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

Chapter 34

“I thought you might not want me to come here after all, this evening,” said Maeneb, hesitating in the doorway.

“Why not?” Gaelera fixed her with a cool, unsmiling gaze. She neither bid Maeneb depart from her quarters nor bid her enter. The maid stood aside with her head down as if her mistress were too bright, or perhaps too terrifying, a sight for her to look at. Gaelera was certainly awe-inspiring – in terms of both the splendid intricacy of her dress and its probable weight. She must be fit, thought Maeneb distractedly.

Too aware of her own awkwardness, she replied, “Because of the… the, er, disturbance in the castle. A sudden death, we were informed.”

“Informed by who?”

“A servant.” Maeneb did not add that the servant was Lady Janeya’s maid Piril, and that Piril and Janeya herself were currently sleeping in the attic where Maeneb usually slept. The pair of them had arrived early in the morning, in the laundry cart which left the castle daily.

Piril had poured out the story up in that draughty attic room while Janeya sat white and listless. Piril described how she and another maid – Eral – had accompanied Janeya as she was dragged from Meya’s quarters up the stairs of the Tell Tower, and thrown into the chamber at the top.

While the door was slammed and locked on the three women, Janeya had sobbed and wailed without a break for the benefit of the guards outside. (At this point in the story Janeya began to cry again, so perhaps, thought Maeneb, it had not been all pretence.) Meanwhile the maids went into the closet and found the kitchen-maid’s corpse waiting there. Felipa had been dead perhaps three hours, and although the muscles of her face were rigid her body had not yet begun to stiffen.

But there was no time to spare. The maids got to work. Janeya’s dress was stripped off her and put on to the corpse: Janeya herself – still weeping – was re-dressed in her maid’s spare clothes, which had been brought up in the bundles that the pair of maids had carried with them. The dead girl’s bloodstained skirts were buried deep in the same bundle.

Eral unbraided and carefully dressed Felipa’s hair before braiding Janeya’s into the tight knots required of serving-wenches. By now the body was completely rigid and would stay so for some time. But that did not matter, for the time of death would not be clear in any case.

Eventually Janeya ceased her weeping; but none of the three had slept. They had waited for the depths of night. Then Piril had stood up – she told this to her small audience in a low voice, but with determination – and had seized the dead girl by the shoulders before slamming her face repeatedly against the stone wall and the window mullion. Once the face was unrecognisable, the maids together had tipped the corpse out of the window.

Nobody else seemed to hear the faint thud in the darkness as it landed far below. All remained quiet. The maids cleaned up the bloodied stonework, helped Janeya to hide herself in the closet, and themselves pretended to lie down in sleep.

But sleep was impossible. Piril said that she lay straining her ears and hearing nothing but the pounding of her heart. It was another hour or two before another, louder pounding drowned out her heartbeat: for just before dawn the body was discovered, and soldiers raced up the stairs of the Tell Tower and barged in.

They seized the maids but did not look inside the closet. Why would they? After the two maids had been dragged away down the stairs, Janeya was able to slip out in her maid’s apparel. Meya had met her in the passage and scolded her past a group of soldiers hurrying the other way. Then Janeya had been hidden in Meya’s rooms – Durba was still there – while Meya herself ran back to the courtyard underneath the Tower, to pretend shock and amazement at Janeya’s suicide.

As soon as Meya returned with the two maids, she managed the disappearance of Piril and Janeya from the castle. She went to hail the laundry cart as it came through the back gate, and told the driver to take the morning off: the laundry would be late “because of a sudden upset.” It was Durba, cloaked and hooded, who then drove the cart back out a little later with its baskets of soiled linen and the two women acting as the laundry-maids.

Once the baskets of linen had been delivered to the laundries, the two supposed maids were delivered to Durba’s lodgings. There, sitting on a bunk, Piril finished the telling of the tale in whispers – for the presence of the pair was unknown to any of the other women, sleeping on the lower floors.

Piril seemed to be quite a resourceful maid; practical and plain-speaking. Maeneb preferred her to Janeya, who did nothing but lie on Durba’s bunk and weep silently until eventually she slept. Maeneb could feel the swirl of Janeya’s emotions and judged them to be a vigorous but shallow whirlpool. She knew that this judgement was probably unfair.

“What servant gave you this interesting information?” asked Gaelera now.

“Some… ah, footman, near the gate.”

“Such tattling servants should be whipped,” Gaelera said without expression. “The disturbance was small enough, but servants will make everything a drama.”

Turning smoothly, she glided down the arched hallway and into another room with a heavy rustling of her skirts. It was as if she were accompanied by a wheezing animal. A decorative bear maybe, disguised as a dress. After another moment’s hesitation, Maeneb followed.

Then she paused in the next doorway, again awaiting Gaelera’s invitation to go in. She stood on the threshold of a receiving-room, richly furnished with the obligatory hangings, several cupboards deeply carved in some dark wood, and at the far end well lit by a many-paned window that curved around a cushioned window seat. Three small chests before the seat were draped with cloth, and held embroidery frames and trays containing reels of coloured thread.

A pair of scissors lay on the cushion of the window-seat: Gaelera picked them up and held them against her bodice, point up. Theatrical, again, thought Maeneb, although there was nothing dramatic in Gaelera’s manner.

“Sit,” she said. “Bring us spiced small wine.” The second instruction was evidently to the maid, who hurried away.

Gaelera lit the ornate double lamps on each side of the window. The sudden light brought colours leaping from the hangings, yet little warmth.

The only place to sit was on the window-seat. Gaelera arranged her skirts around her as she sat. Maeneb perched on its edge, as far as possible from Gaelera and the spreading dress as was consistent with politeness.

“It was very kind of you to invite me here,” she said, although the note that had been delivered to her had contained more of command than kindness.

“You wished to view my embroideries.”

“I would be honoured.”

“So you said,” replied Gaelera. Putting the scissors down beside her, she kept her hand on them as she gazed unblinkingly at Maeneb.

Are they her equivalent of my knife? she wondered, and instinctively checked with her elbow for the shape of her long knife underneath her tunic. The little fruit knife was always in her pocket.

But it was not possible to read anything of Gaelera’s mind. As on their first meeting, Maeneb was disconcerted to find such a complete mental barrier set against her. The fact that Gaelera could know nothing of her mind-sensing abilities only made it the more striking. Who was the woman defending herself against?

Maeneb made an effort at some sort of conversation. “You told me in the music hall that you embroidered your life.”

“I spoke the truth.” Gaelera reached forward to pick up a piece of fabric from the top of the nearest chest. Held in a round frame, it showed half a scene embroidered in richly coloured silks with the rest of the picture drawn out in thin charcoal lines. A woman sat in the centre of a many-paned window, her hands crossed in her lap, surrounded by chests covered in cloth. It gave Maeneb an odd feeling as if she were looking down a long tunnel or enclosed spyhole.

“That is you,” she said.

“Yes. I am almost up to the present day. This has been my life for some time now. But of course it will continue beyond this point.” She put the embroidery frame down again. “What has your life been?”

While Maeneb wondered how to answer, the maid brought in a tray holding two goblets and a jug. She was wary of drinking until she saw Gaelera take a sip. It was wine, pleasantly diluted with some sweet juice and sprinkled with spices. She drank, considering what was safe to say.

“My life has been mixed,” she said. “I belonged to Caervonn for the first seventeen years of it. In Caervonn I was mostly happy, I suppose.” This was a lie; she had never considered herself happy anywhere. “But the last two of those years were dark and difficult.”

“You had a civil war.”

“It was more of a civil disagreement, until it became an uncivil one. You know the history? Huldarion should by our laws have been heir to the throne. His cousin Olvirion disagreed. Huldarion was willing to seek arbitration as to who was rightful king, but Olvirion would not allow him. And then… everything blew up in our faces.”

“The darkburn,” said Gaelera.

“Yes.” She remembered the thickening smoke, the burning towers – some of them not so unlike this tower she sat in, apart from their hexagonal shape – and more than anything, she recalled the panic, the screams, the running in the streets. Maeneb had run too, hurrying after her mother with an armful of belongings, barging into other frantic runners, not knowing where they were going except that it had to be away from the fires. From the deaths and the destruction. She swallowed.

“You do not wish to talk about it,” said Gaelera, as a statement of fact, not of compassion.

“No.”

“And afterwards? Where did you belong?”

“Everywhere and nowhere. After the fire, a few thousand of us left Caervonn, accompanying Huldarion. He was terribly burnt yet never lost his consciousness, nor his grasp of the situation. He directed us from the cart where he lay.” She gazed into space, remembering the agony that he had felt. She had tried to shut it out but it was always there: an agony of mind as well as of his skin and flesh. An agony of loss…

“Where did you go?”

“Wherever Huldarion directed us to go. We fled at first to Outer Kelvha, where we had friends, but we moved constantly those first few years. Wherever we went we were pursued by stonemen.”

“And darkburns.”

“No, that was not until later. The stonemen were bad enough.” Those nomadic years had sometimes been exciting to the teenage Maeneb; but soon became tedious, with the fatigue of long anxiety. The physical fatigue too, with days of riding, the work of putting the tents up and down, the constant packing and repacking.

No matter where they unpacked, nowhere had been home – except, perhaps, Farwithiel, the hidden forest where her father lived. The first time she had visited it she had felt the connection not just with the Farwth but with the place itself. But she would not mention that.

“Your tented city is called Thield,” said Gaelera in her measured way, as if imparting new information to her. “At its greatest, it contains many hundred tents. It is currently located to the south west, less than half way to Weld, so not a very great distance from here.”

“Is it? I didn’t know.”

“Everywhere and nowhere.”

“Yes. But I don’t need to belong anywhere.”

“That is fortunate.” Gaelera reached back and opened a casement window behind her shoulder. Maeneb felt herself twitch forward as the window with its tiny diamond panes was blown wide open. A warm breeze wafted in, lifting the corners of the fabric pieces strewn around the tower.

“This is my home,” Gaelera said, which seemed self-evident, until she continued, “This room. This window-seat. This cushion. I make my home very small. You do not mind the breeze?”

“Not at all. But I worry that – well, the window opens so wide. And this room is up high. You may fall.”

“I will not fall,” Gaelera said, “unless I choose. And while some people choose to fall, I do not think I ever will.” She stared out of the window, her face turned half away. What she was looking at, Maeneb could not tell: dusk was falling, and through its veil there were only more high walls dotted with the blank eyes of other windows, screened and obscured. She knew a courtyard was below but it could not be seen.

“It was cleverly done,” said Gaelera thoughtfully, “but she was too cold.” She turned back to face Maeneb. “You do not know what I am talking about.”

“No.”

“Good. Keep it that way. Whatever you learn – and I expect some rumour will reach you – I do not wish to hear.”

Maeneb bowed her head in agreement; to what, she was not sure.

“You like to wear male clothing,” said Gaelera.

“It is convenient,” said Maeneb. “For riding, and for fighting. And yes, I like it. It is comfortable.”

“You think my clothing must be most uncomfortable,” said Gaelera, passing her hands across her skirts without touching them, her fingers splayed. An odd, ritualistic gesture. It struck Maeneb that the wearing of the dress itself constituted some necessary ritual.

“I expect it too is convenient,” she said, “for you. For your fighting.”

She did not know why she said it, and immediately felt foolish. But Gaelera laughed: a completely silent, eerie laugh.

“My fighting,” she said appreciatively. “Ah, yes. My dresses give me camouflage. They are a subterfuge. An excuse for all the stitching. Let me show you the rest of my life.”

She stood up and walked, rustling, to the tall, elaborately carved cupboard directly opposite the window. When she opened the double doors Maeneb saw inside layers and layers of folded cloth.

“My childhood,” said Gaelera, lifting out two rolls of fabric and unfolding one. The length between her outstretched hands was perhaps a yard and a half long; it was less than a yard wide. The thick cream linen was adorned with several embroidered girls – or possibly all the same girl – running through a field of flowers, bowling a hoop, throwing a ball, playing with a dog.

“Very nice,” said Maeneb. The subject matter was innocuous enough but did not seem to merit such exquisite stitching.

“It was,” Gaelera said. “It was a very nice life until I was seven, and had to return from the country to the castle.”

“You did not like life in the castle?”

“Not at first. I grew accustomed to it. My mother returned to the country – for the sake of her health – but left me with my father in the castle, as was customary. I was not tutored except in the female basics: such as embroidery. I now excel at embroidery.” She rolled up the childhood picture and opened the roll further along its length, to reveal another scene. A child again, but a bigger one, sat upright and unsmiling on a stool, sewing, with an equally unsmiling woman standing over her.

“You did not enjoy it,” observed Maeneb.

“I became used to it as I did to most things. Life in the castle has its own small pleasures.” She picked up the second roll of fabric and displayed a section.

“A feast,” said Maeneb. The silken tables were laid with tiny, perfectly sewn dishes, although the people seated all along them did not appear to eat. “Is that you?” The little figure in the centre not only had Gaelera’s colouring, but, somehow, had her posture and her bearing.

Gaelera inclined her head. “In the purple dress. I was sixteen. The gentleman at the far right end of the table was shortly to offer for my hand.”

“Which... presumably, you refused.”

“I did. My father advised me to. I was not sorry. The man was too low-ranking. He had bad breath besides.” She unrolled the linen by another yard.

A courtyard: a couple standing face to face. The man held out his hand. The woman did not.

“Another refusal,” said Gaelera. “My father was not so pleased this time. He had advised me to accept. I told him I was waiting for a better man.”

“And did a better man come along?” asked Maeneb. She instantly wished that she had said nothing, for clearly the better man had not appeared.

“He did,” Gaelera said. She rolled up the fabric carefully, smoothing out a crease as she did so. “I have not embroidered him. I keep him elsewhere.”

“Who…?”

“No, you may not ask. It came to nothing. He was commanded not to offer for me. He obeyed.”

“He can’t have been that much better, then,” said Maeneb.

“He was wise,” Gaelera said with the faintest lift of her eyebrows. It was the only facial expression that she had so far shown. “It means that he is still alive, though living far away, having sensibly married into Outer Kelvha. He was in fact too good for me, since I am not a better woman.”

“I am sure…”

“I am my father’s daughter.” She carried the two rolls back to the cupboard, replaced them, and selected two more from another shelf.

She started to unroll one. “Another offer,” she said, revealing the next scene. A garden: small, neat trees and roses. A girl sat on a seat beside the roses: a man bent over her. He had a grey beard. It was very cleverly sewn.

Maeneb said nothing. It seemed obvious what was coming.

“I refused him,” said Gaelera. “I gave the reason that he had been married twice already. The truth is he disgusted me. He still does.”

“Oh.” That escaped Maeneb without intention.

“At least I do not have to live with him. I have to live with something else instead.” She unrolled the bolt of cloth further. “My father was angry. He told me that I had no right to refuse the man he chose that I should marry. I said he was too old. Too old? my father said. There is no such thing as too old for a man, only for a woman. A man can get a child at any age, unlike a woman, he said.”

The picture showed a confrontation. Nerogun’s figure, though small, was unmistakeable. Somehow Gaelera’s stitches conveyed his assertive, almost aggressive stance, his jutting chin and frown.

“He said, you’ll get no husband at all at this rate. I told him that I didn’t care. I wish for no husband, I announced, especially not that grey-beard. He asked if I would flout his authority over me. I told him yes.”

She stared up from the fabric in her hands, looking through the window; looking at nothing.

“He said that I was his to do with as he liked. That he would teach me a lesson about grey-beards. That they were powerful, and potent, and that I was nothing. This is the lesson that he taught me.”

She unrolled another yard.

“Oh,” said Maeneb, in shock. “Is…” She stopped. Plainly it was.

And again. The woman was turned round this time, skirts ripped, her back to the man, her mouth an O of pain.

And again. This time she was on her knees, her mouth against his body.

Maeneb had to turn her head away. Her heart was thumping hard with fear and anger. She did not want to see any of those things, even drawn in stitchery. She did not want to imagine them. She wanted to run Nerogun through with her long knife.

As Gaelera had, she looked out through the window, at those closed eyes of other windows.

“I am sorry,” she managed to say at last.

“Why are you sorry? It is for him to be sorry. He has never shown sorrow for it, but he will be sorry if I choose. And he knows it.”

Gaelera rolled up the embroidery and placed it on the window seat; then turned to the last roll, a large and heavy one.

“No more,” said Maeneb.

“No? But this one is quite tame and dull,” Gaelera said. “This is my life since that day.” She dropped the roll to the floor and allowed it to unspin itself along the carpet. A woman sat in a window-seat, surrounded by chests and bolts of cloth. And again. And again. And again. She wore different dresses. Sometimes she was sewing; sometimes her hands lay folded in her lap. The light in the window changed, but the woman – apart from dress and hands – did not.

“Why,” Maeneb managed to say, “why are you showing me this?”

Gaelera began to roll up the last bolt of fabric with her foot. It seemed to occupy her so that she could not answer. Eventually she said,

“My father climbs upon the backs of others and does not care if he breaks them. He will do the same to the Vonn.”

“You do not care about the Vonn,” said Maeneb, because although she could read nothing of Gaelera’s mind, that was one thing she was sure of.

“Not a jot. I care for Kelvha. My lord the Post-Regent also cares for Kelvha; but he cares more about himself. He will go too far.” She picked up the bolt of cloth from the floor and placed it neatly on the other. “He will betray my country. I do not believe that the High Prince will ever be permitted to become High King.”

Maeneb drew in a sharp breath. “That is a….”

“That would be a very dangerous thing to say in any other room. But I have stopped up all my spy-holes; and I admit no spies.”

“Do you have evidence?”

“No. But I am his daughter. I see how nothing is ever enough for him. I understand how the more he has, the less it means. He feels nothing, so he seeks for something he can feel.”

“You may understand that, but I don’t,” said Maeneb.

“I tell you it is so. I do not wish to allow him to damage Kelvha. He will probably betray the Vonn as well; so you must advise your chieftain. Warn Huldarion that my father will only support him for as long as it suits his purposes. Will you do that?”

“Yes.”

“The Vonn may be able to act against him. Somebody needs to. I fear for the High Prince and my whole country otherwise. Huldarion may be the man who can bring my father down. But you may not tell anyone of all this.” Gaelera indicated the folded cloths. “No-one is to know of it until my death. Until then, my embroidered life is to be hidden here.”

“But you have just told me,” said Maeneb. “Why?”

“Because you are alone, as I am; cast out, as I am: apart and separate. We are both alone and therefore not alone. We stand on distant shores, and yet we recognise each other across an unfathomable sea.” Gaelera gazed at her, expressionless. Then she dropped her gaze and made as if to pick up the rolls of cloth.

“Stop,” said Maeneb. “I will carry those.” It was the only way that she could relieve Gaelera of any part of her horrific burden. The bolts of cloth were surprisingly heavy. She carried them to the cupboard and replaced them on the shelves.

When she turned around, Gaelera was regarding her with a half-smile. It was a shock to see her still, enigmatic face take such a shape.

“You pity me,” she said.

“Of course I do,” said Maeneb.

“Don’t. I have my compensations. My father is afraid of me; and I know how to twist and tweak his fear as you know how to use that long knife in your belt. It is your friend when you have no other.”

Maeneb swallowed. Who was the mind-reader now? For her own part, she could still sense nothing of Gaelera’s feelings. All was a blank: an empty page, behind the half-smile and the rustling over-decorated dress.

“Should you not be afraid of your father?” she murmured, as if Nerogun might overhear.

“What can he do more than he already has? But I have made arrangements, and he knows it. That is why he is afraid, and why he will not harm me.” Gaelera again smoothed down an invisible layer of skirt with both her hands. “I relish his alarm. You see, I am my father’s daughter.”

“I see you are,” said Maeneb, although she felt that she saw nothing else. What dreadful mental wounds had this woman carried through the years, beneath her formal carapace? She was a mask; as unknown and unreadable as a darkburn.

Darkburn. She did not know why the thought of that horror leapt to her mind now, unless it was simply a reflection of the fear and fury with which Gaelera’s embroidered life had filled her.

But no. There was something more than that. She raised her head and sniffed the breeze that blew in through the open window.

“Smoke,” she said.