by John M. Ford
In the center of the floor was a whitish circle with the sheen of metal, carved with two entwined dragons, one light and one dark.
"All right," Dimi said, letting his men on in, "tear it apart."
"That isn't necessary," a voice said, and the Duke of Buckingham appeared from behind the draperies. There was a lighted red taper in his left hand. He wore a robe of red China silk, with the tail and head of a dragon embroidered over the shoulders; he was apparently naked beneath it.
"No, I'm not a sorcerer," he said, almost jovial. "But you'd be amazed by how much help they ask for sometimes, creating their effects Not that these effects are minor." He ran his toe along the edge of the floor disc.
"Is Morton back there?"
"No. I suppose he's home at Holborn. Home is a good place to be. Home and warm, home and dry." His voice pitched up. "Home upon the quartered wind, round the earth and home again, lodestone of the heart is turning, open, way, and home by morning." He blew out the candle and ran for the mirror in the wall.
Dimi started to move, to call for a spear to crack the glass.
Buckingham collided with the mirror. He gasped. Cracks radiated around his head, one of his knees; his nose was bleeding.
"Morton.'" he howled.
Buckingham staggered back from the broken glass. He turned, saw the soldiers, then turned again and made, awkwardly, for the draperies where he had first appeared.
Dimi put his sword away as Buckingham stumbled by; he drew his boot knife, raised his arm.
Buckingham began to push the curtains apart. There was a door beyond. Dimi's knife went through the broad sleeve of the Duke's robe just above his right arm, nicking the skin, nailing the sleeve to the wooden door. Buckingham groaned and sank down, his weight pushing the door open, while his pinned sleeve held his arm straight up.
Beyond the door, Dimi could see alchemical glassware, smell acids and hot metal. It smells like a battlefield back there, he thought, and it took one moment more to realize it was because of the scent of decaying flesh.
"Morton, damn you," Buckingham was muttering, as Dimi pulled his knife free and hauled the Duke to his feet. "None of it was ever for me, was it?" He turned to Dimitrios. "Tell Richard... to hold on tight to the crown, now, and watch like Heimdall for the man the East sends to collect it."
"My master is not the King," Dimi said, more for the curious troopers' benefit than the Duke's.
"You're not an idiot, Ducas," Buckingham said, with coarse good humor still showing through. "Of course he'll usurp the crown. What other choice did we give him?"
The two boys were on the floor of the Royal apartments, shooting marbles on the carpet.
"That's a keeper."
"No, it isn't. It's only a keeper if it stops on one of the white places."
"That's white."
"No, it isn't, it's silver. We need more light."
"More light makes my eyes hurt, and besides, silver is white."
"No, it isn't."
"Is too. You don't know anything about heraldry. You didn't even know the doctor's name meant silver."
"I did."
"Look."
The King of England brushed his gold hair out of his reddened eyes and stood up. The Duke of York rose to his knees and looked the visitors up and down, running a livid tongue over his lips.
How much easier if the legends were true, Gregory thought. Anyone could throw a bat on the fire, and wolves were shot down almost as habit. But here were just two children playing. And then if it needed just a scratch from a silver edge, or a handful of mustard seeds over the grave, why, the town fool could rid the world of vampires.
"Hello, Sir James," Edward said. "And who are you, sir?"
"This is Sir Gregory of Bavaria," Tyrell said, as Gregory put his bag on the table and unlaced it. "A German knight-doctor."
Edward said "Uncle Richard said Doctor Argentine had to go away to Italy, but we would have a new doctor. Are you the one?"
"Richard said the doctor was a lady," said the Duke of York.
"You don't know anything. That was the other doctor, the one Uncle Anthony brought to Ludlow. I liked her."
"It was she who sent me," Gregory said, which was only the truth. Doctor Ricci was tired of killing his kind, she said. Tired. As if she knew what it meant to be tired.
"Have you brought some blood? We haven't had any blood for a day and a half. There were some birds outside the window, but when we killed one once it tasted awful, and Doctor Argentine said it was bad for us. Anyway, Uncle Richard says we can't go into the courtyard, because of the men at work."
The Duke of York peered close at Gregory. "You're one of us, aren't you? A Perfect, like Doctor Argentine."
The perfection, to feed on humankind alone. "Yes."
"You see?" York said triumphantly. "I do know something." He looked up at Tyrell. "Did Uncle Richard send you to feed us, Sir James? We haven't done that with anyone but Doctor Argentine, but he said it would happen very soon."
Gregory saw the sweat start on Tyrell's forehead, thought his high leather collar and gorget must be choking him. The henchman said nothing, but held out a gloved hand.
Edward said "You go first, brother."
"Oh, no, Your Grace."
"Yes, do." Then he whispered "King's Taster!" and the two boys laughed.
Edward said "You would know this, Sir James: do dead people bleed?"
Tyrell said "It depends, my lord... but usually they may, for a little while."
Told you, York mouthed, and went toward Tyrell.
"Then when I'm King, with my crown," Edward said, "we'll take all the dead murderers, after they've hanged, and give their blood to everyone who's hungry. And when someone has his head chopped off for treason, that will be just for the Lords. Doctor Argentine said they don't even do that in Byzantium."
"No," Gregory said, "even in Byzantium that is not done."
Tyrell said "I have him now, Sir Gregory."
Edward's eyes widened. "What are you doing, Sir James? Let my brother go. I order it! Doctor, make him let York go!"
Gregory thought perhaps town fools should be recruited for this work: they were capable of great singleness of purpose, and if they ever thought of their own mortality it did not worry them.
"Bite him, brother!"
"Tyrell is dressed in steel and thick leather," Gregory said, "and biting me will not change anything." He closed his hand on Edward's shoulder, drew the scalpel, thinking all the while of Cynthia.
He told her she could never understand what it was to drink at another's life until it was all gone, the omnipotent pleasure of it. Because he had known, every moment, what he was doing to Dominic Mancini. He had always feared that hunger would make him mindless, but the actual horror was that it had not.
"I suppose I cannot understand," she said. "That's why I can't do it, and you must. You do know. And because of that, you're the only one who can do it without hating them."
In that she was right, he thought, as he made the second stroke, and the boy shuddered in his arms and was still. There was no hate in it. Perhaps that was actually the important thing, that there not be hate.
How else explain that he still lived?
John Morton strolled between his strawberry vines, pausing to pinch back a leaf or adjust a wire on a stake. He reached into the greenery, plucked out a berry two inches across; he scrubbed it with his thumb and took a small bite.
Above him, snow was falling heavily, and outside the garden walls it was four inches thick on the ground. There was no wind, but a few yards over Morton's head the flakes were suddenly whipped aside. Only in a far corner of the garden did the snow come through, and in the last feet of its fall it thawed, to land as gentle rain.
"Magister Maleficarum Johannes Mortoni," Richard of Gloucester announced from across the rows of vines, "you are under arrest for the practice of injurious and criminal sorcery—"
"There are problems with 'criminal sorcery' as a legal concept, you know," Morton sai
d calmly. "One doesn't accuse a false coiner of 'criminal metal-pressing,' or a man who steals city water of 'criminal plumbing.'" He took another bite of fruit.
"Doctor Morton, you are not a man who deserves warning, but I warn you to take care."
"There is 'criminal trespass,' of course. That's what you're doing, my lord of Gloucester, with your armed men there. But it's not hard to mend: Come in, Your Grace, and your company. And you are innocent! This is mighty sorcery indeed, don't you agree?" He swallowed the last of the berry, went to a row of small trees bearing green fruit. "I'll have blood oranges in a week or so. Sorry now I wasted the space. But it would have been a nice variation on the berry jars: cut one with a silver knife and instead of juice..."
"Will my lord wizard walk to the Tower, or be dragged there in irons?" Richard said furiously.
"Neither, I think." He plucked one of the unripe oranges, turned it over, displaying a blemish on its rind. "There is only one thing to be done with a rotten fruit, my lord Protector." The orange began to shrivel up in Morton's fingers, until it was as black and wrinkled as a peachstone; then that crumbled to dust. "Who will you have kill them, Richard? James Tyrell? Or the Greek mercenary? I've wondered, if I sent his name to the record-keepers of the East, what reply I would get; the Ducai were an Imperial family."
He chuckled. "Does it surprise you that I should know such things? It's the essence of magic, you know, deception and misdirection until the unexpected wonder is produced. The same is true in a court of law."
He reached into his armpit, produced a green orange, showed the same blemish on its side.
"I know what you're thinking," Morton said, "and without putting my fingers into your mind. It's another fruit, and I made the bruises myself, with my thumb. Which is entirely possible, but you have no way of proving it." He tossed the orange aside.
"Now, you have two blemished fruits plucked from the tree of English nobility. But you also need something to show England, so the nature of the blemish never becomes known.
"I have a contract of marriage between King Edward the Fourth and Lady Eleanor Butler, antedating by some years the marriage of Edward and Lady Elizabeth Woodville. It's quite valid, witnessed and sealed by Stillington of Bath, and best of all, never annulled."
"Eleanor Butler's dead," Richard said.
"But after Edward's marriage to Elizabeth Woodville. Now, indeed, if Edward and his overt Queen had ever repeated their vows since Eleanor died, their children would be as legal as... oh, your son, say. But I happen to know that they did not. Doubtless Edward felt marrying Elizabeth once was enough for even his full life. And so the boys in the Tower, or wherever you've stuck them, are as bastard as... well, your first two.
"Now, I assure you that you will not find this document by searching me, or Holborn Hall, or every rabbit hole in England. But I will consider a general pardon by supersedas, and a safe-conduct to no specified destination, fair exchange for it." He smiled benignly. "I am not a man who craves personal wealth, as you know."
"Damn your exchange," Richard said evenly. "We'll get Stillington's oath."
Morton shook his head. "He's a shaky old fellow, mind and body. And remember, many of the population you have to convince haven't even a bigamous marriage about their births. No, it's Edward's duplicity you have to prove, and for that you need the paper."
Richard looked pensive. Then he said "I don't think so. It sounds... petty." He turned, called to the garden gate. "Doctor, what did you determine to be the condition of the Prince of Wales, when you examined him at Ludlow?"
Cynthia pushed back her hood and stepped forward, her cane sinking into the soft garden soil. "A nodular inflammation of the arteries, Your Grace. Certainly fatal, perhaps within only a few months."
"And did this disease cause the Prince's death?"
"In my trained opinion, to which I am willing to swear publicly, the disease began the chain of physical events which led to his death."
"And the Duke of York?"
"One of the Prince's complications was communicated to the young Duke. Had I been... available, I would have made clear the hazards of keeping the children together."
Morton applauded. "Bravo! Bravissima, Signorina Dottorina! You see, Richard, the value of the surprise witness: you have me completely helpless. Now, how ever will I save my life?"
Richard said "Buckingham swears he turned Hywel Peredur over to you, alive. Where is he?"
"Ah, my lord wizard Peredur. When I saw the lady, I thought we might come around to him." He turned to Cynthia, bowed slightly. "And may I say, Doctor Ricci, I am quite pleased to see you alive. The troopers were quite confident they had killed you... but tell me, how did you survive? You did not suffer too greatly, I hope?"
Cynthia said "It is a long story, my lord wizard, which I would not give you the pleasure of hearing."
"You wrong me, madam," Morton said, and the hurt in his voice was startlingly authentic. "I am a pure thaumaturge; nothing I do is for its spiritual sake, but for a practical end. It was not I who had a man drowned in wine, or sent a woman to the rack for being a dead king's mistress." He reached out to his vines, picked a scarlet berry. "I do not prune my vines because I hate the leaves, nor water them for the pleasure of drowning insects, and if I sometimes sow the... strawberries of discord, then others willingly serve them at their tables."
"Then tell us where Hywel is," Cynthia said, wondering if a person could completely lose track of when he himself was lying.
"You know I cannot do that. Not now that I know it's what you want." He looked at Richard. "I'm not on speaking terms with Nimue."
Richard said, controlling himself, "Are you really in any position to bargain?"
Morton offered the strawberry to Cynthia, who did not respond; he shrugged and took a bite. "We're back to the doomed boys. You still haven't any case the commons will understand; the reputation of a Ricci of Florence means nothing to them, nor will rare diseases. You see," he said, very gently, "their children die every day, without ever seeing a doctor. The highly born have doctors, a sort of engineer-priest who cures. It isn't true, of course, but they really don't believe your children die." He sighed. "And as many of them believe this lady is not even mortal, they will not believe the explanation she proposes."
"They'll believe me," said a voice from the gateway, and a man came forward, tossing off his cloak. Beneath it he wore velvet and silver and steel, and the daylight through the whirling snow made highlights on his yellow hair.
Morton opened his mouth, but could not seem to find his voice. Finally he managed one word: "Rivers?"
"Surprise," Anthony Woodville said.
"I heard your death ordered of the steadfast James Tyrell," said Morton, recovering rapidly. "Is there no one in England a man may trust?"
"Fortunately, the messenger to the steadfast Sir James was the headstrong Squire Bennett, and Tyrell decided to deliver me to Richard instead of Pluto.
"Look now, Doctor, I understand better than Richard how it is between rival scholars, but I agree that you ought to tell us where Doctor Peredur is."
"Oh, I dare not, sir; it is all my life is worth." There was a fluttering motion in the air above, and all looked up: a red and gold cloak fluttered down, batlike, and alighted on Morton's shoulders. He wrapped it around himself. "I have been confined before. I suppose you will torture me, as much as you dare. But I warn you, when you do it you will be thinking of what Peredur may be suffering in exchange, and eventually you will torture yourselves into letting me go."
He began to walk toward the garden gate. As he passed Cynthia, he paused and said, "When you accused me of an unnatural passion of spirit, did you know that Anthony Woodville was here?"
Just outside the gate, a group of soldiers was waiting. Two of them held cold iron chains ready.
"Not here. Please," Morton said, looking back at his vines and fruit trees, at the dome of deflected snow above. "Later, of course you must, but not here... I don't want to see it, when
they all die."
London was alive with lights, from lanterns and scented wax candles down the scale of cost and smoke to tallow-dips and rushlights, all shining off the crisp snow and the low pink clouds. Partly it was for Iambolc, the February light festival, but mostly it was for the Coronation.
As with any fairytale event, there had been a string of omens and ominous appearances by villain and hero figures. The Duke of Buckingham was attainted traitor on numinous (and, it was said, unspeakable) grounds, and then took a fall down Tower stairs that cheated the headsman of his neck. The fell sorcerer Morton being confined securely, the population of North-West London tore his house and gardens to pieces in search of treasure or human bones. Finding neither, a farmer brought some blighty wheat and sowed it in the garden, salt being too precious for such a use, and John Morton! joined the names used for counting-out rhymes and scaring naughty children.
And then there were the Princes. Aldermen and dung-carters, shoemakers and priests of aloof Thoth all wept when Earl Rivers told of their end. None of them had a wish to see the bodies of two dead of a confinement disease, knowing childbed fever and the bloody catarrh and galloping flux well enough.
But they did talk. Rumors appeared about Richard and the children's death as if they were being coined by a machine. It was a good cause to brawl over, tied as it was to how you felt about Northerners or the loose atmosphere of Edward's court (and bedchamber), Hastings's death or Clarence's or Humphrey the last Protector's if you were old enough to recall that and still brawl.
There was a need for a crowned king, even if you did not believe the talk that the land was wounded without him. And the ceremonies had developed a momentum, which like that of a charging body of cavalry could not be stopped, but only deflected. And so the crowns and robes were resized and the formal documents rewritten from Edward V to Richard III.
There were few other differences in the result. It was a Coronation, time to reaffirm hope and life and joy.
In many of the windows, lights were going out.
