“Hmm? No. The houses are quite separate. But Gro and Mark Roy are such intimates and—if you could believe it—the very best of friends, that I dare swear Aikin and Brand have spent as much time around Gro as they have around their father.”
“I can imagine Gro being a good friend—really the best sort of friend,” Margaret admitted, “but it is sometimes hard to conceive of him as being
friendly
.”
“I don’t think he often tries, but then I have never considered that the measure of a friendship.”
“I think he tried for me, and whether or not he succeeded in it I cannot say, but the gesture meant something. He still frightens me a little with his grimness, but I remember that he tried to be friendly, and he cared, and that means something.”
Dammerung put out his arm and thrust back a curtain from a doorway, holding it aside for her to slip through. “Some people have the knack of friendliness but are not quick to be friends. I am that way: I suppose it is a failing of mine. Others, like Gro, make no pretence except to what they truly feel. And, indeed, I fear the man has very few friends.”
Margaret felt surprise and, in the wake of the surprise, defence. “What, why? Are all men blockheads?”
Like spice thrown on the fire, her words brought out a flash of laughter from him. “Hy my! I would not be a man’s reputation for the world once it got under
your
heel…But no, there is some cause, if you are inclined to call it a cause. The material fact is that the lady of the house, whom we are going down to meet, never stood by the altar with Gro.”
As blunt and calloused as she had become, as used to roughing it with Dammerung and his pack, Margaret felt a flush of embarrassment limn her cheeks and she was glad for her own sake—and a little, curiously enough, for Gro’s—that it was dark and that Dammerung could not see it.
“Not a peep out of you,” he remarked admiringly.
“Well,” she pointed out, “there must be a story. And Gro himself is a very admirable sort of man. There must be something to explain it.”
“As a matter of fact, there is.” They emerged from the maze of hallways on the first floor and began the long descent by way of a stair to the ground floor below. A red carpet rustled underfoot, thick about the edges and well worn where countless feet had gone countless times up and down. “And for the very gallantry of it,” Dammerung went on, “I could lay my head at his feet. He found the Lady Herluin—who was not then a lady of anything save decency and virtue—one winter while he was out on one of his days-long rambles. He had only Snati—worthy pup—and together the two of them stumbled on the caved remains of a woodcutter’s hut. There had been a heavy snow that year and the roof, it appears, had not been built to withstand the extra weight. One side of it collapsed, smothering two people, the roof-beam pinned and crushed a third, and the poor Lady Herluin, quite alone in a vast, cold world with her only relatives dead around her, was found in that state by first Snati’s nose and then Gro’s rare tenderness.”
“It sounds like a fairytale,” Margaret noted.
Dammerung’s nostrils flared with a horsy laugh. “Oh yes, fairytales have a way of being bittersweet. At all events, the fact on whose bell-pull people yank most is that, as they were too far from civilization to set out that day, Gro spent the night alone with her, in very close proximity, I imagine, for the night was very cold and the wood quite wet with snow. Whatever they thought of each other and whatever they talked of, I can only guess it was agreeable, for the next day Gro brought the lady home to Gemeren in quietude and decency and they have been together ever since.”
“And the lady was all very willing?”
“Only too, I imagine. I have not met
her
, but I gather she shares her lord’s sense of propriety and all-things-done-in-orderliness.”
He stopped to ask the way of a servant, who informed them that everyone had gone down to the wine-cellar. Margaret, glancing quickly aside, saw the little flinch in Dammerung’s face, but it was gone again too fast for the servant to have taken note; he gave his words of gratitude and hauled her off toward the cellar.
To divert him, she remarked, “I can see how it would be a tale to inspire your sense of chivalry.”
“Yes,” he said a little flatly, “but my fairytale was all over on its head: the lady saved
me
.”
“Let us not be accused,” she told him firmly, “of ever being cliché.”
They went down a narrow stair with the cold scent of earth mingling with the warm scent of vintage. Dammerung slid his fingers along the wall on the descent as if, through his skin, he could feel the coolness and warmth and sleepiness of the world around him seeping through into his arm; his fingers left, for a blink of a moment, little trails of greenish light behind them in the dark, an eerie and beautiful phosphorescence that Margaret wished, girlishly, she could take and spin as he spun the fire and wear about her like a dress.
Unlike Rupert’s cellar, which was utilitarian and dark, Gro’s wine-cellar was well-lit and furnished, faced in stone, and “As comfortable a bolt-hole as you could wish,” Margaret said as she stepped through into the room.
“You like it, then?” Gro rose up from his chair—behind him she was aware of Aikin and Brand, also, rising—and gestured to a woman in gold who was seated beside him. “Lord Dammerung, Lady Margaret, my wife—Herluin.”
She was not a very lovely woman, not as Romage or even Kinloss were lovely: she had vibrant golden hair, very demurely plaited, a decent gown of grey stuff that shimmered with a touch of pearl-gold, and a working woman’s face: honest, open, sensible. As she turned in her chair and got up beside her husband to greet her guests, Margaret saw, somehow, beneath that pleasant, unlovely face, something like worry shift for a moment and then disappear, and she summoned her own charity about her—
For here
, she thought
, is a woman who knows she is not much to crow about and is conscious of a true lady’s face. Hers, I think, is the greater heart.
“My Lady Herluin,” she murmured, and sank down on one knee.
Herluin did not appear surprised, but her husband actually smiled. Then Dammerung stepped forward, his cloak of mockery thrown off, more like a boy coming before his mother than a young man with a birthright to power condescending to slip the hand of a commoner between his fingers. “My lady,” he whispered, and kissed her cheek. “We are honoured by your hospitality.”
Somehow the staunch, blushing woman found her voice. “Truly, sir, you honour us. I think that you did not have to tarry and turn aside out of your way. Your way, I think, lies to the north among the warlords and the lands at war.”
She had a soft, nutty, mousy kind of voice that was very pleasant to listen to. Margaret saw Dammerung rise to the occasion, nostrils trembling on the scent of her voice, a light of daring in his eye. “Maybe my friend your lord does not speak much of war to you—and should he? It is a man’s business.” He gestured to the chairs and remained standing while Margaret sat down and Herluin, a little bemused, sat beside her husband. “But it would be poor sport to come so close to so great a house and not pay respects to its lord and lady. And—hullo! what is this mouse I spy in the corner? I mistook it for the mirror of my lady!”
Gro turned in his chair and beckoned to the slight, golden-haired, blue-eyed creature that stood in the shadows between Aikin’s and Brand’s chairs. “Come here, Ella,” he bade. She came, followed by Snati, and she really looked the image of Herluin, so much so that Margaret thought it uncanny. But where the girl had her mother’s face, she had her father’s grimness about her mouth. She could not be over ten, certainly not twelve, but she stood up straight before Dammerung, her head held high, and looked him back in the face. Gro murmured something about Ella being their daughter and only child.
“Well!” breathed Dammerung. He thrust his hands onto his hips. “By the twelve houses, they smile upon this one! We had but one fair woman—this house has two! Happy me!” And he sat down, hard, in a chair, and beckoned her onto his knee. She came with stately grace, hefted herself up with the agility of one accustomed to riding a pony, and settled back into the crook of Dammerung’s arm. He linked his arms around her and peered hard into her face. “Oh, no, hold hard, friend Gro. This one has the look of a mischief-maker. You had better keep a sharp eye on this one.”
“Which,” asked Gro in a dry, level tone: “you, or she? For you are both thickened like thieves and together pose us all great threat.”
“Oh—ha!” cried Dammerung, and Margaret was glad that her own sudden shock of laughter was drowned in Ella’s. Blushing, but much amused and glad that he had been roused out of his near depression by the little blonde-headed girl, she took her glass of wine from Gro and hid her reddened cheek behind her hand. “She has Mercury’s laugh, too, Gro,” said Dammerung. He began jigging her on his knee and fetched out one hand to take his own wine-glass. “She has the sure makings of a charmer.”
“I think you smell like horses,” she spoke up for the first time. She had a surer voice than her mother, more like her father’s. “I like that.”
He kissed her cheek and told her he was flattered.
“We’ve got to take your papa away again in the morning,” he told her. “The king needs him in the north. He is quite irreplaceable.”
“I am glad you think so now,” said Gro with what were the stirrings of humour.
Dammerung looked round sharply, a wolfish smile shining off his teeth. “Oh ho! Am I not forgiven? And here her ladyship had been so kind as to offer
her
justification by faith.”
Herluin said bluntly, “Oh, are we speaking of that? Yes, Gro told me you had nearly sent him home to me on a bier. Small thanks we get for our pains.”
Dammerung looked cornered. “Here I am come to a friend’s house with all intentions of friendliness and good-will, to be hounded by a simple mistaken made—
in the heat of battle
, I might add...!”
Margaret put in sleepily, “I do not assume responsibility for any of this.” But to herself she thought, marvelling,
They make me laugh—me!—these grim folk and these warlords. They make me laugh. Perhaps that is the greatest wonder of Plenilune, that I, of all people, can look on them and that they can make me laugh
.
Dammerung fashioned some kind of mock defence, which was as beautiful as it was ramshackle, with the lamplight from the wall casting a flare of yellow light across the dark, upreared crown of his hair like the sharpened halo from ancient iconic paintings. “You’ll stand by me, won’t you, sweetheart?” he asked Ella at last, jigging her closer to the hollow of his shoulder. “You and Lady Margaret will witness I would never blow your father to the kingdom-come on purpose—although I cannot say that is such a bad place to be blown to. An’ sure I can think of worse.”
“Lady Margaret might,” said Herluin, getting up in a rustle of fabric, “but Ella must go to bed.”
Ella’s head erupted from Dammerung’s shoulder in startlement and protest. “But Mama—”
“We’ll be sitting on no buts,” her mother retorted. “I told you, you were to stay up in time to see Aikin and Brand, and Lord Dammerung and Lady Margaret, but it is now far past your bedtime and I will have no protests after such a privilege.”
Dammerung rose, Ella still in his arms. “I cry you mercy—I was not aware we were causing such a stir in your routine. Be a good girl then, Ella, and pack yourself off to bed. Goodness knows
I
shan’t be up much longer either, for I have an early and a busy day tomorrow.” He set her in her mother’s sturdy arms.
Gro cast an enormous shadow on the wall as he got up. Turning to Margaret, he bent forward deferentially and explained, “I must go tuck Ella in and say her prayers with her. I will return presently.”
“Oh, no,” she murmured, waving him on. “Please, do not hurry on
our
account.”
In her imperious voice, as her mother was carrying her to the door, Ella called out, “Aikin and Brand promised me they would read Snati’s story to me!”
Her father’s face darkened. “How did you come to contrive that?”
Aikin, spreading his hands and appearing himself all deference and sly smoothness, protested, “She said please, and marked that we did not know when we would be next in Gemeren.”
In a cool tone of triumph Dammerung said, “I did tell you, Gro: you must needs keep an eye on that one.”
Gro seemed to hesitate, but Margaret, seated and twisted in her chair to see the grey, grim lord’s face, saw his greyness and his grimness crumble before his daughter.
Hast conquered him!
she thought grandly.
There is great kindliness and heart beneath that mask, after all
.
“Very well,” he relented. “But make it quick, and no deliberating over the voices of the characters. Whatever comes first will do.” He turned to Dammerung. “Please excuse me. I will not be long.”
“Nonsense, sir. We are trespassing into your world. Take all the time you need with no thought to us. We can shift very well for ourselves.”
He meant it, and Gro saw that he meant it. With his brief, straight-lipped smile he left them, turning to duck out after Brand, who was the next last to go; the clatter of their shoes came back to Margaret for a few moments before the heavy weight of stone swallowed it up.
Dammerung sat back down and refilled his glass and hers in a companionable silence. For awhile Margaret sat with the cool cut glass held suspended between her fingers, the light of it playing red on the long curve of her hand, the warmth and richness like the sweetness of life itself singing through her veins as the blood chased the wine through her body. There was a little clock-face shining at them from the top of a tall wine-rack; the high penny-tick of it echoed against the stone.
“You seem much taken with the little girl Ella,” she ventured.
Dammerung seemed to wake from distant thoughts. A smile flickered like a gull on his face. “Do I? And you, in your way of reservation, I think.”
“A little. But I’ve never had fond memories of little girls—not even of myself as a little girl. Ella doesn’t seem like such a bad young lady, though.”