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Authors: John Updike
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colorful royal party pass. Destined to succeed their parents in thrall to these strips of land owned by others, theywere momentarily liberated to childish gawking and guileless cheers. In the dappled sky a flock of starlings harassed a hawk, dipping and scolding and diving upon him while the lone predator pathetically ducked and mewed.
Feng pulled his horse, a slender black Arabian exotically caparisoned in a Genoese saddle and bridle, close beside her skittish mount. “My brother is good,” he said, as if looming in the eye of hers turned inward. “A good man. Earlier, he was a good boy. Always testing his courage, going onto the heath alone for nights at a time, hardening his warrior spirit with little mutilations, quizzing my father about battle and how to be the intrepid leader. I believe at times he bored the old man, actually. Gerwindil was a godless brute who never did anything on less than three goblets of mead. His most heroic exploits were carried out in such an alcoholic frenzy he had to hire bards to describe to him what he had done. In theory he was a Christian, but in truth he had no idea what it was all about, or who the Jews had been, or what Eve’s sin was. His idea of religion was a ring of big stones and ripping out the guts of a dozen prisoners of war. But he had bowed to the conversion craze and let the priests into Jutland; the castle teemed with priests, and my brother and I got the brunt of their instruction. Neither of us could quite believe what they said, but we believed enough to make us
triste.
”
“Are you
triste
?” Gerutha asked, less in flirtation, she told herself, than out of curiosity—itself a form, perhaps, of flirtation. She was curious about Feng, why he kept fleeing Denmark.
“Not when a certain lady is in my eyes,” he said.
“A certain lady?” Gerutha’s blood quickened with jealousy: Feng had found a successor to the lovely Lena of the Orkney Isles. Horwendil would never be capable of such abstract devotion. What he could not directly hit, fuck, or outsmart had no existence for him.
“Who must go unnamed.”
“Of course,” she said. “That is part of the rules. But does she know, this certain lady, of your devotion?”
“Yes and no, I think. Also”—pointedly changing the subject—“my
tristesse
lifts when I am in a city I have never been in before. But I am running out of cities, unless I venture as far as Byzantium or risk disguised trespass in the Khanate of the Golden Horde.”
They had passed into the terrain of Horwendil’s estates, and she could see, at the end of a lane lined with leafless poplars, the manor house, Odinsheim, where she had been brought on her wedding night and not until mid-morning been made a woman. Several of their party now left them, to gather information for the King, on the harvest and his rightful portions. The rest proceeded on to Feng’s manor house, Lokisheim, which Gerutha had seen from afar but never before from within.
The façade was as wide as Odinsheim’s but lower by a story, and of exposed timber and nogging instead of more costly, rarer yellow brick. Within, servants could be heard scurrying like mice at the scent of the cat. But they had put off lighting the hearth fire too long; the cold logs sputtered and smoked. The house’s interior bespoke a certain military order imposed upon the gaps of neglect. The walls and open cabinets displayed souvenirsof Feng’s sallies across Europe: a curved sword with a bejewelled hilt; a brass device of spheres within spheres, the innermost globe pricked with the arcane pattern of the stars; two tall halberts crossed above a crudely carved coffer with rope handles and iron clasps in the shape of leaping fish.
“A Burgundian gisarme, and a glaive of Bavarian workmanship,” Feng explained with nervous briskness, having seen her eye taken by the halberts’ intricate curves, the lethal barbs. “The Germans of Bavaria have learned the tricks of the Italian north. These
Feng pulled his horse, a slender black Arabian exotically caparisoned in a Genoese saddle and bridle, close beside her skittish mount. “My brother is good,” he said, as if looming in the eye of hers turned inward. “A good man. Earlier, he was a good boy. Always testing his courage, going onto the heath alone for nights at a time, hardening his warrior spirit with little mutilations, quizzing my father about battle and how to be the intrepid leader. I believe at times he bored the old man, actually. Gerwindil was a godless brute who never did anything on less than three goblets of mead. His most heroic exploits were carried out in such an alcoholic frenzy he had to hire bards to describe to him what he had done. In theory he was a Christian, but in truth he had no idea what it was all about, or who the Jews had been, or what Eve’s sin was. His idea of religion was a ring of big stones and ripping out the guts of a dozen prisoners of war. But he had bowed to the conversion craze and let the priests into Jutland; the castle teemed with priests, and my brother and I got the brunt of their instruction. Neither of us could quite believe what they said, but we believed enough to make us
triste.
”
“Are you
triste
?” Gerutha asked, less in flirtation, she told herself, than out of curiosity—itself a form, perhaps, of flirtation. She was curious about Feng, why he kept fleeing Denmark.
“Not when a certain lady is in my eyes,” he said.
“A certain lady?” Gerutha’s blood quickened with jealousy: Feng had found a successor to the lovely Lena of the Orkney Isles. Horwendil would never be capable of such abstract devotion. What he could not directly hit, fuck, or outsmart had no existence for him.
“Who must go unnamed.”
“Of course,” she said. “That is part of the rules. But does she know, this certain lady, of your devotion?”
“Yes and no, I think. Also”—pointedly changing the subject—“my
tristesse
lifts when I am in a city I have never been in before. But I am running out of cities, unless I venture as far as Byzantium or risk disguised trespass in the Khanate of the Golden Horde.”
They had passed into the terrain of Horwendil’s estates, and she could see, at the end of a lane lined with leafless poplars, the manor house, Odinsheim, where she had been brought on her wedding night and not until mid-morning been made a woman. Several of their party now left them, to gather information for the King, on the harvest and his rightful portions. The rest proceeded on to Feng’s manor house, Lokisheim, which Gerutha had seen from afar but never before from within.
The façade was as wide as Odinsheim’s but lower by a story, and of exposed timber and nogging instead of more costly, rarer yellow brick. Within, servants could be heard scurrying like mice at the scent of the cat. But they had put off lighting the hearth fire too long; the cold logs sputtered and smoked. The house’s interior bespoke a certain military order imposed upon the gaps of neglect. The walls and open cabinets displayed souvenirsof Feng’s sallies across Europe: a curved sword with a bejewelled hilt; a brass device of spheres within spheres, the innermost globe pricked with the arcane pattern of the stars; two tall halberts crossed above a crudely carved coffer with rope handles and iron clasps in the shape of leaping fish.
“A Burgundian gisarme, and a glaive of Bavarian workmanship,” Feng explained with nervous briskness, having seen her eye taken by the halberts’ intricate curves, the lethal barbs. “The Germans of Bavaria have learned the tricks of the Italian north. These
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