A good arrangement, it seemed; there was fondness between all of them, and Edmée understood that she was trading passion to be the eventual Queen of Terre d’Ange, mother of heirs.
Then came her hunting accident.
It was obvious that Rolande genuinely grieved for her, and obvious too that he was blind to the possibility that Isabel L’Envers had been involved, attributing Delaunay’s vehemence to a mix of grief and jealousy. It is a human failing, to attribute the best of motives to those we know the least, and the worst to those we love best; he loved too well, Rolande did, and feared to be lenient in his judgment and favor Delaunay because of it. He heeded Isabel, who flattered and bewitched him. And they were betrothed, for House L’Envers was powerful; betrothed, and wed.
And Delaunay wrote his satire.
I think that Rolande knew, when Isabel sought to have him banished. I read what he wrote privately, for none to behold, of how he argued long and hard with his father the King on Delaunay’s behalf. The agreement they reached was a bitter compromise. Delaunay would live, and retain status such as his father’s repudiation had left him, but his poetry was declared anathema. To own it was tantamount to treason.
That much, I had known. I had not known that every extant copy of Delaunay’s works was gathered and burned. Nor that Prince Rolande de la Courcel had wept at the conflagration. I daresay no one knew, save Ysandre, who read these same words.
Somehow, then, somewhere, they were reconciled, Rolande and Delaunay. It falls within a gap in Rolande’s journal; he wrote only, "All is forgiven, though nothing is the same. If we cannot have the past, Elua grant us a future." One might argue that he wrote of Isabel and not Delaunay, but for what followed.
It came upon the heels of Ysandre’s birth, an event heralded in Rolande’s life with mingled joy and terror at donning the mantle of fatherhood. That his relations with Isabel had grown bitter was obvious to one trained to read between the lines. I hoped that Ysandre had not discerned as much, though I doubted it. There was another gap, then Rolande wrote, "Anafiel has promised, swearing upon my ring, and my heart is glad for it though neither Isabel nor Father are pleased. But who among us is whole? He is the wiser half of my sundered soul, and I can give my firstborn no greater gift than to pledge my devotion entire." And then, "It is done, and witnessed by the priests of Elua."
Shortly after this, Rolande’s journal ends. I know why, for he was caught up in the affairs of the heir of Terre d’Ange, and rode not long afterward to Camlach, to the Battle of Three Princes, where he lost his life.
So many killed, I mused, sitting beside the campfire the night I finished my reading of his diary. So much bloodshed. I had been a child still in Cereus House when these things had shaped Ysandre’s life. Mine too, had I known it; but that pattern was forming in the distant future. While I learned how to kneel uncomplaining for hours at a time and the proper angle of approach for serving sweets after a meal, Ysandre was learning how greed and jealousy corrupt the human soul.
No wonder she clung to a girl’s dream of love. I glanced at the well-worn journal, then toward the west, where dim streaks of dying sun glowed between the trees. We were near to Kusheth now, if we’d not crossed the border already. It was hard to tell, in the forest. Somewhere beyond the ability of my vision to scry lay the Straits of Alba, that wind-whipped expanse of water as grey and narrow and deadly as a blade, separating Ysandre from a dream.
Not a mere girl’s dream, I reminded myself, but a Queen’s; Ysandre’s blue boy might have hands that would lie lightly upon the Crown, but they came gripping a spear, a thousand spears. It was a dream to pit against a nightmare, of D’Angeline heads bowed before the Skaldi sword. Thinking of Waldemar Selig, I shuddered. It was hard to imagine any Pictish prince who could stand against him, in all his brawn and might and the teeming loyalty of tens of thousands of Skaldi.
And yet…the Skaldi had felt the hobnailed sandal of Tiberium upon their necks, while the Cruithne had never known defeat. And Drustan mab Necthana was of Cinhil Ru’s lineage, who had cast the soldiers of Tiberium from Alba.
Such a slender hope, and all of it resting now upon our shoulders, this unlikely threesome. I clutched Rolande’s journal to me like a talisman, lifting my gaze to the emerging stars, and prayed that we would not fail.
Chapter Sixty-Two
The scale of the Tsingani horse-fair at the Hippochamp caught me unprepared.
Once we emerged from the Senescine, our route grew ever more obvious, despite the increasing number of roads. As the dank cold of false spring eased into the truer promise of spring-to-come, pale green buds emerged on the trees around us, and traffic grew steadily along the roads.
And amid the travelers, we saw Tsingani in numbers, the true Travellers, journeying always upon the Long Road.
There is another horse-fair at the Hippochamp that takes place in late summer, when the most promising of yearlings are green-broken, offered to the gadje noblemen for outrageous prices. That fair, Hyacinthe assured us, dwarfed this one, as did the fair in midsummer in Eisheth. This was primarily a Tsingani affair, when there were opportunities to be seized early, untried yearlings and stumbling foals at auction, only their bloodlines and the cunning gaze of their breeders to recommend them.
No one has ever made a count of the Tsingani in Terre d’Ange; they are too migratory to stand still for it, too suspicious to report honestly. I have seen them gathering and I can say that they are many, more than we reckon.
As we drew near to the Hippochamp, we passed caravans of Tsingani. It was a strange thing, to witness the change in Hyacinthe. For it was he whom they acknowledged, calling out greetings in their private dialect. And why not? He was young, bold and handsome, one of their own. Hyacinthe shouted back, waving his velvet cap, black eyes sparkling. Their tongue was mixed with D’Angeline, but I scarce understood a word of it.
"You didn’t tell me I had to learn Tsingani," Joscelin muttered to me, riding close by my side.
"I didn’t know," I replied, chagrined. Even Delaunay, scholar that he was, hadn’t reckoned Tsingani a proper language. In all the time I had known Hyacinthe-through all the meals I’d eaten in his mother’s kitchen-I’d never understood what it meant to him to be a Tsingano. In front of me, they spoke D’Angeline proper. I thought of all the casual cuffs and curses he’d endured, from the very beginning of our acquaintance, when the Dowayne’s Guard had found me. I hadn’t known. I hadn’t understood. When he took a broken-down nag and built a profitable livery stable out of it, I hadn’t realized how deeply rooted in Tsingani tradition it was. I’d merely thought him clever for it.
It is a funny thing, how one’s perspective changes. I saw Hyacinthe through new eyes as we journeyed toward the Hippochamp. We passed Tsingani wagons, far more colorful and elaborate than Taavi and Danele’s humble Yeshuite conveyance, though similar in design, and the young women hung out the back, making eyes at Hyacinthe. I learned to tell the unmarried ones, who wore their hair uncovered. They chattered and flirted as we passed, and Hyacinthe grew more desirable with every exchange.
If they seem shameless enough to make a D’Angeline blush-and some of them do, those Tsingani women-I will say that it is a deceptive thing, although I did not learn this until later. For all their licentious behavior, it is only show. Among their own, the Tsingani hold chastity in fierce regard. But I did not know this at the time, and I will admit that it galled me somewhat, to see the number of women who made free to bid for Hyacinthe’s attention.