by S G Dunster
Ice. Beautiful, crystalline, gold, bringing with it hints of storms and stars and future possibilities; pictures in her mind of Rosalie dancing, Beatrice with a look of utter joy on her face, holding something close to her breast.
Fire. Flowing, hot, dazzling silver, and it flowed through her with pure feeling, aspirations, thoughts of earth and healing and strength; the pleasures of the body. The sweet and spicy scents, the joy of the soft and yielding.
It all narrowed to a point for her, just for a moment. Heaven-gold. Earth-Silver, and the two chasing around and around and around, the hot coming as the cold became too much, and the cold spreading through her just as the heat began to burn.
“Vinculum,” she whispered the word twice and felt hollow, bereft, as it all fled to her center, coiling into the tight orbs.
When the lesson had ended and it was time for the small snack they were served between the hours of learning, Thessaly’s mind was still full, still dancing on the knowledge and worlds opening wider to her. She did not even notice what went into her trencher and tasted nothing on her tongue.
She was nudged into awareness by a well-placed elbow when the washing bowl between courses came around again. “Beatrice,” Thessaly began irritably, and then stopped short.
It was him again, holding the bowl to her. The man with the viol. His dark eyes smiled at her, and he gave a slight nod, disarranging a dark spiral of hair so it fell along the bridge of his nose.
She stared like a fool. Carefully, she washed her hands, and carefully, she kept her gaze on her plate as he walked away.
“You’re besotted,” Beatrice remarked.
“It’s nothing,” Thessaly snapped. She didn’t want to explain at that moment how an edge of gold shimmered in her vision, surrounding him. How the smell of it—clean and cold—hit her like a gust of salt-spray turned by an unexpected wind. “Nothing to worry about. I’m just a little discomfited. Hearing that music, here, was a—”
“A surprise,” Rosalie finished for her. “I’ve never heard such fine playing.”
“Indeed,” Beatrice said. “The man’s a talent.” She grasped Thessaly’s arm. “No hard feelings. We all fall once in a while.”
Thessaly shook her head and let out a strangled laugh. “You misunderstand,” she said. She allowed herself a small peek at him as he went around offering the bowl to others. “All these boys from the villages around, are they just here to serve the abbey, do you think? Cleaning and bringing around food? It seems to me he’s . . . just the way he talks . . . .”
“They take Latin and Greek and letters,” A voice behind her said.
Thessaly looked up to find Hodge grinning down at her, and Robert and Rye just behind. “He’s a fine-looking fellow, is he not? Half the girls in Minehead fancy him.”
“Thessaly, too,” Rosalie said, and then coughed as Thessaly kicked at her ankle.
“He is fine-looking,” Thessaly agreed, “as are many young men of the . . . the local population here.”
“The Dumenon,” Hodge supplied. “That’s the local tribe. Bretons to the bone. This part of Kernow’s not been stirred much by Norman or even Saxon blood.” He smiled at her. “You’re off to Dunne’s Tor after supper, aren’t you?”
“Have you visited there?” Rosalie asked eagerly, shifting in her seat so she faced them. She eyed Robert.
He turned slightly pink. “We have. We’re invited there to dine on occasion.”
“I don’t want to go up to the house today at all,” Beatrice announced. “I shall stay here. What lessons do you learn next?”
Thessaly and Rosalie exchanged glances. “We’re expected up there after the dinner hour,” Rosalie said, her voice tentative.
“Not today,” Beatrice declared. “We shall stay until supper.”
Thessaly wondered if Guzal had come back yet. The idea of staying for all of the day’s instruction at the abbey was a glistening, gorgeous thing to her. She did not fancy going to embroidery. And she wasn’t sure she was in a fit state to broach matters of tree-barriers with Lady DuCarne, anyway.
The quiet, relatively un-queer magicks of this abbey were more to her taste.
And Rosalie was right, but not in the way she thought.
She needed to know more about this Dumenon man who played the fydol.
“We write and study the manuscripts in the library after dinner,” Robert said. “Father Raymund has allowed us to try some painting and script as well. All the old books need to be copied so they can be read commonly.”
“A worthy endeavor,” Beatrice sighed, “but it sounds as dreary as sewing. Is there nothing else we could do this afternoon?”
“It is a fine day,” Hodge said, his grave voice belied by the smile in his eyes. “We could skip courses entirely and find our way around the town and harbor.”
“Aye!” Rosalie exclaimed, then colored. “But perhaps not, because Lady DuCarne will be expecting us.”
“I suppose I should go up to the abbey by myself,” Thessaly said. “Surely, the Lady would write my father if I skipped time there at the Tor.
“Oh, Thessaly,” Rosalie groaned, “one afternoon won’t spoil things. Your father is like to be past Marrakesh by now. He won’t get letters until he gets back anyhow.”
“No, likely only just making the landing in France,” Beatrice argued, giving Rosalie a look.
“He’d stay away from France,” Thessaly replied.
“Oh?” A dark eyebrow rose, and a curious glint lit the girl’s dark eyes. “Does he have some trouble with His Royal Big-Nosedness?"
Thessaly couldn’t help but laugh. It was a welcome respite. “One of these days you’ll get in trouble for your sharp tongue,” she said.
“Everyone calls him that,” Beatrice said, shrugging diffidently. ”Le Roi Grand Nez. I just helpfully translated to English.”
“It sounds much less elegant in English.”
“Most things do,” Hodge pointed out, and Rye laughed silently, covering his mouth with a graceful hand. “Shut it,” he muttered to Hodge. “Or you’ll be guillotined right beside Miss DeNought one day. I’d weep myself dry, were you to go the way of other long-tongued men.”
“Thomas Beckett, for instance,” Beatrice put in.
“Quiet. Whose side are you on?” Hodge chided, giving her a pinch on the cheek, and earning himself a sharp elbow to the gut as payment.
“I’m on whichever side I like to be.”
“A true politician,” Rye rumbled, his eyes gleaming with more suppressed laughter. “Or harridan?”
“Let’s go now,” Rosalie broke in. “In any case, we’ve nobody to switch us. And we’re too big for switching, anyhow.” Her eyes darted suddenly to the Abbess, sitting at the head of the head table. In that moment she looked particularly stern, and knowing Rosalie’s thought, Thessaly choked back a laugh. “She won’t switch us,” Thessaly said. “She’d more likely set us to winding bandages. You just want to skip over composition.”
“Aye,” Rosalie nodded emphatically, bringing a muffled laugh from Robert, who had been following the exchange quietly to that point.
“I like this plan,” Thom said, shoving his hands in the small of his back. “Especially should the lovely miss DuNought offer her arm to me during part of the excursion.”
“Only in your blackest, most painful dreams,” Beatrice replied.
At this, Hodge howled with laughter. Rye’s shoulders shook, and he covered his face. They were drawing attention. From the Fydoler as well, Thessaly felt his look, and it was like a shaft of hot sun hit her. She quickly looked again at Rosalie.
“Fine,” Thom said, only a little taken aback. “Rosalie?”
Rosalie, immensely enjoying herself as the center of attention, grinned, rolled her eyes slightly, rose, and took his proffered arm.
“I suppose we must follow her,” Beatrice said to Thessaly in an undertone, “or Rosalie’s like to get her first kiss sooner than she likes.”
“Rose can take care of herse
lf, I’m sure,” Thessaly said. “But I am badly in need of fresh air.” She sighed and stood, ignoring Beatrice’s sly, knowing look.
The Abbess and Father Raymund were talking quietly and seriously about something, and gave them only distracted glances as the group of students left, likely assuming they were moving back to the classroom, but apparently not noticing they went through the wrong door. Thessaly felt the Fydoler’s continued gaze on her, though. Or did she? Was she imagining things now?
She shrugged it off violently, blew out her breath in a frustrated gust, and shoved aside the preoccupation of dark eyes and black silk curls, and the fydol’s golden voice. “We should tour the city ourselves anyhow,” Thessaly said as they stepped outside, under the covered area where wagons came to unload in front of the abbey. “We’ll have to buy things eventually.”
As they walked into the main streets, the scent of salt in the air soon roused Thessaly, and she set aside thoughts of angles and navigation, men and magicks. Excitement and wonder pricked her heart as they walked along the street with its quaint, small buildings, all surrounded by sea and sun.
A painful boil of heat seared through her. She stopped still and closed her eyes for a moment, letting the others get ahead, intoning Umbra’s curse twice to bind her floes. She’d come undone again. She must be careful of emotions—it seemed they undid her more and more often lately.
They went in every shop. There weren’t many, only a dozen or so, and most sold different sorts of wool cloth or things to process them.
“Alum,” Rye said, holding up a fancy wrought canister. “His Holiness’s currency.”
“Most use piss to soften theirs,” Hodge replied. “Alum’s for what’s traded.”
“I’ll know to buy only here, then,” Beatrice said, her nose wrinkled.
“Nothing wrong with good clean piss,” Hodge objected.
“Hodge,” Robert said quellingly. He tilted his head toward Rosalie.
“Don’t worry,” Rosalie grumbled. “How can a man’s piss be unfit to talk about, when cat’s piss is used to flavor fine ladies’ perfumes?”
Beatrice and Rye’s laughs, both rather low and booming, sounded, and Thessaly couldn’t help the way her own mouth turned up in response.
Robert looked as if he wasn’t sure what to say. Thom was nowhere to be seen. Likely he’d found some other wench to bother, Thessaly thought.
“Kitten has claws,” Hodge said approvingly. He took Rosalie’s hand and slid it into the crook of his elbow. “I like you just fine, the lot of you. Let’s go and see the market, and then there’s a certain alehouse we might find entertainment in.”
“Ale,” Beatrice said sourly. “That’s all that can be found here. Or port so thick it’s like eating raisin pudding.”
“Lady Beatrice’s used to fine rosé,” Hodge teased. “Clear enough to reflect her lovely face back to her.”
“Aye,” Beatrice declared, shoving her arm through his other elbow, tugging him and Rosalie along. “And I miss pale wine, too. It goes so much better with fish, which makes up the bulk of any table here.”
“Fish and ale, fish and ale,” Robert said, his voice lilting. “It could be a song. Fish and ale, down the Minehead vale.”
Rosalie slowed and gave him a glowing look over her shoulder.
“No, lady Rose,” Hodge said, tugging her along. “Our Robert’s got a golden tongue and pretty eyes, too—likely the finest this side of Midland. But you’re mine today. You ladies are all sensible, until the music starts.” He gave Thessaly a brow lift, and Rosalie dissolved into laughter.
The market was bustling. They drew a lot of attention—velvets and cotton among homespun. Thessaly wished Guzal had been able to make up a frock from the woolens she’d bought, and that she’d at least thought to don shoes that didn’t require pattens to walk in the streets. “Boots,” Thessaly said. “And a dress. That is what I shall buy today. Guzal is making some, but she’s been distracted.”
“Me too,” Rosalie squealed.
“I shall buy some too,” Beatrice declared. “But first I want to see the market at the cross.”
They walked to the low field, lying seaside of the village road. It was fresh and green, and full of men and women selling things they had grown or made. They looked at early salad greens and pease sold by a trio of women from a cart. There were eggs and lambs and piglets. There were hens—called by the women who sold them “cackling cheats.”
“It’s young and tender, and fed in dews’a’vale,” a girl with three lambs said, dimpling as Robert turned his attention to her. “It’ll make a fine meal.”
“A meal?” Beatrice cooed, kneeling and fondling the wooly nubs on the small animal’s head. “Never.”
“Never eaten mutton, Milady?” Rye’s tone was heavy with irony.
Beatrice gave him a scowl. “Never this mutton. Perhaps I should buy him. I’ll name him . . .” she glanced at the chicken seller, “Cheat. Wooly Cheat.”
“A pet that drops pellets along her polished floors won’t put you in favor of Lady DuCarne,” Robert warned. He bowed to the girl, who rewarded him with more dimples, and presented her with a small bunch of wildflowers. “That smile is trade enough for me.”
The girl colored and slid them into her bosom. She was dark-eyed, with curling plaits that fell over her shoulders to her waist. She was very pretty, Thessaly thought.
“They’re having a dance tonight up at Bury,” the girl said shyly. “If you come, you might find more of ‘em?”
“More of what?”
She smiled slowly, and Robert laughed.
“Bury,” he said. “And where’s that?”
She pointed. “Up the hill. See there, behind the church? The trees rise a bit. You’d all be welcome,” she added, seeing Rosalie’s slight frown, gesturing to Rye, Hodge, Thessaly, and Beatrice as well. “It’s just dancing and music. It’s a hillfolk’s do.”
They all gazed at the hill that headed the street. At its bottom, the tall smokestack of the mine rose, pale, through the trees. It was a low, flat hill, shorter than Dunne’s Tor.
“There’s an old circle fort there. We have dances sometimes. And,” she hesitated, “meetings. But tonight’s open for all. There will be drums and pipes and fydol.”
“Fydol,” Hodge said, glancing at Thessaly. “We shall come of a surety, then.”
Thessaly blew out her breath in a sigh and returned his look with interest.
The girl smiled. “We village girls will be happy to have more partners to dance with.” She bobbed her head. “Please do come.”
“You didn’t ask her name,” Rosalie chided Robert as they walked back up the street to the tailor and cobbler.
“I know it already,” Robert said.
“Ah,” Rosalie replied, coloring, turning away.
“One for the ladies, our Robert,” Hodge said. “Gallant though he is, we have seen he is good with words. And tokens.” He nudged Rosalie, and she gave him a scrunched, laughing sort of smile.
Thessaly felt a sense of exultation as they entered the cobblers, and she ordered a pair of rough farm boots for herself. As the cobbler measured her feet, she pictured her father rounding the hump of the dark continent in his ships. And Loredan.
What would Loredan think of her in homespun and rough cobbler’s boots?
They stepped into a glass-fronted building, finer than others on the street.
The girl in there was startlingly lovely, with black hair falling past her hips and bound around her face in yellow-dyed linen, which set off the slight olive hue of her skin. Her eyes were slanted, almost like she could be from the Spice Islands, Thessaly thought. She was talking quietly, smiling at a woman who held a bolt of wound cloth.
“Meraud,” Hodge murmured as they waited in the doorway. “She and her mother are tailors. She can likely make you a simple woolen overdress that will work to your purpose. No piss in the wool, either.” He gave Beatrice a smile.
Meraud greeted them politely, tho
ugh Thessaly thought there was a glint of skepticism in her dark eyes. She measured the three of them for wool bodices and plain linen skirts.
“Can you have them by tonight?” Rosalie asked eagerly. “We’re going to the dance.”
“The dance,” Meraud said, frowning. “These’ll not do for a dance at the manse.”
“No.” Rosalie laughed. “Can you imagine, Thessaly? Wearing these up at the Tor? No, we’re going to the one on Bury. We want to look the part.”
Meraud set down the cloth, her mouth thinning. “To m’sorrow,” she said, her tone ruthlessly polite, “you’ll wait longer. I can have them the morrow. Early.”
“But,” Rosalie protested, “we can’t wear these to a country dance!”
“I’m sure ye’ll make do,” Meraud said coldly. “And if ye wouldn’t mind,” she gestured to a woman who had just entered.
Beatrice wasn’t having it. She narrowed her eyes. “We give you trade, and you speak with us thus.”
Meraud smiled. “I’ve trade enough. You ladies can come back tomorrow for them. They’ll be well-made, I assure you.”
Beatrice stalked out and let the door bang behind her. “Insolence,” she muttered.
“I rather like her,” Rye said calmly. “There’s a lot of pride in these Dumenon hills.”
Hodge shook his legs dramatically. “Aye. I’m iced to the soles of my feet.”
Rosalie slumped like a wilted flower. “What did I say?”
“Nothing you meant to say,” Robert replied, giving her a smile.
Rosalie brightened at this, but they were quiet all the way back to the abbey.
The Abbess did not question them as they entered, but Thessaly could feel her eyes on them. They all sat around a table’s end together.
Thom joined them a while later. “Why didn’t you invite me along where you went?” He muttered, giving Hodge a dark look. “Father Raymund rounded me up and brought me back. I was stuck in the manuscript room painting teats on a cherub.”
“Sounds like hard and tiring work,” Hodge said.
“You look like the air agreed with you,” Thom said, grinning at Beatrice. “Fancy going out again later? There’s a place serves good ale.”
