Chapter 4.2.2

The light dropped as Lady Victoria shielded her lantern. There was still enough for me to peer down at them, and I watched as she knelt beside Sharp and touched his face. "What’s this? Do Bards cry?"

"It is for the memory of a dear friend."

"What do mean?" She pulled his head to her breast. I caught my breath.

"The songs I sing: they were written by a man I knew, whom I loved as a brother. It hurts me to sing his songs."

"Is he dead?"

Blunt, wasn’t she?

"I believe so," Sharp replied, as if he had not looked me in the face earlier that evening.

"Why do you sing his songs, if they hurt you so?"

Because he cannot protest, I argued for him.

Sharp’s answer was different. "To fire my anger, to fuel my vengeance. Lord Reinard destroyed him, and so I will destroy Lord Reinard. I have come here to wreck his plans for marriage."

"Good luck." The lady touched his face with his her fingers. "Lord Guerney is quite determined for it to be completed, despite the complication."

The what?

He caught her hand and kissed her fingers, then lifted his face to the base of her neck. He kissed her skin, then pulled her neckline lower and nuzzled the curve of her breast. "What is that?"

"She’s pregnant."

His hand, already pushing up the hem of her gown, stopped. "I had not heard that."

"Neither has Lord Reinard." Sharp’s hands were nowhere near her girdle, but it fell away.

He lifted her hem higher, revealing her calf, her knee, and then the silken curve of her thigh. "He does not know he has a child coming?"

Lady Victoria laughed and leaned back, pulling Sharp over her. "They’ve not been face to face, much less belly to belly. The child is not his."

What kind of a harlot did my Lord seek to make the Lady of Songless Castle? How many times would she hang horns on his ignorant head? What was the true price of a piece of weed-filled, wizard-cursed woods?

"And what will Lord Reinard do when he finds out?" Sharp’s hand was above her creamy hip, and his belt lay to the side. I shifted, uncomfortable.

"My Lord intends for him not to find out, before the vows are given and the marriage sealed. I know I can trust you to keep silent."

Instead of a reply, he kissed her lips, her neck, the valley between her breasts...

Chapter 4.2

#

Much later, after my heart had been bled dry, I left the hall with my guards. They led me by a different route – one I supposed was meant to avoid trouble, until I found myself outside the greenhouse door. I stopped, awakened by the thought of the Silver-eyed and their taint within.

"Eh, go on," Ison said, giving my shoulder a shove. "Charles and I’ll watch the door, and ye can take as long as ye like. I need to teach him a thing or two, anyway."

I raised my palms, questioning. Why am I here?

Ison shook his dice bag. "Don’t ye worry. I’ll leave him with his weapons."

Charles leaned forward with a smile. "If you do find trouble, just scream. Like the time you found the drowned rat in the armory."

That had been a forgettable memory – in the dark, with my bare feet.

"But do it louder," Ison added. "I barely heard ye, all the way on the other side of the keep."

But why am I here? I shrugged my shoulder and looked around.

"She’s coming, never you fear." Ison opened the door and gently pushed me through.

Inside the greenhouse I moved cautiously, trying to remember the path from earlier. A few small braziers flickered, giving off just enough heat to drive the frost demons away, and just enough light to let the shadows dance on the glass ceiling. I walked past the silent bower, but at the crystalline flowers, glowing with their own cold light, I turned and made my way into a stand of ferns. I found a spot where I could huddle among the fronds, knees to my chin – and for the first time in many days, indulge in solitude.

It had been a common pleasure back at Songless Castle. There was the hayloft, where I slept before the Old Lord died, and there were fields and woods. The castle itself had more rooms than people. Here, though, I was a gilded prisoner, watched constantly by guards. Well-meaning guards, to be sure, but guards non-the-less.

Why had the gods sent me here? Why had they not left my in my comfortable nest of sorrow, at least with people who understood me? At Songless I was a commoner, a servant – but here I was something worse. I was a monkey, a fool, an idiot. I could speak to no one, therefore, it was assumed I heard nothing. Even my childhood friend treated me with contempt.

On the far wall something scraped, and then a light appeared in the wall. I frowned. – a secret entrance? A possible way to escape?

The light moved forward, and then shone upon the Lady Victoria. She wore a gown and gold-trimmed girdle, nothing more. Her curling hair lay on her shoulders; her bare feet pressed the grass. This was who I was to meet, the lady who had rudely scorned my flowers? Her beauty was dazzling, but...

I decided to stay quiet and let her walk past.

But she did not. She paused at a spot not ten feet away and lifted her lantern, thus revealing another secret of the greenhouse. Beyond the crystalline plants there had been dug a shallow in the ground, and at its center was a fish pond. Beside it stood a bench, and on the ground before the bench, Sharp had spread his cloak.

Chapter 4.1

"You cheated him at dice?" Ison asked.

I shook my head.

"You touched his harp?" Charles asked.

Again I shook my head. Yes, I had touched his harp at times, but with his permission and never in a way that bought offense.

"You touched his wife?" Ison asked.

I was sure I had not done that, and shook my head. My guards had been questioning me ever since we sat at the table, and some of their suggestions made more sense than others.

"You didn't touch his wife," Charles suggested.

I lowered my head into my hands.

"Sing for us!" Lady Victoria called from the high table.

I looked up to see Sharp standing before her table. He bowed, to her, and asked, "Does my fair lady have a request?"

"I would like to hear Lady Dysie."

The other women at the table nodded cheerfully, but Lord Guerney glowered. Sharp seemed not to notice this as he tuned his lute, then held up his goblet as a request for a drink before he began. Elise was the serving maid who answered, smiling at him as she filled his goblet with wine.

She had roses in her hair. The roses from my bouquet.

I scowled into my almost empty mug.

Sharp drank his wine and set it down with a flourish. Then he lifted the lute, played the opening line, and sang out in his clear, sweet voice:

"There once was a king, a very great king,
A king of pride and fame.
He had a lovely daughter so fair,
Lady Dysie was her name.
Oh, the word’s gone up, and the word’s gone down.
And word’s gone to the king:
Lady Dysie’s belly’s gone so round
And she hasn’t got a ring!"

The audience snickered, but Lord Geurney pulled his thick eyebrows together and deepened his frown. If had been in Sharp’s place, I might suddenly found my throat too sore to continue – but that is the gift of hindsight. Sharp continued on, singing the story of a tragic love. The king searched his castle for the lover, and found him to be a lowly kitchen boy, a Heathen with an Outlander mother and a Wizardland father, a boy as unsuited for his daughter as a plowhorse is for a purebred mare. Not only was the boy killed, but the king cut out his heart and sent it, in a golden cup, to his daughter. The last two verses, sung in a high, sweet voice, was her final lament.

"Farewell Father, farewell Mother,
Farewell to comfort and joy.
He died for me, I’ll die for him
Though he was but a kitchen boy.
Farewell Father, farewell Mother.
Farewell my brothers three.
You thought you’d taken the life of one
But you’ve taken the life of three."

A dark song, appropriate for my dark mood. As Sharp smiled and bowed, I drank deeply from my mug – it had been filled without my noticing – and brooded.

***
Author's note: Lady Dysie is an old English ballad that I paraphrased for this story. I've tried to retain the meter while bringing it into modern English -- I can still sing it to Gilligan's Island.

Chapter 3.10

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As the great hall filled for supper, I waited by the door to the ladies’ tower, my bouquet in hand. Charles and Ison were my guards tonight, a comforting presence at my back.

The door opened and a half-dozen blossoms of womanhood poured out – some mere buds and some past their prime, and one so withered and wilted that she may have nursed Lord Guerney’s father in his cradle. Both blonde and dark, they all wore colorful bliauts with wide sleeves that brushed the floor. At the center walked the Lady Victoria, with gold trim and white lace, the most delicate flower of them all.

"She’s not here tonight," Ison muttered, so low that only I and Charles could hear.

I turned my palm upwards.

"The Lady Laurice. Ah don’t see here."

"Unless she’s hiding in the monk’s cowl," Charles said a little too loudly. He gestured toward the Silent Monk who followed them out.

The ladies stopped and looked at us, then giggled. I hastily thrust my wild roses toward the Lady Victoria, a gesture of supplication.

She turned her face toward me, and I was trapped in the emerald beauty of her eyes. How smooth her skin was, how soft and full her lips. A faint rose blushed her cheeks, and she smiled.

And laughed. "What do you make of that?" she said to her companions.

"It’s like that little monkey your Uncle brought back from the Southern Wizardlands," said one of the other women, a thin-faced maid with limp hair. "It used to follow you around, didn’t it? What happened to it?"

"The dogs caught it." She didn’t sound sorry. Without further acknowledgment, she turned and led the entourage off.

My shoulders slumped. I shoved the roses into Ison’s hand and turned, then found myself face-to-face with Sharp. His was dressed in the formal clothes of a Guilded Bard – buckskin leggings and a linen shirt with Bardic symbols embroidered along the sleeves and hem, leather boots and belt embossed with more symbols of strength, and a woolen mantle lined with fox fur. I felt all too aware of my Christian clothing. Yet in that instance, I knew the gulf between us would be bridged, and we would be old friends in each other’s arms.

Sharp drew his sword.

On either side of me, my guards drew their weapons – a sword for Charles and a hunting knife for Ison.

"At least your keepers know what this means," Sharp growled. He slid his blade back into its scabbard. "A pity, though, that you can’t understand why I hate you."

With that he turned on his heel and stalked away.