Quillifer the Knight

by Walter Jon Williams

  I drove my oarsmen in a final sprint to shore, let them all share a cask of small beer, and then brought them out onto the lake again in a more leisurely pull toward the palace to see what was toward. The gunners were still at their leisure, and through my glass I recognized one of their number. I moored Dunnock twenty yards down the quay from the guns, where burning wads wouldn’t fall into the boat if the guns were discharged, and went to greet my friend.

  “Captain Lipton,” said I, and further words were stopped in my throat as he gave me a ferocious bear hug that set my ribs creaking.

  “Well, youngster,” Lipton said as he set me back on my feet. “Good it is to see you, sure. I had thought you were lost at sea, and living in an underwater palace with a nymph for your consort and mermaids for your servants.”

  “I have not been so lucky,” said I, though inwardly I winced at the mention of water-nymphs.

  I had met Captain Lipton during Clayborne’s rebellion, where he had commanded the guns at Exton Scales and been of service both to the army and myself. Afterward he had been a part of the benign conspiracy that resulted in my knighthood. He had a fringe of white hair around a bald pate, and a white beard. He spoke in the sharp, fierce accent of North Fornland, and dressed habitually in worn clothing and a baggy cap that flopped about his ears—but today he wore a trim blue doublet piped with red, a blue-and-gold sash over one shoulder, and, tipped over one eye, a blue velvet bonnet with badge and feather. I regarded this magnificence with surprise.

  “Never have I seen you so splendid,” I said. “Have you dressed especially to welcome me?”

  “Sadly,” he said, “this dress is now expected of me. For you no longer address Bill Lipton of the Loyall and Worshipfull Companie of Cannoneers, but the coronel of the Royal Regiment of Artillery.”

  “Give you joy, Coronel!” said I. “But what is this Royal Regiment?”

  “We are now a part of the Queen’s Guard,” he said. “Along with the Yeoman Archers and the Queen’s Own Horse under our friend Lord Barkin.”

  I looked at the line of demiculverins with their long bronze barrels pointed out at the water. “Why does Her Majesty purpose to guard herself with batteries of great guns?”

  “Someone must fire the salutes,” said Lipton. “Yet if there is ever riot in the town, we will blast it to bits, sure.”

  The monarch traditionally was guarded by foot and by horse. On foot were the Yeoman Archers, who no longer carried bows but instead pikes and firelocks; and on horseback were the Gentlemen-at-Arms, more familiarly called the Gendarmes, armored cap-a-pie in the fashion of knights of old. The Gendarmes were the offspring of knightly or noble houses, whereas the Yeoman Archers had less exalted births. During the rebellion, the Gendarmes had risen for the bastard Clayborne, and those who were not killed at Exton Scales were captured, branded on the cheek with a T for “treason,” and sentenced to ten years’ hard labor.

  The destruction of the Gendarmes had left a large number of well-born youth with unfulfilled martial dreams, and left Her Majesty without so many of the handsome young gentlemen she so enjoyed about her, and so she had formed a new regiment of demilances—no longer in the antique armor of knights, but modern cavalry in breastplate and burgonet, and armed with pistols and sword. The artillery were added at the same time, to enhance the royal magnificence.

  After nearly being unseated by rebellion, Queen Berlauda wanted loyal men in command of the new regiments, and no more-loyal officers could be found than those who had served her at Exton Scales. Lord Barkin, a professional soldier who had commanded a troop of demilances in the battle, was an obvious choice; and though Lipton lacked the well-born refinement the queen liked about her, he knew the specialized business of artillery as well as young nobles knew the chase.

  “Ah, it is all display these days,” Lipton said. “We bow, and salute, keep our doublets brushed, and polish the linstocks to a gleam. And they of Loretto sneer at us for our country ways.” He sniffed. “You would have thought it was they who won the last war.”

  “It might be claimed they won the peace,” said I. For Loretto’s captured king had never paid his ransom, and his grand-nephew and heir had married our queen, and for his condescension had been made king regnant, sharing equally the powers of his wife.

  “Ay, that’s true enough.”

  “But why the long face, Coronel?” said I. “You cannot fairly complain, for you are master of Her Majesty’s artillery!”

  “True enough, youngster,” Lipton said. “Yet the changes they come, and not all are good.” He gestured over his shoulder at the scaffolding covering the palace walls and towers. “It is all show and extravagance here. Look you, they gild the gilding. And now they will call the Estates to pay for it.”

  “Their Majesties are calling the Estates? For new taxes, I assume?”

  “You have not heard? Ay, for the crown needs money, not least to pay my wages, which are two months in arrears.”

  I privately thought that for a soldier’s pay to be no more than two months late was excellent luck for the soldier. “We are at peace,” I said. “The great storm has ruined this year’s yield in Fornland, but for the last few years we’ve had good harvests, and trade has expanded. Why does the crown need more money?”

  Lipton waved a hand. “They gild the gilding, youngster. These Loretto nobility have their own ideas of grandeur, and it seems we must pay for it.” He raised a hand and pointed across the lake, where cranes and scaffolds marked the building of some great project. “And there the monarchs raise the Monastery of the Holy Prophecy, to be the greatest in the kingdom, which will be made rich with donations of land from the crown. And it has also come to the royal attention that the crown possesses twenty-three palaces in different parts of the kingdom, and that some have been neglected and others allowed to fall into ruin, and that the dignity of the House of Emelin requires that all these palaces be restored and made as bright as day.”

  “Is it likely the Estates will agree to pay for this?”

  “The chancellor will get his way. He always does.” He looked down the row of bronze guns all facing out over the quay. “It is not enough for royalty to take a salute of twenty-three guns, but they must also be greeted by a chorus of nuns, all singing praise to the Pilgrim.”

  “Nuns? I met their concert-mistress the other day.” I gestured at the bronze guns. “Why are you set to bombard the lake? Are Their Majesties looming?”

  “Expected this afternoon.” He cocked an eyebrow at me. “Are you still banned from court?”

  I shrugged. “Doubtless I shall find out. It may be that Her Majesty will not remember me.”

  Lipton showed his crooked yellow teeth. “I think she remembers every little thing that has ever thwarted her in her life.”

  “I never thwarted her!”

  “You made her look closely at things she wanted not to see. Did you expect thanks?”

  I spread my hands. “That was three years ago. Surely Her Majesty has had more to attract her disapprobation in the years since?”

  His white brows came together. “Disapprobation?”

  “It’s a new word. I made it up.”

  “It is unlovely. I don’t know that I approbate it.”

  There was the clop of a horse on the quay, and a demilance trotted up along the line of guns. His helmet and breastplate had been plated with gleaming brass, with the royal badge on the breast and the cypher, the entwined B and P on the helmet, and in the afternoon sun the trooper dazzled though he had covered miles and was very dusty. I thought of gilt on gilding.

  “Where is the coronel?” asked the trooper.

  Lipton turned to him. “I am the coronel, sure,” he said.

  The cavalryman raised a hand to the beak of his helmet. “Captain Leyton’s compliments, sir. Their Majesties have just come onto the north lane past the guard lions, and you may begin the salute.”

  “I shall commence directly.”

  The demilance saluted again, turned
his horse, and trotted back the way he had come.

  “They are very proper here, sure,” Lipton said. He brushed his blue doublet with his hands. “I will be busy the next hour, youngster.”

  “Come see me at Rackheath House,” I said. “It’s just down the lake, and you’ll see my flag flying.”

  Lipton bustled away, I returned to my galley, and we pulled onto the water as the guns began to boom. The wind streamed the clouds of gunsmoke onto the lake, and so the galley seemed to float in a world of mist, with the towers of the palace shining gold above, as if they were a vision of another world. The effect was enhanced when the guns fell silent, and Mistress Concini’s choir began to sing, the unearthly music shimmering over the waves, as if it were dropping from the spheres.

  I tasted the gunsmoke on my tongue and contemplated this singing, floating fantasia, the palace as fata morgana, and I thought of Orlanda, equally nebulous as this vision, and deadly as any artillery. I knew that she would be present in the court, invisibly perhaps, perhaps whispering in the inward ear of the queen and the courtiers. She had poisoned the queen against me once, and I had no doubt she would do it again.

  I wondered how foolish were my intentions at Howel in the face of Orlanda’s enmity, and whether I was no more than an insect prepared to be crushed beneath the boot of my own ambition. Yet Orlanda would oppose me no matter what I did, and even if I donned a smock and hood and turned cotter, I thought she would blight my turnips. So if I were to play her game, it seemed to me that the stakes should be worthy of my effort.

  As Mistress Concini’s choir sang in the white mist, I wondered if I were still unwelcome at court. The scandal that I had uncovered seemed a very long time ago, and I a different person.

  The question, I decided, was not whether I had changed, but whether the queen had—and, for that matter, whether Orlanda would allow her to change. And that we would see soon enough.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  If your ladyship will take my advice,” said I, “you will consider these deep yellow diamonds, for if you wear them by your face”—I held one of the stones near her ear, and affected first to study the picture I had created, and then to approve—“you will see they compliment the gold lights in your eyes. If your ladyship will permit?” I touched her chin with my other hand and tilted her head into the light. “Yes,” I breathed. “That is your ladyship’s color exactly.”

  Lady Westley blushed. I could feel the warmth of the rising blood on the back of my hand.

  I withdrew my fingers and showed her the stones again. “Let me demonstrate,” I said, “with a mirror and a candle.”

  I drew to her side a table with a mirror, took the candle in one hand, and knelt by her side. I brushed back the warm chestnut-colored hair to reveal her ear and held the stone against the warm curve of her neck, where an earring might dangle. She gave a little shiver. “Can you see?” I said into her ear. “Should I move the candle?”

  She reached for my hand with the candle, her fingers closing on mine, and moved the light so it shone into her blue eyes. “Ay,” she said. “I see.”

  “I think the effect would be dazzling,” I said. “Your ladyship should wear the stones on earrings, or perhaps on a headdress that would place them near your eyes.”

  Lady Westley let her hand linger on mine. Her bergamot scent teased my senses. “I have never seen diamonds so yellow.”

  “The color of these stones is unusually intense,” said I. “People often buy pale yellow diamonds and put them in gold settings, because then they can pass for white stones to the untrained eye. But the color in these diamonds is too extraordinary for such tricks. Your ladyship should put them in settings of white gold, the better to let them shine in their true glory—and of course you should enhance them with lesser stones, of which I have none, but which your jeweler would be pleased to provide.”

  I drew back from her ladyship, and set the candle on the table. I could see that her face was still a little flushed.

  “Would your ladyship like some more wine?” I asked.

  The court had returned to Howel eight days before, and the palace and the city at once came alive with dinners, receptions, concerts, masques, hunts, and the rattle of carriages as courtiers, diplomats, and suppliants passed my house on their way to Ings Magna.

  I had gone to the palace several times, bowling along in Lord Rackheath’s carriage with my shield now painted on its door. No one had turned me away. I had bowed to Her Majesty at receptions, and she had looked at me without interest.

  Perhaps she did not recognize me. In the past I had dressed in the robe and cap of an apprentice lawyer, for I could not afford to compete in the glitter and display of the court, and as an incomplete lawyer I was at least respectable. But now, though I still could not outshine the jeweled and painted raiment of the high nobility, I could at least glitter in my own distinctive way.

  I took my cue from the chancellor of the exchequer, Sir Denys Hulme, who dressed simply in black, perhaps to avoid the resentment of the nobility unhappy with his common birth, a resentment sharpened by his elevation to the peerage as Baron Hulme. Had he paraded like a glittering peacock and built a shining palace in the vicinity of Ings Magna, he would have been suspected of making away with revenue belonging to the crown.

  Instead he lived in a large house in town and dressed like a sober man of business, which he was, though he set off his severe clothing with brilliant gems, which he wore on his gloved fingers. It was to let the world know he was a man of substance—and indeed he was, for his substantial fortune he had made himself before being appointed to office. And though I’m sure his fortune had increased since his becoming chancellor, I’m also sure he had no need to steal—the man in charge of the treasury will always know where to put his money to make himself a fine profit.

  Having no office, I had no need to pretend to such sobriety as the lord chancellor, so I indulged myself with suits of satin, velvet, and silk—but without the pearls, purfles, paint, and slashings that were so popular among the courtiers—and which I set off by immaculate white linen. But I had reserved the best and largest of my gems for myself, and wore rings on every finger, a blue-white diamond on a gold chain about my neck, and a great sapphire dangling from a gold belt about my waist, a belt composed of tiny links knit one to the other, the most precious chain mail in the world. In the brightly lit Chamber of Audience, amid the fantastic carvings and the bright silk tapestries, and even among the courtiers in their furbelows and fancies, I stood out like a species of fantastic animal.

  Thus did I proclaim myself worthy of the court. And though Her Grace of Roundsilver very kindly wore the blue pear-shaped stone I had given her, and told others where she had got the diamond, I hardly needed her assistance, for my diamonds, rubies, and sapphires in their precious settings told a tale of their own.

  Nor was I entirely a stranger, for I had made the acquaintance of some of the courtiers three years before, and I was gratified, and somewhat surprised, by their remembering me at all. They introduced me to their friends, and related anecdotes—some vastly exaggerated—of my time in the court at Selford. Time had drawn a rosy veil over the escapades that had once caused outrage or suspicion and lent them a charming anecdotal quality, like the subject of a ballad or a stirring episode in a play. From its origin as a bare sequence of events, which seemed to me a collection of episodes all unrelated one to the next, it appeared that in my absence my life had become a tale. And of course, once I saw the shape that time had made of my life, I was able to form new tales in that mode, and so I spoke of my voyages and the shipwreck, along with my modest narrative—for those of nautical inclination—of the invention of Quillifer’s Haul.

  Thus, as I offered a modest relation of my adventures to some of my new friends, was I introduced to Lady Westley, the wife of a knight from Lake Gurlidan who held a post in the Royal Mews as master of the henchmen. Her interest in gems was plain, for with her gown of bright forest-green silk she wore emeralds, t
urquoise, chrysoberyls, and cabochons of jet and of tourmaline, and carried on her girdle a golden pomander set with pearls. A beautiful, if rather miscellaneous, array, which did not complement to the fullest possible extent the broad forehead and generous lower lip, the mass of chestnut hair, and the level brows over the blue eyes, with their flecks of gold.

  And so Lady Westley became my first visitor at my house, and I knelt beside her with the yellow diamonds in my hand, admiring the flush that blossomed and faded in her cheeks.

  “I will take some more wine, thank you,” said she.

  I rose and poured sauternes from a decanter into her goblet. While she sipped, I shifted some scales onto the table by her side and put the diamonds in one of the pans. I knelt by her again, unstopped a bottle, and began, with silver tweezers, to draw out carob seeds and place them in the other pan.

  “These karatioi are used in Sarafsham to measure gemstones,” said I, “for their weight does not vary from one to the other. And as you can see, the stones together weigh somewhere between ten and eleven carob seeds—let us say ten. Because you are the first to come admire my collection, and because your beauty so compliments these stones they might well blush red when you wear them, let us say that I will part with them for thirty royals.”

  Thirty royals would keep one of my tenants and his family roistering and dancing the sarabande for three years or more, yet it was a very good price for such rare stones. Others might have paid fifty or sixty without protest. Lady Westley looked at the diamonds with her lips parted, and I could see the gold flecks glitter in her eyes.

  “I think that is fair,” said she.

  “Your ladyship’s judgment is exquisite,” I said. “Shall we drink to our agreement, or would you like to see some other gems?”