[Galazon 00] When the King Comes Home

by Stevermer, Caroline

  Early the next morning, with great pomp and panoply, the prince-bishop blessed us. It was a lengthy business, but we all felt the better for it. Holy soldiers, there’s a strange notion. But that’s how we felt as the Shene gate opened and the prince-bishop led his army forth. Rigo rode beside him, the crown gleaming on the pommel of his saddle. Istvan rode beside Rigo.

  I was luggage. No matter how I protested, no matter who I argued with, no matter how long, I was relegated to the supply train. The support required by an army is vast and various. I had my possessions, It my horse, and Tig, who grumbled all the while. We took up position among the dust and noise of the rear guard. The extremely rear guard. I had just enough sense to know that I was not going to enjoy much about our journey, but nevertheless my heart was light as we began. The urgency was still running under my thoughts, steady and relentless. The relief of responding to it, of doing something about it in the world made me feel light-headed as well as lighthearted.

  My packing had been a matter of hot debate back at Madame Carriera’s house, for I had recovered the pistol I carried for Istvan. Amyas had proved an unexpected ally in this. Thanks to him, I had an ample supply of powder and shot to go with it, along with an odd assortment of rags and oils I was supposed to use when cleaning it. Amyas insisted that I clean it after every target practice. Amyas insisted that I practice shooting frequently. Ludo promised to supervise me strictly. I consented to this notion, mainly because the idea of conducting target practice on my own sounded like a good way to hurt my ears and get into trouble at the same time.

  I also possessed sufficient food and clothing for a reasonable journey and carried a document bearing Ludo’s sign and seal, for all the good that would do anyone, entitling me to indent for provisions from the army’s supplies, such as they were.

  Best of all, I had the prince-bishop’s permission to accompany the Lidian army. Nothing in writing, nothing so overt. But he had inclined his head graciously in my direction at the valedictory service, and if I allowed myself to draw conclusions from the gracious little gesture he made, he even blessed my horse particularly.

  So we rode away from the city of Aravis, and I was off on my travels again. Though I had been on the road before, the way north along the river seemed strange to me. The year was turning as it should. The days were growing shorter, the nights cooler, the air more crisp, the sun less strong. There was haze over the hills in the mornings. There was dew in the long grass.

  Some fields had been sown, had grown lush, and were ready to reap. Yet no one had ventured forth to bring in the crop. Some fields, closer to the debatable lands near Ardres, showed signs that the land had been tilled, yet the crop had never gone in to the earth. Some fields lay fallow. This untenanted state of the land was clearly, cruelly wrong. That no one dared to bring in the food they would need for the year ahead, that single fact compelled belief in the power wielded by Edward of Ardres.

  “What will they eat?” I asked. “How will they come through the winter?”

  “Red Ned won’t go hungry. He means to king it in Aravis,” some-I one answered.

  “What about the farmers?” I asked.

  “The dead don’t eat much,” someone else called back, earning screeches of laughter. The luggage train was not the most polite part of the prince-bishop’s army.

  I didn’t mind the rude company. Tig’s disapproval of me, something I’d grown accustomed to and missed when it was not in evidence, grew dilute when compared with his disapproval of our traveling companions.

  We were accompanied by the boys, nominally responsible for the safe transport of luggage but really there principally for their employers, the knights, to kick and complain to; the whores, responsible for the usual duties; and the cooks, responsible for the well-being of our entire venture. I found it startlingly like my early days in Madame Carriera’s atelier. As soon as I resumed my habit of checking all my bedding for unwelcome surprises, and guarding everything I possessed against pilfering, I quite enjoyed myself.

  In such an assembly, my passage was so well secured that I could spare attention from my riding. My notebook open on the pommel of my saddle, I used the time well. It provoked some comment at first, but soon enough my companions grew accustomed to my work. “Going to draw my portrait, eh?” one of the prostitutes asked. “Have you seen my best side?”

  With a rude gesture, Tig discouraged her attempt to share her best side with us all.

  “I am a mere apprentice,” I explained. “How better to practice my art than to make a few rough figure studies of what I see around me?”

  “Well, you’re in the right place when it comes to figures. But why do you think you’ll have any call to draw the likes of us?” the woman countered.

  I considered what an excellent model for Mary Magdalene she would make, but it was time for diplomacy. “You’ve heard of the procession of the Magi. The Three Kings came bearing gifts. Who is to say their luggage train did not much resemble ours?”

  “God help them if it did,” someone called. “This is more like the flight into Egypt.”

  “The road to Damascus,” someone else offered.

  I would never have guessed my companions could be so inventive. Eventually they tired of offering me suggestions, and soon my notebook drew no comment. I was free to study them, and I made good use of the opportunity.

  In the workroom you may pose a model all day and half the night if the model has the stamina, but there is nothing like the figure in motion. That’s how the body really works. No better practice for an artist, and I had dozens of models to choose from, all working for free.

  Our progress was swift, for the prince-bishop had provisioned us generously. We rode day into night each evening, then made camp and rested our stock and ourselves. Before first light each morning we rose, brushed the dew from ourselves, washed as well as we could, snatched breakfast, and clattered our luggage back together. By the time the sky grew bright in the east, we were on our way again, screeching with laughter and groaning with blisters.

  I saw little of Ludovic. He had his duties to perform, and he trusted Tig to keep an eye on me. Istvan rode the length of our cavalcade several times a day, as if to round up any stragglers. From time to time he rode beside me, though he said almost nothing. My notebook didn’t seem to bother him. I was glad of that. I’d have been hard-pressed to explain why so many of the studies I did were of him. Rigo and the prince-bishop, I saw only from afar.

  As we drew near to Ardres, the land grew more barren. The noise of our passage seemed louder than before, perhaps because there was little else to make a sound. Only the wind traveled across the deserted fields. Tig said less than ever, but he knew the way things should have been. The look in his face spoke more clearly than words of the depth of the wrong done the land.

  Near the milestone that marked the border, Istvan rode ahead. By the time the vanguard reached the border, orders had come back to us. We were to make camp at the crossroad.

  That was a long night, the last night on the road to Ardres. The weather had turned warm during the day and even after sundown it did not cool. There was no wind at all. The air was warm as fresh milk, and the sparks from our fires sailed high in the calm darkness until they were lost among the colder fire of the stars overhead.

  Our fires blazed bravely. Food and drink were plentiful. There was laughter, music, and even a little dancing. All the same, the hours crawled past. As the sky above us swallowed up the sparks, the empty night around us seemed to swallow up our merriment, and hunger for more. We laughed too hard, too long at every joke. Our well-being had to be overdone to be felt at all. We ate too much and drank too much and tried our best not to think at all.

  Ludo joined us for a time. I watched him in the firelight as he listened to the determinedly cheerful talk all around him. My notebook open on my knee, I kept my eyes settled on him as my hand moved slowly across the page. It was a challenge to catch his expression as he listened, a perfect balance between
readiness to act and utter fatigue.

  When he saw what I was doing, Ludo came to sit beside me. After a leisurely look, he closed the book gently on my hand. I opened it and resumed my work.

  “Must you?”

  “It’s just a study. Ignore me. It’s better if it doesn’t look posed.”

  “Why don’t you ignore me? In fact, why don’t you ignore us all? Let it go. No need to busy yourself recording all this for posterity.”

  His air of indifference nettled me. “I’m not recording it for posterity. Posterity may go hang itself for all I care. I am merely practicing my craft.”

  “No one need practice all the time.”

  “That’s not what I hear from Madame Carriera.”

  “And you pay such heed to her teaching.”

  I turned the page and began to get down Ludo’s new expression. The notebook annoyed him, but the conversation didn’t. I had hardly caught the line of his mouth and jaw when he took my charcoal away. Indignant, I reached for it, and he caught my hand.

  “Aren’t you going to ask me why I’m here?”

  “You came to talk, didn’t you?”

  “Hail, there are a hundred things I ought to be doing instead of sitting here.”

  Contrary to popular opinion, I can take a hint. “Why are you here, Ludo?” I asked obediently.

  “I’m glad you asked.” Ludo brought out my earrings. As he held them out toward me, the hoops blazed in the firelight, reminding me of the dying gleam of the crown as the cast metal cooled. “I thought I should return these to you.”

  I accepted the earrings eagerly. Once I’d put them on, I felt more my old self than I had in a week. My smile and thanks seemed to cheer him. Ludo handed me back my charcoal, and I started on the new turn of his expression.

  Ludo rolled his eyes. “Must you keep scribbling?”

  “Yes. I’ve had enough to eat, and I’ve heard most of these jokes before. What else is there to do? Besides, what else am I good at?”

  “Do you only do things you’re good at?”

  I caught back my honest answer, which would have been, Yes, of course. What else? and studied Ludo with sudden doubt. Was he flirting with me? Here? Now? Hadn’t he noticed my raucous companions? A closer look reassured me. Simple mockery, no more. “Don’t you?” I countered.

  “Obviously I do all sorts of things I’m not good at.”

  “Oh.” That was not what I’d expected him to say. Belatedly it occurred to me that a half share of the mockery in Ludo’s expression was reserved for himself.

  He took my hand in his, held it up to the light, and turned it this way and that. “Is this your only god, Hail? Do you care for nothing but art? You seem to think of nothing else. Lord knows you speak of nothing else.”

  I met his mockery squarely. “The Lord knows He gave me a gift. It is my duty to use it.”

  “Need that consume every waking moment?”

  “I’ve allowed myself a few distractions. Istvan and Julian, for example. If I’d paid proper heed to Madame Carriera, I would never have copied the medal. That’s what started me on this path. Better if I had kept to my studies.”

  “Perhaps.” He examined my palm more closely. “What if you lost this hand, lost your skill with it. What would you care for then?”

  “If I lost my sight, do you mean? My sense of touch? Every way there is to act on my skill? If I lost it all, I think I would care for all the things I care for now, provided I had used all I could of my gift for as long as I possessed the power to use it. If I had set it aside, left it until later to learn my craft, I think I would care for nothing in the world.” I had given this topic some thought when I thought I was going to be punished for attacking Gabriel, and again when I faced Madame Carriera’s lecture when I returned to Giltspur Street.

  “You’re too profound for me tonight.” He let me go and gave me back the charcoal. “I won’t keep you from your divine crusade any longer. Get back to work at once.”

  I caught the mocking twist of his mouth, and as he saw it on the page, the mockery blossomed into bitter laughter. I laughed back at him. “Are you visiting from fire to fire until you bring cheer to the entire encampment? Good thing you saved us for last. Tig can be final proof of your skill.”

  Tig kept poking the fire, ignoring me studiously. A glance over at him sobered Ludo.

  “You mustn’t joke tomorrow, Hail. If Tig tells you something, take heed and do as he says.”

  “Of course. You would break my neck otherwise.”

  Ludovic was very serious. “You do as Tig says. It is his duty, as surely as you have decided it is your own duty to set down every detail in your sacred notebook.”

  I considered the matter carefully and nodded. “What happens tomorrow?”

  “We must let the scouts tell us that. If we lure Red Ned out to meet us here, there will be a fight. If he has the wit God gave him, he remains in his fortress and we will venture as close as we dare. Either way, there will be a fight. It may be tomorrow. It may take longer. Days, perhaps. Even if it does, you listen to Tig.”

  “Of course.”

  “Easily said. Mind you do it.”

  “I said I would.”

  Satisfied, he rose. A few more pleasantries around our fireside and Ludo left us. I put my notebook away and curled up to watch the fire. My eyes burned, and I closed them and let the chatter and the laughter drift past. The sense of the words scattered, and I rested in the ring of light.

  I thought the heat of the fire woke me, but it was the heat of the night. I pushed up on one elbow and rubbed my face. I’d been sweating, and my skin felt sticky. The fire had gone to embers, and overhead the stars were gone. A heavy overcast had rolled in. In the east there was a sullen flicker of distant lightning. Nothing stirred the air. The unseasonable warmth made it hard to breathe. I was not the only one awake, but no one spoke. The silence and stillness felt utterly wrong.

  “What is it?” I whispered to Tig.

  He croaked softly back, “Change in the weather. It must be almost sunrise by now.”

  I studied the sky again. The lowering cloud made it impossible to guess the hour. It felt like midnight to me.

  Tig started gathering up his things. “It’s going to rain.”

  I helped him fold his blanket, and he helped me with mine. It was all too strange, the heat, the darkness, Tig being cooperative. I rubbed the back of my neck. It felt the same as ever, only warmer and damper than usual. No chill foreboding, no presentiment of danger. Just sweat.

  All around us in the dark, people slowly began packing up. The fire was stirred back to life, and by its light we worked as quickly as we could. Hardly anyone spoke.

  Tig checked my packing. “Is the pistol loaded?”

  “I never had a chance to practice with it.”

  “Is it loaded? No? Let me load it for you.”

  “I can do it.”

  “Good for you. Let me.” Tig checked the pistol over and loaded it far faster than I could have. When he was satisfied with it, he wrapped it back up in the oilskin and handed it to me. “There. All but the powder in the pan. But be careful. And once it starts raining, you leave it alone, right? Won’t do you any good then. Mind you, don’t let your powder get wet either.”

  He went on scolding softly as I put it all gingerly away.

  The horses were restless, which made it difficult to saddle up. Tig scolded them too, but gently. “It’s the weather, that’s all. They smell it coming.”

  Truth to tell, I was beginning to think that I could smell something coming too. There was a different scent in the heavy air. It was a cold smell, like moss and wet stone. like a river, perhaps, but a river no sun had ever shone upon.

  “Are you getting a cold or something?” ‘Tig asked me.

  “Smell that? What is it?”

  Tig sniffed. “Horse.”

  “No, more than that.”

  “Horse manure.”

  The breeze rose until not even Tig could pret
end he didn’t notice it. The horses stirred fretfully and tried to turn their rumps into the wind. All the folk around us murmured and grumbled. After the closeness of the warm night air, the wind out of Ardres seemed icy. There was an edge to the chill air that reminded me of the damp stone of the church at Dalager, but this smelled of age unsweetened by incense or devotion. This was ancient, cold, and strange.

  First with a single drop, then a scatter, then in a cold curtain, the rain set in. The churned earth of the horse lines turned to mud. After a quarter of an hour, it was hard to remember a time when it had not been raining. It was a large, determined sort of rain that seeped in everywhere. I blinked and brushed at my eyes again and again, trying to keep my vision clear, but the rain overwhelmed me and I gave up. I would be wet, my things would be wet, and Tig would disapprove of me greatly, forever and ever, world without end, amen.

  At last came the order to mount and ride. We were, as ever, to bring up the rear, keeping close for our own protection, yet not so close that we interfered with army maneuvers. We kept up as best we could, while the prince-bishop’s army proceeded, step by treacherous step, toward Ardres.

  EIGHTEEN

  (In which I retreat.)

  There was a battle that day. At sunrise the rain stopped and we saw the army of the enemy ranged against us. The cannon were deployed on the best ground available, but it was not a favorable place. Nor was it a favorable time, as the ground was sodden with rain and the river already unseasonably high. We were all too likely, should the battle go against us, to be backed to the riverbank and driven into the opponents at our flank. I understood little of this at the time, but one does not hear ballads and reminiscences for as many years as I have without grasping a few essentials.

  At the time, I was merely glad it had stopped raining and pleased that the sun seemed to be rising on a clear day. It was exciting to be among the crowd, to see the ranks and order of the enemy ranged against us. The excitement ran along beneath my pulse, part of that steady urgency that had accompanied me so long.