The Mystic Marriage (40 page)

“She’s coming,” the boy answered confidently. And then, as if to make good on his word, he once again shouted, “Mama!”

So he was a cousin, Barbara thought, just as Maisetra Chamering came bustling out the door, blinking in the light.

In Rotenek she had stood clearly out of place, but here it was different. Here she was mistress. She wiped her hands on her apron as she approached, eyeing the visitors critically but with an air of harried welcome. Barbara swept off her hat to let her long braid tumble free for easier recognition. “Forgive me, Maisetra,” she said, “for the unannounced visit. I was passing near and hoped you might be able to spare me an hour or two. I owe you a morning call, after all.” She made no mention of the harsh words she’d spoken the last time they met. There was an apology owed for that.

The woman’s eyes widened but she made no other sign of surprise. “Mesnera Lumbeirt,” she said with a little curtsey. “Your visit does us honor. I’m afraid you’ve caught me on a busy day. We’ve dinner to make and take out to the fields before I can see you properly entertained.”

“Please,” Barbara ventured, feeling suddenly awkward. “Would you do me the favor of calling me Barbara? If I may call you aunt?” It was a start on the apology. “I’ve never had anyone to call aunt before.” The woman nodded and they both relaxed. “And I can scarcely expect you to drop everything and sit in the parlor with me, but perhaps I could find a corner of your kitchen out of the way and we can talk while you work.”

She turned to Tavit to see if he wanted instruction. He gave an amused nod in the boy’s direction and she caught his meaning. “And perhaps my cousin could help my armin with our horses? They’ve had a long road and longer yet to go.”

“See you finish that harness before we need it!” her aunt called back by way of permission, as they went through the short passage into the bustling kitchen. “He’ll be talking of nothing else for the next week. It isn’t often he gets a chance to handle as fine a piece of horseflesh as those.”

“I thought he had that look,” Barbara said with a grin. “I was the same way at that age.”

The other women in the kitchen looked up to stare as they entered and had to be scolded back to work. There were still glances and giggles—more, Barbara realized, aimed at her clothing than her person—until Maisetra Chamering said sharply, “Don’t gawk like a goose. This is my niece, Baroness Saveze, come for a visit. Do you want her to think we’ve no manners?” The hands quickly returned to chopping and mixing but the eyes still followed her.

In the end, the kitchen corner went unused and Barbara stripped off her coat and rolled up her sleeves to join in, for it seemed the likeliest way to talk easily across the hubbub. “I’ve read the letters,” she said with no preamble.

“Her letters?”

“His,” Barbara said, “to her.”

“Ah, I wondered. And so?”

“I’m sorry for…for the things I said the last time we met.” Barbara groped for an explanation. “The story I’d heard was…different.”

“Not so very different, I imagine.”

“Not in essentials,” Barbara agreed. “But…” She paused. “Perhaps you can tell me what you know.”

Maisetra Chamering shook her head. “We weren’t close, your mother and I. How could we be? She was ten years the elder and—” She hesitated before plunging on. “So much of it happened when I was too young to be told anything.”

Barbara could tell there was more behind that.
We weren’t close.
“She was ten years the elder and beautiful,” she suggested.

Her aunt winced, but the remark seemed to free her from her reticence. “Lissa was the golden one. The beautiful one. She was the one sent to school at Saint Orisul’s while I made do with a governess at home. And talented: she could sing and dance and make pretty speeches. Well, maybe I would have too if I’d been given the chance, but she was so far ahead. Our parents had decided she would make a brilliant match and I would be lifted on her tide. Maybe it wasn’t fair that they staked everything on her dowry, but, you see, once she had married her nobleman, then he would see me well-launched in my turn. That was how it was supposed to work.”

“Only she fell in love with Marziel Lumbeirt.”

“Perhaps she did, I don’t know.” She turned away to check something in the ovens and run a critical eye over the progress of the work before returning. “He was only one of the names I heard. I remember there were arguments and shouting behind closed doors. But I was only a child; no one told me anything. I know there was a great scandal. And then in the end she married Arpik after all. And you know the rest. I didn’t know about…about Lumbeirt and you. Not until that story drifted out this way a year ago.”

That can’t be all!
You’re the only one who can tell me…
“So she married Arpik after all,” she prompted. “And then…?”

Maisetra Chamering shrugged as she piled warm loaves into a basket and covered them with a cloth. “And then he swept her off to his estate after that first season and we didn’t see her for years. But you have to remember, the wars had started and everything was in an uproar. At first we thought he kept her away from Rotenek out of caution. We expected at any time to hear she would be presenting him with an heir. It was only later we knew he simply wanted her out of the way. It wouldn’t have suited him to have a wife close at hand questioning his comings and goings. And then Arpik’s house of cards came tumbling down and took us with it. I should have been brought out that year,” she added, without any discernable bitterness. “We moved back here. What else could we do? I never did have my season. I was the nearest thing to on the shelf when Chamering offered for me.” She turned and said fiercely, as if to convince herself, “He’s a good man. And he’s never been anything but kind to me, despite never getting a penny from it. And when my parents died he saw them properly buried with a stone and everything when they would have had a pauper’s grave else. And we have five fine sons.”

Barbara could think of nothing to do but nod. Whatever Maisetra Chamering claimed, it must have stung. Her elder sister married to a Count and she with a man who barely rose to the level of a gentleman farmer.

“But I never had a daughter,” she added wistfully. “Do you know? At the end, when I heard of Lissa’s trouble and Chamering let me travel to Rotenek to see her, I asked if she would let me take you to raise as my own. All she gave me was that casket of letters. And then later, when we heard she had died of a fever in…in that place, there was no mention of you. I thought you must have died as well. I always regretted that I hadn’t begged harder for you.”

Barbara looked around at the fields and wagons and cast her mind back across the years. What would that world have been like? So quiet and ordinary. And despite all she had suffered through, in that world her feet would never have been set on the path that led to Margerit or to the barony. She reached out and touched her aunt’s hand. “What’s past is past. Regret nothing,” she urged. “I wouldn’t choose to have had any life but the one I’ve known.”

The dinner was packed and loaded at last and her young cousin had completed the harness repairs despite distractions. In the time she’d spent inside talking, the horses had not merely been fed and watered but groomed as if for parade. He was hanging on Tavit’s every word as they discussed the finer points of the beasts. Seeing no signs that her armin wanted rescue, she told the boy, “I’d like to ride in the wagon with your mother. Perhaps you’d be willing to bring my horse along?”

At an admonition from his mother—“Say thank you to the baroness, Brandel”—he was up in the saddle and it was clear that his skill was as deep as his interest.

“Brandel?” Barbara asked curiously as she settled next to her aunt on the wagon seat.

“We christened him Eskambrend,” she replied somewhat ruefully, “but he’s never quite grown into it.”

“After the ancient hero? No wonder he looks ready to charge off after dragons!”

“No, after his grandfather.” Maisetra Chamering sighed. “He’ll need to settle down soon. There was time to indulge in fancies when he was younger, but he needs to find a trade now. I fear your visit will have him dreaming and restless for months on end. It isn’t every day you meet your cousin the baroness.”

“He’s your youngest?”

She nodded. “The rest are out with their father taking in the hay. Perhaps I’ve kept him too close. He was a delicate child. He was sickly as a babe and we nearly lost him to a fever when he was five.”

“He hardly looks delicate to me,” Barbara countered, watching him play touch-and-go with Tavit.

“I suppose I’m too used to comparing him to his brothers!” She laughed. “But there were years when even going out to feed the chickens left him exhausted. I convinced his father to let him be schooled, more than just reading and ciphering. We thought he might go for the church. It’s never a bad thing to have a priest in the family. Or at least a clerk. But you’re right: all he ever wants to read are romances of ancient knights and bold musketeers and the adventures of noble duelists! I hope your man isn’t encouraging him in that nonsense. We’ll never hear the end of it and it will make Petro cross.” And then she gave a little start. “Oh my! Petro. Whatever will he say? I should have sent word ahead.”

“Did he know you came to visit me?” Barbara asked.

“Oh yes. He didn’t approve but he didn’t forbid it. He thought I was putting myself too forward. I didn’t tell him…”

Barbara finished the thought silently.
Didn’t tell him I’d sent you packing.
“I’m sorry for that,” she said.

When they reached the mowers, no one gave her much mind while unpacking and laying out the food, but when all the workers had fallen to, she felt Maistir Chamering’s eyes on her and touched her aunt’s arm to draw her attention. He was a ruddy, weather-beaten man, his balding head gleaming in the summer heat. Only the quality of his waistcoat differentiated him from the men working under him.

Almost shyly, Maisetra Chamering went to bring him over, saying, “Petro, I would like you to meet my niece Barbara, Baroness Saveze.”

“I was passing by,” Barbara added, “and hoped you would forgive the visit with no notice.”

His reply was little more than a grunt and then as if thinking better, a curt nod and, “Mesnera, you’re welcome. Will you be staying long?” It was clear that he had some trepidation at the thought of entertaining her.

“Not even to the evening, I’m afraid,” she replied. “My journey can’t wait. But perhaps another time, when it’s more convenient.”

His reply was noncommittal.

They would have set up a chair for her but Barbara insisted on settling onto the spread blankets alongside her host and shared the meal she’d helped to prepare. For all his surliness, she could see that her aunt’s description had not been mere protest. There was genuine affection and partnership between them. He took the time to point out her other cousins, their names passing by too briefly to stick in memory.

Barbara watched Brandel as he paraded his newfound friend before his taller and more imposing brothers, to Tavit’s silent amusement. She could tell that the topic must have turned to the armin’s profession, for there was much gesturing and playacting of swords and the occasional glance at her. Whatever stories Tavit was telling must have been the embroidered versions of what he’d heard, for they’d had no adventures together that resembled anything of the sort. And then the boys cut willow wands for an impromptu mock-duel and she laughed. “Brandel really does live for the old stories, doesn’t he?”

“Useless fairy tales,” Maistir Chamering said dismissively. “Time he left it all behind. I’m sorry I ever let him go for that nonsense. But his mother…”

A glance was exchanged between them. It was clearly an old argument and one she had won.

“It’s time he learned there’s no place in the real world for daring adventures and dashing swordsmen. The sooner the better.”

Barbara laughed again. “You couldn’t tell that by my life!”

“But he lives in our world, not yours.”

And he seemed as out of place here as she would have been. A thought struck her—the other half of the apology—and before she could think better, she turned to her aunt and said, “I can’t pay you back for everything you lost for my mother’s sake, but I could do something for Brandel, if you permit.”

“What?” Maistir Chamering jeered. “Turn him into a swordsman like that nancy-boy there?”

She bristled at the slight to Tavit but let it pass. If he were a man who could see no strength beyond pitching hay and loading sacks of grain, all the more reason to press the offer. “Armin’s a fading profession,” she said in an offhand voice, “though you wouldn’t know it from the court. But that’s all it is now, really: a bit of playacting to amuse the nobility. But there are other professions in Rotenek he might be better suited for than what he can find here. And a courtier’s training isn’t the worst place to start for any of them. He’s what? Thirteen or fourteen? That’s not too late to start. Think about it. If you choose, send him to me in Rotenek at the beginning of the season and I’ll take him into my household and do what I can for him.”

She could see worry in her aunt’s face warring with recognition of the opportunity. Plant the seed. Let them consider it on their own. A letter could confirm her offer and then they would see what would come.

And what will Margerit say?
I shouldn’t have offered without asking.
Yet at the moment it seemed the right thing to do. Time enough to make it right with Margerit when she was home again. And that day couldn’t come too soon. She glanced up at the angle of the sun, judging how far they could go before dusk. She was relieved when her hosts took up their rakes and forks again and she could make her farewells.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Antuniet

Antuniet sat at the open window in her bedroom and settled the tray securely in her lap. She ran her fingers lightly over the stones nestled in the bunched cloth that kept them from sliding and rattling. Some were angular and sharp-edged, others smooth as river pebbles; a few were rough like hardened hoarfrost. They caught the rays of early morning sun that struggled past the neighboring buildings and glowed like drops of colorful dew. This was a luxury—an indulgence really—that she’d started allowing herself on rising, born out of the need to remind herself that her progress was real and not an illusion of her dreams. The ordinary stones were locked away in a chest in the workroom but these she kept closer: the purest, most perfect gems, the ones that had survived through the multiplication and cibation—that had succeeded in wedding spirit and matter to fix their inherent properties and become true elixir.