“Yes. Now I do.” Ysabo heard Maeve’s needle pierce the taut fabric in its frame. It was another mystery, the queen whose name Ysabo had heard every day of her life but who remained invisible except in her mother’s and grandmother’s stories. “I do remember that wonderful feast. Twelve stuffed swans floating on platters of polished silver and twelve fat salmon on platters of gold . . . I don’t remember eating any of it, though. Did we? Do you remember?”
“No. I remember music, though, but not the musicians; it was as though the music came out of fire and air.”
Their voices trailed silent; their threads spoke, pushed and pulled, in and out. Ysabo felt again their little, fretting bird glances. So she turned to the musicians playing old ballads softly on harp and flute near the hearth.
“That was lovely,” she told them, though she had scarcely heard what they had just finished. “Play it again.”
Their music wove its own thread into the morning. Maeve and Aveline’s voices added texture, soft at first, then gaining depth as they misjudged the reasons for Ysabo’s abstraction.
“I remember having trouble with that, too,” Aveline murmured. “I couldn’t wait for supper to begin, so I could see for certain which it was.”
“And did you?”
“Not at first. You know how they are. Not one face told me anything. They were lost in their own ritual. Do you remember?”
Ysabo felt Maeve’s gray eyes, cold as cloud, drift over her face, away. “Very little. The ones you do remember—”
“Yes,” Aveline said instantly. “Yes. The ones you remember are the ones you never meet during the ritual. Those you meet outside of time, in a stray hour, before beginnings, after endings ...”
“Who? Tell,” Maeve commanded, her hands dropping onto her work, between stitches.
Aveline’s voice went very soft. “The one who taught the young knights how to fight. He had the most amazing eyes.”
Maeve’s hand rose, covered her mouth. “You didn’t.”
“Didn’t I?”
“You went down there? To the training hall?”
“That’s where the young men were when I was young. He talked to me, he wrote me poetry. Best of all, he saw me when he looked at me.”
“What happened to him?”
“Nothing. For all I know, he’s still down there. But I got married.”
Maeve’s voice leaped out of her like a frog. “You weren’t—” “A virgin? No.” Aveline’s voice had resumed its normal volume, in case, Ysabo guessed, her daughter needed to hear this. “It didn’t seem to matter at all.” She added, a bit defensively, “You never told me it might.”
“Well, how was I to know—” She rocked forward, laughing suddenly, her hand back over her mouth. “I remember this much: neither was I.”
“Tell,” Aveline demanded then, and Maeve picked up her needle, her voice going soft again. Ysabo heard Aveline suck breath sharply.
“Nemos himself?”
“Sh,” Maeve breathed, softer than smoke from a dying candle. “Sh . . .”
Ysabo stitched the name into her memory.
At noon the knights rode out. The household gathered in the great hall to watch and pay honor, as two long lines of knights in their silvery mail and white cloaks threaded with red knelt together on the flagstones. They held their unsheathed swords point down on the stones, both hands folded on the hilt. Their heads were bare, bowed. Sun from the high narrow windows crossed them in blades of light.
Ysabo stood between Maeve and Aveline at the head of the lines. The three of them held gold goblets ringed with jewels along the rim. Ysabo’s cup held water; Aveline’s red wine, and Maeve’s a murky, bitter potion that smelled of herbs and dead insects. One by one the knights rose, came forward, chose their cup, drank. They could drink what they liked; if all the knights chose the same cup, it never emptied. Courtiers, old knights, ladies and their ladies, all of whom Ysabo rarely saw except at supper, surrounded the lines, each holding a long, thick, burning candle. Trumpets sounded at each sip. The enormous doors opened wide to the courtyard, where the horses in their caparisons waited restively. The knights mounted as they left the hall. The doors were closed after the last knight had crossed the threshold.
No one saw by what gate they left the yard; there were none when Ysabo looked out. No one saw them ride beyond the walls of Aislinn House; no one saw them return. In the time between those two pieces of ritual, Ysabo had to work her way through a labyrinth of small, strange, and bewilderingly meaningless tasks.
Open this window; light this candle there, though, on such a day, light itself rendered the flame nearly invisible.
Lock the door at the top of the east tower.
Unlock the door on the bottom floor in the west corner of the house that leads to the underground chamber.
Light this candle; place it into the holder. Light this lantern from the taper; carry both into the dark of the subterranean chamber, which was chilly, dusty, and as far as Ysabo could see in the frail, ragged light, entirely empty. The black water that ebbed and flowed silently with the tide in its stone channel caused her some excitement when she first saw it. She finally gathered enough courage to follow it. The water led her not beyond the walls and into the wood around Aislinn House, but to another locked gate. An ornate iron grate was bolted to the sides of the channel; it ran up to the ceiling and down into the water as far as Ysabo could feel. She had been late finishing her tasks that day, and Aveline was furious.
Leave the lantern on the prow of the boat chained to the stake in the stone shore at the water’s edge. Return the way you came, and lock the door behind you.
Don’t ask who takes the lantern back to its hook beside the door, puts it out, and hangs it up again.
Just do it.
Go to the armory near the practice yard. No one will be there at that time of the day. Take the sword with the single red jewel in the bronze hilt out of its scabbard, and leave it lying across the arms of the wooden chair with the cracked leather seat, the worn back where the figures stamped into the leather and painted have become pallid ghosts of themselves. Rest the scabbard against the wall beside the chair.
Leave the room. Quickly.
Climb up the stairs of the east tower, and unlock the door you locked earlier. Go into the room at the top of the tower. Turn one page of the book on its stand in the middle of the room. That page will be no different from the one you turned the day before, and the day before, and the day before that. A blank book of days. Lock the door when you leave.
Don’t ask who unlocks it after you have gone, who reads the blank page.
Cross the parapet walk to the west tower, where, this morning, you fed the crows. Put on the apron someone has left there. Take the bucket of water and the brush. Scrub the leavings of the crows off the stones, their discarded scraps, stray feathers, acrid droppings. Ignore the crows when they line the walls and watch you. They approve. They like a clean house. And with them there, you won’t be tempted to lean over the battlements and watch the wood for a flash of armor, a flow of color through the trees, whose lengthening shadows portend the waning of the day, the return of the knights, the bell.
Go to your chambers, take off your soiled clothes, bathe, and dress for supper.
Wait for it, the ringing of the bell.
When you hear it, open your door to the sounds of the knights’ voices welling and booming up from the great hall, the sound of stray pieces of armor clanging on stones, dogs barking welcome, musicians beginning to play.