Revenge of the Rose (6 page)

It was not really impromptu, of course. His cook had anticipated this event for days and was prepared to feed them all with jellies and summer meats; everyone for miles around had known that Willem of Dole would lead his team to victory, and that when he did he would feed and water them. He always did. But he was a humble man, and the pretense of improvisation added to the spirit of the evening.

Willem sat at the high table in his family colors of red and blue, a slash of sunburn marking what had been exposed between his helmet and his beard. Erec— dressed more demurely now, in Willem’s livery— was serving him a leg from a suckling pig. The knight radiated a relaxed cheerfulness that was as rare on his face as such excitement was in his house. He had won a lot of gold in ransoms today; he’d also added an excellent grey mare to his stable and a staghound hunting bitch; three days’ service from Sauvin of Poligny’s serfs was due him as well.

But late in the day he had surrendered his iron helmet, and the knight to whom he’d lost it— Renard of Vesoul— had no interest in exchanging it for any ransom. “This bonnet is worth ten times its weight in gold,” Renard had laughed, hoisting it atop a lance and waving it for everyone to notice. “I’m the second-best knight in Burgundy, but without this you won’t be fighting any tournaments, so I become the first best!” Willem, to maintain a gentleman’s demeanor, had laughed self-deprecatingly at this but immediately told Erec to try to buy the helmet back. Despite Erec’s best efforts, Renard was not selling.

Willem wasn’t thinking about that now. He was allowing himself to indulge in the deceptive pleasure of feeling rich enough to host a feast— a quick mental calculation would have told him that the feast almost wiped out the amount he’d earned in coin today— and the even greater pleasure of being appreciated by his fellow knights and all their men. He was only sorry Jouglet had left earlier that week; the local entertainers were dull in comparison.

There were some two dozen knights crowded with their squires in the small half-timbered hall, most of them exceedingly drunk. The extra servants hired from the town were all young women and suspiciously pretty; Willem had been taken aback by it at first. But they knew their business. They flirted raucously but stayed entirely clothed, were admirably prompt at service, and if they were doing anything on the side to make a little extra, they were doing it quickly, quietly, and most important they were doing it behind the stables. So the impression of wholesome, if inebriated, jollity was preserved within the hall.

Willem sat back against his carved oak chair and smiled with paternal satisfaction at the hubbub. The hubbub was consuming an amazing amount of larded chicken in pepper sauce, so luxuriously gushing with fat it could almost slide unchewed down one’s throat.

“Excuse me, sir.” The boy who had been minding the door was at his elbow. “But there’s a rider come with a message for you, says he’s ridden three days to get here with it.”

Willem could not think of anyone who lived three days’ ride away who wasn’t already at the feast. “Bring him in then,” he said.

As the boy departed, Willem felt a tap on his shoulder, and looked back to see his mother, almost invisible within the shadows in her dark grey widow’s wimple. She gave him a look that he interpreted at once. “No, milady,” he said gently, with an apologetic smile. “Lienor knows she must not come down here while the hall is full of drunken bachelors. I promise to share the news with her if it is of interest.”

She nodded and slipped back into the darkness by the kitchen screens.

Willem and everyone who had heard the porter’s announcement assumed that a messenger three days on the road would be dirty, hungry, and exhausted. But the young man who entered the hall through the sunset-shadowed door was so elegantly dressed, so debonair, calm, and collected that the murmuring that had begun returned at once to silence. There was respectful ogling as he crossed the room, his face clean, his black hair and beard neat, and— most peculiar for a man who had been three days on the road— a cape of expensive ermine without a mote of dust on it covering his livery. For the cape alone, this courier was dressed as well as any knight in the room, and held himself with greater dignity than most of them.

“Excellent knight,” he said in German-accented Burgundian, and bowed before Willem’s table with a practiced efficiency. He held a scroll in his finely tooled leather glove but little could be seen of it. “May I presume you to be Willem of Dole, the master of this house?”

“…Yes,” Willem said cautiously. “Who are you and what is your mission?” And then because he could not help himself: “You are in an excellent state for three days on the road.”

“I have taken a room at the inn at Dole, sir. I arrived well before the bells tolled vespers, and bathed and changed my clothes before coming to see you.” Seeing the uncomprehending stare Willem and others gave him, he explained pleasantly, “My master pays my travel expenses and is very generous for my comfort, sir.”

This only further astonished the assembled provincials— a messenger so pampered was not even in the realm of their imagining. The young man took this in, hiding his amused condescension, and bowed very deeply again to Willem.

“I forget myself, allow me to deliver my message. I am Nicholas of Swabia, and I bring greetings from my master”— with a gratuitous flourish he flung back the cape, revealing a yellow tunic with a black eagle on it— “His Majesty the king and emperor.”

This was Nicholas’s favorite part of his job, and Willem gratified him by gaping as the room burst into astonished drunken speculation. Nicholas presented the scroll, which was sealed with gold leaf; Willem reached across the table and accepted it. He examined the seal— it was actually gold foil, adhered to the fine paper (the fine
linen
paper) with wax. The small imprint on it matched the eagle on Nicholas’s chest. Willem was almost afraid to break it.

“His Majesty requests your presence at his court,” Nicholas explained, seeing Willem’s hesitation.

Willem was so startled by this announcement that he handed off the scroll to Erec, who in turn ogled the gold seal until another knight reached for it.

“What?” Willem said, trying not to sound moronic. “Would you please repeat that message?”

Nicholas bowed again. “His Majesty the Emperor has called you to his summer court at Koenigsbourg. He is awaiting your presence as soon as you can set out.” Seeing Willem’s confusion he added, reassuringly, “It is not a criminal summons, milord. He has heard good things about your mettle as a knight and he wishes to consider making you a member of his entourage.”

Willem made a gasping sound, and the hall grew still. He breathed out a restrained, incredulous little laugh. “I am stunned. And of course His Majesty’s obedient servant,” he added quickly. He had absolutely no idea what was appropriate in such circumstances. “Should I depart at once?” He stood up, and seeing him, a few of his less-inebriated guests stood as well. A small group of them had gathered around the gold foil seal, staring at it openmouthed.

Nicholas smiled and held up his hand. “His Majesty enjoys a good feast and would surely wish that you enjoy the rest of yours. Let us begin preparations in the morning.”

“Join us,” Willem said earnestly, embarrassed it had taken him so long to think of this. “Please— ” He gestured for his steward to find a stool. Finally thinking clearly, he switched to German to add, “They are about to bring out a currant-bread pudding that has made my cook famous locally. And then by all means stay as my honored guest tonight.”

“For the feast, thank you, I will stay,” Nicholas answered, smiling. “But not overnight— I have a very comfortable room at the inn awaiting me.” Lowering his voice he added, “And a very comfortable young companion as well.”

“Aha,” Willem said with a polite smile. “Well. Perhaps you will break fast with us in the morning? You are welcome to observe mass here— it is a modest chapel that we have, but our chaplain speaks well.”

“I would be very pleased to do that,” Nicholas said and settled elegantly upon the leather stool the steward had brought.

The next morning, by the time mass had been performed by the family cleric, Willem’s handful of devoted serfs, understanding the importance of their visitor, had diligently cleaned up what had turned out to be a very messy evening. The evidential detritus of every indulgence, from overeating to carnality, covered the hall, the courtyard, and the stableyard at dawn; by the time the chapel bell tolled prime, these areas had been restored to their usual monastic sheen.

Nicholas, refreshed from the various comforts procured at the inn, arrived for a breakfast of yesterday’s bread crusts sopped in sauce, and ate beside Willem, describing what the journey would be like and whom Willem should bring with him for the circumstances. The young knight’s eyes grew rounder as he listened. He was being asked to select an entourage of his own: all his squires and enough servants and page boys to attend them for an extended time (he murmured, falteringly, that he might bring one servant, and perhaps two pages, and he had no squire but Erec). He was to bring his armor and at least one ceremonial outfit (he had only one ceremonial outfit, which made the selection simple).

According to Nicholas, the journey would be easy, assuming they did not succumb to heatstroke, ague, highwaymen, or wild boars. They would be almost entirely on the edge of river valleys without having actually to ford any body of water; they would begin by following the River Doubs east and slightly north, into the gentle southernmost foothills of the Vosges. Willem knew this terrain from running the tournament circuit; as in Dole, the climate was mild and the soil superb, the land’s lush virgin forests being reclaimed with growing rapacity by serfs and lords alike, and tamed to crops, vineyards, and livestock forage. Beyond lay the Rhine Valley, a flat, swampish expanse that ran north to south but was extremely broad from east to west as well. They would travel north along its western edge for several days, Nicholas explained, on ancient, refurbished trade roads raised several yards above the marshy valley floor, roads that traveled true north even as the Rhine itself meandered with silt-inducing vagueness toward the North Sea. Conveniently, Koenigsbourg Castle was to the west of the river valley, perched atop a mountain crag; the town of Sudaustat lay at its foot a half-mile distant, snug against the hills that connected the Rhine plain to the northern Vosges. A room at Sudaustat’s best inn had been reserved, although Nicholas was vague as to who was paying for it.

When breakfast was finished Willem set his steward about the task of organizing the adventure. Erec was sent for. The few servants they had, except Lienor’s maid, were corralled into preparations; the task enlisted even those who would have been otherwise harvesting the hay. Nicholas had quite offhandedly remarked that they need not bring much, they would be in a castle town where nearly everything required could be purchased. Willem saw no point in mentioning that he had very little with which to make such purchases.

Once the servants were dispatched on their errands, Willem gestured Nicholas to follow him across the small sun-drenched courtyard toward the back of the manor. “Allow me to present the only treasures of my home,” he said, with an obvious eagerness to please His Majesty’s servant. One thing he knew surely was that introducing his sister to any man would please the man enormously. Lienor’s relentless flirtations had disturbed him until he came to see— Jouglet had pointed this out to him— that for Lienor, the whole point of flirtation was
never
yielding to
any
wooer.

They climbed the outside wooden stairs above the stable, to a small platform and carved wooden door. Willem stepped aside and held open the door for his visitor, wishing that the place were overrun with page boys for such menial services. They went inside.

The women’s chamber was a long, narrow room running the southern length of the household. It had several windows to the south that let in brilliant light, a view of hayfields, and a warm breeze that was softened by the River Doubs. For such a modest house, Nicholas noted, this room was sumptuously decorated and relentlessly feminine: there were flowery tapestries on the walls, flowery curtains by the windows, and flowery draperies around both beds; there was one chair and one stool, each embellished with flowery designs; there were flower-painted chests with attractive but unuseful knickknacks atop them, jewelry draped almost casually over every free surface, and several gilt, but empty, birdcages. The clothes-pole held more kirtles, robes, and tunics than a poor knight’s sister would ever need to own.

Sitting in profile, at the large middle window that had a linen drape protecting it from direct sunlight, were two women. The older one was wearing dark grey, and generally plain; the younger, blond, was one of the prettiest females Nicholas had ever seen. They had been bent over sewing frames, embroidering, but both looked up as the door opened. With twinned expressions and similar bright green eyes, they smiled on seeing Willem then looked startled, almost alarmed, when they registered Nicholas’s presence. They set the sewing frames aside hurriedly, and hurriedly stood up.

“Nicholas, these are the ladies of my house,” Willem said with a hint of pride. “Maria my lady-mother, and my sister and ward, Lienor. Ladies, this is Nicholas of Swabia, messenger of our great emperor.” He had sent them the extraordinary news before retiring last night, along with the gold seal from the scroll; by now even Lienor had managed to control her excitement. Nicholas bowed to the mother, then the daughter. They curtsied, eyes averted. “I am honored,” Nicholas said in a silky voice, “to be granted access to the private regions of the manor.”

Lienor smiled and spoke in the perfect aristocratic German that Jouglet always insisted on. “We are honored to receive you,” she replied. “We have seldom in the course of my life received a visitor to our chambers like this. My brother is famous for being extremely protective.”

“That speaks excellently well of him as well as of you, and only further deepens the honor I feel at having been invited here,” Nicholas said, with another bow.