Lora of Two Worlds

The warm sun of late autumn lay on the flagstones of the Fairwind Quarter. The faint roughness of the stone gave the slow carriage a comfortable rise and fall.

The Odenheim young lady sat inside it. Today it was not men’s clothes only — no paint on her face, a futou cap bound on her head: she was passing herself off as a man entire.

In the Empire a woman in men’s dress was common enough — but it was a taste, not a hiding. So they wore their men’s clothes with brows and eyes painted as ever, plain women to the eye.

”You— my young lord — the rose garden’s come up. It’s early yet. Will you walk in, or sit and wait at the wine shop outside?” Channing held the curtain up for her.

Lora stepped down, took one look at the open-air wine shop, snapped her fan open, and set off along the lane between the flower-walls: ”I’ll go in and see. I’ve yet to clap eyes on a rose that flowers in winter.”

A hundred-odd paces on, she came on an archway, with two servants standing outside it dressed as serving-mans.

They bowed, smiling: ”What young lord is this, so early? Our host, the second lord Hugo, is not yet come.”

”A lord of the Odenheim house.” Channing gave the name.

”Odenheim? There’s a fourth lord of the Odenheims — might it be that house?” The serving-man never needed to look at any list; it came off his tongue pat.

The fourth brother coming? This rig would never fool him. Lora smiled: ”Since the host’s not arrived, I’ll take a turn outside and come by later.”

”Just so, just so.” The serving-man made no move to keep her, and watched her go with a smile.

For the rose garden was not a place open to every soul. Its pavilions and towers kept the shapes they’d worn in the old prince’s day; only Lohenheim’s nobles and officials went in and out, and a plain-clothed scholar only by invitation.

Since the garden was not to be entered, there was nothing for it but to sit at the open-air wine shop and wait.

Happily, the Fairfax carriage hove in sight soon enough, and fat Hugo strode in, wrapped in a chestnut brocade that flashed gold at every step.

The man’s dress sense gave Lora a start — and only then did it come back to her how Leon’s own robes, fine as they were, kept to quiet colors; that day she’d seen him in turquoise, he’d looked quite the fresh-faced young heartthrob.

She was deep in these happy idle notions when more guests came strolling in, one after another.

Lora’s eye flicked once at the Baron’s gate near by — nothing stirring there. Channing, sitting across, said, never moving a muscle:

”On the gable.”

On the gable of the gatehouse sat a figure in gray, still as still, one with the gray roof itself. Who could it be but Lyle?

Before she could so much as start a laugh, she heard someone raising greetings:

”Registrar Kaye — an age, an age!”

”Ah — Lord Quincy? It’s been long since I had the benefit of your guidance.”

”You do me too much honor.”

Weston Kaye’s official grade was low; but his father and his father-in-law were both pillars of the court, and even Quincy Ypres — a civil dignitary two grades above him — stood before him bowing and scraping.

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”And what is Lord Quincy doing sitting out here, not going in?”

Kaye lived near at hand, and had viewed the ”Winter-Cherry Lion” a good few times over already. But idle was idle — it was never his treat, after all; call him to anything and he came.

”I left the house in a hurry — forgot my fan. I’ve sent the boy back for it; I’m waiting on him. Registrar Kaye, there’s a private matter I’d like a little light on — if it’s convenient?”

”Convenient enough — say on, say on, my lord.”

And talking, the two settled themselves at one of the wine shop’s empty tables.

Lora lifted her tisane cup in silence and took a sip: Good grief. She’d have taken him for two crude strokes and done — and here, in half a day’s work, he’d rigged himself an ambush before and a pursuit behind.

And sure enough, the pursuit arrived.

A bang — something had struck the Baron’s gate from within. There came an outcry inside, and the next moment a woman burst out the door, clothes in disarray.

Wait — disarray?!

Lora’s blood rushed upward: No wonder he’d said not to take it true — they were playing it out to the last inch of detail.

Ruth had not run ten paces before she went down, and two guards of the house came out after her. Ruth cried out: ”I won’t go back — I won’t go back...”

”None of that shame out here!” The guards took her by the arms and hauled her back toward the house.

The several men sitting in the wine shop saw it all plainly: who but the Baron of Charnwood himself would dare turn out a maid of his own house with her clothes in disarray?

The Baron had gone dark and quiet ever since his coming to Lohenheim — and here this maid had gone and torn a rent clean into that filthy soul of his.

Ypres shook his head and sighed: ”Young men — no notion of sparing themselves... A pity, a pity.”

”But — wasn’t he lamed? How can he still...” Kaye had never once laid eyes on Leon; he had only heard how the King broke both his legs.

”I’ve heard it said, men of crippled body can be the crueler for it in that matter... Ah! — the one they mean to marry him to at the Birth-Feast. You’ve not heard?”

”A marriage grant? My lord jokes with me. How would such a matter come to a registrar of low seat and light voice, for asking?”

Kaye looked once more at Ruth, struggling yet.

”But this you should know of! It touches the Sorensen house. The girl they’d grant him is your wife’s elder brother’s daughter — your own niece.” Ypres covered his mouth and said it low:

”I had it from a voice out of the palace itself — true as gospel!”

”What?”

Kaye looked: Ruth had torn loose of the guards’ hands and was running toward the two of them again. The maid was sixteen or seventeen, a clean-pretty face, a pair of great eyes fixed on the two of them, piteous, as if begging rescue:

”Two lords — save me...”

This was no easy thing to meddle in. Kaye saw Ypres turn his head away, and he was for turning his own — when all at once two fast horses came on, a young lord swung down from the saddle, marked the maid struggling as she was dragged off, and strode up to block the guards.

”You two — guards of the Baron’s house?”

”To answer Lord Brendan of the Odenheims: so we are.”

Brendan looked Ruth up and down, ran a hundred reconstructions of what might have gone before in his head, and smiled on her:

”A maid of the Baron’s house, are you? Yesterday, come with your message, you were in fine order — and today, this state. My cousin has always been ice and distance, ten thousand miles from everybody — who’d have thought that behind his own doors, he...”

He lifted his head to the two guards:

”Go back and tell your lord: the Odenheim young lady has sent for Ruth to question her, and the fourth lord of the Odenheims has carried her off. When his lordship’s temper has cooled, I’ll see her brought home safe and sound.”

He knew Leon cared for his own sister — and that speech of his was his reminder to Leon: he was in a position to carry tales.

Guards and maid alike were still staring when Brendan had Ruth up on the horse, swung himself up behind her, clapped the horse, and was gone.

Everyone who saw it stood struck dumb — only each was dumbfounded after his own fashion.

On the gable, Lyle was gone in the next breath. An accident clean out of the playbook — down and reporting to his lord was the business now.

It took Kaye a good while to come back to himself. He folded his fists to Ypres:

”My lord, sit easy. There is pressing business in my household — I’ll not presume to stay. I take my leave here.”

That the King should have taken it into his head to grant his niece to a kinsman of the royal house so crooked in body and so rotten at core — he must make haste and carry it to his father-in-law.

Ypres rose to see him off; and when Kaye had hurried away, he too waited no more for any servant and any fan, but walked off straight.

At the wine shop there remained only Lora and Channing, staring at each other.

”How does my fourth brother know Ruth?”

Channing shook his head.

”And where has he taken her?”

Channing shook his head again.

”Come on — home, and let’s find out.”