He meant Blodwen, I guessed. We had not talked of the betrothal. I had been waiting for him to say something, and perhaps he had been waiting for me. This was an opportunity but the moment passed.
I got to my feet. “We had better go down again.”
• • •
In all sorts of ways I was becoming accustomed to the Wilsh and this dazzling city of theirs. Their scents faded in my nostrils into a familiarity that was not unpleasant, their bright clothes and ornaments, their ways of talking and laughing and embracing each other in public—all these lost their power to shock. I grew used to the sight of Snake’s misshapen hands and his weird sinuous walk, and to the other polymufs about the court. I counted ten rings on the fingers of one fat noble and the same day learned why the mouth of the Perfumer Royal was so red: he painted his lips like a woman. Both things amused me: no more than that.
The morning of the day before our departure Hans was to take our horses to be shod. I knew that whatever the qualities of the farrier I could rely on Hans himself to see it well done, but I went down there all the same. The farriery was behind the royal stables—a big place with five smiths at work. Hans was holding my horse, which had been finished. We examined her feet together and I said:
“Good enough.”
Hans said: “He makes a fair job of it, for one who is not a dwarf.”
The man was at work on a rear hoof of Hans’s own horse. I heard the hiss of hot iron being pressed home and smelled the familiar stench of burning. It was only as the farrier straightened up that I realized that he too was polymuf, having a twisted back. He was quite young, in his thirties I judged. It had been surprising that a man should shoe horses but this was more extraordinary. As Hans had said, it was dwarfs work in our city, and jealously guarded as such.
I said: “At any rate, they should see us home.”
Hans said, in a low voice that would not carry to the farrier:
“Do we return tomorrow, then, Captain?”
I looked at him. “As you know.”
“There is a story in the city.”
“A hundred, more likely. Which is this?”
He stared at me with heavy, dark eyes. “They say that the embassy might go back without you—that you might stay here among the Wilsh where you have won fame and the King’s daughter.”
I laughed. “They spin fine yarns!”
“Then it is not true, Captain?”
“No, Hans. Not true.”
The last hoof was done and I offered silver to the polymuf but he refused it; all was paid by the King. I went to the stables with Hans and saw the horses put to grooming. Later we walked together up to the palace. He was never one to chatter but I thought his silence had a brooding in it. I said:
“This tale of my staying when the embassy goes back—you believed it true?”
“I did not know, Captain.”
“But if it had been true—if I had chosen to stay and keep you with me, would you have been glad of it?”
He looked at me. “Very glad.”
“But why?”
“Because I am a man here.”
“You are still my servant, as you were in Winchester.”
“And would be anywhere. It is not what I am to you but what I am to others. In this city there is no talk of dwarf and polymuf and true men. All are men.”
“I doubt they would make you a warrior. There is a height mark which Cymru’s soldiers must reach.”
“Perhaps here I would not be plagued by idle dreams. I do not think I would.”
“And your home, family—you would he willing not to see them again?”
Family ties and the love of home were deep and strong in dwarfs. They lived close with one another and were devoted to their kin. Hans did not answer at once and I said:
“Your father would miss you.”
“In a way,” Hans said, “and in a way be glad. My dreams remind him, I think, of dreams he had in his younger days, and put away. Of course I would miss him, too, and my brothers and sisters; above all my mother. There is always something to lose. But maybe more to gain.”
He spoke with passion. I had had no idea that he felt like this. I said:
“Listen, if you would stay that can be arranged. The King will find a place for you.”
“And you, Captain?”
“By the Great, Dwarf, I can do without a servant!”
I stopped, realizing what I had said. It was no insult, or I had not thought it such, and in Winchester neither of us would have noticed the term I had used. But we were not in Winchester. I said:
“I am sorry, Hans.”
He smiled. “There is no need for it, Captain.”
“But it is true that I can manage by myself. I am used to doing so. Stay, if it is your wish.”
“It is not my wish if you are going.”
“I must.”
“Why, Captain?”
We had come to the gardens at the rear of the palace. There were lawns, so smooth and so finely clipped that from a distance they looked like squares and circles and crescents of green cloth. Gardeners trundled cutting devices up and down. They were on wheels, and a bladed cylinder turned with the wheels and sheared the grass. In Winchester they would have been called machines. Between ran walks of finely sifted red gravel, leading to continually splashing fountains. Wooden casks, brightly painted, contained flowering shrubs brought from the glass house across the river. Above us loomed the palace, with all its domes and towers.
I said: “To give news of the embassy to the Prince, my brother.”
“Captain Greene can do that.”
There were swans on the river and one of them flew low across the gardens with a heavy flap of wings. Before I could speak again, Hans went on, more rapidly.
“There would be advantages in staying, Captain. The King favors you.”
“So does the Prince of Winchester.”
“In Winchester there are intrigues.”
I looked at him in surprise. He was dwarf to me still and the remark improper. I said with some sharpness:
“There are intrigues in every city. Here, too.”
“Of a different kind. No plotting for thrones, no daggers in the night. The King is safe, and the King’s friends. They intrigue for amusement. In Winchester the business is in deadly earnest.”
I thought of the Blaines and the Hardings. I said:
“If you have heard of anything that threatens my brother . . .”
He shook his head. “No, Captain. But the possibilities are always there. As you know.”
It might be that he referred to that intrigue which had deposed Prince Stephen and raised up my father. I looked at him closely, ready to be angry, and saw nothing in his face but concern for me. I said:
“Enough, Hans. If there is to be trouble at home, the more reason for me to return. But my offer to you stands. Stay if you wish and I will obtain the King’s favor for you.”
“No,” Hans said. “Thank you, Captain, but I will not stay.”
• • •
That which Hans had told as gossip of the city took on hard substance within minutes of my leaving him. A messenger from the King told me Cymru desired my presence. I was taken to one of the smaller state rooms and found him in talk with Snake on a matter of taxes. He did not dismiss his Chancellor but bade me sit with them.
He did not indulge in the long preliminaries which were common among the Wilsh but put the matter to me at once and plainly. There was no need for me to go south with Greene. His people did not wish to lose me. Nor did he. Nor, he added with a smile, did his daughter, the Princess.
I hesitated before replying. He must have taken this for encouragement, because he went on to say that I need not worry as to wealth or position. At the banquet, it was true, he had conferred only one thing on me, though that his most precious possession; but it carried benefits beyond itself. I would be made a Count—house and servants would be put at my disposal, and the means to maintain them as befitted a person of rank and nearness to the throne.