Quillifer the Knight

by Walter Jon Williams

  And by and by, I began to see a red-haired lady in the camp, and when I found her playing her mandola in the woods near the nymphaeum, I spoke to her. I fancied I was in love with her and asked her to run away with me, and she consented. She not only guided me away from the camp in the dead of night, but helped me plunder Sir Basil’s strong-house, so that I left with the sack of gold, silver, and gems that were the foundation of my fortune. I stole the stolen goods from the man who had stolen them.

  Yet once Orlanda guided me from the corrie, she led me to an ancient ring-fort in the Toppings, a place crowned by a great fang of a ruined tower. The air was suffused with a kind of unearthly light, and the music of an invisible orchestra sounded on the air. She said she wished to be my bride, but I would not go, and, with good reason, I suspected something uncanny and questioned her. She is a nymph indeed, powerful and immortal, and because I did not wish to spend a hundred years in her bridal bed, she now follows and persecutes me.

  For as you know, I wish to live in the world, and adventure here and make my mark, and I desired not to spend my life on a lascivious couch in fairyland, tended by unseen servants and made the toy of a capricious goddess. What sort of life is that for a man of ambition?

  You should not fear for yourself. For I have made Orlanda promise that, though she may toy with me as she desires, she will not harm those I love. And though I know these words of mine may drive her into some reckless, abandoned, jealous act, I do not shame to say it is thee I love, and no other.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Six weeks after the wreck I sailed into water-girdled Howel, the winter capital, having come up the Dordelle from my own little manor at Dunnock. The great storm that had reaped a great swath through Fornland, burst the banks of the rivers, ruined the crops, and filled the fields with trash had touched Bonille more lightly, but still some of my tenants had lost their harvest, and I brought enough grain to keep them from hunger.

  I had hired a sailing-barge to take me up the river, my horses stood in a pen built on the foredeck, and I had placed on the roundhouse a galley I’d had built at a boatyard at Bretlynton Head. The heat of late summer lay sultry on the vineyards and pastures along the Dordelle, and cicadas cried from the fig-trees and the stately cypress that stood like sentinels on the green hills. The air was scented with sweet flowers.

  Along the shore of the lake, between the city and the palace at Ings Magna, I had rented a house from the Count of Rackheath, a noble lately shocked to discover the monumental gambling debts incurred by his son and heir. Covering these debts led to financial embarrassment, and he had been obliged to withdraw from court, along with his wayward son, and travel to his house in the country in order to devote his next several years to recovering his finances. The house came with the staff that the count would otherwise have been obliged to dismiss, and I hoped they would provide fine and discreet service for the young knight-errant who had saved their jobs.

  Rackheath’s was a fine large home, built of the golden sandstone so common in the city. It stood three storeys tall, with polygonal towers on the corners that faced the lake, and a central gable that rose in gentle, scalloped curves to a pediment. A gilded weathercock shimmered atop the pediment, and elaborately-carved brick chimneys rose along the peak of the roofline. Master Stiver, the steward, met me at the quayside. He was a lean-faced man of middle years, very grandly dressed in black velvet, with a belt of gold links and a long, perfumed beard—and I sensed his disappointment that I was dressed more as a sailor than a lord.

  The galley was put in the boathouse next to his lordship’s own barge, lodging was found for its crew of sailors, my horses went into the stable under the supervision of my groom Oscar, and my luggage went to my chambers, along with my strongbox.

  The steward took me through the house, viewing the great hall with its brilliant silk tapestries that shimmered with golden thread, the reception room with its elaborate boiseries and portraits of ancestors, the game room with its chess and card tables, skittles, billiard table, and dartboard. The count’s bedroom boasted a gilded bed in the form of a galley with no less than seven feather mattresses stacked upon one another. Tucked behind the bedroom was the private cabinet with its parquet of rustic scenes, and nearby was found the true treasure-store of the building, the library with its rows of leather-bound volumes. I let my eyes linger along the gilt-edged spines and promised to visit the room soon, and then was taken to the buttery with its casks and bottles, and the treasury for Rackheath’s silver plate, which had been removed by the count lest his creditors try to confiscate it. There was a bowling green on the lawn that led down to the river, and a tennis court built along one wall of the building.

  I insisted also on visiting those parts of the household that a lord might never see in his lifetime, to wit, the pantry, the brewery, the servants’ bath-house, and the kitchen. I wanted to know that these divisions of the household were in working order, and I wanted also to know that the kitchen was clean. I had been to enough feasts in noble houses to know that the food was often shockingly bad, and I wanted the cook and her assistants to know that, as far as I was concerned, tainted meat could not be disguised beneath a sugary sauce.

  I was then served a dinner that, for its simplicity and wholesomeness, I suspect had been cooked for the servants, though with it I was served a wine that surpassed anything the servants would ever drink in their lives (assuming they were honest and had not plundered the buttery). After the meal the steward introduced to me the other members of the staff.

  In my new household I employed enough souls to crew a pinnace on a voyage to Thurnmark. In addition to the steward, there was a comptroller, an auditor, an usher, a carver and a server, waiters, a cook and her assistants, a clerk of the kitchen to keep track of the kitchen finances, the usher of the hall, the librarian, the yeomen respectively of the buttery, the pantry, the ewer, the wardrobe, the gun room, and the cellar. There was a porter, a baker, a brewer, a coachman, a footman, a great many grooms and maidservants, and a single scullery man, who I imagined must have been greatly overworked.

  My modest little manor at Dunnock did not require so vast a staff. I confess I was beginning to feel a little out of my depth.

  I should, I thought, ask advice from someone more experienced in the management of great households than I.

  There were only two great lords who had ever condescended to speak to me of their own volition, and I decided to write to the Duke and Duchess of Roundsilver that afternoon. And so I went to Rackheath’s cabinet and found paper and quills in the great pigeonholed desk. I cut a quill with my pen-knife, found a sheet of pinched post, and opened the inkwell, only to find it was dry. In the desk I found the materials for making ink: oak galls, copperas, gum, and a small pitcher meant to hold wine, but which had gone as dry as the inkwell. There was also a mortar for grinding the oak galls, some cheesecloth for straining the ink, and pieces of dark velvet for mopping up the spills.

  I called for a groom and asked him to bring me some ink, but it was the steward who brought an inkwell from the buttery, where it was used to keep a tally of the wine.

  “Thank you, Master Stiver,” said I.

  “Does Your Excellency desire me to make you some ink?” he said.

  I held out the pitcher. “If you will have this cleaned, and the inkwell, I will make it myself.”

  “Very good, Sir Quillifer.” He took the pitcher and the inkwell, and then hovered a bit by the door to let me know that he had something further to say.

  “Yes, Master Stiver?”

  “Have you brought a varlet with you, sir? Should I prepare a room for him?”

  “I have not yet employed a varlet,” said I.

  “I will assign a groom, Your Excellency, until you acquire a proper varlet.”

  I waved a hand in dismissal. “Yes, Stiver, thank you.”

  I had spent so much time moving from place to place I had never needed a body servant, though now that I was lodged at Howel, I supposed I wou
ld. That was something else to consider.

  I wrote to Their Graces of Roundsilver with the buttery’s ink and begged leave to call upon them. I had my answer, in Her Grace’s elegant hand, by the end of the afternoon, in the form of a dinner invitation for the next day.

  But in the meantime I made my own ink. I ground the oak galls and soaked them in wine, then added copperas and strained the result. I added gum to thicken the ink to the desired consistency, then, finding it too thick, diluted it with wine. Having tested the result on a scrap of paper, I found the result satisfactory and poured it into the inkwell.

  I recalled learning to make ink in my Ethlebight grammar-school, and the great messes we boys made, in part because we didn’t use wine to thin the result, but aqua urina. The result was disgusting, and resulted in any number of beatings by our beleaguered teacher, but we all thought it a great prank.

  And then I wondered how many hours I had spent making ink in my twenty-two years, not only in my school days, but in my years as an apprentice lawyer, and now as a merchant. Surely I had more useful or enjoyable things to do.

  I wondered if it were possible to save mankind this labor.

  I amused myself by making some preliminary calculations on my bit of paper, but all I managed was to convince myself that I knew nothing.

  Well. Ignorance I have found a thing that, once confessed, is soon amended.

  * * *

  I knew more about the ink business by the time I arrived at the Roundsilver palace the next morning. As Roundsilver’s country seat was near Ethlebight, the palace was faced with brick, one of my city’s great exports. A red facade was ornamented by geometric patterns of colored brick: yellow, sky blue, indigo, and pale green. Brick columns were carved into spirals and fluted pillars; the chimneys were twisted into fantastic shapes and topped with grotesque statues, so that smoke seemed to issue from the nostrils of monsters; and a frieze that ran below the eaves depicted Lord Baldwine, an ancestor of the duke’s, in his famed combat with the dragon.

  The duke himself was about as far removed from Lord Baldwine as can be imagined, for he was smaller than the average and rather dainty, and wore high-heeled slippers. He was over forty, and his hair and beard were fair, with an admixture of silver. He generally failed to pronounce his r’s, not because he had adopted the accent of Bonille, but because he disdained the sound as uninteresting.

  His Grace worshipped Beauty in all its forms and surrounded himself with exquisite works of craft: enamels and cameos, paintings and statues, sometimes in a rather extreme passionate style—queens reaching for the poison cup, mythological figures lamenting in their own gore. The subject of each work was unexceptionable, but taken together, they mounted to a kind of aesthetic testament, a monument to the sensibility of the collector.

  He had married late, to a young noblewoman about my age, and who might have been a reflection of himself in some kind of ageless, sexless mirror. For she was small and blond and exquisitely formed, with blue eyes both lively and kind.

  Their Graces met me in their reception room, with its pillars of emerald-green chrysoprase that held up a barrel ceiling with a fresco of gods welcoming heroes to their banquet. Both duke and duchess glittered with gems, rings on every finger along with brooches, chains, pendants, and chain-link girdles. The duke was dressed in a singular style, in a long tunic of sky-blue watered silk painted with lilies and sewn with freshwater pearls, a turbanlike head-wrapping with fringes that dangled down his forehead like lovelocks, and upturned slippers with tall heels. His lady, in place of the usual embroidered gown worn over a corset and farthingale, wrapped her slight form in a mantle of shimmering gold satin secured across the front with ropes of frogging and brocade. It was a style that had been devised by the Marchioness of Stayne, an acquaintance of mine, while she was praegnas, and had caused a minor scandal at the time. Queen Berlauda had decided to allow the garb at court for any woman carrying a child, but forbade it for anyone else.

  But this wasn’t court; it was the Roundsilver palace, where costumes should not surprise anyone.

  I bowed to the duke and kissed Her Grace’s hand, while trying with discretion to view through the gold satin any material proof that the duchess was bearing a child. The results of my survey were inconclusive.

  “Your Grace,” said I as I straightened. “Is your attire meant to conceal, to enhance, or to astound?” She began to answer, but I continued my exposition. “If to conceal,” I said, “your mantle is inadequate, for it fails to obscure the elegant matchlessness of your faultless self. If intended to enhance, it is inadequate, for it is impossible to enhance your beauty beyond what Nature has already furnished. And if intended to astound, it is also inadequate, for your allure and charm have already astounded the world. In short, though your mantle is magnificent, it falls short of the perfection of the lady that wears it.”

  “If we are to begin with compliments,” said the duchess, “I should perhaps first praise your mastery of the language of the courtier.”

  “But the courtier’s language lacks sincerity,” I said, “whereas I speak the truth.”

  The duke offered an indulgent smile. “As the topic stands in danger of over-elaboration, I shall instead answer the question foremost in your mind, and to say that the answer is yes.”

  I laughed and looked at the duchess. “You are inciens? I am delighted.”

  “I am finding it less delightful than trying,” said she. “Though it has spared me attending the queen on her progress, so that is something to be said in its favor.”

  I felt the duke thoughtful for sparing his wife the rigors of the journey.

  “I’ve invited Master Blackwell to join us,” said the duke, “and Mistress Concini from Basilicotto, who composes music, and who has brought to Howel an orchestra of holy sisters. And we have as a houseguest His Highness the Prince Alicio de Ribamar-la-Rose.”

  The duke’s lisp made reference instead to the pwince and Wibamaw-la-Wose, but I was practiced in deciphering his affectation and knew to install r’s at all the proper places.

  “I shall be delighted to see them all,” said I. “Will I meet all the holy sisters, or just Mistress Concini?”

  “One nun is sufficient at a feast,” said the duke. “And I already feed one orchestra, who I hope will be in tune for us.”

  * * *

  A delicate canzona shimmered down from the gallery, where the duke’s orchestra had played through dinner. A pair of melodies played against one another in intricate counterpoint, while the bass marched along at a steady pace that put most armies to shame.

  “Most of the fine silk was ruined despite the freshwater bath,” said I, “though the stronger fabrics, the noils and pongees and gabardines, resisted the sea somewhat better.”

  “The important thing is that none of your crew were lost,” said the duchess.

  “Ay. But now I must do them justice with the insurors, for they are paid out of the profit of the voyage.”

  In fact I was already doing well enough out of the voyage, and so were the crew, for I had sold much of the surviving cargo in Selford, once I had got it there. Despite having to pay others to ship my goods, the profits from the voyage were enough to satisfy any but the most avaricious merchant. Along with Kevin and his father, I had already commissioned a new eight-hundred-ton galleon to replace the one we had lost.

  There were less tangible benefits, as well. I now had personal acquaintance with the merchants of Tabarzam and the Candara Coast, as well as those fabulous diamond factors on the Street of the Shining Stones, and that would prove profitable on voyages to come.

  “The insurors are proving difficult?” asked the duke.

  “Unusually so. I would have expected them to be grateful I hadn’t declared a total loss, but they are being most obstinate when it comes to paying out on Royal Stilwell.”

  “Yet the ship was wrecked. How can they dispute it?”

  “They claim there have been a spate of ships being deliberately wreck
ed for the insurance. That Stilwell was lost in the greatest storm of the last twelve years, along with at least a dozen other ships, does not in their narrow minds make fraud any less likely.”

  The duke’s eyes darkened. “But surely they must pay out eventually.”

  “I’m sure they will.”

  His Grace the duke was something of a mercer himself, as he bought and sold goods, and though he did not own ships, he nevertheless sponsored voyages. He needed profits to support his royal mode of living, and for that reason he was wise to be wary of the manipulations of insurors.

  “I’m afraid I have been monopolizing the conversation,” I said. “I apologize for going on in this way unchecked.”

  “I have never heard an account of a shipwreck by one of its castaways,” said the duchess. “You have had our complete attention.”

  “It is all very interesting,” said Prince Alicio. “But what is ‘monopolize’?”

  “It’s a new word,” said I. “I made it up.”

  “From monopolium,” said the duke helpfully. “But a verb transitive.”

  “Ah,” said the prince. “I comprehend.” He turned to me. “Your discussion of your business—”

  “Your merchandizing,” said the duchess with a smile.

  “This is very new to me,” the prince finished. “In Loretto we nobles of course may take part in no business. Should I send a cargo to Tabarzam, or loan money at interest, I would be brought up before a court of honor conducted by the constable, and I would be disgraced.”

  “But would they let you keep your profits?” I asked, for that sort of disgrace was of little interest to me.

  “I would lose my privileges,” said the prince, “and I would of course have to pay the tax on my land and buildings, as if I were a commoner.”