The Fell Sword (57 page)

Jehan smiled. He turned to Ser Milus, and whispered something.

Milus grinned at everyone. ‘Suddenly, everything makes sense,’ he said.

‘Do you dance?’ the Red Knight asked the princess.

She looked at him.

‘I gather that was a foolish question,’ he said. ‘But as you are incognito, I assume I can ask you direct questions and get direct answers, so let’s start small. What are you doing here?’

She rose. ‘Dancing,’ she said. ‘I confess that I’ve never danced in public with a mercenary.’

He nodded and pursed his lips. ‘It’s not as hard as it looks,’ he said.

‘I cannot get over the quality of your Archaic,’ she said, as they moved out from the tables. Just at the edge of the Red Knight’s peripheral vision, the Patriarch started – sat up, turned his head, and said something that caused the young priest next to him to turn his head suddenly too.

He smiled down at her. ‘I learned it right here,’ he said. ‘Or rather, I learned it at home from my tutor, and then practised here.’

‘The Academy?’ she asked.

‘No,’ he said enigmatically.

The musicians obviously knew who she was. There was some discordant fumbling.

‘Can
you
dance?’ she asked.

‘No,’ he said, smiling brilliantly.

One of the street musicians appeared at his elbow. He had a hat in his hands, and his hands were shaking. ‘My lord. We— What— That is . . . what should we play?’ he finally got out.

The Red Knight – he refused to play the Megas Ducas tonight – bowed to his lady. ‘Whatever the lady asks for,’ he said.

Every Morean within earshot sighed with relief.

Zoe raised her fan to cover most of her face, but allowed the musician some little bit of her smile, which was quite real. ‘Something fast,’ she said. She turned graciously to the brides, who stood by with their new husbands. ‘Anything they ask for. You are the ladies of this merry meeting, not I.’

Kaitlin curtsied and then grinned impishly. ‘Well—’ She grinned at Despoina Helena. ‘We have practised a Morean dance, and it’s fast,’ she said. ‘Let’s dance a
Moresca.
’

A few couples away Lady Maria gasped, and her son winced.

She leaned over to her son and said, very softly, ‘What have you done?’

He stood his ground. ‘What
you
told me to do.’

The music was fast. Almost a third of the couples and interested bystanders hurried off the wooden floor as soon as the music began – a combination of Albans who needed to see the dance, and Moreans who feared it.

Bad Tom and Sauce were not one of those retreating couples.

She looked up at him – not as far as other women. ‘You know this?’ she asked.

‘No,’ he said cheerfully. ‘You?’

She shook her head and laughed. ‘Just what I needed,’ she said. ‘A fearless partner.’

Mostly – with a few exceptions – the gentry of Morea and Alba shared some common tastes. The gentry often danced stately processions, in couples, or pairs of couples – while the lower orders usually danced in groups, in rings.

The dance that followed didn’t fit well into either category. It featured pairs who turned with each other – not a horrifying innovation, but a daring one. It was obvious that Lady Kaitlin and Ser Michael knew the dance, and had practised with the Morean couple.

In the best traditions of weddings, and women who loved to dance, the two couples danced all the figures alone, first.

When Giorgios picked Helena up and whirled her in the air, Zoe nodded and a tiny smile played at the corners of her lips. ‘Ahh,’ she said, very softly.

They turned outwards from one another and clapped – their time was perfect – and the music swept them on – around, turn, clap, around, together . . .

Everyone applauded. The servants applauded, even the drunks applauded – they were that good. Kaitlin burst into tears and grinned at her husband. Helena threw her head back in delight.

Sauce looked at Tom. ‘Got that?’

He nodded sharply, like a man going into action. ‘Got it.’

John le Bailli looked down at Mag. ‘Perhaps we should sit this out?’ he attempted.

‘Nonsense,’ she said. ‘Men like you have been finding excuses not to dance since the fall of Troy.’

Harald Derkensun dragged Anna by the hand to the centre of the temporary wooden floor.

‘I can’t dance on the same floor as the Empress!’ Anna protested.

But she pivoted on her toes as she said it.

A dark-eyed young woman with plucked brows and a severe, elegant face cleared her throat just behind Morgan Mortirmir. He had a cup in his hand – he’d thought of asking Anna, but he couldn’t, and he’d obviously been right. She looked very happy with Harald.

He turned and looked at the young woman by his shoulder.

She raised an eyebrow.

He turned back to the dancers and she kicked his ankle lightly. ‘Hey, Plague,’ she said.

His head shot around fast enough to leave his eyebrows behind.

He mustered up every shred of composure he had. ‘Would, um . . would you?’ he asked. He bowed.

She sighed. ‘Blessed Virgin,’ she said, not at all piously, and pretended to follow him onto the dance floor while in fact leading him. ‘If the princess can dance with a barbarian, I suspect it’s all the fashion.’

‘I don’t . . . dance,’ Mortirmir managed to say, as the music began.

‘Tap your foot to the music and look elegant,’ she said, rising on her toes. ‘I’ll do the dancing.’

‘You’re a nun!’ he said.

She frowned. ‘You
are
an ignorant barbarian,’ she said.

The Patriarch indicated the young Alban mage in training to Father Arnaud. The Hospitaller nodded. The young woman danced beautifully, and the young man was – literally – suffused with light. He lit the centre of the dance floor, and she danced around him as if he was a lantern. It couldn’t last, and eventually he had to move, but the effect was done well and the two laughed together when he stumbled.

But the Patriarch watched the princess as she went by – first in a ring of women, inside a ring of men, and then outside the ring of men after a complex passage of hands, and then the men shot off into the near darkness and the women danced; the women went off and the men danced, more brightly lit by young Mortirmir than by the torches. The two sexes formed chains, and the chains intertwined – leaned to the left, leaned to the right, shot around, with women’s legs and men’s legs flashing out. Then the women leaped and the men caught them.

The Red Knight turned a full circle with the Emperor’s daughter held high above his head.

The Patriarch sat back suddenly, and then frowned, and held up his cup for more wine.

They danced for four hours. They danced until most of the men and women who fought for a living were as sober as when they had started, and as tired as if they’d fought a battle. They’d danced in lines and circles and pairs and fours and eights and every figure known to Alba, Galle, and Morea. Count Zac and his officers demonstrated Eastern dances, and the Red Knight and his officers had to try them. Bad Tom fell full length trying to kick out his legs, and laughed at his own antics, and Sauce clapped her hands and imitated the Easterners only to discover that it was a man’s dance. But Count Zac put an arm around her shoulders and they drank together, and went on to another dance, and later, she went and caught Milus and Jehan by the hands and dragged them across the great circle of watchers – off-duty Ordinaries, female students from the Academy, and other unattached women.

With unerring professional sense, she marched the two knights to a gaggle of Anna’s friends and peers who had made their way in under various pretences.

‘Gentlemen, these women are whores. Ladies, these gentlemen are shy.’ She grinned to show she meant no harm, but one of the harder women took offence anyway.

‘Who you calling whore, bitch?’ she said.

Sauce smiled. ‘I was one, honey. I know the look.’

‘Really?’ the other woman said. ‘And now what are you?’

‘Now I’m a knight,’ Sauce said. Count Zac was making eyes at her, and she walked away.

Ser Jehan looked down into the deep brown eyes of his sudden new friend. ‘Is she really a knight?’ the girl asked.

‘She really is,’ Ser Jehan agreed. And then he was dancing.

The Red Knight and Zoe danced – on and on. Once they stopped when the Ordinaries came like an avenging army bearing ice – actual ice from the mountains. The Red Knight met them well across the floor, asked who had sent the ice, and then took her some, and watched her eat it.

And again, when the servants came with a bubbly purple wine, he swept her across the floor to see that she had the very first glass.

Everyone commented on how attentive he was.

Wilful Murder sat back and drank his fifteenth jack of cider. He glared at Cully. ‘Thin,’ he said.

Cully rolled his eyes. ‘Not hardly,’ he said. ‘It’s just – different. Sweeter?’ he asked the air.

‘Mark my words,’ Wilful said. ‘He’s going to march us all somewhere horrible in the morning. This whole party was nothing but a cover – we’re going after the false Duke.’

Cully made a face, and shook his head. ‘We won’t have ten men fit for service in the morning,’ he said.

‘Mark my words,’ Wilful said, and belched carefully.

The Red Knight escorted the mysterious Lady Zoe all the way to her door. If he noticed that six heavily scarred Nordikans shadowed them every step through the palace, he didn’t pay them any apparent heed. If he noticed his own Ser Alcaeus or his mother Lady Maria or a long train of Imperial ladies dressed as Ordinaries – all breathless and a few perhaps a little more than breathless – following them along the marbled corridors, he said nothing.

At the doors to the Imperial apartments, he bowed over her hand, not quite touching it with his lips.

She smiled. ‘I expected more boldness from the famous warrior,’ she said.

‘I’m only really bold when I’m paid,’ he said, pressing her hand. ‘Nor do I think that the audience is apt to the purpose,’ he said softly.

She looked into the gloom of the long corridor and gave a sudden start. ‘Ah,’ she said, and vanished into the Imperial apartments. He had a glimpse of serried ranks of maids waiting to take her clothes, and a whiff of perfume, and then the door was closed in his face.

A young shepherd boy stood and gawped at the guard post on the Thrake road. There were twenty of Duke Andronicus’s soldiers, a pair of armoured noblemen, and six Easterners with horn bows. The boy ate an apple and then led his sheep through the roadblock. He was dumb, and made a pantomime of it, and the men laughed gruffly, took two of his sheep for dinner, and promised to beat him if he made a fuss.

He shuffled off to stand on the next hillside, watching them.

A wagon rolled up to the post in the last light of the sun.

The shepherd boy reached into the grass and fetched out a javelin, and then another, and then a sword.

Just as the wagon – a butcher from the city – was clearing the roadblock there was the sound of hoof beats. The men at the roadblock sprang to arms, but it was all too fast, and they were captured or dead in a matter of moments.

The Easterners covering the roadblock, all hardbitten steppe men under a khan, didn’t fight. They ran north, having been mounted.

The shepherd boy and a dozen other men and women who’d passed the roadblock in the last two days fell on the Easterners and the wagon, taking two prisoners and killing the rest.

Daniel Favour trotted down the hill after cleaning his spear on the dead man’s cloak and taking his purse, to find Gelfred sitting on his horse on the road in the fading light.

Gelfred nodded. ‘Well done,’ he said.

Daniel grinned. ‘I thought they was going to beat me. And I was wondering how long I’d take it before I fought back.’ He shrugged.

Gelfred nodded. ‘I did some praying,’ he admitted.

‘You see the wagon that got through?’ Favour asked.

Gelfred nodded. ‘He had a pass. I’ll question him separately.’

Two hours later, the Duke sat with Alcaeus and Father Arnaud, playing music in the yard. A handful of diehards were still dancing, including a remarkably bedraggled Ser Jehan and a very young Morean girl.

‘Will you fall in love with her?’ the poet asked.

‘Are you asking the Red Knight or the Megas Ducas?’ the possessor of both titles asked.

‘Surely you are a man, with a man’s appetites and a man’s desires, and not a pair of empty titles and a suit of armour,’ Alcaeus said. ‘Christos, I’m drunk. Ignore me.’

Father Arnaud watched him like the conscience most of his men assumed he didn’t have. ‘Do you fine gentlemen know
Et non est qui adjuvet
, by any chance?’ he asked.

They played it, and then they all drank wine. People applauded.

‘She’s watching you from the Library,’ Father Arnaud said.

Ser Gavin appeared with a small drum. ‘If I play, am I allowed in the club?’ he asked.

‘A drum?’ his brother asked.

‘It looks easy enough.’ Gavin laughed.

‘Anyway, you don’t need an instrument to join. You need only be celibate,’ Alcaeus said.

Father Arnaud spat some of his wine. He drank a little more, wiped his chin, and shook his head.

‘Someone choose a song,’ the Captain said.

‘It’s your turn,’ Alcaeus insisted.

‘ “
Tant Doucement
”?’ asked the Captain.

‘Must we?’ asked the priest.

‘You don’t love her?’ Alcaeus asked.

‘Who, the princess?’ asked Gavin. ‘My brother is very particular. He probably has his heart set on—’

The elbow in his ribs was not brotherly, and he was unprepared for it. ‘What the
fuck
!’ he said in a distinctly unchivalrous and quite believably brotherly way.

‘My brother was going to say that I had my heart set on the priesthood, but they insisted that I love God, and there’s things I just can’t lie about,’ he said.

Father Arnaud looked away.

‘You are an evil bastard,’ Gavin said, and he laughed and slapped his brother on the back.

The Captain took a deep breath. ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘I am.’ He turned on his heel and walked away.