Ser Jehan – almost fifty, all muscle and gristle and hard-won chivalry – blushed.
Tom pointed at the Megas Ducas, who was rising with the woman in brown – really, the girl in brown – on his arm.
‘Don’t point,’ hissed Gavin.
Jehan smiled. He turned to Ser Milus, and whispered something.
Milus grinned at everyone. ‘Suddenly, everything makes sense,’ he said.
‘Do you dance?’ the Red Knight asked the princess.
She looked at him.
‘I gather that was a foolish question,’ he said. ‘But as you are incognito, I assume I can ask you direct questions and get direct answers, so let’s start small. What are you doing here?’
She rose. ‘Dancing,’ she said. ‘I confess that I’ve never danced in public with a mercenary.’
He nodded and pursed his lips. ‘It’s not as hard as it looks,’ he said.
‘I cannot get over the quality of your Archaic,’ she said, as they moved out from the tables. Just at the edge of the Red Knight’s peripheral vision, the Patriarch started – sat up, turned his head, and said something that caused the young priest next to him to turn his head suddenly too.
He smiled down at her. ‘I learned it right here,’ he said. ‘Or rather, I learned it at home from my tutor, and then practised here.’
‘The Academy?’ she asked.
‘No,’ he said enigmatically.
The musicians obviously knew who she was. There was some discordant fumbling.
‘Can you dance?’ she asked.
‘No,’ he said, smiling brilliantly.
One of the street musicians appeared at his elbow. He had a hat in his hands, and his hands were shaking. ‘My lord. We- What- That is . . . what should we play?’ he finally got out.
The Red Knight – he refused to play the Megas Ducas tonight – bowed to his lady. ‘Whatever the lady asks for,’ he said.
Every Morean within earshot sighed with relief.
Zoe raised her fan to cover most of her face, but allowed the musician some little bit of her smile, which was quite real. ‘Something fast,’ she said. She turned graciously to the brides, who stood by with their new husbands. ‘Anything they ask for. You are the ladies of this merry meeting, not I.’
Kaitlin curtsied and then grinned impishly. ‘Well-’ She grinned at Despoina Helena. ‘We have practised a Morean dance, and it’s fast,’ she said. ‘Let’s dance a Moresca.’
A few couples away Lady Maria gasped, and her son winced.
She leaned over to her son and said, very softly, ‘What have you done?’
He stood his ground. ‘What you told me to do.’
The music was fast. Almost a third of the couples and interested bystanders hurried off the wooden floor as soon as the music began – a combination of Albans who needed to see the dance, and Moreans who feared it.
Bad Tom and Sauce were not one of those retreating couples.
She looked up at him – not as far as other women. ‘You know this?’ she asked.
‘No,’ he said cheerfully. ‘You?’
She shook her head and laughed. ‘Just what I needed,’ she said. ‘A fearless partner.’
Mostly – with a few exceptions – the gentry of Morea and Alba shared some common tastes. The gentry often danced stately processions, in couples, or pairs of couples – while the lower orders usually danced in groups, in rings.
The dance that followed didn’t fit well into either category. It featured pairs who turned with each other – not a horrifying innovation, but a daring one. It was obvious that Lady Kaitlin and Ser Michael knew the dance, and had practised with the Morean couple.
In the best traditions of weddings, and women who loved to dance, the two couples danced all the figures alone, first.
When Giorgios picked Helena up and whirled her in the air, Zoe nodded and a tiny smile played at the corners of her lips. ‘Ahh,’ she said, very softly.
They turned outwards from one another and clapped – their time was perfect – and the music swept them on – around, turn, clap, around, together . . .
Everyone applauded. The servants applauded, even the drunks applauded – they were that good. Kaitlin burst into tears and grinned at her husband. Helena threw her head back in delight.
Sauce looked at Tom. ‘Got that?’
He nodded sharply, like a man going into action. ‘Got it.’
John le Bailli looked down at Mag. ‘Perhaps we should sit this out?’ he attempted.
‘Nonsense,’ she said. ‘Men like you have been finding excuses not to dance since the fall of Troy.’
Harald Derkensun dragged Anna by the hand to the centre of the temporary wooden floor.
‘I can’t dance on the same floor as the Empress!’ Anna protested.
But she pivoted on her toes as she said it.
A dark-eyed young woman with plucked brows and a severe, elegant face cleared her throat just behind Morgan Mortirmir. He had a cup in his hand – he’d thought of asking Anna, but he couldn’t, and he’d obviously been right. She looked very happy with Harald.
He turned and looked at the young woman by his shoulder.
She raised an eyebrow.
He turned back to the dancers and she kicked his ankle lightly. ‘Hey, Plague,’ she said.
His head shot around fast enough to leave his eyebrows behind.
He mustered up every shred of composure he had. ‘Would, um . . would you?’ he asked. He bowed.
She sighed. ‘Blessed Virgin,’ she said, not at all piously, and pretended to follow him onto the dance floor while in fact leading him. ‘If the princess can dance with a barbarian, I suspect it’s all the fashion.’
‘I don’t . . . dance,’ Mortirmir managed to say, as the music began.
‘Tap your foot to the music and look elegant,’ she said, rising on her toes. ‘I’ll do the dancing.’
‘You’re a nun!’ he said.
She frowned. ‘You are an ignorant barbarian,’ she said.
The Patriarch indicated the young Alban mage in training to Father Arnaud. The Hospitaller nodded. The young woman danced beautifully, and the young man was – literally – suffused with light. He lit the centre of the dance floor, and she danced around him as if he was a lantern. It couldn’t last, and eventually he had to move, but the effect was done well and the two laughed together when he stumbled.
But the Patriarch watched the princess as she went by – first in a ring of women, inside a ring of men, and then outside the ring of men after a complex passage of hands, and then the men shot off into the near darkness and the women danced; the women went off and the men danced, more brightly lit by young Mortirmir than by the torches. The two sexes formed chains, and the chains intertwined – leaned to the left, leaned to the right, shot around, with women’s legs and men’s legs flashing out. Then the women leaped and the men caught them.
The Red Knight turned a full circle with the Emperor’s daughter held high above his head.
The Patriarch sat back suddenly, and then frowned, and held up his cup for more wine.
They danced for four hours. They danced until most of the men and women who fought for a living were as sober as when they had started, and as tired as if they’d fought a battle. They’d danced in lines and circles and pairs and fours and eights and every figure known to Alba, Galle, and Morea. Count Zac and his officers demonstrated Eastern dances, and the Red Knight and his officers had to try them. Bad Tom fell full length trying to kick out his legs, and laughed at his own antics, and Sauce clapped her hands and imitated the Easterners only to discover that it was a man’s dance. But Count Zac put an arm around her shoulders and they drank together, and went on to another dance, and later, she went and caught Milus and Jehan by the hands and dragged them across the great circle of watchers – off-duty Ordinaries, female students from the Academy, and other unattached women.
With unerring professional sense, she marched the two knights to a gaggle of Anna’s friends and peers who had made their way in under various pretences.