The Bitterbynde Trilogy (73 page)

A marble washstand held a matching toiletry set. There was a pair of highly decorated enameled porcelain globes on high foot-rims, pierced all over to allow moisture to drain and evaporate. One contained scented soaps, the other a sponge. These were accompanied by somewhat superfluous porcelain soap stands, soap dishes and soap trays, ewers, jars, pots, candle-branches, and a vase overflowing with hothouse-forced snowdrop blossoms. Incongruously, a shoehorn lay on the floor. Made of pewter, it was mounted in ivory with carved and inlaid handles in the shape of herons.

The lady's maid spoke. ‘Wishest donna mine that sas pettibob shouldst lollo betrial?'

‘I beg your pardon?'

The girl repeated her strange sentence, twisting a fold of her skirt in her fingers, gazing hopefully at her new mistress.

‘I don't know what you are talking abdut. Please speak the common tongue.'

The girl's face fell. ‘Forgive me, m'lady. Methought Your Ladyship might like to practice slingua for this night. I asked only whether Your Ladyship would like me to test the bathwater.'

‘Slingua?'

‘Yes, m'lady—courtingle, some name it, or court-speak. Lower ranks call it jingle-jangle. Does Your Ladyship not have it?'

‘No, I do not have such palaver.'

It had sounded like childish babble, yet the girl seemed to hold great store by it. Could that curious string of quasi-words be part of the social fabric of Court?

‘I will bathe now.'

By this phrase, Rohain had meant to indicate that this Viviana should leave her alone. Instead, the girl stepped forward.

‘Let me unfasten Your Ladyship's girdle—'

‘No! I can do it myself. Leave me!'

With a look of despair, the lady's maid rushed from the room. Rohain's conscience was stricken. The girl had only been trying to do her duty as she saw it—but how annoying and confusing it all was! Rohain almost wished herself back in the woods with Sianadh and the wights. Existence had seemed simpler then: it was life or death—none of these perplexing customs and slangish vernacular.

A sound of stifled sobs emanated from the outer room.

What a featherbrain of a girl! Fancy having nothing better to cry about than a sharp word from her mistress! To one who had faced the Direath and the Beithir, it all seemed so superficial.

Rohain removed her girdle of leather and filigree, and struggled' with the gown's difficult fastenings. Presently she peered around the door.

‘Viviana, will you help me unlace?'

The lady's maid came willingly, red-eyed. Together they battled the endless buttons, the petticoats, the pinching, mincing little shoes.

Timidly: ‘Does my lady wish that I should soap her back!'

‘No. I bathe alone.'
Providence forbid that the girl should see the whiplash-scars
.

Nervously: ‘Then shall I lay out Her Ladyship's raiment for the evening?'

‘I have no other clothes—only what you see.'

The girl's face crumpled as though she were about to cry again.

Rohain gathered her wits and said quickly, ‘Naturally, I shall require a more extensive wardrobe. You must soon expedite some purchases on my behalf.'
It is fortunate that so much money remains to me from the sale of the emerald
.

The servant picked up her skirts and effected a dismal bob of acknowledgment.

Beyond the walls, the wind wailed.

Bathed and dressed, Rohain sat before a many-mirrored dressing-table in which she could scarcely recognise herself, while Viviana brushed out her coal-black locks. The courtier was subdued, doleful. Recalling only too well her own servitude, Rohain's heart went out to her. Anthills could appear to be mountains if one were an ant oneself, condemned to live among them daily. Softly, she said, ‘I come from a faraway place where Court customs and ways are not known. This seems to trouble you. Why so?'

‘Indeed, my lady!' Viviana blurted out. ‘It troubles me, more than all the wights in Aia, because it will trouble you, my mistress!'

‘Why should my tribulations be yours?'

‘As I am your servant, your standing reflects on me. I shall suffer for it.'

‘You speak with honesty, if not tact. How shall my plain manners trouble me?'

Viviana spoke earnestly. ‘My lady, there is a way of going on that is not commissioned by those holding office, yet it has grown up in our midst. Here at Court, there is a self-styled elite Set or Circle. The Royal Family and the dukes and duchesses are not part of this courtiers' game, but many nobles below the degree of duke are counted Within the Set or Out of it, with the exception of the very old and the very young. If one is regarded as being Within the Set, one must fight to retain one's hold, for if one is Cut, which means cast Out, there is little chance of regaining one's place.'

‘Is it so terrible, to be Out of this Set?'

‘Indeed, I would say that life is scarcely worth living! Until she witnesses with her own eyes, my lady will not know of what I speak. But by then it may be too late. If my lady is not included in the Set, she will want to leave Court and then I shall be sent back to be maidservant to the unmitigable Dowager Marchioness of Netherby-on-the-Fens! I'd as lief die, in honesty. 'Tis unspeakable, the manner in which the Marchioness treats us. She is continually finding fault and slapping us with her broad and pitiless hand.'

Rohain assimilated this information, staring unseeing into the mirror.

‘Tell me more.'

‘My lady, as the daughter of an earl, you shall be seated amid the cream of the Set at table tonight—the very paragons of Court etiquette.'

‘What makes you think I am the daughter of an earl?'

‘Oh, simply that your finger displays no wedding band, ma'am—despite that I caught a rumour you were a widow—and to be called by the title of “Lady”, you must be the daughter of at least an earl, a marquess, or a duke. Yet since the name Tarrenys is not familiar at Court, methought it must be an earl, begging your pardon, Your Ladyship.'

This was encouraging. Viviana possessed a certain acuity of mind, then, despite her frail emotional state. It seemed that during her stay at Court, no matter how brief, Rohain would need an ally. She studied the lady's maid in the mirror, seeing a rounded, dimpled face, a turned-up nose, a spot of colour on each cheek, hazel eyes with brown lashes that did not match the bleached hair. A pretty lass, Viviana was clad in a houppelande of sky-blue velvet, with a girdle of stiffened wigan. In addition to the girdle, her waist was encircled by one of the popular accoutrements known as a chatelaine, from which depended fine chains attached to a vast assortment of compact and useful articles such as scissors, needle-cases, and buttonhooks.

‘And I reckoned that my lady came from a faraway place,' the girl chattered on, wielding the hairbrush, ‘because of the way m'lady thanked the Duke for his dinner invitation.'

Rohain swiveled in alarm.

‘Said I something incorrect?'

‘Yea, verily, m'lady. A dinner invitation from a duke is a command. One must reply, “I thank Your Grace for the kind invitation and have the honour to obey Your Grace's command.” I don't know what he thought, forsooth, but likely the lack of form did not irk him, for those of the Royal Attriod are above such matters.'

‘But you say that I will be scorned and reviled by others if I am ignorant of these complicated forms of etiquette?'

‘In no small measure, m'lady! The cream of the Set can hang, draw, and quarter the ignorant, in a manner of speaking. Those they have scathed never prosper in Society. But 'tis not merely the forms of address and the slingua—'tis the table manners and all. Entire libraries could be devoted to them. Coming from a high-born family, Your Ladyship will have all the table manners, I'll warrant.'

‘Not necessarily.'

Unbidden, images formed in Rohain's mind; the table at Ethlinn's house—everyone seated around, plucking food from a communal dish with their hands and wiping their greasy fingers on the tablecloth; Sianadh clutching a joint of meat in his fist and tearing at it with his teeth; thick bread trenchers used as plates, to soak up the gravies and juices and to be eaten last.

Rohain chewed her lip. To be catapulted from shame to glory and back to shame would be more than she could bear. And what if Thorn should attend this dinner, to witness her humiliation?

‘Do the Dainnan attend the Royal Dining Hall?'

‘Sometimes, m'lady, when they do not dine in their own hall.'

‘Are you acquainted with any of the Dainnan?'

‘Not I, m'lady.'

‘Viviana, why do the noble courtiers insist upon this? These dialects, these intricate manners you hint at—why are they necessary?'

‘Marry, I vouch it is to show how clever they are, how much they deserve their station because they are privy to secrets of which the commoners know naught. Yet again, those of the highest degree do not concern themselves with slingua and such codes—they do not have to prove themselves worthy.'

‘Viviana, you are wise. I believe I have misjudged you. Teach me, that I may not be made an outcast this night.'

‘My lady, there is no time!' From somewhere down the labyrinths of corridors, a hum mounted to a reverberating crescendo—the sounding of a gong. ‘It is the dinner gong! In a few moments, a footman shall come to escort Your Ladyship to dinner. And then we are both ruined!'

‘Calm yourself. Listen, you must help me. When I go to the table, stay beside me at all times. I will do as others do. Prompt me if I err.'

‘But my lady's hair is not yet coiffed appropriately!'

‘Shall I wear the headdress to conceal it?'

‘No, no—that design is not suitable for evening wear.'

‘Then attend to my hair.'

‘It will take long—'

‘Nonsense! Do the best you can. We have moments, do we not?'

‘Verily, m'lady.'

Determinedly, Viviana swapped the hairbrush for a polished jarrahwood styling-brush inlaid with coloured enamels, its porcelain handle knopped with crystals. She twisted the heavy tresses, looping some of them high on her mistress's head. Securing them with one hand, she fumbled at the legion of assorted knickknack boxes, bottles, and jars set out on the dressing-table, fashioned from silver, ivory, wood, and porcelain. Rohain lifted a few lids, unscrewed several caps, to reveal pink and white powders, black paste, pastilles, gloves, buttons, buttonhooks, ribbons, decorative combs of bone, horn, or brass inlaid with tortoiseshell, silver pique barrettes, enameled butterfly clasps, scented essences, aromatic substances.

‘What seek you?' Rohain winced in pain as Viviana in her haste tweaked a strand of hair.

‘I seek pins for the coiffure.'

A carved ivory box fell open, spewing jeweled pins. Viviana snatched them up and began thrusting them ruthlessly into Rohain's cloud of curls.

‘Ouch!'

‘Forgive me …'

‘What is the purpose of these paints?'

‘They are for the beautification of the face. Kohl for the eyes, creams and coloured powders for the skin; rouge made from safflowers …'

Suddenly panicking, Rohain clapped her hands to her cheeks. In the looking-glass, her new visage had seemed unobjectionable to her, but how could she be certain that this was not merely wishful thinking? Her heart began hammering.

‘Should I be using them?'

‘Many courtiers do, but you need not, m'lady.'

‘Why not, if 'tis what others do? My face—is it acceptable? Tell me truly!'

‘My lady already has the look that others wish to achieve—she needs no paint.'

‘What do you mean?'

Viviana halted her furious burst of hairdressing activity and planted her hands on her hips.

‘Does my lady jest?'

‘No. I do not jest. I wish you to tell me if my features are acceptable. Tell me now, and if they are not, I will not venture into that Hall this night, command or no command.' Butterflies roiled in Rohain's stomach.

A loud rapping at the door startled them both. A voice called out imperatively.

‘Yes, m'lady, yes they are!' Viviana squeaked hastily. ‘Quickly—to be late for dinner is an unpardonable lapse. M'lady would be Out before the first forkful.'

‘Then let us go.'

The decoratively painted plaster walls of the great Royal Dining Hall, here and there covered with tapestries, soared to elaborately carved cornices and a domed, frescoed ceiling. Six fireplaces, three on either side, threw out enough warmth to fill its vaulted immensity. In a high gallery a trumpeter stood like a stalagmite dripped from the plaster ceiling plaques and chandeliers. He was one of the Royal Waits, wearing scarlet livery and the ceremonial chain of silver roses and pomegranates.

Along the walls, edifices of polished wooden shelves lit by mirror-backed girandoles displayed ornamental silverware, tempting platters heaped with fruits and cakes, covered cheese dishes disguised as little milk churns or cottages, silver chafing dishes with ivory handles, and glowing braziers of pierced brass ready to warm food. Liveried butlers and under-butlers stood at attention beside every board. Broad trestles ran down the length of the Hall, draped with pure white damask cloths, lozenge-patterned. The High Table, set up at right angles to this, stood upon a dais at one end. Its snowy wastes were bare of tableware, save for a quartet of surtouts, the seasons personified; grand sculptures in silver-gilt. Spring, her hair garlanded with blossom, caught butterflies. Summer, laurel-wreathed, held out her dainty hand for a perching lark. Autumn, twined with grapevines, dreamed by a corn-sheaf, and Winter, crowned with holly, danced. Candlelight glittered softly from their frozen glory.

The long tables, loaded with dinner service, made the High seem by comparison austere. A myriad white beeswax candles in branched candelabra reflected in fanciful epergnes of crystal or silvered basketwork, golden salvers lifted on pedestals and filled with sweetmeats or condiments, sets of silver spice-casters elaborately gadrooned, their fretted lids decorated with intricately pierced patterns, crystal cruets of herbal vinegars and oils, porcelain mustard pots with a blue underglaze motif of starfish, oval dish-supports with heating-lamps underneath, mirrored plateaux and low clusters of realistic flowers and leaves made from silk.