Chapter 9 #3
Elesbed slept on her pallet of fresh straw until the kitchen stirred for the watch, the dark hour of the night. She woke to the sound of gossiping, as the kitchen staff sat together near the fire, passing a bottle back and forth. One said, “It is true, then? The lady touched a unicorn?”
“Yes. I had it from her guard. She cut a lock of its hair.”
“That happy, virtuous lady. Bless her, and damn the French to hell. They shan’t have her.”
The whole castle was full of intriguing sounds. Laughter, someone singing. The stairs upward from the kitchen tempted her, and her full belly had made her brave. “We ought to go exploring,” she whispered to her cat.
No one saw her when she got up and slipped away, and the cat ran up the stairs ahead and pounced at shadows. Or perhaps on unseen mice.
The scale of the castle dizzied her. Elesbed hid behind coffers and draperies and in the shadows along walls and watched in fascination as people talked their incomprehensible French and drank and laughed and put their heads together and whispered and sometimes played games with cards or sang songs.
She came at length to a room that was empty of people but full of furnishings. Butter ran ahead and darted behind a vast great box, elaborately carved. Next moment, someone shrieked.
Elesbed peered over the top and saw a girl upon a cushion, with tears all over her face.
The girl scrambled to her feet. “Who are you?” she demanded.
“Elesbed,” said Elesbed, after a pause. “Who are you?”
The girl drew herself up haughtily and rubbed her running nose. “I am Isabeau of Brittany.”
“Oh,” said Elesbed, pleased. “You are the duchess’s sister.”
“You are a disrespectful villein. Go away. Your cat is very disrespectful too.” Butter had twined herself around the other girl’s legs and was purring loudly.
Elesbed said, “Why are you crying?”
“I wasn’t crying! Ducal heirs don’t cry.”
Elesbed considered. “Is a ducal heir like a princess? Princesses cry in stories,” she said. “Iseult wept for a year and a day when her lover, Tristan, went away.”
“Oh—” said the other girl and dropped hard onto the cushion. “My sister is going to get married and leave us.”
It took Elesbed a moment, so far away were the casual words “my sister” from her image of the duchess of Brittany. “Yes?” she said doubtfully. “But everyone gets married and goes away. All girls, at least. And he might give her a necklace and a sheep. Won’t she like that?”
Isabeau threw her a look of tolerant scorn. “My sister’s husband will give her castles and lands and jewels and destriers.”
Elesbed didn’t know what a destrier was. “That is even better.”
“But I shall never see my sister again,” said Isabeau and began to cry once more, stormily, burying her face in her arms.
Elesbed sat beside her on the cushion. “Do you mean to sling yourself off a tower in a fit of despair?”
Isabeau blinked and looked at her sideways, tears forgotten in astonishment. “How would that help?”
“I don’t know,” Elesbed confessed. “Princesses do it in stories.”
“This isn’t a story. I wish it was. Do you know a lot of stories?” They were both stroking Butter now. The cat lounged between them with the moonlight peeping in.
Elesbed considered. “I suppose.”
Eagerly, Isabeau asked, “Do you know one about how to learn to do enchantments?”
“Well, you must go to the Lost Lands,” said Elesbed, after a moment’s thought. “And live with the korrigan-queen for a year and a day and she teaches you enchantments. But sometimes she keeps you forever and sometimes you go home and find a hundred years have passed.”
“My sister said that’s what happened to the man that came from Brocéliande. If he’s telling the truth. Only it was two hundred years for him.”
“The autumn-haired man? I don’t know. He was talking on the way but it didn’t make sense. All about blue water and a city and a king with a message. Sometimes he said, Go away, but no one was near.”
Softly, Isabeau said, “I think he has more to say. He might have been in the court of the korriganed. Mightn’t he?”
Elesbed didn’t really have any doubts on that score. “Well, yes. If he was in the Lost Lands for long and long, like he says. But his wits are astray.”
Isabeau ignored that. “He must have learned about enchantments.”
“He might have, but so? You aren’t supposed to trust enchanters. And there hasn’t been one in the world in—forever. Since Emrys.”
“Who? Oh, you mean Merlin? Well, maybe there is another now.”
Elesbed thought how strange it was that in all this great vast house, there was no one to tell the duchess and her sister that they shouldn’t storm round poking at enchanters or galloping their huge, frightening horses through the korrigan-queen’s forest. Isabeau leaped up.
“Perhaps the stranger is in his right mind now, perhaps he is awake for the watch. In the morning I shall not be allowed to go. Come on.” She was already making for the door.
Elesbed had never known royal authority, certainly not embodied in a girl no older than she. She crossed her arms. “I think you are not allowed to go now.”
Isabeau turned imperiously. “Come with me, I order you.”
“I will not. Who knows what he learned in Brocéliande? My gram said that sometimes the korriganed eat your eyes.”
“Oh!” said Isabeau indignantly. “Here, then, if you’re afraid.” She thrust her hand into her robe and brought out something pink. Elesbed eyed it suspiciously. “It’s nice,” said Isabeau. “It’s cotignac. My sister and I made it together, from the quinces.” Her lip started to quiver. “You eat it.”
Elesbed stuffed the whole thing into her mouth. She almost cried too, for joy, because it was very delicious. She’d never tasted real sugar.
Isabeau said, “I’ll give you more if you come with me.”
Elesbed said fervently, “I’ll do anything you say.”
“Goodness,” said Isabeau. “It wasn’t that— Oh, all right.
Let us go. I know where they put the stranger, perhaps he will be awake— Wait, what’s this?
” A stray beam of moonlight had revealed a large kerchief lying forgotten across the vast great coffer.
“Oh,” said Isabeau appreciatively. “It’s nice and soft.
I shall wear it tied round me—there. Now I am almost wearing a dress. ”
Elesbed hadn’t realized that Isabeau’s long and very beautiful robe was not a dress.
Before she could say anything, Isabeau was gone.
Elesbed ran down the stairs after her, Butter following behind.
It seemed the wakeful hour was ending; the smell of banked fires wafted through the castle.
One last time, Elesbed tried, “You can’t speak to the autumn-haired man in daylight? ”
Isabeau didn’t look round. “No. In daylight there are tutors and governesses and attendants and Hawiz, and they will tell me I have to be sensible for my sister’s sake.” Shadows appeared in the corners of Isabeau’s mouth, as if she was trying not to cry again.
They went down one stair, through three darkened rooms, across a short stretch of courtyard, and finally up a third stair, to a door that was closed. A guard stood before it, leaning on a spear. Isabeau lifted her chin and marched up to him.
“Monsieur, I must speak to the sick person within. I am sent by my sister, the duchess.”
The guard looked very doubtful and did not stir from his place. “Forgive me, Demoiselle, but I have orders to let no one pass, save the physician and the priest.”
“And me. For I am the duchess’s sister.”
The guard looked anxious. “Well, no. I should hate for the duchess to behead me if any harm were to befall you, Demoiselle.”
“No harm will befall me, I tell you—”
“What is that?” asked Elesbed, urgently.
They both fell silent.
A muffled voice sounded from within the room. It was speaking Breton, strange snatches of words. “Let me go. Did I go? Where am I? The king—who is the king? He shall have a new bride. I am the herald. I remember.” The voice cracked, choked, fell silent.
Even the guard was listening intently.
Isabeau whispered, “What king?”
“Look!” cried Elesbed. Beneath the door glowed a light. Not fire—streaming bright daylight, though it was the blackest hour of the night. The guard made the sign of the Cross.
“The master of the Lost Lands,” said the muffled voice. “Where am I? I must go, I must—” The voice broke off and there was a heart-rending scream. A shadow passed across the pure daylight pouring from beneath the door.
“There is someone in there with him!” cried Isabeau.
“No,” muttered the guard. “No—he was alone, the door locked.”
“Go away!” screamed the sick man. “Get you gone; you have no power—none—” Another scream and a great thud.
“Open the door!” cried Isabeau, and this time the guard obeyed, with trembling hands. But as the door swung open, the light behind it winked out. They darted in to find only the baffling darkness and the stranger prone by the fire.
Next moment, torchlight bounded up the stairs, borne by a servant, with a tall man just behind.
He’d probably been in the courtyard and heard the shouting.
The tall man stopped short in the doorway, taking in the sight of the unconscious stranger lying facedown on the floor with Isabeau on one side and Elesbed on the other, trying unsuccessfully to turn him over.
“I should have known,” said this man, sounding exasperated.
“You are relieved,” he said to the guard very coldly.
He dispatched his servant for the physician and a new guard, picked up the unconscious stranger, and put him back into bed.
Then he turned a gimlet eye on Elesbed and Isabeau.
“Come on,” he told them both. “March. Don’t think I won’t carry you. ”
Elesbed quailed. But Isabeau merely crossed her arms and said, “Where?”
“Where do you think?” said the man, with impatience, and finally Elesbed recognized him in the deceptive torchlight. The baron of Avaugour, Isabeau’s elder brother. “Back to the duchess.”
Isabeau finally looked remorseful. But with dragging steps and many looks back, she followed Avaugour down the spiraling stairs. “You too,” said Henri to Elesbed without turning around. “Now, child.”
Elesbed bit her lip and came after them. Only Butter was untroubled. She trotted down the stairs, purring loudly and trying to trip them all.
Anne wanted to be cozy in her bed with a hot brick at her feet.
Instead she was sitting in her chair before a remorseful Isabeau while Elesbed effaced herself in the shadows near the door.
Henri had delivered her runaway and slipped out again.
Presumably to find his own bed, with a hot brick to hand.
Anne sighed. “Isabeau, what possessed you to try to visit this man in the middle of the night?”
Isabeau said, “In stories, sometimes the korriganed change in the dark and show their true nature. I thought he might have been lying to us about being a man.” Anne gave her a look of pronounced skepticism.
Isabeau hurried into more speech: “He talked! About a king, and the master of the Lost Lands, and he told someone to go away, but no one was in the room, except that we saw strange shadows moving. What does that mean?”
Anne was faintly disturbed. “Did you also hear him speak?” she asked Elesbed.
The orphan girl, her cat between her feet, was wearing the expression of someone trying her best to blend with the tapestries.
Elesbed swallowed and said, with unexpected crispness, “The man said, The king—who is the king? He shall have a new bride. I am the herald. I remember. But I didn’t know the word ‘herald.’ ” She pronounced it carefully.
Isabeau said, helpfully, “A herald is—”
“Not now,” said Anne and they both, blessedly, fell silent. “We shall ask the stranger what he meant. If he is awake and can speak. For now I should like very much for us all to go to—”
She broke off. She’d seen the kerchief that Isabeau had wrapped about herself over her robe. It was a pretty, dreamy thing, blue with embroidered forget-me-nots. She whispered, “Where did you get that?” Gooseflesh prickled her arms.
Isabeau said, “I found it. It didn’t belong to anyone. It’s pretty. Here.” With quick fingers, she untied the thing and put it in her sister’s hand. “What is wrong? Why are you frowning?”
It smelled of moss. The embroidery lay familiar and perfect under Anne’s fingers, which trembled so that the embroidered flowers seemed to move in some silent breeze. In a voice she did not recognize, Anne said, “Our mother made it. A long time ago.”
Isabeau brightened and put out a hand for the kerchief. “I will keep it, then. I have hardly anything of hers.”
“Not this,” Anne managed.
“But why?”
Anne could not take her eyes off the sea-blue threads. “Because Mother was buried with it.”
Isabeau drew away as though she’d been bitten.
Elesbed surprised them both by saying, “The Lost Lands followed us.” She spoke like a girl whose people lived nearer the raw truth of their land than any duchess in a castle ever could. In that moment, her childish voice conveyed not impudence, but lost wisdom.
“What does that mean?” demanded Isabeau.
Anne found herself asking Elesbed, just as she would have asked one of her maids-of-honor, “How can it follow us?”
Elesbed said, “The edge of the Lost Lands is like the edge of the sea, my gram said. It ebbs and flows. But I never knew what she meant. I’ve never seen the sea.”
Anne whispered, “What happens near this edge of the Lost Lands?”
“Well,” said Elesbed, “lost things reappear, like I told you.” She was looking at the embroidered kerchief. Her hands clenched. “And other things are lost forever.”