Once Upon a Summer Day (22 page)

“Well, don’t just stand there, Maurice,” said the woman, elbowing the man. “Invite them in. Invite them in. They’ve come to bless our farm.” And then without waiting for him to do so, the woman stepped past the dog—“One side, Brun”—and said to Borel, “We’ve supper on the table, all but the biscuits, and I can easily set two more places.” She took him by the arm and pulled him in through the door, Maurice following.

They came into what appeared to be a well-kept, three-room cottage—the main room taking up perhaps half the interior, the kitchen to the right along one wall, and a single bedroom to the front on the left, a workroom adjacent to the rear, these two chambers with a loft above.

“And who might you be, Sieur?” asked the woman as she drew Borel inward, then stepped away toward a cupboard.

Ere Borel could respond, “He is Prince Borel of the Winterwood,” said Flic. “And I am named Flic, and this is Buzzer, my friend and guardian.”

As Borel gave a slight bow, the woman’s mouth fell agape. But she quickly rallied and called out to her husband, who was standing just behind Borel, “Take off your hat, Maurice, for a prince has brought a Field Sprite with his bee to bless our farm.”

“Monsieur Maurice,” said Borel, turning to the man and acknowledging him.

The man doffed his hat, revealing a bald head, which he bobbed, and managed to say, “My lord.”

Borel turned to the woman. “And your name, Madame?”

The woman giggled and blushed and awkwardly curtseyed. “Charité, my lord.”

“Well, Madame Charité, it has been some time since I’ve had a good hot meal, and I thank you for it.”

“Lord Prince Borel,” said Charité, “it is nought but biscuits and sausage gravy and onions and string beans.”

“Ah, Madame Charité,
biscuits avec de la sauce aux saucisses, avec des oignons et des haricots verts, c’est magnifique!
” said Borel.

Charité beamed, and then turned to Flic and said, “Sieur Flic, I’m not familiar with Field Sprite fare; what will you have, you and your bumblebee?”

“Buzzer will take honey,” said Flic. “As for me, I think I’ll try a biscuit, if you please.”

“Slathered with butter and honey, they’re right good,” said Maurice. He walked away and set the hoe in the workroom, his hat atop the handle, then turned to the prince and said, “And you, Sieur, I have a bit of wine cooling in the well. Would you have some?”

“Indeed,” said Borel, grinning.

Maurice pulled out the chair at the head of the table and said, “Have a seat, my lord, while I go fetch the bottle.”

Borel shook his head, and drew a chair along one side of the board and sat and said, “I’ll not take your place as the master of the house. The side of the table will do.”

A smile swept over the face of the crofter, and he flushed with pride. “As you wish, Sieur. As you wish.” He stepped through the back door and out.

“Brun,” said Borel, and the dog came meekly, its tail low but wagging. Borel spoke a few gutturals to the dog, and lifted the tricorn from his head and said to Flic, “He now knows you and Buzzer are friends.”

“Good, I was wondering,” said the Sprite, and he stepped off the hat and onto the table, Buzzer following.

“My lord,” said Charité, her eyes wide in startlement, “you speak the language of dogs? Are you a
magicien
?”

“Non, Madame, no magicien am I, though I do speak a bit of Wolf, and dogs seem to know what I mean. My sire tells me that long past all dogs were Wolves.”

“My, my,” said Charité, “who would have known?” She peered into the brick oven and said, “Ah, good, the biscuits are ready.”

“I speak Bee,” said Flic.

Maurice came back in with the wine.

 

Maurice frowned. “Thirteen, fourteen years past, I can’t say exactly. Reckoning time in terms of the mortal world, well, it escapes me.” He spoke in a near whisper, for Flic was asleep on the table next to a biscuit slathered with honey and butter, the whole of it entirely too much for him to consume but for a small portion. At his side Buzzer dozed.

“Maurice was never very good at it,” said Charité, her own voice low. “Now, me, I think it was perhaps closer to twelve years agone, or just under. It was the day of the big doings up at the manor, for it was when the duke’s daughter, Michelle was her name, came into her majority.”

“Michelle?” said Borel.

“Indeed, my lord prince,” said Charité, “though everyone I know, from castle to town to farm, has called her Chelle since she was but a wee babe.”

“Michelle . . . my Chelle. I see.—But tell me, what came about? How came the vale to be nought but stone? What would cause such?”

Both Maurice and Charité made warding gestures, and Charité looked about to see if ought were lurking in the shadows and, finding nothing, said in a whisper, “Something wicked, that’s what.” And husband and wife looked at one another and nodded.

“We don’t go up there,” said Maurice, and again he made a warding gesture.

“As mortals would reckon it, not for nigh these twelve years,” added Charité, her own warding gesture joining his.

Borel frowned, and counted on his fingers, then said, “Could it have been eleven years and ten moons past?”

Maurice shrugged, but Charité nodded and said, “Could be.”

“Ah, that’s when the Winterwood was cursed, and on that same day . . .” His words fell to silence, and then he said, “It was some twenty years ago when I and my père were here visiting Lord Roulan; I know it was then, for within a year he and my mère vanished.”

“Vanished?” said Maurice.

“Oui. They were enchanted and gone for nearly nineteen years altogether, but now they are back, discovered by my soon-to-be-sister-in-law Camille, who found the way to break the enchantment.”

“There’s a story here for the telling,” said Maurice, replenishing Borel’s cup of wine.

“Perhaps someday I will,” said Borel, nodding his thanks, “but let me see if I am right.

“Chelle would have been about ten at the time Père and I were at Duke Roulan’s manor twenty years back. And so, when another eight years passed, then she would have reached her majority. I believe that would have been nearly twelve years ago—eleven years, ten moons, and a handful of days to be exact.”

Maurice turned up a hand, but Borel said, “It all seems right, if I have correctly reckoned the mortal years.”

Borel looked to Charité for confirmation, and she nodded, then stood and stepped to her bedchamber and came back to the table, bearing a kerchief, which she used to cover Flic. Next to him, Buzzer shifted, but didn’t waken, the bee dormant for the night.

“Tell me,” said Borel, “what happened that day?”

“Well,” said Maurice, “Charité and I, we took two of these very chairs to the yard and sat and watched as the lords and ladies and their attendants all rode past on their fine horses or in their splendid carriages, all heading up the road toward the manor. Brun was a pup at the time, and he was quite excited by all the doings going by.”

“Tell him about the Fey ladies on the horses with silver bells,” said Charité.

“I was just getting to it,” replied Maurice. He turned to Borel and said, “As Charité says, there were a number of Fey ladies on horses bedecked with silver bells that rode past, the ladies laughing together as if sharing a great secret.”

“They were magical, I think,” said Charité. “Fairies or some such, I would guess, what with their silky gowns flowing in the wind and such, the silver bells all achime. I believe they were the same ones who attended the birth, though we didn’t see them at that time.”

“The birth?” said Borel.

“Oui, of the duke’s daughter,” replied Charité. “It is said that Fey women came then.”

“Regardless,” said Maurice, “there was many a rich lord and lady went past, as well as the Fey Folk with their tilted eyes and golden hair and delicate ways.”

There came a lowing from without, and Maurice said, “Oh, my, what with all the talk, I forgot to milk Madame Vache. I will go do it now.” Maurice stood and added, “Much like that day, I was milking when it happened.”

“When what happened?” asked Borel.

“Why, Charité called me to come and see,” said Maurice. “When I stepped out from the byre, Charité screamed and pointed up toward the duke’s vale, and I turned and looked.” Maurice’s eyes widened in memory, and he thumped the table and said, “And that’s when the great black wind came, and the valley turned to stone; either that, or the entire dell just up and flew away, dirt, plants, manor and all.”

Jolted awake by the thump, “Hradian?” asked Flic, sitting up and rubbing his eyes, the Sprite hearking back to the story Borel had told him. “I mean, with a black wind and all, it seems the same sort of thing to me.”

“No, not Hradian,” said Borel, grimly, “but her sister instead. I deem this is her curse, the one I read of in Hradian’s journal.”

“Could Hradian’s sister be this Rhensibé?” asked Flic.

“Mayhap,” said Borel.

“Rhensibé?” hoarsely whispered the crofter, and both he and his wife made warding signs.

“T
hey say she’s a
sorcière,
this Rhensibé,” whispered Charité.

“Oui. In town there are some who claim she has some sort of grievance against the duke,” said Maurice, “or she did, until the valley turned to stone.”

“You know this for a fact?” asked Borel.

“Well, rumor would have it be so,” said Maurice.

Charité nodded her agreement and said, “I think someone—perhaps one of those Fey ladies—anyway, someone said—’round the time of Lady Chelle’s birth I think—that Rhensibé’s rancor against the duke goes back to a distant time.”

Flic looked at Borel. “What was it Hradian wrote in her journal about her sister?”

Borel took a deep breath and intoned, “ ‘On this same day in a linked act, my elder sister cast a great spell upon Roulan and his entire estate through his daughter Chelle, on this the day of her majority’—”

Maurice and Charité gasped, and Maurice said, “Ominous words, them.”

“That great spell had to be the black wind,” said Flic. “But we interrupted you, Lord Borel. There was more.”

“Oui,” said the prince, “there was more. ‘This vengeance is so very sweet, for Roulan was the accomplice of Valeray the Thief. And now all are ensorcelled and well warded; and since none can find Roulan’s daughter—or even if they do, all attempts to rescue her from the turret will fail—then when the rising full moon sits on the horizon eleven years and eleven moons from now . . .’ ” Borel paused, then added, “That’s as far as I read in the journal ere Hradian came.”

“And Hradian is . . . ?” asked Maurice.

“A witch,” replied Borel. “A very powerful witch.”

Maurice and Charité nodded and looked at one another, and Charité said, “Another sorcière.”

“Like Rhensibé is said to be,” added Maurice.

“Perhaps sisters,” said Flic.

“They must have had a pact,” said Borel. “My sire and the duke were both cursed, all for what they did during the struggle against Orbane.”

“Orbane!”
exclaimed Maurice and Charité together, making warding signs. And Maurice pled, “Oh, Lord Borel, speak of him no more, for we would not sear our minds with thoughts of that foul magicien nor have his name uttered in this house. It might draw him here.”

“But he is cast out,” said Borel, “banished to the Castle of Shadows beyond the Black Wall of the World.”

Both Maurice and Charité moaned in fear, and from under the table, Brun whined, the dog sensing his masters’ dread. Charité said, “Oh, my lord prince, we will not hear any more, else he himself is likely to appear.” And she grabbed Maurice by the arm and together they fled to their bedchamber and slammed the door to, and left Brun sitting without and whimpering.

The dog looked over his shoulder at Borel, seeking reassurance. Borel growled a word or two, and Brun settled down.

A moment later, the door opened a crack and Brun jumped to his feet. Through the gap a blanket was tossed into the main room, and Charité called, “Sieur, you may sleep in the loft,” and she slammed shut the door again, abandoning Brun. The dog came to Borel and looked up at him, and the prince reached down and stroked the animal’s head.

From outside, there came a persistent lowing, and Borel and Flic heard the slide of a window sash. Borel looked at Flic and said, “It is Maurice. He’s gone out through the window to milk the cow.”

Flic yawned and said, “Speaking of windows, would you open that one a bit?”

“Ah, yes, fresh air,” said Borel.

“Or something of the sort,” said Flic.

As Borel stepped to the sash and lowered it, the jamb sliding into the recess below, Flic lay back down near dormant Buzzer and pulled the kerchief to his chin and yawned and said, “Good night.” Then he grinned and added, “Pleasant dreams.”