Nobody's Son (23 page)

“If you do not need me lord, I would like to follow him,” Valerian said. “Your challenge excites my imagination; and too, I have always had the strongest fascination for the art of landscaping. It’s a, a—”

“A hobby of yours?” Lissa enquired, one eyebrow raised.

“Well, it is,” Val said defensively; and with a quick bow he hurried over to Orrin before he missed any more of the plans.

• • •

The next few weeks passed by in a whirl of activity. Mark and Gail stunned Orrin and his men by joining in the work: scrambling over fallen walls, digging for old foundation lines, even hauling stones. Mark’s body fell into the comfortable rhythm of hard work it expected as April dried into May and May warmed into June. Spring waxed slowly into summer, and Gail hopped around the Keep like a goblin, getting ever browner and stronger, loving every day she spent outside. Valerian was ecstatic, and spent countless hours doodling visions of what Borders might have been.

The idea of the Old Borders began to exert a weird hold on everyone, not just Mark. Orrin’s masons marvelled at how well the old blocks had been cut, and how cleverly they had been joined, particularly in the making of arches, like that at the Main Gate. Orrin’s carpenter looked longingly at the stands of cedar across the river, his hand itching on his adze. Even the cook, as it turned out, had a passion for chestnuts; he could hardly wait for the fall crop.

As for Orrin, the architect was a man possessed. He had spent his working life in the flatlands, building elegant mansions for clients who craved light and space and air. These were good things, and he did not mean to abandon them. Clearly much at Borders had been made from cedar timber, a wood he knew well and for which he felt great affection.

But here at Borders Master Orrin fell in love with stone. Its solidity. Its permanence. Its
substance
, as he said many times each day, running his hand along a smooth granite block. “You think of it as dull, until you look! Then you see white and grey and flecks of red smouldering within the rock. Leave it rough on the outer walls, of course. But imagine it polished, facing into a room with broad windows and a high ceiling! And so little risk of fire!” And so on.

As workmen pieced the old stones together, so Orrin and Valerian laboured to reconstruct the mind that had built Borders in the first place. They called him the Maker, and admired him beyond reason: his deep knowledge, his keen vision, his profound wisdom. Whenever Orrin would suggest, for example, some way in which the west window of the Great Hall must have been positioned so as to catch perfectly the afternoon light, then he and Val would stare at one another, and shake their heads, and express their amazement at the way the Maker thought of everything.

“Of course he was a genius,” Lissa observed to Mark one day as they watched Val and Orrin at work. “The Maker never can look dull, when he is given credit for all of Orrin’s shrewdest thoughts, and all Valerian’s insight!”

Lissa too was busy, though Mark wasn’t exactly sure what she was doing.

Finally, one day at the beginning of June, she approached Gail and Mark as they watched the doorway of the Great Hall go up. “My lord—”

“Mark!”

Lissa curtsied. “Ahem. Mark, you told me once that when I spoke to you as servant I was to make my speaking plain. Very well: bear with my attempt.

“I have tried to stave this moment off as fiercely as I could, but the crisis comes upon us soon. You two have work to do, and you must do it.”

Mark looked at her, mystified. “You may be speaking plain, but I’m not understanding you. I’m working every day, as hard as any other man, right down to humping blocks of stone or chopping firewood.”

“That is play, my lord. Not work.”

“Play! You try it for an afternoon!”

“Boys sweat when they play ball,” Lissa said tartly. “It does not excuse them from lessons. You are Duke of Borders now. The duty of a Duke does not reside in hauling rocks or stoking fires: his obligation is to rule.”

Mark looked at Gail. “I take it from that guilty face you think she’s right. Very well then: order folk about? I can do that.”

Lissa smiled.
Looks like a cat watching a mouse creep from its hole
. “I am so glad you feel that way—my lord.”

As it turned out, there was much ruling to be done.

Without Mark really noticing, the camp in the river valley had swollen greatly since they first arrived at April’s end. Many newcomers were workmen, of course, sent by Astin to build Gail’s home. But soon other folk were drifting in as well. Merchants and peddlers, adventurers, tinkers, pilgrims. High-spirited youths who came because they thought it fine to serve the man who broke the Ghostwood’s spell. People so poor and desperate they were willing to leave everything behind and head west in the hope of a better life.

Most of these pilgrims came with tents, food, and money, but some did not. Master Orrin wanted them sent packing before they interfered with his work, but Mark wouldn’t hear of it. He was a Duke now: a father to the people on his land. It was his job to find them food, and shelter, and hope. His job to protect them.

“You can’t protect them from everything,” Gail said. “No ruler can do that.”

But Mark said, “He must try.”

At first he asked Valerian for advice. “Come on, Val: you’re Somebody’s Son. Tell me about laws and taxes and armies, mayors and tithes and town councils and common land.”

“… Er, well, this is rather embarrassing,” Val mumbled, “but I really, em, don’t know anything about all that.”

“Goat’s piss. You know everything. Lord Peridot said it himself.”

“Lord Peridot, may I remind you, is not famous for his truthfulness.” Valerian squirmed and stroked his beard and blinked.
He’s ashamed
, Mark realized.
Shite and swanpiece
. “You see, my lord,—”

“Mark!”

“Mark, yes. The issue is I never did… I was not very good at, at all that sort of thing: at governance. It was my father’s shame and cross.” Val forced out a little laugh. “My interests were somehow ever of another star, or in the sky, or growing in the earth. I collected beetles more than taxes, gave out alms more easily than justice. I might perhaps compel myself to think on, on land disputes or fishing rights, but then by imperceptible degrees my thought would shift to the invention of a water-wheel that could lie flat, for instance, instead of standing vertical…” His eyes brightened. “Which reminds me! What a thought I have for Orrin! I saw a perfect place upstream for such a wheel. You see, one need only cut a semi-circle in the bank, thusly—”

“Val, I’ve two villages worth of souls to care for here, and more coming every day.”

Valerian stroked his soft beard and fluttered one plump hand. “W-well, you will need a water-wheel eventually,” he said meekly. “This design of mine not only will mill grain, but will drive a bellows too, if executed properly.”

“Shite.” Mark gave Val a long, hard stare. “So you grew up without a day’s work in your life, and’t’only thing you didn’t learn was—”

“My duty,” Val said softly. “Yes, you have it right. I cannot stand to give an order, force a point, tell another what to do.”

Mark looked at him with wonder and exasperation and pity all mingled together. For the first time he had an inkling of how Val’s father must have felt.

But he’s your friend, and you’ve no right to shame him for

not knowing what you don’t know either
, he thought, clapping Val on the back and leaving him to his water-wheels.

It’s a pain in the arse, though, and no mistake.

Well, it isn’t as if you can’t find it in you to order folk around.

It was thinking of sensible orders to give that was the problem. Lissa was invaluable, of course, but she was used to managing a Princess, not an estate. She too was learning as they went along.

Mark found he liked ruling. He had always been handy, had always prided himself on being a man who got things done. Though building his duchy from the ground up was a bastard, and each night found him battered into the ground, each morning he woke glad to fight again.

He sent messengers out into neighbouring counties to announce that he had land to lease. He set the rents low, but with the catch that for the first five years they must be paid in goods or service, not in coin. “We need their backs and arms and crops. Coin’s not much good until the road’s fixed up and we’ve steady trade through here,” he argued, and even Lissa admitted that his plan was sound.

Lissa was most impressed by how Mark dealt with the Vagabonds, as she called the many young men who had run away from the fanning life, and arrived at Borders with nothing but their pride. “You see that?” Mark would ask each lad, waving at his Keep, now busy as an anthill. “Today this place is crawling wi’ masons and glaziers and cabinet-makers and shinglers and who knows what else. The King has lent us a clothier, a dyer, a tanner, four seamstresses, a huntsman, a chef, a tent-maker—even a perfumer, I think.” Here he would meet the young man’s eyes, and make him feel he was being given a special duty. “I want you to help one o’ these men. Stick to him like a leech and suck him dry. Learn everything he’ll teach and spy out what he doesn’t tell you. By Christmas he’ll be back in Swangard, and we’ll have to dye our own cloth, or tan our own leather, or hunt for our own game: and you’ll be in charge of it.”

It nearly always worked.

The craftsmen didn’t like it much: ‘prentices take more time than they’re worth, as Orrin said, and nobody liked giving out his trade secrets.

But Mark was the Duke.
Which means you have the hammer
, he thought with satisfaction.
Orrin and his clan can bark and snap, but you hawd the leash and they know it
.

“You are a natural leader,” Gail said simply. “I knew that from the first moment I saw you.”

“The Princess was quite eloquent that night,” Lissa said. “‘Like a hawk among the songbirds.’ Those were her words.”

Mark shot a wicked grin at Gail. “And she a fox among hens.”

It was a fair morning in the middle of June when Deron came trotting down the track toward Borders on a fine while stallion.

Mark walked up to meet him. “Good God lad, welcome! Any man that hits Lord Peridot is a friend of mine.”
He rides easy: good. Wasn’t hurt too bad, then
. Though Mark was sure Sir William had gone easy on the lad, Deron had fought long and well, refusing to surrender until his collarbone was broken.
Looks like it healed up well
.

Gravely Deron inclined his head. “My Lord of Borders, thank you for your courtesy. I hope I may redeem it with a minted coin of loyalty, and swear to you my fealty, if your household can withstand the tarnish which a young and unaccomplished knight must bring.”

Mark smiled. “You’ll tarnish nowt but my pride, Deron: I think I always wanted to be just like you. Get off this bloody beast before he kicks me, will you?”

“How could you, the hero of the Ghostwood, ever long to be like me?” Deron said, startled.

“You’ve a quick sword an’ you smell nice,” Mark laughed. “Get down!”

Deron dismounted and Mark looked him over.
Grow out that short blond hair a bit and he could be Lissa’s cousin. About the same age as me; about the same most ways. Except for him being taller, and prettier, and finer, and better able to read and dance and sing: except for those things, you mean
?

Shite.

“So—what brings you to’t’outhouse of the kingdom?”

Deron blushed, beautifully of course. “I must have great regard for the man who broke the Ghostwood’s spell, my lord. And… and more than this, I cannot help but love the lord who chose to play Janseni’s music at his nuptials, and throw the gauntlet of a ripe disdain between Lord Peridot’s teeth. I am third of my father’s sons; I have no purpose on our estate. Even if I did, our seat is on Duke Richard’s land: a demesne I cannot bear to frequent.”

Envy twisted in Mark’s gut.
Oh aye he’s a gracious son of a bitch. A fighter and a dancer too. Look at him, Shielder’s Mark: you could have been that, if you’d been Somebody’s Son
.

Deron’s blush grew deeper. “And Swangard for me is haunted by unhappy memories.”

Janseni. Must be
. Like snow melting in the sun, Mark’s envy turned to pity.
He’s not some young knighted God; just another luckless corked-up whelp running from a broken

heart. He loved Janseni and she couldn’t tell him from polecat piss. The same awd story. Poor bugger.

A shadow crossed Mark’s heart.
You might not always feel so superior, Shielder’s Mark. Not if Gail gets tired of her ploughboy and trades you in for summat more her style. If she leaves you it’ll be for just so soft a tongue, for hands just so white
.

“Come on,” Mark growled, feeling like Deron was his friend and enemy and younger brother at once. “Get your beast to Ostler’s Bill, and then we’ll talk.”

“Deron says we rank just after gall to your father’s taste, and just before goatshit,” Mark said later that night.

He and Gail had slipped away from the camp, leaving Lissa and Valerian to see about finding Deron a place to sleep. The night was dark, but warm. They sat at the edge of the old bridge, with their feet dangling over the rushing water.

“There is something magic in a midsummer moon,” Gail said. “Look at it! Hanging over the Ghostwood: so bright it almost hurts your eyes. Ghost clouds too, up there, drifting in a dark purple sky.”

“He wasn’t fond of me to start with, I guess, but the Janseni business didn’t help, Deron says.”

“Have you ever noticed how clouds move? Especially on moonlit nights like this. They seem so purposeful, sliding to a destination in another world, always changing shape, and you’re sure what the next shape will be, only it never turns out like you expect, and you think you know where they’re going, but you don’t.”

A snatch of laughter and a bit of song carried to them from the camp. “And then there’s the bloody ghost. Walks about’t’ High Holt in broad daylight these days, Deron says. Tradesmen won’t come up no more. Not that I blame them. The Ghost King’s come back and I brung him: that’s what they say in Swangard now.” Mark took out the black iron dagger and slapped it anxiously against his thigh. The blade was cold.