Chapter 2
He was done then, with resolution. There remained the — not small! — matter of implementation. Again, his feet began moving, and he allowed them to lead him.
When Demansk realized where he was going, his lips quirked again. But, this time, into something resembling a genuine smile.
Say what the Emeralds would about Number and Form and all of their other fancy notions. Demansk, born and bred a lord of Vanbert, was a firm believer in the practical wisdom of feet. Calloused feet, ensconced in sturdy sandals, walking on solid and well-placed flagstones. There was a truth you could depend on.
His feet took him to a third statue, this one the statue of the Gray-Eyed Lady. The statue was nestled in a corner of a patio in the garden. This part of the garden, unlike the rest, was shaggy and unkempt.
As he neared the patio, Demansk could hear the object of his search humming a soft tune. He had had little doubt that she would be there. She usually was, this time of day.
So, when he entered the patio, he took the time to examine the surroundings rather than the young woman who sat on a bench near the statue. Those surroundings fit the woman. It was she herself, after all, who had strictly forbidden the estate's gardeners to do their usual work here. Rather to their quiet outrage, Demansk suspected. As was often true with servants, the gardeners tended to be even more devoted to established custom and practices than their masters.
He scanned the patio slowly. In the corner opposite the statue, a smoke tree had been allowed to grow unchecked. The "tree" was more in the way of a huge bush, and it had taken advantage of its liberty to spread exuberant branches in all directions. Yet, despite the luxuriance of its growth, the open nature of the plant itself allowed enough sunlight through for a multitude of smaller plants to thrive within its shelter. Some of them not so small, Demansk noted. One of the hostas bid fair to become a giant itself. And if the astilbes were groaning under the smoke tree's yoke, their abundant flowers certainly did not indicate so.
Demansk looked to his right. All along that side of the square a row of lilies — more a phalanx than a row — were crowding their enormous flowers into the square. It was a riot of color against a mass of green. With, still visible, the stalks of the irises which had sent forth their own glorious phalanx earlier in the year thrusting above the lilies.
His eyes flicked from a shaggy spirea to a triumphant sedum of some sort to a mound of lamb's ears; then, from another hosta to a nearby bed of marigolds. Demansk himself found the odor of those flowers a bit too acrid, but he knew that the mistress of the patio favored them. Enough so, in fact, that she relaxed her usual non-vigilance and kept the surrounding plants sufficiently trimmed to allow the low-growing marigolds their own needed share of sunlight.
Marigolds. It did not surprise Demansk, when he thought about it, that his daughter Helga treasured them. She was much like they, when all was said and done. Beautiful. . and a bit acrid.
There had been times when Demansk had regretted that harsh edge to his daughter. Despite his official august status, Demansk shared very little of the hauteur of the average Vanbert nobleman. So, where most such would have — did, in fact, those who knew her — found his daughter outrageous, he simply found her annoying. At times, at least.
But. . he had always loved her, and deeply. More so, though he would never have admitted it to anyone, than any of his three sons. And he had realized, from the time she was a little girl, that his daughter was a marigold. A sun-lover, who would die in the shade.
Watching Helga now, from his position in the corner, Demansk suddenly understood that he had tended to his own daughter much as she had attended to her garden. Violating custom and tradition, true; but giving her the room she had needed to grow strong. And the air, and the sunlight.
He took some comfort from that knowledge, for a moment. Once he stepped into that patio, he would set in motion a train of events that would pile a mountain of sins and crimes onto his name. The marigold herself would be the instrument for many of them. But, whatever else, Demansk would be able to go to the afterlife pointing to that vigorous flower.
This too, gods, was my doing. Damn me if you will.
By now, of course, his daughter had noticed him. Demansk could see her examining him out of the side of her eyes. She would have detected him long before he arrived, in fact. She was as alert as any skirmisher in Demansk's legions, and would have made a better sentry than most.
But she said nothing, allowing her father the same room he had always allowed her. That was her way, and it was one of the many reasons Demansk treasured her. She simply returned her eyes to the infant suckling at her breast, and resumed humming her little tune.
Tune? Demansk had to suppress a laugh. It was a medley, actually. A ridiculous pastiche of three songs: an Emerald hymn, usually sung at religious festivals; a semi-obscene ballad popular among the seamen and pirates of the Western Isles; and one of the marching songs of the Vanbert legions.
He began to stride into the patio, but was immediately forced to slow down and concentrate on where he put his feet. A good half of the patio's worn flagstones were overgrown by a medley of ground-covering plants even more exuberantly jumbled together than the "tune" his daughter was humming. Aggressive vinca warred with carpet bugle; red phlox with yet another variety of sedum. In the shadier spots, silver beacon valiantly held its own.
In truth, the plants were all hardy — all the plants in Helga's part of the garden were — and could have withstood his sandaled passage easily enough. But Demansk took a subtle pleasure in avoiding destruction, as he marched toward it.
"You don't have to be so prissy, Father," Helga murmured, smiling faintly. "They'll survive."
For a moment, Demansk felt his facial muscles struggling between a scowl and a smile.
As usual, the smile won.
"In the good old days," he muttered, "girls wouldn't have dreamed of being so disrespectful to their fathers. Who" — his voice grew stern—"ruled their families with a rod of iron."
Helga's own smile widened. "Oh, please. In the 'good old days,' our illustrious forefathers were illiterate pig farmers. Standing on a dirt floor under a thatch roof, clad in rags, piglets nosing their bare feet — pissing on them, often enough — and bellowing their patriarchal majesty to a huddle of wrinkled women and filthy children. What I never understood is where they got the rod of iron in the first place." Slyly, looking up at her father under lowered eyelids: "Must have stolen it, since the beggars were certainly too poor to buy it."
Demansk grinned. " 'Stole it'? Well, I suppose. 'Plundered it' would be more accurate."
He lowered himself onto the bench next to her and added: "Say whatever else you will about those illiterate pig farmers, they were the toughest beggars the world's ever seen."
"True enough," she admitted. "Although you don't have to be so smug about it."
"And why not?" he shrugged. "Would anyone else have done a better job of ruling the world? Would you have preferred the pirates of the Isles, or the endlessly bickering Emeralds? Or the barbarians of the south?"
His daughter made no riposte. In truth, she had no disagreement with him on the subject, and they both knew it.
Demansk's gaze fell on his grandson's face. The boy had done with suckling, now, and his eyes were studying his grandfather in the vaguely unfocused and wondering way of infants.
Bright blue eyes, quite unlike the green eyes Demansk shared with his daughter — much less the brown eyes which were normal for those of Vanbert stock. And already the fuzz on the infant's head showed signs of the corn-gold splendor it would become.
Demansk cleared his throat. "Speaking of Emeralds. . There doesn't seem to be much doubt who sired him."
Helga snorted softly. "There is no doubt at all, Father."
When her green eyes came up again, they came level and even. No lowered lids, now; not even a pretense of daughterly modesty or demureness.
"There have been only three men who have had carnal knowledge of me. Counting, as the first of those, the pack of pirates who gang-raped me after I was kidnapped." The shrug which rippled her muscular shoulders would have awed the demigod who, legend had it, held up the world. A titan, dismissing flies. "I know neither their names nor do I remember their faces. Nor do I care."
Her right hand, as well shaped and sinewy as her shoulders, caressed her baby's cheek. "Then there was the Director of Vase, into whose hareem I was sold by the pirates and remained for a year. A fat old man, who managed to get an erection — so to speak — exactly twice on the occasions he summoned me." Another snort, this one derisive. "And then, I'm quite certain, faked an orgasm after a minute or so, once he felt he'd maintained his manly reputation."
Despite himself, Demansk couldn't quite suppress a chuckle. Helga's lips twitched wryly in response. And, for a moment, Demansk was as awed by that little smile as the demi-god would have been at the shrug.
No woman he had ever known — no man he had ever known — could match his daughter's calm acceptance of life and its woes. It was not that she was blind, or stupid, or naïve. Simply that she had the strength to regiment horror and misery, and turn them to her own purposes instead of being broken by them.
"And then there was Adrian Gellert," Helga continued, the flat tone in her voice replaced by lilting warmth, "who was neither old, nor fat, nor — trust me, Father — had the slightest difficulty with any of the business." Smugly: "Nor, I am quite certain, faked anything."
She hefted her baby and held him up before her. "This child is Adrian Gellert's and no other. You can be as sure of that as the sunrise. He was born much too late to have been one of the pirates', that's certain. And as for the old fat Director of Vase—"
Her soft laugh bordered on a giggle. "Look at your grandchild, Father! Even if that old toad could have managed it, do you think his son would look like this?" Her eyes were almost glowing. Some of that glow, of course, was because of the child. But most of it, Demansk knew, was because of the memory of the father. "He has Adrian's eyes, his hair — even that whimsical smile."
Demansk sighed. His face, he knew, was stiff as a board.
Helga studied him for a moment. "I have always been blunt, Father. Why should that disturb you now? It happened. You know it, and I know it. So why should we pretend, or try to cover my shameful past with vague phrases?"
He shook his head abruptly. "It's not that. It's. ." His voice trailed off. For all his own quite-famous bluntness and directness, Demansk simply could not say what needed to be said. He had never been able to say it; not once, in all the months since Adrian Gellert had returned Helga safely to her family.
"Oh," murmured Helga. "That." Her own face was as stiff and rigid as his own.
"Father, please. Do not insult me. For all my occasional sarcasm on the subject of our 'illustrious forefathers' and the 'grandeur of the Confederacy,' I am a daughter of Vanbert. In the bone, and the blood, and the flesh. And, for damn sure, in the spirit."
She plumped the baby back firmly on her lap. "I knew from the moment the pirates seized me that you would refuse to pay the ransom. I would have been furious if you had. The rest of Vanbert may have grown soft and corrupt, but not Demansk. Not us! Sophisticated we have become, and literate — and why not? But we, if no other family, are the true Vanbert breed."