Nancy Berberick - Prisoner of Haven

She looked at the light from the windows of the upper story of the house, those in Loren’s chambers and Tamara’s. Nothing would ease her restlessness today. Nothing would ease her until Sir Radulf had his supper, his private talk with Loren, and his hour of pretending to be a well-met guest in the home of a man whose city and whose hopes he held in his mailed hand. When she saw him ride away, his dark pack in attendance, then she would relax.

In the shadowless morning, Usha felt something cold slide over her. She looked up to see Sir Radulf’s black dragon Ebon, wings wide and gliding on the air currents over the river.

The sweet notes of Tamara’s lute drifted through the solar, sometimes stirring, sometimes soothing her audience. Very likely no musician in Haven had a more rapt audience. Most here were family-her father, his cousin Lorelia, her husband Havelock. Then there was Sir Radulf and Usha. A congenial audience, to be sure, but Usha thought the girl’s lute playing skilled enough to charm a gathering of strangers.

“My dear,” Lorelia said at Usha’s shoulder, “the child is lovely, isn’t she? And so talented! A true luthier .”

Usha forbore to smile at Lorelia’s use of the word for “maker of lutes” to mean “player of lutes” and agreed that Tamara was lovely.

Havelock, looking thin and strained in Sir Radulf’s presence, nodded but said nothing. Usha had hardly heard his voice all evening but to murmur agreement when compliments were presented to his host. The man looked like one in the grip of a wasting sickness. It was a quiet company. Unusually so. All talk had been congenial, often amusing on the surface, but something darker lurked below the amenities.

The mood was fed by the raucous sounds of Sir Radulf’s guard feasting in the great hall below. Four men and two women, they sounded like they were feeding at the barracks rather than dining at the gracious table of their lord’s host. Snatches of bawdy songs punctuated rough laughter, and twice a woman’s voice lifted in sharp protest as a servant was manhandled.

Loren’s face paled to hear this and grew harder each time Sir Radulf ignored it. The clatter of knives against pewter plates sounded harshly. Usha glanced at Sir Radulf, and then away. In truth, she preferred the rowdy feasting of his men to the table habits of their master. She’d sat beside him at dinner, first chilled then made faintly queasy by the strange precision of his table habits. He cut his meat into slices so thin they might be called slivers then carefully placed each on the plate. She’d never seen a man cut a grape in half before eating it. She had to look away as he carefully flayed the breast of duck.

Usha slipped her hand into Loren’s. He absently returned the pressure of her fingers then turned his attention to Tamara, his eyes the brooding color of the candle-smoke hanging in the still air. He had the look of a man who thought his daughter would vanish away, disappearing as the music she made faded.

In Sir Radulf’s eye, Usha thought, Tamara shone like a miser’s pile of treasure. As Tamara played, his hand twitched a little on his knee, as though it was hard for him to keep from touching her.

Usha’s skin prickled. His hands would not caress. They would possess, and it seemed that the knight’s hunger for Loren’s blue-eyed daughter had grown sharper since the day she’d met them in Lorelia’s garden.

The music fell away in a silvery drift of notes, and Tamara stood to make a proud curtsy in acknowledgement of the applause of her audience. Her face, naturally pale, seemed even whiter than before but for two hectic spots of red, like a fever flush. Her sapphire eyes shone. Usha saw the pulse in her throat racing.

In her hand, Loren’s had grown cold. He lifted Usha’s hand and kissed it, as though for courage, then stood.

“Friends,” he said, “thank you for joining us tonight. It’s always a fine thing to share meat and mead with good company.” He gathered them all in with a glance and a smile that showed nothing of the strain Usha heard far beneath his words. “And of course it is an excellent thing to share good news.”

Lorelia’s startled glance darted between her husband and her cousin. The color in Tamara’s cheeks deepened when Sir Radulf, sleek and smiling, gestured. She put aside her lute and glanced at her father before going to take the knight’s hand.

Oh, Usha thought, heart sinking. Oh, no. She seemed to hear the words before Loren spoke them. Tears welled in her eyes.

“Friends,” Loren said, “it is my pleasure-” In the great hall, someone raised a shout or a cheer. Others hailed it in rowdy laughter. “It is my honor to tell you that Sir Radulf has sought my daughter’s hand, and I have granted it.”

Stunned silence lasted for a noticeable half-beat until Lorelia rushed breathlessly into the gap.

“My dear! ” she cried, embracing Tamara. “Oh, child, what news!” Fluttering, she congratulated Sir Radulf, “For it’s only proper to congratulate the groom on his good fortune.” She turned to Tamara. “But of course, one wishes the bride good luck in her choice.”

Uneasy laughter followed at the aptness of the old tradition, then congratulations overrode. Usha hung back, standing in the circle of Loren’s arms, to let Tamara’s family offer their good wishes first. When the time came, she congratulated Sir Radulf, who bowed over her hand and said, “I hope you wish us well, for you are very dear to my Tamara’s father and therefore important to me. I hope,” he said, keeping hold of her hand as she started to withdraw, “that you will paint one of your famous portraits of my Tamara, as my wedding gift to her.”

Usha freed her hand and glanced at Loren, who nodded slightly. “I will be happy to paint our Tamara. Such a lovely subject will surely dance onto my canvas as easily as music dances from her fingers.”

The knight’s chill expression said he liked her pronoun less than she’d liked his. About that Usha didn’t care a whit.

When she embraced Tamara, very quietly Usha said, “Child, never forget that when you need a friend, I am here.”

In her arms Tamara quivered, but not with fear. Usha saw pride and a kind of triumph in her eyes.

In the steamy garden, the night thick and dark and smelling of the foul river, Usha walked in silence beside Loren. She held his hand, and through flesh and bone and sinew she felt his sorrow. Beyond the walls of the garden the city was quiet. They no longer heard the rumble of carriage wheels or cart wheels as they used to do. What voices they did hear were those of Loren’s servants going about their work, safely within their master’s walls.

“I wish it would rain,” Usha said softly.

Loren nodded but absently. In the sky, dragons wheeled and turned.

“My love,” Loren said, answering the unspoken question between them. “If all the free realms fall, as Haven has, I must ensure my daughter’s safety. The safest place will be with the winner.”

Usha pressed his hand, a silent answer. It had never seemed a good enough reason, and Usha had never been able to answer the old question of what she would do.

Loren was a good man caught in difficult circumstances, and this one was his own making. She wanted to suggest that Tamara be taken out of the city by Aline’s people, but she could not. She did not admit that she couldn’t trust a man so close to Sir Radulf.

They passed the garden’s loveliest spot, a reflecting pool ringed with several varieties of weary, rain-hungry mint. Tamara would be leaving this place, and whether she admitted it or not, she would leaving the peace and security of being a cherished daughter in a rich man’s home for the instability of being the wife of a knight.