by Jo Walton
“I’ll be back again in an hour or so,” she says.
“And these are the strangers?” the guard asks, looking at them curiously.
“Adolfo Tornabuoni and Letizio Petranero,” Miranda says smoothly, indicating them as she speaks. “Guests of Master Ficino. They sat down with Duke Orsino this morning.”
The guard bows to them, and they both return the bow, Dolly more smoothly than Tish. “See you all soon,” the guard says. “And be back by sunset, we’ve had orders from the Duke not to let anyone in later.”
“Sunset it is,” Miranda says. “We’ll hear the bell.” Then she says quietly to them, “Silly precaution, having the gate closed didn’t keep Caliban out last night and it wouldn’t today either, if he wants to come in.”
They walk through the gate and out the other side. The city wall is very nearly the same as it was when they last saw it, a day ago and in another world. It is in better repair, and without the clumps of weeds that were growing out of it in their time. (There are no bastions, but they don’t notice that detail particularly.) A steep hill rises up ahead of them. There is another stone wall, about a quarter the height of the city wall, running around the contour line halfway up the hill. Outside it there are trees and straggling clumps of purple-headed ragged robin, and they cannot see whatever is inside.
Miranda leads the way up the track towards the other wall. They come abruptly to a plain wooden door. It is painted light green, and the paint is peeling a little. Miranda draws a large key from the pouch at her belt and sets it in the lock. She moves her hands in a complicated pattern, then turns the key. Then she moves her hands again, and opens the door. “You wouldn’t even have been able to see the door if you’d been alone,” she says as she holds it open for them. They pass through.
“Why is the entrance hidden?” Dolly asks.
“Magic. Guards. Sight lines,” Miranda says, and sighs. “Unlike Ficino, I do have enemies, even now, and I prefer to be safe. That’s why I live out here, not quite in my son’s city. There aren’t any human guards—like most wizards I prefer not to keep servants. They interrupt one’s concentration. Magical guards suit me very well.”
Immediately inside there are two old olive trees, and a steep slope covered with rosebushes arranged in an elaborate pattern. There are artworks dotted around the garden, statues, a fountain, a waterlily pool with lapis and gold mosaic edging. There are also wooden benches here and there. It is clear that it must be a delightful garden in spring and summer, but last night’s storm has blown most of the leaves from the trees and they are lying everywhere. It has the sad neglected autumnal look of all gardens at the end of the season. Tish takes a step, and a green-backed lizard darts away from her foot like quicksilver and disappears under a stone. Dolly is looking up at a statue of a winged lion in a pine tree, thinking how realistic it looks, when it suddenly takes flight and soars away. He jumps back, and Tish laughs.
“There are winged lions the size of herons!” Dolly splutters.
Miranda nods. “Don’t worry. They’re just like little sphinxes.”
Dolly and Tish look at each other, then follow Miranda as she leads the way uphill through the rosebushes. Most of them are bare, just thorny sticks, but some have brown dead roses on them, and one bush is densely covered with creamy gold-hearted climbing roses, which perfume the air strongly. They pause for a moment at the waterlily pond, which is laid out like a clock face, with different lilies in each segment—most of them just leaves now, cupped and full of rainwater, but the nine o’clock segment also holds a single yellow flower, and the eleven o’clock one is completely drained. A bullfrog jumps into the six o’clock segment, then sits on a lily pad and croaks at them loudly. In the centre of the pool is a statue of the emperor Trajan, looking very severe in a toga.
They follow the path around, through the rosebushes. “Watch out!” They have come to the lip of a huge sunken depression of churned earth in the very center of the rose garden, with an overturned statue broken to small fragments, which clearly had stood above it.
“What was the statue?” Tish asks.
“Caliban,” Miranda says. “I thought of it as a kind of memorial, though I hadn’t forgotten that he was alive down there. He would have been dreaming all that time, not really conscious.”
“He said he was constantly testing his bonds,” Tish says, which sounds like being conscious to her.
“How long was he there?” Dolly asks.
“About three hundred years,” Miranda says, absently. “He really shouldn’t have been able to get out, the Aglaia is still in bloom and the roots go all around.”
“Caliban won’t come here, will he?” Tish asks in alarm.
“It’s the last place in the world he’ll come, because I could all too easily trap him here again just by moving a bush,” Miranda says. She starts moving around the rim of the hollow, examining the thorny, twiggy rosebushes one by one.
Dolly feels his knees being bumped from behind, and looks down to see a shaggy grey ram. He puts out a hand and scratches it behind the horns. He always liked sheep at the family farm. “Could this be the culprit?” he asks. “Could he have eaten something he shouldn’t?”
“What? Where did he come from?” Miranda kneels and examines the ram thoroughly, making little tutting noises which he seems to like. “Hekate wouldn’t send a ram. But Hermes might. And Hermes can be a trickster, and he likes change. And the ram came straight for you, Dolly. Hmm.”
“I take it there aren’t usually sheep in here?” Tish asks.
“Not in the rose garden, no, there’s no way for them to get in here. And in any case, the sheep we do keep are white, and not as shaggy as this one. He’d have had to have eaten the bush right down to the roots, and he did, of course. Any grazer who just randomly wandered in would take a mouthful here and there and not be so persistent. And now this dilemma facing us all. I do wish the gods would leave well enough alone.”
(Sylvia and I both hate it when fantasy has actions of mysterious gods acting for their own hidden purposes to drive the plot forward. It always feels so contrived, and it takes agency away from the characters. “The gods made them do it!” Even in Ovid, where Cupid makes Apollo love Daphne and makes Daphne hate him—it just makes it a worse story, without any motivation. But this isn’t like that. You know what we’re up to, dear Reader, now that we’ve finally made it into the rose garden. I did send the ram, of course, just as I sent Dolly and Tish, and just as God sent the ram to Abraham that time. And that’s the good kind of god action, you give things a little push at a weak point and let them snowball from there. “Huh,” Sylvia says. “That’s what you think. This is how things get completely out of control.”)
Miranda straightens up and sighs. “I think Ficino should see this ram. I wasn’t expecting anything quite so concrete—I thought there would be evidence of a lightning strike or something like that.” She pulls a length of vermilion and gold brocade ribbon out of her pouch and makes it into a leash for the ram, looping it carefully in a halter knot so that it doesn’t strangle him when he pulls. For the first time, as she kneels and knots the ribbon so competently, Tish can picture Miranda as a sailor.
“If you wouldn’t mind leading him, Dolly, as he seems to have taken to you,” Miranda says, handing him the other end of the ribbon. Dolly takes it with a little reluctance, and remembers the nursery rhyme, though this isn’t a little lamb but a full-sized ram with curly horns. They go up and over the shoulder of the hill, and see in front of them the ruins of a classical building. Three pillars and a portico are still standing, and behind this is a jumble of fallen marble. Tish and Dolly are both perfectly familiar with follies of this kind, which are very common in England, though this is a little larger than most such. Miranda, however, gasps in horror and comes to a complete stop.
“At least there was nobody in it,” she says, and it is only then that they belatedly realise that this is recent destruction, that this isn’t a planned folly or even a re
al classical ruin, but the wreck of her house, which no doubt contained things she cared about.
“Caliban again?” Dolly asks.
Miranda nods, staring at the ruins. “Well, I’ve shown you my house, for what it’s worth,” she says, with forced cheerfulness. “Let’s go back and see what Ficino makes of all this.”
They return to the city with the ram trotting cheerfully at Dolly’s heels. As they go through the streets, children, and some adults, do laugh to see it.
20
IF NOT HEREAFTER
After the funeral, Orsino feels a strong desire to go riding out alone over the countryside, taking a hawk and a hound with him for company. Normally he would indulge this impulse, saying to himself that he is too tired to work well, the sun is shining after the storm, and there will not be many more mild autumnal days before the frosts. Today he wonders whether he will ever have another carefree afternoon of hunting, hardly caring whether he finds any game or not. He has had so many of them, ranging here and there over the Thalian hills, sometimes greeting farmers as they go about their business, sometimes speaking to nobody until the walls of the city come back into view. He enjoys hunting in a party for deer or wild boar, but riding alone with a falcon delights him more. When he goes out with others he always feels they are looking to him for a lead. If he is the one to make the kill, he wonders if the others allowed it because he is the lord. A hunting party with visiting dignitaries or his own courtiers is a social occasion, and one that needs to be finessed. Hunting alone has no pressure of any kind. He sometimes brings home rabbits, or partridges, or quails, but even if he finds nothing at all he thoroughly enjoys an afternoon with horse and dog and hawk amid the ever-changing beauty of nature. He comes back refreshed to the city and his duties.
Even today he asks himself whether it would clear his mind and make it easier to see what to do about the dilemma of Geryon and Caliban. But as they walk back through the streets he sees Drusilla skip a step, then remember the solemnity of the occasion and look around to see whether anyone has noticed. Viola has, and is trying not to smile. It wouldn’t be fair to keep this news from his family any longer. It affects them too.
As soon as they are indoors, as the courtiers begin to disperse, Olivia turns to him. “We need to talk. Would some random Antean churn up Ficino’s house and kill his apprentice? Why? Or is Caliban loose?”
“Let’s go somewhere private,” Orsino says, including Sebastian and Viola in his glance. Sebastian, at this hint of real trouble, has straightened up and somehow intensified, so he now looks dangerous rather than relaxed—as a cat stretched out by the fire might all of an instant at a passing sound twitch into alertness and show her true predator self.
“I want to come too,” Drusilla says.
“It’s time for your Greek lesson,” Viola objects.
“No it isn’t, I did it this morning.” Orsino makes eye contact with her tutor, a promising young man from Yavan who is also one of his Greek secretaries. He nods, confirming what Drusilla says. Orsino sighs, and waves the tutor away. “I’ve been to the stable and seen Leander, and he’s wonderful, but I know you’re going to discuss something important and I want to be there. I need to learn statecraft, you know I do,” Drusilla continues.
“She might as well come,” Orsino says. “It concerns her as much as any of us. But nobody else.” The remaining courtiers bow themselves away, leaving Orsino’s family alone in the courtyard with the little white dog called Horse.
“My room?” Olivia suggests.
There are not many places in the palace that are truly private, but Olivia’s room is one of them. When this was the Palace of the Priors, and nine men whose names were drawn from a purse ruled the Republic for two or three months at a time, the top floor had been made up of nine bedchambers. When Manetto made himself Duke of Thalia in their place, he slept on the floor below and converted the top floor into guest chambers for ambassadors. During Prospero’s brief rule, they remained unchanged, but Antonio in his reign made the whole top floor into a suite for Geltrude of Montalba, his wife, who had previously been Prospero’s wife. Most of the luxuries and flatteries he installed are gone now, but Olivia’s room still holds a huge carved bed, big enough for four (generally slept in by only two, though not always the same two), a mirror whose heavy gold frame is made up in the dolphin-and-poppy pattern of Montalba, and a tigerskin rug.
Olivia’s creamy gold winter bedcurtains are up already, the colour of Miranda’s climbing roses, though none of them knows it. To the left of the bed is a painting of the Three Graces (one of the Graces looks very like Olivia), and to the right a very relaxed St Sebastian, for which it was clear Sebastian was the model. On one side of the window hangs a tapestry of Pico, his theses in his hand, addressing the people of Thalia from the rostrum in front of this palace. There is a stiff formal portrait of Orsino on the other. There are only four of the buff-and-gold padded chairs, so Drusilla sits on the end of the bed with her feet on the tiger’s back. Olivia’s old black-and-white cat pads slowly down from the pillow to settle herself on Drusilla’s lap. The sleepy contentment on his face contrasts with the tiger’s snarl.
“Is Caliban’s attack why Ficino threw me out of the audience chamber this morning?” Sebastian asks, as soon as they are all settled.
“Yes. According to Ficino and Miranda, who ought to know, the gods freed Caliban, and Caliban intends to free Geryon. My mother thinks our defences might prevent him getting through but wouldn’t recapture him.”
Viola sighs. She and Sebastian have worked hard on the defences.
“Can you trust your mother on that?” Olivia asks.
Orsino shrugs. “Can we trust her on anything? This whole thing could be a plot she and Ficino have concocted, and the two so-called strangers could just be new in town from anywhere. There’s nothing extraordinary about them, they just seem like any pair of naïve giovane.”
“Wait, are there strangers here from Pico’s world?” Drusilla asks, excited, bouncing a little.
“Yes. You saw them at the funeral. Adolfo and Letizio.”
“But I didn’t know they were from Pico’s world! Does that mean the door is open again? Can I go there? I’ve always wanted to go there, always!”
“We can’t go there. They still have death, and magic doesn’t work, or doesn’t work in the same way, so we don’t know if our healing spells and youth spells would work there,” Viola says.
“But I’m nine years old,” Drusilla says, with impeccable logic. “I could go there for just a hundred years and come back. Or maybe just fifty to be safe.” She looks around four firmly negative faces of her parents, and concentrates on Orsino. “Maybe I could just go to school there. That has to be safe. And they have the best schools.”
“Why do you think that?” Orsino asks, never before having given any consideration to the educational establishments of the other world.
“Because Pico was the best wizard, and now Ficino is, and they come from there. Their scholarship must be amazing. I could go there and learn it and come back in twenty-five or thirty years, and I’d be a great wizard and scholar. Don’t you want me to be a great wizard and scholar?”
Orsino laughs. “Ask me again when you’re giovane. You’re too young to go alone between worlds, even if it is educational. And maybe you should talk to the new strangers about how their education really is.”
Drusilla nods decisively, because her father hasn’t given her an absolute no but set her a project, which is, he has learned, the best way to manage her.
“Besides, isn’t Prospero the best wizard?” Olivia asks. “And he was born right here, though I suppose his father came from Pico’s world.”
“To return to our more immediate problem,” Sebastian says, and they all turn to look at him. “Caliban is free. How?”
“They said it was the work of the gods, and did not specify which gods,” Orsino says.
“The Anteans are the descendants of Terra and Neptune,” Viola say
s. “And Diana has been their protector.”
“And we have nothing but the word of Ficino and Miranda that it is divine intervention?” Olivia asks.
Orsino sighs. “Yes. Miranda could have freed Caliban herself, what would be easier? But why? I sensed no smell of conspiracy around this. She seemed surprised and worried by it too.”
“They passed inside without the colour of the light changing in the wardsconce,” Sebastian says. “That is indicative but not conclusive, in the case of such powerful wizards.”
The cat begins to purr loudly as Drusilla pets it.
“Yes, defeating that would be child’s play for Miranda or Ficino,” Viola says. “There are many kinds of malice it alerts us to, but any great wizard could mask their mind to it.”
Olivia’s lips tighten and she begins to frown.
“But Miranda helped with the initial plan of neutralising Caliban and Geryon, didn’t she?” Viola goes on.
“It’s more complicated than that,” Orsino says, with a quick glance at Olivia.
“Geryon killed my brother. I’ll never forgive him,” Olivia bursts out, as if this had happened yesterday and not three hundred years ago.
“Arbitrarily and unjustly. And because this was tyrannical and stupid and shortsighted, Miranda and Prospero didn’t stop me deposing him,” Orsino says. “And Miranda helped by neutralizing Caliban. But she had her own reasons. She always does.”
“Do you know what those reasons are, and have those reasons changed?” Viola asks.
“I have no reason to think they have,” Orsino says, sidestepping the question of whether he knew his mother’s reasons for wanting her first, Antean, husband out of the way. “No, I don’t think she freed Caliban. I do worry about her softening towards Geryon.” He looks at Viola, and smiles apologetically. “After all, continued imprisonment of a son would be very hard for any mother to bear.”
