deliver. In that case, a one-name server would have brought a message board or recited something carefully memorized. But perhaps the old warden had come to announce the peer’s death.
Creakily he signaled Arne to rise.
“Your service, Master,” Arne said.
“The peer regrets her illness has long kept her from visiting her subjects,” the land warden announced in his thin, high-pitched voice. “She has appointed me her deputy and asked me to hold open audience today. Anyone in the village who has information that should be brought to the peer’s attention is invited to impart it to me. I also will hear complaints of injustice, and I will see that everything told to me has her full consideration.”
So he had come as the peer’s emissary. Even in her desperate illness, she was capable of acting with wisdom and firmness, and this was the most effective way she could learn about the raid without turning the prince’s ire against the one-namers.
Arne told Ravla to prepare a room for the audience, and he appointed three men and three women to act as the land warden’s servers. Margaya presented the written discriptions of the raid that Arne had asked her to collect, and other villagers waited patiently in line while one after another described the conduct of the prince’s lashers and answered questions.
It was dark when the land warden finally left. Arne escorted him to the coach and opened its door for him. As the old man started to mount, he placed his hand gently on Arne’s back and asked in a whisper, “Were you injured badly?”
“A few cuts, Master. They will heal.”
The land warden shook his head. “I fear the prince has inflicted wounds on herself that are beyond heeling. I have never seen the peer so angry. She has enormous power when she chooses to wield it. Midlow’s peeragers have forgotten that because she has used it so rarely. They are about to be reminded.”
He gripped Arne’s arm in friendly fashion and boarded the carriage. It made a rapid descent to Midd Street, turned, and left the village at a sharp clip. Behind it, villagers were describing their interviews to each other, and rumors were already circulating.
Two more days passed. Then Arne received a terse order. He, the Three, and six other villagers chosen by him were to be present at court at middae on the morrow for a happening. Every one-name village in the peerdom was being ordered to send representatives. They were to observe the happening carefully so they could describe it to other villagers when they returned.
Arne gave the messenger his acknowledgement and immediately went to see Wiltzon.
“What is a happening?” he asked.
The old schooler was perplexed. “I have never heard of such a thing.”
“I want you to be one of the six,” Arne said. “I will order a horse and wagon for those who have difficulty walking.”
Wiltzon grinned. “That is against the rules.”
“Not when we are using it to carry out the peer’s orders.”
Arne called on Katin, the oldest one-namer in the peerdom. She was blind, but she was still a skilled seamster. She worked all of her waking hours, and her old fingers moved as nimbly as those of seamsters half her age.
She welcomed Arne warmly. She had made swaddling clothes for Arjov’s father as well as for Arjov and Arne.
“Katin, what is a happening?” Arne asked.
“Happening?” Katin frowned. “It is just a word, isn’t it? It means when something happens.”
“The peer’s servers use it as a word for a special event. I need to know what it is.”
Katin thought long with her head tilted back and her sightless eyes fixed on the ceiling. “Happening,” she muttered. “Now I remember. It is some kind of court fuss. I haven’t heard of one since I was young. It has nothing to do with us.”
“It does now,” Arne said. He told her about the message. His concern was that he, as the peer’s first server, might be expected to perform some role in it.
Katin shook her head. “No. It is something for peeragers. One-namers weren’t allowed at those I remember. It has nothing to do with us.”
With that Arne had to be content.
He left for Midlow Court early the next morning, walking slowly and allowing himself plenty of time. This was his practice whenever he traveled. Along the way, he checked the condition of the roads, noted which drainage ditches needed clearing, inspected bridges, and turned aside to see whether buildings at the no-name compounds he passed needed repairs.
Midlow Court loomed on the horizon long before he reached it. The old walled castle pointed its high stone tower skyward from the top of a tall, knobby hill that stood isolated in a broad, flower-flecked meadow. A splendid old forest, which on most days—and nights, too—echoed with the cries of peerager hunters, ringed the meadow. The forest was broken only by the court’s network of roads and by a slow-moving river—the same stream that rushed past Midd Village. Just below the castle and almost invisible behind another high wall was the present palace, a sprawling structure of wood and stone surrounded by its gardens and the buildings where the peer’s household staff lived. Crowded tiers of buildings descended in steps to the bottom of the hill, each rank secure behind another high wall. The lowest, where the court spilled out into the meadow, contained stables and storage buildings as well as accommodation for one-namers who worked and lived at the court.
The castle had the same sturdy stone construction as the dwellings of Midd Village. The remainder of the court had evolved around it, creeping slowly but steadily down the hill in successive layers of peeragers’ dwellings. With the passage of time, wood had become more popular than stone, and the houses of each descending level were flimsier than those above but far more comfortable and more easily built. They also were more lavishly ornamented, it being easier to fashion intricate designs in wood than in stone. In contrast, the outer stone walls became thicker and higher, reflecting an increasing nervousness on the part of the peeragers. Some were apprehensive about the distant wars. Some feared a lasher revolt. Many were highly suspicious of the peerdom’s one-namers.
Peeragers ventured from behind their walls only for play and amusement. The meadow was the site of games; the river, of bathing and water sports; the forest, of hunts and romantic trysts. One-namers learned to keep to the road and look straight ahead when approaching the court.
The court was enveloped in the same uncanny silence Hutter had described. There were no creaking carts climbing or descending the steep roadway that spiraled from level to level all the way up to the castle. The sharp clicks of horses hoofs on the cobblestones, the clatter of one-name carpenters making repairs—the court required prodigious amounts of maintenance—the buzzing clamor of one-namers at work, the excited shouts and furious arguments of peeragers at play—all of that was missing. There was no one in sight, not even the gate guards.
There was
Arne wondered again whether the peer had died. The mysterious quiet was of a community dedicated to death.
Guards stepped into view as Arne approached the gate. They saluted him as though he were a peerager, which he found disconcerting. One of the peer’s servers was waiting there. He directed Arne to the parade by the river where the peeragers held their outdoor ceremonies and riding contests.
“What is a happening?” Arne asked him.
“I don’t know,” the server said.
Arne circled the hill, and soon he was able to see a small cluster of one-namers waiting at the distant end of the parade, looking awkward and uncomfortable in their holiday garb. They had been shunted aside even before the happening began. Their wagons and carts were parked just beyond, surrounded by tethered horses.
Katin had been right: A happening was for peeragers. In some way it had to do with the welfare of one- namers, or they wouldn’t have been invited, but they were not a part of it. They were spectators.
Resignedly they sat down to wait. Time passed, and the day became hotter and increasingly uncomfortable.
From the castle tower high above them, a drum began to beat with mournful monotony. Arne waited for the
