Prince of Dogs

by Kate Elliott

  “I asked about my foster family,” said Alain at last, lowering his hand. “I found out where they’ve gone to.”

  “They’ve gone somewhere?” Lavastine said without much curiosity, although for an established family to pick up and move was unheard of.

  “They’ve taken the steward’s house….” He hurried on since Lavastine clearly did not know what he meant. “It’s a small manor house. It was built in Emperor Taillefer’s reign for the steward who oversaw these lands then. That was before the port was established. An old man lived there. He was the grandson of the last steward, but he’d little to keep and no servants … the fields went fallow. And he’d no ship to send out, though there’s a decent landing spot below the house.”

  “Make your point, son, if there is one you intend.”

  But the road made Alain’s point for him: The packed-dirt way forked ahead. The wider left fork continued south, where it would eventually veer east to join the road that took the traveler to Lavas Holding.

  “The path to the right leads to the steward’s house, which lies down in a sheltered vale by the bay.”

  “And?”

  But Alain knew he would never forgive himself if he did not see them. “I beg you, Father, may we go see them?”

  Lavastine blinked. He looked, for an instant, the way a man might who has just been told that his wife has given birth not to a child but to a puppy. But he pulled up his horse just before the fork in the road, and his soldiers, obedient, halted behind him.

  Alain’s breath ran shallow as he tried desperately to hold back further words, but could not. “I beg you,” he burst out. “Just this one time.”

  Alain knew of no window into Lavastine’s soul and thoughts. His curt speech, his brusque gestures, his impatience and his efficiency, all melded into a whole so seamless that Alain could only suppose, as the church taught, that the outer man mirrors the inner. Only Frater Agius had taught differently: that an outer seeming might mask the inner heart—just as pious Agius had, until the end, concealed his belief in the heretical doctrine of the flaying knife and the death and redemption of the blessed Daisan.

  “Very well,” said Lavastine crisply. Whether he approved this course or disliked it Alain could not have said, nor did he really wish to know. He had to see Aunt Bel and Stancy and Julien and little Agnes and the baby, if it still lived. He had to speak with Henri, to be sure that he didn’t—

  Didn’t what?

  Didn’t condemn him as an oath breaker for not entering the church?

  He took in a breath and started forward. His mare, a meek creature at the best of times, picked her way through the litter of leaves shrouding the trail. Lavastine let him lead their little cavalcade down the narrow path that wound through oak and silvery birch, maple and beech. He saw the outline of buildings past bare branches, a small estate with a house, stables, cookhouse, and outbuildings set around an open court that could also serve as corral. They passed out of the forest and into the scrub surrounding the estate, stumps not yet burned and dug out, brushy undergrowth and new seedlings struggling up toward the light, strips of field cut out of the brush, wisps of winter wheat growing in neat green rows along soil ridges.

  It took him a moment to recognize the young man standing in unmown grass at one end of a long log set up on sawbucks. Stripped of bark and being planed down to an even curved round, the log had the lean supple strength necessary for a mast. At the far end of the log, scraping, stood Henri, his back to the road; Alain knew him instantly. The young man at the near end had the broad shoulders of a soldier, but when he turned to stare, Alain realized this was his cousin Julien, filled out to a man’s stature now and half a head taller than he had been two winters ago.

  Julien saw the cavalcade and cried out so loudly that first two children and then Aunt Bel came to the door of the house; several laborers Alain did not recognize emerged from the workshop. Henri looked up once and with a deliberate shrug went back to his work. But the others flooded out, all of them, Aunt Bel and Stancy, and little Agnes looking more like a woman than the girl Alain remembered. Even the baby toddled out, curly fair hair wound down around thin shoulders. Stancy had a new baby in a sling at her hips. A woman in the robes of a cleric hurried forward to stand next to Aunt Bel. A small child Alain did not recognize stood, mouth open and stick upraised, forgetting the geese she had been set to watch over. The birds strayed into the woods, but only Alain noticed because everyone else was staring at him.

  Aunt Bel walked forward to place herself between her family and the count’s entourage. She folded her hands respectfully before her and inclined her head in the same manner, not quite as an equal but neither as a servant. “My lord count, I give you and your company greetings to this house.”

  “Mistress Bella,” said Lavastine in acknowledgment, a fine mark of notice since Alain hadn’t imagined the count remembered her name.

  The cleric murmured a blessing upon them all.

  The geese were wandering unnoticed back in among the trees while the child gawped at the soldiers in their blue tabards and at the banners that fluttered in the breeze.

  “The geese!” Alain blurted as the first one vanished from his sight. There was a sudden flurry in the crowd. The goosegirl began to sob, frozen in place. Julien ran toward the wood, but that only startled the geese and sent some flapping every which way while the others hissed and snapped; one bit a laborer hard on the fingers.

  Alain dismounted and flung his reins to a groom. “Move back,” he said to the laborer and the few children who had pressed forward. “Down,” he called to the hounds, who had started to bark and strain against their leashes. They stilled obediently. “Julien!” he scolded, coming up beside his cousin, “you know that’s no way to bring in geese.”

  “Yes, my lord,” mumbled Julien, red in the face.

  Alain blushed. Had he sounded so proud? But the geese were scattering and the goosegirl had now hunkered down on her haunches and started bawling outright. He squatted beside her. “Hush, child.” He reached out to touch her dirty chin. “This will not bring them back. Now you go stand there, by the gate to the pen, and you shut it tight once they’ve all gone in.”

  His fine clothing and his clean face and hands overawed her; he saw that by her expression and the way her gaze darted from hands to face to tunic and back again. Her bawling ceased and, though tears still ran down her cheeks, she obeyed him. He went a few steps into the forest and began the onerous job of coaxing the flustered and annoyed geese back out of the trees and into the pen. But he spoke softly and moved slowly, and in time they came, suspicious and ill-tempered but not, at this moment, intent on inflicting bodily harm. Long necks arching, still hissing at the audience of family and soldiers, they followed Alain to the pen and went inside as meekly as geese were able. At the gate, one gander hissed and retreated. Alain circled him carefully, crouched, and snaked out a hand to grab the feet from behind, sweeping the bird up while he took a firm grip on its neck with his other hand. He deposited the squawking, furious bird in the pen, jumped back, and let the goosegirl slam the gate shut. The geese subsided with a hissing and flapping of wings.

  He looked back in time to see Aunt Bel trying not to laugh, the soldiers and laborers staring in outright astonishment, and his father watching with his thinnest smile—the one always linked with his disapproval.

  “I see you haven’t forgotten everything you learned here,” said a voice at his side. Alain turned to confront his father—not his father, but his foster father. Henri.

  Aunt Bel raised her voice. “My lord count, I hope you and yours will take a meal with us. My own daughters will prepare it.”

  Lavastine nodded curtly. He could scarcely refuse. It was practically a sin to scorn hospitality. But after he dismounted, he gestured to Alain to attend him.

  “If you will allow me, my lord,” Aunt Bel continued while Stancy and Agnes and the other women hurried inside and the laborers retreated to stand at a respectful distance. Jul
ien followed Henri back to their work on the mast. “Rather than wait inside, perhaps I may show you around the manor. It was your largesse that made it possible for us to improve upon our circumstances and settle here.”

  “Indeed.”

  Aunt Bel kept a careful distance from the hounds, who growled at her while a padded handler staked them out away from the house. While the soldiers took the horses to graze and water, she conducted Lavastine and Alain on a tour; the cleric attended Aunt Bel much as if Bel were herself a noble lady. It was a fine grand house, although not of course nearly as grand as Lavastine’s fortress, and included a good stretch of ground with fields, two workshops, pastureland and woodland, and a broad path leading down to a sheltered beach where the family’s ship had been drawn up onto logs and covered with a thatch roof for the winter.

  “My brother Henri is a merchant, my lord, and we have for some years shipped both cloth and quernstones south to Medemelacha. There is a quarry near here in the hills where we get our stone. With the generous payment we received from you, my lord, we have been able to expand our business in addition to moving to this manor. I have hired laborers to carve soapstone into vessels for cooking and storage. We will ship them to Medemelacha also. In time Henri hopes to sail north as far as Gent, although there is more risk of Eika attacks in that direction, and next year he intends to attempt his first trip northwest to Alba, to the port of Hefenfelthe on the Temes River.”

  Lavastine began to look interested. A good husbandman, he was wealthy in large part because of his careful stewardship of his lands and possessions. “One ship cannot sail to three places.”

  Aunt Bel smiled. “We are building a second ship this winter. My third son Bruno we have apprenticed to Gilles Fisher, a local man who builds most of the ships hereabouts. In return the shipbuilder will aid my brother with those parts of the ship Henri does not know the secrets of.”

  Lavastine surveyed the work that continued on the mast. Henri, sweating even in the chill, seemed oblivious to the visit of the great lord. “But is it not also true, as my clerics have read to me from the commentaries on the Holy Verses, that ‘the farmer must save some of the grain when he makes bread, else there will be nothing for sowing’?”

  “‘And in the days to come not pride nor greed will fill his stomach,’” finished the cleric. She was a young woman, not much older than Alain himself, with crooked teeth, a pockmarked face, and a cheerful expression. “Your attention to the words of Our Lady and Lord marks you with favor, my lord.”

  “Indeed,” said Lavastine. “So have They shown me Their favor.” He glanced at Alain. Bel, miraculously, appeared not to notice the aside. She moved away toward the other workshop, which was attached by a covered causeway to the main house.

  “Three ships we may hope for in time, my lord,” she said, “but for now the seaways north are closed to us by the Eika. As you say, we must move slowly as we expand lest we overreach. In this room my daughters and I weave. In time we’ll expand to four looms. In time we hope also to hire more laborers and expand the farm as well. We have betrothed my daughter Agnes to a merchant’s son in Medemelacha. He’s an experienced sailor. In time he’ll take over the third boat, should Our Lord and Lady shower their favor upon our enterprise.”

  “But Agnes is too young to be married!” said Alain, shocked.

  Lavastine swatted away a fly and stepped back from the door into the weaving shop, held open by the cleric so that he could look inside. “How old is this daughter?”

  “She is twelve, my lord. Her betrothed will come to live with us next year, but they won’t wed until she is fifteen or sixteen. If you will come this way.” It began to irritate Alain that she addressed all her conversation to Count Lavastine and none to him, as if he were a stranger. Yet certain small expressions familiar to him came and went on her face like so many private signals to him alone of her thoughts and of unspoken comments too personal to share with someone who did not know her intimately, the arched eyebrow that betrayed amusement, the dimple that hid annoyance, the pursed lips with which she swallowed any sign of satisfaction she considered unseemly. “We have bought more cows and will export cheese as well. We hope, in time, to bring a blacksmith here. As you can see, we have hired the Osna smith to come in twice a week and do work for us.” They crossed into the house itself, the long hall busy with women and girls setting out cups and bringing in platters of food from the cookhouse. Beside the threshold Alain saw an unpainted wooden shield, a helmet, and a spear. “We are are sending my eldest son Julien to the new duchess of Varingia as a man-at-arms, because we can afford to outfit him now.”

  They had promised him to the church when he had wanted nothing more than to be a soldier! Stung with jealousy, he flushed in shame—but no one remarked on it. No one even paid attention to him. Of course it would be different for Julien. Julien was Aunt Bel’s legitimate child, her eldest son, and of course she would want to give him such an opportunity now that they had the means. They had done their best by him; it wasn’t their fault they hadn’t known who he really was … was it?

  Aunt Bel went on, discussing various potential marriage alliances for her children and relations. To Alain’s consternation and utter confoundment, Count Lavastine appeared to relish these discussions; he asked questions and gave advice. Indeed, he treated Aunt Bel with the same distant familiarity as he did his own chatelaine, Dhuoda, a woman whose ability to run his household he respected enough to leave her alone to do her job.

  “—and now that we have more business, we have brought in Sister Corinthia of Salia to write and read letters and do our accounts. We also hope to put Julien’s daughter, Blanche, into the church with a dowry. Sister Corinthia will teach her so that she isn’t unlettered when she goes.”

  Julien’s daughter, the baby, was illegitimate, although Julien and his sweetheart had proclaimed publicly their intent to marry before the young woman’s death in childbed.

  “You have done well,” said Count Lavastine. He was—perhaps—impressed. Alain was vastly irritated. He felt used, as if his family had only wanted him for what they could get from him, the count’s generous reward for his fosterage.

  Aunt Bel glanced at Alain, then away. Her features were stern now. “It is nothing we looked for or expected, my lord,” she said as if she had heard Alain’s thoughts spoken out loud. Perhaps she had, seeing his expression. She knew him that well. He was ashamed. “But is it not said in the Holy Verses that ‘you shall eat the fruit of your own labors’?”

  “‘You shall be happy and you shall prosper,’” quoted the young cleric, evidently eager to show off her knowledge of the Holy Verses, “‘and your daughters shall be like the fruitful vines and your sons like the rich stands of wheat. For the hearth-holder who lights each day a candle from the hearth in memory of the Chamber of Light, this shall be the blessing in store for her: She may share the prosperity of Saïs all the days of her life and live to see her children’s children!’”

  “Please, my lord count.” Aunt Bel gestured to the single chair at the table. Everyone else would sit on benches. “If you will be seated.” Now she turned to Alain as well and made the same respectful gesture. “And you, my lord.”

  “Aunt Bel,” he began, hating this formality.

  “No, my lord.” He knew better than to argue with her. “You’re a count’s son now and must be treated as one. ‘God maketh poor and maketh rich; They bringeth low and lifteth up.’”

  “So said the prophet Hannah,” added the cleric.

  Aunt Bel turned back to Lavastine. “I will send one of my children to bring your company in to table, my lord.”

  “I’ll go,” said Alain, though it was not his place. He should not offer, not without asking his father’s permission. But he knew, suddenly, that he would have no opportunity to speak to Henri, that Henri would not eat with them. None of the family would eat with them; they would serve their guests. That was all.

  The soldiers began to stamp in, a flurry of activi
ty by the door.

  Lavastine said, “Alain!”

  Alain made his escape.

  Outside, Julien and Henri were still working on the mast. When Henri saw Alain coming, he straightened and waved Julien away. Then he bent back to his task.

  Alain halted beside the older man. Out here, outside the confines of Osna village, it smelled different. There the ever-present smell of drying fish and salted fish and smoked fish pervaded streets and common and even the Ladysday service. In the longhouse, fish and smoke and sweat and the dust of stones and wet wool and drying herbs and sour milk and rancid oil and candlewax all blended into a rich, familiar aroma. At the manor house there was no such ripe blend, for here there was room to store foodstuffs in the shed beside the cookhouse, to grind stone in a separate workshop, to weave in a room set aside for that purpose. Although perhaps thirty people lived on this farm, they were not crowded together except on winter nights when they would all sleep in the main hall.

  He smelled the sea foam and heard the cries of gulls. The animal sheds stank, of course, but the smell of earth and wind and the late chill of autumn dying into winter overrode anything else, made all else into a fragrant herbal, the scent of life. The smell of land and opportunity, even though it was only an old steward’s house from the time of the Emperor Taillefer.

  “You’ve done well with the payment Count Lavastine gave you,” said Alain, not meaning to say anything of the kind.

  Henri smoothed the sides of the log into an even curve. “As have you,” he said without looking up from the steady rhythm of his work. The words, spoken so bluntly, cut into Alain’s heart.

  “I didn’t ask for this!”

  “How then did it come about?”

  “You don’t think I—!” His voice gave out as he struggled with indignation.