Chapter#214
"Yes," she said. "I want to set up a peace corps as Tashka suggested."
"What?!" he lifted his eyes in horror from the board. "But my dear, what will a peace corps do?"
"They could guard the borders or police the internal problems of the region," Arianna argued. "That is not important, there is plenty of work a peace corps could do. What is important is that we would be saying: We are not interested in war and maintaining heavily armed troops. We want to maintain peace across the country as a whole. Our officers could be trained not in fighting but in skills of negotiation for peace."
"Oh yes!" Clair exclaimed. "I can just hear the thundering hooves of every other region's cavalry coming to over-run us if we do such a thing."
"No indeed," Arianna's face flushed with indignation. "Pava says he will set up a peace corps and Maive el Vaie says she will look into it."
Clair burst out laughing. "Tell me what they said truly," he suggested, his slanted eyes glinting sidelong at her in his good humour.
Her wide red mouth bunched up and she scowled. Finally she admitted: "Pava said if he has a peace corps it will annoy the Generals' strategic staff in Turaine who refuse to give him a position in their offices even though he worked to support Tashka in the occupation of Arventa and that he can design a new double-breasted uniform for them to wear. And Maive said if Pava is going to have a peace corps she is going to have a much better one and they will have a triple-breasted uniform!" she burst out laughing herself at that. "But Clair, it is Tashka's idea. If Tashka starts a peace corps in H'las..."
"My dear," he replied in a voice dripping with scorn, "the day that General-Lord Tashka el Maien van H'las of the offices of the strategic staff in Port H'las starts a peace corps, I will hang up my weaponry and go to the back hills of Sietter in a carriage to scrub kitchen tables. I have said it and you may hold me to my word."
"You are being unreasonable," she complained. "What of the officers we have in the region currently without employment? Think of Commander-Sir Darien, we are wasting his potential..."
"La la la, I am not listening!" he sang. "I refuse to have a peace corps in Sietter. Make your move, my dear."
"It is your move," she replied.
He looked blankly at the board, trying to figure out what she had moved where. After a while he tentatively sidled a priest across the board. (A tinny broken earring. You understand, my dear, the earring means the priest's doxy! is that not splendid? / Oh yes, very entertaining, my dear, I do prithou not mention it to the children.)
"Hanya makes excellent progress with his drawing," Arianna said.
He looked suspiciously at her. This change of subject could not possibly mean she was going to give her peace corps idea the go-by. She looked innocently back at him, her blue eyes limpid in her virtuous biddable face.
He knew then that she was definitely going ahead with it. She would pick a time when he was not thinking about it and slide some innocuous looking scheme in. Before he knew it he would be getting cross letters from Major General-Sir Dar Vaie to enquire what his thoughts might be on this project my Lady van Sietter was promoting. And Darien, a man of such great honour. He had courteously picked a time when Clair happened to be away with the boys - teaching them to pitch a tent and camp in the hills - to come and swear allegiance so that he could swear to Arianna's fingers without embarrassing Clair. Poor Darien would be obliged to become an officer in a peace corps! Clair sighed heavily.
"Yes," he said. "I have suggested that Vidor Hyaline should bring his own children to the castle school and give all the children art lessons."
"Mm," she said, moving another bit of broken bowl out.
As they played the late summer light became blue and crept magically around the flowers in the courtyard. They became nodding white and pale angelic shapes breathing perfume out in the soft warm air. A servant came to light the candles but they lifted their heads, the dark-haired and the blonde in the soft blue twilight, and they said there was sufficient light still.
As usual Arianna won and Clair sulked about it. He turned his head pettishly aside. She looked at his lean tanned neck with a sinew standing out in it and her own blue and gold jewel swinging gently in his ear in the dim blue light from the windows. His dark-haired head and tanned lean neck rose gracefully from the white lace collar of his blue shirt.
He was such a lovely. She stood suddenly up and came round the corner of the table and pressed her mouth softly under his ear. Clair sat quite still, staring away into the twilit courtyard, feeling the soft wet pressure of her sweet wide mouth on his neck.
She stood up away from him and began putting the chess pieces away, he reached out to help her.
They walked up the stairs by the sitting-room to her door and he turned to give her the usual quick chaste kiss. She stooped her head away from his kiss, taking hold of the lace edge to his shirt, her fingers fiddling in between the lace stars and suns and moons. He looked at her with one eyebrow raised in query.
"H-Hanyan does not have nightmares so much the more?" she asked him.
"No, it is some weeks now he has slept through the night," he answered.
"So... mights't come... and sleep in my room?" She was so shy about asking it, she could not even bear to lift her eyes to him: her husband. She looked down at her long lightly tanned fingers fiddling in the white lace edge of his shirt.