“Now,” Otto went on with a grin, “I’m going to run off and grab myself a good seat in the back garden, because it’s getting on toward the time when those rug rats will do their thing.”
“Adieu, then,” I said. “We shall be out anon.”
He bowed to Ulrike, lifted a hand in farewell, and moved away through the crowd.
“A very good lesson in Landuc manners,” I remarked to Ulrike, guiding her along the buffet toward the hot food. A cup of mulled wine and a snack would be good before going out to watch the play.
“Why?”
I halted by a dish of bite-sized meat dumplings, picked up a plate, and put a few on it. “Obviously you were connected to me, but how? It could be important someday, but also it is inevitable that your identity will be known in Landuc eventually. He offered to trade me a piece of information about a missing person for information about you: who you are.”
“Why did he not just ask? You, or someone else?”
“For one thing, he wanted to be introduced. For another, to protect you, I might not tell him.” I lifted an eyebrow and ate a dumpling. Spicy. I helped myself to a couple more. We edged along and I signalled the servingwoman on the other side of the table for two cups of wine.
“Is he really dangerous?”
I just looked at her. “In Landuc, everyone is dangerous. Except, hm, probably Josquin. —I introduced you, indicated that you are my sister. He paid with the outdated but provocative news that Dewar had been in his rooms in Landuc a while back. Note that he did not tell me whether Dewar ever contacted him. He also let me know that he thinks I know more than I am letting on about Dewar’s whereabouts, and I let him know that he was to keep your existence to himself. He acknowledged that I had a right, in a way, to demand this, but that it seemed silly, since sooner or later you will go to Landuc and meet your assorted kindred.”
“But you said nothing like that!” Ulrike tried a bite-sized fruit-and-cheese turnover. I picked up several.
I laughed. “All was there.”
Our wine was handed to me; I gave one to Ulrike and sipped mine. Ulrike tasted the wine. She swallowed. “If Josquin is the only safe relative I have—”
I pointed at her with my fork, trying to impress the necessity for prudence on her. “Oh, no, no. But you should not speak freely to anyone from Landuc. Always remember that although we are related, we have different goals and histories. Very different. If you would like to meet Josquin, that would be nice. I haven’t seen him in a long time. Josquin doesn’t usually have conversations like that. By the way, you did very well, saying nothing.”
“I didn’t know what to say.”
“Even better to say nothing, then.”
Someone rang a bell at the balcony that ran around the room at the second storey and cried that the Children’s Theatre would present a play in the back garden in a quarter of an hour. This was followed by a surge of bodies toward the door, which frightened Ulrike. I pulled her against me and into an alcove while they went past.
“Someone will save us seats,” I said. “Walter or Prospero will, to be sure. Drink up your wine; it’s cold outside.”
She nodded, wide-eyed, watching the people pass. Some stopped and bowed to me, greeting me, and I greeted them and exchanged a few words before they went off. Mother never liked being fussed over in public; this had become an ingrained expectation among her people and they had transferred it to me. All to the good; I dislike being fussed over too. There is always a certain deference and respect, and people tend to leave physical space around the members of our family, but we do without pomp and circumstance.
The hall had largely emptied, save for a few clusters of people talking so intently that they plainly meant to skip the play. I drew my sister along, outside.
We were among the last to arrive. I espied Walter, his lover Shaoll, and our cousin seated on the front row of benches. We joined them and I put my cloak around Ulrike so that she didn’t freeze during the proceedings; hers had been left upstairs. She was already pink-cheeked. Ulrike sat down beside Ottaviano and I beside her. I would rather have sat between them, but asking her to move might start something I had no desire to pursue. Walter rose as we arrived and bounded up onto the stage.
General applause. He bowed hammily. More applause, far more vigorous than necessary, and a few cheers.
“Thank you, thank you,” Walter cried. “I am delighted to see you all here trampling my garden.”
Otto chuckled. Ulrike looked down at her feet guiltily.
“I am even more delighted to see you emptying my cellar and pantry in good health and good spirits,” Walter went on, smiling, “and I bid all my guests welcome and wish you all a New Year as fine as this day.”
“Thank you!” was shouted back at him from various hecklers amid general cheering, and “Same to you, Walt!” and the like.
“There is no activity more fitting to the final day of the Old Year, the Day of Reflection,” my brother went on, “than to review the events of the past year, be they good or ill, to examine them and extract what lesson, if any, they hold for our edification and improvement. However, this requires concentration and a sober cast of mind, both of which are notoriously in scant supply during these three days of festival. Thus I am very happy to announce that the Children’s Theatre have most congenially done our thinking for us, bless their pointy little heads. Now I shall step aside and allow them to present their view of the past year to you, in short as it were, and I encourage you to grant them your most courteous attention and support. Good guests, friends and neighbors, The History of the Dragon of Longview.”
“Oh no,” I said, feeling my face redden as the crowd laughed and applauded.
Walter vaulted to the ground and claimed his seat, grinning wickedly at me.
It is the custom in Argylle to present an Old Year’s play highlighting a notable event of the past year. I had been the target on several occasions in the past. Sometimes the plays are serious and sometimes side-splittingly comic. A number of them have entered the standard repertoire and are played from time to time still. Every community does at least one, but the best appear in Haimance and Argylle City, with placers from time to time turning up in Ollol; our most notable playwrights are not above penning the books for them and have done themselves great credit in the past. Baudrin Leshy’s tragedy dealing with the death of my mother always completely shatters its audience’s composure and is something I treasure for the comfort it proffers, and Gant Harro’s history plays about the Independence War became classics centuries ago.
However, works like that are not produced by grammar-school theatres. I knew I was in for a basting of sorts.
I was not wrong. I suffered all the more because Ottaviano was there, and he was guaranteed to export this to Landuc, for it was hysterically funny and utterly charming. I particularly liked the end, at which—intentionally or not—the vanquished dragon’s head and body exited left and the tail, which had been fidgeting on its own for a while, exited right, lashing splendidly.
Walter laughed himself sick through the whole farce. I resolved to get to him later and find out who’d really written it; it was far above the children who performed it. Shaoll was helpless, weeping with mirth, leaning on Walter, looking over at me and laughing harder from time to time. Ulrike smiled at some parts but seemed to miss many jokes entirely; she laughed more, blushing and glancing at me and giggling, after Ottaviano began whispering footnotes in her left ear. I laughed too—excruciatingly embarrassed at times, but I laughed.
After the play, the always-thoughtful Walter had arranged for a dinner to be laid for us in a small dining room upstairs in the house, and so Shaoll, Ulrike, Ottaviano, and I trailed after him to it. I would have liked to have left our cousin out, but Walter invited him and I couldn’t contradict my brother in his own house.
“I thought you might like a few minutes of quiet,” Walter said to Ulrike. “We’ve been handing you around like a new broadside. But it is only beca
use we like you,” he added with a grin.
“Thank you,” she replied, and sank gratefully into the chair Ottaviano offered her. “It’s all very … it’s very nice … people are so friendly …”
“But it can be overwhelming,” Walter concluded, patting her on the shoulder with one hand and pouring her a glassful of wine (Prissot Black Garnet) with the other. Good for warming winter-chilled bodies.
“I … thank you,” she said, shyly, and sipped the wine.
Shaoll lifted a dishcover. “Venison!” she exclaimed, and looked inquiringly at Walter.
“From Belphoebe’s bow,” he said. “Her New Year’s gift.”
Prospero did not join us, so we dined without him. Ulrike, though unsure of herself, warmed to Walter, Shaoll, and Ottaviano and smiled more often during the meal. I thought she looked tired—her cheeks were flushed and she seemed mildly uncoordinated—or perhaps slightly drunk. Walter kept filling her glass with wine, though, and I wasn’t about to embarrass her by asking if she wouldn’t be better off with water.
“My,” sighed Walter, over our second dessert, “what a pleasant interlude, but—”
Someone tapped at the door, then opened it. We all looked up and I rose to my feet, smiling, recognizing the man who leaned in.
“Voulouy!”
“Lord Gwydion.” Lish Voulouy beamed and came in, followed a few steps behind by a pair of young women. We embraced and kissed one another, both speaking at once.
“I did not know you had come down—”
“I am representing the family—”
“—you should have told me, I would have been honored to host you—”
“—for the treaty meetings—”
“—not having seen you since I’m shamed to think when …”
“Why, but I couldn’t guest at the Citadel, people might think we were getting preference.”
“Of course not if it’s business this time. Damn! When will you come down out of Haimance for pleasure?” I asked him, releasing him and looking into his good-natured, thin face. Voulouy is one of my favorite friends; he’s of the Haimance Voulouy clan which had pioneered and flourished in vineyards and winemaking. He was quite right about not guesting at the Citadel, though the Voulouys are like family to us and everyone knows it.
“When will you come up?” He smiled. “It has been far too long, and the place is as hospitable as ever, but Haimance cannot come to you, Lord.”
“I know. I know. I mean to come, every year, why, every season, and there’s always a fresh broil here.”
He shook his head mock-disapprovingly. “In Haimance we keep our broils low. But I did not come alone, either.… I think you may remember Tautau …”
“Tautau, sun and moon, yes …” I kissed the darker of the two women with him, and she kissed me back laughing at me.
“You might forget all Haimance, but I hope not me,” Tautau said, and I laughed too. We were lovers for a few years before I had gone away to study at a University away in an Eddy-world in Pheyarcet; she had been living in the City then and had moved back to Haimance by the time I returned. There had been business and family affairs for her after that, and we had not pursued the intimacy.
“Here,” said Tautau, “is a Voulouy you won’t remember: Lishon, our youngest sister. This is her first trip to the City.” Lishon was a typical-looking Haimance girl, lively, smiling, and playful. She and Ulrike regarded one another curiously.
“Welcome, Lishon,” I said, “and this is my younger sister Ulrike,” and there were more introductions and a few minutes of chatter until Walter proposed, “Shall we go and join the dancing?”
“Oh yes!” Shaoll said, beaming. “Ulrike, I shall teach you the steps, you will learn in a minute, they are not difficult, and you are light on your feet. You’ll do well.” She was a fine dancer herself, a perfect companion for a musician like Walter.
“I … I’ll just watch, if that’s all right,” Ulrike said.
Ottaviano and I both glanced at her, surprised, and then at one another in a moment of mutually-recognized disbelief. Freia had loved to dance; it seemed Ulrike was not like her in many things.
“Indeed, it’s not all right,” Walter told her in a mock-stern tone.
“But, but …” She blushed. Tautau and Shaoll laughed.
“He’s joking,” Shaoll and Lishon assured Ulrike quickly, in unison.
“Walter is usually joking,” Ottaviano said. “I’m feeling sedentary myself, m’lady cousin. If these gentlemen and ladies have an urge to trample the Old Year down with a dance, I will gladly keep you company the whiles …”
“Otto, I heard you promise Fedelm a dance,” I said, “and I suspect she is waiting to claim it from you.”
“I wasn’t going to dance either,” Lishon said, and Ulrike looked up. The girls looked at one another and Lishon went on, “Please, Tautau, can she—”
“We are going to sit in the gallery,” Tautau said to me, smiling. “Lishon doesn’t know many of the City dances and wanted to watch. She’s a little shy.”
I supposed she might be, but compared to Ulrike, she was positively gregarious.
“If you’d like to join us,” Lish Voulouy said to my sister, “why, the more merrymakers the merrier the party.”
I felt a twinge of guilty relief. I had several times seen a certain lady in the crowd, Evianne Perran, and she had several times seen me, and I wanted to see rather more of her than I could with an awkward younger sister on my arm. Tautau and Lish Voulouy were as reliable chaperons as I could ask for—not that girls in Argylle need chaperons, but clearly Ulrike wasn’t ready to make her way in society.
Ulrike glanced at me and Walter.
“You don’t need permission to sit out,” I said as kindly as I could.
“If you’re really not inclined to dance,” Walter said, “of course you may sit it out. Some people can’t dance after eating,” he stood and stretched and smiled, “but you must excuse me. I’m not one of them. You must dance at the costume party tomorrow, though! No excuses,” he tossed over his shoulder, and left.
Nervously, Ulrike asked, “Costume party?”
“It’s great fun,” I said. “It’s held in the Vintners’ Hall and all over the City. If you will excuse me also, sister, friends …” I added, smiling, “I have several engagements to discharge before I can sit overseeing the festivities in the dignified fashion becoming to my age and position—”
Lish made a choking rude noise, laughing. Otto snorted.
“—and Ottaviano here too has promises to keep; as a diplomat he must be conscious of his honor among us.”
Thus I brought Ottaviano down to the dance with me and left Ulrike in the excellent company of our friends. However, I was delayed by one thing and another—parties and dances are rife with distraction—and so I did not collect Ulrike until the small hours of the morning. Indeed I did not think of her at all until it was time to find my cloak and leave, for hers lay under mine. I took both and went down, looking here and there in the rooms where people had settled in smaller intimate parties for conversation and music and stories, but she was in none of them. I continued down to the gallery where I had left her with the Voulouys.
She was sitting at a table by one of the latticework partitions, which make excellent screens for eavesdropping and whispered flirting. Neither she, Lishon, nor Ottaviano saw me coming toward them through the half-empty gallery; the girls were intent on him, giggling behind their fans and looking sidelong at one another. Lish and Tautau were nowhere to be seen, and I recalled suddenly that I had seen Lish dancing with Prezon Arvaud and Tautau with a fellow I didn’t know. I had been so absorbed by other concerns, among them Evianne Perran, that they and Ulrike had not been associated in my mind. There was no reason for them to stay with her—I had not requested it openly. Still, I was irked, in the main at myself, and also at Ottaviano—the man was subtle, yet he had not taken the clear hint.
“Hullo,” Lishon said pertly to me, with an unc
ommonly arch look which turned into a blush as I looked meaningly at the four empty wine bottles on the table with them. Black Garnet.
“Good evening. Ulrike, I have here something of which you shall have need anon,” I said, displaying her cloak to her.
“Oh! It is late,” she said, sounding confused, and stood, looking at Lishon and at Ottaviano who rose with her.
“Good-night, Otto,” I said. “May the Old Year leave you softly.” It was nearly gone; dawn was but a couple hours away.
“And may the New be generous to you,” he said. “And to you, m’lady cousin. It has been very kind of you to tolerate me,” he said, and bowed to her. “And you, Miss Voulouy.”
“Lishon,” Lishon said. “We do not Miss in Argylle.”
“Indeed you do not.” Ottaviano smiled.
I draped Ulrike’s cloak around her; she had disentangled herself from the chairs without knocking one over or tripping. Lishon bade her an enthusiastic farewell until the morrow. With more polite words of parting, I guided my sister out of the gallery and out of Walter’s house. Doubtless Ottaviano was guesting there.
Ulrike was unsteady on her feet from a combination of tiredness and wine, and I felt it prudent to put my arm around her to help her along over the icy patches of pavement lest she fall.
“I’m sorry,” she said, holding my arm tightly, “I’m not … not used to … to …”
“Prissot Black Garnet is strong stuff,” I agreed. “You should cut it with water, or just drink Tindler water …”
“What’s … what’s tinder water …” she said, trying to sound alert.
“Tindler is mineral water from Haimance. Mother liked it.” Mother had known when to water her wine and when to stop altogether; most Argyllines do. Drunkenness is in poor taste.
“I’m sorry I’m so … wobbly.”
I sighed. “It’s all right, Ulrike.” She would have to learn.
We navigated successfully over the Wye on the Iron Bridge and into the Citadel. Up the stairs, slowly, and then I put her in her rooms and turned to my own.
The Well-Favored Man Page 20
