Chapter 184 Another Piece of Bad News

Leon's face did not smile. His eyes did:

"As if you hadn't."

"Have them all out cutting alder — saw it section by section into cup-shapes, bore a hole through the bottom, and there are your nursery cups. Start the strong seedlings in the native soil first, then move them out into the fields. The next generation's seed should be at home in the new ground by then."

When Lora had said it, Harper Hale nodded, smiling:

"There's the sense of it. When we've planted out the foreigners' flowers and greens, no man ever dared promise it took the first time. My lord — the gardens have little doing in them this season; I'll go out to Greenwillow and add my hands to the fun."

Lora's eyes lit up. She thought of the two Hales' rose graftings — the new sorts they'd bred with blossoms of two colors — the hybrid orchid they had raised, the foreign plants they had brought in and grown...

Could they not be set to cross the common rice with the Southland rice?

The technique itself was past her, truly. But the notion she could put in their heads, and let the craftsmen work out their own way to it.

Dickon Carver was past waiting. He made his bow to Leon and Lora, shouldered the sack of soil, and made for the door:

"I'm off this minute to cut alder. Eight days thrown away already — time waits for no man."

"I'll go along with you — and look over East Manor while we're at it, for a good patch to plant the White Floss."

The two went out, one after the other, and Lora laughed: "Then I'm off too. In a few days it's Augustburg — I'll call at the Horns' and see whether they've got their packing done."

"You're not going. They're not traveling with us — they'll not go over till Roland has found the house." Leon caught at Lora's stole. She grumbled: "The one use of hanging this thing off one's arm is to give folk a handle to catch you by."

"And what manner of skirts do the women wear, in your modern world?" Leon's curiosity was up.

Lora set one foot up on the footrest of his chair and gestured with her hand at her thigh: "The skirt comes to here. Above — just the under-robe, and two shoulder-straps."

"And then?"

"No 'and then.' Everything else is out in the open." Lora spread her two hands. Leon's color changed, and he asked in haste: "But you'd planted cotton, hadn't you? How can your folk still not afford cloth?"

Lora covered her face and giggled: "It's not about affording. It's that a woman wears what she pleases."

"Then you'd best keep to the Empire's skirts and jackets..." Leon smiled his simple smile:

"Three parts of gossamer cloud, cut to her measure;

three parts, new blossoms come to flower;

three parts of dawnlight strung for her pendants —

and one touch of carmine lip, with thoughts gone down a thousand years."

"Why 'a thousand years'? A thousand years on, I'd not know you from Adam." Lora tried to drag her stole back, and he simply would not let go, saying fiercely: "Thinking of running? Run home if you like — I'd fetch you back all the same."

The look of him — that no-arguing-with-it look — warmed her heart, and she grinned:

"I'm not going anywhere. I'm waiting still to be the queen who mothers the realm. The founding King's consort, Lady Yarn, taught the folk to rear the silkworm and draw its thread; I'll teach them to plant cotton and weave cloth. With a man as fine as you in this Empire, where would I go?"

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Ordinarily there were servants and maids always about the two of them, and little chance to speak of the things that touched their stations. Today it was for the Southland rice and the cotton that the others had been sent off.

But talk of this kind brought them a closeness past putting into words — a closeness that belonged to the two of them alone.

Leon was just drawing Lora in to his arms when Lyle's voice came from beyond the door: "My lord — a letter."

Linn and Lyle were back already: with his lord returning to Augustburg, his two body-guards could not be elsewhere than at his side. The Goldwater end of it was under the eyes of Shawn and Corin, with a squad under them.

Lyle came in carrying the letter: "My lord — from Greene, by his own rider."

They had courier-riders of their own now, but between the two cities the run still wanted a night's lodging on the road — and short of something pressing, Greene would never put the riders to it.

In a few days more Leon would be off for Augustburg — and Greene had no hand in the birth-tribute. What pressing matter could be his now?

Leon took the letter-case, drew the letter out, gave it one pass over — and went still.

He read it through again from the head, slow and careful, as if he could not credit it — and a look of loathing utter and absolute came over his face. Lora leaned in; when she had made out what the letter said, she went still too.

Leon set the letter down and took her hand into both of his. Lora, seeing Lyle standing by, was beginning to pull free — and he said it a word at a time: "Rest easy. I will not let this thing happen."

"The King grants the marriage — and you'll defy the King's warrant?" Lora's mouth was put out, and her words were tart with jealousy. Whether Leon would have other women beside her was a thing she had never settled in her own mind; this was the Empire, after all — to insist square on one husband and one wife was straining the knots a bit.

Only she had never looked for the thing to come this soon.

The beginning of it had been a visit the King paid the Queen Mother at the Serene Palace. At the name of Leon the Queen Mother said, with pity:

"The Sixth is a good, dutiful boy. It was only his careless neglect of the small proprieties that let scheming men make their tool of him. And I mind it's his year of majority this year — and Ambrose's too. He's away from Augustburg, with never a soul to see him to his rite of majority. It's a pitiful thing."

"I've only just had a holy text from Leon's hand — the one we copied together for our father's birthday, that year when he was still Crown Prince in the Eastern Palace... Since the Queen Mother speaks of it, I'll summon him home for the Birth-Feast — have him make his bow in her palace. Let that stand him in stead of this year's rite of majority."

Eight months the Sixth had been out of the capital now, and Greene and Legard had both sent in the same word: he lived close and went little abroad; saving the Grand Princess of Selwood's house and the General's, he kept company with no one.

Osler had gone out to Lohenheim — that had been four months after the legs were broken — and when Osler came back, the King had summoned him into the palace in private and made him tell out the truth of the Sixth's hurt.

And got four words for it: "Leave it to God."

If the man could stump along on crutches, he was past sitting the throne. And if that was so — why keep the watch on him so close? Kindness to the Sixth would buy the King, into the bargain, the fine name of a brotherly brother.

"Good, good. Had Your Majesty not said it, I'd scarce have known how to bring the matter up myself. In the old days, when his mother was living, she never fought and never grabbed — we women of the palace got on easy together. Let me stand in his mother's place and give him some small comfort."

The Queen Mother had heard it from her brother several times now — how, in the days before Legard found him out in Lohenheim, his wine trade had been taken under Leon's care time and again, and that was what had kept him easy in the Eastern Capital.

It seemed to her a kind of fate. Both of them sons of the late King — where one could help, let him help.

The King went on: "The Sixth is twenty and never wed. It seems to me the granddaughter of Anselm Sorensen, the vice-minister of Rites, would do very well — shall We beg the Sorensen girl for him? A double blessing on one day."

It was not so sudden a thought, this vice-minister. The King had heard how men were at Sorensen to send his granddaughter into the palace and ally the family with the crown — and how the old man had said, pride up: the Sorensens had no need of a royal marriage to raise their standing.

Anselm Sorensen came of the first house of the Sorensens of Sorenholm, and the great houses of that stamp truly disdained a royal marriage. But it sat ill with the King: We of the royal house have ruled this realm two hundred years — and are We a whit beneath your Seven Surnames, Ten Houses?

You'll not send your granddaughter into the palace? Very well then — We'll marry her into the royal kin instead: to a lame-foot king's brother, no less. Let that turn your stomach properly.

The King had held his temper a long, long while.

And only when he had walked out of the Queen Mother's South-Breeze Hall did he throw back his head and laugh aloud at the sky.