At once the people leaped to their feet, and shouting “Light! Light! God sees us!” began embracing and congratulating each other, while servants hurried in to light tall candles. Lalette found herself in the grip of a woman with a haired mole on her chin, whose over-ample contours were laced into a costume from one of the knightly legends. The woman capered up and down as she talked.
“Isn’t it wonderful?” she cried in a high voice. “We are so glad to have you come! Ser Pyax never spends less than a hundred scudi on his festival! You are the one who witched Count Cleudi, aren’t you? The other two Pyax boys couldn’t come for the ceremony, but they have no sisters, you know. God never fails as the world turns. You must try some of our Zigraner wine.”
A servant was at Lalette’s side, with the beverage in a huge silver flagon on a huge silver tray, and Gaidu Pyax was offering her one of his paired festival-cups, curiously carved, and so heavy it must be pure gold. “My aunt Zanzanna,” he said. “A dog bit her when she was a baby and never since has she been able to control her tongue.”
“I will bite you and drive you madder than I am,” replied the woman with the mole. Lalette looked around over the top of her cup from wine strongly flavored with resin. Everybody was talking at once and in all directions, disjointedly. The room was a little smaller than it had seemed in the dark, but still large, with heavy hangings worked to tapestry at all the windows and pictures occupying every fingerspace of wall between. The chair where the senior Pyax had sat was jewelled around its top. At one end of the room musicians were setting their instruments in order. Most of the people were approaching middle age and were of a strongly Zigraner cast of countenance, but there was one girl of surprising loveliness, blonde enough to be a Kjermanash. The man with her did not look like one of these people either.
Now the musicians struck up and everybody began dancing, even quite an old woman in a corner who had no partner, but stepped alone through the figures. The groups did not form patterns, but each pair toed it by themselves until they reached the end of the measure, when all formed a circle, partners pledging each other in their festival-cups and crying; “Light! Light!” Gaidu Pyax danced well, swinging Lalette strongly when the step called for it. Food was presently brought in, and from time to time a servant would summon the elder Pyax, whereupon he would go to the door and return with a new guest on his arm, clapping hands to make everyone stop what they were doing, whereupon all shouted “You are welcome!” as before, and there would be more drinking of pledges.
Lalette began to feel quite giddy and happy, no longer minding that all these people seemed to be talking about how terribly expensive everything was, or staring at her across their shoulders, as though she were an actress. She did not think anyone here would betray her to the provosts; the women all seemed to be trying to be kind. The thought of what Dame Leonalda would say if she knew her daughter were in such a place struck Lalette as funny, and she sat down, laughing softly to herself over it, to find Aunt Zanzanna bending over her.
“Would you like to lie down for a while in your room? We have such a nice one for you.”
It was easier to walk with the older woman’s arm around her. The room was up two flights, heavily bowered with hangings, and Lalette thought she noted a scent of musk as she lay down on the rich bed in all her clothes. The musk made her feel sick; when she returned from the cabinet she felt so weak she had to lie down again, but the melody of the volalelle they were dancing down there would not let her alone, it kept going round and round inside her head as she slipped down through drowsing wakefulness to full dream and an uneasy sleep. It must have been nearly day when she woke again, and she felt stiff. The scrape of violins still came from below; for a few minutes she considered returning to the festival, then slipped off her clothes and got into bed.
IV
She woke again to see complete spotted sunlight bright across the wall, wondering for the first sleepy seconds where she was. It was a footstep that had roused her; she turned her head and saw Gaidu Pyax looking down, with spots on his costume.