A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 03

Clair looked at her from grey eyes shadowed by a light frown. She read in them anger at her impulsive demand for a punishment that was excessive for the two footmen. She knew too that while Clair had spoken sharply to them, she had liked to see the two men laughing and having their sporting fun racing through the hallway with the trays of crockery on their laps and had indulged them in it. She felt his warm grey eyes judged her and, as usual when it was a matter of the tedious household management, found her wanting. But when he spoke it was in a conciliatory tone of voice.

"I will speak with them," Clair offered. "I will make it plain to them what they have done."

The tears were still sharp in her eyes and she said, "there is little chance of Lady el Vaie sending me another set, is there! since does't not care to invite her to your stupid hunting parties."

Clair looked away to the side as if embarrassed by her making such a fuss over a tea set but she had so particularly liked it, elegant and fine in the Sietter colours. It had reminded her of Lady el Vaie who had been obliged by bad weather to ask for hospitality in the castle once on her way down through the Maier Pass. Lady el Vaie had proved to be hilarious company and Arianna had greatly enjoyed her visit, although Maive insisted on apologising very frequently for imposing herself.

"Maive does not care for riding," Clair said in a stiff muffled voice. "Uh ... for riding to the hunt. She might ... misunderstand, if I were to invite her. She took kindly to you, my dear, and if you, rather than I, send her a particular invitation I feel sure she will be glad to come."

Arianna was about to make a sharp retort when Arkyll bounded into the kitchen and ran across the stone-flagged floor straight to his father. He leapt into Clair's arms, laughing and bouncing, and Clair gathered him close, bestowing casual kisses on his head.

Behind Arkyll's nursery-maid Ria, Lisette hovered anxiously. She raised her brows in surprise to see the pretty green dress that embraced Arianna's bosom like a flowering of spring. Lady el Jien was forever turning it aside when Lisette put it out, saying it made her look too thin. Then Lisette's face crumpled as she saw Arianna's hair. What would Lord Clair not say to her of it, that she had allowed his Lady wife to begin her day so untidy? Lord Clair was looking at her with a raised eyebrow. She knew he would be questioning her about it later but she did her very best! You could not always catch Lady el Jien who would run off down to her library sometimes at break of day, so neglectful of her appearance that she would leave her hair loose in the plait down her back like the stable-maids. Those slack-moral sluts from the stables would come round into my Lady's library if you please! pretending to have some ridiculous question with which to interrupt whatever it was my Lady spent her time on in there. Arianna had turned with a careless smile to say, "I will come and do my hair when I have broken my fast." She thought it was a nonsense! yet she was forever complaining about the time those stable-maids took up with their flirting ways, hanging over her and saying, What about a ride, my Lady, you look pale. Such impertinence. And as if anyone with their mind not addled by mucking about with the other stable-maids could not plainly tell that Lady el Jien was a man-lover, besides a sweetheart who would never willingly slut off the sides of her bed.

"Will you not take Arkyll to school with me?" Clair enquired. "Arkyll, no chocolate pastry. You must eat some proper breakfast. Lisette, have you a comb in your pocket? Dress my Lady's hair up quickly here. My Lady, Dame Inien will be taking Hanyan to the school this morning, I had thought you might like to ask them to have lunch with us?"

"It needs not two of us to take Arkyllan to school," Arianna said, taking an overly large bite of pastry and a quick slurp of cold drinking chocolate in her haste to get on with her day. "Cans't ask Sevianne to lunch yourself, is it not, has't not lost the use of your tongue."

Clair's brow creased up. A footman crossing the kitchen with a tray of serving dishes laughed silently, turning his head away so that Lady el Jien would not see it. What would the Knights and Dames say of it if Lord Clair were heard to invite some plump pigeon who had carried a child without the Angels' blessing to a family lunch! especially this particular pigeon. Clair knew that the footmen gossiped with his personal serving men. Just after the war - in the second year of his marriage, when he spent most of his time at court with a bed barely ever empty of the warm bodies of strangers (and once or twice when he had drunk too deep to give them the go-by, a friend), he used to come home and find their faces curiously cool of expression. Then as he spent less time at court, more time travelling to stay with old Lady el Farin van P'shan in order to sketch the fascinating designs of Northern architecture or going to a simple country inn near the Iniens' house where he absorbed himself in Captain-Sir Vashin's boy or coming home to be with Arkyllan, the footmen smiled at him and served him more willingly. The warm loving laughter of the castle staff at Arianna's lack of sophistication was nothing compared to the cruel sneers of the Knights and Dames but Clair glared at the footman as he passed so that he tripped on a flagstone and the serving dishes rattled on his tray.

"I prithou, ask Dame Inien for me," he said to Arianna in a toneless voice. She lifted her head and looked at him, he stared intently into her puzzled blue eyes in the effort to convey to her what he could not say aloud before the servants or their child. "Then we might go to the castle offices together to see Laran and Tarra?"

Arianna lowered her head and said, "What would I do in the castle offices. I thought I might write some letters, in the library." A sudden scowl clouded Clair's face, just whom might she be writing letters to? Arianna's face became cold. Arkyll was shifting in Clair's lap, his gaze lifting from his mother's to his father's face. The child was turned to the two of them like flowers to the sun, whatever quarrel they might be making, he could not look away.

Arkyll began saying he did not want to go to school. "Musts't go the day," Arianna coaxed in a softer tone of voice, "Hanyan will be there, it will be his first day."

"Have you been going every day while I was away, as we agreed?" Clair asked.

His child looked soulfully up at him, the picture of wrongfully accused innocence. "Of course!" Arkyll said. Ria spluttered from her seat down the table and Arianna laughed. Clair raised an eyebrow in enquiry at Ria.

"He has missed some two days in every five," Ria said.

Clair put Arkyll down out of his lap and turned a suddenly fierce glare at his son. "You have lied to me," he said in a hard voice. "You have broke your solemn word and you have lied to me. I promised you to teach you to ride if you could learn to write your name. Now how can I teach you to ride?"

Arkyll's face bunched suddenly up, he looked sideways at his mother. Stricken, she raised her eyes to Clair, his slanted grey eyes were already raised to her in warning. "May not," she began hesitantly. "No!" he declared.

She would not have paid mind to him, she would have braved his anger if he had been in the wrong. She knew it was her fault for indulging Arkyll. Her head swayed down on her pale neck like a cut flower with no water.

"I want to, I want to!" Arkyll started to run towards his father, Clair held him back with one strong arm.

"You gave me your word," Clair said. His face was as hard as the flagstones on which Arkyll stood. "What am I to do with you now? a son of the el Maiens and you have not only broke your solemn word but given the lie. Do you think this is the way a man of honour behaves?"

Arkyll flung himself aside to his mother, sobbing, "mama, mama! Tell him to learn me, make him learn me!"

"My sweetheart, when has't learned to write," she began in a pleading voice, trying to take him gently in her arms. He cried out and began hitting her with small soft fists, Clair suddenly stood up and caught hold of him.

"What are you about, sirrah?" he demanded. "What way is this, to treat your own mother - who bore you, who has cradled you in her arms all your life! Has she ever hit you? How dare you strike your mother!" He put Arkyll aside and Arkyll crumpled over on the floor, sobbing and kicking out angrily. "If I have to take you crying, you will still go to school the day," Clair added, going to sit back down at the table. "Flava, of your courtesy, my coffee is cold. Fetch me another. And some more drinking chocolate for my Lady, hers is cold too." He turned his head to stare off into the kitchen where the junior cooks were starting to organise themselves for the day. When Arianna made the smallest of movements towards the ostentatiously sobbing Arkyll, he turned his head back and shook it at her with a mute glare.

Arianna turned her head back down to her plate. Lisette was taking her hair up in hands that seemed even more gentle than usual. Arianna's long pale fingers, smeared with chocolate and with crumbs clinging to them, trembled. It was always so when he returned! There were always quarrels and disturbances to the peaceable ramshackle life she and Arkyll led here in the castle. Yet what brought the tears dripping from her nose onto her plate was the knowledge that it was because she indulged Arkyll and the servants and then it fell on Clair's shoulders to discipline them harder when he came home. She found a large kerchief pushed towards her fingers, Clair was not even looking at her, he stared idly off into the bustling kitchen, swinging one arm that was hung over the back of his chair and waiting for his coffee. After a while he said to her, "will you let it pass, that the footmen broke your tea set?" and she muttered, "yes," then he said, "you must break your fast now, Arkyllan, or you will be hungry at school."

Arkyll got sullenly to his feet and trailed over to the table, glowering at them both with exquisite slanted blue eyes just like Tashka's. His father looked back at him unmoved. He was the only person who had ever been able to resist the tears with which Lieutenant-Lord Tashka el Maien van Sietter used to fill those exquisite slanted blue eyes in order to get out of scrapes in their troop.