Maze of Moonlight, Gael Baudino [ebook reader screen TXT] 📗

flouted the estate laws and guards who had clapped those same tenants into leg shackles and marched them smartly before the bailiff got gloriously drunk together, sang together, commiserated together about the cruelties of life that caused one to break the law and another to enforce it . . . and their wives gossiped and exchanged recipes for spiced wine.

Paul delMari liked that. Though a fortress, Shrinerock was a house. His house. He liked his house to be happy.

But though it seemed at times that there were smiling faces enough in Shrinerock to populate a kingdom and set it alaughing with the infectious merriment of the season, there were some faces missing, faces that had been absent at these celebrations for a long time. True, those who bore them had never come openly, and their laughter and healing and harping had always been confined to the private chambers of the castle, but Christmas was not Christmas without them, and because of their absence, Paul, as usual, found a touch of sadness in the merriment. The shadows between the candlelight and the firelight seemed darker, and the sparkles of flame that scintillated in the snowflakes held the accents of tears.

Youthful faces, faces touched with a light that was more than mortal. Some he would never see again. Others he hoped to see perhaps once or twice more, but he was afraid that he would not. The world was a darker place than it used to be, and it was growing darker.

And then, after Christmas, came a new year that, inevitably, would bring more losses, greater darkening. Jehan had left years ago and had never returned; and now, in a few months, Martin would be leaving. Living with such loss, expecting yet another, Paul did not have the heart to take in any more lads for training and nurturing: soon it would be just himself, Isabelle, and Catherine.

He wondered: what happened to humans with such memories and friendships and losses? Did they fade, too?

Still, outwardly, Paul was all smiles and cheer, going about the duties of a baron with the genial smile and bland good nature that had given him the reputation of being a trifle daft. His smiles were a lie—everybody lied in one way or another—that allowed him to pass off some of his stranger actions and opinions as mere eccentricities. The Inquisition had no sense of humor, but being quite mad itself, it understood madness.

But it was hard to be daft when one felt so sad, harder still to remember to keep one's tears confined to the shelter of one's bed and the arms of one's sister and wife.

Today, he was forgetting his smiles. He had the shutters in the west tower open to the cold air, and he was staring out the window at the lands that fell away beneath the steep, rocky precipice upon which his castle had been built. From below came the liquid sound of the waters of Saint Adrian's spring, as much a part of Shrinerock as the wood and stone. Off in the distance,t hough, was Malvern Forest, bare and gray and patched with the white of two-week-old snow. Not that far away, really. Mirya and Terrill and Natil could come for a visit if they wanted. The world was not yet that dark, and the hidden passage that led from the spring to the castle well was still open and unguarded.

He wished that he could hear Natil's harp . . . just once more. . . .

“Lord Baron.”

Quick. Tears dried, Paul? Grin firmly in place? All right, then.

“Hmmm?” he said, pulling back from the window. “Oh, Nicholas! And how are you today, sir?”

The steward of Shrinerock was as outwardly solemn as Paul was bubbly. That too, Paul supposed, was a lie. So many lies!

“I am quite well,” said Nicholas with a deep bow that silently acknowledged his firmly held belief that mighty men like Baron Paul had no business being at all concerned about the health or circumstances of their subordinates. “You have a visitor, my lord. Lake of Furze Hamlet. He indicated to me that it would please you to see him.”

“Lake . . . hmmm.” Paul pretended to be thinking deeply, though he knew quite well who Lake was. “Lakelakelake . . . ah, yes. Lake. I did say that I would see him, didn't I? Ha-ha! Where is he?”

Lake was in the lobby, but Paul instructed Nicholas to bring him up to the library. Nicholas moved off solemnly, an important man doing important work. Paul, for all his forty years, bounded off in the direction of the library like a boy with a piece of sugar waiting for him. Lies, he reflected, had their advantages. Another noble might have steered his way through the castle like a Venetian galley and therefore would have missed the utter joy of vaulting over an astonished serving girl who was scrubbing the corridor floor and sending her pelting away with a sustained shriek.

In the library, he settled himself in the big chair by the fire and waited; and a short time later, Lake entered alone with his cap in his hands. He gave Paul a heavyset bow, his eyes downcast. Today the farmer, too, seemed to be wrapped in a lie.

“Well, my man, what can I do for you?” said Paul. “Not wanting to indenture yourself for more land, I hope. If you work off any more contracts as quickly as you did your first, I'm afraid I'll be calling you baron before too long!”

Lake looked uncomfortable. He was a hard worker. Almost inhumanly so. Always the first out in the fields, always the last to go home. Thirty-five years ago he had come to the estate with nothing but a bundle of clothes and a knife. Now he owned his own land, employed his own men to work it, and paid not fees but taxes to Shrinerock. If sweat and labor could ennoble a man—as Abbot Wenceslas and his monks always insisted