(1312-03-13) The Philosophical Pond
Summary: Which Andrei ends up splashing about in, having anticipated only a solitary stroll in the gardens of Eisheth. Lucky fellow.
RL Date: 12/03/2020 - 13/03/2020
Related: Scholars and Coffee.
azalais andrei 

Jardins d’Eisheth — Marsilikos

Tranquility and beauty of nature is what those coming to the gardens of Eisheth usually seek. There is a playfulness in the arrangement of paths through the greenery, and the way four of them wind to the center, where there is a pond surrounded by a few elm trees, beside an area with wooden benches and tables beneath an arbor, where ivy winds about wooden posts, and a roof of colorfully glazed tiles offers shelter from the sun but also moderate rain.

Bushes are trimmed, and the green is kept short, so that people coming here can enjoy the dramatic view over the coast all the way to the sea, with the harbor and the citadel slightly to the north. Slightly towards the south and close by is the infirmary with the herb garden beside, where a variety of plants used for healing and treating certain illness are grown under the immaculate care of the healers. Towards the east, a path leads towards the temple district, where the dominant structure of the Temple of Eisheth looms, the white marble shimmering almost otherworldly on late afternoons, when it catches the warm, orange light of the setting sun.


Andrei Anghelescu strolls along one of those carefully raked garden paths, still obeying the instructions he was given by Niobe the healer slash courtesan slash whatever it is she does, something administrative from the looks of it. He is learning to like these walks. Not only does he learn a lot about the city from them, the city is beautiful. And of course, he still draws a fair bit of attention in his foreign-cut black coat, walking stick and monocle. Which is good because the more people are busy staring at him, the fewer are paying attention to another man with a face that can easily be mistaken for Andrei's, and that other man is currently negotiating with elements of this city that absolutely do not want to draw attention.

He doesn't like just being the diversion, letting Szimfonia take all the risks. He doesn't like it at all. But as things stand, there's one of the brothers who can come out on top in a fight, and it's not the one with the ruined lungs.

Let us hope the wandering foreigner isn’t too disappointed in his estimation of Azalaïs, when he witnesses her this afternoon trailed at a decorous distance by a pair of burly guardsmen in a dark purple livery badged with flames.

It must be her — she’s wearing a cream-coloured cloak open over exactly the same leafy garments she had on two days ago, with the hood down and her red mane flaming free to her waist. Her hands, her rings, and the colourful stones set in them are hidden beneath a pair of soft leather gloves dyed the same dusky pink as the silk thread which embroidered her cabbage roses. She’s a vision as springlike as the first small flowers beginning to burst up amongst Eisheth’s well-kept greenery — so to the companion with whom she walks arm in arm, whose cloak is a cheerful primrose yellow and buttoned shut against the breeze off the water.

At a distance the likeness between them is chiefly a matter of their hair, the yellow girl’s being the same red but woven through with several delicate braids; as they come closer the affinity deepens, though they seem somewhat separated in years. The girl is no longer a child but not quite a woman: the awkward age, anywhere else in the world, but being d’Angeline her long limbs move gracefully and her youthful skin is without flaw, pale and translucent as the finest porcelain. She’s speaking — Azalaïs’s head is tilted, attending — neither seems aware of Andrei’s dark figure ahead of them, until the girl’s gaze happens to wander across him and her steps hesitate. Azalaïs looks up, and she smiles. One pink-gloved hand tightens on her companion’s arm in reassurance. The other gives Andrei a little wave.

The Chowatti (definitely a) merchant stops in mid-stride and offers a light bow suitable of a member of his class towards someone of noble birth; a little deeper, perhaps, than to most — perhaps he did indeed catch the cue at the Black Pearl when the lady was referred to as Her Excellency. The greeting is extended to the younger lady as well; the two women look alike enough that they are clearly related and it never hurts to be on the safe side.

Seemingly unarmed, the tall merchant proves no immediate threat to the eye of guards who expect no trouble. "A pleasant day, is it not, my ladies?" Because Andrei Anghelescu is very much the kind of man who cannot resist, who must test the limits of anything that glowers at him while wearing a sword, and he absolutely needs to know whether those guards — like a certain young Siovalese lord's — will immediately put him on their list of people we'd like to gut like fish.

The purple L’Envers guardsmen halt when their charges do, and move again likewise. One man continues scanning the horizon, updating his mental register of who is where in the gardens and moving in what direction; the other never looks away from their charges. By default he’s gazing toward Andrei too, but the guards noted the Carpathian menace well before the ladies did, and they haven’t spotted him doing anything suspicious yet, and now with Azalaïs clearly recognising the stranger and extending her pink-gloved paw… They seem to pay him no particular mind. There’ll always be an eye on him, but no more than that.

“A little brisk,” in Azalaïs’s opinion, offered along with her hand and her smile, “but the sky is so big and so blue and so beautiful, we’ve been thinking all day of having new gowns made to match it. My lord, will you please tell me your name again? I’m not sure I could remember it well enough to make a proper introduction,” she confesses.

Anghelescu brushes his lips against the air above the Marquise's knuckles as courtesy dictates, then straightens up with a small smile. "I am Andrei Anghelescu of Podgrabczyna, my lady. It is quite a mouthful to the d'Angeline tongue, I know." He smiles at the younger lady as well.

“Thank you.” And Azalaïs smiles proudly and presses Andrei’s fingertips with her own, as if to pronounce such sweet and exotic syllables were a feat for him as well. “Lord Andrei Anghelescu of—” Infinitesimal hesitation. “The Chowat,” she decides, reclaiming her correctly kissed hand to gesture with, “may I make you known to my daughter, the lady Grace L’Envers?”

And the younger redhead dips into a shallow curtsey, not to a mysterious and slightly alarming foreigner, but to her mother’s friend. “My lord, how do you do?” she murmurs.

With a small, lopsided smile the indeed not very threatening foreigner says, "I am as well as I can be, all things considered, thank you. But I fear I must correct you — I am no d'Angeline lord, and there are probably those who would take offence if I were to imply otherwise. I trust that you too are well, Lady Grace?"

The implications go over Grace’s pretty braided head, as she looks to her mother for confirmation and then back to Andrei. She ventures, “Yes, monsieur, I am well.”

“… Sweetheart,” suggests Azalaïs to her daughter, watching Andrei’s brave face, “why don’t you go along to the temple garden and see if you can pluck a leaf of thyme for me? Just one,” she cautions; “we mustn’t impose too much upon our ancestress’s generosity.”

The girl answers obediently. “Yes, maman.” She doesn’t know why she’s being sent away; still, she doesn’t sulk about it, she just gives another little curtsey to the grown-ups, so perfunctory as to seem habitual, and passes by Andrei along the path toward the temple whence he came.

One of the purple guards peels off in pursuit of her, keeping the same distance between them. Azalaïs’s eyes too follow the flicker of her daughter’s yellow cloak through the gardens. Then she looks to Andrei and offers in a low voice: “I hope you’ve had good news today.”

“You have a lovely daughter, Your Excellency.” Contrary to what one might expect, the foreigner’s voice is neither fawning or … going other places… as he makes that observation. Grace is a beautiful specimen of the human species. And more importantly, one with manners. “I have no children of my own, regrettably. But you must have been very young when you became a mother, or is the famous d’Angeline blood playing a trick on my eyes again?”

Thus addressed, Azalaïs’s strong chin lifts subtly with her next breath.

“Thank you,” is her modest answer to this customary compliment from those who meet her daughter for the first time. “I suppose I was the usual age for marriage, more or less,” she adds after a moment; “my Grace is just thirteen but she’s tall for her age, I think, because she takes after me… You’re not married, then, monsieur?” A frank question posed with a frank gaze, bereft of d’Angeline insinuations. “Or perhaps… not yet blessed?” she asks more gently.

“I am not.” Anghelescu glances after Grace one final time, and then looks back to her youthful mother. “I feel I should perhaps point out that I am not looking to be, either.” He offers a small, wry smile; surely he would not be as naive or ambitious as to set his eyes on the daughter of a Marquise anyhow, should he in fact be in the market for domestic bliss or dynastic continuation.

And then the last half of that question dawns on him and he adds with a small laugh, “Nor indeed blessed. I have spent most my life with the army or running political errands, my lady. No time for such pursuits.”

Azalaïs’s eyebrows furrow above her gentle seafoam eyes, as she gazes up at Andrei and sorts through his disclaimers and their implications— and then she smiles in sudden understanding, and bites her lip upon her own musical laughter. Just a couple of notes escape.

“… Oh, monsieur, I’m sure you have many fine qualities,” she promises him, amused but not unkindly so, “but when the time comes, I’ll look to find my daughter a husband of her own age,” she says in a new, firmer tone, “and her own land. I looked up a map of the Chowat, and I saw where it is, and I can’t imagine… How strange it must have been for your mother,” she marvels softly, her flame-red hair stirring about her shoulders as she gives a slow shake of her head, “to travel such a distance and to make her life there, so far from the world she knew.”

Anghelescu quirks an eyebrow, surprised — and then mentally corrects a few assumptions that he has allowed himself to make about the d’Angeline gentry which were clearly erroneous. Then he nods. “The Chowat is no place for the d’Angeline. Our customs are different, and the expectations placed on ladies certainly differ. A flower thus transplanted never blooms, I am led to believe — although how exactly that works for tulip bulbs is beyond me.”

With a small smile he offers his arm. “I am instructed to walk as much as I am able, for the sake of my health. Perhaps you might care to join me in my stroll around this garden. Or am I being presumptuous, approaching a Marquise in such a fashion?”

Azalaïs’s gaze remains steady upon Andrei’s face as she drinks in what he has to say of his home, nodding thoughtfully at his floral metaphor; and then she places her pink-gloved hand upon the bend of his elbow. “I’d be delighted to have a little grown-up company, monsieur,” she admits, crinkling her nose at him in a manner which strips her words of all possible innuendo. It’s just that she spends so much time closeted with a thirteen-year-old, you know?

“Perhaps you’ll tell me something more of the customs you have for the ladies of the Chowat—?” she suggests, cocking her head at him as they begin to walk together. The remaining purple guard follows, probably beyond eavesdropping distance. “A drawing on a sheet of parchment doesn’t really tell one very much. Well, I suppose it could,” she adds, in fairness, “but the one I found in the library didn’t, particularly. Only names and distances,” she sighs.

“I am finding that the main difference lies in the ways of the mind,” the foreigner replies, starting down the path at a pace that is by no means breath-taking. “The d’Angeline, at least the upper classes, believe very firmly in obligation to one’s seat and house, but also in personal freedom. I think the best way to describe this difference is perhaps to say, that to my eye you are all men?”

The ridiculousness of such a statement does not elude him and his blue eyes glitter with amusement. “You are obviously not a man, my lady. D’Angeline ladies, however, expect a freedom of mind and body that we do not possess. It is not unusual to see a lord of my country — meaning the Chowat, not just Podgrabczyna — sport a mistress or a courtesan, a companion chosen for love or the quality of her company. The idea that his wedded lady might turn up with a similar gentleman on her arm? I will not say scandalous, because the idea is simply not conceivable.”

The idea that she’s a man provokes Azalaïs again to laughter; this time she doesn’t swallow it but lets it ring out in the cool, green-scented air. “… No,” she agrees, flicking a sideways smile at Andrei from beyond the curtain of red hair which serves almost to separate them, “I’m not a man; at least, I don’t think so,” she chuckles. “But you’ve learnt to conceive the unconceivable, then, monsieur? Since you’ve been in Terre d’Ange? I wonder what ideas Chowati ladies conceive of instead?” she murmurs, this third question the most thoughtful one.

“I have learned, in very short time, that I am in a country not my own, and as they say — when in Tiberium, do as the Tiberians do.” Anghelescu doesn’t object in the slightest to the lady’s laughter; he clearly does not feel that she is laughing at him. “That question, though, I must owe you an answer to. Whatever secrets Chowatti ladies keep, they would not share with me even if I were to ask — for fairly obvious reasons. I do find your ways confusing but also, at least in some ways, quite sensible. At least you save yourselves a lot of dramatics and intrigue by simply considering it the norm for a man — or a woman — to take whatever lover they please and make little fuss about it. I have known men to stab each other over one man bedding another man’s woman — I find that your arrangement is probably a fair deal better when it comes to the long term survival.”

The red curtain falls further forward between them; Azalaïs’s smile can only be heard in her voice. “Oh, we still have our dramatics and our intrigues,” she disclaims ruefully, “some of the time. But they sound less violent than yours, and less… enclosed. What you say about keeping secrets sounds rather sad to me,” she admits; “that when ladies of the Chowat do take lovers — they must do, sometimes? — they probably share so little, and trust so little.”

“It would surprise me very much if they did not.” Anghelescu hitches a shoulder — the one not attached to the arm which he offered to the Marquise. “I am told that it is human nature to seek company. It is a matter which I have not given much speculation to — I am not myself married, and thus, I need not worry whether my wife takes a lover.”

He offers a small, lopsided smile at that thought, though. “If it’s any consolation, things tend to be a little more — reasonable, among commoners. The laws are no different but on the whole, the closer to the ground you get, the more common sense people have. Making a large ado about lineages and dynasties and the true blood of whatever ancestor a man prides himself in is a folly of aristocrats. Common men have real problems.”

“They must, monsieur,” is Azalaïs’s quiet comment upon the romantic arrangements of Chowati ladies; “they are made of the same flesh as other women, after all.”

Then Andrei’s talk takes a turn toward commoners and common sense and she nods along, silently agreeing. “I think children are to be prized less for how they come into the world, than for the love they bring into our lives as we raise them… Of course, I can’t deny that in Terre d’Ange,” she suggests gently, “we nobles are proud of our particular heritage. Women as well as men. I’m rather proud myself,” she admits, “to be a Scion of Eisheth. I’ve never been the vessel of a real miracle or anything like that,” she admits, with a quick glance up at Andrei’s face and a crinkle of her nose, “but through me Eisheth’s blood passed to my daughter, and perhaps one day… well, who knows,” she murmurs, “what miracles her future may yet hold.”

“I’m tempted to argue that perhaps you do in fact have a little more to be proud of. The blood of angels is something that we do not have. A man is a man — and though he may embody the traits of a famous ancestor, he is still a man. I pride myself in my name and heritage, but I am not blind to the fact that if I were to take a wife, some day, my best choice would be telling her to at least make certain her lover is fair-haired and then ask no questions.” The Carpathian shrugs again. “For all I know, I may be descended from some handsome peasant. Who knows?”

“I’ll admit that I have never paid much attention to such matters, at least no more than I had to. Perhaps this is why I am honestly a little puzzled as to how much importance the d’Angeline place on the matters of the heart — or other bits.” Anghelescu chuckles softly. “It does seem to be — a rather big factor. I had the — I want to say pleasure, but let’s leave it at honour — of attending the Duchesse’s winter ball in a capacity of arm candy for one of the ladies. I spent an entire evening watching young, very well dressed peacocks try to talk just as well dressed young ladies into their beds. I must confess that what went through my head at the time was along the lines of, do these people not have anything better to do?”

Next to him Azalaïs is content to walk and to listen for a while. She encourages Andrei with the occasional meditative murmur; then, when he mentions the heart and the other bits, she glances up to see his face and her thick red hair falls away from magnificent cheekbones faintly pinkened by their conversation. “… Perhaps that night they didn’t have anything better to do,” she posits, and then she looks down again at the path curving away before them. “It must have been a night of revelry in the dark of winter, after all,” she muses, “and many people do like to end such a night in lovemaking and warmth. Have you not your own winter festivals of the kind?” In the Chowat, she means. She’s thinking of the Longest Night.

“We do. I have never been one for celebrations. I attend the religious services that I must and put in what appearance is expected, and then leave when I can.” A small, wry smile accompanies that statement. “I am certain that a lady of such elevated rank as your own might understand why, Marquise. Surely you are under some obligation to withdraw in order for your subjects to breathe easier as well.”

“Well,” and Azalaïs breathes out a soft sigh, “if we’re speaking strictly, monsieur, that’s my daughter-in-law’s obligation now… But of course, that’s true,” she agrees, her pink-gloved hand giving his elbow a quick squeeze. “Our people deserve to enjoy themselves at such times and it’s far likelier they will do when they’re not minding their manners for us.” In which half-wistful remark she naturally includes Andrei, whose position in Pod-whatever she has some idea of even if he remains reticent of titles, lineages, proper forms of address.

Anghelescu does quirk an eyebrow over the monocle at that. “Your daughter-in-law? My lady, the angel blood must be playing tricks. Surely you are not of age to have a wedded son.”

The lustrous red head half a foot below Andrei’s own shakes at that. “No, monsieur,” Azalaïs answers quietly; “Grace is the only child of my own body, but I have stepchildren as well, my late husband’s children from other mothers. I think it is a consequence of our d’Angeline way of life, that sometimes our families can grow quite large, and— complicated.”

“Ah. Yes. And these children of other mothers are recognised because that is the d’Angeline way.” Anghelescu nods his understanding of a delicate subject — or two, though at the time being he decides to not comment on the unspoken promise to young Grace, of not being stuck with a husband substantially older than herself. “In my homeland they would not be. A child outside of marriage may be cared for and raised in the household, but it will not be given the name of its father. My manservant is my half-brother, but he takes his mother’s name rather than our father’s.”

“… I see,” Azalaïs breathes out. The lift of her eyebrows, and her pensive expression, remain somewhat occluded by her flowing hair. “Well, the elder children came from my husband’s first marriage,” she goes on, speaking by the bye of men and women about her own age, “though one of our sons was born of his liaison with a Jasmine courtesan of common birth. When the Court of Night-Blooming Flowers turned the boy away, my husband took him into his household and gave him his name. In Terre d’Ange,” she says simply, “the names and the forms may vary from family to family, and the children of marriage always come first, but a nobleman’s son would not be made a servant.” She pauses. “Nor,” she adds delicately, “a noblewoman’s. Such children of love are held precious amongst us. I can’t think that wrong, monsieur.”

“I feel somehow obliged to point out that I did not make Szimfonia my servant,” Anghelescu murmurs with obvious amusement. “He is a freeman, not a slave or indentured servant. I did offer him employment and good wages, and as it happens, I am rather fond of him. He was raised in La Serenissima as it happens. In some ways, my brother is far more cosmopolitan than I.”

“Really? I’d like to meet him,” says Azalaïs, just as the breeze cheekily infiltrates her veil of red hair and wafts it backward, revealing her expression to be dreamy, unstudied, gentle. “That is,” and again she flushes faintly, “I haven’t met anyone from La Serenissima either.”

She doesn’t trouble to discipline her hair, but lets the wind do what it will.

“Perhaps some day you may, although I suspect that my poor man might find himself terribly intimidated at speaking to a Marquise,” Anghelescu notes, blue eyes still sparkling; he is clearly the kind of man who finds some strange amusement in conversations that are not intended to be particularly funny. A fancy for banter or wordplay, perhaps. “It is my understanding that at least parts of the gentry here in Terre d’Ange is not afraid of dirtying their sleeves rubbing elbows with the baseborn. This is — not the case where we are from. The higher the rank of the aristocrat, the greater the fear of the commoner — and with good reason. Some of our princes and voivodes deployed quite… forceful methods.”

“Mmm…” Azalaïs murmurs, listening, and then, “mmm,” again and more deeply as she forbears to dig into those forceful methods, at least not today. “But perhaps if your brother is as cosmopolitan as you say, he may have spoken with marquises before, in La Serenissima—?” she suggests, as near as she has come thus far to a tease. “Besides,” she adds, lifting her chin and smiling wryly up at her companion, “he is a nobleman’s son like you, and so he might hold his head high in our land — and I am only a dowager marquise, and that counts for far less, I assure you.” Which demotion she seems to accept with perfect equanimity.

“And thus your ways and customs remain puzzling,” the Carpathian notes with good humour. “To us, a highborn lady will always outrank a baseborn man with only the last name of his mother. Even if he were to be recognised by our father — an act which at this point would require a considerable feat of necromancy — my brother would ever be the Bastard, ever not quite recognised in polite society. There are certainly some who would argue that it is better to be a common man in a secure position than to be a lord’s bastard in a world where bastards are viewed as a threat to any man of pure blood.”

He shrugs that shoulder ever so lightly again. “I do not question Szimfonia’s loyalty. In this, some would call me a fool.”

They have come some way along a curving path and arrived again almost where they began, farther from the sea and nearer to a bright patch of yellow bobbing toward them through all the green. Azalaïs’s hand tightens on Andrei’s arm, to halt their walk in her daughter’s sight.

“Perhaps, knowing what you know of your own world, you’ll say I’m foolish,” she offers gently, while they are still alone, “but I have seen such stories play out in their d’Angeline variations— monsieur,” and here she sounds earnest, “I think bastards only grow into a threat if they are raised so, and made to feel at every turn less than other children who grew from the same seed, as if they were always in an unfair competition and always fated to lose it… Just as I think that a wife who trusts her husband with her secrets, a wife who need not be afraid or ashamed, can speak to him frankly of what is in her heart — and he may ask her what questions he wishes without in turn fearing her answers, or her evasions, or her lies.” She shrugs her shoulders under her pale and creamy woollen cloak. “Of course those are ideals,” she admits, “but perhaps it is better to fail in grasping at an ideal, than not to reach for it.”

Perhaps the Carpathian disregards the Marquise’s words as the follies of women. Perhaps he simply finds it inappropriate to discuss such matters in front of children. Who knows? Perhaps he just doesn’t want to poison young Grace’s heart against the very ideal of marriage in the first place. Either way he acknowledges the redhead’s words with a slight nod and replies, “You are a woman of careful words and consideration, my lady. Our walk may be drawing towards an end but I should not reject the opportunity to speak another time. I will admit that I have not always been impressed with the depth of the philosophical pond amongst the d’Angeline gentry. Today I stand, perhaps, a little corrected.”

“The philosophical pond,” murmurs Azalaïs. She seems to be savouring Andrei’s phrase.

“… Monsieur, I too hope we’ll speak again,” she agrees suddenly, glancing up so that her eyes fleetingly meet his. “I feel I’ve hardly begun to hear the stories you might tell.”

But Grace is indeed hurrying nearer, her steps quickened by the recollection that she has been slow in completing her errand in the herb garden. Her young face is open and eager, her pale cheeks touched a rose-petal pink by the early spring wind coming off the sea. She holds out her hand to them as if offering her passport back into grown-up company: upon her leather-gloved palm there rests a single fresh-picked leaf of thyme, fragrant and green.

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