Jack Vance: Lyonesse

"The punishment is now accomplished," declared Dame Boudetta, still using a careful and strained voice. "Everyone will surely be the better for it; now we must put it from our minds. You are the precious Princess Suldrun, and honest Dame Maugelin will instruct you in the proprieties."

"I do not want her. I want Ehirme."

"Tush now, be complaisant."

Suldrun was taken to her chamber. Dame Maugelin plumped herself in a chair, and began to work embroidery. Suldrun went to the window and stared out across the harbor.

Dame Maugelin trudged up the circular stone steps to Dame Boudetta's apartments, hips rolling and thrusting under her dark brown gown. On the third floor she halted to pant, then went to an arched door of fitted timbers, bound with black iron straps.

The door stood ajar. Dame Maugelin pushed it somewhat more open, with a creaking of iron hinges, so that she could pass her amplitude through the gap. She advanced to stand in the doorway, eyes darting to all corners of the room at once.

Dame Boudetta sat at a table, tendering rape-seed on the tip of a long thin forefinger to a caged tom-tit. "Peck, Dicco, peck! Like a gallant bird! Ah! That was a good one."

Dame Maugelin crept a pace or two forward, and at last Dame Boudetta looked up. "What is it now?"

Dame Maugelin shook her head, wrung her hands and licked her pursing lips. "The child is like a stone. I can do nothing with her."

Dame Boudetta made a short brittle sound. "You must be brisk! Arrange a schedule! Insist on obedience!"

Dame Maugelin held her arms wide, and spoke a single poignant word: "How?"

Dame Boudetta gave an annoyed snap of tongue against teeth. She turned back to the bird cage. "Dicco? Twit, twit, Dicco! One more peck and that is all. No more!" Dame Boudetta rose to her feet, and with Dame Maugelin in her wake, went downstairs and up to Suldrun's chambers. She opened the door, looked into the sitting room. "Princess?"

Suldrun made no response and, indeed, was nowhere to be seen.

The two advanced into the room. "Princess?" called Dame Boudetta. "Are you hiding from us? Come now; don't be naughty."

Dame Maugelin moaned in a sad contralto: "Where is the perverse little thing? I gave stern instructions that she must sit in her chair."

Dame Boudetta looked into the bedchamber. "Princess Suldrun! Where are you?"

She cocked her head sidewise to listen, but heard nothing. The chambers were empty. Dame Maugelin muttered: "She's gone off again to the stour-woman."

Dame Boudetta went to the window thinking to overlook a view to the east, but the way was concealed by the slanting tiled roof over the arcade and the moldering bulk of Zoltra's Wall. Below was the orangery. To the side, half-hidden under dark green foliage, she noted the glimmer of Suldrun's white frock.

Silent and grim she stalked from the room, followed by Dame Maugelin, hissing and muttering furious phrases under her breath.

They descended the stairs, went out and around to the orangery.

Suldrun sat on a bench playing with a wisp of grass. She noted the approach of the two women without emotion, and returned her attention to the grass.

Dame Boudetta halted and stood looking down at the small blonde head. Anger surged up within her, but she was too clever and too wary to allow it tangible scope. Behind stood Dame Maugelin, mouth puckered in excitement, hoping that Dame Boudetta would deal roughly with the Princess: a shake, a pinch, a slap on the firm little buttocks.

Princess Suldrun raised her eyes and for a moment stared up at Dame Boudetta. Then, as if in boredom or apathy, she looked away, and Dame Boudetta was left with a strange sensation that she was seeing ahead, down long years of the future.

Dame Boudetta spoke in a voice grating with effort: "Princess Suldrun, you are not happy with Dame Maugelin's instruction?"

"I don't like her."

"But you like Ehirme?" Suldrun merely twitched the grass stalk. "Very well," said Dame Boudetta grandly. "So it will be. We cannot have our precious Princess unhappy."

A quick glance upward, which seemed to read Dame Boudetta through and through.

Dame Boudetta thought with bitter amusement: If that's the way it is, let it be. At least we understand each other.

To salvage face she said sternly: "Ehirme shall return, but you must heed Dame Maugelin, who will instruct your deportment."

EHIRME RETURNED, and Dame Maugelin continued her attempts to instruct Suldrun, with success no greater than before. Suldrun was not so much insubordinate as remote; rather than spend effort in defying Dame Maugelin, she simply ignored her.

Dame Maugelin was placed in an irksome predicament; if she admitted her incapacity, Dame Boudetta might put her to even less pleasant employment. So daily Dame Maugelin presented herself to Suldrun's chambers, where Ehirme was already on hand.

The two might or might not acknowledge her presence. Dame Maugelin, then, wearing a moony grin and looking in all directions at once, would wander about the room, pretending to put things to rights.

At last she would advance upon Suldrun, in breezy and lightsome confidence. "Now, Princess, today we must think about making a fine court lady out of you. To start, show me your best curtsy."

Suldrun had been tentatively instructed in six curtsies of varying formality, mainly by Dame Maugelin's ponderous demonstrations, over and over again, joints creaking audibly, until Suldrun, taking pity, might make an attempt at the exercise.

After the noon meal, which would be served either in Suldrun's chambers, or in the orangery if the weather were fine, Ehirme returned home to manage her own household, while Dame Maugelin laid herself down for an afternoon nap. Suldrun also was expected to sleep, but as soon as Dame Maugelin's throat began to rattle Suldrun was out of her bed, into her shoes and away along the hall and down the stairs, to wander the fastnesses of the ancient palace.

During the slow hours of the afternoon the palace itself seeme to drowse, and the small frail shape moved along the galleries and through the tall chambers like a dream-wisp.

In sunny weather she might visit the orangery, to play pensive games in the shade of sixteen old orange trees; more often she went by unobtrusive ways to the Great Hall and thence to the Hall of Honors beyond, where fifty-four great chairs, ranking the walls to right and left, represented the fifty-four most noble houses of Lyonesse.

The emblem above each chair, for Suldrun, told the innate nature of the chair: qualities distinctive, vivid and complex. One chair was characterized by a shifting sidelong deceit, but pretended graceful charm; another exhibited a doomed and reckless bravery. Suldrun recognized a dozen varieties of menace and cruelty, and as many nameless affections which could not be described or worded, which caused her a churning of the bowels, or thrills along her skin, or erotic sensations, transient, pleasant but very strange. Certain chairs loved Suldrun and gave her protection; others were heavy with danger. Moving among these massive entities, Suldrun felt subdued and tentative. She walked with slow steps, listening for inaudible sounds and watching for movement or shifting of the muted colors. Sitting half-drowsing, half-alert, in the arms of a chair who loved her, Suldrun became receptive. The murmuring unheard voices approached the audible, as tragedies and triumphs were told and retold: the colloquy of the chairs.

At the end of the room a dark red gonfalon, embroidered with a Tree of Life, hung from the beams to the floor. A split in the fabric allowed access to a retiring chamber: a room dark and dingy, smelling of ancient dust. In this room were stored ceremonial oddments: a bowl carved from alabaster, chalices, bundles of cloth. Suldrun disliked the room; it seemed a cruel little place where cruel deeds had been planned and perhaps accomplished, leaving a subliminal quiver in the air.