The Black Raven - Katharine Kerr [114]
“I think me that might be too soon,” Elyssa said, “judging from what Tammael told me. But after a pair of nights, surely.”
“Thank the Goddess!”
Bellyra got up and walked to the window to lean upon the sill. Down below she could see the polished ward of the dun and its beautiful stonework. She’d miss it, she supposed, but then, to her anywhere her husband might be was the most beautiful place in the world. Not long now, she told herself, and you’ll see him. She wondered if he would pretend to be glad that she’d arrived.
In the end they did take two barges with them to Dun Deverry, thanks to the taxes due Maryn as Gwerbret Cerrmor and the servants due Bellyra as his wife. What with the nursemaids, the children, the scribes, and the maids of her chamber, she travelled in a crowd. As for the taxes, live hogs, live chickens, the food to feed them on, plus sacks of meal, salt fish, dried beef, apples, cabbages, and cheeses made up Maryn’s dues from the farmers of his rhan, and the city folk owed him tanned leathers, lengths of cloth, refined salt, baskets, ceramic pots, and barrels of ale. A few merchants, those who held the charters to trade with Bardek, paid in silver coins, carefully weighed as well as counted and wrapped in bits of fine cloth. All of it needed hauling upriver along with the princess, her women, and their furnishings. Each barge was so laden that the bargemen hitched up a foursome of heavy horses instead of a pair to pull each barge.
“I feel like the richest farmwife in the world,” Bellyra said. “Those are fine pigs, aren’t they? And we have eggs to offer you as well, bard.”
Maddyn laughed. Along with the serving women they were standing on the river pier up at what was then the village of Dai Aver, where they were waiting for the servant girls to finish stowing the baggage. Their barge would travel first, of course, upwind of the livestock. Behind them in the road the silver daggers waited, each man standing beside his horse, or in a few cases, beside two horses. The escort would lead the women’s palfreys, ready for the last few miles to Dun Deverry, when the river road grew too steep for the barge horses. A parade of carts would meet them to carry the furnishings and goods. Bellyra glanced at the cloudy sky.
“I hope the weather holds,” the princess said. “It’s going to take us long enough to get there as it is.”
“At least you’ll have shelter on the barge, Your Highness,” Maddyn said. “But I wish the prince had summoned you before this. Summer’s all but gone.”
“So it is. I had rather hoped to be summoned before this as well.”
Maddyn winced.
“My apologies,” Bellyra said. “With half the folk in the kingdom starved and turned out of their homes, I’ve no call to be pitying myself. Here, Maddo, if the weather holds, will you bring your harp on board to entertain us now and again?”
“I’d be honored, Your Highness. If of course your women won’t object?”
Degwa set her mouth to a tight line and said nothing. Elyssa hesitated, then gave bard and princess both a watery smile that might have meant anything.
“Well, once they hear your harp, they’ll understand. Ah, look. The bargeman’s sending one of the pages for us. We’ll talk later.”
Maddyn made her a bow and strode off to his men. Elyssa watched him go.
“There’s grey in his hair, but he’s a good-looking man still,” Elyssa said.
“It’s his music that commends him to me.” Bellyra put a touch of steel in her voice. “Shall we go on board?”
In the autumn rains Lilli coughed. She always had, and she always would, she supposed, even though the proper hearth in her new chamber helped considerably. While the rain poured over the dun she spent long afternoons in her chair by the fire and worked on her visualization exercises. The work—learning to create mental images and then hold them steady—was tedious in the extreme, but to her it became a refuge. When she was visualizing the elaborate pictures Nevyn set her, she simply could not think about Maryn, and as long as she was working in her chamber, Maryn could not trick