Of Swans and Ravens 🏳️‍🌈 (wlw) [ON HIATUS]

2: The Barn

The Equinox had come and gone, and the nation had feasted and danced in honour of the return of The Great Swan to the Lakes. The constellation of The Great Swan was rising every dusk, and as the nights became warmer, stories of the great creatures of legend were told around the last fires of the season. Spring was turning into summer.

The kitchen garden was awash with vivid colour as buds bloomed. Lush vines flowered and snaked around canes and trellises. Droplets of water slid down the steamy glasshouse panes, and the fragrance of flowers charged the humid air. The window mechanism, built by Margot's father years earlier, sat unwound and idle in its mount on the door. All six glasshouse windows gaped open to save velvety leaves from wilting in the heat.

The white goose's eggs had finally hatched in their little nest in the orchard, and four sweet white goslings had taken to waddling through the borders after their mother, pecking at buds after the spring showers. Margot would shoo the little family into the meadow every morning but by afternoon they would be back in the gardens, and Margot didn't have the heart to send them away twice in a day.

That afternoon Blanche and Adelaide were taking tea with Madame Celine and her daughter Rose, who were visiting from the nearby town of Acquarossa, a day's ride along the river towards Lago Maggiore. The visit by Madame Celine, one of the newer grandes dames of Leonia, had required meticulous planning on Blanche's part in order to maintain her burgeoning reputation at court since the Spring Ball. Presumably Celine and Rose were vital sources of information to Blanche about events in the Royal Palace, the habits of Prince Vittorio, and the fashions of the court.

Margot had been up at sunrise unpacking the new curtain fabrics, paintings, ornaments and other ephemera that Blanche had bought in Lago Maggiore, and echoed the new tastes of the court. She had kneaded fine flour all morning with Bertha to make pretty pastries for Adi and Rose to eat, and had pressed a sack of lemons and taken dozens of trips to the ice-house to make sorbetto for Celine.

"You'd better add more sugar to the sorbetto, Margot." Uma bustled into the long room with a bolt of gingham tucked under her arm. "Madame Celine has the sweetest tooth."

Margot tipped a generous spoonful of icing sugar into the cooling-engine and wound the handle. The air in the room became charged with tart lemony sweetness. "How do you know that?"

Uma unfurled her bolt of fabric across the long table and fished a weighty pair of pinking shears from the drawers. "I saw her attacking the dessert trays at the Spring Ball, of course!" Uma shook out each section of gingham, sending deliciously sugary gusts wafting through the air. "It was magical! The orchestra had lutes and cornets and dulcimers, and-"

"Did the Prince propose to Adi? Is that why the mistress is buying new things for the house?"

"The Prince? Oh yes, he was there. For a few moments."

Margot's hand stilled on the handle, the cooling-engine's whir quietening to a dull hum in her ears. "A few moments? I thought that the ball was his idea."

"It was! He even looked at Miss Adelaide! Three times!"

"Is that...good?" Margot's experiences of men were limited to weekend observation of Marino the groundsman, who lavished his fawning women with florid poetry and nosegays clipped from the formal gardens. Margot had certainly expected Adi to be worthy of more than a mere look from the Prince. 

"Crown Prince Vittorio never looks at women." Uma puffed out her chest like a scrawny pigeon. "Three looks is practically a marriage proposal. Well, that's what the palace footman told me. And the Prince spoke to Madame Blanche. I think." She folded the pinked edges of gingham, her forehead crinkled in concentration. "It doesn't matter anyway. Miss Adelaide will inherit Les Marches, which the Prince needs as border territory if the Aquilans attack us. He'll have to marry her."