Shroud of Shadow (13 page)

Natil took Josef's hand gingerly. “All?”

“Oh, I have lots. I play them all, you see. It's the mark of a humanist.”

“I . . . see . . .”

To demonstrate, Josef swung the lute up, and strummed—very badly—a number of chords. The lute was out of tune. He did not seem to notice. “Do you know any Tuscan songs?” he said suddenly. “You must.”

“A few.” Natil by now wanted desperately to escape.

“Do you know the one that goes . . . that goes . . . ah . . .” Josef fumbled with the lute, plunked out a few half muffled notes, then looked up at her expectantly. “You know: that one.”

As near as Natil could tell, the song Josef was attempting was German, not Tuscan. “I think so,” she said, and, putting her hands on her harp, she played while Josef, muttering to himself and tunelessly singing words that were unlike any Italian that Natil had ever heard, strummed along with her. He was playing in a different key than Natil, singing in yet another. He did not seem to notice.

It went on like that for almost an hour: Natil, habitually polite, playing tune after tune, Josef Aldernacht accompanying her on the Jahn Witczen strongbox while Jahn Witczen himself muttered about Irish harps and brass strings. Bystanders smirked, an occasional coin mercifully appeared, but by the end of the affair, Natil was exhausted and wanted nothing more than to flee into the nearest stand of trees, throw her arms about a gnarled trunk, and shake. She kept wishing that Omelda might return soon and thereby afford some excuse for a quick departure.

Suddenly, though, Josef put down the lute. “Are you looking for a position? You could play for my father. He hates music, but I'm sure he'd like you. And we've got a big house: we have parties and banquets, but we just dismissed our last master of entertainment, and we need someone to arrange music and things. It's nothing like Urbino, but it's quite nice. You'd have a roof over your head, and good clothes, and lots of money . . .” A roof, clothes, and lots of money held not the slightest attraction for Natil, but the feather in Josef's cap was bobbing excitedly. “. . . and you'd be in the pay of Josef Aldernacht himself!”

Natil could only stare at him blankly. There was no Lady, no starlight . . . nothing to sustain her. She simply wanted to run. But her promise to Omelda held her.

Josef suddenly looked up. “Oh, there's my brother!” On tiptoe then: “Francis! Come listen to this harper! I want her for the house!”

The crowd parted and an older man appeared. He was as somber as Josef was gay, and, pausing only briefly to present a beggar with a gold coin while surreptitiously glancing around to make sure that his charity was noticed by all, he came straight up to Josef with the weary expression of a parent humoring an overindulged child. He took no particular notice of Natil.

“What is it, Josef?” he said.

Josef gestured at Natil with a flourish. “Francis, allow me to present . . . ah . . .” He looked at the harper quickly. “Your name, mistress?”

“Natil of Malvern,” she said, resigned.

“Allow me to present Natil of Malvern. She's a harper, and she's played . . .” Josef seemed ready to go up on tiptoe again. “. . . at Urbino! She can take care of the music for the house.”

Francis still looked weary. “Yes, yes, Josef: whatever you want. Take her up to the house and have Charles draw up the documents.” Almost as an afterthought, he looked at Natil. His eyes widened, and he turned immediately back to his brother. “Are you sure, Josef?”

Josef's hand went to his heart. “She's wonderful!”

“Yes . . . of course. Well . . .” Another dubious look. “. . . go ahead, then.”

Natil made herself smile politely. “Honored gentlemen, I am not looking for a position.”

Josef stared. Francis appeared not to have heard.

“I have a friend who is looking for work, though,” the harper continued. “Her name is Omelda. She would serve you well in your kitchen or your chambers.”

No reply. The idea that anyone would actually turn down a position in the Aldernacht household seemed unimaginable to Josef, and Francis appeared not to hear anything said by anyone beneath his social status.

“I . . . ah . . .” Josef looked uncertain, faltered a response at last. “I'm sure we can find her something, too.”

Francis glared at his brother. “Josef, what are you saying? Are you going to let this . . .” He stared at Natil. Natil regarded him more calmly than she felt. “. . . this whatever dictate terms to us?”

“I heard Eudes this morning,” Josef said in a tone at once defiant and appeasing. “He was telling Charles that Martha needed some help in the kitchen. One of the girls was . . . ah . . . I mean . . . she wound up . . .” He looked at the bystanders, abruptly decided to retreat from any direct statement. “She left. Unexpectedly.”

“Left? Without permission? Father
allowed
that? Didn't he call the men to bring her back?”

“I believe it had something to do with . . . ah . . . Edvard and Norman.”

Francis flared. “Leave my boys out of it. You've always hated them.”

Josef became angry in turn. “I don't hate them: they're just that way. And I'm simply telling you what Eudes said.”

“Then I'll have Eudes dismissed!”

“Oh, I'd like to see that.”

“I can do it if I want.”

“Over Father's dead body!”

Both men seemed rather appalled by what Josef had just said. Tremulously, as though attempting to clear the suddenly tense air, Josef turned to Natil. “Will you take the position, Mistress Natil?”

It would not be the first time that Natil had been a musician in a human household, but given Francis's pomposity, Josef's enthusiasm, and Jahn Witczen's arrogance, she was unwilling to accept the offer. But she was not alone now: she had Omelda to think about, and just then the runaway nun appeared at the far side of the square, head down, frowning. Natil judged that she had been unsuccessful.

“Will you . . .” Unwilling to say yes, she was also unwilling to say no. “Will you employ my friend also?” she said quickly, before her conflicting emotions tied her tongue.

“Of course,” said Josef.

“Don't be silly,” said Francis.

The two men glanced at one another. Josef pouted. Francis looked suddenly resigned. “Oh, all right,” he said. “Have it your way.” He turned and walked away. “Nitwit.”

Josef flushed with anger, but, upon examining his prize, was once again rapturous. “Oh, this is wonderful. I'll take you up to the house immediately, and Charles can draw up the papers, and then you'll be one of us. You simply have to tell me all about Urbino, and we'll play duets together. Did you know I write music as well as play it? Poetry and essays, too. I do them in Latin, and I'm learning Greek.” He patted the book that hung from his belt. “Petrarch is my absolute idol. Only the best, you know. I'll write some duets. It'll be wonderful.”

Omelda approached, her face crestfallen, her steps so despondent that the last few were all but a shuffle. She glanced, puzzled, at Josef and Jahn, shrugged, and turned to Natil. “I didn't find anything,” she said.

Natil, feeling trapped by considerations that were uncomfortably human, shrugged. “That is quite all right,” she said softly. “I did.”

***

Eudes, the Aldernachts' chief steward, was as old and dry as an antique wardrobe that had been left in the attic for half a century; and when Josef presented his finds to him later that day, he looked at Omelda dubiously, but he examined Natil with open suspicion. “You realize,” he said, “that once you have taken a position with the Aldernacht family, you are bound to it until you are formally . . . released.”

Eudes's doubt did not equal even a small fraction of Natil's. Upon their arrival at Gold Hall, she and Omelda had been confronted with the articles of indenture that they were required to sign, and she was now wondering whether she should simply decline the position and drag Omelda off to some other city where the people were perhaps saner.

But she also doubted that there was any real sanity left anywhere. The Free Towns had fallen into petty squabbles and then into collapse, and the hereditary mayor of Saint Blaise was now as much an overlord as any baron. Saint Brigid was deserted, Castle Aurverelle had been blown to bits with artillery twenty years ago, and Shrinerock was a convent. There was nothing elven left in Adria save tales and legends.

And with a chill, she realized that there was every chance that the statement was precisely true.

Omelda was staring unabashedly at the splendid room. This was Gold Hall, and event his small office demonstrated the wealth of the Aldernachts: rosewood desk, gilt hangings, gold and silver pens and candlesticks, rows of fine leather ledgers and record books. The indentures were written upon parchment embossed at the top with the Aldernacht monogram and motto, and Charles, the Aldernacht lawyer, wore the bored but crafty expression of a man who had many other things to do, important things, things that involved money and power.

Omelda at last looked at Natil. “It's . . . wonderful.”

To Natil, it looked like a trap, but so eager was the expression on Omelda's face—eagerness being something that Natil had not often seen there—that the Elf nodded to Eudes. “I understand, sir.”

Eudes was unwilling to let the matter drop. “There was a young woman much like yourself who left the family without leave a few years . . . ago. Mister Aldernacht himself gave orders that she be pursued. She was. We eventually had two thousand mercenaries besieging . . . Kirtel.” He examined Natil dustily. “We are a very determined family, mistress Harper.”

Natil smiled. “It is a gift, I am sure.”

Eudes attempted to stare her down, failed, turned loftily to the window. “It is a virtue. It has made the Aldernachts what they are.”

Charles was growing impatient. “Well?”

Natil shrugged. Indentures were meaningless. All that was left was her word—her word to Omelda, her word to the Aldernachts—and she would keep that so long as it remained in her power to do so.

Omelda grabbed the pen and signed, then looked at Natil, waiting. After a moment, Natil signed, dipped the pen. Her signature, pinned down in black half-uncials on white parchment, looked vulnerable, brittle, human.

Eudes witnessed the documents with a quick, practiced initial. Charles rolled them up and thrust them into a leather case. “Good then,” he said in a voice that indicated that he cared little whether it was good or not. “All agreed. Congratulations to you both.”

The door opened, and Josef thrust his head into the room. The feather in his cap waved back and forth like a flag. “Finished? Wonderful!”

Eudes sniffed. “I'll see to it that they are attired more . . . appropriately.”

Josef was indignant. “Not at all Eudes. Omelda needs clothes, but I want Natil just the way she is. I think she looks wonderful. She's played in Urbino, did you know?”

Eudes cleared his throat. “I think, Master Josef, that they do not dress that way in . . . Urbino.”

“I want her just as she is!”

Charles leaned back in his chair, slowly winding a scarlet cord about the leather document case. “I have orders from Mister Jacob,” he said. Josef and Eudes fell silent immediately. “Mister Jacob is leaving for Furze tomorrow morning. He is taking Francis, a number of servants a guards, and . . .” Charles looked at Natil. “. . . a few musicians. Mistress Natil will be in charge of the latter.”

Omelda was stricken. “Tomorrow morning? What about me?”

“You have work to do in the house,” said Charles. He looked at Natil again. “You'll need Aldernacht livery. The chambermaids will see that you're supplied with it.” His lips pursed, disapprovingly. “And get rid of that feather in your hair, will you?”

Jacob Aldernacht was a wiry little ape of a man with a bald head, a square jaw, and a pair of spectacles that perched on the bridge of his sharp nose like a chip on the shoulder of a belligerent boy; and when Natil, appropriately attired in blue gown and white wrap, presented herself to him the next morning, his mouth pursed up as though he were confronted with a batch of highly dubious wool.

He was silent for the better part of a minute. About them, the courtyard of the Aldernacht house was filled with shuffling Aldernacht horses and mules, Aldernacht saddles, Aldernacht soldiers rubbing their eyes and laughing at one another's jokes in steamy puffs, and three or four Aldernacht musicians—Natil's charges—standing off together and examining their mistress just as suspiciously as Jacob Aldernacht himself.

At last the master spoke. “This was Josef's idea, wasn't it, Francis?”

Francis Aldernacht, pulling on a pair of gloves with an air of purposeful importance, looked up from wriggling a thumb into place. “Well, you know, I tried to convince him otherwise,” he said, “but he wouldn't hear of it. He took this one; and to get her, he took the other girl, too.”

The morning was cool, the sun not quite up yet, the alleys and streets of Ypris still shadowed, but Natil felt herself begin to grow warm. And since there was no starlight left with which to fight down her anger, she had to think of something else. Of music. Of a gold coin passing from the hand of an apostate nun into the hand of a beggar woman with two cold and hungry children. Of 747s and highways stretching westward into what she hoped was elven rebirth.

The flush receded even as Francis continued: “He herded them straight up to the Hall and signed them on. This one will do for a chief musician, I guess.”

Jacob glanced impatiently at his son. “Will do? Of course she'll do. Josef might be a nitwit about everything else, but he knows music.” He squinted at Natil. “Even if he can't play a note to save his life.” He laughed, squinted a little harder. “What's that in your hair?”

Natil offered a curtsy. “It is an eagle feather, Mister Jacob.”

“Where the hell did you get that?”

“Friends in a far land gave it to me.”

“China?”

Natil shook her head softly. “Farther away than that. Much farther.”

“Hmmph. You've done some traveling, I see.”

“I have.”

Jacob squinted again at the feather. “How come you don't cover your head like a proper woman?”