That only succeeded in making Van feel guiltier, but he smiled back and thanked the priest. He thought about warning him that the mage was strong and far from harmless -
But Father Tyler was younger than Vanyel himself, quite as strong as any of the stablehands; besides, he was the successor to Father Leren. He had been part of the united Temples' effort at cleansing their own ranks and was probably quite well acquainted with all the faces of treachery.
He'll be all right, Vanyel told himself as he made his farewell and took Blackfoot's reins. She was quite willing to go; in fact she tried her best to drag him to the stable. He would have been amused if he hadn't been so preoccupied.
He held Blackfoot to a walk by brute force, and turned again to his personal dilemma. The problem of Stef was no closer to a solution. Van still couldn't see how he would be able to reconcile all the warring factors in his life.
“What would you do?” he asked the mare, who only strained at the reins on her halter and tried to get him to quicken his pace. “Oh, I know what you'd do,” he told her. “You'd eat.”
She ignored him, and tugged impatiently as they crossed the threshold of the stable. Several of the stalls that had been occupied were empty when Blackfoot hauled him back to her loose-box. So luck was with him - it looked like the masculine contingent of Forst Reach had taken themselves off somewhere, en masse. And since Treesa had Stef as a semi-captive provider of entertainment, she wouldn't be looking for her son.
Vanyel unsaddled the mare and groomed her; evidently she was one of those animals that liked being groomed, as she leaned into his brushstrokes and sighed happily, behaving as charmingly as if she hadn't spent most of the ride fighting him. While he curried her, Van tried to think of somewhere about the keep he could go to think. What he needed was someplace where he could be found if someone really went looking for him, but a place no one would go unless they really were looking all over for him.
Then it occurred to him: the one side of the manor that hadn't yet been built on was the side with that relatively inaccessible porch. It was tree-shaded and quite pleasant, but since the only entry was through a pantry, hardly anyone ever used it. It was too open for trysting, and too awkward for anything else. Which meant it should be perfect for his purposes.
Blackfoot whickered entreatingly at him and rattled her grain bucket with her nose.
“You greedy pig - I'm surprised you aren't as fat as a pony!” he exclaimed, laughing. “Well, you don't fool me. I know the rules around here, girl, and you don't get fed until after evening milking.”
She looked at him sourly, and turned her back on him.
“And you don't get to lounge around in your stall, either,” he told her, as he swung the door to the paddock open. “It's a beautiful day, now get out there and move that plump little rear of yours.”
He swatted her rump; she squealed in surprise and bolted out the open door. She dug all four feet in and stopped a few lengths into the paddock, snorting with indignation, but it was too late. He'd already shut the door.
He laughed at the glare she gave him before she lifted head and tail and flounced out into the paddock.
Then he turned tail himself, and headed back to the keep, and a great deal of thinking.
Once he'd fetched his instrument from their room, Stefen expected Treesa to lead him straight to the solar. That room was normally the ladies' sanctum - or at least it was for all the ladies he knew. But she didn't head in that direction; in fact, she led him outside and down a path through the gardens. The path was very well-used, and led through the last of the garden hedges and out into a stand of trees that continued for as far as he could see.
“Lady Treesa?” he said politely. “Where in Havens are we going?”
“Didn't Van tell you?” she asked, stopping for a moment to look back over her shoulder at him.
He shook his head and shrugged. “I am quite entirely in the dark, my lady. I expected you to take me to your solar.”
“Oh - I'm sorry,” she laughed, or rather, giggled. “During the summer we don't work in the solar unless there happens to be a lot of weaving to do - we come out here, to the pear orchard. No one is working in it at this time of year, and it's quite lovely, and cool even on the hottest summer days. The keep, I fear, is a bit musty and more than a bit damp - who would want to be indoors in fine weather like this?”
“No one, I suppose,” Stef replied. At about that moment, the rest of the ladies came into view between the tree trunks. They had arranged themselves in a broken circle in the shade, and were already at work. Sure enough, they had their embroidery frames, their cushions, and their plain-sewing, just as if they were working in the heart of the keep. Spread out as they were on the grass beneath the trees, they made a very pretty picture.
They came up to the group to a chorus of greetings, and Lady Treesa took her seat - she was the only one with a chair, an ingenious folding apparatus-which, when Stef thought about it, really wasn't unreasonable given her age.
Now Stefen was the center of attention; Treesa let her ladies stew for a bit, though they surely must have known who he was likely to be. After an appropriate span of suspense, Treesa introduced him as “Bard Stefen, Vanyel's friend,” and there were knowing looks and one or two pouts of disappointment.
Evidently Van's predilections were now an open secret, open enough that there were assumptions being made about what being Vanyel's “friend” entailed. Stefen ignored both the looks and the pouts; smiled with all the charm he could produce, and took the cushion offered him at Treesa's feet, and began tuning his gittern, thankful that he'd put it in full tune last night and it only required adjusting now. The twelve-stringed gittern was a lovely instrument, but tuning it after travel was a true test of patience.
“Now, what is your pleasure, my lady?” he asked, when he was satisfied with the sound of his instrument. “For giving you pleasure is all my joy at this moment.”
Treesa smiled and waved her hands gracefully at him.
“Something fitting the day,” she said, “Something of love, perhaps.”
For one moment Stef was startled. She can't possibly have meant that the way it sounded. She can't possibly be alluding to Van and me, can she?
Then a second glance at her face told him that she was just “playing The Game” of courtly love. She'd meant nothing more than to give him the expected opening to flatter her.
Well, then - flatter her he would.
“Would 'My Lady's Eyes' suit you?” he asked, knowing from Vanyel that it was Treesa's favorite.
She glowed and tossed her head coyly, and he congratulated himself on reading her correctly. “It would do very nicely,” she replied, settling back into the embrace of her chair, not even pretending an interest in her needlework.
Stefen smiled at her - only at her, as The Game demanded - and launched into the song.
By the third song he had grown to like Treesa quite a bit, and not just because she was so breathlessly flattering to his ego, nor because she was Vanyel's mother. As Van himself had said, she had a very good heart. When he paused to rest his fingers, she asked him for news of Medren; and not just out of politeness' sake. Ignoring the sidelong glances of her ladies, she asked him several questions about her wood's-colt grandson after Stef's initial answer of “he's fine.”