The Golden Princess: A Novel of the Change (Change Series) (40 page)

The black-and-white birds were resting on T-poles driven into the dirt by the varlets, with their yellow taloned feet clutching the perches to which their jesses were tied and their hooded heads hunched between their shoulders, doing the Prairie Falcon equivalent of a post-prandial nap-and-belch on a couch after a good meal.

Raptors like these falcons were solitary by nature; they didn’t even like each other except in the mating season, much less humans. All you could teach them was that doing what humans wanted would get them more of what
they
wanted, which was to kill, eat, mate and sleep.

“Might as well be men-at-arms,” Heuradys said with a chuckle, and explained her reasoning. “Though at least falcons don’t drink booze.”

Everyone else laughed as well. The hobbled horses grazed contentedly, since this was the equine version of being turned loose in a field of pies and pastries, with one of the younger grooms keeping an eye on them to make sure they didn’t overeat and bloat. The nobles and the Crown Princess had a basket with sandwiches and pear tarts, and a flask of Montinore pinot noir wrapped in wet woven straw to keep it cool, with a striped alpaca-wool blanket to spread on the sweet-smelling clover and ryegrass. Birds were mostly absent—prey species had absolutely no doubt what a falcon’s outline meant—but bees buzzed about, butterflies with white-rimmed blue or bright orange wings fluttered, and clouds drifted in the fleecy sky.

She took a bite of the sandwich, and smiled as she chewed. Old Goodwife Pernelle in the kitchens knew her tastes; thin slices of roast pork loin with a strong-tasting cheese, capers, onion chutney and mayonnaise on crusty rolls fresh that morning.

With lettuce just plucked from the manor gardens, for the crunchy.

Heuradys strongly suspected they were going to be on plain field rations again soon and lucky to get that, and was determined to enjoy this while she could. When she’d finished the pear tart she untucked the napkin from the collar of her jacket, adjusted her Montero hat with the peacock feather, and cleared her throat.

“The yield? With your permission, gentlemen.”

“By all means, Lady Heuradys,” Aleaume said, and Droyn murmured agreement.

It was pro-forma, considering that both were guests of Barony Ath, but manners counted and you had to consult your fellow-hawkers before disposing of the kill. She called to the falconer.

“Corbus!”

Corbus Cornelli was a lean brown-haired man in his thirties in huntsman’s green suede leather, wearing a huntsman’s falchion at his waist and the heavy gauntlet of his calling on his left hand.

“My lady?” he said, rising to approach the nobles and then doffing his hat and bowing.

“The turkey to you and your family, goodman. The pheasants to Father Abrahil.”

She nodded to the westward, where the spire of the church just showed over tree and hedgerow to mark the location of the village of Montinore. The parish priest would distribute the birds—probably in the form of soup—to the needy, mostly the ill and the aged without close kin. If he also had a pleasant Saturday dinner of roast pheasant out of it, that was perfectly acceptable. A village priest was usually a peasant himself, some bright pious lad selected for a few years of higher education by his predecessor, who’d often been his uncle or second cousin. Most lived rather plainly and they had a close touch on the pulse of commons; a wise lord took care not to alienate them.

And it never hurts for us in particular to make a goodwill gesture to the Church. Pagan lords aren’t so common we can afford to be needlessly brusque.

“Thank you, my lady!” Corbus said. “Shall we see the birds back to the mews?”

“By all means, we won’t be flying them again today. They’ve been gorged rather heavily for that.”

“So they have, my lady. It’s worth the trouble to feed them from the hand after a kill. You can’t make a falcon love you, but you
can
convince its little bird brain that sitting on your glove means a full croup.”

“Unless it’s a Harris Hawk.”

He snorted slightly. “Well, if you’re a beginner, they’ll do, my lady. Though they tend to breed unrealistic expectations for
real
falcons.”

Harris Hawks were the only raptors that hunted cooperatively in packs, up to a dozen birds at a time, like wolves with wings. Sometimes you’d see them standing on each other’s backs in stacks four deep atop a rock or tree to get a better look-out. They liked each other, and were affectionate to their human handlers if well-raised from chicks.

“They’re very agile, particularly with ground game,” Heuradys observed.

“Yes, but a Harris keeps trying to lick your hands and cock a leg to pee, my lady,” Corbus said with conviction.

“Ah, goodman, you’re a purist like my lady mother! See to it, then.”

Órlaith rose, an unconsciously supple motion of foot and knee without touching her hands to the ground.

“Come, walk with us, messires,” she said to Aleaume and Droyn.

The four of them strolled along the hedgerow, theoretically admiring the last of the hawthorn blossoms.

“First, I must have your oaths that you will not repeat what I’m about to say,” Órlaith said gravely, bending to smell a flower. “Please, think carefully, because you may be asked to violate any such oath by . . . highly placed people.”

Because her mother takes oaths seriously; but she also takes her children very seriously indeed. And Orrey’s
not
carrying the Sword right now . . . which as a gesture of trust is beyond tactful, it’s so reckless it’s cunning. Damn, but she
is
good at this!

Conflicts of fealty and oath—often tragic ones—were of course the staple of modern literature in the north-realm; they were how a troubadour put some dramatic tension in. Protectorate society
ran
on oaths, and they were important in many other parts of Montival too, if not quite so
overwhelmingly or accompanied with so much ritual. The young noblemen looked at Órlaith, then at each other, then shared a single sharp nod. Then they crossed themselves, kissed their crucifixes, and murmured the form of the oath. After that they were quietly alert. Using falconry as a cover for intrigue was
also
a staple of the troubadour’s art, for the simple reason that it was a good way to have a thoroughly private conversation for unimpeachable reasons.

“Gentlemen, this has to do with why my father was killed—who was responsible, and what has to be done to frustrate their plots and begin avenging him. Also to assist our guest, Her Majesty of Nihon, who suffered the same loss as I, from the same foes, and who needs gallant swords about her now. Are we to leave all the honor and burden of that to her own vassals? I intend to help her on the search which brought her to us, and which her enemies and ours are trying their best to frustrate. There is no time for the ponderous official mechanisms of State. We must out steel and strike.”

Well, dang, I can
feel
the chivalry boiling up inside ’em,
Heuradys thought as Órlaith filled in the details, complete with prophetic dreams.

It was right out of a
chanson
, a princess in need of brave and faithful knights, with
another
beautiful monarch, an exotic quasi-exiled foreign one at that, and a holy relic to sweeten the appeal.

I can feel it in myself, for that matter.

Aleaume evidently had more control over his reflexes than Droyon, who was bursting with eagerness to volunteer as knight-errant.

Or squire-errant,
she thought.
Though if he goes on this quest and survives, the accolade is a certainty. Though-the-second, he’s the son of a Count, and he’d be knighted in a year or two anyway. Plus he’s six years younger than Aleaume, which has to make a difference. Girls become women faster than men stop being boys.

“Your Highness . . . am I to understand that your mother . . . Her Majesty . . . has forbidden this?” Aleaume said heavily.

“Not in the least,” Órlaith said. “She hasn’t been informed, yes, that’s true enough.”

He winced. “Better to seek forgiveness than permission, then?”

Droyon cut in: “Her Majesty High Queen Mathilda herself did much
the same thing when she was Her Highness’ age, Sir Aleaume. Against the express wishes of
her
mother, the Lady Regent Sandra.”

Aleaume acknowledged that with a gesture; it probably also acknowledged that the High Queen was much less likely to have him killed for disobedience than her terrible, smiling mother would have been. Though quite likely to give you a memorable tongue-lashing, or to inflict whatever penalty strict law allowed. Far less to arrange an untraceable tragic accident or have a challenge issued by someone like Tiphaine d’Ath in her dreadful deadly prime. The Lady Regent Sandra had been known in her lifetime as the Spider of the Silver Tower, and for good reason.

They paced along in silence for some distance, until the lancers and mounted crossbowmen of the knight’s little detachment turned and kept pace with them at a suitable distance. His brow was knotted.

“This is very difficult, Your Highness,” he said at last. “There is a conflict of loyalties here. I am of the Protector’s Guard, and your mother is the Lady Protector. You are not; you are also not her heir to
that
position.”

“Your honor is your own to judge, Sir Aleaume,” Órlaith said gravely. “And a knight has no more important duty. I will inform you that my brother John—who
is
heir to the Lord Protector’s chair—is with me in this, actively. He will accompany us. As a matter of fact, he’s off seeing to our transportation and supplies this very day. Successfully, I might add. All will be in readiness in Newport; a fast ship with good captain and crew, money, supplies. Otherwise I would not seek to take this forward.”

His eyebrows went up. He nodded and said approvingly:

“You are moving quickly, Your Highness.”

“There is no other way, if it is to be done at all.”

They walked on for a few paces, and then she continued:

“Tell me, do you remember my father and mother’s visit to your home during the Prophet’s War, when the County Palatine was being liberated? You would have been very young then . . . and I was conceived but unborn.”

The red-haired knight grinned, looking far more relaxed. “Yes, Your Highness, I most certainly do! I was just six—I remember the siege of our
castle at St. Grimmond-on-the-Wold. My mother and Captain Grifflet held it, while my father led our men in harassing the invaders.”

“Sharp memory, for a six-year-old!”

Aleaume laughed. “What I mostly recall is being allowed to pull the lanyard on a catapult, and our soldiers grinning and cheering every time I did. And yes, that wonderful day! Seeing my father again after months, the foe in flight, the news of the great victory at the Horse Heaven Hills . . . and then the High King came, like a paladin of old, like Roland or Huon or
Ogier le Danois
or Arthur himself. He knelt and let me put my hand upon the Sword, and told me of how he’d gained it, and spoke to me . . . I didn’t understand it all, but I swore then to be his knight and fight for him as my father had! I don’t remember much from that long ago, but
that
memory has never left me.”

Órlaith nodded. Heuradys knew the story; she’d heard Rudi Mackenzie telling it to his daughter at a campfire once. She’d been charmed at the time; it summed up all the romance of being an Associate.

“And what did my father say to that?” the Crown Princess asked.

“He said if I was as brave and true a knight as my father I would indeed be welcome at his side. Or . . .”

He slowed, and then turned and looked at her. “Or at the side of his daughter who was to be born that year, who would need such knights.”

She waited, and after a long moment he nodded and went to his knees, looking up at her and holding his hands out with the palms pressed together. She took them between hers, and Droyn and Heuradys moved instinctively to stand between them and any onlookers and to act as witnesses—an oath was a legal act, and required observers who could swear they had seen it done in due form.

“I, Aleaume son of Maugis, of the House of Grimmond, a knight of the Association and the High Kingdom, pledge myself as vassal-at-arms to Crown Princess Órlaith of the House of Artos. I shall be your man, of life and limb and all earthly worship. To you I pledge fealty and obedience unto my death or the ending of the world. Your enemies shall be mine and your friends likewise, and all my aid and help be yours, with goods and sword and counsel. So I swear by God the Father, Son and
Holy Ghost; by the most holy Virgin Mother of God; and by the especial patron of my House, St. Joan of the Bow; and on my honor as a knight.”

Heuradys swallowed, for she knew the man meant exactly what he said. The moment was intensely solemn; there were times when you didn’t need something like the Sword of the Lady to tell when someone was binding themselves with chains of faithfulness like bands of adamant around the soul. Órlaith’s voice was equally grave.

“I, Órlaith daughter of Artos, of the House of Artos and the Royal kin of Montival, accept your fealty, Aleaume de Grimmond of the House of Grimmond. I shall be your liege-lady; to you I pledge fair justice and good lordship and all the aids due a vassal-at-arms, and my protection to you and yours. I will hold your honor as precious as my own, and whoso does you wrong does also the same to me, and at their peril. This I swear by Sea and Earth and Sky; by the Sword of the Lady and She who entrusted it to the line of my blood; and by my own honor as a knight.”

She pulled him to his feet and they exchanged the ritual kiss on the cheeks with their hands on each other’s shoulders. Droyn knelt to make his own pledge as Aleaume stepped back; then they all turned and continued their walk.

“Welcome to the Crown Princess’ menie,” Heuradys said, and exchanged handshakes.

She didn’t mind; a great lord would have many personal vassals, and she was the first and Orrey’s friend as well. The company was pretty good, at that. These were both men to respect, swords to stand about a throne.