Darkburn Book 3: The Gates of Kelvha by Tayin Machrie - HTML preview

Chapter 21

“I’m so glad he’s chosen you,” Janeya said, with heartfelt sincerity in her voice. “I know you’ll make him a good wife. And I’m sure he’ll be an excellent husband.”

“You mean you’re glad he didn’t choose you instead,” said Meya. “Yet everyone expected him to pick you if he did not wish for Idria.”

She sat down next to Janeya on the window seat in the Ladies’ Gallery. They could be seen by anyone out in the courtyard, of course; but for some reason, there was no spyhole at this end of the room. Perhaps the window was considered security enough. Meya wondered if ladies were expected not to realise that they could conspire in full view just as easily as huddled in some secret corner.

At any rate, they could not be overheard. And the discussion she wanted to have with Janeya was not a safe one for anybody else to hear.

Now she studied the younger woman with affection and concern. She had always thought Janeya beautiful, far more so than she was herself; but she also felt that Janeya was more loving, more tolerant than she was, as strong and supple in her mind as in her body. She had intelligence. A perfect choice for queen.

And yet Huldarion had not picked her. Meya found herself surprised by it all over again; for he could not have known that Janeya did not want to be chosen.

“So, what about you, Janeya?” she said cautiously. “The time is ripe for you to marry, and if you have any lord in mind that might suit you, I will have a little influence now; for a while, at least.”

Janeya shook her head and looked out of the window. “No lord,” she said. “No lord.”

Meya sighed. Her affection had an overlay of exasperation. Janeya might be intelligent and loving: but she was also idealistic. She wanted the world to be different and thought that she could make it so by wanting. “That serving-boy?” she said.

“He’s not a boy. Lorolo is a man.”

“If one glance from you can make him drop a whole pile of plates, he is a boy who needs a little more maturity and self-control.”

“He loves me,” said Janeya, her voice singing with emotion. “And I love him. I’m sure Huldarion’s a very fine person – but his arrival here, and my being put forward as a possible bride, has made me realise that Lorolo is the only one I want. Lorolo is a wonderful man. He’s generous and kind and brave and I don’t care about his rank.”

“But everybody else does care.” Meya tried to speak with calm authority, and not to show the exasperation that she felt. “Janeya, this cannot happen. You cannot allow yourself to become attached to a servant. You are the niece of the Keeper of the Keys, one of the highest nobles in the kingdom. If your uncle Melegan suspects anything amiss, Lorolo will be sent away in disgrace. And if Nerogun finds out – which stars forbid – he’ll be flayed to within an inch of his life first.”

“What for? For loving me?” demanded Janeya.

“Are you sure Lorolo loves you? He makes doe-eyes at every woman that he serves a dish to.” Meya knew she was being brutal, but she had to bring Janeya to her senses. She could see the attraction – the boy had big, dreamy eyes and a way of looking at you that made you feel quite… buoyant. She was not entirely immune to it herself. No doubt, she thought, it was partly a result of his upbringing in the south, where manners were freer than here, and partly the young man’s natural desire to please, but it had a tumultuous effect on Janeya. “You haven’t spoken any more to him since you first told me all about it, have you?”

“Of course I have! How could I not speak to Lorolo? When he’s been so gentle and so sympathetic–”

“Sympathetic? What about?”

“About the fact I can’t choose who I marry. He’s seen me looking sad and he says he’s thought so much about me, all the time. We’ve had so many talks–”

“When? Where?”

“Every morning. In the linen rooms.”

“Dear stars,” said Meya in horror. “You can’t. You must stop at once.” She found herself wishing that Janeya had never confided in her. It filled her with a dreadful sense of responsibility for the girl, and an even worse sense of apprehension about what might happen if Janeya did not break up this liaison. “You don’t even know this boy,” she expostulated. “You don’t know what he’s like.”

“I do. He’s lovely, Meya. I love him. It shouldn’t matter that he’s a servant. I thought that if you’re queen, I mean once you’re queen at Caervonn, couldn’t you send for me to be your lady in waiting, and then Lorolo can come too, and we can be wed?”

“And what would your uncle say to that? You would be disowned. Outcast – an exile.”

“I don’t mind that.”

“You would. And that is the least that could happen: your relatives might hunt Lorolo down and bring you back to Kelvha as a widow.” Meya shook her head. “Janeya, I can help you, but not in that way. Trust me – you have to forget Lorolo. I can arrange for him to be transferred out of the castle, with good reports, to Marne or somewhere else–”

“But Marne is forty miles away!”

“Exactly.” She took hold of the girl’s shoulders with firm compassion. “Janeya, believe me, that is the best thing I can do for you. And for him.”

“It’s the worst thing you could do for me!”

“You will thank me in another year.”

“A year!” Janeya’s voice was high. “No, I will never thank you if you have him sent away. I will never forgive you. We love each other, and that outweighs all else.” Although tears stood in her eyes, she did not weep, nor did she protest any further. She stood up from the window-seat, shook out her skirts, and swept from the room.

Meya sat alone, thinking. She would have to arrange for Lorolo’s removal. Janeya would truly not forgive her, she reflected, and she regretted that; but it was better than the alternative. For Janeya, the liaison could result only in shame – for Lorolo, potentially much worse.

She did not know exactly what the punishment was for a footman who transgressed in such a way: but rebellious serving-men – and serving-girls – had, on occasion, been found at the bottom of the Tell Tower, their bodies broken by the hundred-foot fall from the locked room at the tower’s summit. Supposedly they had jumped. Meya thought it unlikely that they all had.

Janeya would always be rebellious, though. Meya sighed. She had been so herself, ten years ago. She had refused three husbands – including Inigun – before the age of twenty.

I was lucky my father was indulgent, she thought now. But I’m sure Inigun was relieved when I refused him that first time. He only asked me to marry him because it was my father’s wish. And of course he wanted to benefit from my father’s patronage. No shame in that: it is the way of Kelvha. Such an upright man Inigun was. So stiff and proper. Yet when he was with my father, discussing military history or playing battleboard, he seemed to come alive.

She had refused him courteously enough, on the grounds of the age gap; for Inigun was a full dozen years older than she was.

“But that gap will narrow,” said her father the next day, “with every year. By the time you’re my age it won’t matter.”

Meya did not see how he could be sure of that, given that his own wife was already dead. Briya had been older than him, and had been ill for years before she died. Impatient at the doctors’ helpless shakes of their heads about her mother’s illness, the teenage Meya had set out to befriend the herb-master’s assistant – a deferential, knowledgeable if low-born woman – and to learn all she could of medicines, herbs and remedies. None of those, she thought regretfully, prolonged her mother’s life, but they had made her last few months a little easier.

And in the dark days after her mother’s inevitable death, the first maidservants had come knocking tentatively on Meya’s door. Could she help a servant with the toothache? With a strange rash? With a bad leg? With a – nervously whispered – desire not to become pregnant, although a young lord kept insisting on, you know, and she was afraid to deny him?

Meya did what she could with all of these. She kept things brisk and factual with the maidservants, giving them a stern look if they stepped beyond their station: but she was not unkind. And she was discreet. What they told her, she told no-one else. And more servants came with their illnesses and problems and their despair and trust.

Meanwhile, Inigun was playing battleboard with her father. Nobody else offered marriage for her after she was twenty. Despite her aristocratic bearing she was already a little heavy, a little dark, and above all a little peremptory for a high noble’s prospective wife.

And in truth none of the high nobles of the right age attracted her greatly. She admitted to herself that this was not their fault: she was not allowed to get to know them except through the formal ceremonies of receptions, banquets, dances and the like. So much of male life was hidden from her. She wasn’t greatly bothered because she had a full life anyway. She was busy running her own household and, increasingly, advising other housekeepers in the castle. She became aware that amongst the servant class, at least, she was acquiring authority and a reputation for good sense.

But a reputation in the servants’ hall counted for nothing. By twenty–three she was also aware that her status in the castle hierarchy would start to fall away soon if she remained unmarried. She had perhaps two years before she would become very anxious for a husband; and when Inigun offered for her again, having shown no interest in the intervening years beyond meticulous politeness, she accepted him. And, gratifyingly, she thought that this time he was relieved when she accepted.

Certainly her father was delighted. “He’ll get promotion now,” he said, and indeed that immediately happened. At the next border action Inigun commanded his own brigade, and with honour: a serious, uncompromising soldier, people said, always planning many moves ahead as if it were a game of battleboard.

At home, he played or talked military strategy with her father Borovin deep into the night. He came to her bed dutifully, but only once a month; hence it took a few years before their child arrived.

Once, she had walked into the game room to see her father’s hand upon Inigun’s thigh as he explained some arcane move of the battleboard soldiers. When she approached, he removed it without embarrassment; but since then, she had sometimes wondered if the friendship between her husband and her father might have become more than manly regard, if such a thing had been possible in Kelvha.

But it was not possible for them to even think of it. A hand on the other’s arm when they met; a clap on the shoulder when they parted. A touch on the leg during a game of battleboard. Anything more between them could not be acknowledged even to themselves. Liaisons between noble males were very rare, and the consequences terrible.

In any case, her marriage reduced the possibility of that sort of gossip, and she was glad that it was so. She enjoyed the running of the expanded household with her new status as a married woman. She saw to it that the many-storeyed house where they all lived was managed well, the servants kept obedient and content, good food and drink supplied, the frequent ceremonies at the Castle carefully fulfilled. It was not difficult. She liked things to be in order, and Inigun appreciated the routine. It was something of a shock when she realised she was pregnant.

A son would have been better, of course: but Inigun, to his credit, showed no regret, only satisfaction at becoming a father. Meya felt no such pleasure in being a mother. Childbirth was painful, exhausting and somewhat horrifying: and afterwards she looked down at the baby in weary bewilderment. What was she supposed to do with it? Where was the love that was meant to spring into her heart?

But the midwife – low-born, of course, but efficient – studied Meya as she lay in bed, the strange baby making noises next to her, and said, “If you don’t take to her straight away, my lady, don’t worry. Just pretend. The baby won’t know any different.”

I’m good at that, thought Meya, at pretending. At being a loving and compliant wife and daughter whose opinions don’t matter.

But isn’t that what I am? Am I not an obedient wife and daughter?

No. I hide myself; I put on an act. I do it well.

At that moment she realised the truth about herself. And with that realisation, she decided that she could pretend to be a mother: a loving, doting mother, cooing and caressing, as if little Aliya were the apple of her eye. She was not an objectionable baby, after all, despite her habit of crying through the night. Even so, at those times Meya chose to hold her rather than hand her to the nursing-maid. Pretending to love her.

One of those nights, about three months in, she was holding the crying Aliya to her shoulder, almost asleep herself, waiting for the gurgle and snort that signified peace for another hour or two; and when it came, she laid the baby in her cradle saying, “There you go, little one, sleep soundly now;” and then was amazed at the tenderness in her own voice. Maybe she felt something for this little bundle after all. Maybe it was not all just pretence.

A month later, she could hardly bear to put the baby down. A year later, she would have given up her life to protect her daughter from any harm. When her husband died, felled in some unnecessary distant battle, she grieved sincerely for him, but was heart-broken because Aliya would now never know her father.

Nor her grandfather. Meya’s father died a few months after Inigun: his heart gave up, they said, and she believed it. Inigun’s death had killed all joy in him, all sense of purpose. He tried to do his own pretending, but she saw his emptiness with compassion and despite her efforts to give him comfort had no power to fill the void. He could find no will to live in his daughter or grand-daughter, because to him women had no meaning. They could be important only as conveyors, witnesses, facilitators. In themselves they could be nothing.

But she was something. She vowed that regardless of her widowhood she would make herself into something, would find herself some role; and she succeeded. She moved into the Castle where the single ladies had their quarters: in their case, it was to protect them from the outside world; in her case, so that she could supervise the Castle’s goings-on more closely.

And the Castle needed supervision. The maids to whom she offered medicine murmured of trouble in the kitchens and the corridors, of over-bearing footmen and rebellious cooks. She learnt from the frazzled chief housekeeper that the head of the servants’ hall – an annoying, puffed-up man who walked with his feet turned out – was not doing his job. Instead of organising the running of the Castle he was raiding the wine cellars and bullying the lower orders.

Meya called him up before the Keeper of the Keys and confronted him with his sins. When the man resigned she suggested a replacement: a quiet, thorough man – not a Kelvhan, but she managed to get him appointed anyway because Lord Melegan would rather not concern himself with such tedious things. Meya was unofficially in charge. Nobody objected because things ran so smoothly.

Now that she was to be married, she reflected, they would have to learn to do without her. But first, a new place must be found for Lorolo.

Best done sooner than later. Meya stood up and left the Ladies’ Gallery to cross the courtyard and wend down gloomy passages to the servants’ hall. It was the best source of information about whereabouts in Outer Kelvha, and beyond, staff might be needed. So many of the servants came from far outside the city that they had more knowledge of distant vacancies than she did.

But when she entered the great kitchen, there was a ruckus. The second cook was shouting at a scullery-maid across a ream of pastry sheets, and the other kitchen-maids were trying to intervene, all very loudly. It took a moment for Meya’s presence to be noticed and to calm the storm.

“She’s just been sick in the butter-churn. It’s the usual trouble,” declared the second cook, Hilfa, a tough woman with arms like tree roots. “The stupid, thoughtless girl.”

“I couldn’t help it,” sobbed the scullery-maid. The other girls at once agreed with her vociferously.

“You could help it happening in the first place,” scolded Hilfa.

“You think it’s easy to stop them, just because it never happens to you!” protested one.

“Who says it’s never happened to me?” countered the cook. “Not recently, I grant. But you just have to be firm with them.”

“How can I be firm, when he says he’ll have me thrown out of the castle?” wailed the scullery-maid. Her face was streaked with tears and vomit.

“You’ll get thrown out anyway once it starts to show,” said Hilfa roughly.

“Enough,” said Meya, and they all fell silent once again. She took the scullery-maid aside into the pantry to question her. Her name was Felipa, and it was indeed the usual trouble, although Felipa would not name the man. A young lord, too high-born to be gainsaid.

“You should have asked me for callaret,” said Meya sternly.

“But it was already too late! I didn’t know that he was going to… And then I kept hoping he wouldn’t want to do it again.”

Meya sighed. “How far on are you?” she asked the girl. “Three months? Very well. You will have to leave the castle in the next few weeks. I’ll seek out a post for you in Outer Kelvha. There are often dairy jobs on the farmsteads, and you may be allowed to keep your baby if you wish.”

“I don’t wish,” hiccupped Felipa. “I don’t want the baby.”

“Whether you want it or not, you’re going to have it,” said Meya firmly, although not unkindly, “and you can’t have it here. I’ll talk to you again in a week or two. In the meantime try not to throw up in front of Hilfa. Stay out of her way if you can.”

She left the girl and went to speak to the cook, to ask her – no, command her – to be more gentle with the girls who got themselves in trouble.

“I can’t be doing with it,” said Hilfa, hands on her bony hips.

“Nor can I,” said Meya, “but I’ll sort Felipa out.”

“And my butter-churn?”

However, that complaint was only muttered. As Meya left the kitchen, she shook her head in resignation. If only she could sort it out, once and for all. If she were Nerogun she’d make short work of all those careless, lusty lordlings…

But Nerogun had more important matters to think about than pregnant scullery-maids. He had a war on his hands: men’s matters. So it was up to her.