A Wild and a Wicked Youth

by Ellen Kushner

Ms. Kushner notes, “This story came to me in a flash in the darkness of a Waterson/Carthy concert last year, when the English folk artists let fly with their awesome rendition of the traditional outlaw ballad, “Newry Town” (also known as “The Newry Highwayman”): A young man, clearly a nice boy, “turns out to be a roving blade” and comes to a bad end while his mother cries, and everyone agrees, “There goes a wild and a wicked youth.”
While the song’s plotline does not really match my story’s, it got me on the right path. I’d been wanting for a long time to write about the early life of Richard St. Vier, the gifted swordsman in my first novel, Swordspoint: a Melodrama of Manners. I’ve always known who Richard’s mother was, and how he learned to fight; but it occurred to me that nobody else did, and it was time to get it down on paper.”

“He’s dead, Mother.”

“Who’s dead, Richard?”

His mother did not look up from rolling out her pastry. They lived in the country; things died. And her son did not seem particularly upset. But then, he seldom did. She was raising him not to be afraid of anything if she could help it.

“The man in the orchard.”

Octavia St. Vier carefully put down her rolling pin, wiped her hands on her apron, and tucked up her skirts. At the door she slipped into her wooden clogs, because it was spring and the ground was still muddy. The boy followed her out to the orchard, where a man lay still as the grave under an apple tree, his hands clutching tight at something on his chest.

“Oh, love, he’s not dead.”

“He smells dead,” said her son.

Octavia chuckled. “He does that. He’s dead drunk, is all, and old and probably sick. He’s got good boots, but they’re all worn out, see? He must have come a long way.”

“What’s he holding?” Before she could think to stop him, her son reached between the old man’s hands to tug at the end of what he clutched in the folds of his messy cloak.

Like a corpse in a comedy, the old man sat suddenly bolt upright, still gripping one end of the long pointed object whose other end was in her son’s hands. It was the end of a sword, sheathed in cracked leather. Octavia was not usually a screamer, but she screamed.

“Rarrrrrr,” the old man growled furiously. It seemed to be all he could manage at the moment, but his meaning was clear.

“Richard,” Octavia said, as carefully as if she were back at her girlhood elocution lessons—though this was not the sort of sentence they had been designed for—”put the man’s sword down.”

She could tell her son didn’t want to. His hand was closed around the pommel, encircled itself by a swirl of metal which no doubt had its own special name as well. It was a beautiful object; its function was clearly to keep anything outside from touching the hand within.

The old man growled again. He tugged on the sword, but he was so weak, and her son’s grip held so fast, that it only separated scabbard from blade. Octavia saw hard steel emerge from the leather. “Richard...” She used the Voice of Command that every mother knows. “Now.”

Her son dropped the sword abruptly, and just as abruptly scrambled up the nearest tree. He broke off a branch, which was strictly forbidden, and waved it at the sky.

The old man pulled the weapon back into his personal aura of funk, rags, hunger, and age. He coughed, hawked, spat, repeated that, and dragged himself up until his back was to the apple tree’s trunk.

“Quick little nipper,” he said. “‘Sgonna break his neck.”

Octavia shielded her eyes to look up at the boy in the tree. “Oh,” she said, “he never falls. You get used to it. Would you like some water?”

* * * *

The old man didn’t clean up particularly well, but he did clean up. When he was sober, he cut wood and carried water for their little cottage. He had very strong arms. He did stay sober long enough to spend all of one day and most of the next sanding every inch of his rust-pocked blade—there was quite a lot of it, it was nearly as tall as the boy’s shoulder—and then oiling it, over and over. He wouldn’t let anyone help. Richard did offer. But the old man said he made him nervous, always wriggling about like that, couldn’t he keep still for one god-blasted moment, and get off that table, no not up into the rafters you’re enough to give a man palpitations now get outta here if you can’t keep still.

“It’s my house,” Richard said. “You’re just charity.”

“Am not neither. I’m a servant. That’s what it’s come to. Fetch and carry for madam your mother, but at least I’ve got my pride, and what does she want all those books for anyway? And where’s your daddy?”

It wasn’t like he hadn’t heard that one before. “She left him behind,” he said. “He couldn’t keep up. She likes the books better. And me.” Richard lifted a book off the shelf. He was supposed to ask permission first, but she wasn’t around to ask. “There’s pictures. Animals’ insides. Inside-out. See?”

He found a particularly garish one. Last year he’d been scared to look too closely at it, but now that he was big it filled him with horrific delight. He thrust it suddenly up into the old man’s face.

But the old man reacted a great deal more strongly than even a very horrible picture should have warranted. As soon as Richard shoved the book at him he jumped backward, knocking over his chair, one arm thrown back, his other arm forward to strike the book from the boy’s hand.

Quickly the boy pivoted, drawing his mother’s book out of harm’s way. He had no desire to have his ass handed to him on a platter, the official punishment for messing up books.

The old man fell back, panting. “You saw that coming,” he wheezed. “You devil’s whelp.”

He lunged at him again. Richard protected the book.

The old man started chasing him around the room, taking swipes at him from different angles, high, low, sideways.... It was scary, but also funny. There was no way the old man was going to touch him, after all. Richard could always see just what he was aiming for, just where his hand would fall—except, of course, that it never could.

Not a screamer, Octavia let out a yell when she walked into the room. “What in the Seven Hells are you doing with my son?”

The old man stopped cold. He drew himself up, carefully taking deep breaths of air so he could be steady enough to say clearly, “Madam, I am training him. In the art of the sword. It cannot have escaped your notice that he has an aptitude.”

Octavia put down the dead starling that she was carrying. “I’m afraid it has,” she said. “But do go on.”

* * * *

Richard practiced in the orchard with a stick. His best friend, Crispin, wanted to practice too, but Crispin’s parents had impressed upon him that lords did not fight with steel. It wasn’t noble; you hired others to do it for you, like washing dishes or ironing shirts or figuring accounts.

“But it’s not steel,” Richard explained; “it’s wood. It’s just a stick, Crispin; come on.”

The old man had no interest in teaching Crispin, and anyway it might have gotten back to his father, so Richard just showed his friend everything he learned, and they practiced together. Privately, Richard thought Crispin wasn’t very good, but he kept the thought to himself. Crispin had a temper. He was capable of taking umbrage for days at a time, which was dull, but could usually be resolved either in a fistfight or an elaborate ritual apology orchestrated by Crispin.

Richard didn’t mind that. Crispin was inventive. It was never the same thing twice and it was never boring—and never all that hard, really. Richard was perfectly capable of crossing the brook on the dead log blindfolded, or of fetching the bird’s nest down from under the topmost eave by Crispin’s mother’s window. He did get in trouble the time he climbed up the chimney, because chimneys are dirty and his mother had to waste her time washing all his clothes out. But Crispin gave him his best throwing stick to make up for it, so that worked out all right. And Crispin’s other ideas were just as good as his vengeful ones. Crispin was the one who figured out how they could get the cakes meant for the visitors on Last Night and make it look like the cat had done it. And Crispin was the one who covered for him the time they borrowed his father’s hunting spears to play Kings in the orchard, when they forgot to bring them back in time. They never told on each other, no matter what.

Crispin’s father was all right, except for his prejudice against steel. He winked when the boys were caught stealing apples from his orchards, and even let Richard ride the horses that were out to pasture; if he could catch one, he could ride it, that was the deal (as long as it wasn’t a brood mare) and Crispin with him.

Crispin’s father was Lord Trevelyan, and had a seat in Council of Lords, but he didn’t like the City, and never went there if he could help it. Every Quarter Day, Trevelyn’s steward brought Richard’s mother the money her family sent from the city to keep her there. A certain amount of it went right back to town, to be spent on books of Natural History the next time Lady Trevelyan went there to shop. Lady Trevelyan was stylish and liked theatre. She went to the city every year. She did not buy the books herself, of course, and probably would have liked to forget all about them, but her husband had instructed that they be seen to, along with everything else the estate required from town.

What mattered was that the money came, and came regularly. Without it, his mother said, they would have to go live in a cave somewhere—and not a nice cave, either. “Why couldn’t we just go live with your family?” Richard asked.

“Their house is too small.”

“You said it had seventeen rooms.”

“Seventeen rooms, and no air to breathe. And no place to cut up bats.”

“Mother, when you find out how bats can fly, will you write a book?”

“Maybe. But I think it would be more interesting to learn about how frogs breathe, then, don’t you?”

So she always counted the money carefully when it came in, and hid it in her special hiding place, a big book called Toads and their Discontents. There were some pictures of Toads, all right, but their Discontents had been hollowed out to make a stash for coins.

Shortly after the latest Quarter Day, the old swordsman disappeared. Octavia St. Vier anxiously counted her stash, but all the coins were still there.

She gave some to him the next time he came and went, though. It had been a beautiful summer, a poet’s summer of white roses and green-gold grain, and tinted apples swelling on the bough against a sky so blue it didn’t seem quite real. Richard found that he remembered most of the old man’s teaching from when he was little, and the old man was so pleased that he showed him more ways to make the pretend steel dance at the end of his arm—Make it part of your arm, boyo!—and to dance away from it, to outguess the other blade and make your body less of a target.

Crispin got bored, and then annoyed. “All you ever want to do is play swords anymore!”

“It’s good,” Richard said, striking at an oak tree with a wooden lathe flexible enough to bear it.

“No, it’s not. It’s just the same thing, over and over.”

“No, it’s not.” Richard imagined a slightly larger opponent, and shifted his wrist. “Come on, Crispin, I’ll show you how to disarm someone in three moves.”

“No!” Crispin kicked the oak. He was smart enough not to kick Richard when Richard was armed. “What are you stabbing that tree for?” he taunted. “Are you trying to kill it?”

“Nope.” Richard kept drilling.

“You’re trying to kill it because you’re scared to climb it.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Prove it.”

So he did.

“The black mare’s in the field,” Crispin told him when he’d hauled himself all the way up to the branch Richard was on, by dint of telling himself it didn’t matter.

“The racer?”

“Yah.”

“How long?”

“Dunno.”

“Can we catch her?”

“We can try. Unless you’d rather play swords against trees. She’s pretty fierce.”

Richard threw an acorn at Crispin. Crispin ducked, and nearly fell out of the tree.

“Don’t do that,” he said stiffly, holding on for dear life. “Or I’ll never let you near our horses again.”

“Let’s get down,” Richard said. He eased himself down first, leaving Crispin to follow where he couldn’t be seen. Crispin got mad if you criticized his climbing, or noticed he needed help. The rule was, he had to ask for it first, even if he took a long time. Otherwise he got mad.

Crispin arrived at the bottom all covered in bark. “Let’s go swimming first,” he said, so they did that. On the way home, they discovered Crispin’s little sister unattended, so they borrowed her to make a pageant wagon of Queen Diane Going to War with the garden wheelbarrow and the one-horned goat, which didn’t turn out as well as they’d hoped, although that wasn’t their fault; if she’d only kept still and not shrieked so loud, nothing would have happened. Nonetheless, it got them both thrashed, and separated for a week. Richard didn’t mind that much, as it gave him more time to practice. All that stretching really did help the ache of the beating go away faster, too.

The old man was going back to the city for the winter, where a body could get warm, he said, and the booze, while of lesser quality, was cheaper, if you knew where to go: “Riverside,” he said, and Octavia said, “That’s a place of last resort.”

“No, lady,” he gestured at the cottage; “this is.”

But when she handed him the money, he said, “What’s this for?”

“For teaching my son.”

He took it, and went his way, just as the apples were ripening to fall. He came back the next year, and the next, and he stayed a little longer each time. He told them he had a niece in Covington, with four daughters ugly as homemade sin. He told them the Northern mountains were so cold your teeth froze and fell out if you didn’t keep your mouth shut. And he told them the city was crazy about a new swordsman, De Maris, who’d perfected a spiraling triple thrust the eye could hardly follow.

“Could you fake it?” Richard asked, and the old man clouted him (and missed). They figured it out together.

Octavia gave him more money when he went. Maybe it was a mistake, because then he didn’t come back. The old fellow might have just dropped dead, or been robbed, or he might have spent it all on a tearing binge. It hardly mattered. But she had meant him to buy a sword for Richard with it, and that mattered some.

So she went up to the Trevelyan manor, to see what could be done. Surely, she thought, they had plenty of swords there. Nobles owned swords, even if they didn’t duel themselves. There were ritual swordsmen you hired for weddings, and, well, guards and things.

The manor servants knew her, although they didn’t like her much. They were all country people, and she was a city girl with a bastard son and some very weird habits. Still, it wasn’t their business to keep her from their lord if he wanted to see her. And so she made her best remembered courtesy to Lord Trevelyan, who was at a table in his muniments room doing something he didn’t mind being interrupted at. Octavia St. Vier was a very pretty woman, even in a sun-faded gown, her hair bundled up in a turban and smudges on both her elbows.

“You’ve been so kind,” she said; “I won’t take much of your time. It’s about Richard.”

“Oh, dear,” said Lord Trevelyan good-humoredly. “Has he corrupted Crispin, or has Crispin corrupted him?” She looked at him inquiringly. “Boys do these things, you know,” he went on. “It’s nobody’s fault; it’s just a phase. I’m not concerned, and you shouldn’t be, either.”

“Crispin doesn’t really like the sword,” she said.

His tutor had taught him about metaphor, but he realized that wasn’t what she meant. He also realized that this poor woman knew nothing about boys, and that he should, as his lady wife often told him, have kept his mouth shut.

“Ah, yes,” he said. “The sword.”

“Richard loves it, though.”

“I hear that he shows promise.”

“Really?” She said it a little frostily, as her own mother might have done. “Have people been talking about it?”

“Not at all,” he hastened to assure her, although it was not true. People did notice Octavia St. Vier’s rather striking boy—and the drunken swordmaster talked in the village where he got his drink, pretty much nonstop. But he just said, “Crispin’s not as subtle as he thinks he is.”

“Oh.” She smiled. She really was a very pretty woman. The St. Viers might be a family of bankers, but they were bankers of good stock and excellent breeding. “Well, would you help me, then?”

“Yes,” he said, “of course.” It was her eyes; they were the most amazing color. Almost more violet than blue, fringed with heavy dark lashes....

“I’d like a sword, then. For my son. Do you have any old ones you don’t need?”

“I can look,” he said. He leaned around the table. “I’m so sorry. I don’t mean to stare, but you’ve got a smudge on your elbow. Right there.”

“Oh!” she said, when he touched her. His thumb was so large and warm, and, “Oh!” she said again, as she let herself be drawn to him. “I have to tell you, I haven’t done this in a very long time.”

“Ten years?” he said, and she said, “Fourteen.”

“Ah, fourteen, of course. I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right. Yes, he’s just turned thirteen. And may I have the sword?”

“You,” he said gallantly, “may have anything you wish.”

* * * *

Richard’s mother brought him a sword. It was a gift, she said, from Lord Trevelyan—but he wasn’t to thank him for it; she had already done so, and it would only embarrass him.

Richard did not ask permission to take the sword to show Crispin. It was his sword now, and he could do as he liked with it. He had already polished it with sand and oil, which it badly needed. Truth to tell, Lord Trevelyan had had a hard time laying his hands on a disposable dueling sword. There were battle swords in the old armory, each with a family story attached. There were dress swords for formal occasions, but he knew Octavia would not be content with one of those. Nor should she be. The boy deserved better. For the first time, Trevelyan considered the future of his unusual tenants. Perhaps he should pay to have the boy trained properly; send to the city for a serious swordmaster—or even have the boy sent there to learn. Richard St. Vier was already devoted to Crispin. When Crispin came of age, he might have St. Vier as his own personal swordsman, to guard him in the city when he took the family seat in Council (a burden Trevelyan would be only too happy to have lifted from him) to fight his inevitable young man’s battles over love and honor there, even to stand guard, wreathed in flowers, someday, at Crispin’s wedding. Trevelyan smiled at the thought: a boon companion for his son, a lifelong friend who knew the ways of steel....

Crispin was tying fishing flies. It was his latest passion; one of their tenants was the local expert, and Crispin had taken to haunting his farmhouse with a mix of flattery, threats, and bribes to get him to disclose his secrets one by one.

“Look!” Carefully, Richard brandished his blade, but low to the ground where it couldn’t hurt anything. It was not as razor-sharp as a true duelist’s would be, but it still had a point, and an edge.

Crispin nodded, but didn’t look up. “Steady...,” he said around the thread in his mouth, anchored to one finger against his hook. “Wait—” With a needle, he teased at the feather on the hook. “There!” He held up something between an insect and a dead leaf.

“Nice,” Richard said.

“So. Let’s see.” Crispin gently balanced his fly on the table and looked up. “So you finally got a real one. Is it sharp?”

“Not very. Want to practice? I’ll tip the point for you, don’t worry.”

“Not now. I want to fish. It’s nearly dusk. The pike will be biting.”

“I’ll let you use the real sword.” It cost Richard something, but he said it. “I’ll use the wooden one.”

“No, I tell you! I’ve been working all day on my Speckled King. It’s now or never. I’ve got to try it!” Crispin picked up his rod, the fly on its hook reverently cupped in one palm.

“Oh, all right. I’ll come with you, then.”

Richard slung his heavy sword back in the makeshift hanger at his hip, and followed the lord’s son out through the courtyard and down the drive and across the fields to where the river ran sluggish, choked with weeds. The afternoon was perfectly golden. He felt that it was meant for adventure, for challenge, for chasing the sun down wherever it went—not for standing very still and waiting for something small and stupid underwater to be fooled onto the dinner table by a feather and a piece of string. Nevertheless he joined his friend on the riverbank, and watched Crispin expertly cast the line.

It was true that the boys had already corrupted each other, in precisely the way that Crispin’s father had meant. It was, for them, just another thing to do with their bodies, like climbing or swimming or running races—and with certain similarities there, as well; they experimented with speed and distance, and competed with each other. Fishing was serious, though. Richard prepared to wait. He wondered if it would distract Crispin, or the fish, if he practiced just a little, and decided not to chance it. Crispin fussed at the pole, and cast the line again.

Gnats hummed on the water. A dragonfly mated with another.

“Tomorrow,” Richard began, and Crispin said, “Shh! I think I’ve got one.” He raised the tip of his rod, and his line tightened. Richard watched Crispin’s face—the fierce concentration as he pulled, released, tightened the line again, and gave a sudden jerk as his opponent lashed the surface of the water. It was a pike, a big one, with a sharp pointed snout, its jaws snapping with the hook. It struggled against the pull of the line, and Crispin struggled with it as it raised white water and then rose into the air—it looked almost as if the fish were trying to wrestle him into its own element, holding him at the end of the nearly invisible line, coming toward him, going away, dancing on the wind. Finally it spun in, a writhing silver streak of a pike that landed on the grass beside him with a desperate thud, enormous and frantic for breath.

“Ha!” Crispin cried, viewing his prize as it gasped out its life—and “Ha!” Richard cried, as he plunged his blade fiercely into its side, where he figured the heart should be.

The fish lay still, then flopped once more and collapsed. Richard withdrew his blade, a little raggedly, and fish guts leaked out its silver sides.

“Why did you do that?” Crispin said quietly.

“It was dying anyway.”

“You ruined it.”

“It was a noble opponent,” Richard said grandly. “I gave it a merciful death.”

“You don’t give a fish a merciful death.” Crispin’s voice was tight with rage. “It’s not a deer or a hound or something. It’s a fish.”

“I know it’s a fish, so what does it matter?”

“Look at it!” Crispin’s fists were clenched. “It looks completely stupid now.” The pike’s fierce mouth, lined with teeth, gaped haplessly, the hook still in it, the feathers of the fly like something it had caught and didn’t quite know what to do with.

“Well, I’m sorry, then,” said Richard. “But you can still eat it. It’s still good.”

“I don’t want it!” Crispin shouted. “You’ve ruined it!”

“Well, at least get your fly back out of it. It’s a terrific fly. Really.”

“No it’s not. It was, but you ruined it. You like to ruin everything, don’t you?”

Oh, no, Richard thought. He knew where this was going, and that there was pretty much no stopping it. It didn’t even occur to him to walk away; that would only prolong things. He had to stay and see it out.

“Go away,” Crispin said. “You’re not my friend.”

“Yes I am. I was your friend this morning. I’m your friend, still, now.”

Crispin kicked the fish. A little goo ran out of its mouth. Its eyes were open. It did look pretty stupid.

“You said you were sorry, but you didn’t really mean it.”

“Yes I did. I am. I’m sorry I ruined your fish. It’s a great fish.”

“Prove it, then.”

Here it comes, thought Richard. He felt a little involuntary shiver. “How?”

He waited. Crispin was thinking.

The longer Crispin thought, the worse things were. It would be something awful. Would he have to eat the fish raw? He wondered if he could.

“Give me your sword,” Crispin said.

“No!” That was too much.

“I’ll give it back.”

“Swear?”

“If you do as I say. I don’t want it,” Crispin said scornfully. “It’s just a beat up piece of junk.”

Richard put his hand on the pommel at his hip. “Swear anyway.”

Crispin rolled his eyes, but he swore one of their oaths: “May the Seven Gods eat my liver live if I don’t give it back to you. After you’ve apologized.”

“All right, then.” Richard drew his blade, and held it out.

“Not that way. You must kneel. Kneel to me, and offer it properly.”

He knelt in front of Crispin in the grass, the sword balanced across his two hands. It was heavy this way.

“All right,” his friend said.

“Is this enough?”

“For now.” Crispin was smiling the unpleasant smile that meant he’d thought of something else. Richard wondered what it was. It was worth staying to find out. His arms ached, but not unbearably.

“Are you going to take it, Crispin, or not?”

“Give it to me.”

Richard held it out a little further, and Crispin grasped the hilt. The weight leaving him was like a drink of water on a hot day.

“Now stand up.”

He stood.

Solemnly, Crispin leveled the sword at his chest. Richard looked down at the tip of the blade against his shirt. This was hard. It took almost everything he had to hold himself in check, not to fight back.

Crispin nodded.

“You have passed the first test,” Crispin intoned. He put the sword aside. Richard hoped it wouldn’t get too wet on the grass. The sun was getting lower. But it wasn’t dark yet.

“And now, the second. Are you ready?” Richard nodded. “Take off my boot.”

He knelt by Crispin’s leg and pulled his left boot off the way he’d seen the valet pull off Lord Trevelyan’s after the hunt. Crispin steadied himself with a hand on Richard’s shoulder, but that was all right; he had to: the whole thing wouldn’t work if Crispin fell.

“Now my stocking.”

Richard eased the wrinkled stocking off his foot. It smelt not disagreeably of leather, wool, and Crispin himself. “What should I do with it?”

“Put it somewhere you can find it again. This won’t take long.”

Crispin’s bare foot was balanced on his thigh, just above his bent knee. Crispin was like an acrobat, poised for flight. Or if there had been a tree above them, he might have been about to hoist his friend up into its branches for the sweetest fruit. He could see all sorts of possibilities, but Richard knew from rich experience that nothing he could imagine was remotely like what Crispin would say. And, indeed, it was not.

“Now, put your tongue between my toes.”

“What?”

Crispin said nothing, did nothing. The foot was there. Crispin was there. The words had been spoken. They were never taken back.

The foot was there. Richard bent his head to it.

Something in his body tingled. He didn’t like it. It was just a stupid foot. It should have nothing to do with the way he was feeling.

He tasted essence of Crispin. Crispin’s fingers were in his hair, holding tight. He moved on to the next toe. The feeling grew. He really hated it, and he really didn’t. He didn’t seem to have a choice, actually. He was feeling it whether he wanted to or not. It felt more dangerous than anything he’d ever done, and he didn’t hate that, either. He ran his tongue along another toe, and felt Crispin shudder.

“All right,” his friend said. “That’s enough.” But Richard didn’t raise his head. “The offense—The offense is purified. The deed is pardoned.” Those were the ritual words. Richard should have stopped, but he didn’t.

“The deed is—”

Richard went for another toe.

Crispin let himself fall. His bare foot caught Richard on the side of the mouth, but Richard could tell he hadn’t meant it to, and let himself fall, too. They rolled on the ground together, struggling against each other for some sort of relief in a fight they didn’t know how to win. They pressed their bodies tight against each other, reaching for each other’s skin through their clothes, and finally had the sense to tear them off and give each other the release they’d gotten in the past. It felt different this time, more frightening, more uncontrolled, more essential—and more complete, when they had both done, as though they had made an offering to the world they hadn’t meant to.

“The offense is purified,” Richard breathed into Crispin’s ear.

“The deed is pardoned,” Crispin whispered to the grass.

They got up and cleaned themselves off, and put their clothing back together, and went home.

The next day, Richard helped his mother clean the loft out. The day after that, Crispin took him riding on a real saddlehorse. They passed through a field with high hedges, but did not dismount to experiment with each other behind them. That particular experiment was over, now. They never spoke of it again.

* * * *

The old swordsman came back at the end of summer, and spent the winter with them. He didn’t say much, and he didn’t drink much, either. He was yellowish and hollow-eyed, skin slack on his face, hands trembling when he didn’t watch them.

Richard showed him his new sword. The old man whistled low. “That’s a real old relic, that is. A pride of ages past. Wonder where they dug that up?” He hefted it, made a few passes with surprising speed. “Wasn’t junk once. Nice balance. Length’s all wrong for you, boy—’smeant for a bigger man. Have to work extra hard now, wontcha?”

He wasn’t fun to have around. Some days he never got out of bed, a grubby tangle of blankets and cloaks he huddled in a little too close to the hearth and its ashes. On what must have been his good days, though, he’d heft his own blade, or the fireplace poker, whichever was nearest, and smack at Richard’s leg or his sword, if either was within reach; he’d growl something in the back of his throat, and then simply go at him as if Richard were some kind of demon he needed to vanquish. Eventually he’d calm down, and start criticizing, or explaining. That was worth the wait. But it was hard.

“I’ve gotten bad,” Richard complained, the fifth time of being smacked along his ribs with the flat of the man’s blade. He was waking up bruised. “I’ve forgotten everything you taught me.”

“No, you’ve not.” The old man cackled. “You’ve grown, is what it is. Arms and legs in a whole new place each morning. Trying, ennit?”

“Very.” Richard risked a pass, and was rewarded with a touch.

“Move the table,” Octavia said absently, standing at it exploring a bat’s insides. They had actually left it on the other side of the room some days ago, but she wasn’t paying attention.

“Well, don’t break anything, then.” She might have meant a bowl, or her son’s arm—or probably both.

Nothing got broken. Richard grew all that winter. He was getting hair in unaccustomed places. His voice was not reliable. It made him all the more eager to master the sword.

“You’ll be a beauty,” the man would taunt him, trying to break his concentration while they sparred. “Good thing you know how to use this thing, because you’ll be fighting them off with it.”

That was good. The last thing he wanted was people pestering him. This fall the goose girl had started following him around, never leaving him alone—and when he ignored her, she actually threw things at him, so he gave her a thrashing—a light one—but still, to his surprise, his mother had given him one when she heard, to see how he liked it. She said it was for his own good, but he knew that she was just good and angry. She told him he must never, ever lift his hand against a woman or a girl, not even if they were being very irritating. Not even if they struck him first. Because son, she said, soon you will be much stronger than they. You could hurt someone badly without even meaning to. So it won’t be fair. And besides, soon you’ll be in a position to, ah, to put them at risk—But we’ll talk about that next year, shall we?

“What if her brother comes after me?” Village boys had bullied him a lot when he was small.

She gave him the same answer now that she’d given then to such good effect: “Oh, him you can try and kill, if you can.”

* * * *

He didn’t see much of Crispin that winter. The snows were unusually deep, and Crispin was at studies of his own. His father had sent to the city for a University man to teach Crispin mathematics and geometry and orthography and things. When he saw his friend, Crispin told Richard that this was unquestionably the worst year of his life so far. And he didn’t see why he had to learn all this stuff when he was going to have secretaries and bailiffs to do the important writing and figuring for him—which earned him a clout from his father, who explained that if he didn’t know how to do those things for himself, he’d be cheated blind and the whole estate go to wrack and ruin. And no, it wasn’t a bit like not studying the sword. Some things were indeed best left to specialists; he wasn’t expected to be able to shoe his own mare, either, was he? Next year he was to have Logic, and Rhetoric, and Dancing.

“Stand fast,” he told Richard St. Vier. “Don’t let them teach you to read, whatever they say. Next time she remembers, just tell her you’re too busy or something.”

“I’ll tell her it’s bad for my eyesight.”

“Whatever it takes. Trust me, it’s the beginning of the end.”

Crispin was considering running away if things got much worse. But not to the city; that’s where all these horrors came from. Maybe he’d jump a boat upriver, if Richard would come with him.

Richard said he’d consider it.

And so they waited till spring.

The old man was better in the spring. He sat out in the sunshine on a bench next to the rain barrel against the wall, like a pea sprout waiting to unfurl in the sun. He dueled Richard up and down the yard, to the terror of the hens, who wouldn’t lay for a week. Octavia complained about the chickens, and the old man got all huffy, and said he would go. She was sorry to hurt his feelings, but she was really just as glad to get her cottage back to herself.

They missed him the next year, though. Octavia felt bad, especially as she was pretty sure he must be dead. He couldn’t last forever, and he hadn’t looked good, even in spring. However, Richard had uncovered the exciting news that Lord Trevelyan’s new valet from the city had studied the sword there, as well.

Richard had given up on Crispin as a dueling partner. Crispin said he had too much to study already, and when they had time to do things together, they had better be something fun. Neither of them had to say that Crispin wasn’t any kind of match for Richard anymore (except in drill, which even Richard couldn’t consider fun).

In an agony of need, Richard plotted how to approach the new valet. Should he be casual, offhand, and only plead if he had to? Or should he abandon all pretense, and simply beg for a lesson?

In the end, it was Lady Trevelyan who decided the matter. Crispin’s mother was back from the city, a month early because of an outbreak of fever there, and bored out of her mind. It was her idea to stage a demonstration bout at the Harvest Feast.

By the time Octavia had heard about it, Richard had already gleefully said yes, and it was too late for her to make a fuss about any son of hers displaying himself like a mountebank for the entertainment of people who had nothing better to do than watch other people poking at each other with hypertrophied table knives. It was just as well, really; she had the awful feeling she might have ended up sounding exactly like her mother.

Still, it would have been nice if Hester Trevelyan could have troubled herself to make a courtesy call to explain to Octavia herself that the swords would be tipped, and there would be no First Blood in this duel, the way there was in the city. A mother’s heart, after all. Or didn’t Lady Trevelyan think she had one? Octavia had Richard’s boots resoled, and made sure he had a nice, clean shirt.

Late on the holiday, Octavia braided her hair on top of her head, fixed it with gold pins, and put on her Festival best—not the dress she’d run away in, which had gone to useful patches long ago, but the one she’d stashed to be married in whenever she and her dashing lover got ‘round to it: a glittery and flimsy contraption a decade out of date which still fit her perfectly, and made her look like a storybook queen.

When she made her entrance on the Trevelyan grounds, everyone stared. The country folk standing behind the ribbons marking off the fight space sniggered, because they’d never seen anything like it; but Hester Trevelyan, who had worn something very similar at her own coming out ball, looked hard at Richard St. Vier’s mother. Then she scanned the crowd for Crispin, and called him to her.

“Your friend’s mother,” she said; “go fetch her—politely, Crispin—and tell her she must come and sit with us.”

Octavia had been dreading this. She did not want to sit and attempt to make conversation with Hester Trevelyan in front of or with Hester Trevelyan’s husband. Still, one must be gracious. She followed Crispin and arranged herself decorously in a chair on the other side of Lady Trevelyan, and smiled and nodded at everything that was said to her, but that was about all.

Hester found the woman very strange, and not at all appealing, lacking, as she’d always suspected, any agreeable conversation. But she put herself out to be affable. It had clearly been a while since Richard St. Vier’s mother had been in any sort of decent company, and perhaps she was worrying about her son. The woman’s eyes kept straying across the yard to where the torches were waiting to be lit around the bonfire, and the Harvest tables all set up.

Usually, Hester explained, her dear friends the Perrys held the swordfight after the bonfires had been lit. They also brought dancers down from their Northern estates to perform the traditional horn dance beforehand—and that was thrilling to see. But because once the fires were started (and the Harvest drinking seriously begun, though she didn’t actually say that) people got a little wild, they’d thought it best here to begin with the duel while it was still clear daylight. She hoped Mistress St. Vier wasn’t anxious. Master Thorne, the swordsman valet, was really as gentle as a lamb. She would see.

Octavia had seen Richard running around with Crispin, eating cakes and apples and throwing the cores across the yard at people. She was glad he wasn’t nervous. His shirt couldn’t be helped; it had been clean when he left the house.

Hester waved a strip of silk at the men with the horns—they were hunting horns, brought into service for a somewhat cracked but nonetheless thrilling fanfare. Richard and Master Thorne entered from opposite sides of the yard.

Master Thorne moved with a smooth elegance Octavia hadn’t seen since she’d left the city. He was arrayed—there was no other word for it—arrayed in green satin, or something that shone like it, his breeches without a wrinkle, his shirt immaculate white. He set his jacket aside, and rolled up his sleeves as meticulously as a master chef decorating a cake. It was a treat to watch, the way they folded neatly into place. She stole a glance at Richard, who was both watching the man intently to see if he knew tricks, and fidgeting with impatience. That particular fidget was well known to her.

Crispin had begged to serve as Richard’s aide, but Lady Trevelyan had put her foot down; it wouldn’t be seemly for the son of the house, not even at Festival. So it was to a footman that Richard handed his sword while he took off his jacket. His mother watched him hesitate a moment before deciding to leave his sleeves as they were. Then he and Thorne advanced to the middle of the field, saluted each other, and began to circle.

It was only a half-circle, really. Richard lunged and struck, and Thorne fell back. People gasped, or clapped, or both.

“Whoops!” said Thorne. “I must have slipped. Shall we try again?”

“Please do!” Lady Trevelyan commanded. She had planned on her entertainment lasting longer than this.

The duelists saluted, and assumed guard. Richard struck Thorne in the chest again.

“Well done!” cried Thorne. He held up one hand for a pause, and then rolled up a fallen sleeve. “You’re very quick, my friend. Shall we continue?”

He did not wait for an answer, just went on guard again, and immediately struck at Richard. Richard didn’t even parry, he simply stepped out of the way—or so it seemed from the outside. Thorne thrust, and thrust again. Richard sidestepped, parried, parried again, but did not return his blows.

Octavia recognized the drill from her hen yard. He was running Thorne through his paces. He was reading Thorne’s vocabulary of the sword, maybe even learning as he went, but it was nothing but a drill to him.

“Stop!” Lord Trevelyan stood up. The fighters turned to him. “Richard, are you going to fight, or just—just—”

“I’m sorry,” Richard replied. He turned to his opponent. “Want me to go a little slower, sir?”

Master Thorne turned red. He glared at the boy, shook out his arms, and breathed deep. He passed one sleeve over his face—and then he laughed.

“Yes,” he said; “go a little slower, will you? It’s Harvest Feast, and the Champions fight for the honor of the house and the virtue of the land. Let’s give the people what they came for, shall we?”

The duel was so slow that even Octavia could follow the moves; for the first time she understood what it was her son could do. It was a textbook lesson—but it thrilled the country folk, who’d never seen real swordplay before.

Richard wasn’t quite grown up enough to let Thorne beat him. So when Thorne finally tired of showing Richard and the crowd just about everything he knew, he obligingly opened himself for St. Vier’s final blow.

“How long did you study?” Richard asked Thorne later.

“Oh, just long enough to put on a show. I figured I could get work as a house guard if valeting got thin. Lots of city men do that. It’s always good to have a second skill to fall back on.”

“So do you think I should learn how to valet?” Richard asked with distaste.

“You?” Thorne shook his head. “Not you.”

* * * *

When Richard was sixteen, the old man came back.

He could smell fumes from the cottage before he entered and found him in there, peeling potatoes for his mother at the big chestnut table as though he’d never been away.

“Look at this dagger,” the old fellow wheezed. “Worn thin as one of the King’s own Forest Leaves. Now I peel with it, do I?”

“Use the paring knife.” Richard held it out to him.

The old man flinched. “Put that down on the table,” he said. “It’s bad luck passing a knife hand to hand. Cuts the friendship. Didn’t you know that?”

It hadn’t been that kind of flinch.

“Want to spar?” Richard asked.

“Spar? With you? Hell, no. I hurt, boy; everything hurts. Everything hurts, and I can hardly see. Spar with you?”

“Oh, come on.” Richard felt himself jiggle with impatience. “I’ll nail my feet to the turf. We’ll just do standing. You can just check my wristwork.”

The old man wiped a rheumy red eye. “Told you, I can hardly see.”

“You’ve been chopping onions. What’s for supper?”

“Onions. Stew. How the hell should I know? I’m just the servant here. You’re the man, St. Vier. The man of the house, the man of the hour....”

“Cut it out.” Well, he’d smelt it before he came in. There was the tell-tale jug, propped against the chimney piece.

Octavia came in with a fistful of thyme. “There you are, Richard. Look who’s dropped by for dinner.”

“I didn’t come for your cooking, lady,” the old man said. “I came for the feast.”

“What feast?”

“Don’t get out much, do you?” He hawked and spat into the fire. “The whole county’s buzzing with it. Thought you’d know. There’ll be a feast, after. And alms galore, I shouldn’t wonder. And booze.”

Octavia pressed her back to the door for support, knowing she’d need it. “What’s happened?”

“Your man Trevleyan’s on his way out. Thought you’d know.”

No one had told them. It was close to autumn; everyone would be busy with the harvest or the hunt; they’d been staying out of the way. True, Lord Trevelyan had been ill for a bit in summer, but last they’d heard, it had passed.

Richard drew a long breath. “He isn’t dead now. Maybe it will be all right.”

“Maybe,” his mother said. She started chopping thyme, thinking, Well, I’ve still got a long lease on the cottage.... Maybe Crispin will take Richard into his service.... I wonder if Thorne will stay on....

She handed the old man another onion. “Make yourself useful,” she said.

But Richard took it from him. “You’re going to slice your thumbs off.” The old man’s hands were shaking. Richard put the jug into them. “Just drink,” Richard said; “I’ll cut.”

In the morning, very early, he was gone. They found his sword out by the gate, and a horn button in the hedge. Octavia followed her heart to the orchard, expecting to find him lying under the very tree where they had first discovered him passed out with a sword in his hands. But there was nothing there, only a few apples, rotting in the grass.

Three days later, Lord Trevelyan died. The valet, Master Thorne, came himself to the cottage to tell them.

“Should I go see Crispin?” Richard asked.

Thorne fingered the frayed rushes of a chair back. “Maybe. I don’t know. He’s doing his best, but it’s hard on him. Any man grieves when his father passes; but Crispin’s Lord Trevelyan now. He’s not himself, really; none of them are. The lady’s distracted. I didn’t know it would be this bad. You never know till it happens, do you?” He sipped the infusion Octavia gave him.

“So should I go now?”

“You might do that.” Master Thorne nodded slowly. He looked ten years older. “Yes, go ahead; I’ll just sit here for awhile and drink this, if you don’t mind.”

* * * *

Richard walked softly through the halls of the Trevelyan manor. He’d known it all his life, but it felt different now. Not the lord’s death, exactly—but the effect it had on everyone. The people that he passed were quiet; they barely acknowledged him. The sounds of the hall were all wrong: footsteps in them too fast or too slow, voices too gentle or too low. Richard felt lost. It was as if the shape of the hall had changed. He closed his eyes.

“What are you doing here?”

Lady Trevelyan stood before him, dressed in black, her long bright hair bound back behind her, falling like a girl’s. Her eyes were red-rimmed, and her face had the same pulled look as Master Thorne’s.

“I came to see if Crispin was all right.” She just stared at him. “I’m Richard St. Vier,” he said. He wanted to fidget under her gaze. But something about the focus of her stare now kept him still and watchful.

“Yes,” she said at last; “I know who you are. The swordsman. That peculiar woman’s son.” She was grieving, he reminded himself. People were said to go mad with grief. Maybe this was it.

“I’m Crispin’s friend,” he said.

“Well, you mustn’t see him now. He’s very busy. You can’t see him, really. It’s not good. He’s Lord Trevelyan now, you know.”

He wanted to retort, “I do know.” But she felt weirdly dangerous to him, like Crispin on one of his dares. So he just nodded.

“Come with me,” she said suddenly. Without waiting for a reply, she turned and walked away. The swirling edge of her black skirt struck his ankle.

Richard followed her down the silent halls. People bowed and curtsied as she passed with him in her wake. She opened the door to a little room, and beckoned him in with her, and shut it behind them.

The walls of the round room were heavy with fabric, dresses hanging on peg after peg.

“My closet,” she said. “Old gowns. I was going to sort through them, but now it doesn’t matter, does it? I may as well dye them all black, and wear them to death.”

“They’re pretty,” he said politely.

She fingered a green and gold dress. “I wore this one to the Halliday Ball. I was going to have it cut down for Melissa.... Children grow up so fast, don’t they?”

She looked up at him. She was a tiny woman. Crispin’s bones hadn’t come from her. “Would you like to see me in it?” she asked wistfully.

What kind of a question was that? He licked his lips. He really should go.

A swoosh of icy blue hissed across his skin. “Or do you think this one’s better?”

The cold and cloudy thing was in his arms. It smelt metallic.

“That’s silk brocade, Richard St. Vier. Blush of Dawn, the color’s called. It’s to remind you of early morning, when you wake up with your lover.” She brushed the fabric over his lips. “Thus. Do you like it?”

He looked over at the door. Silk was expensive; he couldn’t just drop it on the floor. Maybe there was a hook it went back on—

She followed his gaze to the wall. “Do you like the pink silk better?” She held a new gown up against herself, the glowing pink cloud eclipsing the black of her dress. “This becomes me, don’t you think?”

He nodded. His mouth was dry.

“Come closer,” she said.

He knew the challenge when he heard it. He took a step toward her.

“Touch me,” she said. He knew where he was, now: walking the fallen tree, climbing to the topmost eave....

“Where?”

“Wherever you like.”

He put his hand on the side of her face. She turned her head and licked his palm, and he started as if he had been kicked. He hadn’t expected that, to feel that again here, now, that dangerous thrill at the base of his spine. He shuddered with the pleasure he did not like.

“Hold me,” she said. He put his arms around her. She smelt of lavender, and blown-out candle wicks.

“Be my friend,” she whispered across his lips.

“I will,” he whispered back.

Lady Trevelyan laughed low, and sighed. She knotted her fingers in his hair, and pulled his head down to her, biting his lips as she kissed him. He shivered, and pressed himself against her. She lifted her inky skirts, and pulled him closer, fingering his breeches. He didn’t even know where his own hands were. He didn’t know where anything was, except one thing. His heart was slamming with the danger of how much he wanted it. His eyes were closed, and he could hardly breathe. Every time she touched him he tried to think what a terrible thing this was, but it came out completely different: he had to stop thinking entirely, because thinking it was dangerous just made him want it more. She was saying something, but he couldn’t hear it. She was helping him, that was what mattered. She was helping him—and then suddenly it was over, and she was shouting:

“You idiot! Pink peau de soie—ruined!” She shoved him away. His sight came back. He reached for his breeches, fallen around his knees. “What do you think you’re doing? Who do you think you are?” Her face and neck were flushed, eyes sharp and bright. “You’re nobody. You’re no one. What are you doing here? Who do you think you are?”

He did up his buttons, stumbled out into the hall.

The door was closed; he couldn’t hear her now. He started walking back the way he’d come—or some way, anyway. It wasn’t a part of the house he knew.

“Richard!”

Not Crispin. Not now.

“Richard!”

Not now.

“Richard, damn you—you stand when I call you!”

Richard stood. He had his back to Crispin; he couldn’t look at him now. “What?” he asked. “What do you want?”

“What do I want?” Crispin demanded shrilly. “What the hell’s wrong with you? What do you think I want?”

“Whatever it is, I don’t have it.”

“No, you don’t, do you?” Crispin said bitterly. “God. I thought you were my friend.”

“I guess I’m not, then. I guess I’m not your friend.”

Crispin threw a punch at him.

And Richard returned it. He didn’t hold back.

It wasn’t a fair fight, not really. They’d never been even in this game.

It was, Richard reflected after, a good thing they’d neither of them had swords; but he still left Crispin, Lord Trevelyan, a wheezing mess crumpled on the floor.

Then he went home and told his mother what he’d done.

* * * *

She had known that it would come someday, but this was so much sooner than she’d hoped.

“You have to go, my love,” she said. “Trevelyan’s dead. His lady won’t protect you, and Crispin certainly won’t.”

Richard nodded. He wanted to say, “It’s only Crispin,” or “He’ll get over it.” But Crispin was Trevelyan now.

“Where should I go?” he said instead. He pictured the mountains, where bold men ran with the deer. He pictured another countryside, much like this; another cottage by a stream, or maybe a forest....

“To the city,” his mother said. “It’s the only place that you can lose yourself enough.”

“The city?” He’d never been there. He didn’t know anyone. The house with no air was there, and the place of last resort. But even as he thought it, he felt that curious thrill down his spine, and knew he wanted it, even though he shouldn’t.

“The city,” he said. “Yes.”

“Don’t be frightened,” his mother said.

He said, “I’m not.”

She pulled out the book on Toads, opening to the hollow where the money was. “Here,” she said. “Start with this. You’ll earn more when you get there.”

He did not ask her, “How?” He thought he knew.