Chapter 204 Ode to Bright-Virtue Abbey

In the back room of the East-Capital Vault, a handful of men in high feather sat round a steaming chafing dish.

The table was big enough and to spare; Leon waved Linn, Lyle, and Norton into seats as well. Many a year on, some man among them would look back and remember it: the meal they ate that night was the freest, the gladdest of their lives — and the only time, ever, that this company sat down together, lord and man, with no shadow between them.

October, and the King's Birth-Feast. In the Palace of the Holy Crown the maple leaves were only beginning their turning; the empty plaza before the Supreme Hall stood ranked today with rows of low tables.

Inside the Supreme Hall's great hall sat the King, the Queen Mother, and the royal kin; outside, on the plaza, the ministers and greater officials.

The great doors had been done up as a song-stage: four-and-twenty musicians to a side, and dancers to the count of sixty. As the company filed in, a newly arranged piece was already sounding without — the Hymn of Long Life.

The consorts, the princesses, and the noblewomen had their banquet in the side hall. Of the singing and dancing they could see nothing; the music reached them only. But no stage was wanted for color. The side hall had pageantry of its own — a blur of perfumed hair and glossy coils, the soft chime and clink of pendants.

They had all been gathered at the St. Agnes' Eve too, and in greater numbers then. Seated now, the noblewomen still hunted out their acquaintance and fell to whispering, every pair of them, like friends parted half a lifetime.

Lora sat alone at a little table hard against a pillar, well away from the Dowager Ladies and the grand princesses.

And from the moment she had walked in, one thought that no one else in that hall could have had sat quietly at the bottom of her chest:

The Supreme Hall of the Palace of the Holy Crown — this was the place where, in the years she knew, the King would be shut up by his own chamberlains at twenty-six, and die in that keeping. And today, in this same hall, it was all song and dance — the feast of his twenty-second birthday.

"This young lady's face is a new one to me. Which house is she of?"

The young woman beside Lora — a high-coiled head with one great silk rose pinned in it — leaned over. Near enough Lora's own age, by the look of her. Lora dipped her head and smiled:

"I'm of the Odenheim family — only just up from Lohenheim, so I've not had the making of many acquaintance here."

"Odenheim? From Lohenheim, the only one I'd know is the Lord Regent's granddaughter — Odile. Do you know her, sister?"

The young woman set her round fan going. The fan, it seemed, had been perfumed over with incense — a rich wash of musk came off it, near enough to stop Lora's breath.

"Odile? She and I were classmates at the convent school. And how should I address you, sister?"

"I'm Jocelyn — the Lord Mayor Jarman is my grandfather." The young woman hid her mouth behind the fan and gave a little trill of laughter: "So Odile went to school, did she! Last time we ran a contest of 'odes on the moon,' she never let on."

Another of the noblewomen chimed in: "At the St. Agnes' Eve the Lohenheim schoolgirls got put down flat — not one of them could out-write us. After that, how would Odile dare show her face at it?"

The rest all went to tittering: "Countess Odenheim — you've had a narrow escape. Better drop all this school talk."

Lora, though she hadn't sat one single lesson since crossing over into this world, thought it no bad thing that Lohenheim kept its convent school. She asked, with a perfectly straight face:

"You never went to school, then — so you studied your letters alongside your brothers?"

That stopped the whole table. They hadn't looked for that: this Odenheim girl feared nothing under heaven.

"I had my own mother at home to teach me — the Mirror for Women, the Counsel for Maidens. And I read poetry and write it too, well enough. Why should I study alongside my brothers? Or does going to your school make you wiser than the rest of us?"

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Jocelyn's voice had gone sharp and a little shrill. Even the Dowager Ladies turned to ask a princess who the young woman beside Jocelyn might be; and the ladies seated forward couldn't put a name to her either.

The Dowager Lady Elena suddenly put a face to her; she beckoned a lady-in-waiting over and put a whispered question, and had it answered: it was the Countess's youngest daughter — Lora von Odenheim.

Lora didn't know it, but at the St. Agnes' Eve the King had set an "ode on the moon" as the theme. The men had written in the great hall, and the women in the side hall — and the Lohenheim women's pieces had all been feeble, and the Augustburg ladies had laughed them to pieces.

That was why Odile never once owned to having gone to school.

And now Lora had walked straight back into the same snare — how could the court ladies not gloat till they burst?

Later ages remember only the High Empire, when the standing of women ran high; they forget that Leon's father set scholars to write the Discourses for Women and the Duty of Wives, for women to learn and live by. Two lines of those books had stuck fast in Lora's memory: "Reverence your husband as your head and lord — that duty is no light thing." And: "No fault fouler than a jealous tongue."

By this day the capital's convent schools had all been shut, and the noblewomen were back in the age of never crossing their own doorstep.

And since they didn't go to school, of course they must sing the praises of not going. Jocelyn was hungry for the center of the floor; she saw every eye turning her way, and lifted her fan to point at Bright-Virtue Abbey, plain in view without:

"Since the Countess of Odenheim thinks her schooling set her above us — let's have a contest, then. An ode to Bright-Virtue Abbey, there before our eyes, for a Birth-Feast gift to the King. How's that?"

Pah! The little toady!

Bright-Virtue Abbey had been Chant-Virtue Abbey before — till the ministers, wanting a show of praising the present King, petitioned to have it re-named. And now an "Ode to Bright-Virtue Abbey" — what was that but a sly lick aimed upward at the King?

"A fine proposal." The Grand Princess of Goldhall nudged the Dowager Lady Theodora at her side, smiling: "Mother — you be their judge, and go claim your reward before the King for it."

The Dowager Lady Theodora nodded:

"Bright-Virtue Abbey — the King's own bright virtue, that is; and a woman's part is to keep within herself. A proper theme. And which house is this young lady of?"

"Your Grace — my father is the Count of Odenheim, warden of Thornford." Lora rose and curtsied to the two Dowager Ladies.

"So it's one of the Countess's girls. Your first time at court, child — don't let them rattle you. It's only a poem." The Dowager Lady Theodora gave her a kind word.

Lora smiled, thin as paper: "My thanks to Your Grace. Only — I propose we each write two, lest someone afterward cry off-day."

Both Dowager Ladies laughed out loud. A sharp one, this — the sort that won't let go the upper hand.

Palace maids hurried up with brushes, ink, and paper, and laid them before Lora and Jocelyn.

Jocelyn had her scheme ready-made. She had gone about the abbeys with her mother, and abbey walls are ever papered with verses left by traveling literati. Copy any two off a wall — the Countess was fresh come to Augustburg and would never know them from her own.

Up went her brush:

Ode to Bright-Virtue Abbey, First

The bell peals, the censer smokes, round the world of dust they wreathe;

Who comes to morning worship, wakes to what her fortune breathes?

In and out these holy halls, a soul learns trust and troth;

Bareheaded under heaven's blue, she serves the saints in oath.

Ode to Bright-Virtue Abbey, Second

To flee the world, no need to seek the deep hills out;

Wherever an abbey stands, there dwell the powers divine.

If the Blessed One has any mind to mend this world,

This believer-girl would gladly keep her vigil at the shrine.

Jocelyn read her own work through, found it passable, and turned, smug as a cat in cream, to Lora — who had written one poem and set her brush down.

Lora was thanking her lucky stars in her sleeve: these months past, every chance he got, Leon had set her at her brush practice — and for characters of this size she no longer needed the feather pen for a crutch:

Ode to Bright-Virtue Abbey

The tide trails the dark swell — the snow hills lean and spill;

A far haven: a fishing boat angling beneath the bright moon.

The bridge fronts the abbey gate — the pine path winds small;

The rail overhangs the spring's eye — the stone ripples run clear.

Greene upon green, the far trees — river and sky at their dawning;

Red upon red, the near clouds — sea and sun in their shining.

Gaze far — on every side, the clouds join hands with the water;

Amber peaks by the thousand — and light gulls, a few.

"What — one poem, and the brush is down?" Jocelyn hadn't looked for her own two short pieces to be outdone by a single long one.

"I'm done. Two poems."

"You take us all for blind? Going to split one poem down the middle and call it two?" At Jocelyn's word the whole table went to laughing:

If eight lines were all she had, why not cut them in half to begin with? What a simpleton.

Lora couldn't be bothered to spend words on the company. She handed her draft to the maid who had come round for the collecting.

The maid carried both young women's drafts to the two Dowager Ladies — and there they sat, staring:

Never mind the verse itself — two had been the bargain. Why had the girl written one?

"What is it you're all playing at?"

The ceremony in the great hall was over; everyone had drifted out to the ball grounds for polo and football. The King, catching the sound of laughter from the side hall, had brought the men of the great hall back over with him.

Lora turned — and there, at the back of that whole crowd, in the wheelchair, was him.