The Red Wyvern - Katharine Kerr [36]
Although Bevyan was undoubtedly rising in the queen’s favor, as yet she hadn’t been invited to eat at the royal women’s table. Her usual bench stood close enough to the queen, however, for her to watch Abrwnna and her women as they sat giggling together over their meat and bread. Not far away, though at enough distance for propriety, the queen’s fellowship shared a table while immediately behind them sat the sons of various high-ranking nobility, Anasyn among them. Bevyan enjoyed watching her son, grown so tall and strong, taken into the company of his peers. She had tried over the years to distance herself from him; she had mourned his brothers too bitterly to wish to repeat that particular grief. Yet she was proud of him and his courtly manners as well. Although the lords around him were drinking hard and laughing, Sanno watched his ale and spoke only quietly if at all.
Instead of ale, the young men of the queen’s fellowship had been drinking mead, or so Bevyan heard later, and rather a lot of it. All at once one of them shouted, someone else swore, a third oath rang out and stilled the general clamor. Bevyan rose to look just as the queen’s men leapt up, knocking over benches, to rush the lords at Anasyn’s table. Bevyan saw Anasyn jump free and grab a friend from behind just in time to keep the lad’s sword in its sheath.
The fight devolved into shoving and cursing. A table went over with the crack of breaking pottery. Someone swung a punch, someone else reeled back with a bloody nose, but the older lords were on their feet and running, calling out to one another like hounds coursing for game. They grabbed the combatants and dragged them apart, then for good measure dragged them clear out of the great hall.
“And what was all that about?” Lilli said.
“Oh, who knows?” Bevyan said with a shrug. “Men will take insult and so easily, too.”
And yet she saw Anasyn, hurrying across to her through the confusion and beckoning her to join him. With a gesture to Lilli to stay put, Bevyan headed to the curve of the wall and a little space free of gawkers, where he joined her. His right sleeve was soaked through with mead, as if someone had thrown a goblet-full.
“There you are, Mother,” Anasyn said. “Father said I should tell you what happened.”
“Oh did he? It was more than some stupid insult, then.”
“Truly. Someone proposed a wager, you see, on how soon one of the queen’s fellowship would bed the queen, and which one it would be. Well, they overheard, and—”
“Oh ye gods! So the gossip’s got as bad as all that? Who started it?”
Anasyn shrugged for an answer. Out in the great hall everyone was sitting back down; a pair of pages were righting the overturned benches and picking up trenchers from the straw while assorted dogs wagged their tails and watched, hoping for another spill and sudden meal.
“Your father was right to let me know,” Bevyan said. “I’ll have a word with Merodda about this. As far as I can tell, she’s the only one with any influence over the lass.”
“So I’ve heard.”
“Which reminds me, dear. The queen tells me you were offered a place in her fellowship.”
“I turned it down.”
“So she said. I was just curious—”
“I’ve never wanted to be anyone’s lap dog and run with a pack of them. It’s disgusting, watching them fawn over her.” I see, Bevyan thought. So my lad’s fallen in love! Aloud, she said, “And quite right, too. Well, I’d best see how the poor lass fares.”
The queen’s hall in Dun Deverry occupied an entire floor of the royal broch. Carved chairs, heaped with faded and torn cushions, stood on threadbare Bardek carpets, while sagging tapestries covered the walls between the windows. When Bevyan came in, she expected to find the queen in tears over this insult to her honor, but instead Abrwnna was pacing back and forth in front of a cold hearth while her maidservants cowered out of her way in the curve of the wall. One of the girls was crying, and her messy hair, pulled every which way in long strands, gave evidence of