Part 8 (1/2)
”Tell me what you know of my father.”
Ca.s.sander said ponderously: ”I can tell you next to nothing because that is all I know. Apparently he was a handsome young vagabond who chanced to find Suidrun alone in the garden and imposed himself upon her lonely condition.”
”Maybe she was glad to see him.”
Ca.s.sander spoke with unconvincing primness: ”She acted without decorum, and only that may be said for Suldrun. But his was insolent conduct! He made a fleeting mockery of our royal dignity, and well deserved his fate.”
Madouc reflected. ”It is very odd. Did Suldrun complain of my father's conduct?”
Ca.s.sander frowned. ”By no means! The poor little wight seems to have loved him. But tus.h.!.+ I know little of the affair, except that it was the priest Umphred who found the two together and brought the news to His Majesty.”
”My poor father was punished terribly,” said Madouc. ”I cannot understand the reason.”
Again Ca.s.sander spoke virtuously: ”The reason is clear! It was necessary to teach the churl a stern lesson, and to discourage all others of like mind.”
With a sudden quiver in her voice Madouc asked: ”Is he then still alive?”
”That I doubt.”
”Where is the hole into which he was cast?”
Ca.s.sander jerked his thumb over his shoulder. ”In the rocks behind the Peinhador. The oubliette is a hundred feet deep with a dark little cell at the bottom. It is where incorrigible criminals and enemies of the state are punished.”
Madouc looked up the hill to where the gray roof of the Peinhador could be glimpsed behind Zoltra Bright-Star's Wall. ”My father would be neither of those.”
Ca.s.sander shrugged. ”Such was the royal justice, and doubtless correct.”
”Still, my mother was a royal princess! She would not have loved just anyone who happened to look over the fence.”
Ca.s.sander shrugged, to indicate the puzzle took him beyond his depth. ”So it would seem; I grant you that. Still-who knows? Royal princess or not, Suldrun was a girl, and girls are female, and females are as wayward as dandelion fluff in the wind! Such is my experience.”
”Perhaps my father was highborn,” Madouc mused. ”No one troubled to ask.”
”Unlikely,” said Ca.s.sander. ”He was a foolish young rogue who received his just deserts. You are not convinced? This is the law of nature! Each person is born into his proper place, which he must keep, unless his king grants him advancement for valor in war. No other system is proper, right, or natural.”
”What then of me?” asked Madouc in a troubled voice. ”Where is my 'pedigree'?”
Ca.s.sander gave a bark of laughter. ”Who knows? You have been granted the status of a royal princess; that should suffice.”
Madouc was still dissatisfied. ”Was my father put into the hole along with his 'pedigree'?”
Ca.s.sander chuckled. ”If he had one to begin with.”
”But what is it? Something like a tail?”
Ca.s.sander could not restrain his mirth and Madouc indig antly rose to her feet and walked away.
IV.
The royal family of Lyonesse often rode out from Haidion into the countryside: to join a hunt, or to indulge the king's taste for falconry or simply to enjoy a pastoral excursion. King Casmir usually rode his black charger Sheuvan, while Sollace sat a gentle white paifrey, or, as often as not, the cus.h.i.+oned seat of the well-sprung royal carriage. Prince Ca.s.sander rode his fine prancing roan Gildrup; the Princess Madouc ranged happily here and there on her dappled pony Tyfer.