The Given Sacrifice (34 page)

“There will probably be a chorus of children and a bouquet,” he said.

“I’ll bear up,” Mathilda said as she took his arm. “Let’s not disappoint the audience.”

“And my mother says a travelling bard’s job was hard back before the Change,” he said.
“Always putting on a show. At least nobody gave her a second glance when she was driving
her wagon around the Willamette between performances!”

He’d sent instructions for minimal ceremony, and he knew the Grand Constable shared
his sentiments on that sort of thing most exactly. Her Châtelaine . . . not necessarily
so much, but she would do her best.

A cheer went up as they descended from the train; varlets were bustling about, unloading
gear down to Órlaith’s pony, and Maccon in a basket—quite a substantial one, for the
young beast had huge ears and paws already. A bright eye and pulsing black nose were
visible through the wicker, wiggling with the desire to get out and smell and taste
and acquire new admirers. This was an informal visit—up here in the Protectorate he
generally used the full fig of a Crown visitation only on nobles he didn’t trust,
that being a polite way to use up resources they might otherwise put to mischief.
They couldn’t even complain, since it was an honor.

D’Ath was there, leaning on a stick, and Lady Delia with a lacy parasol protecting
her creamy skin. Rigobert de Stafford was too, his bowl-cut blond hair and short dense
beard showing a little more nearly invisible gray as he doffed his chaperon hat. So
was his current partner, Sir Julio Alvarez de Soto, a slim handsome swarthy man in
his thirties, quiet and dangerous-looking in dark country-gentry clothes that contrasted
with Rigobert’s peacock fashionability of blue velvet, black satin and crimson linings
on the sleeves of his houppelande. He still had the lean erect broad-shouldered build
to carry it off, though, and Rudi hadn’t the slightest doubt that when he didn’t he’d
switch to something more appropriate.

That’s six years they’ve been together, since the tag end of the war, so perhaps Rigobert
is settling down in middle-age.

He hoped so; he liked the Baron of Forest Grove, both as a man and a valuable servant
of the Crown, and had sensed a loneliness under his good humor and active social life.

Lord Maugis de Grimmond, Baron of Tucannon, was there too, and his wife Lady Helissent,
and their son Aleaume, now a likely-looking lad of twelve just home for a holiday
from page service in Walla Walla to Lord Maugis’ overlord Count Felipe.

And taking after his mother, save for that rusty-nail hair—which is to the good because
Maugis is, frankly, a homely man. It’s also a very good thing they haven’t far to
come from Grimmond-on-the-Wold, which keeps this all looking completely casual and
social, which it is, only not totally.

Mathilda made a gesture—hand palm-down and then turned up, which was Associate court
etiquette for
don’t kneel
. The noblemen and women responded with deep sweeping bows and curtsies respectively,
except for the Grand Constable who bowed as well. The assembled commons behind the
gentlefolk knelt anyway, several hundred of them in their best Sunday-go-to-Church
outfits, splashes of embroidery on hems and necks, bright printed wimples for the
women. The village priest signed the air.

“Rise, my friends,” Rudi said; they did, and cheered, waving straw hats and holding
up children to see.

Pleasant to be popular; and to be sure, they get a party at their baron’s expense
out of it,
he thought.

Yearling steers and pigs were roasting over open pits in the town square, filling
the air with a pleasant savor as cooks basted them with paintbrush-sized brushes on
the end of long sticks, and trestle tables had been set up with wheels of cheese and
bowls and dishes of each household’s prize contribution, and barrels were waiting
in the shade along with tall baskets of new loaves. Another carried the lutes and
hauteboys, drums and accordion that would provide music for the dancing later.

He and Mathilda extended their hands for the kiss of homage. The Grand Constable was
limping and using her stick as she came forward.

“How is the leg, Tiph?” Mathilda asked.

“Healing, but damned slowly,” d’Ath said. “He shouldn’t have been able to touch me.
I was careless.”

“He was
twenty-five
and you’re
forty-six
!” Lady Delia said sharply. “You’re not getting those awful
lettres de cachet
from Sandra anymore, you don’t have to
do
this.”

A small chilly reminiscent smile from Tiphaine: “
The bearer has done what has been done by my authority, and for the good of the State.
Sandra always absolutely
loved
writing those. That was back before she got religion, of course.”

Mathilda winced. Baron Tucannon looked up briefly as if considering the weather, unconsciously
disassociating himself from the display of high-level dirty linen, while his son looked
bewildered at the byplay and his wife carefully blank-faced. Rigobert simply laughed.
Delia cleared her throat and went on:

“And you shouldn’t be fighting duels at your age anyway! I spent far too much time
sending you off to the wars; now that you’re home I expect you to
live
for a while.”

Her eyes flashed; she was in her thirties herself, and one of the most beautiful women
Rudi had ever seen in a sweetly curved way, with translucent eyes the color of camas
flowers in a cloud-shaded mountain meadow and hair of iridescent black, glimpsed in
braids beneath her tall headdress. She had a reputation as an arbiter of fashion,
which she showed now by the elegant variation on what she had christened
afternoon dress
. August in the Palouse was hot to people used to the Willamette. Lady Delia’s red
linen shift came to a daring two inches above her ankles, trimmed with a ruching of
darker red and a scatter of pink ribbon roses. It was sleeveless and the light silk
half-dress over it was a pale pink that took the warm tone below. From the waist to
the knee it descended in long thin daggers of cloth, each neatly bordered with cream
and crimson. The sort-of-sleeves were also dags of the translucent silk, dangling
to her elbows and more thickly embroidered. Her wimple was more of the pink silk,
held in place by a light ribbon braid in graduated pinks and reds, cascading down
her back.

Rudi caught Helissent and Mathilda’s tire-women both eyeing it intently, clearly memorizing
details for later. Lady d’Ath’s irritated answer brought him back from contemplation
of feminine frivolities, though he’d always found Delia’s skills in that regard seriously
impressive.

“I’m alive and getting older, and he isn’t, like that uncle of his I killed back in
the old days,” d’Ath pointed out. “And
he
challenged
me
, not vice versa.”

“And forbye, for that very reason if he were alive, he’d be in very bad trouble,”
Rudi said grimly.

“I’m Grand Constable, for what it’s worth these days,” d’Ath said. “That’s a Protectorate
appointment, covering the Association, not one by the High King. You couldn’t have
touched him, legally.”

“
I
could,” Matti said flatly. “I’m Lady Protector. And I
would
.”

There were two carriages drawn up with the d’Ath arms on the doors; sable, a delta
Or over a V argent. They managed to disengage themselves, after the inevitable bouquet
and chorus of children, singing quite nicely under the direction of a young and nervous
priest, and after a sharp glare from the Baroness of Ath and a quiet word from Delia
dissuaded the bailiff of the estate from proceeding from an introduction to a plan
for a tour of the newly installed and state-of-the-art dam, well, hydraulic ram, windmill
and solar-heated waterworks that he obviously had his heart set upon.

Rudi grinned to himself. He’d just received an anguished howl in the form of a petition
from some Corvallan manufacturers complaining that workshops in Portland and Walla
Walla had stolen the thermosiphon design. He’d replied politely, pointing out that
the Faculty Senate had refused to include a patent law in the Great Charter and that
they might want to take it up with them . . .

Tiphaine grumbled as she levered herself up into one of the coaches, and the High
King’s Archers deployed their bicycles; there were a dozen men-at-arms on coursers
and mounted archers on quarter-horses, their look of grim efficiency marking them
as much as the d’Ath arms, and smaller detachments from the
menies
of the other nobles. Rudi sympathized with the injured Grand Constable as he handed
Mathilda up and seated himself; he would vastly have preferred riding horseback, after
days of sitting in a train. There had been times he was tempted to go walk the treadmill
with the horses, not being a man used to inactivity. Órlaith was on her Butterball,
to the unspeakable envy of all the other noble children.

The whole settlement was on the south-facing slope of a declivity in the hills. The
carriages jounced across the stone-paved central square with its church, tavern, smithy
and workshops, school, bakery, bathhouse-laundry. There was rather more than the average,
since this was to be the home-manor of the whole estate, and had a railway to boot.
A long low building with large windows was a weaving-shed, where households with a
loom could use it and store their yarn and gear without cluttering up the house; behind
the whole ensemble was the tall skeletal shape of the village windmill on the ridgetop,
its three airfoil-shaped vanes rotating with majestic deliberation.

The village was raw and new, the trees and plantings still small and struggling, but
looked prosperous; the tile-roofed rammed-earth cottages of the peasants and craftsmen
were on lanes lined with young trees, each in its rectangular fenced toft with sheds
and gardens at the rear. Even the small dwellings of the cottar laborers had three
rooms and a loft and an acre of allotment ground attached. A few excited peasant youngsters
ran after them waving as they drove up the winding road to the manor between rows
of fir saplings; Órlaith waved back with a broad smile, and various mothers and elder
siblings dragged the youngsters back, often by one ear.

The manor sat on its own gentle south-facing slope some distance away, beyond the
demesne farm complex with its squat circular grainaries and boxy wool-stores and a
bit higher up for the view, behind a wall that enclosed its lawns and ambitious but
rather tentative terraced gardens. The Great House and outbuildings were rammed earth
too, the more expensive variety with some cement mixed in and covered in a warm cream
stucco with just a hint of reddish gold. The composition was so charming that you
took a minute to discern the dry moat disguised by a ha-ha and the fact that all the
exterior windows were narrow and could be slammed closed in moments by steel shutters.
It wasn’t a castle but it was definitely defensible against anything short of a formal
attack with artillery, and while certainly big it was by no means excessive for a
moderately prominent baron.

Just a wing on that thing in the Venetian style the Renfrews are building in Odell,
Rudi thought.
Though to be sure, Conrad
is
a Duke nowadays.

The roofs were bright unfaded red tile and fairly steeply pitched; most Palouse winters
had more rain than snow, but you couldn’t count on it. It was newer even than the
village, so new that there was still roofer’s scaffolding on the top of the four-story
square tower at one corner. When they’d been shown to their quarters—which from the
battered gray suit of plate on a stand in one corner he guessed were the Grand Constable’s
ordinarily—there was still a faint damp scent of curing
pisé de terre
and plaster.

“This is lovely,” Mathilda said once their bags had been unpacked and the staff left.

She looked around the bedchamber’s expanse of smooth pale mosaic tile and the French
doors opening onto balconies with their decorative wrought-iron balustrades overlooking
the fountain, walkways and gardens in the courtyard below. Like many modern manor
houses, it made up with interior inner-facing windows and glass doors for the light
excluded by solid exterior walls. There was a big fireplace with a carved stone surround
of owls and olive wreaths, swept and garnished with dried wildflowers for summer,
but discreet bronze grill vents showed a central heating system.

“Handsome work,” Rudi agreed.

“Beautifully proportioned, and I love the coffered cypress-wood ceiling . . . I like
that arched-passageway Romanesque style too . . . though the murals and the tapestries
aren’t up yet, of course. It’ll be even prettier than the Montinore manor house back
on Barony Ath. Delia has exquisite taste and she got to start from scratch with modern
methods here.”

Órlaith came barreling through side by side with Yolande de Stafford, a dark-haired
girl of her own age who resembled a younger version of her mother, and her elder sister
Heuradys, who had a mop of dark-auburn curls and resembled neither of her parents.
Maccon was at her heels skidding on the smooth floors in a rattle of claws and just
ahead of the determined-looking Prince John, whose shorter legs were pumping to keep
up with the older girls; Órlaith paused to give them both a hug while Yolande and
Heuradys bobbed a preoccupied curtsy. Then she dashed on dragging her brother by one
hand. Dame Emelina followed a moment later, with a half-apologetic glance, then went
in pursuit with the folds of her riding habit swishing.

“If we could bottle that energy and commission the Guild Merchant to sell it, the
Crown would have no financial problems at all, at all,” Rudi said.

“Right now I’ll settle for a nice long soak. That sunken tub looks attractive.”

“Not nearly as attractive as you, in it.”

“Why, whatever could you mean, good sir?” she said, batting her eyes and giving him
a smoldering smile.