Prince of Dogs

“Please, my lord count.” Aunt Bel gestured to the single chair at the table. Everyone else would sit on benches. “If you will be seated.” Now she turned to Alain as well and made the same respectful gesture. “And you, my lord.”

“Aunt Bel,” he began, hating this formality.

“No, my lord.” He knew better than to argue with her. “You’re a count’s son now and must be treated as one. ‘God maketh poor and maketh rich; They bringeth low and lifteth up.’”

“So said the prophet Hannah,” added the cleric.

Aunt Bel turned back to Lavastine. “I will send one of my children to bring your company in to table, my lord.”

“I’ll go,” said Alain, though it was not his place. He should not offer, not without asking his father’s permission. But he knew, suddenly, that he would have no opportunity to speak to Henri, that Henri would not eat with them. None of the family would eat with them; they would serve their guests. That was all.

The soldiers began to stamp in, a flurry of activity by the door.

Lavastine said, “Alain!”

Alain made his escape.

Outside, Julien and Henri were still working on the mast. When Henri saw Alain coming, he straightened and waved Julien away. Then he bent back to his task.

Alain halted beside the older man. Out here, outside the confines of Osna village, it smelled different. There the ever-present smell of drying fish and salted fish and smoked fish pervaded streets and common and even the Ladysday service. In the longhouse, fish and smoke and sweat and the dust of stones and wet wool and drying herbs and sour milk and rancid oil and candlewax all blended into a rich, familiar aroma. At the manor house there was no such ripe blend, for here there was room to store foodstuffs in the shed beside the cookhouse, to grind stone in a separate workshop, to weave in a room set aside for that purpose. Although perhaps thirty people lived on this farm, they were not crowded together except on winter nights when they would all sleep in the main hall.

He smelled the sea foam and heard the cries of gulls. The animal sheds stank, of course, but the smell of earth and wind and the late chill of autumn dying into winter overrode anything else, made all else into a fragrant herbal, the scent of life. The smell of land and opportunity, even though it was only an old steward’s house from the time of the Emperor Taillefer.

“You’ve done well with the payment Count Lavastine gave you,” said Alain, not meaning to say anything of the kind.

Henri smoothed the sides of the log into an even curve. “As have you,” he said without looking up from the steady rhythm of his work. The words, spoken so bluntly, cut into Alain’s heart.

“I didn’t ask for this!”

“How then did it come about?”

“You don’t think I—!” His voice gave out as he struggled with indignation.

“What am I to think? I promised the deacon at Lavas Holding to put you in the monastery when you came to your majority at sixteen, and she did not say me ‘nay.’ Had she known who you were, do you think she would have offered you up so easily?”

“She didn’t know Count Lavastine wouldn’t marry again! She couldn’t have known that seventeen years ago. You think I somehow cozened him, cheated him, made up a story—! Just to get out of the church!”

“What am I to think?” asked Henri. He had not once raised his voice. “You made it clear enough you didn’t want to enter the church, though the promise was made at the same time you were given into the Circle as a newborn babe.”

“Made by others,” retorted Alain furiously. “I couldn’t even speak. I was a baby.”

“And then,” Henri went on as quietly, “after the monastery burned, you went to serve a year at Lavas Holding and we hear nothing more of you until this payment comes, and you are suddenly named heir to the count. I counseled Bel to send it back.”

“To send the payment back!” Henri might as well slap him in the face as say such words. “You would have sent it back?” His voice broke like a stripling’s.

“‘Accursed thirst for gold, to what fell crimes dost thou not force men’s hearts?’ The cleric, a fine educated woman I can tell you and a very Godly one as well, has been reciting to us the lay of Helen, which they call the Heleniad. Those words I took to my heart and I said them to Bel.”

“You don’t think Aunt Bel is greedy!”

“Nay,” admitted Henri. “Nor has she acted in any way except for the family. Indeed, we will be the better for her stewardship. But we should never have accepted that which came to us through false pretenses. The Lord and Lady do not smile on those who lie to advance themselves.”