Chapter Text
The sound of his pounding footfalls deadened by a carpet of sweet, cool moss, he broke cover close to the mellow pinkish bulk of the house, heart hammering more with exhilaration than the exertion of a mile’s run through thick woods on a glorious day. Caspian was going to be wild with envy when he heard!
His pace slowed as he crossed the impressive façade of the manor and he had to duck beneath each mullion window, every tiny pane of glass glinting in the midsummer sun. His feet flexing to loosen their mud-encrusted leather boots Drinian, heir to the great lordship of Etinsmere, paused at the main door to remove them, picking his way across the chilly stone flags of the entrance hall with care until he could hop onto the first step of the oak main stair, ears pricked for the agitated quack of the housekeeper, old Ellena, demanding to know what had kept him from home beyond teatime. What a shriek she would loose if I told her!
A shiver of movement at the edge of his vision stopped him dead, one hand curved around the worn carved balustrade down which he was apt to slide. Someone in the Great State Parlour? The King was not in the North, was he?
“My Lord, you fret for naught.” The boy relaxed, for when Mamma spoke in that merry, lilting way, just on the edge of laughter, all must be well with the world. “Miraz is a poltroon! Why, even the market women laugh at his pretensions!”
“And so they may Elizabetha, but a King should be more circumspect.” The gravity in his father’s low voice made the eavesdropper’s innards tighten. Papa was sometimes stern; occasionally rather frightening. Never in his eight years, however, had Drinian heard him so obviously troubled. “Of course the Prince is a knave and his spouse a termagant, but Caspian’s folly is to make public his contempt for them - aye, and the party they build against him.”
“You mean Glozelle and Sopespian, I suppose.” A word of His Majesty’s clicked into Drinian’s head at the clipped coldness his mother gave the two names. Shrewish. It had been heard often at the Palace when the poor Queen had suffered her last illness. “Tirian, no person of honour – no person of sense – would associate with those villains.”
“Miraz does, my dear. By his partisanship they have profited, and by his brother’s indiscretion others have been drawn to their side. Caspian has great plans, but they must be carried out with tact.”
“Our master barely knows the meaning of the word!” His mother’s chortle fortunately overlaid Drinian’s snigger as her slender shadow swayed to merge with the burlier silhouette of her husband stretching across the hall. “But while he may not be sensitive, neither is Caspian a fool. He will manage Miraz. Did he not declare as much himself?”
“Aye and loudly, as if he didn’t know the Palace filled with his brother’s spies.” His wife’s optimism did not appear to be cheering the Lord Tirian. Drinian worried at his bottom lip, not understanding his father’s alarm but wholeheartedly sharing it. “I have begged him be cautious; reminded him even the greatest of fools can stumble to success, but no. He sees Miraz still as the irritating infant of their nursery, weeping in his nurse’s lap for attention he could earn no other way.”
“And his foot-stamping now is but a symptom of the same childish spite.” Her voice was the soothing one of scraped knees and wrongly added sums, but having passed his eighth birthday fully half a year before Drinian was proud to be beyond infant consolation. He was a Narnian lord like his sire. It was his duty to ponder on the affairs of the great. Papa would not fret without reason. And Prince Miraz, his best friend’s uncle, was a horrid old prune.
Pleased with his own wit the boy swung lazily off the balustrade, which gave a sharp and ominous creak. “Who’s there?”
Several words he was not supposed to comprehend burst through Drinian’s mind. “’Tis only I, Papa,” he called meekly, smoothing down his wind-tossed hair before stepping into plain view of the parlour door. Both parents, the tall father towering over the dainty mother, beamed as much with relief as pride at the sight of their handsome son. “I’m sorry to be so late, Mamma,” he continued, adopting his most humble pose. “Was Master Hofian very cross? And Irina?”
“Your dancing master is paid whether you deign to attend his lesson or no: as for your nurse, you know if she is, she shan't remain so.” The Lady Elizabetha ruffled her son’s raven locks playfully, her panic dissolved as her husband’s did not. “Run upstairs before your sister can finish your scones as well as her own!”
“A moment, lad.” Tirian of Etinsmere caught his pointed chin in a callused palm, forcing the boy’s wide dark eyes to hold his own piercing stare. “Where have you been?”
“About in the woods, Sir.” Innocence seldom persuaded Papa, but Drinian was rash enough to keep trying. The Lord Tirian grunted.
“I’ll detain the lad a moment, Elizabetha. Assure his nurse he’s come to no harm, unless I discover aught more worthy of a whipping than his missing Master Hofian’s lesson again,” he advised his wife, accompanying the threat with a wink that proved its hollowness. With a gentleness unlooked for in so big a man he urged his son back into the grandest and chilliest chamber of the house.
“You heard matters spoken of which it were best to remain ignorant, Drinian,” he stated, heedlessly fingering the richness of leather on the large chair against which he leaned. “How long were you idling there?”
“Mamma was calling His Highness a fool, Sir.” With a tilt of the head did he declare his agreement, the small defiance winning a reluctant twitch of his father’s mouth.
“Fools can say much without the punishment of other men.”
“Like Master Wullens?”
The Lord Tirian chuckled massively. “Aye, like His Majesty's jester; or his brother! You will say naught to anyone – least of all your friend the Prince – of what you have heard.”
“Yes, Father.” Which did not mean it would be forgotten. “The King’s brother…”
The corners of Tirian’s full lips turned ominously downward. “Leave Prince Miraz and his insolence to your elders. Whatever his designs on his brother’s crown…”
At the cocking of his firstborn’s head and the quizzical raising of one brow the Lord of Etinsmere checked himself, glaring as if his indiscretion was Drinian’s. “The business of the Crown is not yours, lad! Which is as well! Were you to give graver matters the same attention you do your dancing… it has not passed unremarked that three times you have been lost in the forest when Master Hofian has ridden leagues from the Palace to school you.”
“But Sir….” On this, Drinian reckoned, the ground was steady beneath him, knowing Papa liked the courtly arts no better than he. Were Mamma not so insistent, additional studies in seamanship would replace the weekly drudge of dance and music. “I meant to be back in good time, truly I did, but I was distracted.”
All thought of royal brothers at odds flew from his head as he remembered precisely what had pushed Mamma’s injunction to be home in good time from his mind. “I saw one, Father! A Faun! Oh, and it was just as they are in picture books, with the hairy legs of a goat and the body of a man, bearded and with horns bursting from the top of his head! They still live, Papa, just as Caspian’s nurse and Irina say, and I followed its funny little footprints down toward the shore and right into the Black Woods!”
“Enough of this tomfoolery!” The thick sandstone of the manor walls reverberated with the Master’s roar and the shrill stream of excited babble stopped on Drinian’s dry lips. “Do you mean to frighten the women from their wits with this raving? Fauns, indeed! Shame on a lad of your years believing such fairy tales!”
“But Father, I saw it! Clear as day, and not thirty yards away! I’ll wager there are dozens – hundreds of them living in the woods, knowing no man dare go near the old castle on the island!”
Too late, as his father’s ruddy complexion turned to puce, did he recall his supposed ignorance of that tumbledown structure just beyond reach of a strong swimmer (and well beyond the bounds of his mother’s indulgence, were she to hear of him straying so far into the Haunted Forest). Overgrown with apple trees, its walls slowly crumbling, the ruined fortress had intrigued and alarmed Drinian in equal measure since he had chanced upon it three months before. “I mean – why, every fool knows it exists, Sir! Why else would there be an ancient proclamation forbidding any heir of Telmar to venture close to the place?”
“Say one word o’ this nonsense to His Highness Caspian at your peril, boy - unless you’d care to discover a punishment that makes the lash a pleasure!” Every fine hair at the back of his neck prickled. When Tirian, Lord of Etinsmere, Admiral of the Fleet and Chief of Counsel to the King, dropped his deep bass bellow to this low, dangerous rasp, one knew one stood in imminent peril. “And even hint to your mother that you lurk in the depths of those woods, you’ll find yourself confined to the nursery for the rest of your days! Am I understood?”
“Yes, Father.” Hard to remember that scarce ten minutes before he had been in such a frenzy of delicious excitement. “And I have said naught to Casp – the Prince’s Highness, I mean – of the place.”
“I fancy that loose-mouthed old fool of a woman has told too many nursery tales.” His son's contrition appeared sincere, and Tirian no more than his wife could long be angry with so promising a venturesome heir. “Now, hurry to make peace with milady your nurse - and compose an apology to soothe Master Hofian’s displeasure! And be warned – should you fail to remember your next appointment with him, I am under stern instruction that all your studies in seamanship are to cease.”
Drinian’s head dropped. No son of Etinsmere would be seen with dampness filling his eyes! “I am sorry, Father,” he mumbled to the formless bulk of the man reflected in the high polish Ellena kept on the Great Chamber’s wooden floor. “I shall pay more heed to time in future.”
“Promise no more than you can be certain to give and no man will have cause to condemn you.” Amused (if not wholly persuaded) Tirian gave an affectionate clout to the shoulder that sent the boy staggering toward the door. “And promise me on your honour as an Etinsmere you’ll say naught of fauns or vexatious princes to your playmates!”
Instinct made him straighten to attention, dark head proudly raised. “On my honour, Sir,” Drinian pledged. Tirian’s sternness melted.
“The word of an Etinsmere suffices for me,” he murmured, giving a small nod by way of more formal dismissal. “Run away now! And send Mistress Ellena to me. I'd have arrangements made for your Mamma’s likely absence in days to come. What, lad? Do you forget, your grandmother Greenglade lies dangerously sick? Fauns in the woods, indeed! For shame, that Etinsmere’s son should babble such nonsense!”
Drinian fled as he was bidden, only the thought of his crippled grandmother’s failing health keeping the jubilant grin from his face. They did exist: and if there were Fauns in Narnia still, then there would be Dwarves too, and beasts that spoke like men.
“Pah!” he gurgled, halted before the Nursery door to compose himself before facing his infant sister. “And they'd speak more sense than Caspian’s addle-pate Uncle Miraz, too! Katharina Etinsmere! Have you finished all the scones? You’ll end with a belly like the Hobbled Hermit of Hamdon Hill, and then what will Mother say?”