Chapter Twenty
The jesters sang and played him a farewell song. It may have been traditional for debuts—he didn’t know.
Feather walked him to the door. “Are you sure you won’t accept my carriage?”
Her face was so close ....
Lark touched her mouth lightly with his lips. His tongue darted with the slightest flicker between her lips, making brief, intimate contact with the tip of her tongue. She seized his hands and nuzzled closer but he evaded her, keeping the contact fleeting and tantalizing the same way he wanted to kiss the colonel for the first time someday.
Someday will probably be never.
Lark drew away and avoided her gaze. After an entire evening of dancing about, her eyes finally focused on him and him alone. He worried about what she might see. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “It must bore you to have so many men in love with you, and jesters must be the worst. They’re pretending it’s a game, and you have to play and—”
She set her fingers over his mouth and he quieted. It made it easier to let her lead the way. “You’re wise for one so young.”
That made him smile. “You can’t be much older than I am.”
“You might be surprised,” she whispered. “Anyway, it’s not boring with you. You’re different.”
Not too different, he hoped. “Good night. And thank you.”
“I’m glad you came back.” She turned in a way that let her watch him watch her walk back to the house for a good distance. He lingered a little longer than he wanted to, then set off toward Grant’s room.
He wasn’t sure Grant would be awake. A slight glow under the door encouraged him to knock softly.
Heavy footsteps approached the door. “Who is it?”
“Lark. Your friend. The jester,” he added when the door didn’t budge on the first word.
Grant opened the door, his bulk silhouetted by a single candle. He seemed a foot taller than Lark remembered.
“I have something for you. I was going to slip it under the door, but I saw the light—”
Grant stepped aside. “You look different with the—you know.”
Lark ventured inside, uncertain. “I know it’s almost time to go out fishing. I won’t keep you.”
“How would someone like you know when it’s time to fish?” Grant shut the door. It was more of a welcome than Lark had hoped for.
“I grew up three blocks from the sea. Sometimes the noise would wake me up and I’d look out and see the fishermen with their nets, and sailors leaving their wives or their whores, and all that sort of thing.” Lark drew the borrowed paper from his waistcoat and set it on the rough little table. He wondered if he’d ever see the inside of this room again.
Grant strode over. “What’s that?”
“The alphabet. Do you want to try?”
“If this is about me saving your life, don’t worry about it. It just happened. I didn’t even really mean to. Not that I didn’t want to, don’t get me wrong.” Grant seemed to not want to look at him. He fussed with cleaning his lone, empty breakfast plate from the table. “I guess I’m just saying it’s not worth you going out of your way. There’s no lighted way I’d learn to write anyway, when I can’t even read.”
“They’re intimately connected. That’s clever of you to think of it. I don’t think that it’s necessarily obvious to someone who’s illiterate.” Grant ducked his head at the praise. “Would you mind if I washed my face?”
“Go ahead.”
It took a lot more work than he expected. He had to use soap and water and oil and cheap brandy before he got his face clean. His skin burned, but he had himself back. Exhaustion dragged him down and bent his spine, and he wasn’t sure—maybe Lark had seen the truth of things, that he had no friends, no one who cared about him or even liked him. At least without the mask he could entertain the possibility that Grant might permit him a few more minutes of his time.
Grant sat at the table staring at the letters. Mark limped over and stood beside him. He bent and braced against the table so he could trace over the letters at the bottom. “These letters are your name. You can learn the rest if you like, but if you have a moment I’ll teach you how to draw this.”
“I don’t have anything to write with.”
Of course he wouldn’t. “We’ll use wine.” Mark fetched the bottle and a cup. He dipped his finger in. “Do you remember the G I showed you?” He traced it on the paper. It didn’t leave much of an impression, but it didn’t have to.
Grant attempted a G on his own. The paper moved around on him, frustrating his awkward attempt so Mark helped him hold it. At the end of three tries he had a pretty good one. It encouraged him to try the R. Mark pulled up the other chair and they filled the bottom of the page with GRs.
“Before you know it you’ll be able to sign your name.”
“That might come in handy,” Grant admitted.
“If you want I can come back tonight, or tomorrow if that’s too soon, with some paper and such.”
“Don’t you got jesterly things to do?” It could have been a rebuff, but Grant’s tone was more puzzled than anything.
“Yes, I do. But it’s work, just like fishing is work, or baking, or what have you. No one wants to work all day every day, and no one is entirely defined by what they do. And—” He remembered singing to the boy he’d been. Making friends came so much more naturally to him in those days. The shy overtures, followed by that wonderful feeling that the friendship had always existed and always would. “I’d like to think that we’re friends.”
It took a blink of Grant’s eyes and a twitch on his cheek and it was done. Grant smiled and he outshone all the wonders Mark had witnessed at his debut. “Okay.” He let out a breathy laugh. “Wow. Am I not supposed to tell anyone or anything like that?”
“I’ll tell you what. I’ll try not to come here in my costume so I don’t embarrass you in front of your friends, and you can tell whomever you like.”
Grant choked on a laugh. He looked at the dawn’s light glowing on his threadbare, checked curtain.
“I’d better go.” Mark braced up, grabbed his cane, and Grant walked with him to the door, down the long stairs, and part way down the street before Mark started to shiver. He didn’t realize what it was at first until he recognized the intersection where Grant had led him to his room, bleeding.
“You want me to walk you to the parks?” Grant asked.
He knew. No derision, no pity, just a matter-of-fact question.
Mark gave him a matter-of-fact answer. “I’ll be more careful this time.”
“You’d better be.” Grant waved as he walked away. “See you tonight?”
“I hope so.”
Lark was stronger than him. He never flinched walking through this neighborhood, though it was dark and the remaining men, however many there might be, could easily use revenge as an excuse to try and feel alive again. Mark hated that about Lark, and the cold, and the loneliness, and the constant calculation. Lark even hated himself. He hated himself enough that he had to obliterate his own face to feel like someone worthy of friendship again.
Mark slowly limped toward the parks. The island might not have carriages for hire, but they’d have messengers. He’d hire one and wait for the colonel’s carriage in the church garden rather than fake limping all the way home.
A carriage rolled up the street behind him. Mark turned to look in case it was one the jesters he’d met who might be willing to take him home.
Mark nearly collapsed in relief when he saw the gray-haired former-soldier. “Philip!” He waved but Philip had already seen him and drew the horses to a halt. “I hope you haven’t been all over the city looking for me.”
“The colonel said if you weren’t at the mayor’s to try at Mr. Roadman’s. I wasn’t quite sure where he was at but I saw ‘im on the street and he said you were headed for the parks. And here we are.”
Mark let himself in before Philip could step down to help. “If I
fall asleep on the way just leave me in the carriage.” He shut the door, the wheels began to roll easily on the sand, he leaned back in the seat, and sank into bliss.
The colonel roused him. His eyes were bloodshot and stormy. “I’m glad to see you home,” he said curtly.
Mark’s mind groped desperately for more sleep. It was almost, not quite but almost, as bad as his hangover—was that only yesterday morning?
“A letter arrived this morning,” the colonel told him. “It’s in a puzzle scroll. The key is waiting for you at the church.”
That woke him up for all of a minute. When his thoughts couldn’t settle on a theory about who might have sent it—it might not have even been someone he’d met yet—he lost the last of his will to stay awake. Philip, the colonel and Trudy all helped settle him into bed, and he sank into soft bliss once more.
Mark locked himself in his bedroom and cleared his desk of half-finished songs, writing samples and notes.
His first puzzle scroll. He put on the winter gloves he’d worn on his trek through the snow, though no gloves he’d heard of would resist the needles that would snap from the case into his flesh if he made a mistake.
He hoped the priest had given him the correct key, or the message would be ruined, or he’d be poisoned, or both. The puzzle scroll might not be loaded, but he’d been taught to always assume that they were.
He counted the cuts in the key and carefully slid it in. One. It only turned to the left. He flinched when it clicked. Two. It only turned to the left again. His mouth was so dry he couldn’t swallow. Click. Three, right. Click. It would be better if it got stuck, as most mis-fit keys would, than to turn in the wrong direction as a bad copy might. Four, left. Click. Had the sender tested it for safety? Five, right. Click. Each turn released a section of the puzzle within. The last turn popped the case and Mark jerked his hands back. No moisture, no chemical scents, just sheaves of paper-thin metal opening as the puzzle scroll hinged open. Each nested layer contained a page of paper. The central chamber had a pouch.
The coded letters written in familiar script gripped his heart. Gutter. That code was the only one Gutter had taught him personally, a code just between the two of them. He’d known it so long and practiced it so often that he could read it native.
Mairi died because of sin; unworthy lovers did her in. Lost, but she still lives between a morning song and soul unseen. Love will never die or fail, though away from her we sail and lose ourselves to storm and sea pretending we are truly free. Love will once again belong to soul unseen and morning song, and they will name a child of sail who will upon the waves prevail.
I can only guess what drove you away. It could be the belief that I desired you to go, or that I forced you to go, or that you had to go for reasons of your own. My concern for your safety is rivaled only by the dread that you may have been wounded in body or soul and have gone to strangers to heal rather than trusting in me. Whatever the reason, please trust in my friendship and love as I trust in you. Perhaps you doubt my motives. What you can’t know is what I haven’t allowed you to remember, though it’s in your mind waiting to help you understand.
Come home quickly. I have so much to tell you, and it will change everything.
Mark stood up and paced. His hands trembled and he thought he’d be sick.
Gutter didn’t necessarily know Mark was here. He’d wait for confirmation of the scroll’s delivery before he’d act one way or another. If Mark didn’t go to him, either Gutter himself or someone on his behalf would come to bring Mark back.
Mark paced faster. He wanted to run, but he had nowhere to run to even if he could excuse himself from the colonel’s side to deal with this. If Gutter had asked, Mark couldn’t have even told him why he wanted to run. He just knew he felt trapped, hunted and ashamed.
That shame ate at his insides. He’d bound himself to someone of low consequence, at least from Gutter’s perspective. Anger would be preferable to the disappointment Mark anticipated.
He’ll learn of it soon enough. Best tell him myself.
Mark had no reason to believe Gutter would kill him, and killing the colonel would serve no purpose. Mark would still be bound to him. He doubted that Gutter would vent his anger that way knowing it would strand Mark politically forever.
He hoped that logic and reasoning could temper Gutter’s reaction. If Gutter had burned Mairi and her crew alive, then no one could predict him, not using any reason or motive that could apply to a sane person.
The fragility of Mark’s political situation might prevent the lord jester from coming and fetching Mark himself. Gutter arriving on the colonel’s doorstep would be very much like the king himself stopping by for a nice month-long visit. Whatever opinions the islanders held about Colonel Evan would explode into a storm of lies and speculation.
That truth might sway Gutter from interfering if he wanted to keep Mark safe.
Gutter no doubt sent the puzzle scroll with instructions that it be returned along with the key if the messenger couldn’t find ... had it been addressed to Lark, or Mark Seaton? That might hint at what Gutter had designed, or suspected, depending on whether he’d manipulated Mark or had tracked him down after a desperate search.
The only reason the sacred messenger had delivered the scroll to the colonel was the bond. Even a sacred bond wasn’t strong enough to hand Colonel Evan both the key and the puzzle scroll to complete the delivery. Now that Mark had gotten the key from him, the messenger could leave.
The messenger would catch the next suitable ship back toward the mainland to report a successful delivery. Mark was running out of time to respond to Gutter before news, like a new bonding to one of the island’s most famed men, would reach him.
He found some old stationary and a pen in his bedroom’s desk and began to write.
I can’t come home.
Mark stepped back from the desk and forced himself to consider those words and what might follow. Would Gutter trust his assessment or would he try to bring Mark back by force? He wished he understood the full meaning of Gutter’s poem. Trying to guess the meaning was dangerous—it would be too easy to misinterpret, though he thought he had the gist of it.
Home. Calling Seven Churches home had already begun to feel like a lie, though Perida didn’t quite feel like home yet.
Should he mention Obsidian?
No. That could bring him here in a shot for the book and the ring. Right now he can only guess that I might have them.
He envied the famed jesters of old. Their secret exchanges weren’t just clever, but tightly framed so that intended correspondents couldn’t mistake each others’ meanings while those who intercepted the messages would be misled and lost.
That made him realized something. Gutter could have written that poem such that Mark couldn’t mistake its meaning. He must have blurred it a little on purpose, probably to keep Mark uncertain so he would be afraid to do anything but what Gutter asked him to do.
The letter had come too late to prevent Mark from doing anything drastic, if that had been Gutter’s hope. Mark exposed a fresh piece of paper, leaned on the desk and wrote his next line near the center of it.
I love you, and miss you.
Hopefully Gutter would read trust and care in those words.
Unfortunately those words didn’t lie. Somehow he’d lost the certainty that Gutter had to be involved in all that destruction. The letter had moved him like a love song, and he had to admit that he felt lonely and afraid even with the colonel to protect him. He’d need to find his anger, or something just as strong, to protect him from Gutter’s influence before they reunited.
I’m happy, sound and safe here. I’ll come to you when I can, he wrote on a new page. That wasn’t perfectly true, but true enough for his purposes.
He’d include the gazette with its torrid description of his and Colonel Evan’s jesterly elopement so that Gutter couldn’t escape the full meaning of those words.
One more page.
&
nbsp; I’ll present myself when I can, too soon and not soon enough for both of us. Please wait for me. I beg your patience and I hope you will extend the trust that you so passionately described to me.
He might write a completely different letter depending on what he found in the pouch. At least he’d set down his initial answer. It would be a good starting point.
The pouch held an extra key and a vial. He opened the vial carefully and waited for its scent to reach his face.
The cloying, over-strong scent, a little like bad figs and dull brandy, touched his memory to a lesson that went over some of the world’s most deadly poisons, an exotic and little-known one from the Surmellidan. It made his skin prickle. He closed the vial and set it aside.
The last item was a small roll of velvet with a flat backing.
Four golden sol and a pair of matched diamonds. A small fortune, presumably so that he could buy clothes and live well until Gutter reached him, or perhaps a reminder of the wealth he’d left behind and that would be his again if he returned. His thoughts leapt to only one use. He had even less time to dwell on the letter than he’d guessed. He set the pages in, and coiled the gazette at the center. He didn’t bother with refreshing the poison. Mark locked it, and hurried out with the puzzle scroll and the velvet roll held tightly in his hands. “Miss Trudy! Get Philip. I need the carriage again.”
“Can you do it?” Mark’s impatience made him more forceful than he meant to be.
Dellai Bertram stared at Mark for a long time, not so much at him as into him. It made Mark even more uncomfortable.
The Dellai had no furniture, or books, or statues, only carved stone that made the walls, columns and ceiling into a garden-like space of white marble. Despite its graceful lines, the dellai’s meeting chamber was a dead, cold place. “I see the advantage to you. What would be the Church’s advantage?” the dellai asked.
“I could pay you a fee.”
“How much?”
“I would have to investigate. You remember the effects I listed?”
“Oh yes.” The dellai set his hand high on a marble tree branch and gripped it. “But this isn’t just a fiscal matter. I don’t make a habit of assisting jesters. And if I assist one, why shouldn’t I assist any other that comes to me?”
“You want some sort of assurance.”
“I want something tangible of use to all that is good and just in the world. At the moment I have no way of knowing if helping you will be of general benefit to all, or if it will create problems. For all I know, you may already be acting in ways that your new master would not approve.” The dellai let his hand slip back down to gesture broadly. “Some sort of direct benefit now will at least offset any future trouble you may cause.”
The messenger might leave any moment.
Mark remembered the death mask. “There was something in particular on my list that might be of interest to you.” He was fairly certain he shouldn’t be doing this, but he never intended to use the mask, and it might be safer here regardless. “A certain mask.”
The dellai’s expression fixed in place for a moment before he relaxed into a false smile. “I remember.”
“What do you suggest I do with it?”
“It’s a living mask?”
Mark remembered how he felt it flinch under his hand and shivered. “Yes.”
“Let me see it before I agree to anything.”
Mark bit back a curse. “The messenger won’t wait much longer. I won’t offer anything to do with the death mask again. Accept or decline quickly, please, before it’s too late.”
The dellai ground his teeth. “There is something unrelated that I have a bit more interest in, having to do with you and your master.” He hesitated. “If Baron Evan dies before you do, you will be at loose ends No one likes to see that sort of thing, most especially the Church. I will do this for you on one condition. You will offer your services to the Church here in Perida. You will swear to do this. We, of course, may decline your offer at the time, but you ought to prepare yourself for the possibility that we will accept.”
He had a feeling that swearing an oath to a dellai would bind him as hard as he was bound to the baron. “Why would you want anything to do with me?”
“I thought you were in a hurry.”
Mark bit his lip. “I don’t trust the Church. I’ve seen it do terrible things when people get in the way of what it wants.” He couldn’t bring himself to actually accuse the dellai of arranging for the colonel’s death. No, the Church couldn’t want Mark that badly, though a part of him wondered what all this was about. The voices? Gutter? The mainland? The dellai’s face had flushed pink and Mark had to offer something quickly before the dellai cut off all negotiations. “I ... will present myself. I won’t offer myself to the Church blindly, but I will listen to the Church’s case and give it serious consideration. If you knew me at all, dellai, you would understand the great concession I make by promising this.”
The dellai sighed through his nose. He held out his hand. “Swear.”
Mark didn’t have time to hesitate. He shook the dellai’s hand. “I swear.”
“Bring in your messenger,” the dellai snapped.
Mark dove for the door.
The messenger was still there.
“He’ll see you,” Mark told him.
It was hard not to regard the sacred messenger with some awe, knowing their remarkable history and heritage. They were as well-trained as jesters, though in a different direction. This messenger had carried the puzzle scroll all the way from Seven Churches by the Sea without a clear destination. Mark could only guess what kind of danger and obstacles he’d faced trying to find Mark and complete his delivery.
The messenger carried the puzzle scroll in a special satchel. Once over a year ago Professor Vinkin had somehow gotten a messenger’s satchel and brought it for Mark to look over. Though it had some interesting pockets and traps, it didn’t appear all that special.
This satchel, like Obsidian’s death mask, seemed alive.
The messenger with his rough beard and long hair, tough clothing and battered weapons, appeared at ease aside from his impatience. “Dellai, my ship won’t wait much longer,” he said.
“I will send a guard to hold the ship,” the dellai told him.
Rank and sacred credentials didn’t appear to sway the messenger. “Dellai, we will miss the tide, and my instructions require me to return as soon as possible. I will not wait.”
Dellai Betram gave Mark a long look. “Then I will accompany you personally.” He held out his hand.
It took Mark a moment to realize what he wanted. Mark squeezed his hand around the money case, wondering if it might not be used for something better, but he relented and handed it over. It wasn’t just handing over the money without any sort of receipt that made him uneasy.
“Seaton?” the dellai asked.
“Yes. Mark Seaton.” Why would someone as important as the dellai go all the way to Seven Churches personally? He could send the fortune with the messenger and a sacred guard could receive instructions and go to the mainland on the dellai’s behalf.
The dellai glanced at the sacred messenger. “You will bear witness. On behalf of Meridua’s Church, I will negotiate for Mark Seaton’s indenture to be transferred to us. If it is paid in full by this and his other assets, I will seize any positive balance and you will still owe me that oath. Do we understand each other?”
Mark nodded.
Dellai Bertram walked out, bellowing at various guards to attend to him.
Mark tugged on the messenger’s elbow before he could follow. “Tell Gutter—” he began, a bit desperate to find words. Nothing he said could help. He didn’t know why it scared him so much to sever this tie to Lord Argenwain and the Cathretan Church, but it did. For many years the debt connected him to Seven Churches like bloodlines tied a family together. After this and the bonding, would Gutter even acknowledge his existence? “Tell Gutter I’m well.”
&nbs
p; The sacred messenger gave a short nod and strode away. After a breath Mark chased after him. “The message—did he ask you to deliver it to Lark, or Mark Seaton?”
The messenger spared him a glance. “Is there a difference?”
“There is to me.”
“I was given both names, and more.”
“What other names?”
By this time, with long strides that kept Mark running alongside, his limp abandoned, the messenger reached his horse. “The list is too long to repeat. If we meet again, Lark, I will be glad to oblige you, with Gutter’s permission of course.” With that he rode away. The dellai stepped up into a carriage, still barking orders, and hurried after him.
Gutter is going to hate me forever. I’ve ruined everything.
But it was done and done. It had been done when he’d abandoned his indenture, but until now he hadn’t appreciated the full consequences of his actions.
So this is freedom.
Mark returned to the carriage. “Thank you, Philip. Please take me home.”
“Are you all right, sir?”
Mark smiled. His concern sounded genuine. “I’m fine, thank you.”
The long ride seemed much shorter than usual. Hevether Hall, with its stark face, black arched entrance and largely empty rooms felt cold despite the tropical heat constantly wearing at them from the outside. Poetic. A direct opposite of his home in Lord Argenwain’s house which had been garish, constantly full of servants and visitors, and in winter had been warm, even hot inside while the ice formed envious knives outside the windows.
He heard the colonel’s footsteps coming from the sun room through the hall and the enormous columned gallery that teed with the grand entrance before the man himself appeared. Mark waited near the main sitting room for him. “Where have you been?” The colonel’s calm tone couldn’t hide his anger.
“On business.”
“Our business. You haven’t spent an hour here except to sleep, and I have no idea what you’re doing. As of now I’m reining you in. You are not to leave this house without my permission.”
Mark couldn’t help it. The laughed welled up and escaped before he could contain it. “Whatever will please you, my lord and master.”
“You find this amusing.” His head jerked up and too far back like a horse in proud defiance.
“No one else would, I know. They’d have to have had the day I’ve had.” Mark didn’t know where to begin. “Dellai Bertram has run off to the mainland. I’ve sent a message to Gutter. And I remembered something on my way into town for which I have to apologize.”
Colonel Evan’s hands flexed open and he stiffened his spine as if bracing for gale winds.
“It’s customary for jesters to give a gift shortly after the bonding.” His good humor dissolved into shame. “I don’t even know what to get you, and I’ve spent most of my money, so I couldn’t—will you give me some time?”
“I had wondered.” Wreathed in dignity, the colonel approached a pair of paces. “I also remembered about gifts this morning, and I knew immediately what I wanted to give you, but I was afraid you would hate it.”
Mark grinned and a set of soft chuckles tickled out. “We’re quite a pair.” Was that a smile in the colonel’s eyes? He couldn’t tell for certain.
“Yes, we are.”
Mark chewed his lip. “You have me, sir. Whatever will you do with me?”
The colonel gestured toward the breakfast room. “Let’s begin with a discussion.”
“About?”
“Everything.”
“We had one very splendid Yule in particular. Our last all together.” The colonel hopped from rock to rock while the waves crashed. Foam occasionally floated by with the thick spray. Sometimes Mark had a difficult time hearing him over the ocean’s roar, and the gull cries, and the sharp peeps from strange birds with brilliant orange throats and flashy black and white wings sharp as knives. “My father, my fiancé, my sister and her family, then two sons, and her husband of course. Later she had two daughters. She had her family in the proper way. Boys first, then girls, and she started at the ideal age. Father was so proud of both of us. We’d made smart matches, and our future looked so promising. He didn’t know it yet, but I’d fallen in love with someone unsuitable. But my engagement hadn’t fallen apart yet. I was giddy with my secret love, too self-involved and selfish to care about what it meant and what it would do to all of us. I’ve been happier since then, but never again ... content. For those several days we were a good family in good standing, and our future seemed perfect.”
“How old are your nephews and nieces now?” Mark hoped they’d all lived, though of course the odds were against that.
“Little Ricky turns thirteen in a pair of months. He’s the eldest. Melissa is four. All four are doing well. Father forbid me from seeing them out of an ignorant fear that I’d do something awful to the boys, but my sister receives me when I visit and ... and we all pretend that I’m obedient and stay away out of concern that I might corrupt them or hurt them. I miss them terribly. I’d see them every day if I could. I’m their only uncle, so I can say I’m their favorite uncle. They do seem to delight in seeing me, if only because they know I’ll always have something for them.”
It broke Mark’s heart to listen to him talking about it as if it were someone else’s troubles. What he didn’t talk about seemed even more pitiful. Mark didn’t even know his lover’s name, never mind their history.
“Publicly, of course, we are an unbreakable bastion of loyalty,” the colonel continued. “If we see little of each other, it’s because we’re industrious, and stoic, and all that. And we gather for all the required holidays.”
“Who else knows?” He wished he didn’t have to ask.
“Amery. A few of my lieutenants. My household and my father’s household, of course.” The colonel turned briefly to gaze at his home. He never turned his back to the sea for more than a second. Mark followed his example, keeping watch over the waves.
“Speaking of your household, it’s too small for a house so large.” Mark told him. “What do you have, fifty rooms? And you’d have more if it wasn’t built with such immense spaces in it. You’re going to need more than Trudy, Philip and Norbert to keep it up.”
“Like the hells I do.” The colonel said it in a mild tone, but the words stood firm against argument.
“It’s not fair to them. They’re not just caring for you anymore. Also, I have messages that will need to be delivered. Are you going send Philip for that, and have him be my driver in addition to his duties to the horses and the exterior property ....”
“You need to put my horses to use and stop using that damned carriage so much,” the colonel told him.
“I’m not a good rider.”
The colonel gave him a sharp look that softened after a moment. “Then you’ll learn.”
“It’s not just messages and travel. We’re going to open up more of those rooms and you’re going to entertain guests at Hevether.”
“No.”
“Yes.” Mark leapt from rock to rock over streams of flooding seawater to get ahead of him and stand in his way. “You have friends. You need to have them come to visit you. It’s the best way to learn what’s happening out there. You can’t perpetually send me on forays hoping someone will let something slip. I’m a stranger here. Until I can get a reasonable foothold, you have to let me reinforce your alliances and make some of my own through you. Besides, it’s very unattractive, sulking out here. Some might consider it romantic, but you’ll never be able to take advantage of it. From a political standpoint it’s worse than useless. It looks weak.”
That last part got his head up.
“Every summer,” Mark continued, “we’d have party after party at Pickwelling. The expense was enormous, but the rewards far exceeded it. Lord Argenwain has over a hundred servants and he’d move some of them from his country house to Seven Churches during the peak social season. We needed every last hand that coul
d be crammed into the servant quarters. Sometimes we’d have twenty suites filled with guests, and dances with over two hundred nobles and all their hangers-on in attendance every week. That required constant cooking, cleaning, shopping, arranging, decorating and running about. I’m asking for so much less. A stable boy so that if Philip is away there’s someone to tend to a visitor’s animals. An apprentice for Philip, and a scullery maid for Norbert. Trudy should have a parlor maid and a chamber maid helping her at the very least. And you should have a full-time laundry maid doing laundry here at Hevether rather than sending your laundry out whenever you run out of stocking and sheets so that we can put more of the rooms to use and have things like curtains and—”
“Stop.” A huge wave sent cooling spray high over their heads. It rained down in a soft mist. Sunlight caught the drops in his dark hair. “Just ... stop.” He looked stiff and miserable and chilled despite the heat.
“All right.” Mark stepped back. “Let’s go back to the house.”
The colonel followed him obediently, most likely because he didn’t know what Mark had planned. Mark herded him through the seaward entrance, up the stairs and back to the seaward and roadward side of the house to the master suite, but not the bedroom. The colonel would certainly throw him out the moment Mark touched him in such an intimate environment. “Have a seat.”
The colonel gave Mark one of those now-familiar warning looks, but settled on the narrow chair near his window. Other than a few other matching chairs, a bookshelf and a desk, the large private room between the master bedroom and the lady’s suite had little in it. It looked as if he’d been forced to sell all his prize possessions to cover a large debt.
Mark doubted that such a man as this with his frugal lifestyle, lack of bad habits such as drinking and gambling, and lack of friends with bad habits, had any debt that outweighed his assets. The colonel had simply neglected his house, just as he neglected himself. Mark set a firm hand on his shoulder and began to rub. Naturally the colonel flinched.
“What are you doing?”
“Relax.”
“I’ll have an answer or you will lose that hand.”
Mark doubted he was bluffing. “I was servant to an old man with an old man’s aches and pain and stiffness and suffering.” He set his other hand on the other shoulder and kneaded hard, though not quite enough to penetrate the steel tension in those remarkable shoulders. “Relax. I’m not going to rape you.”
The colonel grunted. Mark gripped and shook him gently. Finally the muscles yielded. The colonel groaned.
“Naturally everyone who dared assume anything about Lord Argenwain figured he rode me hard every night. In actuality I spent most of our time together helping him walk up and down the stairs, massaging his hands when they hurt after he wrote all those politically necessary letters, and I rubbed his scalp when he had headaches. I read to him every night.” Mark worked his hands up to the colonel’s neck and stair-cased his thumbs up along his spine and back down. The colonel had knots everywhere but Mark needed him to learn to trust before he could work those painful places the way they needed. “He didn’t have much ardor left in him. Just now and then, and he was never cruel.”
“It doesn’t matter. He should have never—”
“I know. Relax. He won’t touch me again. That part of my life is gone.”
The colonel tightened up again. “You sound regretful.”
“I’m not.” Mark didn’t dare admit that he cared about Lord Argenwain, and how he felt so terribly lonely here. It would be impossible to explain why he missed Pickwelling, because he couldn’t even explain it to himself.
“The more I hear of your life there, the less impressed and the more disgusted I am with the both of them, but especially Lord Jester Gutter. He seems to me little better than beggar boy herder.”
Mark’s teeth ground together, but he resisted the urge to defend Gutter. He poured his confusion and anger into his hands.
“No answer?”
“He paints roses.” Mark pulled the colonel’s coat off his shoulders. The colonel didn’t resist. “During the summer he sits in the garden for hours, very early in the morning when no possible duty could call him away. Sometimes he’d have no sleep but he’d sit and paint the morning light and the dew and soft petals. It isn’t just the beauty and the presence of those paintings that draw people to his art. They remark at how real the blossoms are, how fresh, how you can almost smell them, touch them, how they seem more alive than the real blooms were. But what truly entices them, and what most of them can’t explicate is the love. And he loved me that way. He painted a portrait of me once. I can’t bear to look at it. It makes me want to cry. I realized that he knew my pain, and grief, and hope. It makes the thought of his betrayal almost impossible to believe, though the evidence was always there, haunting me.”
“Describe it to me. Your portrait.”
Mark closed his eyes and saw it in his mind. His chest ached and his throat tightened. “I was sixteen years old, sitting in a chair in the study looking outside. It was summer. He asked me to stay there, and he came back with his watercolors. For weeks he would ask me to sit there for a little bit at a time and he asked me questions, made me laugh, made me think. In the oil I have my chin resting on my arms and I’m sitting twisted in the chair gazing into that summer light. Like the love in the roses, you can see I’m an orphan who’d gladly trade his fine clothes for rags if he could see his parents, even just for one moment, see them alive and well. There’s no grief except in a subtle way in one eye.”
The same eye on the black side of the mask he’d painted on his face as his first mask.
“He made me beautiful, and young, and fragile, but there’s strength in my hands from the fencing. I was prettier then. I didn’t have to shave.”
“You joke, but ....”
Mark understood. He opened his eyes and let the feelings slip away. “Take off your waistcoat. Might as well take off your shirt too.”
“No, I think I’ve had enough.”
Mark didn’t let him stand up. “Will you stop being so worried about your virtue and let me do this for you? I promise I won’t seduce you.”
“I’m less concerned about that.”
“Oh please. You’re still in love with whatever his name is. Just think about dog shit and monkeys with firearms and you’ll be fine.” Mark set his hands on the back of the chair.
The colonel sniffed and worked his waistcoat off. “You certainly know how to manipulate my moods.”
“It’s not hard. I just have to be cruel and annoying and you trust me. Better, you trust yourself. I don’t think you need to worry, though. You want a lover. I’m just a toy.”
That declaration sat heavily in Mark’s mind for far longer than he wanted to live with it. The colonel didn’t venture to refute it. He just stripped off his shirt, revealing a strong back, a soldier’s back, the straight spine and smooth skin of a nobleman who always went outdoors in proper clothes. The only scars Mark could see were on his arms, and he had plenty there.
The colonel wasn’t just young and handsome. He was clean. Lord Argenwain was always well-washed, but time and hardship and the endless wine and smoke and food and travel and everything else that had aged him had stained his skin and nails and hair into materials as fragile and marked as old paper. By comparison the colonel was as pure as clear, cold water.
It took all of Mark’s will to keep from tracing the colonel’s fine skin with his fingers.
“Now lay down. The rug there, or your bed, it doesn’t matter.”
The colonel obeyed, leading Mark into his bedroom. A flash of memory came from Lark—that calculating lust that had no soul, that would seduce this man if he thought he could get away with it. Of course Lark wouldn’t consider it worth the risk even if he didn’t worry too much about the household political consequences of his conquest. Lark feared rejection worse than death.
Mark hated what the mask had thought and felt. The colonel wasn
’t someone to trifle with, and they both had fragile hearts that would be too easily shattered in Lark’s cold grasp.
Mark worked that fine back until his hands ached and his shoulders burned, worked until the colonel winced and moaned in painful but exquisite protest, worked until the muscles had a smooth, almost liquid consistency. The colonel’s scent ... that fine, smooth warmth parted Mark’s lips and drew them, but he didn’t dare touch his mouth to that radiant skin. The physical and spiritual power beneath that skin could destroy him with a single word.
He left the colonel in his languor and set off for his room, trembling with something deeper than lust. He needed to write a list of things he had to accomplish in the near future.
Or rather I need the distraction.
He refused to whittle his wish. If he got into the habit he would forever be dashing away for privacy whenever the colonel inspired his lust. He’d rather calm himself with intellectual things, and then visit Grant and be a human being with a friend, a bottle of wine and things of no importance to talk about. Everything here was too confusing, and deprived, and too full of longing and loss and danger and fearsome responsibility.
Technically he wasn’t allowed to leave the house without permission. He suspected that if he asked right now, the colonel might be happy to be rid of his problematic, neglectful and sinful pet.
Maybe in an hour he’d dare ask.
An open window on the way to his room conveyed the urgent rhythm of a fast rider. By the time Mark made it to the entry hall, Trudy had opened the door to the knock and received a decorated wooden box about the size of a sword case. She offered Mark the case. It felt empty. The paper tied to the latch had the symbol of a feather embossed in gold leaf on black paper.
“Thank you,” Mark told Trudy, and shut himself in his sitting room.
The first debut gift had arrived.
Masks Page 21
