‘Among others,’ Diota spat. ‘She’s ridden a prize number of warhorses.’
‘Aaaghh!’ wept Emota. It was as if she’d taken a wound, she cried so hard.
‘The Galles will use her against you,’ Almspend said, brushing on. ‘Her lechery will make you look a wanton, Your Grace.’
The Queen knelt by her lady. ‘Emota – I need to know what has happened. But I will not desert you.’
Almspend’s eyes met Diota’s in agreement for once. ‘Your Grace, it would be better if you did desert her.’
The Queen gathered the sobbing girl in her arms. ‘Why – because she loved the wrong man? What does it matter?’ she asked. ‘It is all male vanity and foolishness. All of it.’
Almspend’s eyes met her Queen’s. ‘That’s not the argument to use to a court full of men at Christmas,’ she said. ‘The Galles have us under siege, my Queen. And they have put a sap in through poor Emota.’
‘More like a battering ram,’ Diota said.
‘Be kind. Both of you. What has this girl done that is so bad?’ She turned to Almspend. ‘I understand your argument, my dear. I am upset too.’ She pressed her hand against Almspend’s cheek. ‘You are angry.’
‘More afraid than angry,’ Almspend said cautiously.
‘What do you know?’ the Queen asked, gazing into her secretary’s eyes. Almspend’s eyes were pale blue and shone like ice on a clear winter day. The Queen’s were deep and dark, green and brown and gold, and they seemed to hold secrets – all the secrets of an ancient world.
‘What have you learned?’ the Queen asked.
Almspend pursed her lips and frowned, and her eyes darted away. ‘Not today – please, Your Grace.’ She looked at the young woman sobbing on the floor. ‘Your Grace – I apologise. Emota is guiltless of anything but having her head turned. I’m sure of it. But the vitriol we will reap-’
‘When you call me Your Grace this often, I know that something is very wrong.’ The Queen smiled. She looked down and put her hand on the girl. ‘But no girl who has been raped is guilty of anything, and we will not make her more a victim.’ She ran her hand down the girl’s back and golden light seemed to fill the room.
‘Ahh!’ sighed Emota.
The air seemed clear and clean.
Diota breathed in and out noisily, and then sighed. ‘Ah, poppet. You have deep places in you, and no mistake.’
The Queen shook her head. ‘I will make them pay. I will make them pay for Emota and for Mary and for every harsh word they have said. I swear it.’
The lights flickered.
Almspend shuddered. ‘That – was heard.’
‘I care not. They would toy with me and harm those I love? I will rip their manhoods from them and blind their eyes with my talons.’ The Queen stood up like a statue of bronze, and she shone.
Almspend stepped back.
The Queen put a hand to her forehead. ‘Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners now and in the hour of our death. Holy Mary, what did I say?’
Almspend shook her head.
The Queen took a little holy water from a vial and crossed herself. Then she took a deep breath. ‘I was in touch with something,’ she said. ‘Becca, you are troubled and you were before Emota came in.’
‘Humour me,’ Almspend asked without raising her eyes. ‘Your Grace.’
‘Is it something bad?’ the Queen asked.
Almspend raised her eyes. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Oh, how I wish I could lie.’
The Queen smiled. ‘Let us kneel, and pray to our Lady for succour. And to Christ Jesus.’
Almspend sighed. They all knelt, and prayed.
There was noise in the courtyard, and Diota leaned out to watch. A dozen squires – most of them Galles, but several Albans – trooped by with torches. They stopped in the middle of the courtyard and began to sing a bawdy carol. They were dancing – Diota leaned out further.
Her breath sucked in, and she turned inside.
‘They have figures. Made like Your Grace, and Lady Mary, and Lady Emota. In whore’s clothes. They are dancing with them.’
The Queen’s face darkened. ‘Send for my knights.’
‘Your Grace, most of your knights were sent north by the King.’ Almspend shook her head. ‘There’s Diccon Crawford and Ser Malden. They can hardly fight all the Galles.’
The Queen’s face darkened further.
‘And the King has just stepped onto his gallery,’ Diota reported.
‘He will act,’ the Queen asserted.
‘I’m sure of it,’ Diota said. She came back to Almspend’s side, and took up a brush.
After some hooting from the courtyard rose to assail them, the Queen sobbed. The harsh laughter of young men rose to assail them.
And the King did nothing.
‘How did it come to this?’ the Queen asked.
N’gara – Yule Court
The hall was set with a thousand stars and ten thousand tapers – slight lights of beeswax that nonetheless seemed to burn for ever, while a hundred small faeries flitted from light to light like bees with flowers. The silver sound of their laughter was polyphonic and, against it, Tapio’s harper played an ancient lament, the ‘Song of the Battle of Tears’, which was only played at Yule.
Tamsin sat in state and Bill Redmede, who loved his own lady to distraction, nonetheless found her the fairest being he’d ever seen. Today her heart-shaped face was framed with her snow-white hair and her gown of white wool was embroidered with golden leaves and red berries intertwined with real holly and real ivy, and she wore an ivy crown.
She sat in the centre of the dais with Mogon, the Duchess of the Westmores, as her title was translated, on her right, and a tall golden bear on her left. At her feet was a table full of men – Redmede himself, and Bess and young Fitzwilliam and Bill Alan, and Cat, and the Grey Man. And on the other side sat Outwallers – a very young shaman, an elderly hunter who’d been healed by Tamsin herself, and a handsome man with the strangest skin Redmede had ever seen, blue-black like charcoal, with lively brown eyes and curly hair.
He caught Redmede staring at him, and instead of glaring he smiled. Redmede responded with his own smile.
‘Nita Qwan,’ the man said, extending his forearm in the Outwaller way, and Redmede bowed his head as Jacks did and then embraced the man. ‘Bill,’ he shouted over the music. The irks tended to listen for a bit and then wander off into conversation, and the hall was loud, although the plaintive notes of the lament were easy to hear, if you listened. ‘Or you may call me Peter!’
‘Your Alban is easy on the ears,’ Redmede said. He introduced the black Outwaller to Bess, who grinned, and to Bill Alan, who looked at the man’s hand for a moment as if it was a precious artefact.
‘Was it an accident? Or some monster did this?’ Alan asked.
Nita Qwan laughed. ‘Where I come from, all men look like me.’
‘O’ course they do, mate!’ Bill Alan said. ‘Don’t mind me – too much mead.’ He raised his cup. ‘An’ very fine it looks on ye, too!’
‘You must be the Sossags,’ Bess said.
Nita Qwan grinned and swallowed some mead of his own. ‘We must, lady,’ he said.
The music changed, and couples – mostly irks – began to rise from the benches. There were enough Western Kenecka Outwallers – with their red-brown skin and high cheekbones – to provide a solid contingent of men and women, and the Jacks and Outwallers were game to dance.
Tamsin came down the dais, and Tapio forward from the tapestries at the back of the hall to bow deeply over her hand. She smiled, as radiant as the brightest mid-winter sun, and the mistletoe in her hair seemed to glitter with life and barely suppressed magic, and Tapio gathered her in his arms and kissed her. And as they kissed, many others kissed throughout the hall, and Redmede found himself lost in Bess’s eyes.
And then the Faery Knight took a great cup of beaten gold from one of his knights and walked to the centre of the hall.
‘Be free of my hall, all you guests. But be warned that this night we celebrate the triumph of the light over the darkness – whether you choose to call that Yal’da or you celebrate the coming of a blessed babe or you merely yell for the crushing of the long night. If you serve the dark, begone!’