Maze of Moonlight by Gael Baudino (read with me TXT) 📕

sure. But he will at the same time be prevented from doing honest work.”

And how much honest work, he wondered, had ever come from the hands of Christopher delAurvre? The nobles lived on the backs of the peasants, made war on the backs of the peasants, sometimes (and he thought again of his grandfather) took sport on the backs of the peasants . . . or rather on their fronts. This Walter paid taxes and tithes, and had contributed his fair share to the clothes that Christopher was wearing, to the chair he sat in, to the food—black bread or gilded haslet, it did not matter—he ate.

And Vanessa, too, was a peasant. And Vanessa . . .

Such was his kingdom.

“Jerome,” said Christopher, “send a provost out to check on Walter's wife. If she's having difficulty eating, see that she gets what she needs. I'll have no sickly whelps on this estate.” He fixed Walter with a glance. “Walter . . .”

Walter quailed.

“You're lucky I'm not my grandfather.” Ne, he certainly was not. And, in fact, towards the end of his life, his grandfather had not been his grandfather, either. Was that good? Bad? The Free Towns, intact, were a place for Vanessa to go. She had said so herself. That was good. But . . .

The puzzle made his head hurt all the more. “I'll take you at your word. But you know how this estate is run. The next time, say something to the provosts or come and see Pytor or Jerome before you start stealing fish. Then we'll all be happier, won't we?”

Walter bobbed his head, tugged his forelock, seemed ready to drop to his knees in gratitude. Christopher waved him away and stood up. “I'm done. I'm sick of this. I'm going to go sit in the garden like a daft fool. Natil . . .”

She was already looking at him as though she had anticipated his utterance of his name. “My lord.”

Damnably unnerving. “Go and play your harp . . . someplace else. I don't want to hear it. Are you educated?”

“I have not studied at a university, my lord, but I know several languages in addition to Greek and Latin, and I am well conversant with the classics . . . as well as with music, of course.”

Of course she had not studied at a university: she was a woman. But if she were even half as knowledgeable as she said, then there was other work for her in Aurverelle. “Go and talk to Efram, the priest. Maybe you can help him teach some of the village lads.”

Natil curtsied deeply. “And the girls also, my lord?”

Unnerving. And cheeky, too. And he was letting her get away with it. His grandfather . . .

But he was not his grandfather. He had proved that over and over again. But what sort of a man would break men's necks for imagined slights, or rape peasant maids in the forest for recreation? How different, really, was Roger from Yvonnet? Or, for that matter, from the men of the free companies who took whole towns for all they were worth?

Natil was still looking at him, calmly waiting for an answer. “The girls?” he blurted. “If you can find any whose mothers can spare them.”

And Vanessa's mother and father had put her out of the house.

Feeling sick, wanting to hide, Christopher turned and stalked out of the hall.

Natil found him late that night in the stables.

Christopher had given up hiding in his chambers. Even after so many months, they still reeked of Anna's presence; and, now that Vanessa was gone, his still-healing mind had doggedly reverted to reestablishing old associations and outworn memories: there seemed that night to be nothing in his bedroom that did not remind him in some way of his dead wife, and therefore of the Crusade, Nicopolis, and his grandfather.

As he had many times before, then, he prowled the corridors and corners of Castle Aurverelle, slouching down the deserted halls, peering into vacant rooms with fevered urgency, surprising the kitchen boys and scullery maids. He was not sure what he was looking for. He was not even sure he would recognize it if he found it. Eventually, though, he found the wine casks, decided that they were good enough for now, and drank himself nearly insensible. Then, strictly ordering the servants in the cellar not to tell anyone of his destination—actually, he did not know himself—he crawled up the stairs, vomited his way across the dark courtyard to the stables, and finally collapsed beside the earthy presence of a mule.

Straw. Turds. The big brown eyes of the beast glinted at him in the darkness.

Christopher laid his cheek against the animal and wept. Aurverelle seemed a shadow. His life was a waste . . . and not even a particularly glittering waste. He himself was still half mad, and there did not seem to be much of a cure in sight. His only hope lay in a peasant girl who, far from loving him, regarded him only with a sense of frightened pity.

Much better he curl up with this beast, then. A mule was but a mule, a monkey but a monkey, and Christopher delAurvre but a lowly fool who, though he had temporarily given up his capering and his bellows, deserved no more than a stable.

The church bell was tolling matins when he became aware of a faint shimmer out of the corner of his eye. There was a rustle of a gown in the darkness, the sound of a knee settling to the earth and straw beside him. The mule stirred.

“My lord?” Natil. Quiet, calm, tranquil. She might have been sitting down with her harp instead of kneeling in a stinking stable.

“Leave me alone.”

“That I will not, my lord,” she said softly. “I agreed only to cease playing at your order. I said nothing about leaving you alone and friendless.”

“I'm not friendless,” he said dully. He thumped the mule. “This is my friend, Brunellus. He comes