<h2 id="c10"><span class="h2line1">9</span> <br/><span class="h2line2">SPRING FESTIVAL: INTRIGUE OF COUNT CLEUDI</span></h2>
<p>“Now the mask, Mathurin,” said Count Cleudi. One corner of his
lip twitched (the black eyes glinting with malice). He seemed as
light and strong as one of those bronze statues of the winged man,
knuckles resting on the table. His own costume was a rich purple,
as he glanced from the mirror to Rodvard’s face, masked down to
the lower cheeks, but with the lips bare.</p>
<p>“The chin is much alike. Turn around, Bergelin, slowly, pivoting
on the ball of the right foot. So.” He lifted his own right arm,
slightly bent, dropped his left hand to dagger-hilt, and illustrated.
Rodvard tried to follow him.</p>
<div class="pagenum" id="Page_286">286</div>
<p>“Not quite right with the dagger; you are jerky. But you will
hardly be dancing a corabando. Have the goodness to walk across
the room. Stand. Mathurin, where does he lack the resemblance?”</p>
<p>The servant’s fingers came up to his lip. “The voice is almost
perfect, my lord, but there is something in the movement of the
hands not quite . . .”</p>
<p>“It is only birth that does it,” said Cleudi. “The wrist laces; he
is not very used to handling them. But for the rest, Bergelin, you
were born a most accomplished mimic and swindler. Remind me
to dismiss you before your natural talent is turned in my direction.
Now the instruction; repeat.”</p>
<p>“I am to be at the ball when the opera is over, at least a glass
before midnight. The fourth box on the left-hand side is yours. I
am to look at the doorbase of the second box, where a handkerchief
will be caught. If it is white, edged with lace, perfumed with
honeymusk, I am to go below and make myself seen at the gaming
tables. But if the handkerchief is blue and rose-perfumed, I am to
take it away and leave in its place another; then without being seen
on the dancing floor or at the games, go at once to my lord’s box,
but leave the panels up and the curtains closed. Someone will
presently tap twice, a lady. I am to greet her with my lord’s sonnet,
eat with her; declare my passion for her . . . My lord?”</p>
<p>“Yes?”</p>
<p>“What if—that is—I would—”</p>
<p>Cleudi shot him a gleam (containing amusement mingled with
a little dark shade of cruelty and the thought of shaming him with
the full statement of his quaver). “You want money, apprentice
swindler? You should—”</p>
<p>“No, my lord, it is not that, but—.” The Count’s toe tapped, his
expression became a rictus, and Rodvard rushed on with heat at
the back of his neck. “What if the intrigue does not succeed, that is
if you do not appear in time—”</p>
<p>The rictus became a bark. “Ha—why, then you must suffer the
horrid fate of being alone in a secluded apartment with the shapeliest
and most willing woman in Dossola. Are you impotent?”</p>
<p>Rodvard half opened his mouth to protest in stumbling words
that he was a promised man, who thought it less than honest to
violate his given word, but Mathurin tittered and (the stream of
hate and fury that flowed from those black eyes!) he only made a
small sound. Cleudi barked again:</p>
<div class="pagenum" id="Page_287">287</div>
<p>“Ha! Will you be a theologian, then? It is she who should make
confession, not you—by the wise decision of the Church, as I was
discussing but lately with the Episcopal of Zenss. The minor priests
will say otherwise; but it is a reflection from the old days, before
the present congress of episcopals. Listen, peasant; is it not manifestly
to the glory of God that men should seek women for their
first and highest pleasure, as it is that daughters should have all
monetary inheritance? Is it not also manifest that all would be
under the rule of women, who have the Art as well as their arts,
unless some disability lay upon them. . . . Ah, chutte! Why do I
talk like a deacon to a be-damned clerk? Enough that I have given
you an order. Greater things than you think hang on this intrigue,
and you’ll execute it well, or by the Service, I’ll reduce you to a
state where no woman will tempt you again. Now take off that
finery; be prompt here at two glasses before midnight for Mathurin
to dress you.”</p>
<h3>II</h3>
<p>“But where does this intrigue lead?” asked Rodvard.</p>
<p>“Could not your Blue Star give you a clue?” said Mathurin.
They sat on a green bank behind the hall of conference, many-colored
tulips waving in the light breeze about them, and Rodvard
carefully tore one of the long leaves to ribbons as he answered:</p>
<p>“No. There may have been something about Aggermans in it,
but he was not thinking of his central purpose at all, only about
how it would be a nasty joke and a revenge. What—” (it was behind
his lips to ask what he should do lest he lose the power of
the Blue Star, but in midflight he changed) “—what have you done
toward saving Baron Brunivar? Will there be a rising?”</p>
<p>(There was a quick note of suspicion and surprise in the eyes
that lifted to meet his.) “Nothing for now, but to let Remigorius,
and through him the High Center, know what’s in prospect. There’s
no accusation as matters stand; it will gain us nothing merely to
put out the story that the court plots against him. . . . Yet I do not
understand why he has failed to fly when it’s as clear as summer
light that Florestan means the worse toward him.”</p>
<p>“What I do not understand,” said Rodvard, “is why the High
Center has failed to make more preparation. It will be too late
when Brunivar’s been placed in a dungeon, under guard and accusation
with a shar of soldiers around him.”</p>
<p>“It would never pass . . .” Mathurin’s voice trailed off; he contemplated
the lawns, brow deep, and Rodvard could not see his
thought. “I can understand the High Center.”</p>
<p>“What would never pass? You are more mysterious than the
Count, friend Mathurin, with your hints here and there.”</p>
<div class="pagenum" id="Page_288">288</div>
<p>The servitor turned on him eyes of angry candor. “Rodvard
Yes-and-No, my friend, Cleudi is right in calling you more of a
moralist than a churchman is. By what right do you question me
so? Do you think I am of the High Center? Yet I will show you
some of the considerations. It will never pass that the Chancellor
should execute Brunivar and then have it proved that this fate came
on him for some private reason. And now that you whip me to it,
I will say as well that it will never pass that Brunivar should not
be executed while we cry shame. We need a general rising, not a
rescue that will drive many of us abroad. People will not leave
their lives to fight until there is something in those lives that may
not be sustained.”</p>
<p>(Conscience again.) Rodvard set his mouth. “If you wish the
reign of justice for others, it seems to me that you must give it
yourself, Mathurin, and I see no justice in watching a good man
condemned to death when he might be saved. I heard the Baron
speak out in conference, and he may yet win something there. But
even fled to Tritulacca, or to Mayern and Prince Pavinius, he would
still be worth more than with his throat cut.”</p>
<p>The serving man stood up. “I’ll not chop logic against you; only
say, beware. For you are a member under orders; your own will or
moral has nothing to do with the acts of the High Center. Brunivar
is nothing to us; down with him, he is a part of the dead past which
is all rotten at the heart, and of which we must rid ourselves for
the living future. I will see you later, friend Bergelin.”</p>
<h3>III</h3>
<p>A tray had been left in his room as usual, but Rodvard hardly
ate from it before flinging himself down to lie supine, watching
the pattern of light through the shutters as it slowly ticked across
the wall, trying to resolve the problem that beset him. Brunivar
with his noble aspect and surely, his noble mind. “Free will and
the love of humankind,” the Baron had said, and they called it the
doctrine of the apostate Prophet. Yet for what else had he himself
joined the Sons of the New Day? What else had the Baron put into
practice out there in his province of the west?</p>
<p>Yet here is Mathurin saying that no happiness could be bought
by love of humankind, since certainly no love of humankind would
let a high man go to shameful death when it might be prevented.
No, perhaps that was not true, either; even barbarians had sacrifices
by which one gave his life that many might live, though their
method in this was all superstition and clearly wrong. . . . But
only by the consent of the one, Rodvard answered himself; only
when there was no way but sacrifice.</p>
<div class="pagenum" id="Page_289">289</div>
<p>Brunivar had made no consent; was being pushed to a sacrifice
by malignance on one side, with the other accepting the unwilling
gift he gave. Yet in that acceptance was there not something base
and selfish? He remembered the curious unformed thought of
treachery he had surprised in Remigorius’ mind, Mme. Kaja’s active
betrayal, Mathurin’s violence, and was glad they were joined with
him, in one of the minor Centers of the Sons of the New Day. When
that Day rose—but then, too late for Brunivar. Ah, if there were
some deliverance, some warning one could give that would be
heeded.</p>
<p>A clock somewhere boomed four times. Rodvard twisted on the
bed, thinking bitterly how little he could do even to save himself,
willing in that moment to be the sacrificed one. With witchery
one might—Lalette . . . Little cold drops of perspiration gathered
down his front from neck to navel at the perilousness of the intrigue
in which he was now embarked for the night, perilous and
yet sweet, delight and danger, so that with half his mind he
wished to rise and run from this accursed place, come what might.
With the other half it was to stay and hope that Cleudi would not
interrupt the rendezvous in the box, as he had said, so that the
heart-striking loveliness he had now and again seen from far in the
last seven days (for he did not doubt that the mask to meet him in
the box would cover the Countess Aiella) might lie in his arms,
come what might to the felon of Lalette’s witcheries. Was he himself
one of those whose purposes were hideous, as Tuolén the butler
had put it, with an inner desire toward treachery toward her who
had received his word of love? Wait—the word had been wrung
from him, given under a compulsion, was the product of a deed
done under another compulsion. This, too. Before a high court I
will plead (thought Rodvard) that I myself, the inner me who
cherishes ideals still, in spite of Mathurin or Tuolén, had no part
in betrayals . . . and recognized as he thought thus, that the union
in the place of masks was of that very inner me, given forever . . .
or forever minus a day.</p>
<p>Flee, then. Where? A marked man and a penniless, trying to escape
across the seignories, with only a clerk’s skill, which demands
fixities, to gain bread. Brunivar might perhaps be held from flying
to safety by compulsions as tight as these—at which the wheel of
thought had turned full circle; and the realization of this shattering
the continuance of the motion, Rodvard drifted off into an uneasy
doze, twitching in his place.</p>
<div class="pagenum" id="Page_290">290</div>
<p>He came fully awake with a final jerk, swinging feet to the
floor in the twilight; stood up, made a light, and not daring to go
on with his self-questionings, pecked a little at the gelid remains of
his noon viands, while speculating on Cleudi’s intrigue. But the
Count had so buried the line of his plan that nothing could be
made of this, either; Rodvard went to seek Tuolén, in the hope that
he might have some light. Vain hope; the butler’s cabinet was dark
and everyone else encountered in the corridors was hurrying, hurrying,
with burdens here and there, in preparation for the grand
ball. There was an atmosphere of anticipatory excitement that built
up along Rodvard’s nerve-chains until he stepped forth into the
spring eve to escape it.</p>
<p>Out there, the evening had turned chill, with a damp breeze off
the Eastern Sea that spoke of rain before sun. All the flowers
seemed to have folded their wings around themselves to meet it,
and Rodvard felt as though nature had turned her back. He longed
for a voice, and as a girl’s form came shadowy around a turn of the
path, he gave her good-evening and asked if he might bear her
burden.</p>
<p>“Ah, no, it is not needed,” said she, drawing back; but a shaft of
light from a window caught them both and there was mutual recognition,
she being the breakfast chambermaid, whose name was
Damaris.</p>
<p>“Oh, your pardon, Ser,” she said. “It is most good of you,” and
let him take her package, which was, in truth, heavy.</p>
<p>“Why, this must be gold or lead or beef, not flowers as it should
be on festival eve,” he said, and she trilled a small laugh before
answering that festival it might be for those badged with coronets
or quills, but for her class it was a night of labor—“and it is not
gold, or I would run away with it, but one of those double bottles
of Arjen fired-wine for the box of the Count Cleudi, whom you
serve.”</p>
<p>She turned her head, and in the light which threw across the
path from another window, he caught a glint of her eyes. (She was
very friendly after a week of bringing him breakfasts, in which he
had treated her as courteously as though she were high born.) “Will
you have no festival at all, then?” he asked.</p>
<p>“Oh, yes, tomorrow afternoon, when all the court’s asleep. In the
evening when they wake, it will be duty again.” They had reached
the door of the great hall; within workmen were attaching flowers
to the bowered dais where the musicians would play, there was a
sound of hammering from somewhere along the balcony behind
the boxes, and Tuolén the high butler was revolving in the midst
of the dancing floor, pointing where a flower-chain should be draped
or a chair placed. His movement was that almost-prance which
Cleudi had demonstrated. The girl’s face turned toward Rodvard
(her eyes suddenly said she wished him to ask her something, he
could not quite make out what, they were so quickly withdrawn,
but it was connected with the festival).</p>
<div class="pagenum" id="Page_291">291</div>
<p>“I’ll have no festival myself unless someone takes pity on me,”
he said.</p>
<p>(That was it.) “Would you—come and dance with me? It is only
a servants’ ball . . .” (She was a little frightened at her own boldness
in asking someone so far above her in station, yet trembling-hopeful
he would accept.)</p>
<p>“Why—have you no partner?”</p>
<p>“My friend has been called away to serve in the army. I have
my ticket already and it will only be three spadas for yourself.”</p>
<p>(Somehow he would get them; it would be an afternoon of real
relaxation from complexities.) “You honor me, Demoiselle Damaris.
Where shall I meet you?”</p>
<p>“Oh, I will wake you with breakfast as usual, and wait for you.
Here is the door.”</p>
<p>The box was larger than one might think from the outside, and
already heavy with the perfume of flowers.</p>
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