* * * *
They seated the hedge knights well below the salt, closer to the doors than to the dais.
Whitewalls was almost new as castles went, having been raised a mere forty years ago by the grandsire of its present lord. The smallfolk hereabouts called it the Milk house, for its walls and keeps and towers were made of finely dressed white stone, quarried in the Vale and brought over the mountains at great expense. Inside were floors and pillars of milky white marble veined with gold; the rafters overhead were carved from the bone-pale trunks of weirwoods. Dunk could not begin to imagine what all of that had cost.
The hall was not so large as some others he had known, though. At least we were allowed beneath the roof, Dunk thought as he took his place on the bench between Ser Maynard Plumm and Kyle the Cat. Though uninvited, the three of them had been welcomed to the feast quick enough; it was ill luck to refuse a knight hospitality on your wedding day.
Young Ser Glendon had a harder time, however. “Fireball never had a son,” Dunk heard Lord Butterwell’s steward tell him, loudly. The stripling answered heatedly, and the name of Ser Morgan Dunstable was mentioned several times, but the steward had remained adamant. When Ser Glendon touched his sword hilt, a dozen men-at-arms appeared with spears in hand, but for a moment it looked as though there might be bloodshed. It was only the intervention of a big blond knight named Kirby Pimm that saved the situation. Dunk was too far away to hear, but he saw Pimm clasp an arm around the steward’s shoulders and murmur in his ear, laughing. The steward frowned, and said something to Ser Glendon that turned the boy’s face dark red. He looks as if he’s about to cry, Dunk thought, watching. That, or kill someone. After all of that, the young knight was finally admitted to the castle hall.
Poor Egg was not so fortunate. “The great hall is for the lords and knights,” an understeward had informed them haughtily when Dunk tried to bring the boy inside. “We have set up tables in the inner yard for squires, grooms, and men-at-arms.”
If you had an inkling who he was, you would seat him on the dais on a cushioned throne. Dunk had not much liked the look of the other squires. A few were lads of Egg’s own age, but most were older, seasoned fighters who long ago had made the choice to serve a knight rather than become one. Or did they have a choice? Knighthood required more than chivalry and skill at arms; it required horse and sword and armor too, and all of that was costly. “Watch your tongue,” he told Egg before he left him in that company. “These are grown men; they won’t take kindly to your insolence. Sit and eat and listen, might be you’ll learn some things.”
For his own part, Dunk was just glad to be out of the hot sun, with a wine cup before him and a chance to fill his belly. Even a hedge knight grows weary of chewing every bite of food for half an hour. Down here below the salt, the fare would be more plain than fancy, but there would be no lack of it. Below the salt was good enough for Dunk.
But peasant’s pride is lordling’s shame, the old man used to say. “This cannot be my proper place,” Ser Glendon Ball told the understeward hotly. He had donned a clean doublet for the feast, a handsome old garment with gold lace at the cuffs and collar and the red chevron and white plates of House Ball sewn across the chest. “Do you know who my father was?”
“A noble knight and mighty lord, I have no doubt,” said the understeward, “but the same is true of many here. Please take your seat or take your leave, ser. It is all the same to me.”
In the end, the boy took his place below the salt with the rest of them, his mouth sullen. The long white hall was filling up as more knights crowded onto the benches. The crowd was larger than Dunk had anticipated, and from the looks of it, some of the guests had come a very long way. He and Egg had not been around so many lords and knights since Ashford Meadow, and there was no way to guess who else might turn up next. We should have stayed out in the hedges, sleeping under trees. If I am recognized...
When a serving man placed a loaf of black bread on the cloth in front of each of them, Dunk was grateful for the distraction. He sawed the loaf open lengthwise, hollowed out the bottom half for a trencher, and ate the top. It was stale, but compared with his salt beef, it was custard. At least it did not have to be soaked in ale or milk or water to make it soft enough to chew.
“Ser Duncan, you appear to be attracting a deal of attention,” Ser Maynard Plumm observed as Lord Vyrwel and his party went parading past them toward places of high honor at the top of the hall. “Those girls up on the dais cannot seem to take their eyes off you. I’ll wager they have never seen a man so big. Even seated, you are half a head taller than any man in the hall.”
Dunk hunched his shoulders. He was used to being stared at, but that did not mean he liked it. “Let them look.”
“That’s the Old Ox down there beneath the dais,” Ser Maynard said. “They call him a huge man, but seems to me his belly is the biggest thing about him. You’re a bloody giant next to him.”
“Indeed, ser,” said one of their companions on the bench, a sallow man, saturnine, clad in grey and green. His eyes were small and shrewd, set close together beneath thin arching brows. A neat black beard framed his mouth, to make up for his receding hair. “In such a field as this, your size alone should make you one of the most formidable competitors.”
“I had heard the Brute of Bracken might be coming,” said another man, farther down the bench.
“I think not,” said the man in green and grey. “This is only a bit of jousting to celebrate His Lordship’s nuptials. A tilt in the yard to mark the tilt between the sheets. Hardly worth the bother for the likes of Otho Bracken.” Ser Kyle the Cat took a drink of wine. “I’ll wager my lord of Butterwell does not take the field either. He will cheer on his champions from his lord’s box in the shade.” “Then he’ll see his champions fall,” boasted Ser Glendon Ball, “and in the end, he’ll hand his egg to me.”
“Ser Glendon is the son of Fireball,” Ser Kyle explained to the new man. “Might we have the honor of your name, ser?”
“Ser Uthor Underleaf. The son of no one of importance.” Underleafs garments were of good cloth, clean and well cared for, but simply cut. A silver clasp in the shape of a snail fastened his cloak. “If your lance is the equal of your tongue, Ser Glendon, you may even give this big fellow here a contest.”
Ser Glendon glanced at Dunk as the wine was being poured. “If we meet, he’ll fall. I don’t care how big he is.”
Dunk watched a server fill his wine cup. “I am better with a sword than with a lance,” he admitted, “and even better with a battleaxe. Will there be a melee here?” His size and strength would stand him in good stead in a melee, and he knew he could give as good as he got. Jousting was another matter.
“A melee? At a marriage?” Ser Kyle sounded shocked. “That would be unseemly.”
Ser Maynard gave a chuckle. “A marriage is a melee, as any married man could tell you.”
Ser Uthor chuckled. “There’s just the joust, I fear, but besides the dragon’s egg, Lord Butterwell has promised thirty golden dragons for the loser of the final tilt, and ten each for the knights defeated in the round before.”
Ten dragons is not so bad. Ten dragons would buy a palfrey, so Dunk would not need to ride Thunder save in battle. Ten dragons would buy a suit of plate for Egg, and a proper knight’s pavilion sewn with Dunk’s tree and falling star. Ten dragons would mean roast goose and ham and pigeon pie.
“There are ransoms to be had as well, for those who win their matches,” Ser Uthor said as he hollowed out his trencher, “and I have heard it rumored that some men place wagers on the tilts. Lord Butterwell himself is not fond of taking risks, but amongst his guests are some who wager heavily.”
No sooner had he spoken than Ambrose Butterwell made his entrance, to a fanfare of trumpets from the minstrel’s gallery. Dunk shoved to his feet with the rest as Butterwell escorted his new bride down a patterned Myrish carpet to the dais, arm in arm. The girl was fifteen and freshly flowered, her lord husband fifty and freshly widowed. She was pink and he was grey. Her bride’s cloak trailed behind her, done in candy green and white and yellow. It looked so hot and heavy that Dunk wondered how she could bear to wear it. Lord Butterwell looked hot and heavy too, with his heavy jowls and thinning flaxen hair.
The bride’s father followed close behind her, hand in hand with his young son. Lord Frey of the Crossing was a lean man elegant in blue and grey, his heir a chinless boy of four whose nose was dripping snot. Lords Costayne and Risley came next, with their lady wives, daughters of Lord Butterwell by his first wife. Frey’s daughters followed with their own husbands. Then came Lord Gormon Peake; Lords Smallwood, and Shawney; various lesser lords and landed knights. Amongst them Dunk glimpsed John the Fiddler and Alyn Cockshaw. Lord Alyn looked to be in his cups, though the feast had not yet properly begun.
By the time all of them had sauntered to the dais, the high table was as crowded as the benches. Lord Butterwell and his bride sat on plump downy cushions in a double throne of gilded oak. The rest planted themselves in tall chairs with fancifully carved arms. On the wall behind them, two huge banners hung from the rafters: the twin towers of Frey, blue on grey, and the green and white and yellow undy of the Butterwells.
It fell to Lord Frey to lead the toasts. “The king!” he began simply. Ser Glendon held his wine cup out above the water basin. Dunk clanked his cup against it, and against Ser Uthor’s and the rest as well. They drank.
“Lord Butterwell, our gracious host,” Frey proclaimed next. “May the Father grant him long life and many sons.”
They drank again.
“Lady Butterwell, the maiden brick, my darling daughter. May the Mother make her fertile.” Frey gave the girl a smile. “I shall want a grandson before the year is out. Twins would suit me even better, so churn the butter well tonight, my sweet.”
Laughter rang against the rafters, and the guests drank still once more. The wine was rich and red and sweet.
Then Lord Frey said, “I give you the King’s Hand, Brynden Rivers. May the Crone’s lamp light his path to wisdom.” He lifted his goblet high and drank, together with Lord Butterwell and his bride and the others on the dais. Below the salt, Ser Glendon turned his cup over to spill its contents to the floor.
“A sad waste of good wine,” said Maynard Plumm.
“I do not drink to kinslayers,” said Ser Glendon. “Lord Bloodraven is a sorcerer and a bastard.”
“Born bastard,” Ser Uthor agreed mildly, “but his royal father made him legitimate as he lay dying.” He drank deep, as did Ser Maynard and many others in the hall. Near as many lowered
their cups, or turned them upside down as Ball had done. Dunk’s own cup was heavy in his hand. How many eyes does Lord Bloodraven have? the riddle went. A thousand eyes, and one.
Toast followed toast, some proposed by Lord Frey and some by others. They drank to young Lord Tully, Lord Butterwell’s liege lord, who had begged off from the wedding. They drank to the health of Leo Longthorn, Lord of Highgarden, who was rumored to be ailing. They drank to the memory of their gallant dead. Aye, thought Dunk, remembering. I’ll gladly drink to them.
Ser John the Fiddler proposed the final toast. “To my brave brothers! I know that they are smiling tonight!”
Dunk had not intended to drink so much, with the jousting on the morrow, but the cups were filled anew after every toast, and he found he had a thirst. “Never refuse a cup of wine or a horn of ale,” Ser Arlan had once told him, “it may be a year before you see another.” It would have been discourteous not to toast the bride and groom, he told himself, and dangerous not to drink to the king and his Hand, with strangers all about.
Mercifully, the Fiddler’s toast was the last. Lord Butterwell rose ponderously to thank them for coming and promise good jousting on the morrow. “Let the feast begin!”
Suckling pig was served at the high table, a peacock roasted in its plumage, a great pike crusted with crushed almonds. Not a bite of that made it down below the salt. Instead of suckling pig, they got salt pork, soaked in almond milk and peppered pleasantly. In place of peacock, they had capons, crisped up nice and brown and stuffed with onions, herbs, mushrooms, and roasted chestnuts. In place of pike, they ate chunks of flaky white cod in a pastry coffyn, with some sort of tasty brown sauce that Dunk could not quite place. There was pease porridge besides, buttered turnips, carrots drizzled with honey, and a ripe white cheese that smelled as strong as Bennis of the Brown Shield. Dunk ate well, but all the while wondered what Egg was getting in the yard. Just in case, he slipped half a capon into the pocket of his cloak, with some hunks of bread and a little of the smelly cheese.
As they ate, pipes and fiddles filled the air with spritely tunes, and the talk turned to the morrow’s jousting. “Ser Franklyn Frey is well regarded along the Green Fork,” said Uthor Underleaf, who seemed to know these local heroes well. “That’s him upon the dais, the uncle of the bride. Lucas Nayland is down from Flag’s Mire, he should not be discounted. Nor should Ser Mortimer Boggs, of Crackclaw Point. Elsewise, this should be a tourney of household knights and village heroes. Kirby Pimm and Galtry the Green are the best of those, though neither is a match for Lord Butterwell’s good-son, Black Tom Heddle. A nasty bit of business, that one. He won the hand of His Lordship’s eldest daughter by killing three of her other suitors, it’s said, and once unhorsed the Lord of Casterly Rock.”
“What, young Lord Tybolt?” asked Ser Maynard.
“No, the old Grey Lion, the one who died in the spring.” That was how men spoke of those who had perished during the Great Spring Sickness. He died in the spring. Tens of thousands had died in the spring, among them a king and two young princes.
“Do not slight Ser Buford Bulwer,” said Kyle the Cat. “The Old Ox slew forty men upon the Redgrass Field.”
“And every year his count grows higher,” said Ser Maynard. “Bulwer’s day is done. Look at him. Past sixty, soft and fat, and his right eye is good as blind.”
“Do not trouble to search the hall for the champion,” a voice behind Dunk said. “Here I stand, sers. Feast your eyes.”
Dunk turned to find Ser John the Fiddler looming over him, a half smile on his lips. His white silk doublet had lagged sleeves lined with red satin, so long their points drooped down past his knees. A heavy silver chain looped across his chest, studded with huge dark amethysts whose color matched his eyes. That chain is worth as much as everything I own, Dunk thought.
The wine had colored Ser Glendon’s cheeks and inflamed his pimples. “Who are you, to make such boasts?”
“They call me John the Fiddler.” “Are you a musician or a warrior?”
“I can make sweet song with either lance or resined bow, as it happens. Every wedding needs a singer, and every tourney needs a mystery knight. May I join you? Butterwell was good enough to place me on the dais, but I prefer the company of my fellow hedge knights to fat pink ladies and old men.” The Fiddler clapped Dunk upon the shoulder. “Be a good fellow and shove over, Ser Duncan.”
Dunk shoved over. “You are too late for food, ser.”
“No matter. I know where Butterwell’s kitchens are. There is still some wine, I trust?” The Fiddler smelled of oranges and limes, with a hint of some strange eastern spice beneath. Nutmeg, perhaps. Dunk could not have said. What did he know of nutmeg?
“Your boasting is unseemly,” Ser Glendon told the Fiddler.
“Truly? Then I must beg for your forgiveness, ser. I would never wish to give offense to any son of Fireball.”
That took the youth aback. “You know who I am?” “Your father’s son, I hope.”
“Look,” said Ser Kyle the Cat. “The wedding pie.”
Six kitchen boys were pushing it through the doors, upon a wide wheeled cart. The pie was brown and crusty and immense, and there were noises coming from inside it, squeaks and squawks and thumps. Lord and Lady Butterwell descended from the dais to meet it, sword in hand. When they cut it open, half a hundred birds burst forth to fly around the hall. In other wedding feasts Dunk had attended, the pies had been filled with doves or songbirds, but inside this one were bluejays and skylarks, pigeons and doves, mockingbirds and nightingales, small brown sparrows and a great red parrot. “One-and-twenty sorts of birds,” said Ser Kyle. “One-and-twenty sorts of bird droppings,” said Ser Maynard.
“You have no poetry in your heart, ser.”
“You have shit upon your shoulder.”
“This is the proper way to fill a pie,” Ser Kyle sniffed, cleaning off his tunic. “The pie is meant to be the marriage, and a true marriage has in it many sorts of things—joy and grief, pain and pleasure, love and lust and loyalty. So it is fitting that there be birds of many sorts. No man ever truly knows what a new wife will bring him.”
“Her cunt,” said Plumm, “or what would be the point?”
Dunk shoved back from the table. “I need a breath of air.” It was a piss he needed, truth be told, but in fine company like this, it was more courteous to talk of air. “Pray excuse me.”
“Flurry back, ser,” said the Fiddler. “There are jugglers yet to come, and you do not want to miss the bedding.”
Outside, the night wind lapped at Dunk like the tongue of some great beast. The hard-packed earth of the yard seemed to move beneath his feet ... or it might be that he was swaying.
The lists had been erected in the center of the outer yard. A three-tiered wooden viewing stand had been raised beneath the walls, so Lord Butterwell and his highborn guests would be well shaded on their cushioned seats. There were tents at both ends of the lists where the knights could don their armor, with racks of tourney lances standing ready. When the wind lifted the banners for an instant, Dunk could smell the whitewash on the tilting barrier. He set off in search of the inner ward. He had to hunt up Egg and send the boy to the master of the games to enter him in the lists. That was a squire’s duty.
Whitewalls was strange to him, however, and somehow Dunk got turned around. He found himself outside the kennels, where the hounds caught scent of him and began to bark and howl. They want to tear my throat out, he thought, or else they want the capon in my cloak. He
doubled back the way he’d come, past the sept. A woman went running past, breathless with laughter, a bald knight in hard pursuit. The man kept falling, until finally the woman had to come back and help him up. I should slip into the sept and ask the Seven to make that knight my first opponent, Dunk thought, but that would have been impious. What I really need is a privy, not a prayer. There were some bushes near at hand, beneath a flight of pale stone steps. Those will serve. He groped his way behind them and unlaced his breeches. His bladder had been full to bursting. The piss went on and on.
Somewhere above, a door came open. Dunk heard footfalls on the steps, the scrape of boots on stone. “... beggar’s feast you’ve laid before us Without Bittersteel ...”
“Bittersteel be buggered,” insisted a familiar voice. “No bastard can be trusted, not even him. A few victories will bring him over the water fast enough.”
Lord Peake. Dunk held his breath ... and his piss.
“Easier to speak of victories than to win them.” This speaker had a deeper voice than Peake, a bass rumble with an angry edge to it. “Old Milkblood expected the boy to have it, and so will all the rest. Glib words and charm cannot make up for that.”
“A dragon would. The prince insists the egg will hatch. He dreamed it, just as he once dreamed his brothers dead. A living dragon will win us all the swords that we would want.”
“A dragon is one thing, a dream’s another. I promise you, Bloodraven is not off dreaming. We need a warrior, not a dreamer. Is the boy his father’s son?”
“Just do your part as promised, and let me concern myself with that. Once we have Butterwell’s gold and the swords of House Frey, Harrenhal will follow, then the Brackens. Otho knows he cannot hope to stand ...”
The voices were fading as the speakers moved away. Dunk’s piss began to flow again. He gave his cock a shake, and laced himself back up. “His father’s son,” he muttered. Who were they speaking of? Fireball’s son?
By the time he emerged from under the steps, the two lords were well across the yard. He almost shouted after them, to make them show their faces, but thought better of it. He was alone and unarmed, and half-drunk besides. Maybe more than half. He stood there frowning for a moment, then marched back to the hall.
Inside, the last course had been served and the frolics had begun. One of Lord Frey’s daughters played “Two Hearts That Beat As One” on the high harp, very badly. Some jugglers flung flaming torches at each other for a while, and some tumblers did cartwheels in the air. Lord Frey’s nephew began to sing “The Bear and the Maiden Fair” while Ser Kirby Pimm beat out time upon the table with a wooden spoon. Others joined in, until the whole hall was bellowing, “A bear! A bear! All black and brown, and covered with hair!” Lord Caswell passed out at the table with his face in a puddle of wine, and Lady Vyrwel began to weep, though no one was quite certain as to the cause of her distress.
All the while the wine kept flowing. The rich Arbor reds gave way to local vintages, or so the Fiddler said; if truth be told, Dunk could not tell the difference. There was hippocras as well, he had to try a cup of that. It might be a year before I have another. The other hedge knights, fine fellows all, had begun to talk of women they had known. Dunk found himself wondering where Tanselle was tonight. He knew where Lady Rohanne was—abed at Coldmoat Castle, with old Ser Eustace beside her, snoring through his mustache—so he tried not to think of her. Do they ever think of me? he wondered.
His melancholy ponderings were rudely interrupted when a troupe of painted dwarfs came bursting from the belly of a wheeled wooden pig to chase Lord Butterwell’s fool about the tables, walloping him with inflated pig’s bladders that made rude noises every time a blow was struck. It was the funniest thing Dunk had seen in years, and he laughed with all the rest. Lord Frey’s son was so taken by their antics that he joined in, pummeling the wedding guests with a bladder borrowed from a dwarf. The child had the most irritating laugh Dunk had ever heard, a high shrill hiccup of a laugh that made him want to take the boy over a knee or throw him down a well. If he hits me with that bladder, I may do it.
“There’s the lad who made this marriage,” Ser Maynard said as the chinless urchin went screaming past.
“How so?” The Fiddler held up an empty wine cup, and a passing server filled it.
Ser Maynard glanced toward the dais, where the bride was feeding cherries to her husband. “His Lordship will not be the first to butter that biscuit. His bride was deflowered by a scullion at the Twins, they say. She would creep down to the kitchens to meet him. Alas, one night that little brother of hers crept down after her. When he saw them making the two-backed beast, he let out a shriek, and cooks and guardsmen came running and found milady and her pot boy coupling on the slab of marble where the cook rolls out the dough, both naked as their name day and floured up from head to heel.”
That cannot be true, Dunk thought. Lord Butterwell had broad lands, and pots of yellow gold. Why would he wed a girl who’d been soiled by a kitchen scullion, and give away his dragon’s egg to mark the match? The Freys of the Crossing were no nobler than the Butterwells. They owned a bridge instead of cows, that was the only difference. Lords. Who can ever understand them? Dunk ate some nuts and pondered what he’d overheard whilst pissing. Dunk the drunk, what is it that you think you heard? He had another cup of hippocras, since the first had tasted good. Then he lay his head down atop his folded arms and closed his eyes just for a moment, to rest them from the smoke.