The Black Prince: Part II (23 page)

He clasped his hands in front of his stomach. “All are assembled.”

“The bride?”

“In her chamber.” Bossard gave Hart a look of appraisal. As though he were a horse at auction. “My Lord, you are…festive.”

Hart was dressed from head to toe in black. Not even a pelt thrown over his shoulder, lined in a crimson velvet for his house. He’d seen how men dressed for weddings in the South. Had, after all, grown up there and attended more than a few of the ghastly events. Where no one seemed the least bit contented, let alone joyful, even in those rare cases where the couple protested that it was a love match. The only wedding he’d known to truthfully
be
the result of a love match was his sister’s, and she’d looked sick and scared while the duke had looked thunderclouds.

Hart saw no reason to pretend at something he wasn’t.

“Your gloves are quite fine.”

Hart’s response was noncommittal.

“You rarely take them off.”

“I rarely see something I wish to touch.” Hart’s tone was cold.

“Rudolph insisted on attending. Informed me he would not be balked. So I drugged him.”

“And Aveline?”

Hart made no particular remark on Bossard’s latest revelation, because he wasn’t surprised. Nor did he choose any man for any position with the intent of directing that man’s every effort. Bossard had been right; Rudolph was too sick to leave his bed and too stupid to realize as much. He was so Gods be damned noble that he’d already nearly killed himself once before.

Aveline, meanwhile, was still something of a mystery. He’d seen her, running about the castle, looking perpetually like a cat that had fallen into the washbowl. She’d seemed happy, too, which was a bit of a surprise. Hart didn’t know, yet, whether this meant that she, like Bossard, truly felt liberated or whether she was unwell of mind.

“Aveline awaits you in the vestibule, along with the witnesses.”

Who were Arvid, another tribesman, and Bossard himself for Hart’s side. And Emma, Jeanette, and an older woman who appeared to be Jeanette’s former nursemaid for Solene’s. Emma was the pretty one. She’d make some man happy. Aveline was too young to serve as witness; for the marriage to be valid, all involved must have reached the age of decision.

Three witnesses for each side. The bride. The groom. The priest.

It all seemed so simple.

After the ceremony, the fact of it having occurred would be recorded in the chapel’s register.

Hart found himself studying the chimeras again.

“My Lord. Will your, ah, other wife be joining us soon?”

The look that Hart turned on him must have been truly terrifying, because Bossard immediately fell silent.

Hart turned and strode toward the door.

A
veline stood with her back to them. She appeared to be examining a reliquary, which had been displayed on a side table. A foot, copper over wood, with the relic itself mounted in gold on the bridge. Presumably a piece of some saint’s foot; reliquaries of this type were often shaped to represent what they held. The cut above the ankle was also capped in gold. The toenails appeared to be cut from some sort of rock crystal.

“You should put that down,” he said, but kindly.

She turned. “It’s really creepy.”

“It is.”

“Do your people worship misplaced tidbits of dead people?”

No, we worship the Lord of the Flies.
“No. We worship the earth, and see the Gods—our Gods—as manifestations of her power. Of our own. To us, all things, all manner of trees and other growing things, the lakes and the mountains that nourish them, are divine. And yes, men and beasts. Whom we see as equal, one to the other.”

Emma, he noticed, was giving him an appraising look. She was standing, with Jeanette, in the shadows. He wondered how long they’d been there. And what they thought about what was transpiring.

“I like that,” Aveline announced. “I think I’m going to join your religion.”

A smile quirked Emma’s lips. Jeanette looked horrified. Hart wondered, again, what he was going to do with this precocious child.

“I don’t want to worship a dead foot.” Aveline made a face.

“Aveline!” This Jeanette.

“I don’t blame you.” Hart’s tone was mild.

The door opened again and the old nurse stepped into the gloom. Hart still wasn’t clear on what her name was. She curtseyed to him politely before rushing over to liberate the reliquary from Aveline and return it to its proper place on the table.

Bossard reappeared. He’d vanished almost as soon as they’d come inside. “We should go into the chapel,” he said, “and take our places.” In response to Hart’s unasked question, “the other witnesses await you at the altar. As does Father Eric.”

Hart could only presume that the bride would be with them shortly.

The chapel was large enough, although nowhere near the size of the one at Caer Addanc. It was simpler, too: a central nave, supported on either side by arches that rested on carved columns. All the same stone within as without. The ceiling overhead was vaulted with crisscrossing wood supports. As were the ceilings of both transoms. A staircase to the left led to the upper gallery. The same gallery that could be accessed directly from the hall above. The lord and his most honored guests would be able to attend services without lowering themselves by mingling.

The chancel was separated from the rest of the chapel by a carved rail, topped by a screen. Beautiful workmanship. Beyond it, the sanctum. Where none but the priest could go.

Hart let Bossard lead him to the platform, on which the altar stood. Two steps and he was on it. Arvid and the other man, whom Arvid had selected and whom Hart did not know, were both in their uniforms. The chapel was dark, for all that there was a window in the sanctum. A large thing with stained glass panels set amongst the mullions: mouchettes and daggers and trefoil heads. Hanging lamps alone seemed to stave off utter blackness.

Appropriate, for the occasion.

Still, Hart wondered how a religion that purported to advance the notion of loving and forgiving gods could end up inspiring so much that was so…dismal.

Arvid and the other man grunted their greetings. The priest, standing before the altar with his hands pressed together like a nervous girl’s, looked like he wished the chimeras would descend from the roof and carry him off. Disembowel him. Anything, so long as he wasn’t left here.

Hart favored him with an unpleasant smile.

The women took their places. Aveline was allowed to join them. She alone seemed quite excited. Jeanette looked like she wanted to throw up, the nameless old nurse looked like she’d rather be sleeping, and Emma’s look of appraisal had transformed into one of frank invitation.

Hart might be interested, but not on his wedding night.

Arvid was giving Jeanette an equally open appraisal. And she was his type, too: soft and full-figured, with curling loops of hair the color of autumn leaves. Her gown was green. Simple, but lovely.

Hart doubted that Arvid planned to tell her, over lunch, about his wives. But then again, he wasn’t planning on going home. He, like Rudolph, had chosen to make a life at House Draca. Which, for Arvid at least, meant leaving Sigrid and the others to their own devices. The question then became whether Jeanette, who wore the unbound hair of a maiden but who assuredly clung to the teachings of the church, could be persuaded to see Arvid as anything more than a monster.

She wasn’t looking at him at all, now. At any of them. Her head had turned toward the door.

Where Solene stood.

She was flanked on either side by members of Hart’s new garrison. Ostensibly to act as an honor guard but in truth to ensure that she arrived. They’d waited outside the chapel the night before, escorted her to her room, and waited outside of that while she prepared. Hart had no clear vision of what she might do, save mount some foolhardy half-attempt at escape, but he believed in taking precautions. He could only be grateful—or not—that she’d lacked the courage to end her own life by climbing out an arrow loop and pitching headfirst into the moat.

She was wearing black.

Yellow and green were the traditional colors for a bride in Morven. In the East, Hart had heard, they wore red. Black was the color of mourning.

The color of death.

Black. Just unrelieved black. Not even a slash of color to her sleeves, or a sash about her waist. The color wasn’t especially flattering on her, either. She wore a black coif over her hair, which had been pulled back into some sort of braided bun. It, too, was entirely black.

The carried no flowers, no token of good luck. She wore no ornament, not even earrings. And her expression, as she faced them down, was glacial.

“If she means to kill,” Arvid said, “she should use arrows.”

For the longest time, she refused to move. Whether she was making a point or whether she was simply poleaxed from fear, Hart didn’t know. Finally, though, one of the guards touched her shoulder. Realizing, then, that being dragged to the altar might be even worse than walking there of her own accord, she began to move. Slowly.

Wise of her.

One step. And then another. And another.

There was no sound, save for her slippers on the stone. And breathing. Hart could hear them all breathing. The whisper of leather brushing against itself as Arvid shifted position. A small cough from Jeanette. The priest clearing his throat.

Hart reflected that, of all present, Bossard was the only one truly attired for a wedding. He looked, indeed, like he should be the groom. Why wasn’t he married? He might be fat, and less than the image of male perfection, but no more so than other men. And he was intelligent.

What made a woman want one man, and not another?

Solene took her place beside him.

After a nervous cough, and one last glance about the chapel to see if the Gods had arrived to save him, the priest began. “Dearly…beloved, ah, we are gathered here this morning in the sight of the Gods to join together this man and this woman in holy matrimony. Which is an honorable state,” he continued, “instituted of the Gods in the Celestial Kingdom. And into which, ah, honorable estate,
holy
estate, these two now enter.”

Hart glanced down at his bride. She stared fixedly forward. She was a small woman, he realized, perhaps for the first time. Not as small as Lissa but small. She only seemed great, because she was so fierce. He had a sudden vision of a squirrel chattering at a hawk, hoping its bluster would make up for its size.

“Therefore, if any man can show any just cause, why these two may
not
lawfully be joined together.” The priest paused. “By the law of the Gods, or the law of the realm, let him now speak.”

Silence.

“Or else, hereafter, forever hold his peace.”

Maeve, backed by her armies, did not break down the door. No chorus of angels descended from the heavens. The witnesses, certainly, held their tongues. And so did Solene.

The priest now addressed them directly, his gaze passing from one to the other. “And now, I require and charge you both, as you will answer for your crimes at the dreadful day of judgment. When all secrets, of all hearts, shall be disclosed. That if either of you know of any impediment, that you confess it. For be well assured that so many as be coupled together otherwise than in accordance with the Gods’ word burn in eternal damnation. For their marriage is not lawful and, thus, are they guilty of the sin of fornication.”

Which was, somehow, the worst crime against the Gods. Hart had been brought up to fear it as nothing else. Even murder.

The priest turned to Hart. “Lord Cavendish.”

It was strange, to Hart, to hear his surname being used. He, himself, had never used it. Although he had that right. He had been, after a fashion, acknowledged by his father. Or, rather, by whomever had recorded his birth in his own chapel’s register. Wherein he bore that name. Rather than a bastard’s non-name, like Hill or Moss or Glen. In Enzie, though, he’d simply been Hart. And then, in the North, he’d earned his own name as was custom there. A man might be known as the son of another man, but his own achievements were paramount.

In Barghast, the name Cavendish meant nothing. It described no familial connection, it celebrated no battles. Those members of the Morvish court who’d put down roots in the wilds of the North still had Morvish names, of course, but they were never used. Tristan was hailed, and proudly, as the Demon. The Demon of Darkling Reach. Isla had quickly become Isla the Fair, for her unfailingly kind demeanor. Even Asher, as little as he was, was popular enough to have earned a name. The Little Prince. Sometimes the Black Prince, in reference to that strange similarity of mood he shared with his father.

Their late and largely unlamented king had come to be known as Brandon the Accursed.

Piers was the Reformer, and to some the Soldier-King.

Hart nodded.

“Will you have this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife, to live together after the manner prescribed to us, by the Gods, in scripture? Will you love her, comfort her, honor her and keep her, in sickness and in health and, forsaking all others, keep your body only unto hers, for as long as you both shall live?”