Read Online The Black Swan by Mercedes Lackey - Free Book Online Page B

and no one ever questioned how many bottles he and his young friends consumed, where anyone but Siegfried would have found the servants reluctant to fetch more than three bottles in a night. Siegfried preferred not to be in his own quarters following dinner. It was too easy for people to find him there.
    Tonight, though, only three shared the room—clearly that of a bachelor scholar. Furniture was shabby but comfortable, royal cast offs appropriated by Wolfgang’s servant. The huge, canopied bed, fully large enough for a family, was loaded with books and manuscripts except for just enough room for a single person to sleep, and candles jammed into the melted remains of countless predecessors adorned the head-board. Old cushions rubbed bare of nap or with mouse holes chewed in the corners were piled out of the way; these served as seats when there were more visitors than two. Threadbare hangings and curtains kept the chill of the stone walls at bay, all of them banished from the royal chambers years ago when their patterns faded into oblivion or were damaged by moths. For the rest of the furniture: Wolfgang had a desk with one broken leg, held steady by a broken stone column he had found in a ruin; a chair so monumentally ugly that the queen had ordered it burned; a bench padded with an ancient featherbed; and an assortment of stools in various states of repair.
    Tonight Benno, clad in a sumptuously embroidered linen doublet of rich blue left open at the throat to show his lace-trimmed cambric shirt, sprawled at his ease on the bench. Siegfried’s tutor Wolfgang, in his usual rusty black, rested an elbow on the arm of the chair he occupied next to the cold fireplace. Siegfried, attired more casually in a fine lawn shirt and brown leather trews had appropriated Wolfgang’s bed; he, too, sprawled comfortably propped up on a pile of cushions, wineglass in one hand as he listened to Benno and Wolfgang continue the debate that had begun well over an hour ago. A sultry breeze coming in at the window, heavy with the scent of roses, made him feel indolent and lazy.
    He listened in a pleasantly detached frame of mind, drunk enough so that his vague dissatisfaction with life had receded into a mellow haze.
    Wolfgang and Benno had consumed their share of wine, so at least the debate was on an equal footing. For the moment, Siegfried preferred to listen; Wolfgang was a good talker, and wine freed Benno from the diffidence he otherwise showed for the old man’s level of knowledge.
    Wolfgang’s learning wasn’t much help in this case though, and he shook his gray head. “I am confused; more than confused with all of this,” he said. “I think that you have me at a disadvantage. Start at the beginning; explain this new fashion of love to me. You say it has rules? How can an emotion be governed by rules?”
    Benno, who had been fostered in a French court, was only too ready to impart his knowledge. “The complete knight must have a lady to whom he is devoted. For her honor and glory he fights, it is to her beauty he composes and performs songs, she is the first thing he thinks of on arising and the last on sleeping.”
    â€œAnd this woman is not his wife?” Wolfgang said, puzzled.
    â€œNo—love has nothing to do with marriage,” Benno replied with authority. “Marriage is about property, lineage, continuing the family line. Love doesn’t enter into it—oh, Wolfgang, think! Look at Dorian; he’s going to be married to a woman with a face like a cow and a body like a sack of turnips, and how could he be expected to feel anything for her? Marriage is a contract, much like the contract of liege to lord. One needn’t love one’s lord in order to fulfill that contract. One needn’t love one’s wife to fulfill the contract of marriage—which is to impart to her the use of one’s goods, one’s name, one’s property, in exchange for children