The Song of Andiene - By Elisa Blaisdell Page 0,98
thin cloth.”
“Why must we wear these?” Ilbran asked, as he looked down in disgust at the court robe he wore.
“They hold Festival here,” Kallan said. “The last joy before summer.”
Ilbran took a tentative step, then, more confidently, another one, too long. He heard the seam tear, and froze, peering to the side to see what he had done.
Syresh laughed. “Take shorter steps. If you are to live in a palace, you must learn to walk like a lady,” and he laughed again at Ilbran’s look of disgust.
Kallan chuckled. “You and the minstrel make a good pair. Our lady will have two jesters.” That silenced Syresh, for the moment.
“Were they so stinted in cloth that they could not make the skirts wider?” Ilbran asked. “I never wished to eat at a king’s table. One more mocking word, and I will put on my trousers and tunic and go and sleep in the stable.”
Kallan broke in. “There would be room enough. The horses will be gone to the mountains. But you’ll come with us, if all you can do is stand loutishly against the wall. Our lady has few enough to follow her.”
Ilbran was silent. The unaccustomed clothes—that was nothing. But the other two had lived this kind of life; they had been born to it; it came back to them like the feel and fit of old clothes. He had never even touched the fringes of it, and he had no desire to. Did Andiene truly long for it, or did she merely want revenge? He looked at Syresh. “You are her liegeman; you should wear her badge.”
“I do not know what colors she has chosen.”
“It would be easy to forget. You’ve worn the badges of two kings already.”
“What do you mean? Who told you?”
Ilbran answered quietly. “It was a long time ago, but it was the last day of my old life, so I remember it well. I remember a soldier picking out stitches from his Festival robe, and making weak excuses for his turned coat.”
Syresh looked at him in amazement. “It was long ago. It seems our lives are knotted together like a net. You, me, Lenane, all five of us were in the city that day.”
“We have chosen our side for the last time,” Kallan said gravely. Syresh nodded. There was no room for mockery when things like that were remembered. And this was a Festival day, the last before summer. They hurried to join the revelry.
***
In the other room, down the long hall, Lenane and Andiene laughed for sheer pleasure as they bathed and dressed themselves. Lenane shook out her long hair, still damp, and coiled and pinned it, winding it with a chain of red metal she had pulled from her pack.
“Where did you get that?” Andiene asked, with a smile.
She needed no answer. Some villager had been taught to be more careful of her treasures. “What of your hair?” Lenane asked instead. “It looks as though it had been haggled off with a kitchen knife.”
“I had no time to fuss and fool with it. I cannot say the word and grow it long again.”
“I know,” Lenane said, “but you can make it seem deliberately done, and not hacked off in penance for your sins.”
Andiene giggled and started to laugh. Lenane had never seen her so foolish-merry. In between bursts of laughter she gasped out, “Whipped and driven out for harlotry, with my skirts cut short and my hair cropped about my ears!”
“Not the regal aura that you wish to show the people,” said Lenane.
“What is harlotry?” asked Kare.
“Nothing that you need concern yourself with,” Lenane was quick to say. She hunted in her pack again, and brought out a pair of scissors. Andiene knew better than to ask where she had gotten them. So the minstrel snipped and sheared until Andiene looked in the beaten metal mirror to see a wavering dark reflection of herself, wearing a silver cap lying close to her head.
“No queenly look,” she said.
Lenane spoke more seriously than she had before. “My lady, you have the manner of one born to power. Dressed in seaman’s rags, you have it. Hair cropped short, worn down to your feet, it would make no difference. The people this morning saw it and trembled.”
“I trembled too,” Andiene said. “I was raised to this life—royal halls and feasts should be familiar to me—but I am afraid. Afraid of what I may say or do. I have not been used to the company of mankind.”