Havemercy (3 page)

Eventually, the chatelain found me.

“Damn it, boy, what are you doing there?” he called up to me, arms folded, standing beneath my tree. I nearly fell off the branch and only managed to catch myself just in time. I wasn’t keen on falling, not again, since the first time I had I’d done considerable damage to my wrist.

“Oh, well,” I said. “Didn’t want to be in the way.” Then, I realized it was very awkward talking to the chatelain this way, and clambered down the trunk.

The chatelain looked at me with some bafflement—a big man, broad-shouldered, good-natured but often red in the face about something or other. I was quite fond of him, though there were a rather large number of people who found themselves put off by his bellowing.

“Well,” he said. “Hal, you’ve a leaf in your hair.”

So I had. I combed it out as quickly as I could with my fingers, book tucked under my arm and threatening to slip all the while. “Sorry,” I said.

“At your age,” said the chatelain, “you’ve no business still reading in trees. Well, no matter. We have something to discuss.”

I walked beside him on the bank of Locque Nevers for a time while he said nothing and worked his large jaw. The upset with his brother had unsettled him. I was unsure of what to do or say, and so did and said absolutely nothing, which seemed the best option.

At last, the chatelain took a deep breath, clasped his hands together, and said, “The Mme and I will be trusting you to take care of him.”

I didn’t have to ask who. “Oh,” I said, and without thinking, “in—Well, how?”

“You may have noticed that your room is situated very close to the guest’s chamber,” the chatelain explained. “My brother is . . . not impressed by country life, nor was he crafted as a person to respect or uphold any of our . . . country values.”

“Ah,” I said, when it appeared I needed to confirm I was listening.

“He thinks they’re damn backward,” the chatelain clarified. “Already, there is some suspicion among the servants concerning members of the Basquiat. Besides which, my brother is by no means an inconspicuous man. It is this decided lack of inconspicuousness that has returned him to us in the first place, and will no doubt cause a considerable volume of misunderstandings in the coming weeks until he is once again . . . accustomed to our lifestyle here.”

“Ah,” I said again. I was coming to understand this better, though he was speaking as if he were uncomfortable, and therefore without his usual brusque clarity. At its simplest, I realized the chatelain wanted me to treat the Margrave as I would have treated his sons and daughters: half-schooling and half-nannying.

I didn’t think this was the best of plans, but it wasn’t my place to air these concerns.

“Yes,” said the chatelain, even though he’d agreed to his own statement and nothing more. Perhaps he’d seen the understanding on my face, for Mme often commented I was as easy to read as a book. Though I was uncertain as to whether my adoptive patroness could read at all, and couldn’t keep from wondering whenever she used this expression.

Still, I didn’t think the Margrave would appreciate being treated as a child by one not so long departed from that state himself. This was not my observation to make, and yet I couldn’t help but hope that the chatelain would realize this for himself.

All I knew about the man—save that he was the chatelain’s brother—was that he was a Margrave, which meant that he was a magician who’d done great service for the Esar in one way or another. The title was usually awarded to a man who had distinguished himself in the war. What I’d read about the Basquiat offered little help, for I felt that any man sensational enough to be a member of the city’s elite assembly of magicians would find no amusement in the country. Many people referred to the Basquiat as the heart of Volstov—to the Esar’s displeasure—as their meeting place stood second only to the palace in scale and architectural marvel.

How anyone could leave all that excitement for a place as simple as Nevers, I didn’t know.

Then I remembered that it had not been his choice to begin with, and a dark cloud settled over my heart as swiftly as the weather can change on a summer’s day. Dealing with the Margrave would be far worse than even dealing with William, the chatelain’s middle son.

Wind stirred my hair, in want of a cutting, and made little eddies and ripples on the lake’s smooth surface. The chatelain had been standing silent for some time now. I found myself wondering after his thoughts. I’d never had a brother myself, and so I had nothing to be used for comparison. He seemed agitated, which was usually left to the Mme, and what was more, he had nothing to say for himself, which I thought terribly strange.

“He’ll likely be rude,” the chatelain said at last. He too was studying the lake, as though it might offer some helpful wisdom to deal with what I was privately beginning to view as the coming storm, throwing our little household into disarray.

I nodded, to show that I’d heard him.

“He’s a good man,” he continued, with a conviction that assured me he believed at least this about his brother. “A good man. Not as good as some, and certainly not as sensible, but his heart’s in the right place.”

I was relieved to hear this, as there had been a section in the roman about the very early founders of the Basquiat, two of them with their hearts removed entirely and stored elsewhere for safekeeping.

“I’ll look after him,” I said, with more courage than I felt. There were some days, after all, when I felt that I was inadequate to bear the responsibility of the chatelain’s sons and daughter. His brother, some small rebellious part of me insisted, was asking too much. I’d already decided the Margrave would see straight to my purpose and would hate me on sight.

But I’ve always found that it’s best to prepare for the worst possible eventuality in any given scenario. Then you can only be pleasantly surprised.

Three days went by faster than I could possibly have imagined, with the servants shooing me out of every room I could find in which to take refuge, even the ones we never used. The children were the only ones who seemed pleased, referring to the Margrave as Uncle Roy. To the children, he was preceded only by his reputation for lavish gifts. Mme, on the other hand, developed a tight look about her mouth whenever he was mentioned, and the lines only grew deeper as the days went on.

Breakfast on the fourth day was one of the most awkward meals I’d ever had at the table, rivaling the time Alexander had eaten too much ice cream and been sick all over me and his birthday cake.

The Margrave would be arriving by carriage, we’d been told, and the letter had held a date but no specific time.

The chatelain fiddled absently with his silver coffee spoon.

From the drawing room, where the windows were wide and the view was best, we at last heard a small shriek and the patter of shoes as Emilie went running to the front door in a manner unbefitting a lady, exactly the way Mme had warned her against.

There was a short silence. Then, chaos broke loose in a clamor of scraping wood, chairs being pushed back from the table so the three boys could follow their sister in a most undignified rabble. I hoped that it did not reflect on my own influence in any way. At least I wasn’t yet their tutor.

“Well,” said the chatelain, wiping his mouth with a linen napkin. “I suppose we should go and ensure my brother’s well-being in the face of the young herd of elephants I’ve apparently raised.”

I nodded and got up from the table too quickly, almost knocking over my chair.

The lines around Mme’s mouth looked as deep and permanent as if they’d been carved with a chisel, but she rose with enviable grace. Together, the three of us stepped into the hall and made our way to the front door, where the Margrave was waiting for us.

ROYSTON

The terrible thing about the country—and this was why I’d left in the first place—is that you can’t spit sideways without hitting a sheep. They’re smelly, cruel creatures, malevolent and unclean. They clog the roadways, chew their cud, and clutter the landscape, abundant as the grass—gray and misshapen and utterly depressing. My brother’s castle in Nevers was exactly like every country castle on the continent, and I was jostled by the country roads, nauseated by the country smells, and assaulted by the country architecture, so that I arrived late with a headache sharp between my eyes.

My brother’s men were waiting to greet me, suspicious eyes sidelong and unwelcoming, though they were dressed as if they did indeed know what civilization was. Then all at once my brother’s children, two of whom I’d met when they were on holiday in Miranda some years earlier, were piling out the door into the sunlight, shrieking my name and kicking up dust.

“Have you brought anything for us?” the girl asked. She was the youngest; I hadn’t met her before, though I had sent her a tiger rug once, much to the distress of my brother’s simple wife. I tried to remember her name, but I found I could not.

“I might have done,” I replied, stepping back to avoid letting her clamber up my leg as if it were a tree trunk.

“Emilie!” I knew before lifting my head that this was the wife come out to greet me. I procured my pocket watch for the eldest of my nephews to examine, while Emilie jumped away from me and smoothed out her skirts, her cheeks bright red.

“It’s no trouble,” I said.

“She must behave as befits her,” the wife sniffed, keeping her distance. “I know standards are . . . different in the city, but in the country a young lady’s upbringing is a serious matter.”

“Naturally,” I replied.

The house was ugly but large, with a sloping shingled roof over the old castle walls and windows like gaping eyes. I shuddered to think what it would be like inside during the winter, when the snow was deep and the wind sharp. The courtyard was neatly kept, the stable far enough from the house that at least the smell of animals would not invade our living quarters except in the height of summer, and nearby I could hear the Locque Nevers rushing desperately onward. I felt a momentary kinship with the river, as if we were both aching yet helpless to escape, bound each in our own way to our eternal, shackling paths. But I was no poet, nor was I a river, and at some point I presumed the waters of Locque Nevers would reach the sea—whereas I was here indefinitely, with no similar prospects of escape.

One of the younger boys, William, was busy trying to break and not to break my pocket watch all at once. My brother had gone to see to the horses, which I’d expected of him, and I was glad he remained the same as ever. Too much change isn’t good for a man. It troubles him and hinders him from digesting his meals properly. However, it left the wife, the children, the servants, and me alone together, and not one of us able to speak.

“Well,” the wife said at length, though it seemed every word she spoke pained her, “these are the children.”

“Yes,” I agreed. “They are indeed.”

“Alexander is the eldest,” said a new voice, warm and uncertain. “William is about to break your pocket watch.”

I refocused my attention just over the wife’s shoulder and noticed someone unfamiliar hanging back not as a servant would, but neither like a true member of the family. I decided right away that he must have been no more than a distant cousin, which was why no one had seen fit to trim his hair.

“Then there are Etienne and Emilie,” he went on, shifting a poorly bound roman from under his left arm to under his right.

“Emilie and I have already met,” I said.

“Etienne is shy,” the young man explained, shrugging. He had a strange sort of grace about him, the unusual and post-adolescent combination of complete self-consciousness and blissful distraction. He bore it well despite the hair.

“Which we will very soon break him of,” the wife added sharply. She seemed to be on the verge of having the vapors.

“Like a horse, I presume,” I replied, and then added smoothly, coming up to take her hand and press it against my lips in my most formal of bows, “I am your servant, Mme, in all things. Your hospitality overwhelms me. I shall repay it any way I can.”

“Oh, well,” she said, fluttering like a poor man’s peacock—a rooster with too much tail for its own good but a rooster nonetheless. “You’re family, of course.”

I was, for good or for ill. “And who is this?” I asked, gesturing to the young man. I realized now the dreamy air that hung about him—like dust motes in a shaft of light—must have been a reflection of the great and secret desire he was harboring even now: that he wished to be elsewhere, reading his book, completely unbothered by our posturing.

“Who? Oh, Hal,” the wife said. “He’s to be Alexander and William’s tutor, when Alexander comes of age.”

“Next summer,” Alexander said proudly.

“Very good,” I replied, distracted. The tutor-to-be was pale but freckled along the bridge of his nose, and he was neither awkward nor shy but acutely polite. I shook his hand. “What are you reading?”

“This? Nothing,” he said, and endeavored to hide it from me.

“Hal very much enjoys his romans,” the wife said. She was sniffing again.

I thought about offering her a handkerchief, then discarded the notion. It would not do to offend my brother’s wife all at once. There would be no sport left for later on, and now that I was in the country, I needed to ration my amusements as meagerly as I could.

Instead, I offered the youth a thin smile, taking advantage of his preoccupied state to lift the badly concealed volume from his hands. It was uncouth of me, but I did not expect to be reprimanded by the lady of the house, who had already made it quite evident that Hal was not among her chief priorities.

“Oh,” he said, not sounding distressed but merely surprised.

The roman was a familiar one, though not the most widely respected or circulated collection of information on the Basquiat. The author had taken several creative liberties with the origins of the thing, for one, and there was scarcely even a mention of the Well. It skirted the matter of its overzealous guardians entirely, save a small notation that they called themselves the Brothers and Sisters of Regina. Yet I raised an eyebrow, surprised in turn, for I hadn’t expected to find any touchstone to the city here.