Through a Brazen Mirror by Sherman Delia

Author:Sherman, Delia [Sherman, Delia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ace
Published: 1989-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

Chapter Two

June came soft and smiling to Albia that year, promising fat sheep and generous cows, tall corn and heavily bearded wheat. The auspices were favorable: the court was well fed; the King was to be married; the plague had not taken so many lives as it might. New faces appeared among the household to replace those who had died, and their ignorance and curiosity demanded that the tale of the plague and the court champêtre be told again and again. At the center of that tale, and at the center of speculation, too, stood Albia’s new Chamberlain, William Flower.

When the King was within earshot, the court praised Master Flower’s unvarying calm, his rule of cleanliness and order. But when the King was not nigh, the nobles were inclined to grumble and grutch. The post would more fittingly have gone to one of the elder lords of the kingdom—the Earl of Brackton, perhaps, or even old Baron Carstey—than to some upstart kitchen-knave. What was the world coming to, when a man was not acquainted with the Royal Chamberlain’s ancestry? Things would not have fallen out so in King Geoffrey’s time. So said the nobles, shaking their heads darkly.

Their ladies, in whose eyes Master Flower’s person bulked larger than Master Flower’s parentage, praised him with whole hearts. They admired every part of him: his grace, his courtesy, and, above all, his sensitive attention to the plight of four-and-twenty women languishing in a queenless court like lapdogs in a hunting-kennel.

“He must have been married,” said Lady Dumbletan as eight of the four-and-twenty sat together in the Solar over their tapestries. “Or else been brought up among sisters. Fresh rushes on the solar floor every second week! It is as pleasant as it is prodigal. Why, court has not been so comfortable since Queen Constance died.”

Lady Elizabeth Rawlings, Countess of Brackton, curved her plump mouth and set another stitch in an altar-cloth. She was growing heartily weary of discussing Master Flower’s kindness and Master Flower’s wisdom, not to mention Master Flower’s shapely leg and Master Flower’s fine grey eyes.

Yet she was forced to admit that the court was more comfortable than it had been of late. At table, the pages regularly brought hippocras and syllabubs and even barley-water to those who preferred these lighter potables to wine. The minstrels had added troubades and chansons to their store of drinking songs and martial ballads. Often there was dancing after the boards were cleared, and the court Fool’s jests were less blushfully ribald. So, “Yes, Lady Dumbletan,” said Lady Brackton, and smiled, for it is not wise for lapdogs to nip and snarl at each other. Furthermore, Lady Dumbletan, whose wire crespinette gave her drooping face something of a spaniel look, could not help her want of wit any more than a spaniel could.

Eight silver needles dipped and soared above eight expanses of white linen. “It is passing strange,” said the young Baroness Carstey, “that Master Flower should so choose to hide his history and his origins.

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