Conrad learns what his wages will be

Anything that made the Duke’s grim steward smirk could not be amusing for anyone but him. It seemed so obviously true that calling it a foregone conclusion was an insult to logic. It might have been an axiom.

“His Grace will see you now,” he said kindly.

Aldwyn speaking kindly! There could be no surer sign of Conrad’s doom.

Margaret had told.

Conrad thanked him – did one thank the Angel of the Apocalypse? – and heaved himself up from his chair.

Time had seemed to crawl while he had sat waiting, but now that he was on his feet he found that it had not been an illusion. His legs and arms moved with ponderous slowness, as if he were dragging himself through a jar of honey. Every step took half an hour; every second stretched out obligingly to make the few remaining minutes of his life last for days.

Only his heart seemed unaware of this change, and it galloped like four horses. Conrad thought he would rather have been going into battle. At least in a battle he would be likely to have something wherewith to defend himself.

The Duke glanced up from a stack of parchments he had been shuffling upon his knee. “Good afternoon, Conrad,” he smiled.

Conrad wondered in despair what the papers were. A decree banishing him from the kingdom, perhaps? An order sending him to stand a fourteen years’ lonely guard upon the highest, coldest, most distant mountaintop overlooking the valley? A sentence of death?

He bowed and smiled weakly. “Your Grace.”

“Have a seat, young man. I trust I did not interrupt any pre-​​party preening?” The sound of rustling ceased, and Alred looked shrewdly up at him. “You’re not particularly vain, are you?”

“No, my lord – I hope not!” he blurted. “That is… unless it were a vanity to think oneself not vain…”

He smiled foolishly, helpless before such cunning. He had prepared himself for an immediate outburst of fatherly fury. Now he would be on edge, waiting for it to come.

Alred sat back and rubbed his nose thoughtfully. “Perhaps it is, young Socrates. I only meant to say that vanity is my own especial domain, and I do not intend to allow any rivals into these walls. However, I shall admit that the upkeep of my vanity would be far less costly had I such a head of hair as yours, and the height to which you are heir. Please, have a seat, that I may feel less small.”

He waved the stack of parchments at the couch and laid them aside. It seemed that Conrad’s fate was not spelled out upon them. Perhaps it was too shameful to be written down.

Conrad settled himself uneasily on the edge of a cushion and waited. Again the seconds slowed. Alred leaned his elbows upon the tabletop and folded his hands into a single fist before his face, hiding the expression of his mouth. His eyebrows lowered into a menacing scowl.

Conrad swallowed and sat back on the couch. The weirdly hot and humid exhalation of drying plaster trickled over the back of his neck like the whispering breath of a girl.

Margaret had told.

Conrad did not know what had been different about that kiss; only that it had been like trying the same key in the same lock and finding on the hundredth try that it suddenly fit.

Her tense, wary little body had relaxed into his arms instead of leaping away from every contact with his. Her coolly critical lips had stopped experimenting and evaluating; they had warmed and softened and moved obligingly wherever his lips had wanted them to move, rippling beneath them like meadow grass bowing to the greater will of the wind.

For only a few moments – alas! the shortest seconds of his life so far – everything had been so perfectly right. Who could have guessed that a mere meeting of mouths could be such earthly bliss? How much more, then, everything they had yet to try?

But it must have been wrong, too, for some equally mysterious reason, in some equally mystifying way. Something had frightened her or repulsed her or angered her, though he had done nothing they had never tried before, and she had squealed and kicked his shin and run away.

Then she had told her father.

Alred lowered his hands away from his mouth, and in the context of his pursed, pouting frown, the scowl of his brows suddenly seemed only sad.

“I’ve been hesitating a while, Conrad, trying to decide whether I ought to speak first to you, or to your father, or even to your stepmother. But I think this has only been an excuse for my own cowardice. You will find it strikingly obvious that this conversation will have no weight unless I have it first with you, man-​​to-​​man.”

Conrad thought this calmly rational introduction seemed promising… unless “man-​​to-​​man” were only a courtly way of saying “with swords.”

“Yes, my lord…” he said softly.

Alred sighed and smiled wryly at the ceiling.

“I must sound as if were about to ask you something shameful. In fact, the shame is all on my side. Permit me to make an exception to my general rule and speak plainly. Conrad, I should like to have you as my squire. Now, I shall get the shameful reasons out of the way first, and then tell you the others that you will find rather more agreeable to hear.”

“Your… squire?” Conrad squeaked.

“Yes, yes,” Alred said quickly, overlooking Conrad’s surprise in his own haste to get through the conversation. “You see, old man, you were one of the few gentlemen present… that night… a few weeks ago… you know the one I mean…”

His words came out in starts and spurts, as though he forced them by handfuls through a coarse sieve.

“You are one of the few who know what happened that night,” he blurted in a single gasp. “So there is no need for any… difficult explanations with you. You see.” He stopped and rested his face in his hand, almost panting from the effort.

Conrad licked his lips and mutely waited. His own worries were forgotten as he wondered just how difficult “difficult” could be if it were not yet this. He had seen the glib, gracious man lying half-​​dead in a lake of his own warm blood, and still he thought he had never seen him so discomposed.

Alred lifted his head. “You see, Conrad,” he continued, “that outward appearances notwithstanding, I have not yet recovered from that injury. I think I may never.”

His voice was shaky, but his words flowed more easily now.

“I think I shall never swing a sword again. I shall never swim or hunt or climb a wall again. I think I shall never bear more than an hour or two upon a gently trotting horse, for that is as long as a man may safely grit his teeth without permanently injuring his jaw. Do you understand?”

Conrad nodded. He understood, but it was more difficult to believe.

“However,” Alred said darkly, “my family does not know it. And I do not want them to know. Only Dunstan and Sigefrith and Paul know… and you, now. I hope that even if you refuse me this favor, you will at least honor the secret with which I have entrusted you.”

Conrad nodded again.

Alred sighed and pushed back his chair. Already Conrad was watching – as he would forevermore – for some sign of weakness or handicap. Alred’s hands did rest heavily on the arms of his chair. He did bend low.

“You see, Conrad,” Alred said as he strolled slowly around his table, “the duties of a squire of mine will be more than ceremonial. He must not only hold my horse’s bridle but help me to mount. He must not only strap on my scabbard but slip my sword into it. He must fetch and carry and do things I ought to ask of a servant or page, but which I as an impatient, independent man have never asked of servant or page. He must allow me to pretend to be a man, now that I have made myself less than one. And he must let no one know.”

“My lord…”

Conrad did not know what he wanted to say. He only wanted this to stop. He wanted the world to go back to the way it had seemed. He would have gladly met Margaret’s outraged father if such a man would come to take the place of Margaret’s wounded, defenseless, dearly beloved one.

“I warned you that I am exceedingly vain,” Alred smiled. “I know this request does not seem appealing in any way. But allow me to tell you the rest of what I had to say before you decide.”

“My lord – ”

“Ah!” Alred shook his finger at him. “Hear me out. I would not have asked you if your only virtue were your knowledge of my ugliest secret. It is you I want, and your presence that night was only my good fortune. You are a rather… unusual young man,” he said wryly, “but it is rather to your honor. I have seen you doing the right thing even when all the other boys were doing the wrong. I have seen you shrug off their mockery, which is a sign of such a rare strength of character that I can count on my fingers the number of grown men I have known who have shared it.”

“My lord!” Conrad gasped, panicking to have such high praise heaped atop his towering, teetering sense of guilt. He was about to confess everything.

Alred simply slapped his hand down on his shoulder. “Of course, of course – you must ask your father. And I shall understand if he does not accept, as you are the only surviving son of his beloved first wife, and I believe I have some idea of what you must mean to him.”

Alred squeezed his shoulder, proving the grip of his fingers, at least, had not weakened.

“But on my side, let me say this. I am a rather wealthy man, and one with some influence and perchance some slight power in the world. If you serve me and my family well, as I have never before asked a squire to serve me, I believe you will become more dear to me than ever before a squire. While you are here I shall give you everything in the manner of horses and hawks and fine wine and fancy clothes that a young man can desire – to the extent of your meager vanity, of course,” he winked.

Conrad laughed weakly. “I don’t truly…”

“And when you are grown, I shall do all I can to ensure your fortune and your happiness. Even,” he concluded solemnly, “unto giving you, in the fullness of time, the most precious thing I own. Do you understand?”

Conrad understood, with such a sudden, startling, unchildlike clarity that his mind was hesitant to believe.

Margaret had not told.

He was not to be banished or horsewhipped or burnt at the stake. On the contrary, he had been given to understand that like Jacob of the Bible, if he served his employer well, then he might aspire someday to marry his employer’s daughter, noble lady though she was, and simple knight’s son he.

It ought to have made him glad… and yet somehow it seemed it would be harder to defy the Duke’s implicit trust than his wary surveillance… that once they no longer needed to sneak to be alone they would feel more ashamed when they were… that it would be crueler to take the innocence of a girl he might hope to have fairly someday than one he could never hope to have at all.

Alred smiled blithely at him as though he could not begin to guess all that was going through Conrad’s mind – or, Conrad thought shrewdly, as though he well knew.

“There’s no need to decide now, old man – ” Alred began.

“But – I wasn’t – ” Conrad blurted.

“No, no, I simply will not accept any answer you may give me now. You must at least speak to your father, and you may send him to me if there is anything you prefer I discuss with him myself. You may also speak to Leila, or to whomever you believe might take an interest in this particular decision of yours.”

He paused, as if to give Conrad time to think of a whomever.

“Only do not mention what I said to you at the beginning. That shall remain between us. I assure you, even lacking that, my esteem for you is such that I would have asked you long ago if I were otherwise selfish enough to ask a man to give me his first-​​born son. There is no boy between the ages of ten and twenty whom I should rather have at my side, except he be a son of my own. I shall simply have to try to make it worthwhile to your father and you,” he added softly, with a wink that seemed more sad than teasing.

“My lord…” Conrad said painfully.

He tried to confess that he did not deserve it. He tried to simply confess. He was not the honorable boy the Duke thought him, and he was not even honorable enough to find the strength to admit it. The best he could do was to try to be worthy of such esteem henceforth.

“I thank you for the honor,” he said simply.

“Don’t say ‘but’!” Alred warned him.

“I didn’t mean to.”

Alred bowed and smiled. “I beg your pardon.”

Their eyes met, and Conrad was so shamed by his shameful desire to look away that he forced himself to hold the Duke’s gaze, almost hoping that the man would be able to see all the way down to his guilt. But Alred seemed to stare deeper still, all the way down, and even through, and even behind. He stared until his dark eyes swam with tears, and he was the first to look away.

Conrad hastened – as he would forevermore – to distract his lord from his unspoken sorrows.

He asked slyly, “What did you tell Aldwyn just before I came in here?”

“What?” Alred smiled. “Aldwyn?”

“He was practically grinning when he came out of here.”

“Aldwyn?”

“Grinning for him. I thought it could not possibly be good news for me.”

Alred tapped the side of his nose thoughtfully. “I simply told him to go home. I told him it was no use getting rid of Father Wrath-​​of-​​God Matthew if I had to sit and be looked upon by Aldwyn the Dire. Smiling, you said?” he asked with a smile.

“Grinning like a skull. He must have been happy to go home early.”

As he hoped, Alred laughed aloud and contradicted him. “My dear boy! I suspect he was smiling at the compliment!”