5. Chapter 5
Chapter 5
“ Y ou seem to have quite a gift, Roxane,” Julia told her little sister-in-law, putting the wax tablet away. Paper, let alone parchment, were too expensive to sully with a schoolchild’s exercises, so the simple tool of the ancients was usually used instead. “You are very quick.”
“I don’t feel quick. There are four whole - how did you call them - decensions?”
“Declensions, Roxane. There is nothing all that horrid about them, truth be told. Actually,” inspiration struck, “we could learn them by inventing little stories to illustrate each. That should help you.”
“Stories like those of Halfdan the Long-Haired and his fights with the northmen?”
“I mean more something in two or three sentences. Something very simple. Though you can make them about Halfdan, if you’d like, or some other ancient ruler”.
“I like the songs of the Brendan the Stormlord best of all.”
“Who is that?” Julia racked her brain for the memories of long-ago history lessons and stories of the gods. Nothing came up.
“He is from the songs that the sailors sing,” Roxane brightened. She looked neat today, clearly having tidied herself up for the occasion of the first lesson, even though her dress still put Julia in the mind of a potato sack. “He was a great hero of a long, long time ago. He held a ship together that was ready to snap apart, once, battled a kraken, and survived thirty-three storms.”
“How exciting. Did he battle the kraken alone?”
“With just one ship, yes!”
“That is impressive. Where did you hear those songs in the first place? I would have thought a lord’s sister would not be seen at a harbor too much”.
“Here and there. I - wander about sometimes. The fishwives sing them too, sometimes, when they work on sorting the fish. They do many things here, the fishwives I mean. Their husbands catch fish, but they clean and sort and carry and sell it”. Roxane paused. “My old tutor had said once that a lady must not sully herself with commerce, but - they are not ladies, are they? So, it’s not shameful for them”.
“That is true.” Julia wondered about this girl’s prospects in life. Perhaps, someone would marry her despite her clubfoot - a good dowry had sweetened much worse matches in the past, and now that becoming her husband would also mean becoming the king’s brother-in-law, she will likely not lack for suitors once she grows up.
How many of these suitors would actually mean their sweet words at least by half was another question.
For a second, Julia wished intensely for this future never to come, for Roxane to always stay here, collecting learning like a magpie, wandering around the huts of fishwives, and picking up the songs of the sea.
She wondered if her husband had wished for the same. If his reluctance to resume his sister’s regular routine had little to do with the hurt of the siege.
“Does your brother know about your - acquaintances?”
“A little. But - he had not been here since the start of the war. Not even during the siege.” The child’s voice caught at that.
“It was hardly his fault.”
“I know. I know. He had things to do, enemies to fight. But... it pinched so much, the hunger. I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t think. I could only walk about, as though the Triad had taken my wits away. I tried to keep my hands in hot water, one of the maids said it staves off hunger, but I couldn’t always stay like that, could I? I had to eat Hilda, in the end.” Her words were thick with gathering tears, and Julia clutched her hand.
“Hilda?”
“My rabbit. Athelstan gave her to me when I was five. She was so soft. They did it for me, ushered me into another room. I couldn’t hold the knife”.
“Of course you couldn’t,” Julia said soothingly.
“I was almost sick after the meal. But I thought - then it would all be for nothing, won’t it? So I lay down to keep it all in...”
Without a second thought, Julia gathered her little sister-in-law to herself and pressed her close in a tight embrace. Roxane’s arms wrapped around her immediately.
“I thought he would come and save us,” the girl whimpered. “I thought my brother would arrive any day, with a glorious cavalry, like in the songs...”
There was no need to ask which brother she meant. Most likely, not the one who left her in Greyharbor like an unwanted and ill-fitting doublet.
“He had come now,” Julia whispered, stroking her dark hair. It was damp beneath her hands. Did the girl take a bath before the lesson, then? It was touching, how seriously she took her new occupation. “He won the war, didn’t he? He did save you. All of us. And he is here now, and he will never leave you again. I am no glorious cavalry, of course,” she tried for a joke. “But let’s hope I would do.”
Roxane closed her eyes and breathed carefully, but Julia could not be sure if it was a genuine calming of nerves, or merely a hasty re-fitting of a ladylike mask.
Although, where would this war-bred, half-wild girl have had any opportunity to craft that mask in the first place?
***
Julia’s heart skipped a beat with elation when she heard the firm knock on her bedroom door.
There was no way to mistake the sound of footsteps.
Perhaps, she thought, unbraiding her hair extremely quickly, her husband finally decided to step over his dislike of their marriage; perhaps, their marriage would now finally be consummated, and she out of danger.
“Come in!” She called out.
He did. There were few men on earth who looked less disposed to indulge in any delights; but, on the other hand, Lord Waite almost always looked like that.
“Do forgive me the delay,” Julia smiled brightly, leaning back and allowing her now-loose hair slide over her nightgown-clad shoulders. “I was not quite presentable.”
“Whereas now you are ready for a feast?” He raised his eyebrows in pointed irony. “I came to talk of important things, my lady.”
“Of course. I’ve never thought otherwise,” she lied smoothly.
“You quite evidently did, but that is no matter. I want to tell of the danger to this place.”
Thwarted or not, Julia could not deny the importance of the information. She leaned forth:
“What manner of danger?”
“Do you know anything of the northmen, my lady?”
A twinge of irritation.
“I may have grown up in a landlocked province, my lord, but not in a sealed tomb. Of course I know of the northmen and their feuds and their gods of the sea”.
“Indeed. At times I think I should have been born in the days of the empire.”
“Because they would have given you a better chance at glory?”
“I care naught for glory,” Athelstan Waite bristled, putting her in mind of a particularly grumpy hedgehog. “Only because the ancients didn’t have to deal with the yarls and their serpent-ships. These people sat beyond their great woods and disturbed no one but each other. As it is, they are disturbing our people.”
“Have there been attacks?”
“A couple of merchant ships raided. They were petty matter, not belonging to the Fishmongers” Guild or any other grandees of their trade, so the raiders hadn’t gone over-bold yet. Still, a duty is a duty, and an insult is an insult.”
“This insult seems to me more of a hint. Or a warning. Pay us the vergeld, or else”.
He looked at her sharply:
“Have you been speaking to Father Telmen?”
“Only on the spiritual matters. If you think that your loyal chaplain would share bosom secrets with me…”
“…then I am a fool? I suppose. He is a man of fierce loyalties, to the family and the place.”
Am I not part of the family now? Julia thought. Am I not a part of the place?
She did not say either aloud. There were limits to complaints her pride could permit her.
Besides, she could guess the reason. While neither histories nor heraldic signs have ever been her favorite subjects, there were things one could deduce. For example, the fact that a noble family who were masters of the smallest province likely rarely married outlanders. Father Telmen likely hoped for his charge to marry some grimly dutiful Mearnt maiden of plain habits.
Instead, he got Julia. Julia of the courtly Ielthe, with her kermes-dyed crimson gowns.
“Perhaps,” she brushed the topic aside with an effort. “What were the secrets your chaplain had never divulged to me, then?”
“Only the one you had already realized. We have received a demand for vergeld.”
“An explicit demand?”
“Of the kind not seen since my grandfather’s day.”
“When are you going to pay it?”
“If it were my own choice, I would have said, when the Radiant Bridge dissolves. I advised Orwyn to permit me to answer them with fire and sword.”
Oh dear. Julia could imagine, from what little she knew of King Orwyn, how well this advice would have landed.
“Let me make a bold guess, my lord. His Majesty’s request was different.”
“His order. Let us not veil my brother’s words in the silks of politeness.” His tone was bitter.
“As you wish. Though I rather like silks of different kinds.”
“He told me to go along with their demands.”
“It is not a bad decision. The realm is still too weak. It cannot afford massive sea-raids hot on the heels of a civil war.”
“A realm is only as weak as the men who defend it.”
“There is a saying abroad that an ill peace is better than a robust war.”
“Does one usually not turn into the other anyway?”
“My lord...”
“I want to protect our land,” Lord Waite whispered fiercely. “My land, and what is mine. I hope you don’t think it an unnatural desire.”
Once, she would have been on the other side from him, a figure on a furtive black boat running in between his imposing ships. He might have caught her and hauled her in front of him, likely as stern and implacable then as he was now.
Or he might have simply had one of his archers shoot her down without ever seeing her face.
“What is yours? Do you mean Greyharbor, the town, or your sister?”
“All of it, and yourself besides.”
“Myself, too?”
“Of course. Are you not my lawful wedded wife, after all? Do I not have responsibilities towards you?”
“I suppose.”
“I swore by the Triad. I swore to protect you and guard you, and to allow no hurt to come to you.”
Many people claim responsibilities they do not wish to uphold , Julia wanted to say. Many people swear oaths they do not mean.
She also wanted to say that Athelstan Waite must be the only man in the whole country who could make words such as these resound with about as much passion as a boulder has.
“But my brother’s orders are higher than mine,” he continued, “so the time we have until the meeting is by the end of this month. I came to warn you of my absence for the purpose, as well as to spare you any surprise in the ledgers.”
“I promise to be frugal. Will you permit me to help to organize the ceremony, though?”
“It won’t be a ceremony. These men don’t exchange ambassadors and sign treaties. They take if you are weak and leave you alone if you are strong.”
The implication of how the decision to pay would make the crown look, in his opinion, was clear.
“All the more reason to show them we are no beggars.”
“This isn’t Fellsong, my lady, or the court. Cloth-of-gold is no shield.”
“I wouldn’t be foolhardy enough to suggest a cloth-of-gold in times of care,” Julia smiled, suddenly quite exhilarated by the prospect. “But new liveries would do nicely.”
***
They did not keep a large table at Greyharbor. It was a usual arrangement for the lord of a middling, if strategically important, keep - himself and his lady wife at the head of the table, the scions just a little further, and guests of diminishing order of importance upon the benches, further down still. One would have never thought that this dining hall belonged to the king’s only brother, though. Nor would one have guessed it from the food itself - it was good, fresh fare, all salmon from the sea and bird and some game seasoned with sharp pepper-sauces, but no choice rarities like blackbirds baked into a pie or pigs rendered in pheasant feathers.
Julia was about to bring her wine-cup to her lips when she felt a pull on her sleeve. Her closest neighbor, a thin and sharp-boned mother Elder Sister from the Convent of the Lady’s Mercy, was demanding her attention.
“Yes?” the new Lady Waite turned to the old priestess, all brittle smile.
“I wanted to say that I have heard from one of our sisters that Lady Roxane is a sweet and pious girl.”
That must have been the sister who perished in the siege.
Of course she had kept a regular correspondence with Elder Sister while still alive , Julia thought. When did the servants of the Triad ever forget that they are parts of the same whole, after all?
“Naturally she is,” Julia lied. Lying with an expression of charm came easy to her after her years on the black waves.
“I am saying that our convent could be a good place for her to finish her education.”
“Finish her education? She had barely begun it.”
“Hardly. She already knows her letters, her numbers, and something of the keeping of accounts. Indeed, Sister Aelfryda mentioned that Lady Roxane has quite a gift for that.”
“That is not enough, though.”
“Not for a learned Sister, perhaps. Of course, many a man of great family would deem it quite enough in a wife, but, perhaps, she hungers for a greater knowledge?”
The hint about her possible pious path was plain enough. Julia felt a brief flare-up on anger – Roxane has not had her first bleeding yet, and people were already trying to poach her.
But there was naught to be gained by outbursts, and the Elder Sisters were powerful women. Julia knew that, like any noblewoman – or nobleman, for that matter – she had to be sweet to them.
Especially given the circumstances. She recalled her husband’s recent revelation. If there really was a growing danger…
“I can imagine it would”, Julia replied, good cheer in her voice. “After all, given what had recently happened, her prospects had been transformed from those of a younger sister of a Mearntish lord to that of a royal sister. Of course any convent would be glad to boast such a novice, I understand…”
“Who would be the subject of a boast?” Lord Waite finally glanced in her direction, having noticed the murmur of their voices.
“Lady Roxane, my lord. The Convent of the Lady’s Mercy seems to be glad to give her education and instruction”.
For a second, Lord Waite was silent, his eyes stormy.
Then he glanced directly at the priestess, and said:
“My sister is quite unsuited to the life of humble contemplation.”
“Many novices are. But with the Triad’s help...”
“Tell the Triad to direct its help elsewhere. To filling the nets of the fishermen of Greyharbor, for instance, or to keeping the sailors on my ships from the fury of the storm. It is not the Triad’s wish for my sister’s good blood and entry fee, it is yours. I have as little desire to pander to it as I do for giving Roxane away to some grasping lordling who would only want her dowry.” With these words, Lord Waite returned to the salmon, as though cutting off a thread.
Julia was left blinking. She had thought herself over-bold with the priestess, but this brutal frankness was... disturbing. It was not as though they would never want good relations with the servants of the Triad again, after all.
“My husband can be a very direct man,” she told the old woman quickly. “Besides, he has a lot on his mind these days.”
“I can see that.” Her lips were pursed into a thin pale line. “I dearly hope that those important matters do not lead him to forget his prayers.”
“Neither prayers nor sacrifices. In fact, I am going to sacrifice a dozen doves at the Lady’s altar this coming week.” Julia smiled as brightly and prettily as she could, pretending that the sacrifice was a long-standing plan and not a hasty last maneuver.
“I am sure the Lady would listen to your prayers. She is kind to young wives wishing for their husband’s love and a child under their heart. Even in cases that might seem hopeless.”