Lora of Two Worlds

The third lord had gone with the General out to the barracks beyond the city; the second was deep in the wrangle of the man-hunt; the eldest had set out for Augustburg. The house guards who took the news had nowhere to carry it, and so they brought it to Channing, who was standing his watch — a watch that doubled as a mind kept on the tower chamber. Channing, going to find the young lady, did not hold out much hope. A tender young thing at bottom, with father and brothers buckled round her — she could well afford to do whatever entered her head. But the Windsor house was not one to be trifled with. Their family had knotted marriages with royal kin into its web several times over; a minor branch of the royal blood like the Odenheims — and a Lord Warden’s house at that — they would not so much as put in their eye. The Seven Surnames and Ten Houses of the old old blood were no longer what they had once been — that bow drawn clear to the sky, one hand blotting out the sun — but through marriage upon marriage they still held the power of the outer officials fast inside their own web. ”Call Shawn and Conan. We go to East Manor.” The young lady answered on the instant, without one blink of thinking: ”While East Manor is Odenheim land for a day, it is under Odenheim protection for that day. There is no manner of reason on earth it should eat insult at anybody’s hand.” The young lady headed out. Lilac tugged at Lucy, who had gone all fluster with no head left on her, and said under her breath: ”The lords are all out of the house. Run quick and tell the sixth lord next door.” ”Oh!” Seeing her make for the front gate, Lilac caught her back: ”Not the gate, goose! If the young lady climbs the tree, haven’t you learned it yet?” With two of the garden’s watering-maids lending their hands, Lucy spent the strength of a suckling babe and at last worked her head over the wall — straight into the eyes of Lyle, sitting in the courtyard. But by then the young lady’s carriage was already away from the General’s house. ”Send a man to fetch Roland. We make for the place first!” As Leon went out he ran straight into the Prince Consort, who frowned at him: ”Leon, you’ve not been in Lohenheim long — you may not know it yet. The Windsor house has been rooted deep in the lands south of the Loene and in Eastmarch for ages, a far harder knot than men like Legard, who fight you in the open at court. Never mind a demoted prince like you — even your aunt, strong a woman as she is, has to give them three inches of face. And isn’t your aunt still away in Augustburg...” ”Strong or not, this is not the Windsors’ empire. My aunt yields to them — not out of fear of them. She only means to keep the outer officials, already split down the middle by the faction fight, from taking one crack more.” The Prince Consort saw Leon would take no counsel, and it put a shadow of displeasure on him; he tried once more: ”You know how matters stand between Felix and the Dunbar girl. The Dunbars and the Fairfaxes are on awkward footing now, and the Windsors are the Dunbars’ in-laws by marriage. Felix comes home tomorrow — I’ve no wish to go poking a hole in any kettle and leave him the mending of it.” That argument did loosen Leon a little — Dorothy Dunbar’s second aunt was none other than Windsor Yves’s mother — and besides, there was truly no call to spend his hours on an uncle who had charge of nothing. He returned: ”Understood, Uncle. That breed mostly bullies the soft and cringes before the hard. As long as they don’t push the insult past bearing, I won’t show my face.” Leon was lodging in the Grand Princess’s mansion. What frightened the Prince Consort was this: with the Grand Princess not yet back from Augustburg, if some affair blew up, he did not trust his own arms to hold the lid down. Lyle wheeled Leon out, and could not hold the question in: ”My lord, you truly won’t show yourself? By the young lady’s bearing, she’s off to a brawl. We can’t very well watch her be set on and do nothing.” ”I won’t show myself — does that tie your hand? Get there ahead of them; we’ll speak after.” And Lyle had read it right. Lora had not gone out meaning to reason with anyone. Even if her own people were in the wrong — someone else had done the provoking. When the carriage swung into the small road that ran to East Manor, they saw it at once: two knots of men at the manor gate, locked and tearing at each other. The gray hemp-clothed men were the tenants; the bright-dressed were the Windsor house’s bully-boys. The strange thing was the small, smart carriage parked to one side, its door shut — who sat within, no one could say. ”The Odenheims are come! Steward Coltrain — it’s the Odenheim people — we’re saved!” Someone sharp-eyed had known the Odenheim carriage from far off, better than a dozen sword-bearing guards trotting at its heels. Shawn had sent a man to carry word to the third lord, and drawn ten men from the house guards besides. Not a great number. But a carriage meant the master had come. During the standoff just before, the Windsor steward had said one thing that left every man there furious and hopeless together: ”Three days and the pledge papers run out. The Odenheims just now can’t so much as see to themselves — a sum like this they’ll never raise. Why should they tear their faces open with the Windsor house over property that already belongs to another?” The flashily-dressed woman in the small carriage dabbed her lips with her handkerchief and smiled: ”I’d advise you all to know what’s what. The young Lord Windsor has said it — this manor is already made over to me. Your Odenheims did the Ashby family in; and I am here to show the Odenheims that behind one mountain there always stands a higher one. Keep me out today, and three days on I’ll have every tenant of you rolled up in your bedding and thrown off this land!” Coltrain answered with a cold laugh: ”The Ashbys leagued with the marcher troops and put Lohenheim to the torch — any man in the realm had the right to cut them down. However high you’re favored, you are still nothing but a bondmaid of the Crown. Don’t go counting yourself so much.” ”Bondmaid? I was the third daughter of the Ashby house — and was it not your doing that ever I came to be one? Windsor Fortune — slap his mouth for me! Beat it till that mouth can’t shape those two words again!” Norton snatched up a spade and planted it before his godfather, glaring down Windsor Fortune: ”Who dares lay a hand on my father!” Windsor Fortune had served the Windsor house how many years — what great scene had he not seen? Why would he fear a few petty tenants? Out went his hand to press down the spade in Norton’s grip — eh? Why wouldn’t it give? Quick as a coin, he turned the press into a stroke of his own goatee: ”Good tenants all — this is our young Lord Windsor’s new favorite, and the mistress who is to come over you. Let us all keep our voices gentle. In time to come you’ll hand in your tax grain and still keep two tenths of the crop for your pots. But set yourselves against Madam Ashby here, and what you catch will be a deal worse than a slap.” ”Two tenths? That’s flat meant to starve a man dead!” someone cried out among the tenants. The second Miss Ashby gave a scornful little laugh: ”Too little, is it? Windsor tenants have always taken just that share. Don’t care to farm it? Then go weep at the Odenheim gate — let that house dole you a mouthful of bread and meal, and see whether their own pot still comes to the boil.” And with that she went off like a hen that had just laid her egg — ”cluck, cluck, cluck” — crowing over herself: ”The ruin a man brews with his own hands, he must drink to the last dregs. Barely past, the guards out clamoring for their pay — and now tenants come begging for grain. Truly, the comedy of it...” At that, it was no longer only Coltrain and his son — the old soldiers at their backs went hot through and through: ”Out! Starve us first — no Windsor field will we till!” ”Whose Windsor field? This manor still carries the Odenheim name!” ”Those manors came to the Countess as her dowry from the Charwick house — the ducal house will have them back, never fear.” ”The General won’t forsake us! Run this witch out!” The second Miss Ashby flung the carriage curtain down with a slap: ”They dare curse me? Windsor Fortune — if you don’t teach these farm-wretches their lesson this very day, I’ll have it out of you before the young lord. Mind how you go!” And Windsor Fortune was no fool. In a few days the manor would be his master’s beyond argument — and when that day came, would killing or flaying be anything more than one word’s work? It was just this second Miss Ashby: she had gone out of the city to keep her vigil at a shrine, and on her road home had passed East Manor, seen the wheat standing gold in the fields, and gone hot with covetousness — she must turn in and look the place over. But the lame steward of this manor proved a prickly one: no Odenheim horses and men, said he flat out, would be entering the manor. So much the better — a lesson for the cripple, and the farm-wretches would toe their line hereafter: ”By the second Miss Ashby’s order — seize that cripple who gave her offense, and slap his mouth!” The mark fixed, several of the bully-boys drew their blades and came on, sweeping aside the men about Coltrain and his son, while the rest closed in on Norton. Norton was not yet seventeen — but from the day his ears could take in sound, it was as if he had been made another man; and with the hard drilling in the barracks these months past he had not only grown sturdier — he had shot up a good head. That was why, at the first sight of Lora after their parting, looking down on the young lady a full head shorter than himself, he knew it in his bones: he was no longer the little mute who tended flowers in a garden — he was a man who could stand over her, and hold the Odenheim house safe. He had been at East Manor days already, at work with his own hands beside his godfather on the wheelchair drawn out in Lora’s sketches. When word came of the trouble at the barracks, he had wanted to go back too — Coltrain had argued him into staying: With the General and the young lords there, and a few loyal adjutants at their side, no great harm could come to the barracks. But these manors, one step from being torn away — their life and death hung by a hair. Norton gripped his spade and stepped in on the blade-men: ”The likes of you — daring to threaten my father!” One sweep of the spade sent them staggering back step upon step. Two of the bully-boys, seeing the gap yawn wide between Norton and Coltrain, thought they had found their opening and came at the elder man with blades up. Norton’s backhand took one of them across the back of the head — the man dropped on the spot, face-down into the muck, and gave no sign of stirring. ”A man’s killed! A life for a life — kill him!” And the old soldiers of East Manor took up their hoes and spades and went at them like a hive broken open.

Stolen from NovelPhoenix, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.