Chapter 209 A Mother's Shield

By the time Lora put the green glass cup into the Dowager Lady Elena's hand, Ambrose was back beside his mother, changed and in order.

The accident had come at a bad hour for him — he still hadn't fixed a next meeting with Lora.

The King, smiling from ear to ear at Ambrose, was picturing it already: himself in that chair, squirting ink full in Voss's face — full in Wyse's.

"Your Grace — is it this box?"

The Dowager Lady could hardly hang the sixth lord's chair round Lora's neck, so she only took the box, took Lora's hand, and smiled:

"You've had your trouble for me. Some day, when you go to the Serene Palace to wait on the Queen Mother, you must come sit in my hall. Ambrose is forever at the Serene Palace — if you're coming, he can go fetch you."

"Just so, cousin. Look at your third brother there — too busy to so much as come into the great hall. And I'm the capital's famous man of leisure. Ah — and wasn't your mother after a manor out in the country? I know of two whose masters mean to sell. Some day I'll take you and your mother out to see them."

That could only have come from Brendan — the man was hopeless. Their mother had mentioned it once, in passing — and he would go and lay the whole house open, every matter in it, before people who were nothing to any of them.

There was Lora with one hand in the Dowager Lady's clasp, and Ambrose at her side running on with this and that — and every eye nearby turning her way.

She understood it now, the whole scheme: mother and son were out to have the royal kin and the near houses see, plain, that Ambrose stood close to her — so that whatever they did next would seem to fall out naturally.

A neat little set of sums, well learned. And did they think Lora von Odenheim was one to be led along by the nose?

Lora heaped the smiles on, turned the clasp about, and took the Dowager Lady's hand in hers:

"When I was in the Eastern Capital, I'd already heard it said: Prince Ambrose, the dutiful son, the gentle soul — no woman in the capital but admired him. All Your Grace's good bringing-up, that.

Only — when Your Grace's own niece, and she a beauty, could be set down by Prince Ambrose at the place of a junior consort, what would a raw newcomer like me, who doesn't know the first rule of the capital, be doing, daring to put herself under the prince's protection? His intended princesses would eat me alive."

The Dowager Lady's own niece: first to go into the palace — then shifted over to Ambrose. The business had already drawn the kin's tittle-tattle down on the Dowager Lady's head; and then the word came that the niece wouldn't have it, wouldn't so much as spare her aunt's face — skipped the St. Agnes' Eve entire, and went home to Lohenheim.

Too shabby, the kin said — all of them blood kin. If she couldn't be a princess, then at the least a Lady of the chambers. If you never meant to promise her, you had no business fetching her up to the capital and playing her for a season's sport. How now was the Dunbars' lawful daughter ever to be married?

Lora batted her big eyes, all good faith, at the Dowager Lady. The Lady faltered, and drew her hand back. That business the last time — truth be told, his handling of it hadn't pleased her either.

But she and Ambrose were no true mother and son. The one without a son, the other without a well-born mother to stand behind him — that was what had thrown them into each other's arms for warmth. And a prince of the blood was a prince of the blood; she could hardly read him a lecture.

Ambrose, for his part, had never looked for Lora to bring Dorothy's business into the open light. It came over him in a flash:

She and Dorothy know each other. No wonder she's scarce-civil to me — she's taking her cousin's part. First thing, then: change the impression she has of me.

The King could hold in no longer. He resolved to drop a stone down the well after him — teach the boy to mind his manners for a season — and he followed Lora's lead:

"Ambrose — you'll not have that ragtag and bobtail of yours bullying Lora.

The chapter's author publishes it on , but this copy was taken without consent and does not carry their approval.

Just now, that reversible verse of hers was carried outside the hall, and the ministers went clicking their tongues over it. Some tried their own hands — and not one came up to hers.

Beauties in the capital are a crowd at a fair; a woman of letters — this one and no other. I am minded to bring her into the palace, make her a lady-officer at my own side — and spare her being marked down by some blind, weightless nobody in this city."

The realm had known lady-officers of the presence, of old. But the Crown, for fear of the rear court's troubles, had gone its own way: from their grandsire's reign onward, no King had set a queen beside him in his lifetime; of the consorts, a favored few, most bore sons and were never raised a rank for it — and as for employing a woman who stood between the rear court and the forecourt, that had gone clean out of the world's memory.

The palace ladies of the present day, under the Mistress of the Household, served the rear court only, and never once meddled in the forecourt.

One sentence, and the whole hall sat forward. Every eye went over this Miss von Odenheim, on her first showing.

Voss, standing by the hanging curtain, turned his eyes on Lora as well:

Something here out of square. The King loves his beauties — he has even had a maid of the gardens, then and there, on the spot. Last year he found men to go over his sacred day-register from top to bottom, and forbade, on pain, any record of the day or the place where he lay with a woman. But I have never seen him shield one like this.

What is it in this Lora von Odenheim that I don't know — that King and Ambrose should both put out a hand for her, in the open court?

Ambrose's face went red, white, red again:

The royal brother's meaning stood plain: Lora is his, and I'm to keep my fingers off. Lora herself he could let go — but that Book that turns poverty to riches — handed to the royal brother, just so?

Look at the King's bearing — this "Grand Strategy of the Realms" — nine times out of ten, it's true!

And Lora was full of nothing but regret: of all things to copy — why did it have to be that very canon? All the poets this age has bred, and not one of them could put a line against that poem... and the next time they set me writing, whose do I copy?

And besides — who would be some lady-officer? Up at four in the morning, and no leave to go off duty till the King was asleep...

Her daughter's whole face one long reluctance — and the Countess had taken in every inch of it. She rose in haste and made her bow:

"Your Majesty does her too much honor — where would Lora find such gifts? Skins and scraps, learned from the schoolmistress at the convent school, no more. Today is Your Majesty's Birth-Feast, and this birthday verse of Lora's — how would the outer ministers presume to get ahead of it? Everyone gave way to her, that's all — to give Your Majesty a glad hour, no more. Pray, don't take it for the thing itself. Only look first at that hand of hers — the characters drop their strokes half the time. Set her up as a lady-officer, and she'd wear the old Odenheim face clean off the family."

The Countess making her own daughter's handwriting the joke, the whole table's stiffness broke, and everyone laughed out easy.

Before her marriage the Countess had been a famous beauty. Who could say how the Duke of Charwick had come to pick as he did — marrying her down to a soldier.

And with Prince Jasper alive and hale — a branch of the house ever mild as fine weather, never contending, never grabbing — and standing so high in the generations besides, a grandsire-cousin to the King himself — his line stood at the head of the house's rolls.

So the Countess, come out of the ducal house of Charwick, carried real weight among the women.

Seeing her mother step out in front of her, Lora found her footing again. She made the King a full bow, and smiled:

"Your Majesty — Lora is young yet. Not fit to attend court at Your Majesty's side. Fit only to keep by the Queen Mother — look after little Truffle for her, chase cats and tease dogs, and wear out the days so."

The Queen Mother had watched it all with cold eyes. She knew the shape of it: the King was making Ambrose ugly before the company, and Lora, caught between two brothers, the innocent one paying.

Ambrose was forever running to the Serene Palace — she knew the man well. But the King was her own son. Her son would not have Ambrose hanging about Lora — had gone so far as to point at the mulberry and curse the locust, calling Ambrose "weightless" to his face.

Much else might not be in her power. But the marriages of these royal brothers — was that not in her power?

The Queen Mother beckoned, and Lora came to her side:

"For giving the King so good a birthday, your credit today stands first. One poem — and every minister of the forecourt put under it. Three little Truffles delivered, and new life added to the Birth-Feast. I mean to reward you — and not with a seat at my table alone. Charlotte."

From behind the Queen Mother a lady-officer of middle years stepped forward, hands down, awaiting her word.

By now Leon's thoughts were a rout. Never, in all his planning, had he looked for this turn on Lora's first entering the palace.

This Lady Charlotte — one of the two Mistresses of the Household, over the Office of Proclamations and the Office of Registers.

Which is to say: the lady-officer who conveyed the Queen Mother's edicts, and held the rolls of the rear court.

Who came in, who went out, of the rear court — the Lady Charlotte's one pen settled.

Leon's two hands closed white-knuckled on the armrests of his chair, his eyes fixed on Lora, who hadn't the first idea what was falling on her:

Lora — tell me. What am I to do?!