The Blue Star, Fletcher Pratt [essential books to read .TXT] 📗
- Author: Fletcher Pratt
Book online «The Blue Star, Fletcher Pratt [essential books to read .TXT] 📗». Author Fletcher Pratt
Rodvard himself was a little faint from lack of food when he reached the royal villa after a solid half-league of trudging beyond the stage-post, nor did the under-butler who received him offer food, but took him at once to a cabinet looking out over a terraced flower-garden, at the back of the rambling building. This guide said to wait for the arrival of Ser Tuolén, the butler-in-chief. The name had a Kjermanash sound; and sure enough, the tall man who came after perhaps half an hour’s retard, had the high-bridged nose and curling hair of that northern land. Rodvard stood to greet him with extended hand, and as he looked into the eyes, received a shock that ran through him like poison-fire, with its indubitable message that he was facing another wearer of the Blue Star.
“You are Ser Bergelin?” The eyes looked at him fixedly though the lips did not cease smiling. “What is your function to be?”
“Writer to the Count Cleudi for the conference,” Rodvard managed to say. (One almost seemed to drown in those eyes, liquid and northern blue, but he could not read a single thought behind them.)
The smile expanded. “You will find it easier to meet others who know when you have borne that stone for a time. I perceive it is a novelty to you. There are not many of us. Hmmm—I suppose it is little use asking you why Count Cleudi wishes a Blue Star with him. No matter; I have watched him before, and it is no secret that he wishes to be Chancellor; even Lord Florestan knows that. I trust you are not an Amorosian or one of that band of assassins who call themselves Sons of the New Day?”
“No,” said Rodvard (and thought with the back of his mind that this was why all plans to deal directly with the court had broken, and others of the brotherhood been laid in the toils of the provosts, this Star-bearer here.) With the front of his thought he concentrated on looking at the detail in the painting of a milkmaid just beyond Tuolén’s ear.
The butler-in-chief turned. “It is by Raubasco. He was not satisfied with the highlights in the middle distance, as I discovered by a means you will understand, so it was easy to persuade the painting away from him. Do you intend to bring your wife?”
“No,” said Rodvard, (thinking quickly on Lalette and as quickly away).
“Oh, there is something wrong with the personal relation. Perhaps it is just as well if you do not; Her Majesty is not prudish, but she does not approve of witches at the court. Your room will be at the depth of the west wing, beyond the hall of conference. I will have one of the under-butlers show you.” He stood up, then paused with one hand holding the bell-rope.
“One last word. A Bearer finds himself in a strange position here without his witch. I suppose your wife has given you the usual warning about infidelity, but you are clearly new to the jewel and young, and there are not a few ladies who might make the loss seem worth the gain—since you can read their desires. In particular I warn you to stand clear of the Countess Aiella of Arjen, in whom I have noted something of the kind. She is involved with the Duke of Aggermans, a man who’ll protect his own dangerously. . . . Drop in tomorrow night after Cleudi releases you; it will be a pleasure to compare things seen with another Bearer. I have not met one for long.”
In the room was a tray of food on the table, ample and well selected, with a bottle of wine; three or four books also, but they were all gesling-romances, and of a kind Rodvard found it difficult to bear even when well written, as these hardly were. He glanced at each in turn, then tossed them aside, and was only rescued from boredom by Mathurin’s coming, who pressed his hands, and said he would come the next evening again, but for the now, he must hurry.
Rodvard replied that the high butler Tuolén was the bearer of a Star, and Mathurin must either avoid his eye or keep his own thought on innocuous subjects.
“And his witch? Wait, no, that explains much.”
“I do not see,” said Rodvard.
“Why, fool, the hold the court party has. No sooner a man turns up that’s in opposition than your Tuolén knows his most secret purpose, and I do not doubt that his wife witches the man. This is something for the High Center of the New Day.”
IIIA pretty maid brought him breakfast in bed. She gave him a cheerful morning greeting but embarrassed him by hoping in her thought that he would not make love to her. Her mind held some memory of how the last man in this room had done so, but she shied from the thought of the outcome so much that instead of decently avoiding her look Rodvard was tempted to pry deeper, but there was hardly time.
She said it would be near to noon when Count Cleudi rose and that his apartment was in one of the pavilions set among tree and shrub and garden, west from the main villa. Rodvard dressed and went to stroll in that direction through curved avenues among intricate beds of spring flowers—tulip and narcissus, with pink azaleas just in the bud beside them and magnolia showing its heavy white wax. The pathways had been laid out so that each sweep brought somewhere into view through trees the pale blue bay, with the white houses of Sedad Vix climbing the slope beyond, their walls touched to gold by genial sunshine; bright yellow birds were singing overhead, or busily gathering morsels for their nests. Rodvard felt his heart expanding with a joyous certainty that all would yet be well, though in the same tick demanding of himself how men who dwelt in such surroundings could be given to evil and oppression. Ah, if all people could only walk in gardens daily! A question in philosophy to put to the doctor—but before he could frame it into words, a turn of the path brought him past a tall clump of rhododendrons to the front of a red-doored pavilion, where a gardener was letting into the ground plants of blooming hyacinth.
The air was rich with their fragrance. “Good morning to you,” said Rodvard cheerfully, for joy of the world.
The man looked up with lips that turned down at the corners. “If you say it is a good morning, I suppose it must be one for you,” he said, and turned back to his trowel.
“Why, I would call it the best of mornings. Does not the fine air of it please you?”
“Enough.”
“Then what’s amiss? Have you troubles?”
“Who has not?” The gardener slapped his trowel against the ground beside his latest plant. “Look at these flowers, now. Just smell that white one there, it’s more fragrant than the blue. Aren’t they beautiful things? Brought here at expense, and in this soil, see how black it is, they would grow more perfect than ever, year by year. But here’s the end of them; as soon as the blossoms fade ever so little, poor things, they must be dug up and thrown away, because she—” he swung his head and rolled an eye in the direction of the red-doored pavilion “—can’t bear to have any but blooming flowers at her door and will want new lilies.”
“Who is she?” asked Rodvard, lowering his tone for fear that voices will sometimes carry through wood.
“The Countess Aiella. Her affair, you will be saying, whether flowers die or live; she has all that income from the Arjen estates, and doesn’t have to provide for her brothers, who married those two heiresses up in Bregatz, but a man could still weep for the waste of the flowers. Ser, give a thought to it, how in the world we never have enough of beauty and those who destroy any part of it take something from all other people. Is it not true, now?”
He paused on his knees and looked up at Rodvard (who was growing interested indeed, but now felt the coldness of the Blue Star telling him that this earthy philosopher was not thinking of beauty at all, but only reciting a lesson and wondering whether his pretty speech might not draw him a gift from this poetical-looking young man.)
“I do not doubt it,” he said, “but I have no money to give away,” and turned to go, but he had not travelled a dozen paces when he met one who must be the Countess Aiella herself by the little double coronet in her drag-edge hat. Rodvard doffed to the coronet, noting in the fleeting second of his bow the passionate, bewildering beauty of the face surrounded by curves of light-brown hair.
She stopped. “Put it on,” she said, and he looked up at her. The cloak did not conceal the fact that she was still dressed for evening; a leg showed through the slit in her dress. “I have not seen you before.”
“No, your grace. I only arrived last night.”
“Your badge says you are a clerk.”
“I am a writer to the Count Cleudi for this conference.” (He dared to look into the eyes a finger-joint length below his own; behind them there was boredom with a faint flicker of interest in himself and the thought of having spent a bad night; a weary thought.)
“Count Cleudi, oh. You might be him in disguise.” She laughed a laugh that trilled up the scale, slipped past him with a motion as lithe as a gazelle’s and up the path into the red-doored pavilion. Rodvard looked after her until he heard the gardener cackle, then, a little angry with himself, stamped on round the turn of the path, trying to recover the glory of the morning. Some of it came back, but not enough to prevent him thinking more on the comparison between this countess and Lalette than the difference between this day and any other day; and so he reached Cleudi’s door, with its device of a fishing bird carved into the wood.
Mathurin greeted him properly in words to show he and Rodvard barely had met each other. The pavilion was all on one floor, the Count in a room at the side, with a man doing his hair while he sipped hot spiced wine, from which a delicious odor floated. Rodvard had heard of, but never seen this famous exile and intriguer; he looked into a narrow face with a broad brow above a sharp nose and lips that spoke of self-indulgence. Mathurin pronounced the name of the new writer; a pair of dark eyes looked at Rodvard broodingly (the thought behind them wondering what his weakness was and how he would cheat). Said Cleudi:
“I do not ask your earlier employment, since it is of no moment if you are faithful and intelligent. I cannot bear stupidity. Can you read Tritulaccan?”
“Yes, your Grace.”
“You will gain nothing by attempting to flatter me with the form of address. On the side table are pens and papers, also a horoscope which has been cast in Tritulaccan and a poem in your own musical language. Make fair copies of both in Dossolan. Have you breakfasted?” (His accent had the slight overemphasis on S which no Tritulaccan ever loses.)
“Yes, thank you.”
The symbols on the astrological chart were new to Rodvard; he had to copy each by sheer drawing and then translate the terms as best he might. The poem was a sonnet in praise of a brown-haired lady; its meter limped at two points. Rodvard managed to correct one of them by a transposition of words and presently laid both papers before Cleudi, who knit his brows over them for a moment and smiled:
“You are a very daring writer to improve on what I have set down, but it is well done. Mathurin, give him a scuderius. Well then, you are to wait on me in the conference at nine glasses of the afternoon. Everything I say is to be set down, and also the remarks of the Chancellor Florestan, but most especially those of the Baron Brunivar, for these may be of future use. Of the others, whatever you yourself, consider worth while. You are dismissed.”
Mathurin saw him to the door. “The scuderius?” asked Rodvard.
“Goes into the treasury of
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