Suldrun studiously said nothing, but Lady Desdea persisted. "The weather is fine. Suppose we take our little walk now."
"You must excuse me, my lady," said Suldrun politely. "This is a place where I go only when I am alone."
Lady Desdea raised high her thin chestnut eyebrows. "'Alone'? It is not seemly that young ladies of your place should wander alone through remote areas."
Suldrun spoke in a placid and offhand manner, as if enunciating a known truth. "There is no harm enjoying one's private garden.
Lady Desdea could find nothing to say. Later she reported Suldrun's obstinacy to Queen Sollace, who at the moment was testing a new pomade formulated from the wax of lilies. "I've heard something of this," said Queen Sollace, rubbing a gobbet of white cream along her wrist. "She is a strange creature. At her age I had eyes for several gallant lads, but as for Suldrun such ideas never enter her odd little head... Ha! This offers a rich scent! Feel the unction!"
On the next day the sun shone fair among small high cloud-tufts.
Reluctantly to her lessons with Julias Sagamundus went Suldrun wearing a prim little lavender and white striped gown gathered high up under her breasts and trimmed with lace at hem and collar.
Perched on a stool, Suldrun dutifully wrote the ornate Lyonesse script with a gray goose-quill, so fine and long that the tip twitched a foot above her head. Suldrun found herself gazing out the window ever more frequently, and the characters began to straggle.
Julias Sagamundus, seeing how the wind blew, sighed once or twice, but without emphasis. He took the quill from Suldrun's fingers, packed his exercise books, quills, inks and parchments, and went off about his own affairs. Suldrun climbed down from the stool and stood rapt by the window, as if listening to far music. She turned and left the library.
Lady Desdea emerged into the gallery from the Green Parlor, where King Casmir had instructed her in careful detail. She was only just in time to notice the lavender and white flutter of Suldrun's dress as she disappeared into the Octagon.
Lady Desdea hurried after, heavy with King Casmir's instructions.
She went into the Octagon, looked right and left, then went outside, to glimpse Suldrun already at the end of the arcade.
"Ah, Miss Sly-boots!" said Lady Desdea to herself. "Now we shall see. But presently, presently!" She tapped her mouth with her finger, then went up to Suldrun's chambers, and there put inquiries to the maids. Neither knew Suldrun's whereabouts. "No matter," said Lady Desdea. "I know where to find her. Now then, lay out her pale blue afternoon gown with the lace bodice, and all to match, and draw her a bath."
Lady Desdea descended to the gallery and for half an hour sauntered here and there. At last she turned back up the Long Gallery. "Now" she told herself, "now we shall see."
She ascended the arcade and passed through the tunnel ou upon the parade ground. To her right wild plum and larch shadowed an old stone wall, in which she spied a dilapidated timber door. She marched forward, ducked under the larch, pushed open the door. A
path led away and down through juts and shoulders of rock.
Clutching skirts above ankles. Lady Desdea picked her way down irregular stone steps, which angled first right then left, past an old stone fane. She proceeded, taking great care not to stumble and fall, which would certainly compromise her dignity. The walls of the ravine spread apart; Lady Desdea overlooked the garden.
Step by step she descended the path, and were she not so alert for mischief, she might have noticed the banks of flowers and pleasant herbs, the small stream flowing into artful pools, then tinkling down from stone to stone and into yet another pool. Lady Desdea saw only an area of rocky wasteland, uncomfortable of access, dank and unpleasantly isolated. She stumbled, hurt her foot and cursed, angry at the circumstances which had brought her so far from Haidion, and now she saw Suldrun, thirty feet along the path, quite alone (as Lady Desdea had known she must be; she had only hoped for scandal).
Suldrun heard the steps and looked up. Her eyes glowed blue in a face pale and furious.
Lady Desdea spoke peevishly: "I've hurt my foot on the stones; it's truly a shame."
Suldrun's mouth moved; she could not find words to express herself.
Lady Desdea heaved a sigh of resignation and pretended to look around her. She spoke in a voice of whimsical condescension. "So, my dear Princess, this is your little retreat." She gave an exaggerated shudder, hunching her shoulders. "Aren't you at all sensitive to the air? I feel such a dank waft; it must come from the sea." Again she looked about her, mouth pursed in amused disapproval. "Still, it's a wild little nook, like the world must have been before men appeared. Come, child, show me about."
Fury contorted Suldrun's face, so that teeth showed through her clenched mouth. She raised her hand and pointed. "Go! Go away from here!"
Lady Desdea drew herself up. "My dear child, you are rude. I am only concerned with your welfare and I do not deserve your spite."
Suldrun spoke wildly: "I don't want you here! 1 don't want you around me at all! Go away!"
Lady Desdea stood back, her face an ugly mask. She seethed with conflicting impulses. Most urgently she wanted to find a switch, lift the impudent child's skirt and lay half a dozen goodly stripes across her bottom: an act in which she dared not indulge herself. Backing away a few steps, she spoke in dreary reproach:
"You are the most ungrateful of children. Do you think it pleasure to instruct you in all that is noble and good, and guide your innocence through the pitfalls of the court, when you fail to respect me? 1 look for love and trust; I find rancor. Is this my reward? I struggle to do my duty; I am told to go away." Her voice became a ponderous drone. Suldrun turned half-away and gave her attention to the flight of a rock-swallow, then another. She watched ocean swells crashing through the offshore rocks, then come twinkling and foaming up to her beach. Lady Desdea spoke on.
"I must make clear: not for my benefit do I clamber through rock and thistle to notify you of duties such as today's important reception, as I now have done. No, I must accept the role of meddlesome Lady Desdea. You have been instructed and I can do no more."
Lady Desdea swung around her haunches, trudged up the path and departed the garden. Suldrun watched her go with brooding gaze.
There had been an indefinable air of satisfaction in the swing of her arms and the poise of her head. Suldrun wondered what it meant.
The better to protect King Deuel of Pomperol and his retinue from the sun, a canopy of red and yellow silk, the colors of Pomperol, had been erected across the great courtyard at Haidion. Under this canopy King Casmir, King Deuel, and various persons of high degree came to take their pleasure at an informal banquet.
King Deuel, a thin sinewy man of middle years, carried himself with mercurial energy and zest. He had brought only a small entourage: his only son, Prince Kestrel; four knights, sundry aides and lackeys; so that, as King Deuel expressed it, "we are free as birds, those blessed creatures who soar the air, to go where we wish, at our own speed and pleasure!"
Prince Kestrel had achieved his fifteenth year and resembled his father only in his ginger colored hair. Otherwise he was staid and phlegmatic, with a fleshy torso and placid expression. King Casmir none-the-less thought of Kestrel as a possible match for the princess Suldrun, if options more advantageous were not open, and so arranged that a place for Suldrun be laid at the banquet table.
When the place remained vacant, King Casmir spoke sharply to Queen Sollace: "Where is Suldrun?"
Queen Sollace gave her marmoreal shoulders a slow shrug. "I can't say. She is unpredictable. I find it easiest to leave her to her own devices."
"All well and good. Nevertheless I command her presence!"
Queen Sollace shrugged once more and reached for a sugarplum. "In that case Lady Desdea must inform us."