by Iain Banks
She returned to her apartments at about a half past the morning's third bell, bathed and changed into more formal wear, and then took me with her to the great hall.
I cannot recall there being any great air of expectation in the place, but then it was a crowded scene, with hundreds of courtiers, foreign diplomats, consular people, nobles and traders and others milling about, all no doubt concerned with their own business and quite convinced that it was more important than anybody else's and merited, if it would help them, the particular attention of the King. Certainly the Doctor seemed to have no premonition that anything strange or untoward was about to happen. If she seemed distracted it was because she wanted to get on with the matter of getting her apartments, her study and workshop and her chemical machinery back together. As we made our way to the hall, she had me note down several ingredients and raw materials she suddenly realised she would be needing in the near future.
"Ah, my dear Doctor," Duke Ormin said, pressing his way through an exotically garbed knot of incomprehensibly jabbering foreigners. "I'm told there's somebody here to see you, ma'am."
"Is there?" the Doctor asked.
"Yes," Ormin said. He stood straight for a change, and looked out over the heads of the crowd. "Our new Duke Walen and, ah, Guard Commander Adlain said something." He squinted into the distance. "Didn't catch it all and they seemed… Ah, there they are. Over there." The Duke waved, then looked at the Doctor. "Were you expecting anybody?"
"Expecting anybody?" the Doctor repeated as the Duke led us to one corner of the hall.
"Yes. I just… well, I don't know…"
We approached the Guard Commander. I missed whatever the Doctor and Duke Ormin said next because I was watching the Guard Commander talk to a couple of his guard captains, two intimidatingly large, stern-faced men armed with double swords. As he saw us approach, the Guard Commander nodded to the two men. They stepped away to stand a few paces off.
"Doctor," Guard Commander Adlain said in an open, friendly manner, putting his arm to one side of the Doctor as though to grasp her far shoulder, so that she had to turn to one side. "Good day. How are you? Unpacked? Are you happily reensconced?"
"I am well, sir. We are not yet quite fully settled in. And you?"
"Oh, I'm…" The Guard Commander looked behind him, then a look of some surprise came upon his face. 'Ah. Here's Ulresile. And who can this be?"
He and the Doctor both turned round to face Duke Ulresile and a tall, bronzed-looking man of middle age dressed in strange, loose-fitting clothes and a small tricorn hat. Duke Ulresile was smiling with a curious eagerness. Behind him stood the new Duke Walen, his head down and his dark eyes looking half closed.
The bronzed stranger had rather a prominent nose, and perched upon it was an odd framework of metal with two coin-sized pieces of glass set in it, one in front of each eye. He took this off with one hand as though it was a hat (that was left on) and made a deep bow. I half expected his hat to fall off, but it appeared to be held in place by three jewelheaded pins.
When he straightened, the fellow spoke at the Doctor in a language quite unlike anything I had ever heard before, full of strange gutturals and odd tonal shifts.
She looked at him blankly. His friendly expression seemed to waver. Duke Walen's eyes narrowed. Ulresile's smile broadened and he took in a breath.
Then the Doctor grinned, and reached out and took the stranger's hands in hers. She laughed and shook her head and out of her mouth rattled a stream of sound that sounded very like the sort of sound the stranger had produced. In amongst all this expeditious blabbering I caught the words «Drezen» (though it sounded more like "Drech-tsen'), "Pressel', «Vosill» and, several times, something that sounded like Koo-doon. The pair of them stood beaming huge smiles at each other and talking in a continuous stream of sound, all the time laughing and nodding and shaking their heads. I watched the smile on Duke Ulresile's face fade slowly, withering like a cut flower. The sullen, hooded expression on the new Duke Walen's face did not alter. The Guard Commander Adlain looked on with a fascinated expression, his gaze flitting to Ulresile now and again, a tiny smile playing around his lips.
"Oelph," I heard the Doctor say, and she turned to me. "Oelph," she said again, holding one hand out to me. She was still grinning broadly. "This is gaan Kuduhn, from Drezen! Gaan Kuduhn," she said to the foreigner. "Blabber blabber Oelph," (well it sounded so to me) she said to him. I recalled that the Doctor had told me that a gaan was some sort of part-time diplomatic rank.
The tall, bronzed man took the wire contraption off his nose again and bowed to me. "I ham press to meet yore, Welph," he said slowly in something resembling Haspidian.
"How do you do, Mr Kuduhn," I said, also bowing.
She introduced Duke Ormin too. The gaan had already met Walen, Ulresile and the Guard Commander.
"The gaan is from an island in the same group as my own," the Doctor said. She looked quite flushed and excited. "He was invited here from Cuskery by the old Duke Walen to discuss trade. He took a quite different route to mine but it seems to have taken him just as long. He has been away from Drezen almost as long as I have so he has little fresh news, but it is just so good to hear Drezeni spoken again!" She turned her smile to him again as she said, "I think I shall see if I can persuade him to stay and found a proper embassy." She started blabbering to him again.
Ulresile and Walen looked at each other. Guard Commander Adlain looked up at the ceiling of the great hall for a moment, then he made a small tutting noise. "Well, gentlemen," he said to the three Dukes. "I think we are somewhat surplus to requirements here, don't you?"
Duke Ormin gave a distracted, "Hmm." The other two men glared on at the Doctor and the gaan Kuduhn with what looked like disappointment, though in the new Duke Walen's case this required no alteration to his normal expression.
"Fascinating though I'm sure this exchange is in its native language, I have other business to attend to," Adlain said. "If you'll excuse me…" He nodded to the Dukes and walked off, nodding to the two bulky guard captains, who followed in his wake.
"Duke Walen, Duke Ulresile," the Doctor said, still smiling. "Thank you so much. I am most flattered you thought to introduce me to the gaan with such dispatch."
The new Duke Walen remained silent. Ulresile seemed to swallow something bitter. "Our pleasure, madam."
"Is the gaan required for an audience with the King?" she asked.
"No, he is not required for an audience with the King," Ulresile said.
"`Then may I take him from you for a while? I'd so much like to talk with him."
Ulresile tipped his head and gave a small twist of a smile. "Please. Be our guest."
Master, I spent a bell and a half with the Doctor and her newfound friend in an alcove off the Song Court Gallery and learned nothing except that Drezem talk like the world is due to end at any moment and sometimes take their wine with water and a little sugar. The gaan Kuduhn did have an audience with the King later that day, and asked the Doctor to interpret for him, as his Imperial was little better than his Haspidian. She agreed happily.
That afternoon, I was sent by myself to the apothecary Shavine to buy chemicals and other supplies for the Doctor's workshop. The Doctor looked quite radiant when I left, dressing and preparing with great care for her meeting with the gaan Kuduhn and the King. When I inquired, I was told that I would not be needed again until the evening.
It was a fine, warm day. I took the long way to the apothecary's, walking down by the docks and recalling the stormy night half a year earlier when I had come here in search of the children who had been sent for ice. I recalled the child in the cramped, filthy room in the tenement in the poor quarter and the terrible fever that had killed her despite all the Doctor could do.
The docks smelled of fish and tar and the sea.
Clutching a hamper of glazed clay jars and glass tubes all wrapped in straw, I stopped off at a tavern. I tried some wine with water and sugar, but it was not to my taste.
For some time I just sat and stared at the street through the open window. I returned to the palace around the fourth bell of the evening.
The door to the Doctor's apartments hung open. This was not like her. I hesitated to proceed further, suddenly filled with a sense of dread. I entered and found a pair of short dress boots and a small formal waist-cape lying on the floor of the sitting room. I put my hamper of chemicals and ingredients down on the table and went through to the workshop, where I could hear a voice.
The Doctor sat with her feet up on the workshop bench, her naked heels resting on a sheaf of papers, her legs exposed to the knee and the neck of her gown unbuttoned over her chest. Her long copper-red hair hung down loose behind her. One of the room's roof-hung censers swung in slow loops above her head, leaving a smoky, herb-scented trail. Her battered old knife lay on the bench by her elbow. She held a goblet. Her face looked red about the eyes. I got the impression she had been talking to herself. She turned to me and fixed me with a watery look.
"Ah, Oelph," she said.
"Mistress? Are you all right?"
"Oh, not really, Oelph." She picked up a jug. "Want a drink?"
I looked around. "Shall I just close the apartment door?"
She appeared to consider this. "Yes," she said. "Closing doors seems to be the order of the day. Why not? Then come back and have a drink. It's sad to drink alone."
I went and closed the door, found a goblet and brought another chair into the workshop to sit with her. She poured some liquor into my goblet.
I looked into the vessel. The liquid did not smell. "What is this, mistress?"
"Alcohol," she said. "Very pure." She sniffed at it. "Though it still has an intriguing bouquet."
"Mistress, is this the distillation you have the royal apothecary make for us?"
"The same," she said, drinking from her goblet.
I sipped at it, then coughed and tried not to splutter it back out again. "It's strong, isn't it?" I said hoarsely.
"It needs to be," the Doctor said in a morose tone.
"What is wrong, mistress?"
She looked at me. After a moment or two she said, "I am a very foolish woman, Oelph."
"Mistress, you are the cleverest and most wise woman I have ever met, indeed you are one of the cleverest and most wise people I have ever met."
"You are too kind, Oelph," she said, staring into her goblet. "But I am still foolish. Nobody is smart in every way. It's as though we all have to have something we're stupid about. I have just been very stupid with the King."
"With the King, mistress?" I asked, worried.
"Yes, Oelph. With the King."
"Mistress, I am sure the King is most considerate and understanding and will not hold whatever you have done against you. Indeed perhaps the offence, if offence there was, seems greater to you than it does to him."
"Oh, it wasn't much of an offence, Oelph, it was just… stupidity."
"I find that hard to believe, mistress."
"Me too. I find it hard to believe. But I did it."
I took the merest sip from my goblet. "Can you tell me what happened, mistress?"
She looked unsteadily at me again. "Will you keep what I tell you…'she began, and I confess that my heart seemed to sink into my boots at these words. But I was saved from a further extension of my perjury and betrayal, or from a wantonly rash admission of my own, by her next words. "Oh, no," she said, shaking her head and rubbing her face with her free hand. "No, it doesn't matter. People will hear if the King wants them to. It doesn't matter anyway. Who cares?"
I said nothing. She bit her lower lip, then took another drink. She smiled sadly at me as she said, "I told the King how I feel about him, Oelph," she said, and sighed. She gave a shrug as though to say, Well, there you are.
I looked down at the floor. "And how is that, mistress?" I asked quietly.
"I think you might be able to guess, Oelph," she said.
I found that I too was biting my lip now. I took a drink, for something to do. "I'm sure we both love the King, mistress."
"Everybody loves the King," she said bitterly. "Or says that they do. It is what one is supposed to feel, what one is obliged to feel. I felt something else. Something it was very stupid and unprofessional of me to admit to, but I did. After the audience with gaan Kuduhn you know I do believe that old bastard Walen thought he was setting me up?" she said, as though interrupting herself. I choked on my drink. I was unused to hearing the Doctor swear. It distressed me. "Yes," she said. "I think he thought that I wasn't… that I was… well, anyway, it was after the audience with the gaan. We were alone. Just him and me. A stiff neck. I don't know," she said miserably. "Maybe I was excited at having met somebody from home."
Suddenly she sobbed, and I looked up to see her bending forward so that her head was lowered towards her knees. She put the goblet down with a thud on the workbench and held her head in her hands. "Oh, Oelph," she whispered. "I have done such terrible things."
I stared at her, wondering what in Providence she could be talking about. She sniffed, wiped her eyes and nose with her sleeve, then put her hand out to the goblet again. It hesitated by the old dagger lying nearby, then grasped the goblet and brought it towards her lips. "I can't believe I did that, Oelph. I can't believe that I told him. And do you know what he told me?" she asked, with a hopeless, wavering smile. I shook my head.
"He told me that of course he knew. Did I think he was stupid? And oh, he was flattered, but it would be even more unwise for him to respond to me than it had been for me to make the declaration in the first place. Besides, he only liked, he only felt comfortable with pretty, dainty, delicate women who had no brains. That was what he liked. Not wit, not intelligence, certainly not learning." She snorted. "Vacuity. That's what he wants. A pretty face fronting an empty head! Ha!" She threw back the last of her drink, then refilled the goblet, spilling some of the liquor on her gown and the floor.
"You fucking cretin, Vosill," she muttered to herself.
My blood ran cold at her words. I wanted to hug her, to hold her, to take her in my arms… and at the same time I wanted to be anywhere else but there, then.
"He wants stupidity, well… Oh, do you see the irony of it, Oelph?" she said. "The only moronic thing I've done since I landed was to tell him I loved him. It was utterly, completely, definitively and absolutely imbecilic, and yet it still isn't enough. He wants consistent dim-wittedness." She stared into her goblet. "Can't say I blame him." She drank. She coughed, and had to put the goblet down on the bench. The goblet's base settled on her old dagger, so that the vessel over-balanced and fell with a crash to the floor, breaking and splashing the alcohol across the boards. She brought her feet down from the bench and put them under the chair she sat on, her head in her hands again as she curled up and started to weep.
"Oh, Oelph," she cried. "What have I done?" She rocked to and fro on the seat, her face buried in her hands, her long fingers like a cage around her tangle of red hair. "What have I done? What have I done?"
I felt terrified. I did not know what to do. I had been feeling so mature, so grown up, so capable and in control over these last couple of seasons, but now I felt like a child again, quite perfectly unsure what to do when confronted with the pain and distress of an adult.
I hesitated, a terrible feeling growing in me that whatever I did next it would be the wrong thing, the wrong thing entirely, and I would suffer for it for ever more and worse still so might she, but eventually, while she rocked back and forth and moaned piteously to herself, I put my goblet down at my feet and got out of my seat and went to squat by her. I reached out one hand and placed it gently on her shoulder. She did not react. I let my hand go back and forth with her rocking, then slid my arm further round her shoulders. Somehow, touching her like that, she suddenly seemed smaller than I had always thought her.
Still she did not seem to think I had committed any terrible transgression by touching her so, and, finding my courage and taking it by the
scruff of its neck, I moved closer to her and put both my arms around her, holding her, slowly stopping her rocking, feeling the warmth of her body and tasting the sweet air of her breath. She let me hold her.
I was doing what I had imagined doing only moments earlier, doing something I had imagined doing for the last year, something I thought would. never, could never happen, something I had dreamed about night after night after night for season upon season, and something that I had hoped, and still hoped somehow might lead to an even more intimate embrace, no matter that that had seemed almost absurdly unlikely, and indeed still did.
I felt her grip on her head loosen. She brought her arms out and put them round me. Embraced by her. My head seemed to swim. Her face, hot and wet from her tears, was next to mine now. I shook with terror, wondering if I dare turn my face towards hers, bring my mouth close to her lips.
"Oh, Oelph," she said into my shoulder. "It is not fair to use you so."
"You may use me as you wish, mistress," I said, gulping on the words. I could smell some delicate perfume rising from her warm body, its tender scent not swamped by the fumes of the alcohol, and infinitely more heady. "Is it…?" I began, then had to stop to swallow on a dry mouth. "Is it so terrible to take the risk of telling somebody the feelings you have for them, even if you suspect they feel nothing similar for you? Is it wrong, mistress?"
She pushed herself gently away from me. Her face, tearstreaked, puffy-eyed and red, was still calmly beautiful. Her eyes seemed to search mine. "It is never wrong, Oelph," she said softly. She reached down and took both my hands in hers. "But I am no more blind than the King. Nor any more able to offer requital."
