“She had been with child.”
“Oh.”
A very daunted silence fell.
The Provincara rubbed her chin, and eyed Cazaril. “A true story, Castillar?”
“Yes,” Cazaril sighed. Her flesh had been bruised and battered, cold, blue-tinged, inert as clay beneath his clutching fingers, her sodden clothes heavy, but not as heavy as his heart. “I had to tell her husband.”
“Huh,” grunted dy Ferrej. The table’s most reliable raconteur, he did not try to top this tale.
“It’s not an experience I ever wish to repeat,” added Cazaril.
The Provincara snorted and looked away. After a moment, she said, “My granddaughter cannot go sporting about naked in the river like an eel.”
Iselle sat up. “But suppose we wore, oh, linen shifts.”
“It’s true, if one needed to swim in an emergency, one would most likely have clothes still on,” Cazaril said helpfully.
Betriz added wistfully under her breath, “And we could cool off twice. Once when we swam, and once when we sat about drying out.”
“Cannot some lady of the household instruct her?” Cazaril coaxed.
“They do not swim either,” said the Provincara firmly.
Betriz nodded confirmation. “They just wade.” She glanced up. “Could you teach us how to swim, Lord Caz?”
Iselle clapped her hands. “Oh, yes!”
“I . . . uh . . .” Cazaril stammered. On the other hand . . . in that company, he might keep his shirt on without comment. “I suppose so . . . if your ladies went along.” He glanced across at the Provincara. “And if your grandmother would permit me.”
After a long silence, the Provincara growled grudgingly, “Mind you don’t all catch chills.”
Iselle and Betriz, prudently, suppressed hoots of triumph, but they cast Cazaril sparkling glances of gratitude. He wondered if they thought he had made up the story of the night-ride drowning.
The lessons began that afternoon, with Cazaril standing in the middle of the river trying to persuade two rather stiff young women that they would not drown instantly if they got their hair wet. His fear that he had overdone the dire safety warnings gradually passed as the women at length relaxed and learned to let the waters buoy them up. They were naturally more buoyant than Cazaril, though his months at the Provincara’s table had driven a deal of the wolf-gauntness from his bearded face.
His patience proved justified. By the end of the summer, they were splashing and diving like otters in the drought-shrunken stream. Cazaril had merely to sit in the shallows in water up to his waist and call occasional suggestions.
His choice of vantage had only partly to do with staying cool. The Provincara was right, he had to allow—swimming was lewd. And loose linen shifts, thoroughly wetted down and clinging to lithe young bodies, made fair mockery of the modesty they attempted to preserve, a stunning effect he carefully did not point out to his two blithe charges. Worse, the effect cut two ways. Wet linen trews clinging to his loins revealed a state of mind—um, body—um, recovering health—that he earnestly prayed they would not notice. Iselle didn’t seem to, anyway. He was not entirely sure about Betriz. Their middle-aged lady-in-waiting Nan dy Vrit, who declined the lessons but waded about in the shallows fully dressed with her skirts hoisted to her calves, missed nothing in the play, and was clearly hard-pressed to control her snickers. Charitably, she seemed to grant him his good faith, and did not laugh at him out loud, nor tattle on him to the Provincara. At least . . . he didn’t think she did.
Cazaril was uncomfortably conscious that his awareness of Betriz was increasing day by day. Not yet to the point of slipping anonymous bad poetry under her door, thank the gods for the shreds of his sanity. Playing the lute under her window was, perhaps fortunately, no longer within his gift. And yet . . . in the long summer quiet of Valenda, he had begun to dare to think of a life beyond the turning of an hourglass.
Betriz did smile at him—that was true, he did not delude himself. And she was kind. But she smiled at and was kind to her horse, too. Her honest friendly courtesy was hardly ground enough to build a dream mansion upon, let alone bring bed and linens and try to move in. Still . . . she did smile at him.
He stifled the idea repeatedly, but it kept popping up—along with other things, alas, especially during swimming lessons. But he’d sworn off ambition—he didn’t have to make a fool of himself anymore, dammit. His embarrassing arousal might be a sign of returning strength, but what good did it do him? He was as landless and penniless as in his days here as a page, and with far fewer hopes. He was mad to entertain fantasies of either lust or love, and yet . . . Betriz’s father was a landless man of good blood, living a life of service. Surely he could not despise a like sojourner.
Not despise Cazaril, no—dy Ferrej was too wise for that. But he was also wise enough to know his daughter’s beauty and connection with the royesse was a dowry that could bring her something rather better in the way of a husband than fortuneless Cazaril, or even the local petty gentry’s sons who served the Provincara’s household as pages now. Betriz clearly considered the boys to be annoying puppies anyway. But some of them had elder brothers, heirs of their modest estates . . .
Today he sank down in the water to his chin and pretended not to watch through his eyelashes as Betriz scrambled up onto a rock, translucent linen dripping, black hair streaming down over her trembling curves. She stretched her arms to the sun before belly-flopping forward to splash Iselle, who ducked and shrieked and splashed her back. The days were shortening now, the nights were cooling, and likewise the afternoons. The festival of the ascent of the Son of Autumn was at hand. It had been too cool to swim all last week—only a few days were likely left warm enough to make these private wet river excursions tolerable. Fast gallops, and the hunt, would soon entice his ladies to drier delights. And his good sense would return to him like a strayed dog. Wouldn’t it?
The slanting light and chilling air drove the lingering swimming party from the water to dry a while on the stony banks. Cazaril was so drenched in mellow ease that he didn’t even make them conduct their idle chitchat in Darthacan or Roknari. At last he pulled on his heavy riding trousers and boots—good new boots, a gift from the Provincara—and his sword belt. He tightened the browsing horses’ girths and removed their hobbles, and helped the ladies mount. Reluctantly, with many backward glances at the sylvan river glade falling behind, the little cavalcade wound up the hill to the castle.
In a spurt of recklessness, Cazaril pressed his horse forward to match pace with Betriz’s. She glanced across at him, quick fugitive dimple winking. Was it want of courage, or want of wits that turned his tongue to wood in his mouth? Both, he decided. He and the Lady Betriz attended Iselle together daily. If some ponderous attempt of his at dalliance should prove unwelcome, might it damage the precious ease that had grown between them in the royesse’s service? No—he must, he would say something—but her horse broke into a trot at the sight of the castle gate, and the moment was lost.
As they entered the courtyard, the scrape of their horses’ hooves echoing hollowly on the cobbles, Teidez burst from a side door, crying “Iselle! Iselle!”
Cazaril’s hand leapt to his sword hilt in shock—the boy’s tunic and trousers were bespattered with blood—then fell away again at the sight of the dusty and grimy dy Sanda trudging along behind his charge. Teidez’s gory appearance was merely the result of an afternoon training session at Valenda’s butcher’s yard. It wasn’t horror that drove his excited cries, but rapture. The round face he turned up to his sister was shining with joy.