Chapter 19: A Brother Offended
Before the entry to Braewode Manor, Sir Coltram glowered at Tamlyn.
"What is this?"
Coltram looked askance at Tamlyn, rudely ignoring his greeting.
Tamlyn was unperturbed. "Brother, I know this must be difficult for--"
"Brother? How dare you." Coltram held out a hand with a quick glance to his groomsmen, who had been moving to lead away the dismounted horses; they stopped in their tracks and stood, trying not to look at anyone. "Who are you, and what want you of me and mine?"
"I want nothing that belongs to you, Coltram. I am your brother, Tamlyn-"
"Ah, yes, the resemblance is uncanny." Coltram tilted his head back, regarding Tamlyn through half-lidded eyes. "My elder brother Tamlyn, dead these seven years and more. My lady Margaret, I had you figured differently. You really had me believing that you cared nothing for your late husband's inheritance, but now that the requisite seven years have passed and you see your chance slipping away…" Coltram began to chuckle. "Tell me, lad, which of my father's many bastards would you be? Ah, let me guess. From that pretty redhead nurse who was sent away so suddenly. Or perhaps--"
Tamlyn's voice was rolling thunder. "Enough, Coltram, of degrading him whose title you may soon bear, if you will only hear me." That got Coltram's attention; he waited. "Take this, read it ere you judge me or my lady wife." Tamlyn drew from his surcoat a rolled paper and held it out to Coltram, who never dropped his eyes from Tamlyn's, but at last deigned to take and unroll the paper. Margaret saw the changing expression, the widening and narrowing of his eyes, the dark and light succeeding each other. He perused the paper once, twice; then his arms dropped to his sides; the paper curled slowly back into a roll of its own accord. Margaret moved slightly closer to Tamlyn and hooked a hand very lightly into his elbow. Her gaze was steady. Coltram began tapping the rolled paper on his thigh as he turned to pace on the wet cobbles.
"You would relinquish to me the baronetcy of Braewode." He said it, not looking at anyone.
"Aye, Coltram. It is only an acknowledgment of the truth; that you have been the loyal son my lord our father wanted and needed, not I. I need nothing from you, and want nothing, but this:--" Coltram looked at him, finally-- "That we be brothers again. That there be no acrimony between our families. That is what Father and Mumma would have wanted." Tamlyn turned toward Margaret. "Let us be going, love. Let him take his time." He lifted Margaret to her horse, and mounted his own; their attendants did the same. "Coltram, Clewode already has seen those papers. They need only to be signed by you. Brother, don't belabor it," he said, at which Coltram looked up at him from the papers he had again unrolled. "I expect to hear from you timely. All you would have had by virtue of my Lady's widowhood is in there." He turned his horse and they moved away.
Coltram stood in the gray afternoon before the Hall. God knows, he did look just like Tamlyn. Spoke like him, too; but he couldn't hide that odd accent he had, whoever he was. Too young by a bowshot, too. His beard was just thickening up. Tamlyn would be near two-score years. Seven years agone, Tamlyn-- or whoever it was then-- said that in the Realm, one did not age. But Coltram had refused the possibility of that world long before. No one could enchant Coltram with babble about Faeries.
Margaret could have had the young man, if she wanted him, without pretending he was Tamlyn; as a widow, she was free to choose anyone she wished. Or was she deceived? Or what was in it for her? Did she so crave the fame her elf-knight brought her that she was willing to substitute him with some half-brother, born on the wrong side of the blanket? But why then renounce Tamlyn's heritage? What were these people about? He watched the riders departing, focusing on the boot of Lady Margaret's right foot where it bounced against the near side of the charcoal mare she rode. He marked her profile as she turned her head to speak with her impostor. I could have had her myself, had I played it right.
He replayed an irksome scene in his mind. They had finally buried Jehanna, a relief more than a loss. He had lost her weeks before. Now her headaches no longer would oppress his hall, nor her wildness liven his nights. Coltram had gone to the bower of his children, to find Lady Margaret with the three of them in her lap, wetting the black velvet gown she had worn to the burial with their smuts and tears; she had seemed unconcerned with that, but brought the little maidens closer to herself, her hands gathering them in, speaking softly. Her tucker had come askew of the neck of her dress, and a strand of her dark hair lay across her collarbone. He evaluated her in the dusk of the bower; she was slim and lovely of face, if one cared for brown-haired girls. She was practically a maid-- for though he had never tried to dissuade those who whispered that her foundling was her own brat, he knew for certain that it hadn't been; he had seen her with his own eyes in Leighame Palace just weeks before the child's appearance at Brycelands-- but as a widow, she would require no morning gift, no father's blessing.
As the days passed, it became clear to him that she was more than fond of his children. Jehanna had given him no sons. She had caught his eye, and his children gave him an in. One evening after she had bade the bairns goodnight, he met her outside their door and proposed that they marry as soon as her widowhood was declared. She had gone round-eyed and demurring at this suggestion. He had drunk wine to get his courage up, and her prim surprise irritated him. Apparently, she was intimidated by him; very well, he would use that.
"Come, my Lady," He had said, moving closer, "We are both of us alone now. Is not a living man better than a fey for a husband?"
He put his left hand on the wall over her shoulder, his right on his hip, leaning over her. He let his eyes be filled with her comely face, her lovely form. She shrunk, breathless as a trapped hare, but was silent, and he had the peculiar impression that she was praying. A numbness crept over him. Suddenly he swayed on his feet, though he was used to drinking much more on occasion. He closed his eyes and shook his head to clear it; when he looked again, Margaret was disappearing with a swish of her skirts into her door. He heard the bolt slip softly into place.
He had approached her more than once, but after that first time, she simply looked at him, clear-eyed, in the face. "No, my brother."
Now as Coltram saw them disappear down the hill away from Braewode Manor, he turned away, smirking bitterly. It was a shame, really; Margaret was evidently a resourceful and unscrupulous young woman, he and she would have made a good pair. Her courtly aspirations would have complemented his military ambitions. "Let her have her renown, for what it's worth; and her young lover. I have what matters to me, now."
The clouds cleared off and the stars crowded the moonless sky as they drew near to Brycelands. Margaret rode the crupper behind Tamlyn's saddle with her arm around his waist; her horse had tired. The evening had snapped cold and still and she drew near to his warmth, watching for shooting stars as they rode.
The village was quiet. Compline had passed and the midnight office had not yet rung. The plash of the fountain could be heard almost to the head of the cobbled street. Behind shuttered windows somewhere, a tenor flute played a melancholy air. The bailiff, hearing hooves, came out into his dooryard. Margaret called a good evening to his house.
"Thank you kindly, my lady; and to yours as well," he said; gladness in his voice at having been caught vigilant. "See you in Church, my lord," he called. Tamlyn waved his hand.
When they started up the lane to Brycelands, Tamlyn called to the others to go on ahead of them. He turned his rangy palfrey toward the low sheep fence and jumped it, and cut across the field and up the hill, to a point of the field where the open sky lay about them. He slowed the horse to an amble, giving it its head. It wandered to almost a stop, snuffling in the short grass and pulling a mouthful the sheep had left behind.
"What are you thinking on, my lord?" said Margaret.
"I am thinking...I will surely bless you and make your children to number as the stars in the sky..." he murmured.
"And in your offspring all nations on earth
will be blessed, because you have obeyed Me," Margaret finished.
Tamlyn hummed his admiration. "Very good, for a daughter of Eve," he chuckled.
"What mean you?"
"I never saw a Bible in the possession of the Elves, yet they knew it, line upon line. And so did I, somehow. It was available as air. It was... easy to be a Christian among them."
"You handled your brother very Christian, today, I thought. A brother offended is harder to win than a walled city, and contentions are like the bars of a castle."
"He is my own brother. How could I not?"
Margaret was silent.
"I have to confess that today I missed Them. When I saw my brother's face, when I heard his evil thoughts toward you, and me. It made me sad to be reminded, Love, that I was not altogether unhappy serving Galorian. Nor was I completely without consolation, for my heart trusted your faithfulness. And perhaps misused it. There, Love, I've said it. I am so--"
"Do not say you're sorry, oh, no," cried Margaret, tightening the arm about his waist. "Do you think I would have wanted you pining every moment, when I had my Sunniva, my foundling, my sievan? Think you not I felt sad to find that her smiles filled my heart and let me forget you for a while?" She said it quickly, wincing, turning her head to muffle it in his cloak. Tamlyn dropped the knotted reins and turned, and clasped Margaret's waist; he dragged her around in front of him and held her close. "Tell me about Sunniva. What was she like?"
"Just an ordinary, miraculous child...We knew from the start she wouldn't last, she never kicked her feet, or moved her legs, and as she grew but a little, she never seemed to breathe well...But she smiled and smiled. And she loved us with all her little heart. She was always ill and needed constant care, but even so it was so hard to let her go...My little Sunniva, my little angel visitor...I hope there will be more children. Our own."
"Ah, As the stars in the sky?"
Margaret lifted her eyes to the brilliant heaven. "I could hope so. Our own." Tamlyn looked down and in her wide, dark eyes, saw reflected there the bright powder of the stars in miniature. Until his own shadow eclipsed them as she pulled his head down over hers, his heart swelling as he held her tighter still.
Tamlyn stood at a worktable, surrounded by Margaret's bunched herbs hanging, and crocks and jars of beeswax, lanolin, and tallow; he was binding with gut a new membrane to the chanters of the bladder pipes. A messenger arrived from Lord Coltram Braewode with the papers signed and witnessed by Lord Clewode. Tamlyn stood examining the papers, sealed with the heavy, dark, tasseled imprint of the Duchy of Cynrose. There was a finality to holding them, a loss he had not expected.
He brought it out to the rear garden, where Margaret was pruning the roses, for the gardener was not ruthless enough to suit her. The grass had not yet browned, but the roses were all but bare, and the ivy a deep bronze over the gray stone wall beyond. A chill breeze whispered of rain to come and the sky was leaden, but her face bloomed like the last rose of Autumn. She stood as he approached her and smiled with pleasure. She took the papers and glanced at them.
"No longer Lord of Braewode." She stated it, and regarded him, touching his arm. She saw it affected him and stepped close, leaning into his shoulder under the arm he wrapped around her neck. "You will always be a son of the King."
"Ah, amen to that. . .What is title, anyway? What is nobility, that I should feel in some way lessened?"
"An honorable name is an inheritance. Its price is above rubies, aye? That is loss, to be sure, though it diminishes you not one bit, if your own name is honorable." She gathered an excited breath. "What then shall we call our bairn?"
It was a moment before Tamlyn looked into her upturned face, taking in her meaning in the blushing smile. Then he threw his head back and shouted, and drew her up and spun her about him.