The Vampire & Her Witch

Hugo stood worn and weary in the Great Hall of Lothian Manor, but for the first time in his life, he felt genuine pride as he looked upon the results of his efforts in what had once been the center of Lothian Power.

Hugo had gratefully thrown off the mantle of Dame Sybyll Hanrahan’s proxy as soon as Owain issued his challenge to a trial by combat. Once the fighting had ended and Ashlynn withdrew from the Great Hall, however, he’d picked back up the mantle of Steward when he stepped in to help Isabell take control of the aftermath of the battle.

”Leave the domestic side to me,” Hugo had offered. ”I know the staff and the things that need to be done before the morning’s feast. You have enough on your plate just keeping the manor secure and handling the, um, the guests,” he’d said as he watched the lords, ladies, knights and children milling about the Great Hall in various states of shock, denial, fear and confusion about what had happened that night.

”You’re a good man, Hugo,” Isabell said when she accepted his help. ”Owain didn’t deserve you and Ashlynn is lucky to have you. I’ll make sure she knows you’ve helped.”

With that, Hugo threw himself into the work of transforming the Great Hall from a scene prepared for a coronation that had hosted a battle, a trial, a duel, and a great working of witchcraft into a place that would feel welcoming for the lords and ladies of the march who would meet here an hour after dawn.

Some decisions were easy. Ashlynn had ordered the court to assemble for breakfast, which would require not only tables and chairs for all the guests, but a worthy feast from the kitchens. But while these things weren’t optional, the arrangement of them would prove to be vitally important for how things would unfold, and Hugo had his own ideas about how to best serve Lady Ashlynn’s purpose as he set her stage.

”What do you mean, you don’t want a table on the dais?” The head chamberlain asked Hugo, blinking in confusion. ”The High Table belongs there, where the people can see Lady Ashlynn, the Barons and other important guests. If she can’t address the court from the dais, then where am I supposed to put her seat?”

”In the middle of the hall,” Hugo said, pointing to a spot not far from where Lady Ashlynn had fought her duel with Owain the night before. ”Lady Ashlynn will sit among her people, not above them. Arrange the rest of the tables in a spiral around hers, like the spokes of a wheel pulled in one direction,” he explained. ”That will give everyone a view of her table without giving preference to one group or another.”

”But, your lordship, I won’t be able to fit as many tables in that way,” the head chamberlain protested. ”My staff knows what they’re about, just let us do it...”

”No,” Hugo interrupted, surprising himself with the intensity of his voice. ”You don’t need as many tables as before. This is an assembly of the Court. There are a few guests without a title to their name who will be included; I’ll provide a list,” he said. ”But the Inquisition will not be joining us the way they did last night, nor will the wealthy and privileged men of means who bought their way into Owain’s favor.”

”We can host the latter elsewhere in the manor,” Hugo added as he realized that some of those people might not be genuine sycophants clinging to Owain’s thighs. Several of them had likely bought their way into Owain’s favor because doing so was good for their business and it wouldn’t help Lady Ashlynn to make enemies for her among the merchant class on the very first day of her reign.

At the same time, for the discussion Lady Ashlynn needed to have, it would be better to host those merchants for a private luncheon or less formal gathering later, and Hugo resolved to see to that too. For now, however, he was mostly concerned with the event that would launch Lady Ashlynn’s reign as marchioness.

”As you wish, your lordship,” the head chamberlain finally relented, though he couldn’t back down without a final parting shot. ”But if Lady Ashlynn is displeased...” he added, already reaching for the name of his new master as a shield against punishment from her Steward.

”I know,” Hugo said. ”I can accept the blame,” he promised before he turned to busy himself with the other details of the hall.

Everything needed to be perfect, and for that, he had all of the decorations down and the hall swept and scrubbed until he couldn’t find a trace of blood from the duel or soot from the fiery confrontation between High Inquisitor Ignatious and Abbot Recared’s Inquisitors.

But a bare hall wouldn’t make for a place that people would feel welcome or at ease, and for that, he turned to other things.

Messengers were sent to every household, returning to the hall only when they’d collected the banner of the baronies who would sit beside Ashlynn at the central table for the feast. Owain had decorated his hall as a monument to a hundred years of Lothian Rule. Hugo decorated Ashlynn’s hall as a place where every voice was honored... or at least, most of them were.

Without a delegation from Hanrahan, Hugo found his own family awkwardly unrepresented but he accepted it as unavoidable and set his worries aside. The next time the court convened, Lady Ashlynn was all but certain to invite Dame Sybyll to attend... Until then, he would do his best to speak on her behalf, banner or no banner.

”Banners are a beginning,” Hugo mused as he watched the household staff bringing things together under his design. ”But Lady Ashlynn would never stop at that,” he mused.

If it had been an assembly for Owain, or Bors before him, Hugo could have decorated the hall with the captured weapons and banners of the Lothian’s enemies, but those enemies were Lady Ashlynn’s allies and the message such a display would have been insulting in the extreme.

Instead of a grand display, what he needed to do was to find a way to make the space more comfortable, and more welcoming to the people who had drawn swords to face each other just the night before.

”Ah!” Hugo said with a wide smile on his lips as he recalled one of Lady Ashlynn’s stories about gatherings among the Eldritch beyond the Vale of Mists. ”Head Chamberlain,” Hugo called as he approached the man with a wide grin. ”You get a ’High Table’ after all,” he said with barely suppressed delight as he imagined the chaos he was about to unleash into the chamberlain’s neatly ordered world.

”Send for the castle carpenter and his apprentices,” Hugo said as he looked at the tables that were slowly moving into position. ”Tell them to bring their saws. We’ll also need plenty of cushions, blankets, and furs for the feast,” he said, ticking items off on his fingers one by one.

The cost of what he intended wouldn’t be small, and some might say that he was about to ruin furniture that was older than either himself or the chamberlain... But tonight, the cost didn’t matter. The ledgers would be wiped clean and written anew once he had a chance to take stock of the treasury, and even if they weren’t... Lady Ashlynn wouldn’t care.

There were times when every golden sovereign and silver penny mattered, down to the smallest snip of tin. Tonight wasn’t one of those nights and tomorrow wouldn’t be one of those days either. What mattered now was results, and just as Lady Ashlynn had put him and Liam and so many others off balance by adopting the closer, comforting traditions of the Eldritch and displaying their subtle sophistication, Hugo intended to unbalance the Lothian court, taking away the familiar and teaching them to embrace something new.

He couldn’t send people into the forest to gather evergreen boughs or fresh rushes to cover the bare stone floor, but by the time he was done, no one would be able to say he hadn’t made a space that was comforting, warm, and welcoming to everyone Ashlynn had summoned for her feast in a way that they’d never seen before...