Cards of Grief

by Jane Yolen

  I bought an animal to ride; spavined and sway-backed as it was, it was all the town could spare. The coin I used was my own body. I was quick, and I can’t imagine the girl or her mother had any pleasure in the exchange. I certainly did not. But the horse they sold me compensated them in the long run, for it bruised me in private places and coughed great globules of sputum on my boots whenever we stopped, and it died messily on the second day in a patch of bellywort. I was hours after picking the thorns from my clothes. Still, the beast saved me a day of walking, and for that I was grateful to the girl, to her tight-fisted mother, and to the beast itself, for which I composed a short and rather bawdy grief quarto. I made it back to the court in three days instead of the expected four.

  After months on the road, lying on the straw-stuffed mattresses offered by the six Common Grievers and eating their swill, it was a pleasure just to look at the wide cobbled roads leading into L’Lal’dome. The turrets of the palace rose before me, dominating the landscape: the left-hand tower with its juts and precipices, the right-hand tower with its smooth glissades. We call them the sky twins, and they are an unlikely pair. It is said they were built by two quarreling princesses, both of whom hoped to be Queen. The towers were completed but the princesses died young, ending their particular line. The Queens who followed kept the towers as reminders of false hopes.

  I was delighted to see the imposing pair, a signal that I was home. I wondered what Gray would say when I brought her here. Would she start with delight at the differences between the twins? Or would she silently compose an ode comparing them to some grieven sister or aunt? Would the cobblestones amuse her—or merely bruise her country feet?

  Lost in similar rehearsals, I made my way through the twisting market streets to the Apartments of Princes, where I knew a hot bath would be ready.

  Plumbing is the prerogative of Royals. We have the water and the wisdom, drawn from the complement of Stars who first devised the system of pipes and weirs. For the sharing of their knowledge and the skill of their hands, we allow the folk of Stars to live alongside us in L’Lal’dome as partners, though not, of course, as equals. But we rarely intermingle. It is considered bad form for a princeling to ally with a girl from Stars; besides, they are a boring folk, stiff-necked and overserious. Of course a Queen can always choose to lie with whom she will.

  But I gave solemn thanks that day—as I had never done before—to the anonymous Stars who had invented the baths. It was worth all the dirty traveling in the Middle Lands to come home to the pleasure of hot water and soap.

  The bath room was crowded when I arrived, crowded with servers as well as my fellow princes. As I stripped for the warming pool, leaving my mission clothes (ugly, worn, common things) in a pile, I was hooted at by T’arremos.

  “He’s gotten thin and wan. Perhaps he dies of too much touching—poor, dirty bardling.”

  A grimace was my only answer. T’arremos was always slight in wit and ill-favored as well. He had a birth scar, a bold berry-colored mark like a map on one side of his face. Because of it his mission year had been singularly unsuccessful. He had had to buy the favors of what few girls he could find and he had only once been chosen to serve the Queen. His failures were public ones and they flavored his speech with a permanent sourness.

  Ignoring T’arremos, I slipped into the pool, letting the warm water lave me. I resisted the urge to duck under. Such a display would have been bad form indeed.

  T’arremos tried again. “Home early. We thought you were to be gone another month. The girls of Middle Lands too much for you then? Or did they forget to applaud your performances?”

  I resisted the immediate response, sensing that there were some princes there who were as jealous as T’arremos at my successes with the plecta and harmonus. Instead, I stood up, leaving the warmth of the pool before being truly centered in it, and turned slowly toward him. I showed him, without words, that I—unlike he—was a well-favored Royal still in my prime. Then, even more slowly, and smiling, I said, “I am home early for there is one the Queen must see.”

  I stepped gracefully from the pool and walked—not exactly strutting but only a fine line away from it—to the heated pool beyond where I stretched up on my toes, raised my arms above my head, and dove in. I stayed under for as long as I could, then surfaced, careful not to breathe heavily, though my chest ached and I longed to gulp in the water-laden air.

  As I had hoped, the whole bath room was abuzz with my statement and T’arremos was gone. He had, I hoped, raced out to tell one of his Masters, for he often spied for the older princes, those closest to the Queen. And they were the ones who could help me get an early audience with her. But it would have been no good trying a direct approach with them. They loved intrigue and I would have had to waste days. That T’arremos, too, would be favored in this exchange was a necessary evil that I planned to sort out afterward. First, though, I had to make myself clean.

  More wine?

  Thank you. I see my memoirs do not bore you.

  On the contrary, they are fascinating.

  Do not patronize me, sky-farer. The King knows everything.

  And will, I hope, tell all in his own good time.

  What I will tell may not be all, but it will be the truth.

  My rooms, with their silken draperies and soft-filtered light, were exactly as I had left them nearly three seasons before. The walls, covered with my collection of ancient viols, welcomed me home. Still naked from the baths, I wandered from instrument to instrument, strumming and plucking, a ritual I had devised as a child to help my thinking. Certain dominant chords centered my thoughts, certain arpeggios lent permission for flights of fancy. My servants knew better than to intrude on either my practicing or my thinking. Though they might listen, they would never enter until the run of strings was done or until I called them into my presence. A well-trained servant is one of life’s greatest pleasures.

  We do not believe in servants.

  Neither do the Common Grievers, though many of them move to L’Lal’dome to serve us. And do you not serve your chief?

  It is not the same.

  No, it is never the same.

  I sat down on a plush pillow, one of the eight I was allowed, crossed my legs, and pulled my favorite plecta onto my lap. It had an old autumn-colored box of smooth wood. The body arched deeply and the sounding boards were intricately inlaid with decorated ivories worked from the bones of small animals. The neck was fretted which indicated how old it was. The sound post was also of bone, giving it a richer, fuller tone than if made of wood. I had purchased that particular plecta for its dark resonances and had polished it with a honey-wax the long chilly winter of my thirteenth year. The other princes had laughed at my dedication to a single worn instrument. Indeed, T’arremos had called it an obsession. Of course the other princes who played mostly preferred the newer multicolored viols from the Rock Street merchants. But using this ancient plecta is more than an affectation with me, though I would not call it an obsession. I have a real love for the old unpainted strings. They echo, they sound the centuries, just as we older princes do. You see, I still call myself a prince, though I have had the thirty cushions for almost a year.

  But I apologize, I stray far from my tale. You want to know about the Gray Wanderer, you said, not some old prince whose organs shriveled up years ago and whose sole pleasures are in the stewardship of state, small pieces of gossip, and memories.

  Well, I played Gray’s song over and over on my plecta, teaching my mind to remember what my fingers already easily recalled. I was able to embroider the tune a bit, for the strings were wonderfully supple on this instrument, though I had not plucked it for three seasons past. (I had carried only a worn harmonus for my travels.)

  The song echoed in the room till the very walls were party to Gray’s great-grandmother’s immortality. And when I was satisfied that I would not stumble when presenting the song to the Queen, I stood. Gazing out of the window into the courtyard below I was surprised
to find that it was already dark.

  “Mar-keshan,” I called out and my servant entered immediately.

  He was old and brown as cow spittle, but I would not let him retire. He had been old when he had come into my service on my birth day. He was, in fact, so old that his blue eyes were practically translucent, yet still—I think—they saw more truly than any of the young servers I have around me today.

  “My lord,” he said, bowing, showing no surprise at my early return or any indication that I had been gone months without a word to him.

  “I will eat and then be dressed,” I said. “Any requests for me?”

  “The Prince D’oremos would see you this evening at your leisure.” He allowed himself a part smile because he knew what such an invitation meant. Mar-keshan had been a server for enough years to understand princely politics well, though he was originally only a Waters man who chose service instead of the sea.

  I smiled back at him. Understand—only in the privacy of my apartment would I ever do such a thing. It is bad form to be intimate with your servants. But Mar-keshan was more than a servant. He was my oldest—well, friend may be too strong a word, but we knew each other well. We said nothing, though. One never knows what holes have been bored behind the curtains to allow for listening ears.

  I signed to him with the hand signals we had long ago adopted: This is interesting and we shall talk of it later. Then I said, aloud, “I will eat first,” and sent him away with another wave of my hand. He left quietly and I made one more tour of the strings, plucking, strumming, bowing. It was good, indeed, to be home.

  D’oremos had an apartment with five rooms, each larger than my entire holding. Though he no longer lay with the Queen—indeed, how could he, being over fifty years, his organs drawn back up since the end of his prime—he was her first adviser. If she listened to anyone, she listened to him. And it was said he still pleasured her in other ways, but I knew she preferred the company of sweet-breathed princes and an occasional muscular girl from the ranks of Arcs and Bow.

  I had been to his room only twice before. The first time was when I had turned thirteen and he had asked to hear my songs. I had been playing at a master level for three years, then, an unusual circumstance. He had heard me often at the consents where I had been something of a prodigy. There I usually played in groups, with small solos. But my reputation had grown steadily and this intimate recital for the chief of the princes would put the cap on it. I played for him.

  He had lain among his pillows, stroking the long waterfalls of his mustaches as I performed. I cannot recall the tunes, but I know that I brought three instruments with me: the violetta, because he had requested it; the verginium, because I was the only one who regularly played it with any facility; and, of course, my sonorous plecta.

  He said nothing when I was done but waved a languid hand, which his servants interpreted correctly as a call for food. I was too nervous to eat but began instead to babble about music. He silenced me with another wave of his hand and finished his small meal of succulents without a word. A servant appeared with a bowl of scented water. D’oremos washed his hands and mustache, then dried them with a rainbow-colored cloth.

  When the servant left, D’oremos turned to me, his hard marble eyes staring into mine. “Your music moved me deeply,” he said, though there was no clue to it in his voice. Then he leaned back against his pillows and closed his eyes.

  After a moment, I realized the audience was at an end. I rose, careful to silence the plecta’s strings with my palm, shouldered the other two instruments, and left.

  The second time he was no warmer, but at least he spoke more. It was two years later when my organs had descended and I was about to go out on my mission year. Since he was the official Father of Princes, at the Queen’s own appointment, it was his duty to inform each prince in turn of the Rites of Sowing.

  He was brusque in his explanations, having me strip and using my body as the template for his talk. Much of what he told me I had learned already in the vernacular, in giggling embraces with L’eoninanos and G’al’ladinos in the baths or at night when we fumbled in wine-fogged attempts to draw one another’s immature organs out. But there was much that was new as well, for I had never lain with a woman. That was for the mission year. And I learned from D’oremos that night the secret of the Royals: of the short years we have to sow and why there is so little reaping done. It could have been a painful discovery had he chosen to make it so. But his dry explication made it seem no more than a minor burden, a small payment for the many and varied pleasures of being a Royal. I accepted it without tears as a prince should. Grieving, after all, is an art, not an indulgence.

  But this third invitation was of a different sort. Though I had not completed a full year of sowing, though I still had four or five good years to plow our Queen, I was considered a man, to be summoned, as a man is summoned, to D’oremos’s quarters. I went, plecta slung across my back, fast enough to show him that I was willing to partner him in this venture; slow enough to indicate that I did not plan to bend to his will.

  He opened the door himself, an indication of the importance he attached to our meeting, though he smiled me no greeting. I matched his control, merely nodding my head, the young prince to his father.

  He gestured to a set of ten pillows. Ten pillows! It was better than I had hoped. I set the plecta on the floor and sank back against the pillows, waiting.

  He lay back on his twenty cushions and stroked the long graying strands of his mustache before speaking. “You are home before time. I will not insult your intelligence or mine with games. Tell me what you have to tell me and then we will eat.”

  I had thought to make a long, convoluted tale of it, with choice anecdotes about the plump and pretty girls I had met and my successes in the Halls. And if it had been the other major prince, C’arrademos, such a ploy would have worked well. But one look at D’oremos’s face stayed me. I was direct with him.

  “In a minor Lands Hall I met a girl. Her name is Lina-Lania. She is tall, yellow-eyed, slim, and in her first Hall has written a poem that is like no other I have ever heard. It has simple grace and is the most moving thing…” I stopped.

  “You sound like a fool made from tumbling,” D’oremos said. He said it without rancor or judgment. It was a simple statement.

  “I would not ally with a Middle Lands girl, though I might tumble her,” I said. “But her words fit my songs, the songs I have not yet written, the ones I am meant to write.”

  He did not answer.

  “We were told to look for Royals begat in earlier sowings. You told me, in this very room. Reap the Harvest.” My voice took on a slightly petulant tone.

  Still he did not speak.

  “Lina-Lania is one. I am sure of it.”

  He looked up at the ceilings, which were draped in red-and-gold silks. Without meaning to, my eyes followed his. The corner of one silk had pulled away from its fastening and drooped slightly. D’oremos clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth, a small deadly warning, and I knew that there was a servant who would be given the choice of the Cup or dismissal come morning.

  “I also was certain I had found one,” he mused. “The next year she grew fat on Royal food and I realized that her yellow eyes were only a muddy reflection of a boy’s desire. She did not last long and took the Cup willingly.” He smiled at the memory. “She was a pretty thing, for a while.”

  I was silent.

  “T’arremos brought back twin boys, and you know how rarely there are twins born. Perhaps once every three of four generations. They were marvelous children. Very inventive physically, but stupid beyond belief. Even the Queen laughed at T’arremos. He sent them home, denying them the last comfort of the Royal Cup. We are, I fear, breeding fewer and fewer.” He pulled on one side of his mustache, which gave his face a lopsided, quizzical expression. “How sure are you?”

  I reached out for the instrument, my eyes never leaving his, and brought the plecta onto my lap. It
was such a wonderful, sturdy old thing and I knew it would need no further tuning, which would have spoiled the moment. I played the Gray Wanderer’s song.

  On the second time through, D’oremos’s thin, reedy tenor, slightly off-key, joined me in the chorus:

  Weep for the night that is coming,

  Weep for the day that is past.

  Tears began to leak from his eyes, down the well-worn grooves in his face. I had not expected that. My fingers slowed to a stop.

  “My father,” I whispered.

  “She shall have her audience with the Queen,” he said, leaned back against his pillows, and closed his eyes.

  I waited a minute more, hoping to hear the terms of our mutual undertaking. Then, understanding that there would be no demands from him, that finding Lina-Lania was enough, I rose and went back to my rooms.

  I should have celebrated, I suppose, celebrated both my return to the comforts of L’Lal’dome and the success of my shortened mission. But I felt strangely cold and sick at heart. I slipped out of my robes and lay in the darkness, pressed against my eight pillows.

  Mar-keshan came and went several times on quiet feet. He left bowls of sweet-smelling fruit to tempt me and slipped two new pillows under my head.

  “Sent from Lord D’oremos,” he said, pride in his voice.

  But I could not eat and I could not sleep, though I must have dozed off in the end, for I dreamed that a gray-cloaked figure stood at my feet, carefully away from the cushions, and offered me a cup of blood, crying all the while I drank.

  We shall speak of this again tomorrow.