Chapter 10 The Hunig Moon
The Hunig Moon
Osric
When Fairhrim’s deofol next prickled Osric’s tācn, his first impulse was to ignore it.
He was in the throes of a vague misery, angry at her for what she’d done but finding himself, also, missing her.
The confusion of feelings could find no place to settle, but crept, heavy and dark, from heart to mind and back again.
He ought to go out on some deplorable debauchery, but he preferred to mope. It was women like Fairhrim who turned decent men into pathetic pining cretins.
This was rather a lot of fuss for a Flight of Fancy. He must hold on to his anger above all the rest.
Fairhrim’s deofol pressed at Osric’s tācn so sharply it might have been using its teeth again. Given that July’s full moon was only a few days away, Osric let it through. He did, after all, need to know where to meet Fairhrim for the next healing attempt.
The white genet materialised. Its red eyes gleamed with contempt. There were no preliminaries save for, “You absolute moron.”
“Hello, Fuckfang,” said Osric.
“Every time I think you’ve plummeted to the bottommost depths of idiocy, you spelunk your way to new ones. Did you really think Aurienne would let you intercept Tristane’s transfer?”
“No one lets me do anything,” said Osric. “I do what I want.”
“Hasn’t she just taught you the contrary?”
“She didn’t tell me her seith markers had other uses.”
“You didn’t ask,” sniffed the deofol. “You’re to meet her at the Hotel Llawgnychu on the day of the Hunig moon. The healing will take place at sunset. Aurienne is taking rooms at the hotel. You may take yours in the foulest midden heap in Dyfed; it’s all you deserve.”
The deofol vanished with an irritated crackle of fur.
On the day of the Hunig moon, Osric discovered that the Hotel Llawgnychu was not a part of the waystone graticule.
Apparently, it prided itself on its remoteness and exclusivity, and therefore forced its guests to arrive at a waystone two hours away by carriage, from whence they were carted into the mountains of Dyfed.
The hotel was situated upon a lake. It was originally some rich bastard’s sprawling private mansion, recently converted to a hotel, and enjoyed now by other rich bastards.
There were extensive gardens, an elegant terrace, and, following the lakeside, a long undulating promenade.
Couples meandered arm in arm among fluttering banners and stalls selling ice cream, lemonade, and sweets.
Osric bribed the man at the front desk to free up the best rooms at the hotel for his use, because he was the richest bastard there and he deserved it.
Having selected a table on the terrace, Osric discovered that the hotel was a favoured spot of lovers and honeymooners, or singletons hoping to join those categories.
He was accosted three or four times by gentle ladies and one hopeful man.
He fended them off, then pushed a few thrymsas into his waiter’s palm and told him he was married, and to please keep away the riff-raff.
Osric ordered a fizzy something or other featuring alcohol and spheres of frozen cantaloupes. He leaned back indulgently as he sipped upon it. This was what he liked: just him, his drink, and his problems. No Fairhrim.
“Pardon me, sir,” interrupted the waiter.
Osric, at peace with the world, answered opulently: “What is it, my dear man?”
“Your wife has arrived, sir,” said the waiter.
Behind him stood a figure. It was not Osric’s wife, given that he did not have one. He did not have a significant other of any kind. He did have a significant irritant, however.
Fairhrim swept towards Osric. She leaned over him. She smelled good. Soapy. Fairhrimy. She pressed a soft kiss to his cheek.
She asked, insanely, “How are you, darling?”
Osric stared at her in mute astonishment.
The waiter helped Fairhrim into a chair. She asked for a coffee, black, and turned to Osric with a gentle smile, as though he was charmingly slow, which would explain why he was gaping at his wife like an idiot. The waiter, satisfied that he had ruined everything, left.
His wife? His wife? Fairhrim had a comic spirit Osric hadn’t known about.
“Apologies for my absence,” said Fairhrim.
“Not at all,” said Osric. “It was the best gift you could give me.”
Fairhrim was becomingly dressed in the fashion of the other promenaders: long white gloves, a hat with a veil and ribbons, a pale pink dress that rippled along her body, silky and cool.
She was striking—lovely—a walking Monet, but Osric did not care, because she was, above all, a detestable Haelan who had put him in a wardrobe full of skeletons and thus ensured that Tristane would die.
As soon as the waiter was out of earshot, Fairhrim shed her sweet veneer. She looked upon Osric as a blot on the landscape, both moral and physical.
“There was a strange mix-up with my room reservations,” said Fairhrim, growing taut about the neck in that way she did when Osric had annoyed her especially.
Osric, who did not care about Fairhrim’s ineptitude when it came to admin, and did not understand why she was sharing this story with him, fished about in his drink for a cantaloupe ball.
“I had taken the suite at the top of the hotel,” continued Fairhrim.
Osric chewed upon the cantaloupe.
“But it appears someone bribed the front desk to take the rooms for himself,” said Fairhrim.
“Ah,” said Osric, who now understood why he was being involved in this tale.
“I asked if it happened to be a Mr. Hungwell who had taken the rooms. They said yes. I said, ‘Oh, that’s my husband. Silly man must have forgotten I had already made a reservation.’ I’ve asked them to take my things upstairs, to our room.”
“I had wondered why I’d been promoted to husband,” said Osric. “May I ask why you’re dressed like an aunt?”
Fairhrim, crisp with indignation, replied, “This is how one dresses at the lakeside.”
“In a beekeeper’s hat?”
The waiter passed. Fairhrim cast her eyes demurely downwards, which lulled Osric into a false sense of security. As soon as the waiter was gone, however, she went on the offensive. “What’s that dangling from your back?”
“A capelet.”
“Mud flap. What colour do you call that suit?”
“Grey.”
“Rat colour. What is that stick?”
Osric, who had thought he had been sexing it up with his cane, was offended. “It’s a cane.”
“For mobility?”
“For fashion.”
Fairhrim conveyed her opinion with a moue. “And those gloves?”
It was Osric’s turn to grow crisp. The gloves were a handsome pair of plum suede, brand new. “What’s wrong with them?”
Fairhrim observed the gloves as though they were a pair of dead birds lying on the table. “There’s enough sorrow in this world without you inventing more.”
“I beg your pardon.”
“Why have you stuffed loo roll into your shirt?”
“It’s a cravat.”
“You look like an aunt.”
The waiter returned and inserted himself among the explosive ingredients that were Osric and Fairhrim. Between them he placed Fairhrim’s coffee things, and thus prevented the two of them from doing each other serious injury.
Fairhrim resumed the manner of a loving wifeling.
Osric slipped his hand along the back of her chair, ostensibly in affection but really to threaten strangulation.
Fairhrim pinned his advancing hand with a glare that all but drew blood, and held the skewer in place until Osric withdrew his hand and brought it back to his lap.
It wasn’t clear to Osric afterwards whether it was her will or his that had moved it.
“Are you going to walk along the lake today?” asked the waiter. “Bit cloudy, but it looks like the rain will hold off after all.”
“We should,” said Osric, who thought a walk along the lake would be an excellent occasion to drown Fairhrim. “As soon as you’ve had your coffee, belovedest.”
“I’d be overjoyed,” said Fairhrim. “Be a lamb and pass me one of those gaufrettes.”
Osric was a lamb. Fairhrim was “belovedest.”
The waiter stepped away, at which point Osric’s affectionate wife called him a room-stealing, unprincipled cad, and he called her a whingebag.
Osric fished out another cantaloupe sphere. Fairhrim pushed away her coffee.
With the air of a woman who has things to do, Fairhrim asked, “Have you finished fiddling with your balls?”
“Almost,” said Osric. “Not to sound kinky, but I do like being watched.”
There was a delicious silence.
“At least one of us will have a happy ending,” said Fairhrim.
“Coffee not good?”
“Oh, it’s lovely. Try.”
Osric tried. He choked. “Foot broth.”
“I didn’t want to suffer alone,” said Fairhrim. “May I have one of your balls, as a palate cleanser?”
Osric slid his glass towards her. “You may even have both.”
Fairhrim put his balls in her mouth. Osric awaited the verdict. She said, “Not unpleasant.”
Damned with this faint praise, Osric, out of etiquette rather than desire, offered Fairhrim his arm. She, who would rather hold a grudge than his arm, hooked one pointy finger at his elbow.
They descended the few steps from the terrace down to the lake and promenaded among the elegant crowd. Banners danced in the breeze; couples lay upon the lawn; vendors offered ices and spun sugar and fresh fruit, beaded with water.
Fairhrim’s stiff walk at Osric’s side was suggestive not of matrimonial bliss but rather that she was the victim of a parasite who had attached itself to her as its host. Osric studied the dockside in search of the most discreet place to push her into the water.
Fancying something sweet to rid himself of the lingering taste of foot broth, he stopped by a trolley selling pink heart-shaped lollies.
He reached for a coin. The vendor, under the delusion that Osric wished to purchase the lolly for Fairhrim, placed it in her hand, and said, “Sweets to the sweet.”
Osric bought a second lolly with a false smile.
“That,” said Osric, as he and Fairhrim left the trolley behind, “wasn’t for you.”
“I know,” said Fairhrim. “It makes it sweeter.”
They carried on along the lake.
“Why do you keep staring into the water?” asked Fairhrim.
“Working out where to drown you,” said Osric.
“You wouldn’t dare.”