The Architecture of Desire

by Mary Gentle

  "There!" Bevil Calmady stabbed a pointing finger.

  Riders plunged away towards woodland cover. The sun glinted from burgonet helms, breastplates, and the barrels of pistols. Maybe a dozen men. One rider lagging at the rear spurred viciously and uselessly at his straining horse.

  "Oh, lord." Gadsbury leaned and spat over his horse’s shoulder. He chuckled. "There’s always one lackwit. Look at him—Bevil!"

  "They're Protectorate men!"

  Bevil spurred his horse raw. The downhill grassland jolted past him, cold wind whipping his eyes; and he struggled to ease the hilt of the sword in his hand, the guards bruising his knuckles as the blade slipped.

  The other mount and rider spurred on.

  Bevil swung the sword up, coming within bare distance; skidded his horse around in a turn that all but foundered it; cut a backstroke slash that hit nothing at all; and was away before the enemy rider could turn.

  A sudden rush of sound. Bess and Gadsbury rode past him, pounding across the frost-slippery grass, yelling as high as baying hounds. He spun his horse back to follow them.

  "Stand, you whoreson, stand!" A deep voice belled desperation. "Hold the line!"

  Enough sense penetrated his wind-blasted brain to know that there was no line, no battle, nothing but a skirmish; himself way out in front, the riders near the woods about to turn, one lifting his arm . . .

  The flat crack! of a pistol echoed across the morning.

  Bess and Gadsbury reined in, deliberately and visibly leaving the pursuit. Across the hillside, the enemy force vanished.

  "I —"

  He turned in the saddle and the sky blackened.

  The smell of pain dizzied him, a smell like cracked glass. He took his hands away from his face, unaware that he had covered it. Dark red blood ran across his skin. Cold stung his mashed lips and nose. He snuffled blood, staring.

  "That," Pollexfen Calmady shouted, "is the wound you should have got to teach you skirmishing is no game. Never go in without support, never go in without orders: what do I have to do, boy?"

  Bevil removed a patched handkerchief from his pocket and cupped it over his nose. Cold dried the blood on his gloves and bare wrists.

  Muffled, he said, "I’m sorry . . . Gadsbury, I’m sorry."

  "No harm done. Spirits," the small man said gruffly, riding up; and Bess, Lady Winslow, added, "High spirits, he’ll lose that soon enough. Or at any rate, as soon as we do."

  "Then let him learn some devil-damned responsibility! Boy, you do the business attendant on this, and I’ll check on your handling of it later."

  "Yes, Fa—yes, Captain."

  Back in column, Bevil Calmady in turn rode beside each of the company’s two sergeants, listing point-duty and necessary extra guard duties for the night.

  In mid-speech he looked up to see the White Crow’s eyes on him, the woman obviously listening; and no distaste in her expression, only memory and a kind of self-mocking hunger.

  Chapter Four

  The spiked heads on poles on Southwark bridge muttered their rote litanies of confession into the winter air.

  White Crow glanced up at snow-crusted scalps and moving, blackened lips.

  "The old place hasn’t changed, I see."

  Snow clung to stanchions. Below, Thamys froze, cracking barges in the slow grip of ice. Iron-rimmed coach-wheels rumbled on the bridge, sudden sparks striking in the cold afternoon.

  "It won’t change. Not until we rid ourselves of the cause." Mud crusted the hems of the young woman’s skirts. Desire walked with her hands tucked up into her sleeves, grey coat billowing. The cold air reddened her cheeks, the marks on her face, at least, beginning to fade after three days. A sepia bruise darkened the lower lid of one eye.

  Straight-backed, the White Crow leaned the reins against the dapple grey’s neck, avoiding a sedan chair carried against the flow of traffic. The lead carrier muttered thanks, redfaced and sweating. The wigged Lady Justice in the chair made no acknowledgement.

  "By cause, you mean the Qu—"

  "I mean to speak nothing that would lead to my speaking in public." A sharp jerk of her head, black hair flying, in the direction of the spiked poles.

  "Still a danger?"

  "Oh, yes."

  Saddle motion rocked her hips. The White Crow sat erect; momentarily touching the rein to the dapple-grey’s neck and riding closer to the coach. Jared solemnly waved. She waved back. Cold froze her temples, but she did not pull her hood further down.

  "You have a town-house," Desire-of-the-Lord Guillaime said.

  "My grandfather built a house in Roseveare Court, near the convent gardens. Twenty years’ neglect is long enough to turn it to a slum, I don’t doubt."

  "The General knew you’d come. She will have had it set in order."

  "Will she now. What does she want with him? Why don’t you ride, for God’s sake?" Exasperation rasped in the White Crow’s voice; vanished. "Unless you’d rather walk? It’s as you will."

  Gentlemen-mercenaries rode by twos and threes, red-and-blue silk velvets stark against the snow and traffic. Lord Gadsbury and Sir John Hay shared a mount; Arbella Lacey rode Bevil Calmady’s gelding—the boy riding in the second coach—and Captain Pollexfen Calmady reached across from the saddle to the first coach’s window, taking the Lord-Architect’s flask and drinking deep, and passing it to Arbella. Curses and laughter from the rest of the troop floated back down the bridge.

  Bells rang out from the far bank’s clustered streets.

  "What did I tell you?" The White Crow shifted in the saddle, eyeing the horizon behind them. White cloud scarfed the hills. "Safe until today. We shall have blizzards tonight."

  "That’s not well. You may need to travel. For Regina Carola. And you must come to court—the Protector-General’s court."

  "I haven’t agreed to anything yet!"

  "Tomorrow. And him, too: the renegade architect."

  The White Crow snuffled a small laugh. "Casaubon, a renegade?"

  "Madam, if he helps us build the eye of the sun, every royalist will call him renegade. I think with good reason."

  "You’re an odd one, you."

  The young woman shrugged, moving shoulders and elbows in a gesture that managed to indicate crowded southern streets, ice-locked quays, solemn Tower, mineshafts, temples, and all.

  "I know the town," she said. "It’s a grave and gallant city."

  Tiny bells jingled on a white mule’s harness. One of the child-priests of the Sun rode down the centre of the bridge. The White Crow drew her mount aside, in the coach’s wake, waiting until he passed.

  The black-haired young woman rested a hand on the mount’s stirrup. Ungloved, her flesh marbled blue and purple with cold. The White Crow watched her receive pain.

  "Desire—"

  "It is my discipline. Suffering mitigates."

  "I don’t believe—!"

  Dark eyes flicked up, the contact of gazes like a punch in the stomach. "Sin is the flesh. Sin is the failure to defend. The failure to achieve."

  The White Crow glanced ahead at the lead coach. Casaubon’s voice boomed, the higher registers of Arbella and Bess replying. She frowned. Between the ranks of poles lining the bridge, fragments of confessions drift down from dead withered lips:

  "—treason against her most Catholic Majesty Carola. Second of that name—"

  "—the rack, and then drawn on a hurdle to this place—" "—against the Protector, Olivia, this sin—"

  "—pain—"

  "—-for crows to peck at, as a warning—"

  She snorted in black amusement.

  "I’ll do what you want."

  "Yes." Desire-of-the-Lord Guillaime tucked her bare hand back into her armpit. "I thought you would."

  "Tell me, is it me, or are you enjoying this?"

  The young woman limped, heeled boots skidding on the bridge’s trodden snow. The White Crow looked down at her unprotected bare head, tangled matt-black hair; reached down with one hand that she drew back
with the movement hardly begun.

  Desire lifted her face to the low afternoon sunlight. Cheeks red, eyes brilliant with cold. A transparent drop of moisture hung delicate at her nostril. For the first time that the White Crow could remember, her lips moved in a smile.

  "Oh, yes."

  The White Crow rode silent all the way to Roseveare House.

  "There’s our old inn, The Greene Lyon," Bess Winslow suggested, as cautiously as if she handled wild gorse. "It’s that or take Protectorate quarters."

  "You’re quartermaster, do as you will."

  Pollexfen Calmady’s voice rumbled, half-inaudible, his chin down in the lace at his throat.

  Night blurred the fine edges of the winter afternoon. Roofs, weathercocks, towers, and gables all faded into sepia. Her horse’s hooves crunched through the snow’s ice-rime, grimy with coal dust. She glanced behind her at the company riding; bright plumes dimmed in a Protectorate street. They kept no perceptible distance between themselves and the older Calmady.

  She said, "You know I follow you."

  His head lifted. The creases of his face deepened as he smiled. He made a small sound in the back of his throat: amusement or cynicism or merely acknowledgement. "The Greene Lyon, then. And devil take the hindmost for a night’s work—drinking!"

  She looked at Gadsbury, close behind Calmady, and the other mercenaries. "Count me in with you!"

  Rising in the east, a piss-yellow moon stained the sky.

  Sweat slicked her cheek.

  Half asleep, she fumbled a fold of the sheet under her face and let it mop up the film of heat. Casaubon’s flesh shifted under her, solidly warm.

  She lay belly-down across the vast expanse of the Lord- Architect’s hips, back, and shoulders; pillowed against the fat of his bolster-arms, her nose buried in the curly, short hair at the nape of his neck. Slightly rank flesh smelled warm in her nostrils. Rhythmic, untroubled breathing lifted her.

  ". . . Mmrhhnn?"

  Belly on back, sweat-glued to every contour of muscle under pillows of fat, she shifted one leg; her pubis resting on the cool flesh of his buttock, a foot trailing down to the bed. Heat and slick sweat woke her, and the frost-cold air that touched her unprotected ear outside the blanket.

  Awkwardly, peeling skin from skin, she slid down into the folds of blankets tenting his body, and yelped at the touch of cold cloth.

  ". . . time is’t?"

  The White Crow hitched herself up against sloping pillows, grabbing at sheets to bundle round her bare shoulders. Brilliant, the morning light of heavy snowfall gleamed on every polished wood panel and candlestick of the room. Her breath huffed silver-grey. "Wake up, rot you! It’s late. General Olivia."

  "She can wait. So can t’other."

  The bedframe creaked loudly. The fat man, nose still buried in linen, reached one ham-hand up to grab blankets and rolled massively over onto his side; hunched down so that only a tuft of copper-red hair showed.

  "Ei!" The White Crow hugged her bare breasts, left on the naked and blanket-denuded side of the bed.

  "You should be up!" She hit the cloth-covered bulk, fist bouncing back from solidity. The Lord-Architect Casaubon rolled over onto his other side, in the bed that shifted on the floorboards and squeaked in protest, and rested his chins on his hand. Dark red lashes lifted. He beamed sleepily at her.

  "I am," he said, "I am . . ."

  Momentarily taken aback, she blinked and then grinned.

  "Good."

  She ran her finger over the fullness of his lower lip, down his underlip to the deep swell of his chin. Soft against the pad of her finger: delicate flesh and moist breath.

  Humour retreated, burned up by something more urgent in his eyes. His free hand slid across under the blankets and pulled her sprawling against his body. She dug fingers deep into his capacious flesh, wrestling, blind in the sweat and odour of desire; too urgent now to do anything but take.

  The Lord-Architect Casaubon flicked open his court fan with a practised twist of the wrist. He eyed himself in his mirror over the black-painted, sequin-decorated sealskin, flirted an eyebrow, and gave a beam that the fan concealed.

  "Perfect!" he announced. "Ah. Little one . . ."

  "Mmm?"

  He turned from the full-length mirror. Outside the window, in Roseveare Court, a yellowing sky bled snow. Against this light, the Master-Physician White Crow bent to buckle the fifth chain-and-buckle on her left boot.

  "Is that entirely wise?"

  The woman straightened. She hooked a pair of thin iron chains from her belt, over her narrow black leather trousers, looping through the crotch and twisting to fasten them at her hip. Other chains tautened: at hip, knee, calf, and ankle. She put one hand to her cinnamon-coloured hair, braids fastened up with black-iron clips.

  "Formal plain black. That’s what you wear at the Protectorate court. Puritan black. I know these things, remember? I was born here."

  She laced the black leather bodice more tightly over her breasts, and tucked a black rose into their visible division. The bodice’s straps cut into her bare arms. A studded collar circled her throat. A black-hilted dagger clinked, dangling from one thigh.

  "And if the General should happen to suspect that I don’t much like the puritan Protectorate—or being hauled out of Roseveare on business that isn’t mine—or being emotionally blackmailed by her messenger Desire Guillaime—well, then: good!"

  The Lord-Architect drew himself up to his full six-foot-five, weight back on one heeled shoe, black brocade coat swirling. He flicked the sealskin fan closed and secreted it away in an inside pocket. The immense turned-back cuffs of the coat snagged on the black-silk embroidery of his waistcoat and breeches.

  "Sometimes, Master-Physician, you’re just plain embarrassing company."

  "Ha!"

  The White Crow slung a glove-soft leather cloak around her shoulders and pulled on black leather gauntlets. Her turn arrested partway: she stared herself up and down in Casaubon’s mirror. "I’m really going to go out on the streets like this, just to make a point about Olivia’s self-styled puritans? No! Yes. I suppose I am. Let’s go, before I lose whatever nerve I have left."

  Window-glass vibrated. A lump of decaying snow slid down. The Lord-Architect paced across creaking bare boards, opened the window, and gazed down into the snow- choked narrow street. Lamps burned in the row of booksellers’ shop-windows along Roseveare Court. "It’s Guillaime."

  Her hand pushed his arm. He moved back. She leaned over the casement, looking down at the girl in her layers of skirts and coats. Snow settled and melted in black hair.

  "I’ve called your carriage." Snow distanced Desire-of-the- Lord’s voice.

  The Lord-Architect nodded ponderously. Beside him, White Crow lifted a hand in acknowledgement and pulled the window quickly closed.

  "I’ll have to find time to examine her today. She’s healing well. Bodily. What’s in her mind . . . I don’t know! I suppose I can at least tell her if she has pox or a bastard."

  "Little one, don’t be so bitter."

  "Oh, that’s the strange thing. I’m not."

  The White Crow walked to the bassinet, lifting out the baby with automatic care. She nuzzled her face against it.

  "Are you coming with us, then? Little Jadis? Coming to see what lunacy we’re about to be roped into?"

  "Yawp!"

  The Lord-Architect Casaubon thoughtfully picked up two spare feeding bottles of milk, tucking them into one outside pocket, and slid a handful of rusks into the other. He licked crumbs from his gloved fingers. Milk oozed into the black cloth.

  "Father!"

  The Lord-Architect gazed around the small, panelled chamber. His gaze abruptly lowered. A beam spread over his face. Jared, in the doorway, and spruce in brown frock-coat and breeches, eyed his father with long-suffering patience.

  "Father, why don’t you let Abiathar carry those?"

  Casaubon slowly squatted down on his haunches. Level with Jared’s face, he met puzzled bl
ue eyes.

  "Abiathar is taking you to see the sights of the town. Won’t that be nice?"

  The eight-year-old clasped hands behind his back and frowned disapprovingly. "I would like to go to the Stock Market, Father. And the ’Change, if I may."

  The Lord-Architect Casaubon raised his eyes. The woman shook her head, mouthing a sentence which he deciphered as Nothing on my side of the family. With some effort, he rose to his feet.

  "Of course you may. Tell Abiathar that I said so."

  The door shut soundlessly behind Jared.

  "No," Casaubon said, "I don’t know where he gets it from, either."

  "It’s safer than taking him to court."

  The redhaired woman rested Jadis in the crook of her arm, swaddled in a woollen coat and her own cloak; walking towards the door. Chains jingled. She shot the Lord-Architect a speaking look. Casaubon shut his mouth. He followed her down narrow, winding flights of stairs. Snow-light shone yellow at casements and high clerestory windows. A tiny bell chimed, another, and two more: the clocks of Roseveare House striking ten in the morning, in anything but unison.

  "At least one of those struck seventeen." He reached past her in the narrow hall to open the door.

  "I’m worried."

  "We can call in a clock-mender. In fact, I myself have some degree of talent in that respect—"

  "Not about the clocks!"

  "I know. I have also some degree of talent as regards the noble craft of architecture. Count on me to content this Protector-General. "

  The door swung half-open and lodged. A wall of cold air hit him in the face. The Lord-Architect drew his foot back and kicked the door. The door banged open and back against the house wall. Congealed snow and ice spanged off the shopfronts across the street. A patch of snow slid off the opposite roof and fell six floors to pock the street beneath. The Lord-Architect blinked.

  "Casaubon . . ."

  He slid gilt-and-sequined buttons into three-inch buttonholes, fastening the black brocade frock-coat up to his chins. White flakes blew in and settled on his sleeves. He turned the coat-collar up.