Reign of the Eagle, page 126
Caedmon was with him, and that was some comfort. The great hillichmagnar hadn’t been allowed to march with the army, either. Elwyn had said it was because Uncle Lawrence didn’t want anyone to show him up. “Lawrence is only still captain general because no one trusts Flora Byrne,” Elwyn had complained. “I mean, she’s supplying most of the troops, but the other dukes trust her about as much as a dockside whore.” Edwin didn’t like to think his choice of captain general was between his uncle, who had a habit of losing important battles, and a duchess who had, until recently, been literally sleeping with the enemy. But that seemed to sum up the situation.
“It must have been a tactical withdrawal,” Caedmon said, watching the returning columns of troops. “They do not look as if they have suffered many casualties. It seems as though the rumor I have heard is true—my colleague Lady Jorunn is refusing to leave Formacaster, and if I may say so, any time an army does not have to face a hillichmagnar in battle, it is a good thing for them.”
“Then things are looking up, aren’t they?”
“H’m...perhaps.” The sorcerer’s thick eyebrows contracted in a scowl. Then he looked at Edwin, and his expression softened. “Perhaps your uncle has learned a little prudence. It would not go amiss. Now if he would learn how to accept help, we might finally get somewhere.”
Edwin and Caedmon watched at the city gate while the army set up their tents outside the walls, and as the knights and retainers of Duchess Flora marched back up the High Street to the castle. Edwin got a few bows and a few nods, but mostly the men seemed tired, bedraggled, and ready to be done with the whole business of warfare. Their armor was tarnished, their banners hung limp and dusty. Their beards were wild and overgrown. Their eyes were fixed on the ground, hardly seeing what was around them.
One of the few men who noticed Edwin at the gate was Andras Byrne, second son of Duchess Flora, and one of her main cavalry commanders. Edwin liked Andras a great deal; they often practiced archery and sword fighting together. Andras was also supposed to be Edwin’s brother-in-law someday, though that was an awkward subject they tried to avoid.
Andras did his best to be reassuring. “It’s a temporary setback, nothing more. We’ll give it another try in the spring.”
“Do you think I might go along?” Edwin asked. “When we give this another try, I mean.”
Andras smiled. “Yes, I promise. If I have anything to say about it, anyway. At the very least, you can ride with my cavalry.”
Edwin quite liked that idea. Andras had knighted him a few months earlier, but he didn’t feel like a real knight yet. Maybe he would if he put on armor and fought a few battles.
Duchess Flora joined them a moment later. She was almost the last one through the gate, and like Andras, she was certain things would go better in the new year. Edwin tried to ask her, too, if he could ride with the army, but she had other topics in mind.
“Have you seen Elwyn yet?” she asked Andras.
“No, Mother. I imagine she’s up at the castle. Right, Edwin?”
Flora patted Andras on the back. “Go see her, dear. She’ll want to know that you’re safe.”
Andras caught Edwin’s glance and rolled his eyes. Then he mounted his horse and rode up the street after the retreating columns of knights and men-at-arms.
Flora put an arm around Edwin’s shoulders. “Could I have a word, your majesty?” She nodded at Caedmon. “In private, I mean.”
Caedmon bowed. “I was thinking I might have a word with the Earl of Hyrne. Perhaps he will be more receptive to advice now.” Then he left, and Edwin was alone in a shaded, mossy corner of the gatehouse with the duchess.
Flora smiled, and the thick layers of powder and paint crinkled around her mouth and eyes. “Edwin, darling, I was wondering if you might have a word with your sister Elwyn.”
“A word? What about?”
“Well, I was thinking perhaps it might be time for us to set a date for her marriage to Andras.”
Edwin bit his lip. “Um...she’s not going to be happy about that.” His older sister had only agreed to the engagement because it was fake. It was a public subterfuge to cement the alliance between the Byrnes and the Sigors.
“I’m aware of Elwyn’s...reservations. Your sister is so shy sometimes.”
“She is?”
Elwyn hated socializing and talking to people, particularly people she disliked. That wasn’t at all the same as being “shy.”
“Yes, dear. I would appreciate it if you’d get her to pick a date. She’ll take it better coming from you than from anyone else.”
That was certainly true, insofar as Elwyn probably wouldn’t throw things at Edwin. At least he didn’t think she would. He wasn’t looking forward to the conversation, though. But it was his duty, all the same. “Very well. I’ll have a word with her. I can’t promise anything, though.”
It started to rain as Edwin made his way back to the castle. Everything turned gray and foggy—a perfect match to the mood of the town, he thought. People huddled in their homes, out of the streets. Even the taverns seemed abandoned. If they had any customers, they weren’t in a partying mood. This was a day for sullen, solitary drinking.
Up at Dunharvin Castle, it took Edwin the better part of an hour to find his sister. No one knew where she had gone. He fully expected to find her in the stables with some handsome young knight, or perhaps with one of the housemaids. You never knew with Elwyn which it would be. But to Edwin’s surprise, he found her alone.
She was in the Noon Court, the private garden of the duchess, sitting by herself on a wooden bench and watching the rain. A little arbor stretched over her head, but it didn’t seem to be giving her much shelter. She didn’t look as if she cared, though. Her dark hair hung lank over her sodden riding dress. One lock draped over her eyes, and she hadn’t bothered to brush it away.
“Are you alright?” he asked.
“No. It’s been a long time since I’ve been alright.” She wiped some of the water off her face.
“Did you see Andras? He’s back, you know.”
“Yes.” Elwyn sighed. “I’ll see him later, I suppose. I don’t have it in me to pretend right now, Edwin.”
“Fair enough.” He sat down next to her.
“I’ve been thinking about Keelweard.”
He knew she didn’t mean the battle they had just lost, or the city in general. “I heard the Cuthings are all safe,” he said. “The duke, Lord Rodger, and, um...Hildred, too.”
“I don’t doubt that,” said Elwyn. “Hildred is like a cockroach. She’ll survive anything.” She wiped her eyes. The rain made it impossible to know if she was crying or not, which was perhaps why she was sitting out here.
Hildred and Elwyn had shared a very passionate affair, right up until Hildred had tried to betray them to the Gramirens. Out of respect for her father, the Duke of Keelweard, Edwin had declined to execute Hildred for treason. The treason wasn’t so bad, actually. It was breaking Elwyn’s heart that made Edwin hate her.
He put a hand on his sister’s shoulder. “She didn’t deserve you.”
“I don’t know,” said Elwyn quietly. “I think people tend to have the lovers they deserve.”
She was about to descend into morbid self-pity, so Edwin took the opportunity to change the subject. “Listen, I was talking to Duchess Flora, and she thinks it’s time for you and Andras to pick a date for your wedding.”
“Fuck that.” Elwyn stood, her slim frame shaking with rage. “Fuck that. I’m not the one who lost the fucking battle. I’m not a consolation prize to make the Byrnes feel better. Tell Flora she can take her wedding contract and shove it up her ass.”
“Fine, but maybe we could pretend to—”
“Dammit, I told you I don’t have it in me to pretend today.” She turned and stormed off into the rain, leaving her cloak behind on the bench.
Sometimes Elwyn was a mystery to Edwin. He could never understand why she did some of the things she did. Why, for example, was she so dead set against marrying Andras Byrne? Granted, they all knew Andras was in love with someone else—with Donella Gramiren, daughter of the false king, in fact. But that didn’t really explain the vehemence with which Elwyn rejected the match.
But then again, Elwyn was always passionate in her reactions to people. She either passionately hated them, or she passionately loved them. Hildred was just one example of this phenomenon. Sometimes she tried to fight against her feelings, as she had with poor Sir Alfred Estnor, the man she had almost married. But that had only made her fall harder for him in the end, which had made his death in battle even more devastating for her. Elwyn couldn’t help it—she fell hard for all her lovers, both male and female. She would get violently attached, and then her heart would get broken, and she would be miserable.
Edwin used to wonder why she did that. Why didn’t she ever learn? But he was a little older now, and—he hoped—a little wiser. During his trip to the north, he’d had a love affair of a sort, as well. And he thought he understood now why Elwyn got so attached whenever she fell in love. It was like drinking—it always felt good at the time. Only afterward did you realize what a bad idea it had been.
Edwin didn’t talk much to anyone about his own little heartache. He had told Elwyn about the girl he’d met at Atherton, and Elwyn was very sympathetic. And Caedmon had been along on the trip with Edwin, so he knew about the brief romance, too. But Edwin didn’t like to talk about it. He felt stupid about the whole business, and he felt even stupider because he couldn’t forget the girl: Penny Ostensen.
She was a regular feature of his daydreams now. Her long blonde hair, her wide blue eyes. Those curves in close-fitting dresses. He could still remember sitting with her on a rainy evening. He remembered kissing her, and he remembered how she’d let him do things...touch her in places he’d never touched a girl before. He had felt her breasts—her naked breasts. He was getting excited thinking about it now. She had wanted to run away with him. She had wanted to have sex. And they would have, except that Edwin had felt honor-bound to tell her who he really was.
That was how it had ended—an explosion of anger and a slap across his face. Not because she was the daughter of Duke Lukas, one of the top Gramiren commanders. She hadn’t really cared about the politics of it. She was angry that Edwin had lied to her. And in retrospect, he could see she was perfectly entitled to be angry.
He and Caedmon had been obliged to leave town rather quickly after that, since his cover was blown. So he would probably never see Penny again. But he still thought of her constantly. And he imagined that was how things were for Elwyn. Only in her case, she’d had so many more lovers and so many more nights of passion. She probably couldn’t get those nights out of her mind, any more than he could. Thinking of all those people she’d lost, all those times she could never get back—it was no wonder she was always so angry. It would have been a wonder if she hadn’t been.
He sat on the bench, in the rain, thinking of Penny, until he heard footsteps splashing up the garden path, and saw his uncle, the Earl of Hyrne, approaching with a cloak pulled up over his head. “Holy Finster, Edwin. What are you doing out here? You’re going to make yourself sick.”
“I was...well, I was about to go in.”
“Good.” The earl held out his cloak. “Here, put this on. There’s going to be a council meeting in ten minutes, and you need to be there.”
Edwin sighed and went with his uncle. There wasn’t much point in his going to the council. Hardly anyone ever listened to him. On the whole, he would much rather have stayed out in the rain, dreaming of Penny, even if it did make him sad.
Chapter 12
People hadn’t finished celebrating the victory at Keelweard when the Equinox came along and gave them another excuse for celebration, mingling it all into one grand party. Some of the faculty even gave students a day off lessons. In the evening, there was a huge feast, almost as big as the one they usually had at Finstertide. The cooks had outdone themselves; no one wanted to look as if they weren’t happy about the victory.
No one except Penny, that is, and her dwindling circle of friends. They had a whole table to themselves: she and Eleanor Rath and Corrine Ripley. No one else wanted to sit with them. From time to time, someone would approach, seeing the empty chairs. But then they would notice Penny sitting there and turn away again, blushing. A few of them, the ones who had once been her friends, would give her a sickly smile and make some dumb excuse, like, “I think I forgot something.” There were plenty of empty seats. No one was forced to sit near her if they didn’t want to.
People were watching her, though. She caught them staring at her. When she got up to get more mulled cider, she could hear people whispering her name. She could feel their eyes following her. Some of them looked away when she looked back. Others were bolder, particularly the girls. Penny had never been on the receiving end of so many nasty looks in her life. She found it very disconcerting.
Much though Penny had always loved Atherton, she knew her popularity had been fatally damaged the past spring. She had guessed things would be bad this year, though she hadn’t known how bad they would be. She had tried to convince her mother to let her go study at a convent. But her mother said a convent school wouldn’t offer the “resources” that Atherton did.
“That’s what you told me three years ago,” her mother had said. “You begged me to let you go to Atherton, instead of staying at Brancaster. Then you went behind my back and begged your father until he let you go. So, I’d hate for you to miss out on all those ‘resources’ you were so eager to enjoy.”
Her mother didn’t care about academics at all. She believed in palm reading and tea leaves, for Finster’s sake. Penny had never seen either of her parents read a book for pleasure in her whole life. There was no reason for them to force her to come back here.
A lot of people hadn’t come back this year. For the most part, the missing were the sons and daughters of Sigor supporters. Like Meredith Barras, for example, daughter of the Duke of Pinshire. Penny had always liked Meredith, in spite of the fact that their fathers were on opposite sides of the war. That never mattered to Penny, and she had assumed Atherton was the kind of place where people from different backgrounds were brought together in a common spirit of intellectual inquiry, regardless of politics. Unfortunately, she was learning that she was one of the few people at the school who felt that way.
She and Corrine and Eleanor were about to start on dessert—a cream pie with raspberries and blueberries on top—when a pair of very young girls came up to the table. They were arm in arm, each one trying to push the other slightly ahead, and they were stifling giggles. Penny didn’t know them well, but she knew they had started at the school that term.
“Please, have a seat,” she said, pointing to the empty chairs and smiling encouragingly.
“No, thank you. We have seats,” one of the girls said. “We wanted to ask....” She dissolved in laughter, and her friend had to finish the sentence: “To ask if it’s really true you met Edwin Sigor here at school.”
Eleanor gave the girls a severe look. “Let me guess. You’re doing this on a dare, aren’t you?”
“Um...maybe,” one of them admitted, looking only slightly ashamed of herself.
“Go away,” said Corrine.
“It’s alright,” sighed Penny. “I did meet Edwin. He was here under an assumed name, and he was very nice, I’ll have you know. And yes, if you’ve heard that I kissed him, then you’ve heard right. You probably heard that I did more than kiss him, but that’s none of anyone’s business.”
“Does...does he still come visit you?” one of the girls said, in the tone of voice people used when discussing the delusions of madmen.
“Seriously, go away,” said Corrine.
The girls left, laughing so hard they had to lean on each other for support.
“Ignore them,” Eleanor advised. “They’re idiots.”
“I didn’t even tell them the craziest part,” Penny muttered.
They would have genuinely thought she was insane if she’d told about how her aunt, Queen Muriel Gramiren, had sent a sorceress to kill Edwin, and that she had ended up torturing Penny with magy to find out where he had gone. Penny hadn’t betrayed him—she was very proud of that. Of course, it was her fault that the assassin had known he was at the school to begin with, because she’d gone and blabbed about him to the girls on her hallway in Queen Freyda House. And for that, she was heartily ashamed.
She had been so stupid. But she had felt surprised and hurt that he had lied to her, calling himself “Henry Harris,” and saying that he was the son of a knight from Newshire. She had fallen rather hard for him, and one romantic night, she had let him go a lot further than she had ever imagined letting a boy go, at least not before she was betrothed to him. She would have gone even further with him—all the way, in fact—but then he had told her his real name.
In retrospect, she admired and loved him all the more for doing it. But at the time, she had been so shocked and humiliated that she had slapped him and run all the way back to her room. And she’d been so angry and hurt that when some girls asked her what had happened, and why she was so upset, she had told them the truth.
Almost no one believed her. Most people thought she was lying because “Henry” was really a lowly merchant’s son, and she hadn’t wanted to admit she’d been tricked into thinking he was a gentleman. Other people thought she was doing it for attention, or to make some other boy jealous. When she doggedly insisted that she was telling the truth, people got annoyed at her. Even some of the people who believed her were annoyed, too, because they thought she was betraying her family by falling for a Sigor. The people who disbelieved her thought she was a fool, and the people who believed her thought she was a traitor. Earstien only knew what the Sigor supporters at the school would have thought, if there had been any left. They’d probably be mad at her for blowing Edwin’s cover and almost getting him killed.
