by Mary Gentle
"Valentine."
"Your Majesty."
"Waldegrave, see we are not disturbed." The door clicked shut, cutting off sound.
The swarthy woman stopped facing the window, staring down at the morning and the frozen Thamys. Black curls fell to the small of her back, dark against the green silk of her coat and knee-breeches. She turned, one hand tugging the lace at her throat.
"How long is it since The Masque of Death and Diamonds?"
Black eyes glinted, humourously. She reached for the chocolate Nipples of Venus that stood on a plate on a side-table, cramming one into her mouth.
"Damnation, is it twenty years?"
"Close on, your Majesty."
"And you had the temerity to leave our court. Or was it tact?"
The White Crow folded her cloak and put it over the back of a chair. This small, furniture-cluttered chamber boasted a fire, and she stretched out her hands to the heat.
"Tact." She shrugged one bare, chilled shoulder. "I’ve come to collect on the debt, your Majesty."
"Indeed? You’re not the only one to use the amnesty to attempt that." The woman laughed, a resonant richness. "We gave them the answer that we’ll give you—although we give it to you with less excuse. It is none the less tine. Despite all you see here, the royal treasury is bare. Bare as Olivia’s heart."
The last words came with lazy precision, as if presented on a stage. The White Crow cocked her head at the panelled walls, raising an eyebrow. The Queen crossed to a small door, flung it open, and jerked her head at the muscular dark boy sprawling on a bed in the room. He sulkily rose and walked towards the exit. Carola ran a hand over his tightly clothed buttocks as he passed.
"Now we're not overheard."
The White Crow watched a reflection in the window, overlaying the frozen river and the north bank. A woman in a blue, lace-decorated gown, hair tumbling loose; nothing of the Scholar-Soldier or Master-Physician about her. "The scars?"
The older woman pushed heavy ringlets away from her temples. The faintest white scars marked her skin. "We remember. You were only a child. Your eyes so huge . . . you looked up from the pavane and cried ‘Ware candle, your hair’s afire!’ And muffled us in your gown when no one dared touch the royal person before she burned into disfigurement."
"I remember."
"We would have recognised you without spies to tell us."
The White Crow stepped forward and took a wine-glass from another table. "The Queen and her Hangman."
She drank.
Wine tanged in her mouth, cold and numbing. Carola sprawled down on the couch, tossing wine-soaked biscuits to the spaniels. The White Crow walked unsteadily over and sat down on the same couch, in a swathe of brocade. "Now—"
The swarthy woman stared at her in glacial outrage.
"If you cannot show respect, we can ban you the commonwealth!"
"I am not used to monarchs. Nor to this land. It ought to have been my home and it never was." The White Crow looked up with eyes clear as cold water. "Listen to me while I collect on the debt you owe me. I have six thousand guineas. Take it. I have it: it’s all I can do."
"All? We expect more loyalty from one of the ancient houses."
Half-humourous, half-despairing, her gaze met Carola’s.
"When I left this was still one commonwealth. No civil revolt, no war . . . it didn’t matter then if Roseveare’s sympathies were Puritan or Catholic. Your Majesty, for the sake of childhood, when just seeing the court in procession used to make my heart turn over with pride, I come to you with what little help I can give. And—because of what I’ve seen since, people leeched to death to keep your court in toys and luxuries—this is all the help I can or will ever give."
The woman opened lazy eyes, looking up through black curls, and snapped, "Stand up. Now. Yes."
Unsteady, knees rubbery, the White Crow stood.
"There is a window through there." One nail-bitten hand gestured towards the Banqueting Hall. "One January day they built a scaffold outside it, and my father walked through, and they cut off his head upon a block. His own people! For whose government his nature was too mild, too gentle, too honest and civil. I saw Roseveare in the crowd! Saints became serpents, and doves became devils . . . Do you think I will take anything from traitors?"
The White Crow sighed. "I was out of the commonwealth, then, your Majesty. Far from here. And that is not all the truth about your father."
A spaniel whined. Carola rubbed its head absently. She leaned back, a large woman of some presence, staring out from under black brows. One heeled and buckled shoe tapped the carpet.
"If you owe me any debt, pay it by taking Roseveare’s gift. My duty to your Majesty." The White Crow’s hands fisted. Her lungs a hot void, she drew shallow breath. "As for what use you put it to—to raise troops, to corrupt whores, feast, found an art gallery, go into exile, put another bridge across the Thamys—I don’t care."
The White Crow stood motionless, aware of the faint voices beyond the door and the crackling of the fire. The purity of the morning sky burned beyond frost-patterned glass. She put the wine-glass down, releasing it from whitened fingers; and drew a deep breath. The scent of dogs and upholstery filled her nostrils.
Carola sighed. "You have returned no honest soul, I think." "Honest enough. No monarchist."
"Olivia’s woman, then?"
"That neither."
The White Crow picked up her flowing dress, hooked one foot behind the other, and sank into a curtsey. She backed to the door. As it opened, the black-ringleted woman’s resonant voice sounded again:
"Roseveare, of course we’ll take your money. Who’d be such a fool as to refuse six thousand guineas? But don’t show your face in our court again. We consider we pay all debts, tolerating your outburst. We tell you where you stand now."
The swarthy woman held up her bitten, ringed hand; thumb and forefinger a fraction apart.
"This close to Newgate prison."
The sun hung high in the south. Blue-and-rose shadows clung to the curves of fallen snow. Olivia trod down the crispness. She raised her head, stopping abruptly amid the crowd of aides and captains.
"Is it noon yet?"
Dozens of soldiers crowded the trenches, half-built walls, masonry piles, and snow-shrouded gantries of the site. Sun glinted from mail, black armour, and faces reddened by the cold. Massed breath steamed up into the air. Talk quietened as she strode past.
"The bell in Ludgate struck quarter-to, madam General, no great while since."
"Good Master Cord, find me the architect."
Cord-of-Discipline Mercer floundered across a hollow, where snow had drifted in the night. The young man vanished into the crowd at the foot of the nearest crane. Olivia spared a glance up at counterweight and pulley and gantry, their iron-cuffed wood bright against a blue sky.
Her eyes narrowed.
"Tell Master Cord he may save his labour." She pitched her voice to carry. "Architect Casaubon!"
The great wooden platform built for lifting masonry rocked in the freezing air. Chains and ropes groaned. The man inside raised one fat arm, signalling, and the crane pivoted slowly. Olivia gazed up at the vast figure of the Lord-Architect on the platform.
"Good day to you, madam!"
His booming voice rang out across the eye of the sun, succeeded by a whisper. Crammed in a corner of the platform, somewhat green, and in shadow, a crop-haired man stood with both hands locked about the wooden rail. "Madam Protector . . ."
"Master Humility," she acknowledged cheerfully. "How are your consultations, master? What conclusion have you arrived at?"
She signalled. The platform lowered, settling on packed snow some ten yards outside the circular walls. She barely glanced at that sandstone-brightness, uncanny in the white landscape.
"I’ve shown Master Casaubon where we attempted to build the support armature for the dome. And over what area the destroyed beams were found." Humility Talbot’s white and gloveless hands gripped
the rail. "He advises, Protector, that no human foot be set upon the stone while this attempt is made to discover causes."
"I see."
She snapped her fingers. Humility Talbot scrambled from the basket, stumbling on solid earth and snow, red to the ears and panting. His eyes shifted wildly. Olivia cast an eye up at the crane.
"Mistress Patience, help me unbuckle this breastplate. Lend me your cloak, Master Talbot."
Freed of weight, she swung the cloak about her shoulders, fastened the clasp, and swung over the rail and into the masonry platform. Icy wind blew, briefly, in her yellow-grey hair, moving the wispy curls across her eyes. She rubbed her nose with a leather-gauntleted hand.
"I understand that the sighting itself will be done from here? Very well, master architect. I accompany you."
The Lord-Architect blinked at her from slightly red-rimmed eyes. He sniffed, cavernously; beaming; rolls of fat creasing his cheeks. "Most welcome!"
Sun glittered here and there on the heads of crossbow-bolts, on basket-hilted swords, and long pikes. The planks jerked under her boots. She grinned, fiercely, the cold freezing her lips, and busied herself with wrapping her muffler more firmly about her neck as the platform lifted into the air.
"Now, sir, you are the safest you have ever been." Amused, Olivia leaned her arms on the railing, staring down. "Since I believe all these within my sight, at least, are loyal. And now we may speak together privately."
Rising, the wooden scaffolding platform creaked alarmingly, seventy feet above the earth.
"Master architect?"
"A calculated strain." The Lord-Architect waved his fat hand casually. "High eno—eeshou!"
The plank platform twisted gently. The Lord-Architect Casaubon wiped his nose on his sleeve, leaving a wet silver trail across the black brocade. He squinted up at the noon sun. "High enough."
She raised a gloved hand, waving to the man, just visible, in the crane’s cabin. The counterbalanced gantry swung with a gradual speed. The platform moved smoothly, earth sliding away beneath, replaced by stone, until it hung directly over the circular wall of the eye of the sun.
"Just so high will the golden sphere stand, that I will have placed on the dome." Her warm breath moistened the wool muffler. She tugged it down, rubbing at her bulbous nose and cheeks, and stretched her shoulders; cold’s rheumatism fading in the glory of height and clarity.
Below, the site spread out, the geometry of circles and rectangles plainly visible under the snow. Groups of workmen clustered around braziers and toolhuts, their pencil-shadows short and north-pointing. Beyond them the land sloped down through two streets to the river, an expanse of frozen white. General Olivia stared first across the Thamys at the far shore of Northbankside, and the distant hills of Middlesex and Rutland.
"An old city, master architect."
She turned, facing south now, the noon sun almost warm on her skin. She laughed, small and gruff, dazzled. To east and south and west, snow-covered gambrel roofs, spires, crenellated towers, warehouses, palaces. Smoke threaded up from chimneys. A rook winged lazily northwards towards the river. Olivia gripped the rail in one hand, leaning out. Beyond the soldiers and masons, people crowded well-trodden paths about Smithfield and Spitalfields and the city-wall gates; riders and carriages coming in towards the markets, a bonfire burning down towards the convent garden.
"You would not know, from here, that all totters again on the edge of civil revolt. Amnesty is a fragile plant, easily blasted. I have said we puritans are the heirs of the pagan Romans, who by their Mithras foreshadowed our Lord. Is that true, master architect, do you think?"
"Oh, indubitably." The Lord-Architect took out an off-white kerchief, brandishing it. He leaned over the side of the platform and waved expansively to the crowd below. "Cooee!"
Faintly, a few answering catcalls drifted up. The large man beamed.
He swung his arm in a half-circle. Olivia ducked easily and came up again. His pudgy finger ticked off the panorama of Whitehall Palace, Observatory and Mint, the Guildhall; all the great facades lining frozen Thamys: "Fantastic carapaces!"
"Sir?"
Stray wind blew his cropped copper-red hair across his forehead. He shoved clumsily at it with a half-gloved hand, eyes squinting against the brightness and void of air, and clapped her on the back.
"Buildings—our fantastic carapaces of the soul! Vitruvius writes that all habitations, laid out according to line and true proportion, reflect the lineaments of the universe itself. . ." His eyes opened wider, a startling bright blue; lost in a delight of theory. "Like caddis-fly cases, cities grow."
"Over many generations." She stared down. "This town has stood against war and famine, kept by plain men and women who suffered monarchy until it grew tyrannous. And who will not suffer it now. Yet I do wonder. I do wonder, master architect, whether the blood-royal that has nourished the buildings of this city be necessary still."
Foundations and outlines of towers, nave, and courtyards rumpled the site’s covering snow. She stared down. Directly beneath, across a void of chill air, naked stone shone. Warm, startlingly delicate white stone shown now by contrast with the snow to be biscuit-coloured. The foundation, piers, and pylons of the dome.
Baroque, fretted, bright as the noon sun itself, the inlaid mirror of the central hall shone.
"Sol invictus!" She crossed herself devoutly.
From here, the separate inlays formed a pattern: clusters of tiny particles that became larger, baroque shapes that, seen from a proper perspective, formed feathered eyes, stylised wings, all facing inward to where inlaid steel and silver merged in one blaze of light.
"There!" Triumphant, she grabbed his coat-sleeve. "Look you there, master architect!"
Hanging above a circle of mirror, pure as cold Western lakes, she stared down into reflection. A fringe of inward-leaning stone walls: perpendicular arches and half-windows. The underside of the minuscule plank-platform. Even the dots of their white faces. And held within that stone foil, lambent as sapphires—the azure winter sky.
The cold air smelled slaughterhouse-warm, rich suddenly with blood. Thinned oxygen whispered in her lungs.
Bulging up from beneath, coiling masses of guts pressed against the mirror. Flesh roiled. Bloody lights, torn muscle, ropes of entrails and bowel: blue and purple and red: all Smithfield’s abattoirs, all the Thamys’s shambles, all the battlefields of the civil revolt could not fill the Pit so disclosed. Demon faces formed and dissolved.
She coughed, wiping streaming eyes.
"Be certain I have not lacked, neither, for those who attribute disasters here either to ill-luck, or the Lord’s will. It is otherwise."
The stench abated.
"Demonic manifestations, eh? You should have called me in the sooner." The Lord-Architect wrested one of the ornate rings from his fat fingers and sprang it open with a nail to disclose, as it unfolded, a miniature armillary sphere. He clicked the bevel of another ring, which lifted to show the spike of a miniature sundial; busying himself between the two for some moments.
"Noon in thirty heartbeats."
Both rings clicked shut and were returned to their respective fingers. The fat man removed a notebook from his coattail pocket. His breath misted the air around his face. Drops of sweat slid down his face, runnelling over chins into a wilting lace cravat. He fumbled in the pockets of his tightly buttoned black frieze coat.
The Protector-General flattened herself back against the rail as he turned around, buffeted by elbow and buttock. "I rely on you, sir. To tell me answers that, for all their expertise, my plain men do not dare tell me."
The Lord-Architect extracted a pencil and held it up in brief triumph.
"Sir—"
"Rot it, be quiet, can’t you? Heliomancy takes concentration."
Amused, cold, dizzy with the exhilaration of height, she smiled and leaned back, her arms outstretched along the platform’s rails. A smell of sand and earth clung to the wood.
The fat man l
ooked south.
Following his gaze for the briefest second, her eyes filled with the sun’s blazing whiteness. She muttered a curse. Green-and-purple images swum in her vision, blotting out the snow- covered cityscape below and the purity of blue sky.
"Master architect?"
"Hurts, rot it."
Faint freckles stood out on his pale skin. The delicately carved lips thinned. His head lowered and she stared through blotched sight into blinded, dazzled blue eyes. One half-gloved hand fumbled pencil and notebook, and the fat man sketched, with quick and fine accuracy, the shapes of the images swimming behind eyelids.
"There!" He snapped the book shut, beaming. "You’re fortunate to have me, madam. Any other architect would take a week to draw up these configurations. Send a carriage for me and I’ll bring the answers along tomorrow."
The White Crow pulled the nursery door closed, listened in the hall for a moment to Jared’s quiet breathing, and plodded downstairs to the kitchens. An ache born of snow-walking burned in her calves.
"And to think I sometimes wish I was back on the road." The White Crow grinned at Abiathar. "The life of a Scholar-Soldier was always better indoors; don’t let me tell you any different!"
The older woman chuckled, handing over a mug of mulled wine. The White Crow slumped in the kitchen chair, the warmth of ovens blasting against her skin; sighed, and slid down so that she drank from the mug at a dangerous angle, a few drops spilling onto her shirt.
"The little one’s asleep."
"Good . . . did she take her bottle well?"
"Sweet as a nut." Abiathar’s tone chilled. "How you can think of risking yourself at the court, and that baby depending on you, I don’t know."
Hanging hams, sausages; new loaves wrapped in cloth; jars of preserves and heavy iron pans: all blurred in her sight with a sudden rush of sleep. The White Crow blinked gritty eyes. "If I don’t sort this out, it’s flee the commonwealth, and Jared and the baby with me. The which I would prefer to be a little older, before I travel again."
The White Crow looked over the rim of her pewter mug. Spices and red wine stained her mouth. She licked her lips.
