Quillifer

by Walter Jon Williams

  “How big a share?” asked he.

  So, we argued over that over the course of an hour, and in the end I wrote the letter, Newbolt took on a stock of fresh water, and was gone the next forenoon. I spent a few more days in Bretlynton Head, and acquainted myself with the city. It was in a near-lawless condition, for the Sea-Consuls who had pledged their allegiance to Clayborne had fled, the Warden of the Castle was nowhere to be found, and such aldermen as remained were not enough to establish a quorum. Privateers had been hovering off the coast for weeks, taking prizes, the news of which pleased me enormously. Eventually, I took passage back up the river. It was a slower journey, and I enjoyed the view, sitting on the foredeck with my copy of Bello’s Epics, the stately classical hexameters running through my head while I viewed the old robber-castles on their crags, the sheep in their pastures, the vineyards that ran down to the bank of the Dordelle, cherry- and apple-trees in blossom, the hills and mountains verdant with the new spring. Bonille well lived up to the promise of its false etymology, but by the end of the journey, I was burning to get off the boat and to my business ashore.

  I arrived at Howel just ahead of Queen Berlauda, who was to make a grand entry into the city to meet with her lieutenants and review her army. The artillery were busy organizing a salute of gunfire, and the courtyard behind the baron’s residence was now covered with the gunpowder that had suffered the separation of its elements on its journey to the capital, and was being remixed by hand. I preferred not to be blown up, and kept my distance.

  I amused myself by viewing the sights. Bonille had once been a part of the Empire, and many old imperial structures still stood. Most were temples, but there was also an aqueduct that still functioned, a theater that held two thousand people, a basilica filled with shops, parts of the city wall, and a stadium across the river. I saw everything I could but avoided the stadium, for this was where Clayborne’s army was being held under guard.

  The day of the review came. The enormous guns that His Grace of Roundsilver had given to the Crown were deployed with the rest of the artillery in the grand review, and between those two enormous bronze weapons I sat on my savage horse Phrenzy, very martial in my battered armor. I lifted my sword to the salute as Berlauda rode by propped up in her carriage, her blond hair agleam in the May sunshine, her handsome face displaying its accustomed serenity. The Knight Marshal rode next to her, for once without his fur coat, and dressed in a brilliant outfit of sky blue, glittering with gems and silver thread. He had arrayed his lucky medallions all over his doublet, and no doubt thought himself very blessed to have had their protection. The tale in the army was that he would be made a marquess, and receive lands from the Duke of Andrian’s domaine. Neither he nor the Queen betrayed any sign they had recognized me.

  Berlauda’s half sister Floria followed in the next carriage, along with a group of court ladies. The princess wore a gown of dark red, piped with the bright royal scarlet, and a scarlet cap tilted over one hazel eye. Her dark hair was braided atop her head. The eye passed over me, then snapped back to my face. She stood and craned toward me as the carriage moved past, her mouth open in surprise, and then she laughed and fell back into her seat, convulsed with mirth.

  Doubtless, as she rolled away, she was gasping out a joke about frumenty.

  The day after the review was Lord Utterback’s grand memorial. The Count of Wenlock set up the hero’s casket in the city’s largest temple, with its fluted pillars and boxy pediment, now desanctified and used as a setting for lectures, readings, and concerts. The royal standard I had taken from the Carrociro, the shield on white with its gold thread and braid, lay draped over the coffin. An abbot with a sonorous voice presided, the same who had addressed the crowd on the day Berlauda had been crowned. The Knight Marshal came in his sky-blue suit, with a grandson at each elbow. Her majesty attended the service for the victor who had secured her throne, as did many of the court. She wore the cream-white silken gown permitted to royalty as mourning dress.

  The veterans of Exton Scales came, some of them wounded and supported by friends or by crutches. They wore their bandages defiantly, for these were the true laurels of victory. Most were not permitted in the confined space of the temple, but stood in a silent congregation outside.

  I arrived with Lipton, and as he wore an officer’s sash, he was allowed past the door, and he took me with him. I wore my armor, and carried my sword at my side and my burgonet under my arm. As a token of mourning, I wore sprigs of rosemary on my collar. I did not care if the sight of me drove Wenlock to a fury, for I had come to say farewell to a comrade and a friend, and to honor his courage and his victory.

  I stood in the back of the dark old temple as incense and a sonorous choir wafted over me, and the abbot, the Marshal, and Wenlock eulogized the hero of Exton Scales. I did not quite recognize the man they described, this decisive and infallible titan, so intent on bringing to a fulfillment the martial grandeur of his ancestors; and I thought that the man I remembered, with his sardonic wit and his philosophical discourse, was much more interesting, and perhaps more worthy of note than the ivory statue conjured by the speakers’ fulsome rhetoric.

  I had not expected to be mentioned, and I was not, though I found it a strange sensation to be thus written out of history.

  Trumpets blared, drums boomed, and Wenlock put on his purfled round cap and walked out the temple, followed by the casket on the shoulders of six titled pallbearers, including Lord Barkin. I don’t think Wenlock saw me in the crowd of mourners.

  Outside in Curzon Square, the coffin was laid on a wagon that would take it to the city’s harbor, for transport down the Dordelle to Bretlynton Head, and from thence across the sea to Ethlebight, where Lord Utterback would ultimately be laid to rest at his ancestral home, some leagues up the river from the city.

  I remembered the young man who had ridden to the city’s defense with thirty well-armed followers, and faced Sir Basil calmly in the old fortress, and who resolved to fight Clayborne’s army even though the battle was nigh hopeless. If he had been overwhelmed by his responsibility, he had never lacked for courage, and he had never failed once he understood his duty.

  Queen Berlauda followed the coffin from the old temple, walking with the old Knight Marshal between two files of Yeoman Archers, and we all knelt as she passed. Lipton and I made our way out and paused on the portico, beneath the pediment with its worn, ancient statues of headless heroes. The day was bright and warm, the air fragrant with the scent of spring flowers. A line of carriages was drawn up between the temple and the group of soldiers who waited in the square. The Queen entered one of these along with the Marshal, and waving pleasantly, they left the scene. Great nobles and leaders began to fill the others.

  Lipton and I turned to those leaving the building, and we greeted Frere, whose great black beard was as magnificent as ever, bald old Captain Snype, Ruthven in his muscled leather cuirass, and some of the other officers. Lord Barkin, who had helped to carry the pall, was already gone.

  We held a colloquy for a while, and I think we all sensed that this would be the last time we would all be together. The war that had brought us to our rendezvous at Exton Scales was over. Ruthven would soon return to Selford with his regiment, Frere had received an appointment as Warden of the fortress of Dun Foss up on the border with Bonille, and the professionals like Snype would be looking for another war. Lipton would remain in Howel with his battery of demiculverins, and fire salutes at royal parades.

  For myself, I prayed never to see another battlefield, but otherwise knew not what I would do with myself. There was nothing to keep me in Howel, not with the Queen viewing me with loathing and Wenlock wishing to hurl me into prison for theft or any other crime that occurred to him. But there was no reason to travel anywhere else, especially as Orlanda might whisper poison into the ears of everyone I met, and make any new place as inhospitable as the court. When Frere asked me what I would do next, I said that I didn’t know.

  “Idleness will
only serve to get you into trouble,” said a familiar voice. “You had best find an occupation and stick to it.”

  I turned and bowed to the princess Floria. She wore greens and blues, with a carcanet of emeralds. Sprigs of rosemary were pinned as tokens of mourning to her hat and her gown. Two burly Yeoman Archers stood three yards behind her, and neither eyed me with favor.

  “Does your highness have a suggestion which profession I might adopt?” I asked.

  “I do not,” she said, looking steadily up at me with her hazel eyes. “I know only that, judging by that broil on the Mummers’ Day, you make a damned poor bodyguard.”

  “But you, highness, make a very good one,” said I. “You interceded on my behalf, and saved me from the stocks, at the very least.”

  “Nay,” she said, “they would have cut off your head, and her majesty would have signed the warrant with a blithe heart. Yet I thought that a man who has such a useful way with bandits and assassins should not be so carelessly tossed away.”

  “Then I thank you for my life. I wrote you my thanks at the time.”

  “I read the letter. I thought that to reply might have brought trouble on you, for none of my correspondence is private.”

  “I thank you for that courtesy.” I bowed again. “May I introduce these officers?” For the others had been standing, heads bowed, while this conversation went on, and our words must have been a great stimulus to their imaginations.

  I presented the others, and said that we had all been together at Exton Scales. She looked at them with interest.

  “It speaks well of Lord Utterback that you gentlemen attend his memorial,” she said.

  “He was our comrade,” said Coronel Ruthven.

  Her highness’s bright eyes flicked from one to the other. “At court, Count Wenlock is like a battery of artillery when it comes to his son: he bombards us daily with his son’s many virtues, and his own woes, and with the debt her majesty owes to his house. He lays siege to the throne and comes nigh to demanding honors for himself. Yet should we further ennoble an already-noble father for the sake of his dead son?”

  We had no answer for that, though personally I wished Wenlock in the Mare Postremum without a dinghy. So, Floria turned to me.

  “Was my lord Utterback the hero of the battle? Was he everything his father says?”

  “My lord was the hero entire,” said I. “He fought bravely all day long, he led the final charge that broke the rebellion, and he died at the moment of victory.”

  “But surely he was not the only hero of the day.”

  “There were a thousand heroes that day,” said I. “But all of them are dead.”

  There was a moment of silence. Floria’s quick, birdlike gaze settled on me. “And you, Goodman Quillifer? You are ever in the midst of quarrels and dissensions, and you have crossed swords with infamous bandits and murderous rogues. Were you not in the forefront of the battle? I see that your armor has been battered, and there is a crease across the skull of your helm.”

  “I had the ill fortune to be struck by the enemy, and the good fortune not to have been murdered,” I said. “But as for bravery, there were many on the field more worthy than I.”

  She looked at me for a long, thoughtful moment, and then nodded. “Your loyalty to your commander commends you. I apologize if you find my questions impertinent—I want simply to learn things, you see. We in the palace know only what we are told by people like Wenlock, and by the Marshal, and neither of them were there.”

  We looked at her in silence. For my part, I would say nothing that would serve to diminish Lord Utterback’s honor or memory, and I suppose the others felt much the same way.

  “May the Pilgrim enlarge your knowledge,” said Frere finally.

  A little wry smile touched her lips. “He hasn’t yet,” said she. “But the world may hope.”

  We bowed, and she withdrew to her carriage, which soon drew away.

  Lipton looked after her thoughtfully, and tugged his cap down over one eye. “That is a very strange little girl, sure,” he judged.

  “She wants to do Wenlock down,” said Frere. “I care not what happens to the count, but I know I want nothing to do with any court conspiracy.”

  I had even more reason to keep away from such a conspiracy than did Frere, and so I nodded agreement.

  “What was meant,” asked Snype, “when you thanked her for saving your life?”

  “Not so much saving as sparing.” And I told her about Lord Stayne, the attack on the Festival of the Mummers, how the princess had intervened to prevent my being executed, and how I had come to join the army as a refuge from being killed on the streets of Selford.

  “It ended well for you,” said Frere, “so I will not say your decision was unwise. Yet it is a strange enough reason for joining the Queen’s Army.”

  “A great many soldiers seem to have joined to flee from their former life,” said I, “whether they were being hunted or no.”

  “You left out the reason why Stayne has taken so against you.”

  “Because,” said I, “a great lord needs reason in nothing he does.”

  This they found amusing. “Is Stayne still after your life?” asked Ruthven.

  “I have no knowledge one way or another, but I am sure he does not wish me well.”

  “Your bodyguard here is being disbanded,” Ruthven pointed out. “You might wish to take care.”

  Lipton clapped me on the shoulder. “The Cannoneers will look after him!” he said. “Whoever wants him will have to face the great guns!”

  After bidding my friends farewell, I went out into the square where the soldiers waited, and I shook many by the hand, and spoke with all those who desired to talk to me. I wished them all a safe journey home, or to their next posting, and afterward went back to the baron’s house, and gazing out the windows at the pretty houses glowing gold in the noon sun, tried to decide where next my life would take me. For it seemed that since I had left Ethlebight, I had been blown from one course to the other as if by a perverse wind, and if there was any sense to it, I could not find it. Yet neither could I find a course I strongly wished to take, and so I dealt with whatever business came to hand.

  The next few weeks, I spent with the documents I’d acquired when I had looted the homes of the proscribed. I had deeds to properties, and I surveyed as many as were within a few hours’ ride, and decided to keep some of them. I hired a man to manage them for me, and a lawyer to help me sell those properties in which I had no interest. I also held mortgages and documents relating to loans, and these I investigated through the lawyer, kept some, and sold others to bankers. There was a branch of the Oberlin Fraters Bank in the city, and I arranged for any income to be deposited there, and investigated the means by which I might transfer the money, by note, to another branch.

  While I thus occupied myself, it was announced that Priscus, Loretto’s heir, was on his way to Howel to claim his bride. The marriage contract had been made with the promise that Priscus would lead an army against Clayborne, a promise that Priscus had failed in every way to fill. Even though he had done nothing, apparently Berlauda was obliged to marry him anyway.

  The city was soon bustling with preparations for welcoming Priscus and his entourage, and Lipton and his artillery were sent out to practice their royal salutes. I decided I might as well stay for the celebration, as a great festival seemed a fine antidote to the great miseries of war.

  Yet there were reminders of the war almost daily, for following Berlauda came her new Attorney General, Lord Thistlegorm, with a company of judges to sit on special treason courts. Anyone who had sworn allegiance to Clayborne, or to the infant Emelin VI, was found guilty, as were a number of those for whom the evidence was far less direct. Informers haunted the courts, and rumor had it they were paid by the conviction. Even Clayborne’s childhood nurse was brought before the bench, and found guilty of inciting treason on the part of her infant charge.

  As an apprentice lawyer, I knew that th
e treason laws were severe, and that guilty verdicts were all but inevitable in many cases, but that such verdicts were intended to be mitigated by the monarch’s prerogative of mercy. Berlauda had the authority to pardon any of those convicted, or to alter the sentence to one less severe; but she almost never intervened in these cases, and the result was executions nearly every day. A forest of pikes sprouted around Clayborne, each with its grisly fruit.

  The remains of Clayborne’s army were tried by a military court headed by the Knight Marshal. As they had all been found in arms against the Queen, the verdict was never in doubt. One in ten, chosen by lot, was to be executed, and the survivors branded on the cheek with a T for Treason, after which they would be enslaved for ten years, to work in the Queen’s silver mines in the Minnith Peaks, to maintain harbors, erect buildings, and harvest timber from the royal forests. Few, I guessed, would survive this hard labor.

  Berlauda was beginning her reign with a massacre. I wondered what Priscus would think, strolling up to the Hall of Justice to find himself face-to-face with the decaying, eyeless evidence of his bride’s implacable will.

  If he had any sense, he would jump back on his boat and row for home as fast as he could.

  Priscus was sailing in a galley along the Dordelle from Bretlynton Head, but ahead of him came the Duke and Duchess of Roundsilver across the Cordillerie from Longfirth, and bringing with them Roundsilver’s Players to declaim the patriotic pageant of The Red Horse in the old Aekoi theater. I paid a call on their graces when I saw they’d arrived, and was invited one afternoon to what is called a banquet. A banquet is not a meal, for no meat is served, but instead nuts and sweets and cakes were laid on a board for our pleasure, and wine was served by the steward at the cup-board. Blackwell was present, but he had come down with a quinsy on the journey, and he now wrapped his throat with flannel and could barely speak. He ate nothing, drank only tisanes, and was as great a picture of misery as you could imagine. The duchess fluttered about him to make sure he was comfortable, the kindest nurse in all the world.