The Book of Forbidden Wisdom Read online

  “Who is he?” I asked.

  I had addressed Silky, but it was Violet, who had come up beside us, who answered.

  “A bard,” she said, in a voice that conveyed she didn’t think much of him. “Can’t you tell?”

  “He was just passing through.” Silky sounded worried. “Father told me. I’m sorry, Angel. I didn’t want to upset you. But Cal sang himself hoarse at Bertin’s funeral, so Father heard this one and approved him. He says the man’s good at his job and has a sweet voice.”

  “I see,” I said. I didn’t. I was thinking of those strange eyes. Neither Violet nor Silky seemed to have noticed anything unusual about him—­but I found it hard to take my eyes away.

  “So you don’t mind the change?” asked Violet.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “But Cal must be truly hoarse to miss this occasion to show off.” Cal, our village bard, had a fine voice, but he was, perhaps, a little too proud of it.

  I looked over at the itinerant bard again. And now I saw what Silky and Violet saw: that the man looked travel-­stained and, oddly, angry. He was sun-­darkened—­a testament to life spent on the road enduring the vagaries of sun and rain. Landowners, on the other hand, were usually fair-­skinned. We did not, after all, work the land.

  We just owned it.

  The man turned to one of the bundles and pulled out a lyre. I wondered if Father had given him a low price for the wedding since he was, essentially, a vagabond and did not have to hold us to the usual rate. It was the kind of thing Father would do. The man surely looked discontented enough.

  The normal wage for a wedding would have made a bard rich for half a year.

  The bard raised his head and caught me looking at him. He looked right back at me, full in the face. And then he smiled—­except it wasn’t a friendly sort of smile. It was patronizing. As if he knew me. As if he knew all about me.

  Me. A child of the House of Montrose. Me. Lady Angel.

  I could have had him turned out, of course, but there was something fascinating about him. Perhaps he was a poor castoff from a landed family. It happened. Besides, it would dismay Silky if we had no bard, and it seemed pointless to get rid of him because of one glance.

  At weddings, bards were expected to give the news (keeping early guests occupied), sing the wedding songs, perform an epic and provide music at the party following the ceremony. If Father really had heard and accepted this bard, the performance wouldn’t be bad.

  I went back to the skin decorators, who started the final work on my hands. Suddenly the marriage ceremony seemed very near. I could touch nothing until after the wedding now. Silky would dress me. It would be her last chance to hold the wedding gown.

  The bard gathered his bundles and instruments and went toward the kitchen, where I knew he would be well fed. Cook had a weakness for bards—­she liked the gossip they carried. Soon I would be part of that gossip, slipped into a recital somewhere down the road. Lady Angel Montrose married Lord Leth Nesson.

  And that was that.

  I had to confess to myself that I really didn’t know just how happy I would be. I didn’t think I’d be miserable—­far from it—­but as a married woman, I would probably never speak to Trey again, except formally. The time had finally come to cut the tie. We were adults now, sacrifices to the endless ceremonies and formulas that drowned friendships made in childhood.

  “What’s the matter, Angel?” asked Silky. She was good at reading my mood.

  “I want this to be over,” I said.

  “How can you want your wedding to be over?” asked Silky. “It hasn’t even started yet.”

  “I wish Trey could be here,” I said. “Father didn’t have to ban him from the wedding.”

  “Trey’s a boy,” said Silky. “The bride can’t invite a boy.”

  “Then I wish Leth had,” I said.

  “Right,” said Silky.

  “He could have.”

  “Right.”

  We went into the house and made our way through the halls and up the staircases until we were back in my room. Silky slipped Mother’s gown over my head, did up the pearl buttons and began the lengthy process of pinning and sewing me into it.

  “There,” she said. “Almost done.” Her eyes brimmed with tears.

  “I’m sorry about the dress,” I said. “I wish it could be yours.”

  “Mine will be beautiful, too,” she said, but her eyes still glistened in the light. She finished with the pins in the back and turned me around.

  “Wow,” she said. Her sorrow was gone.

  “ ’Wow’ what?”

  “You’re gorgeous.”

  “We both know who the gorgeous one is,” I said. Silky just laughed and shook her head, and her white-­gold hair was a cloud around her face.

  When we reached the wedding tent, where the ceremony would take place, where I would finally be able to see Leth without a chaperone at my side, I saw that Silky must have been up very early tending to all the wedding details. The path to the tent was sprinkled with rose petals, and there were flowers everywhere—­a riot of color and scent. Nothing had been left undone.

  It was as if Silky could read my mind.

  “I added stuff,” she said. “So there’s nothing to complain about now.”

  “Silky,” I said, “you know I wouldn’t have complained.”

  “I wasn’t thinking about you.”

  I laughed. “I thank you, but I’m sure what Leth’s parents had was fine.”

  “You’d think it would be, considering the dowry,” said Silky. “But they’re stingy, and you know it. I’m sure Leth wouldn’t have approved.”

  It was indeed a good dowry. This marriage was the biggest real estate transaction the village had ever seen. And despite Silky’s romantic enthusiasm, I was perfectly able to see the wedding as Father and the Nessons saw it—­as a good land deal. A sensible merger that would add to the power of both families.

  And I got Leth in the transaction. He was a good choice. Other Ladies even accounted Leth the most handsome man they had seen, although I preferred Trey’s dark looks to Leth’s fair coloring. To be truthful.

  Another thought came on unbidden: Leth’s not as handsome as the Bard, either.

  I laughed out loud at that. After all, the Bard was nothing more than a landless vagrant with a goodish face.

  Leth was a good man and extraordinarily generous: he had agreed that Silky would live with us until her marriage. As eldest girl, I had received my mother’s inheritance—­but now I could make sure Silky had a good dowry when her time came.

  Silky and I went to the side tent, where I would wait until Leth and Father and the Nessons and the witnesses and guests and all the nobility father could muster were in place.

  I began to fidget.

  “Stop that,” said Silky. “You’ll ruin the pattern on your hands.”

  “Sorry.”

  “At least you’re acting like a bride.”

  “I suppose I am a bride.” Perhaps I was curt. Silky didn’t reply. I held my bouquet firmly in my hand while Silky put flowers in my hair. I was dark, like Trey, and for effect she wove tiny white roses into the braids coiled around my head. The scent of the roses was strong, and as I watched Silky work, I saw that she had added some wild roses to enhance the scent. And because she knew I liked them.

  Violet—­who was looking more like a lemon drop than ever—­popped her head in the door.

  “It’s the Bard,” she said.

  “Drunk?” asked Silky, concerned.

  “He wants to check whether you want the traditional music,” said Violet, “or something different.”

  “Traditional,” said Silky. “What else?”

  “Don’t I get a say?” I said.

  “No,” said Silky. “You’re just the bride, Angel. Traditional.”<
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  “I’ll have the servant tell him,” said Violet. She was too old, three months older than I was, for direct contact with a lower-­caste man. That meant she had to communicate with the Bard through intermediaries.

  Violet returned shortly and stood behind me, ready to lift the train of the dress. Silky and I would enter together, the two scions of the House of Montrose.

  “Ready?” asked Silky after giving me one more critical examination. I must have passed. She looked radiant. I wished I could look that radiant. I prepared for the traditional music.

  A minute later the preliminary music began, and it was something very untraditional, something haunting, in a minor key, but before Silky could run out and throttle the Bard, he launched into the wedding theme.

  For the first time, my stomach fluttered. And at that moment, I really wanted Trey, to whom I could talk and who would make me calm. It would have been nice, I thought, to have had an un-­chaperoned, informal parting with Trey. Because everyone knew friendships changed after marriage. For one thing, the married were much higher in status than those who were uncontracted.

  But there was no precedent for a farewell to a male friend. We had been awkward in our snatched good-­byes. We had only had a moment before the chaperone descended upon me, and she had been livid, and while I hadn’t cared, I knew that was the end of it.

  I couldn’t tell if Trey liked Leth. I rather thought not.

  The music began to swell.

  “Are you ready, Silky?” As if I had to ask.

  “Of course,” she said. Her body decorations were exquisite. Dark red flowers glowed in her golden hair.

  The music had almost reached the moment when I would begin my walk, Silky behind me, toward Leth. And soon the legalities of the land transaction would be over, and Leth and I would be married.

  It would be a nice life. And I was sure that, after a few initial questions, he would leave alone the issue of whether or not I had knowledge of The Book of Forbidden Wisdom or the Spiral City. He had never once mentioned The Book, but I knew he thought about it. All of Arcadia did. The St. Clares, my mother’s line, had passed forward knowledge of The Book all the way to my mother, who had died young.

  All Arcadia knew that, too.

  Silky took my arm for a moment and then kissed me before taking her place again.

  Then I set my foot on the narrow walk, and the servants pulled open the flaps of the tent. I smiled, but it felt forced, and the considerable weight of the dress seemed to hold me back. They were all there: Father, the Nessons, my aunts and uncles and cousins, Gurd—­the head of the village—­the minor nobility, each with distinct and colorful liveries. It seemed everyone except Father, who had dressed as always in his endless mourning, had chosen to wear something vivid. The tent was a riot of color, and a profusion of flowers lined the path. There was a shower of rose petals as I entered.

  It might not have been the happiest day of my life, but I wasn’t unhappy. I thought that perhaps one day I would be able to make amends to Trey.

  The sky was blue. The bard was in voice. Silky was with me, and I was going to take her away from our father’s dreary house of eternal mourning.

  I saw Leth waiting. He looked real and solid and ready to take me as his bride. Behind Leth were his brother, Benn, and his sister-­in-­law, Lorna of the House of Tern. My father—­a head shorter, stern, rigid in his mourning—­stood next to Leth. This was a big day for my father, a triumph, really. For years he had feared that Trey had some hold on my heart. He didn’t like Trey very much—­or maybe he just didn’t like Trey’s landlessness. It came to the same thing.

  Then had come Leth, with his vast holdings, and my father almost—­almost—­perked up. At least enough to be almost attentive when it came to my new suitor.

  On our second arranged meeting, Leth had said, “Stifling, isn’t it?” And he had not meant the weather.

  I began to consider that Leth might make a suitable partner.

  Shortly thereafter, the Nessons approached Father, and I let him know that the merger could take place. Why not? I was almost sixteen. It was time to marry.

  And now I walked into the tent and took my place next to Leth. Silky went and stood with Father. I wasn’t supposed to look at Leth until after the ceremony, but I leaned forward and peeked at him.

  He looked a little pale, and I knew that he, too, was finding the tent, as he would put it, stifling.

  Two books were open in front of us. The Marriage Book and the Land Book. The witnesses were in place. The music ceased. The Arbitrator called for the rings, and then made the motions over them. Then he opened the Land Book. And I couldn’t help but think: land first. Always the land first. The marriage contract bound earth to earth as much as bride to groom. The marriage ceremony came second to the land merger: it was an excuse for a party and a license to produce children, but ultimately it was a formal contract signing.

  I certainly thought about it that way, especially since I didn’t even know what I thought about having children. I remembered what we tried never to speak of—­the night our mother and the baby she bore died. In the chaos, the midwife left the door to the birthing room ajar, and I had seen the bloody sheet and one of my mother’s arms dangling limply off the bed. My father had gone in, and the midwife tried to stop him, but he pushed her away and went down on his knees next to the bed. From that moment, our father wore only black, and he never sought another marriage.

  These were not auspicious thoughts. I gave my head a little shake.

  The Arbitrator handed the pen to Father. There was a small intake of breath, and I looked up, surprised. I was suddenly aware that Silky’s breathing had changed. Of course, her life, as well as mine, was about to be forever altered. And it occurred to me then that the two books open in front of me were the twin volumes in which my life would be forever sealed. The Montrose estates—­my family’s land—­would merge with the Nessons’. And the Nesson name would become mine.

  And then they would close the books. And my life would be written.

  The Arbitrator held the pen out to me. I looked at it. Silky, even though Father could undoubtedly see her, poked me. Leth, against all decorum, turned his head to look at me. I took the pen.

  Then a voice rang out.

  “I stake a claim.”

  At first I didn’t know where the voice was coming from.

  But while the Arbitrator may have been as surprised as anyone there, he had been well trained. He had the pen he had given to me back in his hand before anyone else moved or spoke.

  “I stake a claim to the Montrose land.”

  I tracked the voice this time. A man in silhouette stood in the entrance of the tent, the afternoon sun blazing around him so that I couldn’t see his face.

  My father moved toward the man, stumbling over the table the books were on and pushing the Bard out of the way.

  “Who dares?” said my father. “Who dares interrupt this marriage?”

  Land greed. I saw it all the time, and now it was in his eyes.

  I wondered if Leth had any idea of what was happening.

  And I thought that no, probably he didn’t.

  My father was scrambling for the entrance. When he’d pushed past the Bard, the man had dropped his instrument, a stringed thennet. It made a harsh, discordant sound now as he picked it up. The bodyguards of the minor nobility, unsure of what was happening, were pushing away the crowd and trying to gain control. I watched the scene as if it no longer had anything to do with me. And then it seemed that all at once everybody was talking, chattering, speculating. There were a ­couple of shrieks as ­people in the back of the crowd pressed forward to see the man who had staked a claim to the Montrose estates. In so doing, they threatened to trample those caught in the middle.

  I had been to a lot of marriages, and I knew, at that moment, better than anyone in the
tent, how carefully the Wedding Director choreographed everything in advance—­right down to the color of polish on my toenails and the color of ink in the pen the Arbitrator had just snatched from me.

  We were dangerously off script now.

  Leth’s mother called out something to him, and he turned his head away from me. But then he looked at me again.

  Silky crept up on one side of me and put her arm around me, breaking what decorum was left.

  The dress, the flowers, the music—­I knew that Silky envied none of it now.

  Again the voice rang out.

  “I claim the Montrose estates. And I do not approve this marriage.”

  Silky held me close. “It’s going to be all right,” she whispered.

  But we both knew it wasn’t.

  “What’s going on?” asked Leth, but nobody answered him.

  My father was clearly trying to figure that out himself as he pushed his way to get to the man in the doorway. But the Arbitrator’s assistants, on a gesture from the Arbitrator, stopped him.

  “Who dares do this?” My father was repeating himself now. “Who dares?”

  I wondered, as if from a very great distance away, why he kept on asking the question. By this point, it was clear there was only one person I knew of who could possibly make such a claim.

  There would be no marriage this day. I suddenly felt absurd with the wedding flowers in my hair, and I began pulling them out and throwing them onto the grass. Then, abruptly, everything in the world was stilled. The scent of wild roses, more heady than that of the blooms from Leth’s parents, was overpowering. A bee lazily circled my bouquet. There was sweat on Leth’s brow, but his pale blue eyes were fixed on me.

  The moment passed. My father raged. The mundane smell of food from the dining tent overcame the scent of roses; the bee flew off; the only thing still connecting me to the earth was Silky’s arm around my waist, because I couldn’t see the blue of Leth’s eyes anymore—­he had dropped his gaze.