A Liar’s Grace

by Joseph Howse

part 2 of 3

Visiting swollen Artgur in the guardtower was not how Neetham had planned to make his entrance into the ducal residence. However, standing outdoors he had been growing cold, not to mention uneasy about where Gert’s chatter had been leading. Artgur did not chatter much.

“Bowl,” Artgur requested. Just after Neetham’s arrival (and the departure of Gert, who had babbled something about her other duties), Artgur had decided to pull the aching tooth. The guardsman was still spitting from the ordeal.

Neetham crept to the fireplace in the corner of the room, fetched hot water and the wooden bowl, and averted his eyes while Artgur swished and spat.

“Better,” Artgur grunted.

Neetham hastened to dump the bowl over the fire. The scene then receded into silence, except for the crackling of the wood and the whistling of the wind that pried past the shutter on the tower’s window. Yet there was something else as well, something deep and keening in the dead of the winter air.

The door burst open and Gert blew in from the drafty spiral stairs. Her blue eyes were wild, like two looking glasses pointed into an ocean storm.

“Get yaself up, Artgur! Din’t ya hear his Grace blow’n’ his horn? He’s on his way ’n we got to find...!”

She ran back out without finishing.

“Find what?” asked Neetham, turning to Artgur. A shrug was the only reply to be had. The guardsman lumbered out with his cheek resting on his palm.

Neetham faltered and did not follow. He disliked spiral stairs. Soon, soon, he reflected, the Duke would be back; the document would change hands. These were Neetham’s last moments alone with the scroll. He drew it from his vest, fingered its unbroken seal and dreamt what secrets could have lain within. Of course, it was only an architectural diagram. So he had been told; so he believed.

A whim made Neetham Banderdrake roll the scroll back and forth along the curve of his cupped palms. He saw no harm in this until the wind gusted again, lifting the fine, feather-light paper and landing it in the fire.

The howling of the gale filled Neetham’s ears and mind as he rushed to grab the paper from the fire. Once he held it again he saw that it was unharmed — not even singed. Molten-coloured light, in the shape of inscrutable charts and scripts, pulsed from the paper’s hidden surface.

* * *

“These years, Gert, never knew you could read.” Artgur was becoming contemplative as he held the ladder for Gert in the keep’s library.

“I can’tst read, ya daft, woolly lamb!” Gert rummaged along the top shelf, where rare scrolls were stored, and presently she muttered to herself, “Ow! This’un be just right for size. T’even stinks just the same as that other. T’ain’t holy, stinks t’ain’t. That note what comes to Tasher’s Tor t’ain’t holy t’either. Chap-lips says it t’ain’t.” She descended the ladder and then hissed to Artgur, “I can’tst read, hear, but I listens is what. Can you listens too, lamb?”

Artgur shrugged and nodded.

* * *

Neetham happened to be the first and only one who came to open the gates for the returning hunting party. “Your Grace,” said the Royal Messenger, kneeling before the sable steed of the long-haired, clean-shaven man who led the procession. Neetham had to wait long for the terse reply to emerge from the chapped redness of the rider’s lips:

“Not quite.” The words seemed to come out as searing ooze. “Neither one of us knows the other, clearly.”

Neetham Banderdrake saw it fit to stand, given the importance of what he had to say. “I come from his Majesty, the King, to see Duke Calbin Tasher III, with an important message! Are you his kinsman, sir?”

“Yes, I’m his cousin, Aedon Tasher.” He sighed and cast his pale eyes over his shoulder, past the dark shroud of his own locks. “Here comes my wife, Valnya Tasher — and her lady-in-waiting and full constellations of grooms.”

“Does his Grace lead from behind?” Neetham questioned.

“One could say that. His Grace and his hounds tarry on the moors in the presence of another madman, who begs to play his lyre for food. Of course, when I say ‘another madman’, I mean there are so many among the common folk.”

“His Grace is good to speak to them.”

“Yes, he’s frighteningly good at it.”

As the lady, the maid and the grooms filed into the courtyard, Gert and Artgur were suddenly on the scene to offer hands and knees for whatever servitude was required.

“My wife has legs of her own!” hollered Aedon Tasher, pushing Gert away from Valnya Tasher’s side. “Let her dismount by herself, milksop! Go fetch me my daughter!”

“Ow! Yes, whatever sir says; she’s just sleeping!”

“Then wake her! She is to see me; then we eat!”

Gert curtseyed and ran away in tears. Artgur, who had gone unnoticed, shrugged and lumbered after her.

By the time each rider had dismounted unassisted, the light was fleeing fast from the sky. The hunting horn sounded once more and was followed by yapping dogs and plucked lyre strings. The Duke’s balding head, then the Duke’s horse’s head, then the Duke’s new minstrel’s head rose above the line of dead grass. Calbin’s voice was frail yet somehow musical as he called into the gateway:

“This fool’s name is Dufrel, and he shall play sweet music as we feast on winter hares! Ah,” he laughed, “how like is this winter to... bridal garb!”

The assembly knelt in homage as Duke Calbin Tasher III rode his stallion over the slop pail.

“Like bridal garb indeed, your Grace,” called his cousin after reflection, “for it robs the old wood of its leafy brood, yet leaves new birth for other seasons!”

“A little roughly said!” remarked the other cousin, who, as Gert had said, was wife to the other cousin.

Neetham was studying the minstrel’s patchwork coat and wayward beard of brown, red and grey. As Dufrel grinned in reaction, the Royal Messanger found himself wondering where such vagabonds acquired gold front teeth.

Before Neetham could collect himself to re-announce his mission, along came another petty competitor for attention. As her horse galloped uphill, her grey cloak whipped against the frost in the air of dusk. A last, coal-coloured hound gamboled ahead of her riding crop.

The fast rider reined in hard on the cobblestones. A complete silence, even from the animals, followed her halt. Her features were hidden behind the heavy veil on her hood, yet her bare hands bore no marks of age or weather.

“You left this one on the moors,” the young woman stated. The hound leapt to lick his Grace’s hand.

“Ah,” laughed the Duke, “to think I had forgotten my dear daughter and my dearest hound in one stroke!” He leaned across in his saddle to kiss her cheek, or rather her veil. Unseen, the face within did not react.

“Let’s feast, your Grace,” said Aedon, adding beneath his breath, “while we still have the stomach for it.”

“Dufrel and I shall lead the way!” his Grace replied. “The rest of you — if it be not your duty to feed hounds and horses — may come and make merry with the two of us!” The Duke did not bother to dismount but rode inside instead.

* * *

Once the table was filled, Dufrel bowed and addressed his audience: “As I look into his Grace’s florid face, accentuated by the finery of his ruff, I cannot but be reminded of the rising run. Consequently, I shall sing in his honour. I shall soon begin.” He hummed while vibrating his lyre strings. “I shall now begin.” He sang:

“Come, your Grace, rise and witness the morning.

“(The morning!)

“How it shines on your face, O! the morning!

“(The morning!)

“Wearing your lace, bearing your mace, face...

“The morning!”

Neetham knew little of minstrelry, so he simply waited and followed in the suit of his Grace’s applause.

“Mark there,” bellowed Calbin Tasher III: “that is precisely how I feel in the morning! More, man, more!”

“Father,” hissed the veiled lady, by his side, “should we not show ourselves to be stern and humble before the Royal Messenger, who merits the first of our attentions?”

(She had learned Neetham’s purpose, as well as his name, from Gert. The two women had crossed paths upstairs when his Grace’s daughter had gone to change into her dark silk dinner gown and dinner veil.)

“How now?” cried Dufrel. “Do I hear we have the Royal Messen-engers among us? My next act works best with the assistance of an army of Royal Messen-engers! One will do, however, if no more can be spared.”

“Yes! Yes!” his Grace ordained. “Go be his pawn!”

Shakily, Neetham stood. Dufrel whispered loudly, “The Royal Messen-enger and I must go confer for one moment — one moment only!” Later in that moment, Neetham found that Dufrel’s arm had hauled him to the Tashers’ private chapel. The minstrel seemed to know the hallways strangely well.

A scroll popped from one of Dufrel’s pockets. He set it on the altar, where it caught the light of the stained glass window, making the paper look holy and pure. “Give me what you carry,” Dufrel whispered, “and deliver this instead. Thousands will suffer if yours is delivered, yet very few if mine is delivered instead.”

Neetham thought it both clever and wise to ask, “Am I one of the thousands or one of the few?”

A pair of throwing knives flashed from under Dufrel’s sleeves. “I feel sure that you’ll be one of either if you don’t deliver my scroll.”

Neetham made the exchange without further question.

As Dufrel stuffed the King’s scroll amid patchwork layers, he asked, “Can you flap your wings?”

“I beg pardon!” Neetham sputtered.

“Flap! You’re my homing pigeon! That’s going to be my act with the Royal Messenger.”

“That would be an indignity to the Crown!”

A moment later, back in the Great Hall, Neetham was wildly flapping his arms to the chorus of the Duke’s cackling and the dogs’ yapping. “More, man, more!” wept Calbin Tasher III in hysterics. “Never has...!”

“Guard!” barked the Duke’s veiled daughter, silencing and stilling the room. Artgur burst into the hall and gazed around for the source of the trouble. “Pay this minstrel food and silver,” the daughter commanded him, “and make sure he gets out of our house.”

“I too shall make sure he gets me out of the house,” laughed Dufrel; “I shall hold him to his duty by knifepoint!” The Duke seemed to find this, too, irresistibly funny. Neetham did not. The Royal Messenger exchanged glances with the departing trickster, who draped his sleeve over Artgur’s shoulder.

The message to the Messenger was clear: Artgur would die if Neetham did anything to stop Dufrel’s escape. Granted this reason, Neetham staked his life on the ever lengthening and narrowing path that liars are fated to walk. He could hardly expect another window for mentioning that the Royal message was in thieving hands and its brazen pilferer had slipped away.

* * *

Outside, Artgur grinned and blinked as the sun’s last rays tapped against the gold of Dufrel’s teeth. To the guardsman, it might have seemed strange that the minstrel was not grinning back. A grimace, rather, was the expression that exposed the fool’s teeth.

“A good night’s work you had there,” whistled Artgur in an unusually chatty spiel. “You can thank my Gert for that, eh?”

“Gert?” the minstrel sputtered. “And who might that be? I really can’t say I understand you.”

“Oh, tosh,” whispered Artgur, patting the bony hand on his shoulder. “Why so shamefaced, friend? Work is hard to come by; ’tis no shame to get it from family.”

“She told you,” Dufrel sighed. “Yes, it’s true. I am her uncle, too long estranged, on the distaff side. Awfully good of the girl, to tell me where to find the Duke and how to entertain him. Clever girl, Gert is.”

“Uncle,” echoed Artgur, no longer patting the hand but wringing it lovingly instead. “My Gert’s uncle. Friend, I wish to wed her in the summertide.”

Crossing this courtyard was taking longer than Dufrel had planned. “Don’t say?” he breathed.

“’Tis so, friend,” Artgur replied, “and, friend, as she has no father living — or no father as known to her, or I know not just how it is, or no one can recall — friend, I can ask the blessing of no better man. Friend...”

“Well said,” Dufrel interjected, “and if you’ll make do with me, I’ll make do with you.”

Artgur’s grin widened as far as the remaining swelling would allow. “Uncle,” he choked, “let’s embrace.”

Dufrel, who had clearly miscalculated his power over Artgur, found himself enveloped by the guard. On being released, the minstrel still had the suspicious nature and presence of mind to wonder whether the scroll had fallen from his pocket. He felt for the paper; it remained in its place.

“Till later... nephew,” Dufrel offered as they reached the gate. Artgur nodded. Gert would be pleased with the results of the errand.

* * *

Proceed to part 3...