The Falconer's Daughter - Liz Lyles Page 0,20
be necessary.”
She still didn’t know the places he named, her world barely large enough to include Scotland and England and France that she had heard so much about. “Why wouldn’t Chaucer simply be translated into another native language—”
“Not native, vernacular!”
“Into another vernacular?” She said the word strangely, the accents stilted on her tongue. It was hard for her to lose the Highland inflection, her words soft, the consonants full, round.
“You ask too many questions,” Mr. Pole said.
Her papa had said that, too, but at least he always answered them. “You can’t explain, then?”
“I won’t explain,” he said irritably. “Your questions are irrelevant…no, it’s not even that. They are ignorant. You ask because you don’t want to learn. If you don’t want to learn, then waste somebody else’s time.”
“I’m not,” She shouted, preparing to throw her book at him. “And you are the one who is lazy. You don’t want to explain, or you can’t, because you don’t know the truth.”
“The truth?” he shouted back. “How would you know? Do you want the truth? I’ll give it to you. You’re a bastard, did you know that? A shame on your entire family.”
Cordaella hurled the book, catching Mr. Pole squarely on the forehead. The years hunting with her father had given her an extraordinary arm. “Liar.”
“True.” He dropped his voice as he rubbed the spot where she’d hit him, a look of fury in his eyes. “It is. Your parents were never married.”
Tears welled in her eyes, furious tears that she dashed away with her balled hand. “It doesn’t matter,” she said, but her own voice failed her, all conviction gone. She felt Philip’s and Elisabeth’s eyes on her. She wished she were dead, killed along with her father. Anything would be better than this. “It doesn’t matter to me,” she repeated, hoping for a measure of defiance, for some disdain to disarm the tutor. “I loved them anyway.”
*
IF LESSONS WERE bad with Mr. Pole, Mass with Bishop Langford was far worse. The only interesting part of Mass was the chapel itself, which, the Earl had noted in his most puffed voice, had been built only eighty years ago in the Gothic style, a style copied from Paris at the height of its popularity. The chapel was supposed to be a miniature of the great cathedrals in France, with its small ceiling soaring towards Heaven, which Philip confided, was meant to help one’s soul draw closer to God.
Saintly statues had been carved into the small portal, more reminders that the chapel was to be—indeed—an image of Heaven. Yet Cordaella dismissed the figures as ludicrous. They were neither delicate nor expressive, carved by a village mason who knew too little either about limestone or about the human body. These saints had limbs and heads that were oversized for the small torso and the grouping of saints looked more like peculiar animals. Cordaella would kneel during Mass and half close her eyes, squinting at the statues to see if she could make them move.
Without turning her head, Cordaella could look from the statues to the row of her relations. From her position in the pew, she could see all of their bent heads—one short uncle, the Earl; his new wife, Mary, who only talked in a whisper; and her true blood relatives—three sickly-looking children terrified of their father. She lifted her head slightly to get a better look. The Lady Eton still knelt, her lips moving in silent prayer. The Earl’s chin was in his shoulder; he was probably sleeping. Philip read, Elisabeth traced the embroidery in her skirt, and little Edward picked his nose. Trust little Eddie to be picking his nose.
The priest’s intonation began again, his chanting a singsong of Latin. Cordaella could only understand the odd phrase, partly because her knowledge of Latin was still scant, and partly because the priest was very hard to follow. If the priest prayed in Latin, did that mean God spoke Latin? Did that mean she was supposed to only pray in Latin?
The priest said “Let us pray,” and everyone moved forward to the kneelers. Cordaella knelt with the others, folding her arms in front of her as Lady Mary had directed. The black sleeves of her gown fell back, revealing her small white wrists. She would wear mourning for a year in honor of her late grandfather, the Duke of Aberdeen, John Macleod.
To wear black for mourning. It was another new idea, a peculiar idea to wear only one color, and such an awful