Adria blinked, looking from the woman, to the crow, to the water at her feet. Finally, Adria smiled and nodded.
The woman rolled her eyes, shaking her head. “Not your usual job, then, is it?”
Adria shook her head.
“Best be on about it then, lass.” The woman turned back to the kitchen doorway. “And best tell Kaye her great grand cousin niece is as likely to embarrass us all in the towers as to dirty her shiny slippers.”
Adria backed away again, hiking up her skirts, and only then realized that she had worn her own slippers rather than Twyla’s.
Adria considered the conversation, looking past the kitchens to the High Temple of the Sisterhood, and then to the citadel’s gateway and the city beyond.
With a long sigh, she turned back to the keep, marching home to the shouts of soldiery and the cries of the crow.
Fury of Wind and Light
Somehow, something changed in what and how Adria was permitted to study. A young page knocked upon her door one morning, silently delivering a message to Kaye. Kaye read it with some interest before refolding it and returning it to the boy.
“Hm,” she said simply, then turned to where Adria sat finishing her breakfast toasts. “It appears your highness is summoned to the Hall of Arms this morning.”
This was to become an occasional, if not common occurrence. One page or another at the door with a message, Kaye shaking her head frowning, and Adria following the boy down the stair and halfway across the keep.
And though Adria was not permitted to openly practice general arms among the courtier’s sons, she nonetheless was allowed a chair set upon the gallery above. Of course, she ignored the chair, and instead spent this time in imitation of the boys in their drills and sparring.
After a couple of weeks, she found the chair had been removed, replaced by a straw dummy in the shape of a man, and beside it a small rack with an assortment of wooden swords and shields, staffs, bows and blunted arrows.
Adria was pleased, and though there was no allowance for a true sparring partner, her vantage point allowed her to see and hear everything which happened below, and prevented those below from having much of a view of her own lonely education.
She particularly took to archery, and in this proved a great benefit, for she needed no partner, and in fact the bow had become an acceptably fashionable diversion for female nobility in Heiland, at least so long as it was associated with the hunt.
Of course, Adria took to it with rather more zeal than noble whimsy, and became so focused that she often practiced beyond the hours allowed for the boys below.
“A fair shot.”
She started at the voice of Brother Rodham just after her arrow struck her distant dummy squarely in the chest.
Without thinking and just as the boys did, Adria saluted the Knight Sergeant, who flashed a smile and bowed low in return.
“A fair shot, Highness, I mean to say.”
Adria smiled and inclined her head in return.
“I have a theory to test.” Brother Rodham eyed the dummy at the far side and held out his hand, askance.
Adria laid the bow in his hand, and he took up an arrow from the quiver stand between them. He tested the draw twice, then set the arrow and took aim. “I’ve been watching now and then, and…”
He let fly, and the arrow struck the shoulder of the dummy. He frowned and nodded, raising the bow to eye level, turning it one way and another to get as much of a view as he could along its length.
“As I thought,” he sighed. “I must apologize, Your Highness.”
Adria leaned in over the table, and Sir Rodham held the bow so she could see. “I’m not…” She hesitated.
He rotated one way, and then the other.
“It has a bend…” Adria realized.
Sir Rodham placed the bow on its rack and nodded. “Just so. You are learning to shoot on a bad bit of wood. You’re adjusting your aim to account for it, but this will serve you poorly in the end.”
“Surely I can have another?”
He was nodding, and pulled one of the arrows out of the quiver. “You must, and must have true arrows to learn the proper weight.”
Adria swallowed, smiling. “Thank you, Brother Rodham.”
He nodded, then shrugged. “It is not my thanks you owe, Ma’am. It seems your name has been entered in the lists for the Squires Tournament this year.”
Adria only blinked, disbelieving.
“You have attracted greater notice than mine, M’lady. I only wish to make certain you are best equipped to not bring shame upon your House and station.”
He smiled, and Adria nodded happily, regaining her voice.
“Thank you for this at least then, Sergeant,” she answered. “I will bring no shame to you, nor my father, nor to the name Idonea or the flag of Heiland.”
Although it was said that the Squires’ Tournament could not compare to the one held for the Knights and nobility proper, the youth of Windberth anticipated it as the event of the year, for this was the only tournament held within Windberth itself. Both the court and the city itself eagerly prepared for both the lists and the celebration surrounding the contests.
Citizens came and went more or less freely in the days preceding. Banners were hung, choice food prepared, and participants readied their skills and their appetites for the day.
Adria had, of course, attended the event in prior years, but it was rather another matter for her to find herself upon the field of the outer bailey rather than in the royal box of the stands. In fact, there was some stirring in the stands when the horns produced the royal fanfare and her name was announced alongside her brother’s as “Their Royal Highnesses,” to avoid any indication of precedence.
If any may have objected at her presence, Matron Taber herself gave no such indication, presiding over the formal opening of the event by invoking the ritual words of trial by combat. Such trials now rarely existed in the actual practice of law, and the words had been heavily modified to include the specific doctrine of the Sisterhood.
The Matriarch was the only one to attend the Royal Box, for Adria and Hafgrim were obliged to remain within the competitors’ square. Father, moreover, was nowhere in attendance, a fact which disappointed Adria but appeared to go without particular notice by others. He had attended the tourney two years previous, Adria remembered, but not the last. In fact, he had been seldom in evidence at court lately, and Adria had not been invited to see him in some time. Still, she had harbored some hope.
Adria had learned the ceremonialism of the event with the others, and had practiced the archery events with all of her free time the past several weeks. Still, she was nervous under the eyes of so many spectators and more than a few disapproving frowns and whispers.
In her first event she performed rather poorly. It was a distance event, and though she managed a good arc with her steel-tipped violet-ribbon arrows, the draw of the bow, given the strength of her arms, was not enough to reach the inner circles of the large target drawn upon the field. She was applauded, nonetheless, and one of the other contestants remarked favorably upon her consistency, the four violet ribbons in a much closer bunch than the others had managed, even if not as accurate.
Hafgrim came from his own first event, a horseback race, with similar mediocre marks, but to Adria’s surprise was remarkably nonchalant.
“Worried over the first rounds?” he laughed, smacking her on the back as he might one of his attending pages. “Really, you’re taking this too seriously, Highness.”
His use of the title forced Adria to smile.
“I was fourth out of six myself,” Hafgrim sighed. “So that, when I am their lord, most of the nobility will think they can outrun me when I grow angry, at least if on horse.”
His rare display of good humor made all those around laugh, and helped Adria relax. And Hafgrim
had some small reason for pride, Adria remembered, for he had at least fared better at horsemanship this time than he had the two years previous.
Adria improved a good deal in the second event, a simple mid-range vertical target shoot. Without the handicap of long distance, and with her anxiety diminished, her hands were steady, and she managed a third place finish, to increasing applause and murmurs of approval. Even with her poor standing in the first event, she suddenly found herself above the middle in standing, and was awarded several congratulations from the other contestants and their parents during a break for midday refreshments.
She and Hafgrim sat at the high table alone, feasting upon a young pig who appeared to have just plucked an apple from a tree when he was slaughtered, for it remained between his teeth. They enviously watched others among the young contestants and other celebrants, who played at backgammon or tenpins or bobbed for apples themselves. This dinner held other duties for Hafgrim and Adria, as a number of the Peers brought their similarly aged sons or daughters before the prince and princess to allow for formal introductions.
“We’re a little young to marry,” Hafgrim said to Adria during a lull, realizing the likely import of the ritual.
“But obviously not too young to be introduced,” Adria sighed. “And unfortunately not too young for parents to entertain thoughts of betrothal, certainly. Marriages have been arranged for princes younger even than we.”
Hafgrim’s eyes widened at the thought. “They must be disappointed that the king is not in attendance, then. I haven’t a clue what your dowry should be.”
Adria kicked him beneath the table, retorting “Well, if anyone asks me for your hand, I’ll let you go for a suckling pig and a wink...”
Hafgrim made a most unpleasant expression at this, though neither of them knew what the phrase exactly meant. Adria was saved a response by the introduction of a southern baron’s second son, a suddenly shy ten-year-old with slender hope of rising so far above his station by wooing a thirteen-year-old princess.
Seeing this, Adria took some pity upon him and them. “He seems to have a wise demeanor. You must have pride in his thoughtful nature.”
They left with slightly less embarrassment than they might have, and Hafgrim grinned. “You, my dear sister, are far too kind. Now they will be emboldened at every court function until your finger has a ring.”
“Perhaps,” she shrugged. “But is it wrong to have better hopes for your younger sons than the Brotherhood? That young man seems ill-destined for Knighthood.”
Hafgrim sighed, likely considering his current ranking in the tourney. “Well... that is true enough.”
Adria found her stride after dinner, excelling in ways she had not even known to practice.
“Shoot as quickly as you can, but be accurate,” Sergeant Rodham had simply instructed for the speed competition. Drawing more quickly seemed hardly to matter to Adria, and she took third place.
In the final list, roving marks, the targets were of varying sizes and set to float upon the water this way and that, all in motion, but Adria again found little more difficulty in finding the marks, particularly with a bow that bent in only the right direction. When her final arrow struck center for a first placing, there was now much surprise and then applause, and Adria reflexively looked to the royal box in the stands, hoping her father might have decided to watch the final events.
And then she felt foolish, knowing the events would have been stopped for the king’s arrival, and that there would have been more fanfare.
But within the box with its three empty chairs sat Matron Taber, regal and still, with several officiates of the kingdom, the Sisterhood, and the Knights of Darkfire in the boxes about her.
Adria could not read her expression because of the distance and the obscuring sun.
Hafgrim had fared better later in the day as well, also taking a first place in one of his lists — an ax throwing. Though it was considered a somewhat peasant sport, Hafgrim and Adria nonetheless took real pride in his proficiency — for hers was, in truth, not so different.
Before a sumptuous supper banquet began, the winners were all announced, and Adria was surprised to find she had finished second in her age class for the archery events, above many in their second or third year of competition. The winner, Atrius, son of the Earl Eastwick, took her hand in congratulation, and bowed. “Excellently done, Your Royal Highness.”
Unlike the earlier introductions, Adria found herself flushed at the manner of the Earl’s son, and her discomfiture only increased as she took her prize to the crowd’s applause. It was by no means the greatest honor of the tourney, a second placing in a sport the nobility tended only to play at, whose wartime use was preferred for the peasantry.
Still, Adria’s pride was undiminished as the Brother Marshal of the Knights of Darkfire, hesitating with an uncertainty of protocol, knelt before her to place a violet and black ribbon pendant around her neck.
Again, she looked to the stands, and finally beyond, where she could not possibly hope to make out the form of her father in a window of his tower. Still, she imagined it so, and determined that when she had the chance, she would remember to ask him if he had stood there.
It was a new demand for her when, in the days following the tournament, Adria worked up the courage to inquire about her father directly. Somehow, she had come to understand that there were times when her father was present at the citadel, but nonetheless was never to be disturbed.
“It is the Lord Steward’s place to decide who may and may not visit His Royal Majesty.”
Adria was undaunted. “But surely the king will allow a visit from his daughter, or else I can be given some reason why this is not so.”
The Sister frowned uncomfortably. “I will take your question to the steward then.”
“Very well,” Adria sighed. She did not expect a favorable response.
Later that day, it was Matron Taber, and not the Lord Steward, who summoned Adria.
“You have been asking of your father.” The Matriarch diverted only some small attention to Adria, instead focusing upon the papers held before her by her attending Sisters, which she scanned quickly before signing.
“I have,” Adria said weakly. She’s sending me away, Adria thought as she watched the papers being signed. I’m being married away already, to some lord of a foreign land...
But no such pronouncement was forthcoming as Taber dismissed the Sisters and their documents and turned her attention fully to Adria. After the door closed, the Matriarch motioned for her to come closer — a rare gesture.
“Adria, your father is ill,” the Matriarch said, with an uncharacteristic softness to her voice.
Adria only nodded, counting habitually for Taber’s next words.
“I understand that you must be disappointed that he did not attend your tournament.”
Again, Adria nodded. It was a rather long count this time, and Taber’s eyes appeared more thoughtful than usual, instead of already decided.
“Your father would have been proud, of course.”
Have you told him? Adria wanted to ask, but did not want to appear so eager for attention. Instead, she surprised herself.
“And my mother…?”
The Matriarch did not seem to have expected this either, but she continued, after a moment, in the same voice.
“Adria, your mother is dead,” she said. “But… yes, I have no doubt that she would be proud of you as well.”
Adria stood, still and silent, for her own count of ten. She tried, as hard as she could, to figure out if Taber was speaking the truth, and what purpose she had in saying this, truth or no.
If she is dead, then why all the secrets? she thought. What does it matter?
“My father is ill,” she repeated aloud, determined not to back down or be patronized. “I shall attend him.”
Only a brief coun
t before Taber replied. “I am afraid you cannot.”
It was a difficult tone to read — neither gentle nor commanding, merely stating a fact. Adria searched for reasons why she would be disallowed.
“And why shall I not?” she asked, unwilling to make the guesses which crossed her mind, and then changed her mind, adding, “Is my father dying?”
After a long silence, which Adria somehow forgot to count, the Matriarch only shook her head, slowly, silently. After another count, she waved her hand in the way she sometimes used in formal situations to dismiss the Sisters — with more ambiguity even than the usual tone of her words.
She then turned her attention to the Sister waiting at the door, motioning for her to approach and escort Adria.
But Adria stood her ground, and raised her hand for the Sister to hold her position.
“I am not a child, Matron,” Adria managed after a moment. “I will not be played with as one, nor shall I be dismissed on a whim.”
“Indeed.” Taber answered, and her attention returned. “I have been assured by those who attend you that you are not yet a woman. Is this not true?”
Adria did not know how to answer, but felt betrayed that Kaye or another of her servants was communicating such things. Of course, she knew this must be the case, but for the Matriarch herself to know such details was discomfiting.
Adria counted to twelve before Taber nodded, several times, very slowly.
“Leave us,” she said at last, and it was clear she addressed the attending Sister and not Adria, who realized she could not remember ever having been completely alone with the Matriarch.
“Remove your clothing,” Taber commanded.
Adria swallowed, then slowly did as asked, removing her woolen cloak, her velvet gown, then finally the smock that rested against her bare skin, and stood before the Matriarch. Gathering her will, she refused the impulse to cover herself with her arms in any way, though she felt her face flush against her will, and her limbs trembled with the cold.
Heir of Scars I: Parts 1-8 Page 20
