, her knees rammed up under her chin, while Aikaterine ran hot water down her back. The soap was chicory-coloured and smelled exotic. If she did not look at the dress, if she did not think about it, if she focused on the warmth of the bath and the feeling of coming clean, she could rouse her spirits a little—though she wondered what the point was of anyone having high spirits on a day like this. As Aikaterine had put it so very bluntly, Woodbird was getting married, and it was not to Skander Rime.
When it was time, she put up her chin and let Aikaterine get her into the dress and said no not a word, though her heart seemed to mortify inside her. When they went through her toiletries they found they had brought her jewellery and combs but had neglected to bring any pins. That took Margaret’s heart and buried it dead. But Aikaterine, seeming nonplussed, brushed out her long Victorian hair, dried it, and left it as it was. As it dried it sprayed upward in low brown curls in a gypsy way, which worried Margaret. Would nothing go their way today?
For once Aikaterine put on a smock of some other colour than white: she stepped into a simple gown of grey bound in pink ribbon. With her lush blonde hair flowing over it, she looked quite a picture. Margaret smiled mournfully and turned from her bed chamber into the little sitting room.
Skander was up. He was dressed simply in dark earthy colours—for a moment, as he stood against the window with his back in shadow and his face turned from her, she almost mistook him for his cousin.
He turned at the sound of her door.
“I thought you were Dammerung for a moment,” she said, offering light conversation. She moved toward the tea. “Was your bed too hard?”
“Not too hard. I’ve slept on harder. You have not seen Dammerung this morning?”
She paused over the round handleless cups and looked quizzically at him. “No. Should I have? I have only just come out.”
He shook his shoulders and set his empty cup down on a little table. “I don’t know. He was not in the room when I woke this morning and his cloak is gone from the peg.”
Margaret swung round. Her white stallion-skin hung alone on the wall: the panther-skin was missing.
“That worries me,” said Skander frankly.
It worried Margaret too, though she did not know why. But Skander was in a bad way, boldly though he faced the proceedings, and she could not worry about Dammerung while it was her task to cheer his cousin. “I am sure he can manage. You know him: he is inscrutable and doesn’t like to be pried. Have you eaten? More tea?”
She ate and Skander had seconds just to accompany her, but even when they had finished, touched up, and were ready to leave for the ceremony, Dammerung had still not arrived. Though he did not say a word, Margaret could see Skander was doing worse with each passing minute. His lips were compressed, brows clenched, cheeks ashen. But when they left the guest wing and plunged out into the stinging cold wind of the long yard, heading down the little central road for the church, he did, after a few minutes, put out his arm so that Margaret could take it.
It seemed everyone was headed toward the church, blowing in the wind like pretty pieces of paper and feathers. An instrument was playing somewhere: not a piano or a horn—after a few notes Margaret recognized it as her old haunting spirit the panpipe. Under its notes, burning in the crystal sky, she and Skander walked arm in arm, close together for the wind was strong and cold. But once, at the mouth of an alley, her companion stopped short and turned.
Margaret looked beyond him up the alley. A door had opened in the side of a building. In the shadow of a low overhang there was a flutter of white, a rush as of swan’s feathers, and from a distance she realized she was looking at the bride. There was a flock of people around her but she stood out, even in that cramped, narrow space alongside the church. Skander stiffened and seemed to draw breath as if a knife had been riven in him. It was too far away for anyone to hear—Margaret barely heard it—but the swan-white figure turned, cast about wildly as if thrown into a sudden confusion, and saw him. Everything hung still a moment. Margaret did not dare to break it; they, it seemed, did not dare to break it. Skander looked as though he wanted to turn away, conscious that he was ruining a moment he had wanted Woodbird to enjoy, but he could not do it.
The crowd did it for them. Someone called the lady’s name and she had to go, pulled away, drowned in a sea of attendants. The alleyway was empty. A door banged shut in the wind.
Without a word Margaret pulled Skander gently along. There was nothing she could say. Words cheapened sentiment. She knew his agony, an upturned hourglass mirror of her own, and knew pity was galling. She could only be there to propel him when, of a sudden, like a stallion spooking at a strange object, he balked at the door and almost turned back. She gritted her teeth and went forward so that he, as her escort, had to go too, and they sat together in mute commiseration in the gold light of the church, listening to the wild panpipe playing a hymn that only the wind outside knew the words to.
There was still no sign of Dammerung. The church was filling up—Margaret had to crush to one side against Skander to make room for a lord and lady beside her. She recognized a few faces: Mark Roy and Romage and their two sons, Lord Gro FitzDraco, sketched in grey clothing and black riding boots. Centurion had made it, which surprised Margaret, and she wondered how the falling out of the Overlord ceremony had been met among the lords and land-owners of the Honours. Once, to her horror, she thought she spotted Dammerung on the far side of the church, only to realize, with all the blood shocking back to her heart, that it was Rupert. She stiffed and almost grasped for Skander’s hand. Panic crushed her brain. She could not meet that devil’s gaze. Did he know she was here? Her ribs ached suddenly, as if the breaks were still there. She looked away, breathing shortly, chin shaking.
I must pull myself together. I mustn’t cry. I musn’t leave. I am safe where I am. Skander will not let anything happen to me. He can’t get at me. Where—where is Dammerung!
She began to dread that Rupert had found his brother and done him harm. Almost she got up then and there to look, but an instinctive better sense rooted her to the bench. She looked at Skander’s face. It was grey but calm.
How can he bear this?
The next quarter hour was agony for both of them. Margaret dared not look up from her tiny sphere lest she catch Rupert’s eye. She was dying to know where Dammerung was and if he was all right—that thought, that he might be in danger or in need, perhaps more than the thought of meeting Rupert’s eye, terrified her. When she chanced to look at him she saw Skander sitting rigidly, fists clenched on his knees, his head turned to watch like a hawk the steady flow of people filling the church benches. But when the ceremony began in a painful blur of candlesmoke and a rush of pentacostal winter wind, it seemed unreal to Margaret. She saw a man at the front of the church standing by the shepherd: a young, well-formed man, not unhandsome nor coarse, but rather plain, she considered, when compared to an image like Dammerung or Aikin Ironside. She had forgot his name. He did not seem important, not until—Skander’s hand whitened and slowly relaxed as with a conscious effort—Woodbird appeared in the dove-shadowed church doorway and was led in a long, beautiful flutter of swan feathers to the man’s side. The panpipe had been joined at some point by a harp and they sang out an eerie, elemental combination of stark and transient images. It hurt, and Margaret was almost glad when it stopped and the shepherd began to speak.
For all that she had wanted to sit under a church service, she now barely paid notice to the man’s words.
You are making a horrible mistake!
she wanted to cry out—but cold good breeding made the words stick in her throat.
You have all the power you could want, all the autonomy a woman could need! How can you willingly marry a man you do not love!
The homily was concluded. If their ceremonies were anything like those she knew, they would move on to the dedication and the vows now. The groom held out his hand to the bride; the bride lifted her hand, seemed almost to waver, if Margaret’s imagination did not get the better of her, and finally placed her fingers delicately atop the man’s.
“We will now proceed to join this man and woman before the witness of the congregation.” The shepherd turned and looked beyond them to the people sitting on the benches. His simple grey outfit, looking more like a farmer’s visiting clothes than a clergyman’s wear, was smothered in the sweeping splendour of Woodbird’s exotic gown. It was hard to see him between the bride and groom. “Has anyone a claim against either by which this joining should not proceed?”