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In the spring, the marquess of Caelin threw a banquet to introduce his vassals to his newfound heir, the Lady Lyndis.
All of the local lordlings were in attendance. They were eager to show how much they supported Lord Hausen, now that he had recovered from his mysterious illness. They were curious to learn something more about the recent death of the marquess’ brother, and whether they should play-act sadness or relief that Lord Lundgren was gone. And, above all else, they were hungry to see the new heir, who was half-Sacaen and therefore sure to be half-wild.
They hoped for savagery and barbarism. They hoped that Lyndis would talk in broken sentences and eat everything with her bare hands.
As a result, they were disappointed.
Seated next to her grandfather, Lyndis behaved as if she had spent her entire life there. She sat straight and still. She spoke using perfect grammar. She unhesitatingly selected the correct fork when the fish course arrived.
The Caelin lords exchanged puzzled glances. But one small hope remained: there was to be dancing after the feast, and who knew what uncouth or immodest dances the Sacaen heir might demonstrate?
“One, two, three, four, five. One, two, three, four, five.”
It was a week before the banquet that Lyn was dreading, and the five of them were gathered in the empty hall. Florina and Lyn were seated on the broad window sill. Wil was standing near them as he energetically thumped a broom handle against the floor at rhythmic intervals.
Kent and Sain stood in the middle of the room as they demonstrated the steps of the galliard. Sain was wearing an old dishrag tied around his waist to denote a dress. (Sain had tried to cajole Florina into playing Kent's dancing partner, but she had gone white at the very suggestion.)
“One, two, three, four, five. One, two, three, four, five.”
“Oh, Kent,” Sain said merrily as he and Kent continued to move in a slow circle, facing the same direction, their hands clasped together. “I never knew you could dance so elegantly.”
Kent ignored him. “Aaaand one, two, three, four, five. See? It’s very simple, milady.”
“It doesn’t look simple,” Lyn said grimly.
“It’s really just a series of little kicks,” Sain said helpfully. “Each foot kicks twice, and then, for the fifth kick, you also do a little hop at the same time.” He demonstrated, jumping into the air so enthusiastically that he nearly pulled Kent off his feet.
Kent glowered at him. “You must not jostle your partner, Sain.”
Kent regretted the words as soon as he spoke, as he saw a bright gleam in Sain’s eyes that meant they were all about to be subjected to some innuendo-laden joke about “jostling” and “partners.”
To forestall that tedious event, Kent dropped Sain’s hand as if it were a hot brand and, speaking too quickly for Sain to interrupt, said, “It’s your turn now, milady.”
“My turn?” Lyn said.
“Yes,” Kent said, turning toward her. “You must practice if you wish to be able to do the dance at your grandfather’s banquet. It is not enough to merely watch Sain and me.”
Lyn made a face, but she also stood up. “Yes. That makes sense.” She approached the center of the room.
Sain stripped off his dishcloth. “I yield the floor to you, milady.” He cast a speculative glance at the space on the window sill that Lyn had left -- but Florina frowned at him so fiercely that he visibly abandoned that idea and instead went to stand next to Wil, who was ready and waiting with the broom.
Kent offered his hand to Lyn. “Milady.”
She took a deep breath, and then she took his hand. “Like this?”
“Move your left foot ahead slightly? Good. Now, starting with your right foot…”
Wil began thumping the broom handle once again to keep time. Sain joined in by clapping and calling out encouragements. Florina leaned forward as she watched Lyn’s feet intently.
Lyn kicked and hopped and moved, and all the while, her expression was fierce, as if she was dancing her way to her own execution. Which is how she felt about the looming prospect of the banquet, and the dancing, and existing beneath the critical eyes of all the local lords.
Beside her, moving smoothly through the steps, Kent counted out the beats without emotion, but his grip on her hand was firm and comforting.
After the banquet was finished, the tables were cleared from the hall and the musicians were brought in.
As Lord Hausen led his grandaughter to the center of the room to begin the night’s dancing, all the local lords watched them narrowly. What barbarian steps would the Sacaen heir reveal?
Two other observers were also watching closely, although perhaps without the same bloodlust that characterized the Caelin lords. Kent and Sain were standing in the high gallery that ran along the top of the hall. They were both wearing their parade uniforms, and so any Caelin lord who glimpsed them might have assumed they were part of the evening’s ceremonial guard -- although, had Lord Hausen noticed them, he might have felt some confusion, as he had given both of them the evening off.
The musicians began to play. In the center of the floor, Lyn took a deep breath as she took her grandfather’s offered hand.
The local lords leaned forward.
Up in the gallery, two knights began to count under their breaths.
“One, two, three, four, five.”
Lyn moved through the steps she had so grimly memorized -- but it was easier moving to music than the sound of a solitary broom handle, she found. It was even, possibly, enjoyable.
She glanced at her grandfather, who was moving sedately through the steps alongside her. He smiled at her, and she, smiling back, was almost overcome with a flood of affection for him, the grandfather she had almost never known, her very last kinsman, rescued from the edge of death.
I do this happily for him, she thought, making her demure, abridged kicks. For him, I will happily learn about stupid little forks and stupid little dances.
The musicians reached the end of their song. Lord Hausen and his heir stopped and bowed. The Caelin lords applauded: some with an air of disappointment, since Lady Lyndis had danced the galliard very credibly, but most with an attitude of anticipation and excitement. After all, now that Lord Hausen had completed the evening’s first dance, the rest of the lords could join in with their own dancing.
Up in the gallery, Sain threw his arm around Kent. “Look at her! Amazing! A real credit to both her instructors!”
“She did very well,” Kent said quietly.
“Ah, next we’ll have to take her down to the village some night, show her some real country dancing.” Sain pulled at the neck of his parade uniform, which was exceedingly uncomfortable. “But I don’t have to tell you, it’s a real relief. I’m glad she did so well.”
“Yes,” Kent said.
“And now all the toffs will probably want to dance with her all night, I bet. A victim of her own success. Poor Lyn.” Sain shrugged. “But better her than me, I guess. Do you want to go see if there’s any food lingering in the kitchens? Wil said the steward was going to open up some cider, special, just for the castlefolk tonight.”
“You go ahead,” Kent said, leaning against the railing of the gallery. Below, he could see one of the little Caelin lordlings talking to Lyn and clearly trying to persuade her to dance with him in the next set. “I’ll catch up.”
“Suit yourself.”
Sain went out the hidden hallway that led from the gallery and took the stairs down to the kitchens. There, he found several open casks of cider, and the cook, and Wil, and half of the castle guard, and even Florina, who was sitting under the kitchen table and drinking a big mug of cider.
They all shouted when they saw Sain -- the casks of cider, it turned out, had been open for a while -- and as they pressed cups on him, he regaled them with the dancing triumphs of Lady Lyndis, who had moved with such elegance and grace (Sain said) that many of the Caelin lords had quietly brushed away tears as they watched her.
“Ah, there’s nobody who can doubt her fitness as heir now,” Wil said, and the rest of the room cheered in slightly intoxicated affirmation.
“Was she lovely, Sain?” came a voice from below, and Sain looked down to find Florina peering up at him from beneath the edge of the table.
“Aye, Florina,” he said, smiling at her. “As lovely as a princess in a storybook.”
“Ah,” Florina sighed with great satisfaction as she ducked back beneath the table. “Then I hope they all remember what they saw out there.”
Meanwhile, Kent had leaned a little too far over the edge of the gallery railing -- and, looking up, Lyn had clearly seen him.
He jerked back immediately from the railing, but he knew it was too late.
He thought, for a moment, of following in Sain’s wake, of heading down the stairs, of hiding out in the kitchen. If he moved quickly, the gallery would be empty by the time Lyn got there.
Then he thought, No, that is cowardly, Kent.
Then he thought, No, I will escape, and stepped into the hallway -- but he had dithered slightly too long, and he found his path of retreat cut off by Lyn.
She was breathing hard. Clearly she had run the whole way.
“Why are you lurking up here?” she asked.
“To see the dancing,” he said, and even as he said it, he cringed internally. God, he sounded like a child of five found awake past his bedtime.
“Oh.” Lyn straightened. “Um. What did you think…? Of how I did…?”
“You were excellent, milady,” Kent said warmly. “You did very well.”
Lyn let out a great gust of a sigh. “Good. I’m glad. I wanted to reflect well on my grandfather.”
She moved past him and stepped onto the gallery. After a second of indecision, Kent joined her at the railing.
They stared down at the sea of lords and ladies, who were moving into position for the next dance. No one, it appeared, had noticed that Lyn had gone sprinting from the hall a few minutes previously. No one looked up and saw them in the gallery.
“Now they all want to dance with me,” Lyn said with an air of defeated resignation.
“That is not uncommon at dances, milady,” Kent said gently.
Lyn made a face. “I don’t see why I would want to dance with strangers.” She glanced at Kent. “If you came down, I would dance with you.”
Kent blinked. For a moment, he felt curiously unsteady, as if the gallery flooring was about to slide out from under his feet and pitch him over the railing.
“I cannot come down, milady,” he said. “It is not fit for lords to dance in mixed groups with the common folk.”
Lyn rolled her eyes. “All these secret rules are very tedious.”
Below them, the musicians struck up the next song, and the dancers began to move -- but instead of partners facing the same direction, as they had in the galliard, now the dancers were facing one another.
Lyn peered down. “This is a new dance.”
“It’s just a variation on the galliard,” Kent said. “The volta is the closed version, and the galliard is open.”
Below them, each dancing lord seized his lady by the waist and hoisted her into the air. The laughter of the dancers rose to the gallery.
“You didn’t show me this dance,” she said. There was a note of accusation in her voice.
“I didn’t think you needed this one,” Kent said faintly. “Many dancemasters don’t consider it a fitting dance--”
“But you know the steps?”
“I may,” Kent said, in a voice barely above a whisper.
“You must teach it to me,” Lyn said determinedly. “If I don’t know how to dance this as well, I may embarrass my grandfather.”
“There is no need--” Kent began to say, but he got no further because Lyn had seized his hand and dragged him back into the hallway, where they were out of sight from the dancers below.
“Now,” Lyn said. “How do we begin?”
Kent looked at her. While it was on the tip of his tongue to tell her that he would not and could not teach her these steps -- instead, he found himself reaching for her right hand.
“For the leap, your hand goes here,” he said, placing her hand on his shoulder.
Lyn nodded. “Where does your hand go?”
“Here, milady,” Kent said, in a voice that was nearly a sigh as he placed his left hand on her waist and his right hand on her hip.
Lyn’s expression did not waver. “And then you lift me?”
“Indeed, milady,” Kent said. “Like so.” And he raised her into the air, and as he did so, he felt her hand tighten against the back of his shoulder.
He lowered her to the ground and took a step back. His palms tingled. He felt short of breath.
For her part, Lyn looked merely thoughtful and resolute. “It seems simple enough. Shall we do it with all of the proper steps?”
“Milady--” Kent began, but Lyn was already putting herself in position.
“Should I count off?” she asked him. “No, better not. Let’s just time it according to the music.”
“Yes, milady,” Kent said, helplessly.
And so, guided by the faint music from below, Kent and Lyn danced the steps of the volta together. And this time, when they reached the moment for Kent to lift Lyn, it fell within the folds of the dance, one state flowing into the next, and it felt easy and natural for Kent to raise his lady heavenward, and for Lyn to burst out in jubilant laughter.
And a small part of Kent thought, Oh. So this is how it should feel.
He lowered her to the ground, and she grinned up at him. Neither of them heard the music fading away from below, the dancers taking up new positions, the room preparing for a new set.
“Milady,” Kent started, but he got no further, because Lyn had leaned forward to kiss him.
Another version of Kent -- a better, more knightly, more chivalric version, a Kent who took his responsibilities to his liege seriously, a Kent who respected the natural hierarchies of the world -- would have pulled away, apologized to his lady, and virtuously gone to a chapel to hold an all-night vigil for his own soul.
This Kent thought a little mournfully of that superior version of himself as he kissed Lyn back, his hands returning to their old positions: his left hand on her waist, his right hand on her hip.
Below them, unheeding, the musicians played. The dancers danced. Lord Hausen rubbed his eyes, struggling to stay awake. Wil was leading the castle guard in a drinking song, and Sain was slowly coaxing Florina out from under the table with the promise of an apple pie he was prepared to liberate from the pantry.
At last, the lady and the knight parted. They said nothing, for a moment, as they looked at one another.
“Your grandfather will be wondering where you are,” Kent said at last.
“Yes,” Lyn said.
“You should go...back.”
“Yes,” Lyn said again.
There was a pause. A better, more knightly, et cetera version of Kent would probably have taken this time to sternly remind Lyn of the vast distance between their stations in life, and that nothing of this sort could ever happen again.
This Kent said, “There will be...revels. In the kitchens. If you want to come...afterwards.”
“Yes,” Lyn said for the third time.
“Oh,” Kent said, and he suspected that he was smiling down at her with a rather foolish expression. “Good.”
“And maybe after that,” Lyn said, “I can teach you some of the dances of Sacae.”
And then she leaned forward to briefly kiss him again, and then she walked past him, to return to her grandfather and the lords of Caelin and her myriad heavy responsibilities.
For several moments, Kent stood in the hallway. He felt perfectly empty of any kind of thought, as if rain had washed away the interior of his skull and now he was clean and new and free.
The music of the next set of dances drifted up to him.
Kent went down the stairs. He followed the sound of joyous singing all the way to the kitchens.
"Kent! Hey! Do you want some of this pie?"