Crossing Over - Anna Kendall [63]
“And what do you call this, my lord?” She pointed to the wine in her goblet, turning the stem slightly to make the wine swish and the candlelight flash fire from her jeweled rings. The bud of her sixth finger she kept curled under, hidden in her palm.
“Kekl.” It was like the grunt of a boar, and just as wild. Lord Solek had eaten and drunk prodigiously, but he did not seem affected by the wine.
“Kekl.” From her, it was music. He gave his great laugh. The advisors smiled, with strain. Lord Robert did not smile. He had not smiled all evening.
“And this?” A soft hand fingering the goblet suggestively.
“Vlak.”
“Vlak,” she repeated. “Kekl in vlak.”
He was charmed, almost against his will. The heat that I had felt between them from the first glance had been no more than that, the heat of man and woman. But now he gazed at her, almost puzzled, and I wondered what the women of his own country were like, in that unknown place far to the west across the distant mountains.
Lord Robert drank more.
“Wine,” Lord Solek repeated, making the word guttural. “Queen Caroline.”
“Yes,” she said, and their eyes locked, watched by her uneasy advisors and his wary chieftains. It was a relief when the entertainment began.
Lady Cecilia was in it, and it was shocking. Not to the visitors, who watched in polite incomprehension, but to the court. Gone were the stately dances that the old queen had insisted on. Cecilia, Lady Jane, Lady Sarah, my lords Thomas and George and Christopher—all of them performed village dances, as if they were peasants. They sashayed and roistered and kicked jeweled slippers and polished boots. The women swished their skirts with abandon so that ankles and even knees were revealed, and the men swung the girls so high their feet left the floor. The musicians played the lively village tunes, although without the bawdy lyrics. There was supposed to be a masque, too, but the players never got to it because after the second shocking dance, Lord Solek leapt from the high table to the floor below and bellowed something.
Eammons choked out, “He says he will . . . will dance with Your Grace.”
Dead silence.
No one asked the queen to dance; it was her prerogative to do the choosing. Not even Lord Robert could transgress that rule. But that had been the old dances, the old court. And the savage chieftain stood on the polished stone floor, his hand outstretched toward the dais, his brilliant blue eyes both an invitation and a challenge.
Queen Caroline gathered her train over her arm and descended to the floor. To the musicians she said, “Play.”
They were almost too shocked to obey. The piper’s lips were stiff with horror; they could barely curve around his instrument. But somehow a tune was started and taken up. The queen and the savage danced.
He was quick, with an athlete’s grace, and the peasant dances were, of course, much simpler than the endless complicated figures of court dances. Lord Solek did not do too badly. She flowed like water around him, looking small next to his bulk even in her high-heeled slippers, and when he swung her high at the end of the dance she seemed to float toward the ceiling. Then she was sliding down against his body until her feet were again on the floor, and again there was silence. No one dared move or speak.
“All dance,” the queen said.
Panic, but controlled panic. More courtiers and ladies scrambled up from the tables, down from the masque platform. The savage’s three chieftains leapt up and each seized a lady, all of whom looked terrified. Lady Cecilia cowered in Lord Thomas’s arms, as far away from the savages as she could get. And so they danced.
It went on for an hour. The little princess was taken away to bed by her nurse. The stewards brought more wine, more ale. The savage captains performed a “dance” together