Chapter#04

The son of the infamous el V'lairs van Athagine was her husband's friend, they were reputed to hunt ladies together, but this was not enough to guarantee an accord in trade. High taxes on wines brought through Sietter from Athagine and Vail had led to bands of desperate smugglers roaming the hills. Arianna frowned as she thought of the dwindling numbers of flotillas of barges and caravans of horses travelling the Arven River and Maier Pass, of trade driven to the long overland route through other regions instead of coming the easier route to court from the port cities in H'las because the high taxes and costs of security made the Maier Pass too expensive.

Arianna's frown hardened. She turned from the view of the rolling low Sietter hills, bitterness clouding her blue eyes. She had heard it said that Tarra el V'lair van Athagine refused to offer Clair el Maien a glove for spending the night with his then wife, he said would offer it to his wife for taking up time he could have spent with his friend. That was not the worst of the stories told about el V'lair and el Maien and their play in the pink-fingered set at court. But those other stories did not involve a Lady of great beauty and high intelligence, who had escaped a tyrannical marriage arrangement and gone back to her home region to re-marry happily and resume her interests in poetry and literature.

Poetry! what was that. Did it feed the poor? Could it address the violence which Arianna was obliged to witness between the menfolk of the high nobility. If it was not warfare, it was duelling. They lived in a web of violence as the merchants lived in a web of trade. There was barely a Lord she knew of who was not scarred by it: her own younger brother had had his face and one leg completely ruined by wardogs in a peacetime exercise. Here in Sietter she was in the worst of it, there were so many men who had come back from the war with H'las devastated in body and mind. Guiltily she looked over at the ramp down the side of the steps again.

Even a brief friendship she had once enjoyed had been brutally ended when her husband challenged el Parva van Selaine over a poem foolishly dedicated to herself. That was what poetry did, it led to some silly young man being slashed in the face for the sake of a code of honour that brought neither profit nor prosperity. Honour! What was honour? Arianna flattered herself she was at the least of it no stupid languishing poet to believe her husband might do such a terrible thing out of love. Her upper lip curled in scorn as she turned back into the big echoing entrance hall.

Then she smiled indulgently, seeing the two footmen who used wheelchairs racing each other through to the kitchens. They braked sharply on seeing her, nearly shooting the trays of crockery on their laps onto the stone floor.

She loved to see the two young men enjoying themselves and only shook her head, going to walk with them to the stone-flagged kitchens. She rested a hand on the shoulder of one of them as she went.

The young footmen were so attentive, she often became fond of them and she hoped these two would stay since Clair had made careful provision for them in their wheeled chairs. Although of course if there were better opportunities for them elsewhere Clair ought to encourage them. The stable-maids too. It was surprising how many of them he would suddenly call to the offices to interview when he came home. They would sidle surreptitiously in the library and say, My Lady, my Lord has found me a better position, looking wistfully into her face as if they would miss saddling up Sweetheart for her and accompanying her out in the hills.

The footman's muscular shoulder was firm under her hand. She gave it a friendly squeeze.

The footman turned his head to his colleague with a sly grin. His colleague made a hideous grimace back, Angels' sake! the Commander's Lady wife! what are you thinking? The footman enjoying the pressure of Lady Arianna's hand on his shoulder only grinned again, Well? she would not be the first to look down the social classes for her pleasures. In this very castle ... eh? Although he knew if he said it aloud the older servants would become angry and find ways to punish him without Lord Clair or Lord Tashka having to hear that he had thrown that scandal about.

He would not even hint at the gossip about Lord Clair himself which my Lord's personal men-servants sometimes let slip. His colleague had been a soldier in Lord Clair's troop and would never tolerate a word against his former Commander.

The footman slid his eyes surreptitiously at Lady Arianna in her faded frock. It did not make the most of her considerable charms, it was like something the kitchen maids would wear but although it was not becoming it made her seem accessible to flirtation, especially when she smiled that warm curve of the full sweet red mouth at you. He was even contemplating putting his hand over hers when she took her hand away. She went ahead into the kitchens with the faded cotton swinging around those wide hips that must surely be so soft for a man to sink himself between.

The other footman jostled his wheels as he pushed into the kitchens. He sniggered slily and wistfully. The head cook glared at the two of them. They both blushed.

The head cook turned back to Lady el Jien. She was asking if there might be some recipe for cakes for the Knights' and Dames' reception which did not use too much flour, he made an indulgent smile.

'The waste of it,' Arianna thought with a sigh. A waste of precious wheat and sugar, just to make some formal polite occasion at which the lesser aristocracy could ask her to use the van Sietter powers to secure them advantageous positions at court or in the regional army. A waste of her time too, which could have been spent on much more deserving projects than promoting the flirtation and inter-marriage of their daughters and sons. When she thought of the sensible hard-working mercantile and farming classes, even of the impoverished weavers, shopkeepers, lesser trades people who could not get near to ask for the help she longed to give them, it made her feel quite frozen cold with the injustice of it. If she had been an oldest child to rule her own region, with a counter to throw in the votes at the King's Councils, instead of a younger child bestowed away elsewhere, what would she not have done ....