The Dread Wyrm (Traitor Son Cycle) (21 page)

“I’ll do my best,” Ser Gabriel said.

“I still can’t believe she agreed. What did she ask for?” Ser John asked.

Ser Gabriel smiled. “A life of chastity,” Ser Gabriel said. He left the older knight speechless and led his household and their baggage south, to the ford.

At the ford, he found the woman he’d missed. Sister Amicia sat on her little horse with her two attendants, Sisters Mary and Katherine.

“May we accompany you on the road?” she asked.

The Red Knight used his knees to press his riding horse close to hers. Her smile was brave. He hoped his was as good.

“You mean you wish to spend ten days on the road to Harndon with us?” he asked.

“I’ve been accused of heresy,” she said, her back straight and her head high. “I intend to meet it in person, and not cower here. I gather you have similar plans.”

He thought of various quips, but it had always been her courage he loved best. He bowed. “I’d be delighted to have your company, Sister.”

Horse by horse and wagon by wagon, the ferry took them across. In each ferry load, the weight was made up by sheep or cattle—enormous cattle with vicious horns. The lowing of the herds, the belches and farts, the sound of chewing, the hollow tread of their hooves, went on and on.

Bad Tom met the Red Knight on the south side. The road up from the ferry to the high bank was solid mud, and the younger nun’s palfrey almost lost its rider going up.

“You brought her,” Tom said with real approval.

“It’s not what you think,” Ser Gabriel said.

Bad Tom laughed. “Sometimes I think you’re the smartest loon I’ve ever known,” Tom said. “And other times the greatest fool.”

Amicia rode up in the last sentence. She laughed.

Ser Gabriel laughed. “Ten days on the road with you lot?” He smiled. “Let’s go to Harndon,” he said.

Two hundred leagues to the north, Thorn stood in his place of power, staff in left hand, but this time he cast no power. He was in his new form of stone and wood, tall and impregnable. He held the results of a year of breeding a careful, dreadful nurture.

At a distance, his right arm would have seemed to be sheathed in fur. Closer examination would indicate a dozen giant purple-black moths, each as big as a heavy bird of prey.

He reached through the
aethereal
until he made contact with the aura of power that was his Dark Sun. He showed the aura to his moths, and he flung his arm up, like a falconer sending his bird after prey.

And they flew.

Harndon—The Queen

S
pring was a season made for joys, but Desiderata had few enough of them. She sat in her solar with Diota brushing her hair.

“Never you fuss, lass,” Diota prattled. “Soon enough he’ll come back to his duty.”

“Duty?” Desiderata asked.

“Don’t snap at me, you minx,” Diota said. “You know what I mean.”

“You mean, when I’ve had my baby, my body will be desirable again, and my lover will return?” the queen asked, mildly enough. “You mean that this is the role of women, and I should abide it?”

“If you must,” Diota said. “That’s men.”

“He is the king,” Desiderata said.

“He’s ill-advised,” Diota said, patiently. “That Rohan all but pushed the red-headed vixen into the king’s arms. The chit never had a chance.”

“I agree that she’s little to blame,” Desiderata said. She enjoyed the kiss of the sun on her bare shoulders and her hair, and listened to the sounds her baby made—increasingly strident and yet beloved sounds.

She was contemplating her unborn child when a bell rang and the outer door opened.

“Fuss, it’s the witch,” Diota spat, and moved protectively to her mistress’s other side.

Outside, a young woman said, “And where is the royal lady this morning?” in a Jarsay accent.

Lady Genevieve was the plainest—and eldest—of the queen’s ladies, a good ten years older than the queen. She wore a cross big enough to hang on a wall and her dress was plain to the point of being frumpish. She wore dark colours and sometimes even wore a wimple, although today she wore her hair in an Alban fashion—each plait was wound in the shape of a turret, making her head look like a fortress gate, which the queen found particularly apt.

“Welcome, Lady Genevieve,” the queen said.

“All this hair brushing is mere vanity,” Lady Genevieve said. She sat without asking permission. “I have brought you some religious instruction.” She looked at Diota. “You may go.”

The queen frowned. “My lady, it is for me to welcome or dismiss my servants. Of whom you yourself are one. I have never been much for formality, but you may stand until I ask you to sit.”

“Do not give yourself airs,” Lady Genevieve said. “You are a wife taken in adultery, bearing another man’s bastard, and the sign of your shame is on you every instant.” She remained seated. “My lord de Vrailly has sent me to attend you, and I shall. But do not pretend with me.”

Desiderata nodded slowly. “So you refuse my command,” she said.

Lady Genevieve was the widow of a southern lord. She knew how to make herself obeyed. “I will accept any reasonable command,” she said sweetly. “Let me read to you from the Life of Saint Catherine.”

“What if I do not wish you to read?” the Queen asked, already weary.

“You are unwomanly in your striving,” Lady Genevieve said. “A woman’s role is passive acceptance, as I told my husband on many occasions. Indeed, I was a byword for passive acceptance.” She snapped her fingers. “If your woman is to remain, she may as well be useful. I’ll have a cup of sweet cider, Diota.” She turned back to the queen. “Where was I? Ah yes—passive acceptance.”

Diota slipped out and found Blanche, one of the queen’s laundry maids, in the outer solar.

The nurse took a cup and poured cider from a jug, and then, catching Blanche’s eye, she reached under her skirts and wiped her hand there and then used it to stir the cider.

Blanche stifled a cackle and handed the nurse a slip of parchment that had been pinned to a shift.

Another of the queen’s “new ladies” came in the outer door without knocking, but by the time she came in, Blanche was folding shifts and putting them into the press.

Lady Agnes Wilkes, twenty-nine, unmarried, and with a face capable of curdling milk, stalked in and looked sullenly at the serving girl. “What are you about, slut?” she asked.

Blanche kept working. “Folding, milady.”

Lady Agnes frowned. “Do this sort of thing at night,” she said. “I don’t
need to see your kind in these rooms by day, and neither does the queen. What if the King were to come?”

Diota slipped away with her cup of cider and gave it with a sketchy curtsy to Lady Genevieve, who didn’t acknowledge her at all. She took the cup and drank from it. “Tart and sweet,” she said.

Diota smiled happily. “A pleasure to serve you, my lady,” she said.

“Well,” Lady Genevieve said. “A change for the better, then. I see Lady Agnes has come in and I’ll exchange a word with her.” The older woman rose and set her cup down with a click.

She went out, and they could hear her in the outer chamber.

Diota handed the Queen the slip of parchment. The Queen seized it, read it—and then put it in her mouth and began to chew.

Diota collected cups and a shift and began to tidy the queen’s private chamber.

The two ladies came in. “Your Lady Rebecca has deserted you,” Lady Agnes said with real satisfaction. “Lord de Rohan sent for her this morning, but she’s fled. Many things are missing—she was a thief as well as a heretic. I am here to make an inventory.”

“Lady Rebecca had no need to steal,” the Queen said. “She was the lord chancellor for half a year.”

Lady Agnes made a face, and Lady Genevieve made a rude noise. “Perhaps the King pretended that she was the chancellor,” she said. “No woman could ever hold such an office.” She spoke as if she relished the low estate of women. “What foolishness. Women have no aptitude for such things. When I was with my husband, I cultivated a becoming passivity. I
never
put myself forward.”

“What happened after?” the queen asked sweetly.

“After what, my dear?” Lady Genevieve asked.

“After your husband died?” the Queen asked.

Diota almost choked, but Lady Genevieve frowned. “I have no idea what you are about, madame.”

The queen rose.

“You need to dress,” Lady Agnes said. The Queen was wearing only a shift, and her belly was magnificent—and very visible.

“I am more comfortable like this,” the queen said.

“You are lewd. Indecent.” Lady Agnes began to seize clothes from a cabinet.

“In my private solar?” the queen asked. “I think not.”

“I do not wish to gaze on your body,” Lady Agnes said. At odds with her words, her eyes were on the queen’s belly.

“You are very wanton,” Lady Genevieve said. “We will dress you. It is time you had the becoming clothes of a matron, and shed all this vanity.”

The queen smiled. Her smile was lazy and slow, and took its time, and in the end, she shocked Diota.

“You know, my ladies,” she said. “I think perhaps you have the right of it, and my baby has addled my wits. I will, indeed, cultivate a becoming passivity.”

Blanche took her laundry basket and went into the corridors below the Queen’s Tower, moving briskly. No one particularly wanted to see servants in the formal areas of the palace, not even trusted servants like Blanche, who wore the crisp red and blue livery of the winter. It had only changed ten days ago, and her sideless surcoat and matching kirtle marked her as “belonging.”

Of course, few were quite so rude about their wishes as the queen’s new “ladies.”

Ladies
, Blanche thought to herself, and crossed the corridor that led to the King’s Tower after a careful glance in either direction. The Galles who now inundated the court like crabs at high tide were often present here, gathered in little knots with their cousins and brothers, looking for offices and sinecures.

They were the most determined rascals she’d ever known. None of them had tried outright rape—not yet—but she’d been offered every insult short, and various grasping hands and sweaty palms and scratchy moustaches had tried her virtue over the last few months.

Blanche’s contempt—the contempt of an attractive young woman—was absolute. She loathed them for their obvious contempt for women, she thought them weak for their ceaseless striving, and she cursed them with the worst derision she could offer because they appeared desperate. None of them had any idea how to approach a woman—all the servants said so. They were as aggressive—and mindless—as hungry wolves.

Blanche passed the king’s corridor with a feeling of relief, her mission nearly complete, and descended two winding stone staircases—servants’ stairs, and thus almost unfailingly safe. She passed one of the upper palace male servants—Robin le Grant, wine steward—who gave her a bow and a smile.

The servants were developing a whole language for the situation. That smile meant the stairs were clear.

Blanche slowed her pace and breathed a little easier. Her contempt for the Galles was not unmixed with fear.

She passed the kitchen corridor with a nod to three kitchen girls she knew.

“Laundress was askin’ for you,” said the nearest. She flashed a smile.

Blanche suspected that all three of them were malingering—loitering in corridors was not encouraged by the Butler, who was both a gentleman and a senior servant and ruled with a rod of iron. But she returned their smiles. “Stairs is clear,” she said as she swept past and turned again, walking down the familiar short flight of steps. To the right was the river gate, or at least
the portions of the old fortifications and the corridors that led there. To the left lay the laundry, a kingdom—or rather, a queendom—entirely populated by women. There were laundresses who actually washed, and laundresses who only ironed, and laundresses who were really fine seamstresses for everything from repair to marking—every garment in the palace was marked with the owner’s initials in fine, neat cross-stitching. All in all, from twelve-year-old Celia who washed the dirtiest linens to ninety-year-old Mother Henk who could barely work but still had the finest embroidery stitches in Harndon, the laundry employed forty-five women all day, every day. The Laundress—Goodwife Ross—wore upper palace livery but never left her domain.

She was standing by the door to her alcove when Blanche came by. Blanche curtsied—the laundry was formal enough.

“I worry for you, lass,” Dame Ross said. She looked in the basket.

Blanche shook her head. “No mending for the queen.”

“Any trouble?” the Laundress asked.

“No Galles in the corridors. The queen’s new
ladies
were a treat though.” No palace servant ever spoke slightingly of any member of the upper classes—not directly. It was all tone and eye contact, nothing that could be reported or punished.

Goodwife Ross narrowed her eyes. “Anything I should know?”

“Lady Agnes suggested that I had no business in the queen’s chambers. And me in my livery!” Blanche spat her words with more vehemence than she’d intended.

The Laundress pursed her lips. “I see,” she said.

Blanche dropped a short curtsey—the bob of the working woman. “I’ll be about it then, ma’am,” she said.

Goodwife Ross dismissed her with a wave. The goodwife was aware—in the vaguest way—that Blanche “did something” for the queen. That was sufficient for her.

Blanche took her basket into the steamy main laundry. The moment she upended it on the sorting table, her life as the queen’s messenger vanished to be replaced by her usual life.

“Blanche! There you are! Be a sweet and fetch us a cup of water?” asked rheumy old Mother Henk.

“Blanche, you promised to teach me stem stitch!” begged young Alice.

“Blanche, there’s a mort of fine sewing waiting in your basket and I’ve all I can do keeping the King in braes,” snapped Ellen. Ellen was the other upper palace laundress who wore livery and was allowed to collect laundry in the public rooms of the palace. Like Blanche, she was young, pretty, and had worked in the palace since she’d been a young child.

By that point in her work day, Blanche was delighted to collapse onto one of the backed chairs that the fine sewers used while mending. From the pockets under her kirtle, Blanche fetched out her prize possession—her
sewing kit, with a pair of steel scissors made by Master Pye himself, a pair of silver thimbles, a dozen fine horn thread winders full of threads—white linen, white silk, black linen, black silk, and this season, red and blue for the livery.

Ellen was putting thread on her winders. Thread came from the dyers in skeins, and sewing women and tailors had to wind it onto something of their own. Blanche owned two beautiful thread winders—a tiny one of ivory that had been her mother’s and another of mother of pearl from far off Ifriquy’a. Both were at home.

“If the King wears his hose any tighter,” Ellen said and shook her head. Laid across her lap were a fanciful pair of hose, one leg alternating diagonals of red and blue, the other leg solid scarlet with a patch of superb gold embroidery. The hose were in the latest style that joined at the top, and they had torn in the crotch.

“He’s too old for these tight things,” Ellen said. A year ago, open criticism of the king’s taste in clothes would never have been uttered. Blanche felt disloyal just listening.

Ellen frowned, aware of her transgression. “I only mean…” She paused. And looked down at her scarlet thread winder. She finished it off and then loaded her blue.

Her thought was unspoken, but they didn’t need to share it. Blanche knew that Ellen’s criticism was not for the King, but for his new lover, a red-headed girl of seventeen. Lady Jane Sable. Her name was never mentioned in the servants’ halls below. She seemed to inspire in the King a sort of ferocity to pretend he was young, and his pursuit of youth—hers, his own—had led to a loss of royal dignity that all the servants felt reflected on them.

Lady Jane was herself not so bad. She was well-bred enough to be careful; she was cautious about the king’s reputation, and she was polite to the servants. But she had her own waiting woman, Sarah, and her laundry never came to the laundry. Sarah ate in her mistress’s rooms and never came into the great hall below stairs where the servants dined and many slept. The lady’s father was already the leader of the pro-Galle faction of Albans.

Blanche began to repair the queen’s shifts. She had patiently run up half a dozen new ones that suited the queen’s changed shape, working at home with her mother, and now even the new shifts were having their carefully felled side-seams pulled.