Coronets and Steel

by Sherwood Smith

  “You’ve been on the run even more than I have.”

  “I am always on the run. Part of the job. That’s both the joy and the pain of it.”

  I remembered what he had said about vocation and avocation and knew he was not complaining, he was stating a fact. “What d’you have? A Pedro-picnic again?”

  “No, this I sorted myself. Pedro was busy preparing a consolation banquet for your aunt, who had the brass to throw a formal party in honor of her daughter’s return, tonight. She can vilify me as much as she likes but I will not be there to hear it. Kilber will.” He smiled, knowing I’d share the joke.

  And I laughed at the thought of Aunt Sisi having to deal with Kilber’s grim countenance. Whether she and her guests ignored him or not, he’d be a nice, big, grizzly gray elephant in her refined drawing room.

  “Basic fare, therefore,” Alec said. “Fresh bread, some turkey slices from the homely Ysvorod kitchen, an aged cheddar, medium-sharp—oh. Plums. And—ah! Half a chocolate bar. Good chocolate. For drink we have the Benedictines’ home-brewed dark ale, and afterward, vintage Adam’s ale there in the stream.” He opened and flourishingly displayed each item as he named it.

  “Nice! Um hmmm,” I nodded primly each time. My mood had changed. Whether he’d planned it intentionally or not, there was no vestige of droit de seigneur in the place he had picked, in his manner, or even in the food he had selected. He could so easily have taken me to the royal castle and whistled up an army of minions to wait on us while we sat at either end of a thirty foot long table loaded with gold plate. Or we could have gone to some exclusive place that only the rankers knew about, where the food and the talk was international and sophisticated—and political.

  Wherever in civilization we would have gone, the crown prince and his lady friend would have been watched.

  Here we were alone, two human beings. We ate in easy silence, passing the ale bottle back and forth. I savored the sounds of the falling water, rustling leaves, occasional birds and small creatures. The summer air was fresh with the smell of water, and the scents of greenery.

  When we’d eaten the last of the plums, I sighed, and sank back on the quilt to gaze happily up at the stars.

  “Shall I fetch the water?” he asked. “I’m more handy than you at present—”

  “Argh!”

  “—at risk of a scabrous pun,” his voice floated behind as he walked over to the stream.

  When he returned he asked idly, “Are you finding Nat a compatriot?”

  “She’s great. Though at first it seemed weird hearing ‘right on’ and ‘mellow out’ here.”

  “She told me that hearing you talk was as good as a fresh-baked New York bagel.”

  He smiled at the twinkling lights of the city. I sensed any more had to come from me, so I said, “She also gave me the background on the Tony-Aunt Sisi mess, as much as she knew. I got the feeling she knew little about the military aspect, and cared less.”

  “True. Did you enjoy the conversation with my father?”

  “I did. We have absolutely nothing in common, but he made me feel as if I were interesting. As if he enjoyed the conversation.”

  “I’m sure he did enjoy it. As for interests in common, there is music.” Alec idly ran a blade of grass through his fingers. “He has always said he is not musically inclined, but he likes to listen to classical. You saw his LP collection in the Ysvorod House library, didn’t you?”

  “Yes. But—” I protested, flashing back to Mina and her hearth. “Your father can’t have been that unmusical. Mina told me he played duets with Gran when they were young, and she was so good she would hardly have played with a two-finger chopsticks plunker—” I stopped, realization finally hitting me.

  Alec commented, “He’s never played since.”

  “Mina said he loved Gran,” I said tentatively. “But that’s not all of it. Right? He was in love with her.”

  “He’s never said anything. But I believe it’s true,” Alec replied. “That is part of why I grew up angry with her.”

  I thought about that, retracing all the threads through all the conversations I’d had about Milo and Gran, with Alec, Mina, Nat. Even Tony, muttering Shades of our fathers.

  The starlight beyond the oak-leaf canopy was not bright enough to illuminate faces or features. I was wondering why it was that, despite having had great parents and a trauma-free childhood, I instinctively kept aloof from most men to the extent that I’d never had a real relationship—just recreational dating—when Alex said softly, “So you have ceased to distrust me?”

  For a measureless space, I contemplated the myriad implications.

  Then I said, “I trusted you from the beginning—though I didn’t want to. It was so much easier not to trust.”

  He waited, but more than that I would not say. It didn’t seem right, until I talked to my grandmother. If that was even possible.

  Alec brushed an insect away. Aware of his proximity, I lifted my face to look into his. He did not move, or speak. I reached with my good hand and touched his face, his warm skin beginning to roughen over cheekbones and chin, his fine, soft hair. He sat motionless under my hands as I traced the faint lines in his forehead; slow and deliberate, my touch slowed to caresses, and I felt the fine skin under my fingers relax.

  I could not see, but I could hear his changed breathing, and I could sense his waiting, until I ran my fingers through his hair and cupped the back of his head, bringing it insistently toward mine. The fire of expectation sang through my blood and bones as slowly he blocked out the stars and breeze and rushing stream, and our lips met in a deep and antiphonal kiss.

  I woke before dawn.

  For a long time I listened to the sound of the stream and to Alec’s soft breathing. To the sound of his slow and steady heartbeat, as the light outlining his shoulder changed subtly from shadowy and cool to warm and then flesh-toned. I was lying on my right side under the second quilt, my left arm tucked under his, and my head on his chest; when morning had banished all the shadows I lifted my head to contemplate Alec’s peaceful brow, the dark eyelashes on his fine-drawn cheeks, his mouth relaxed with the shadow of a smile at the corners.

  Gran, did you feel such transcendent joy when you looked on Armandros’ sleeping face? I think I understand a lot, now.

  It was a crow that broke my silent vigil. Crashing through a near bush, it scolded some unseen creature noisily, then flapped up into the sky cawing in outrage.

  Alec opened his eyes, lifted his hand to run his fingers down and down through my hair.

  He kissed me. Rekindled desire metamorphosed through tenderness, warmth. Finally we got up and splashed about in the shocking cold stream, gasping and laughing, and pulled ourselves together again. He helped me resume my sling, and with the grace of Prince Charming he slid my sandals onto my feet while I perched primly on a rock. We talked about childhood as we packed all the things, and when we climbed into the car we were singing an old Beatles tune, in a reprise of our drunken performance at the Vienna train station.

  When we began the hairpin turns, the wind cool and bracing on our faces and in our hair, he was laughing as he told me about his early morning ritual when he was fourteen, of listening to the entire Revolver album, a ritual that lasted through an entire school year.

  I told him about my instant success at an arts summer camp run by new age sorts, when I was eleven, by getting together three other long-haired girls and singing parodies of Beatles’ songs under the sobriquet Beatles Reunited.

  I was just ninety-four

  And shaped like a door—

  And before too long I barfed over he-er . . .

  He laughed aloud at that, and I wondered why Nat had told me he was so inaccessible, because here he was, obviously enjoying something as silly and unsophisticated as it was possible to get.

  But we didn’t get to Milton and his long-ago dead schoolmate. Our reminiscences halted when we reached the outskirts of the city. And that’s when his mood chang
ed, the smile vanishing behind the Mr. Darcy mask. It acted on the fire of my euphoria like cold water.

  I tensed up, tried to relax, tensed again, and turned to his sober, closed profile. “I do love you. It took me a while to catch up,” I said in a rush of words. “But—I feel like I always have, somehow. And always will.” I laughed uncertainly, my emotions whooshing up and down and around like a roller coaster at warp speed. “Always. That is, as much as a finite person can see into the infinite.”

  We were already on Nat’s street. As Alec stopped the car, he began in a low, quick voice, “I was never in my life more undone than when I returned home and found that damned necklace lying there, and you gone—”

  “Yo, gang!” A voice interrupted from behind. Nat was up in her window, her eyes ringed with exhaustion, her smile twisted. “Kim, I’ve got a visitor for you. Coming up?”

  “Sure, hang on a—”

  Another voice interrupted then, from a house on the other side of the street. A reedy female voice cried in Dobreni: “God bless you Aurelia Dsaret!”

  Our heads whipped around to the steep-roofed house across the street where, in an attic window, a wrinkled face peered out. Black widow’s weeds covered old shoulders and a snowy kerchief framed gray hair. Gnarled hands jerked, and a pure white rose sailed down and thumped on the hood of the car.

  I reached over the windshield to fetch it. As I smiled and nodded, tucking the rose behind my ear, the half-seen old woman cackled a delighted laugh and called, “On Festival Day will you march with the Innocents? I shall then come watch!”

  A few passersby slowed, smiling. Above, an unseen woman scolded, half-laughing and half-scandalized, “Mama! You come inside . . . you shouldn’t . . .” The rest was lost.

  Alec’s face was blank, the same drained-of-reaction lack of expression I had seen all those weeks ago when I stood over him with my hair on his lap, obviously not my cousin Ruli.

  I said, reluctantly, “I’d better go in. Later?”

  I climbed out, my sling banging my side, and he looked up. “I’ll find you another place to stay,” he began, but was interrupted as a passing man called, “Good day to you, Stadthalter!”

  Alec turned to smile and wave. I could feel the effort that took, and my newfound joy was tempered by confusion.

  “Alec?” I muttered, aware of the passersby, who had not moved on. Instead, they gathered in ones and twos, curious, smiling.

  I tried to shut them out as I studied him to find the key to his thoughts.

  “Tonight.” He met my eyes only briefly; his were squinted against the strong morning sun directly behind me.

  Conscious of the watching crowd I backed away. I tried to smile casually, flicking my fingers up in a careless wave, then I made myself walk to Nat’s door.

  The urge to stop and watch him until he was out of sight was so strong it was almost painful.

  At least I’ll see him later.

  I walked into the apartment, and stumbled to a stop when I smelled cigarette smoke.

  Nat stood in her cluttered living room, looking tense and rueful as she held out a tray with two of her mismatched teacups. I turned to the hastily reassembled couch-bed to find, sitting in an elegant peach silk blouse and slacks, Ruli von Mecklundburg.

  FORTY

  HER FACE WAS beautifully made up, her hair swept into an elegant chignon. A dainty gold watch gleamed on one thin wrist, and a bracelet of crystal charms on the other. She was as out of place in Nat’s homely, cluttered apartment as a swan in a henhouse.

  Her perfectly painted red mouth thinned in a polite smile. Her gaze was furtive, uncomfortable—shy.

  “I came to see how you are.” Her fingers nervously settled her cigarette in a cracked ceramic saucer offered to serve as an ashtray.

  I walked the rest of the way in, feeling like Frankenstein’s monster. “How nice of you,” I managed. “How are you?”

  On the other side of the room, her head hidden from Ruli’s view by the big lamp, Nat rolled her eyes.

  “Fine, thank you.” Ruli rearranged her feet and added, “I wanted to thank you. For helping me the other night. And I hoped to talk to you.”

  The world had closed around me again, and it knocked my mind spinning. But I was—at last—learning to think on the run, and not only about myself. “Sure. Look,” I tried to sound easy. “I’ve got to go get something, pay someone I owe—why don’t you come with me? Nat? How was it?”

  “Twin boys.” Nat laughed, voice raspy. “She finally pushed ’em out at three this morning.”

  “Bet you could use a nap, then.”

  She saluted. “You got that right! For about a month.”

  Ruli rose. “I see. You are a nurse, is that it?” she asked in her beautifully trained English.

  “Doctor, in reality. But in Dobrenica a midwife. A miraculously good one,” Nat said, smiling.

  “I see now why you are here, Cousin.” Ruli’s brow cleared. “Maman said—” She broke off, her eyes wild.

  It didn’t take magical powers to guess that whatever Sisi had said about Nat or me wasn’t anything we’d want to hear, so I said quickly, “Ruli, let’s talk while we walk.”

  Ruli thanked Nat for the tea she had not drunk, and we left. When we got outside I pushed my hair behind me, aware of it hanging like an uncombed horsetail down my back. Recalling someone’s words she never walks I glanced down at the heeled sandals she was wearing and said apologetically—in French—“It’s about a mile.”

  She responded with unexpected humor, “After being closed in that pile on the mountain for all those weeks, anything is a pleasure. And soon I will be forced to do the Innocents March, so I may as well get the practice. How—how is your arm?”

  “Okay. Nat fixed me up. It’ll heal up fine.”

  “Is it true Dieter shot you?” she asked curiously, then flushed. “Of course if you’d rather not—”

  “Oh, it’s okay. Nightmare’s over. I don’t know who shot me, but I don’t think it was he. I’d have recognized his disgusting voice. And he carried a whole lot more firepower. And probably wouldn’t have missed.”

  She sighed in disgust, her gaze on the cobbled road in front of her dainty shoes. She did not appear to notice the considerable attention we were garnering; I looked down as well, afraid to meet any eyes, to elicit any more “Aurelia Dsaret” comments. “A horrid, evil person.”

  “It was pretty bad up there, eh?”

  Her nose twitched, as if she’d whiffed something stinky. “They were always talking about killing. Dieter would go on about how he’d kill the new president of the United States if someone offered him enough money. How he’d kill this or that person. How he’d torture Alec to discover the hiding place of the so-called Dsaret hoard and then kill him. What he was going to do to you. And then Tony told me he was going to kill Dieter. That’s all I heard that last week, killing, killing.”

  I grimaced in sympathy.

  “Are you really from the States?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Your French. It’s good.” I knew she meant it as a compliment, but her voice carried shades of her mother’s gracious condescension.

  “Thanks to my grandmother. As for the latest idiom, I picked up a little of it in Paris a few weeks ago.”

  Her eyelids lifted in pleasure. “You were in Paris? It seems a hundred years since I was home. How were—but then, you wouldn’t know—” she began in disappointment.

  “Not likely,” I said ironically, and she flushed as if rebuked. I added hastily, “I don’t know anyone there. Too bad, too! It’s a wonderful city. I would have liked to spend more time there.” Inside, I was thinking, She called it home.

  She hunched her shoulders and cast a furtive look about the busy street, but I had a feeling she didn’t see any of the shops or people. Her hand fumbled in the elegant handbag and she half pulled out a cigarette case, then dropped it back. She said in a low voice to the tops of her shoes, “I wondered if you’d like to go on—�
�� and stopped.

  “Pardon?” I prompted cautiously.

  “Trade places,” she said in a desperate whisper. “Marry Alec and stay here.”

  Her words hit me with such force I felt dizzy—but I didn’t see ghosts or goblins or anything that would have been relatively simple to define, compared to the new mess facing me. Instead I saw Alec’s sleeping face as dawn began to paint his silhouette with color, and how badly I wanted to waken every day to that.

  I don’t know how long we walked like this, side-by-side and in silence, before I got control. It’s not all about me. And she isn’t swooping down to give me what I want because I deserve it. So what does she want? “But what about the Blessing?”

  “I don’t know,” she—well, she whined, twisting the rings round and round on her fingers.

  “You don’t believe it’ll work?” I asked.

  She gave me a slanted glance, through eyes that were unsettlingly like my own. “I’m afraid it will,” she said in a low voice. “Don’t you see? If it does not, as Maman insists, then a marriage would not matter. I could live in Paris—Dubrovnik—do what I want and never have to be here except on state occasions. But to be married and imprisoned in the Nasdrafus forever . . .”

  “What’s wrong with the Nasdrafus?”

  She shrugged listlessly. “It’s a nightmare, from everything they say. Ugly creatures from stories walk freely, and there are no machines. Paris wouldn’t be the real Paris—it wouldn’t have elevators, or cars, or electric lights. Beka told me once that the Salfmattas say it looks more like the Paris of two centuries ago.” She shivered.

  “Your family doesn’t believe in it?”

  Ruli gave me a brief smile. “Maman doesn’t want it to work, unless she can guarantee she would have the influence she has now.” She gave a very French shrug. “My brother talks to the undead, and some say he knows the wild folk. But he says to anyone who will listen that magic is gone. Yet even so, they are all here for the Festival.”

  We were at the inn. I was trying to think of three things at once and doing none of them well when we walked in. Forcing my attention front and center, I introduced Ruli, who barely responded to their gratified nods and bows.