Or What You Will

by Jo Walton

  “You’ve got his colouring, but you have your mother’s brains, God be praised,” she said, kissing him and tucking the covers around him.

  Two years after this, when he was eight, Orsino asked his tutor one day why he couldn’t be Duke of Thalia. “I understand I am to be King of Syracuse and that takes precedence, but why can’t I be Duke of Thalia too?” His tutor was a middle-aged man, a humanist called Pannio of Verona. He knew Greek and Latin and had read Plato and was very confident about the right way to bring up princes to make them into Philosopher Kings. He had recently arrived in Thalia with high hopes of moulding Orsino, and was favourably impressed by how fast the boy managed to pick up the classical languages. Pannio believed that if children grow up steeped in the classics they will behave like ancient Romans, and that this is the best possible hope for the future of Illyria.

  Pannio looked at him very sharply, and Orsino wanted to squirm under his gaze, but he had already learned to keep himself still and disguise his feelings when under regard by people who matter. “Thalia is to be inherited by your mother’s older son, Geryon,” Pannio said.

  “But why?” Orsino asked. He hated the idea of Geryon, the older brother, the monster, the stranger who must inherit his home.

  “He is the elder, and you will inherit a greater kingdom through your father.”

  “But my mother left him with his father, and they seem to be happy there as far as I’ve ever heard. Why can’t he just stay there and inherit Tempest Island and rule the Anteans and leave Thalia to me?”

  “No doubt your mother, or perhaps her father, Duke Prospero, wished to keep the Thalian duchy from being subsumed into the crown of Syracuse. It might not be a problem for you, who are growing up here and love it as it deserves, but in future generations your descendants, living in Syracuse, might not care for it and come to take it lightly. Your brother’s descendants will be resident here.”

  Orsino didn’t need the Aristotelean logic Pannio had already begun teaching him to see the huge flaw in that argument. “But Geryon isn’t resident here,” he pointed out.

  Pannio shook his head and drew Orsino’s attention back to Livy. But the conversation has consequences, and not ones Orsino likes. Pannio speaks to Miranda, and although she delays and drags her, feet she has to admit the justice of it. Two years later she brings Geryon to Thalia, to get to know his future domain.

  The day Geryon arrived in the city, Orsino hid in one of the deep cellars to avoid greeting his half brother. He was pulled out by Pannio, who tutted at him, feeling that Orsino’s bad behaviour was a failure of his own training, and so they should both be punished for it. Orsino’s blue velvet doublet was covered in cobwebs, but Pannio dragged him straight to the banqueting hall without a pause to wash or change. “You’re late already,” he said. “You wanted to go into the cellars. Go to dinner as you are and face the consequences.”

  Orsino had learned not to argue with his tutor when he was in this mood. So the first time he sees Geryon it is in the banqueting hall. His brother is seated next to Miranda at the high table, crammed into a gilded chair that is already, at fifteen, too small for him, and wearing bright green-and-gold brocades with puffed sleeves that enhance his strange nature. Humans can interbreed with nymphs, but it so rarely happens that nobody is used to seeing the results. There are a family of farmers near Malfi who are said to have a dryad ancestor, but it shows only in a faint greenish cast to their skin and a frondiness to their hair. Communities of nymphs are rare in Illyria, though they are said to be more common in Sariola and Yavan and some other far-off parts of the world.

  Geryon’s skin is a mottled reddish grey, with a suggestion of scales. He is shaped mostly like a human, though bigger than most. The thing that most obviously marks his difference is his lack of a neck. His huge head grows directly out of his shoulders, which do not narrow but stay broad.

  Miranda, who grew up on Tempest Island surrounded by Anteans and with her father as the only human, shows neither distaste for nor fascination with Geryon’s strange appearance. But everyone else present shows one or the other, to differing degrees. The top table is crowded with Miranda’s counsellors and major courtiers, the heads of important families, the podesta who commands the hired troops, the bishop, the abbots of the major monasteries, and even, down at the end by the guard captain, the chief rabbi. All of them are either openly staring at Geryon or looking at him uncomfortably out of the corners of their eyes.

  Orsino’s empty chair is on Miranda’s other side. He pulls it out and seats himself. He reminds himself that he is a prince, and holds his head up straight. If he could have missed this meal, it would have made a point. Being brought in late and dirty merely makes him seem like a child. Orsino is ten years old. He bows with as much dignity as he can manage to the assembled notables, and beyond them to the entourage that crowds the lower tables that run up and down the hall. He takes up the tongs and helps himself neatly to a buttered quail from the big green blown-glass dish in the centre of the table. “I’m sorry about the state of my clothes,” he says, because mentioning it himself is better than waiting for somebody else to bring it up. He sets the tongs down again, gently, making sure not to clatter the silver on the polished wood of the table.

  Geryon grins at him. His grin is very wide, with too many teeth, which looks peculiar in his strange neckless face. He needs to turn his shoulders to look at Orsino, because his head doesn’t turn on its own. “Don’t worry. It’s nice to see something as real as dirt. And I never even wore clothes until they made me come here.”

  Miranda winces, the bishop raises his eyebrows, the troop captain smothers a grin, and Orsino realises all at once that Thalia is even more strange and formal and uncomfortable for his brother than Syracuse is to him, and that Geryon is not an enemy but a pawn in all this, just as he himself is. He decides to change the subject before Geryon says something more about clothes and embarrasses them both even more. “Did you come by ship from Tempest Island?” he asks. “How long did it take?”

  “No, I came underground. Being on a boat makes me very sick.”

  “Underground?” Orsino asks, not understanding.

  “We Anteans can move through the earth,” Geryon explains. He reaches out to the glass serving dish, picks up a quail in one hand and pops it whole into his mouth, crunching up the bones, and talking with his mouth full. “My father brought me, to show me the way. But he’s gone back now. We went under the earth on Tempest Island, and then down under the bottom of the sea, and we came up again in the hills near Thalia.”

  “Like moles,” the bishop suggests. He is an old man with a white beard, known for his translations of Greek poetry into the vernacular.

  Miranda’s fingers tighten on the horn handle of her silver-tined fork, and her lips press together. Orsino thinks moving beneath the earth sounds great, but he can already imagine the military implications. An army of Anteans could come up anywhere, where nobody was expecting them. But nymphs didn’t have armies, and that was just as well.

  “I was sick when we went to Syracuse by ship,” Orsino offers. “But only the first day. After that I got my sea legs and the captain said I could be a sailor if I wanted to. And Mother said I could spend a month on a boat in the summer learning seamanship if I master Greek this year.”

  “And have you?” Miranda asks.

  Orsino is conscious that everyone else at the table is listening to them. Pannio is seated on the long benches of the lower tables, but he can probably hear, and wouldn’t be above saying something if Orsino risks boasting. “Not entirely, my lady Mother,” he says.

  There is a ripple of laughter around the room. “Entirely mastering Greek may take a lifetime,” the bishop says, smiling patronizingly.

  “And mastery is more a matter for a churchman or a tutor than a noble,” Drusus Claudianus says, grinning at Orsino. He is the head of one of the most powerful noble families in Thalia, and claims descent from the ancient Claudians of Rome. “I’d say let him le
arn seamanship, my lady.”

  Miranda inclines her head but doesn’t give an inch. “There’s time yet before I decide, and I’ll listen to his tutor’s report.”

  “I don’t know three words of Greek,” Geryon rumbles. He seems determined to stress his difference and lack of culture in front of everyone.

  “But you don’t want to go sailing, so you have no incentive,” Orsino says, neatly.

  Geryon laughs, which shakes the table. He puts two of his great fingers into his mouth and pulls out the gnawed skull of the quail, which he drops on his trencher. The Chief Rabbi winces, one of the court ladies turns her head away, and another begins to fan herself. “I hope we’ll be friends, little brother,” he says. “I like you.”

  And they were friends, they were friends for years after that, friends despite their different natures. Geryon was uncouth and direct, and Orsino was smooth and subtle. Neither of them seem much like Miranda. Orsino does not want to be like Ferrante, and works hard to avoid this. He could not tell whether Geryon is like Caliban, because Caliban never visited the mainland. Geryon sometimes went to Tempest Island in those years, but Orsino never did. Miranda and Prospero would never agree to take him, and of course Geryon went underground, where he could not go. In all those years when Pannio tutored them both, Geryon was his despair. Geryon never learned a word of Greek, and even his Latin remained terrible. “I’ll have other people do that for me, if it’s needed,” he said. Orsino worked at his letters and enjoyed it; he became a good humanist, and made Pannio proud. As time went by he spent more time in Syracuse, learning statecraft from his grandfather. It still always felt like escaping when he came back to Thalia.

  Then, twelve years after Geryon came, when Orsino was twenty-two, Pico conquered death. A decade after that Orsino realised that despite being born and raised specifically to be an heir, he was never going to inherit anything. But it was twenty years more before Miranda retired and gave Thalia to Geryon. After she handed the duchy over she went on extended travels, to give the people of the duchy time to get used to her absence, or so she said. She told Orsino he could use her house in her absence. The house has always been there. She raised it by magic not long after the end of the civil war with Antonio by which she came to be duchess. That civil war, though it ended before he was born, loomed large over Orsino’s childhood. His nurse’s sweetheart had been killed in it, and some of the castle guards had been wounded in it, and all of them had lost friends. Miranda’s house was invisible from almost everywhere. The wall that ran around it could be found, but the gate only appeared to those she wanted to find it, and even then, not always in the same place. After she left and Geryon was invested as Duke of Illyria, Orsino went to it and wandered around, mystified at his mother’s choices, but he continued to live in the rooms of the Palazzo Vecchio where he had always lived. He became Geryon’s advisor, when his brother would take any advice, and seethe when his brother listen and ignore him, making rash and rapid decisions to the detriment of Illyria. Orsino was fifty-four and still giovane, unmarried, unsettled, and insecure, oh, especially that last.

  A year later, Orsino meets Olivia in Miranda’s house outside the walls. It is the only place they can possibly have a conversation without being overheard. Olivia is nineteen years old, giovane, a properly brought up young lady, daughter of Drusus Claudianus and a marriageable daughter of the eminent Claudian house, and now its only heir. She lives with a drunken old uncle and her family of servants, and is of course never alone or unchaperoned. To come here to meet Orsino she has brought four armed guards, who wait at the front door, and her duenna, Maria, who sits down in the best chair and begins fanning herself while looking at them with a great deal of interest.

  “This is a beautiful house,” Olivia says. It is a perfectly proportioned symmetrical classical palazzo, in terra-cotta and marble. They are sitting in the great drawing room, which stretches from the front to the back of the house, and is furnished with a mosaic sea-scene floor, tapestries of an angelic choir, and very comfortable Savonarola chairs with padded seats, brocade-and-carved-oak arms and backs. The windows of the drawing room look out over the rose garden, which is particularly splendid. Ah, that moment it is early September, and many of the most spectacular bushes are in flower.

  “My mother said I could use it in her absence, but I haven’t been here much,” Orsino says. Olivia’s beauty, which he hadn’t been expecting, confuses him. He would be inclined to be angry with the people who hadn’t told him how beautiful she was, except that they did tell him and he didn’t believe them. She is an orphaned heiress, of course she must be considered beautiful, unless she was actively repulsive. He had expected her to be passably attractive, with the bloom of a young girl, but the face she shows when she draws back her veil is like a madonna painted by a great master, beautiful and sad and wise. He can see her fair hair glinting under the cloth draped over her head, and the black clothes she wears enhance the elegance of her trim figure. She is certainly young, Orsino thinks, staring at her, but she is ripe like a peach. You would paint her as summer rather than spring, an orchid rather than a snowdrop, a queen rather than a princess, Juno rather than Diana—he realises that she said something and he didn’t catch it.

  Maria takes out a distaff and begins to twirl it, twisting wool into thread. “It’s amazing the lack of dust if nobody’s been using it,” she says.

  “She has magical servants to keep it clean,” Orsino says. “But I don’t know how to coax them into offering us refreshments, so I’m afraid I have nothing better to offer you than these oranges.” He put them into his pocket at the last minute as he left the Palazzo Vecchio, and now he draws them out, a little squashed. Olivia takes one, and sits turning it in her hand. Maria cackles with laughter.

  “We’ll take the intent of hospitality for the deed,” Olivia says, with a quelling glance at her chaperone. “It was not easy to find this time. Let us not waste it.”

  “No indeed,” Orsino says, and then wastes more of it failing to find similes for Olivia’s face. She has a tiny cleft in her chin, which irregularity sets off the perfection of her other features.

  “Your brother killed my brother,” Olivia begins, when it has become clear that Orsino has been struck dumb by her beauty. Although she is only nineteen and has been sheltered, this is a situation she has encountered sufficiently often that she knows how to cope with it.

  “Yes,” Orsino says, forcing his mind to the important business that has brought them together. “Your father died, and your mother chose to follow him, and then Geryon killed your brother. You said in your letter that you knew why he did it?”

  Olivia raises her chin bravely, changing the pattern of light and shadows on her face. “My brother, Claudio, refused to give me in marriage to your brother, Geryon,” she says.

  Orsino shudders, quite involuntarily. “That’s terrible,” he says. “And it’s tyranny.”

  “My mistress has no desire to mate with a monster,” says Maria, emphatically.

  “Nor did it suit my brother’s dynastic intention for me to become a duchess,” Olivia says.

  Orsino can’t blame Geryon for asking. They have discussed the need for him to marry a fully human woman, but he thought they were trying to negotiate for a princess of Tedesca, which would be a useful alliance. Marrying Olivia would cause several problems—it would mean favouring the Claudiani over the other families of Thalia, and wouldn’t bring the city the least advantage. On the other hand, now that Olivia was the last of the Claudiani, that would prevent that from being much of a problem, and the other noble families would be sure to rally to her. He forces himself to concentrate.

  “Killing him for that reason is tyranny. But so far nobody knows for sure why he killed Claudio. There are rumours running everywhere like a lightning strike in a dry summer. Geryon has done some other strange things, things he won’t talk to me about, but this is worse than anything. Are you sure this was his reason?”

  Olivia looks down, l
ooks at Maria, who is concentrating on her distaff, and then back at Orsino. “Duke Geryon made the offer to him late at night, after a dinner. Claudio told me they had both been drinking. He took him aside as he was leaving and said he wanted to marry me. Claudio, in a polite falsehood, told the duke that I was promised elsewhere. When Geryon pressed him as to who, my brother’s fuddled wits were not up to coming up with an answer. He said he’d call on him the next day to discuss it. The next morning Claudio came to my rooms to work out a stratagem. We decided he should say that to end the feud between our family and the Eliani, I had been promised to Silvio Elia. We thought he couldn’t object to that, and it would explain why the betrothal hadn’t been announced before.”

  “And that’s why Silvio has fled,” Orsino says. He does not doubt her, he would as soon doubt a painted Madonna that spoke revelation to him.

  “Yes. I sent Maria to warn him after Claudio was killed. He has gone to the court at Syracuse.” Maria looks up and nods when her name is mentioned, but does not speak. Olivia takes a deep breath. “I do not know what passed between my brother and yours. But when Claudio’s body was sent back, it was in two pieces, and bore the marks of huge fingers.”

  “I couldn’t stop her seeing,” Maria says, as if Orsino had reproached her. “She would look, no matter what anyone said.”

  “Geryon tore him apart,” Orsino says. “I—this is treason, but I can’t let this pass.”

  “That’s what I hoped in contacting you,” Olivia says. She seems entirely self-possessed in speaking of the gruesome murder of her brother, but Orsino sees her hands are shaking a little as she tucks them under the edge of her shawl.

  “I cannot act fast,” Orsino says, thinking quickly through his options. “Geryon is formidable, and there is also the problem of his father, of Caliban. Geryon could tear me apart too, if he thought I was against him.” He looks out into the rose garden. It was very like Miranda to build a rose maze and put it on only one side of her house. “I will need to plan carefully and seek help. I could bring an army from Syracuse, my grandfather would give me one on this provocation, but any champion would lose any duel with Geryon, and that would gain nothing. It will have to be by subterfuge.”