‘It feels so good to be out of the dun,’ the Queen said. ‘Don’t you think so, Lady Bevyan?’
‘I do, Your Highness.’ Bevyan paused for a hurried glance back – the men were all staring at the Queen. ‘It’s a lovely sunny day.’
‘Perhaps Her Highness might sit up?’ Merodda said, smiling. ‘She has a great many men in her retinue, and dignity is never amiss.’
Abrwnna stuck out her tongue at Merodda, but she did sit, smoothing her white riding dresses down over her knees.
‘I’m quite sure my guards know their duty,’ the Queen said. ‘And they’re all very loyal to the King. Well, to your brother, my lady Merodda. He picked them, after all.’
‘My brother acts purely in the King’s interests,’ Merodda said. ‘Any loyalty paid to him is loyalty paid to our liege.’
‘Oh please!’ Abrwnna wrinkled her nose. ‘You don’t have to pretend around me. We all know who really rules the kingdom.’
A page was approaching. Bevyan laid a warning finger across her lips.
‘Your Highness?’ the boy said. ‘The meal is ready.’
‘Very well.’ Abrwnna rose and nodded his way. ‘Shall we go, my ladies?’
While they ate, with the pages hovering around in attendance, Abrwnna kept the conversation to court gossip. Her maidservants supplied her with every scrap of scandal in the dun, apparently, to augment what she gleaned herself. She ran through various love affairs or the possibility of them as if she were reciting the lists for a tournament.
‘So you can see, Bevva,’ Abrwnna finished up, ‘all sorts of things happened this winter while you were gone.’
‘Indeed,’ Bevyan said. She reminded herself to tell Peddyc about this use of her nickname. ‘Long winters do that to people, and with so many widows sheltering here under your protection, I suppose things might get a bit complicated.’
‘Very, and I haven’t told you the best bit yet. Lady Merodda’s brother was the biggest prize of all. The Regent might as well be a nice fat partridge, for all the hawks that are set upon him.’
Merodda, who was buttering bread, smiled indulgently.
‘Well, Your Highness,’ Bevyan said. ‘He has access to the King, and that does make a man attractive.’
‘Just so. The worst thing happened though. It was right before the thaw. Two of the court ladies were fighting over Burcan, just like dogs fighting over scraps of meat. It was Varra and Caetha.’
‘Caetha? I’d heard she left us for the Otherlands.’
‘She did, and here’s the thing. It looked like she was gaining the Regent’s favour – everyone said he was much taken with her – when suddenly she died. Everyone said Varra poisoned her, it was so sudden. And then Varra left court and went home to her brother, which makes me think she really did do it.’
‘Oh, my dear liege!’ Merodda looked up with a little shake of her head. ‘I doubt that very much. Here – it was at the bitter end of winter, and we all know what happens then to the food, even in a king’s dun.’ She glanced at Bevyan. ‘The poor woman died after eating tainted meat. It was horrible.’
‘But she’s not the only one who ate it.’ Abrwnna leaned forward. ‘Merodda had some, too.’
‘And, Your Highness, I was quite ill.’ Merodda shuddered as if at the memory. ‘Caetha wasn’t strong enough to recover, I’m afraid. It happens.’
‘Indeed, it does happen, and a sad sad thing,’ Bevyan said. ‘There’s really no need to talk about poisoning people.’
And yet, despite her sensible words, Bevyan found herself wondering about Merodda’s herbcraft. If she could wash her face with ill-smelling water and keep her skin as smooth as a lass’s, what other lore did she know? No doubt the Queen had no idea that poor dead Caetha’s real rival had been Lord Burcan’s sister.
Since it was the Queen’s pleasure to ride, the women returned to the dun late in the afternoon. Side by side Merodda and Bevyan walked into the great hall, where the men were already congregating for the evening meal. They watched the Queen and her maidservants flit through the crowd like chattering birds and chase each other, giggling, up the stone staircase. Bevyan could just see on the landing a handful of young lords, each marked as a member of the Queen’s fellowship by a twist of green silk around their right sleeve. They bowed to the ladies and walked with them up the stairway and out of sight.
‘Bevva?’ Merodda said suddenly. ‘You don’t suppose Abrwnna has a lover, do you?’
‘It’s one of my fears, truly. She talks of little else.’
‘Just so. Being married to a child is a difficult thing for a lass like her.’
They exchanged a grim glance, for that moment at least allies.
Later that evening, Bevyan remembered to ask Lilli about the lady Caetha in the privacy of her suite. Lilli repeated the story of the tainted meat and added that Caetha had died clutching her stomach in agony.
‘How terrible!’ Bevyan said. ‘I take it that your mother was ill as well.’
‘She was. She’d eaten from that same meat.’ Lilli considered with a small frown. ‘But she wasn’t anywhere as ill as poor Caetha, though she threw up ever so much and told us all how much pain she was in.’
‘That’s an odd way of putting it, dear. Do you think she wasn’t in pain?’
‘Oh, my apologies. I didn’t mean it to come out like that.’ Lilli laid a pale hand at her throat. ‘She was; of course she was. It was awful to hear her moan and not be able to do anything for it.’
‘No doubt. You poor child! Well, I’m so sorry about poor Caetha.’
‘Oh, indeed. We all were.’
Yet once again Bevyan wondered.
Often over the next few days Lilli found herself drawn back to her mother’s chamber and Brour. She felt as if she were living the lives of two different girls. In the afternoons, she would sit and sew with Bevyan and the other women, talking over the news of the royal dun while the embroidery grew thick on the pieces of Braemys’s wedding shirt. But in the morning, she would watch her mother to get some idea of Merodda’s plans, and once they were established – a country ride, perhaps, or a session in the Queen’s chambers – Lilli would slip upstairs for a lesson. Oddly enough, Brour always seemed to know that she was coming and would be waiting for her.
‘Is that dweomer?’ she demanded one morning. ‘The way you know I’m coming?’
‘It’s not. I am your mother’s scribe, after all. She tells me when she’ll be occupied, and then I assume you’ll be coming up here. Although, to tell you the truth, sometimes I worry about her laying a trap for us, like.’
‘So do I. But today I know she’s gone with the Queen to the temple down in the city, so she should be busy for a fair long while.’
‘Good.’ Brour considered, tapping his fingers on the closed book. ‘I’ve got a thing of great import to tell you. Repeat back to me what I told you about the Wildfolk.’
‘They are creatures of the Sphere of the Moon as we are of the Earth. They have eyes that see and ears that hear but not true wits. The dweomermaster can command them at will but should never trust them.’
‘Excellent! And what of the Lords of the Elements?’
‘They too are spirits, but of the Spheres of the Planets. They have the beginnings of true wits and thus are wily and hard to command.’
‘Well