Quillifer the Knight

by Walter Jon Williams

  She gave me an appraising look. “Why not both?”

  I laughed. “Why not?” I reached for my own cup and poured sauternes, and then turned to Lady Westley, raised my glass, and touched it lightly to her own. “To beauty,” I said, “and to the loveliness which my stones can only enhance, but never supplant.”

  She blushed again, most becomingly, and drank. For the next quarter hour I showed her some of my prizes and spoke of the Street of the Shining Stones in far Sarafsham, and the deep mines that had been worked for centuries, protected from collapse by the great cedar beams hewn on Mount Safavi and dragged thirty leagues to the diggings. The close-knit families of merchant princes who controlled the gem trade, each rich as King Timaeus and proud as a Lorettan lordling. The keen-eyed cutters who studied the raw stones, propping them between mirrors so the sun would come at them from all angles and reveal their structure. The caravan guards, grim and fierce, who escorted the gems from Sarafsham to the port of Tabarzam, and whose dour temperament was belied by the warm hospitality they offered me around their campfires, and by their sad and sentimental music. And while I offered these memories, I illustrated my words with gems, which I set on a length of black velvet that I had placed on her ladyship’s knees.

  Lady Westley listened with interest, but paid more attention to gemstones than to my tales. I refilled her cup again. At length she sighed.

  “I should like to possess them all,” she said. “But that is hardly possible.”

  “I understand,” I said. “These stones each have their story, and I feel as if I could relate all of them.” I carefully took the black velvet away and placed it atop my strongbox.

  I rose from my kneeling posture and helped Lady Westley rise to her feet, and then found myself looking into her gold-flecked eyes at a range of inches. Her lips parted. I could scent the sweet sauternes on her breath, and scent as well the bergamot fragrance she had dabbed on her throat.

  “When you have the diamonds mounted,” said I, “I hope you will come and model them for me. For well will they grace this neck.” I kissed her below the ear, and she shivered as I took her in my arms. I let my lips travel from her throat to her mouth, and she kissed me with bright eagerness. The taste of her lips set my blood afire.

  Two constraints fell upon our afternoon of love. The first was that she was not alone, having very properly brought a serving woman with her. This woman was being entertained in the serving hall, but could not be expected to wait there forever.

  The second was that I had never before dealt with the complicated garments of a lady of the court. There was a corset to be considered, and the whalebone busk she wore to flatten her chest in accordance with the fashion; there was a farthingale, and a bumroll, numerous petticoats, a kirtle, and the gown over all. I had no doubt that with a degree of patience I could perform the necessary unlacings, but I had little confidence that I could stitch her up again and send her from the house in anything but scandalous disarray.

  Yet she was avid, and I had scarcely more patience than she. I placed her upon a settee, and there was nothing but to push up the petticoats and gown, and reveal her legs and the stockings gartered with ribbons of peach-colored satin. I kissed along the soft, warm, fragrant flesh from her ankles to her velvet, where I lingered for a moment or two to enjoy the soft cries that came from her throat, and then I straightened and began to undo my own laces.

  The rest you may imagine for yourself. Some span of minutes later, she lay at rest on the sofa in a froth of petticoats, her half-dreaming eyes gazing up at the ceiling; and I reclined with my head in her lap, watching the rose fade slowly from her cheeks while she stroked my hair. “My lady?” I asked.

  “Yes?”

  “In consideration of our degree of amity, I hope I may not be considered overly familiar if I petition to address you by your forename.” The first of which, I happened to know, was Osgyth.

  She gave a low chuckle. “Which one? I have six or eight forenames,” she said, “all of elderly relations from whom my father desired money. And I care neither for the names nor the relations.”

  I considered. “May I call you Girasol, then? For your beauty has an opalescent sheen, yet you are passionate, and in my arms you blaze up like a fire-opal in the sun.”

  She teased a lock of my hair. “Are you the sun, then?”

  “I am more like a moon, as my radiance is but a reflection of yours.”

  She flushed prettily. “Oh, with such flattery you will go far at court.” Her eyes lost their dreamy quality, and she looked at me with speculation. “Yet you have only one name.”

  “A single name is not uncommon in the west of Fornland.”

  “Yet how would you know if I address you formally or informally? The name is the same.”

  “Choose a name, my Girasol, as I did for you.”

  “Heliodor,” she said. “For you have sold me those sun-colored stones.”

  “It is a name out of romance,” said I. “Heliodor, the beryl knight.”

  “Should I be ever confined in a dungeon,” she said, “I will expect a rescue.”

  I kissed her thigh, and then went across the floor to my strongbox. I chose a stone, put it in a velvet bag, and returned to her side.

  “We have done business together,” I said, “and I would not tamper with those arrangements, for I would not have it thought that you coupled with me for precious stones. But yet a lover may offer a gift, may he not?”

  She kissed me before opening the bag, which I thought was the proper order. The white diamond I had given her was small, only a fraction more than two karatioi, but it was flawless, and cut in a new fashion, adding eight new facets to the seven of the table cut, and showing a brilliance that had once only been possible in larger stones. Girasol gave a cry of delight and kissed me again.

  “You must tell your friends that you paid dearly for your diamonds,” said I.

  She laughed. “Perhaps I have.”

  “If you think this payment dear,” I said, “then what will you think of the exactions I hope to inflict on you in the future?”

  By the time she called her maid, I had helped her adjust her costume so as to avoid scandal, and she carried all three of her diamonds in velvet pouches. I had some misgivings at allowing some of my best stones to leave without being paid for, but I found myself unable to deny Lady Westley her pleasures.

  And my trust was not misplaced, for the next day came a draught on the Oberlin Fraters Bank for thirty royals, along with a pendant in the form of a cameo of a rayed sun carved in agate, and on the reverse side, a glass compartment that held a lock of chestnut hair.

  * * *

  In truth I must recommend to all young men that they find a wife. Not that they marry, though they may do that as well, but that they find a merry, pleasing wife, with whom they may delight the hours. For a wife, being married already, will leave a man his freedom and will not harry a man to join her in wedded union. Nor will they play such games as coy virgins play, saying “nay” one day and “maybe” the next; and because wives have knowledge of the world, they will know how to please, and how in his turn the youth should please them. A wife may therefore be a part of a man’s education, and certainly the most pleasurable part thereof.

  I have treasured all my wives, and warm memories of them take up a special place next to my heart.

  So to young men I say: Find you a wife! A wife! A wife!

  There is laughter in your black eyes, my love. Yet I remind you that for peril there is nothing like a single lady, and that you yourself are the proof. For you I will risk the gallows, where with wives I risked but the wrath of the husbands.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  You were amused, I saw, by my haplessness when faced with Lady Westley’s court dress. But as you know firsthand, I have surmounted my handicap in the time since, and I can tie up a lady’s points as smartly as I can a bowline. At need I could earn my living as a lady’s maid, if any lady were deranged enough to employ me, and for th
at I must thank the practice I had with Lady Westley.

  I have, after all, repaired your own costume on more than a few occasions. Occasions which, I hope, we both found unforgettable.

  * * *

  “I have just viewed the lord great chamberlain’s head,” I said, “on a spike in front of the Hall of Justice. He did not contribute to the beauty of the scene.”

  “Yet it is more wholesome,” said Lipton, “than to see a forest of heads in the square, as we did after the rebellion.”

  Which was true enough. The bastard Clayborne and many of his supporters had once graced a thicket of pikes in the square, but most of the heads had been removed, and now only the usurper and his close kin were visible, removed from the square to the top of a crow-stepped gable over the hall’s entrance. The Marquess of Scutterfield was the only recent head to be found on the square, and I hoped he was not a harbinger of more to come.

  Lipton and I were dining in Rackheath House’s great hall. Surrounding us was a riot of embroidered herbs, flowers, stags, and knights, all embroidered on brilliant silk tapestries, with the gold threads kindled by the noontide sun. We were served by two footmen, the master carver, and the two yeomen, respectively, of the ewer and of the buttery, who were to aid us in washing our hands between removes and to keep our glasses filled. Thus my intimate dinner with a friend was attended by five eavesdroppers.

  The carver laid his knife to a carbonado of mutton, poured on a sauce of claret and camphire, and garnished it with lemons and capers, after which the footmen marched our plates to the table. “By your leave, my masters,” they said, nearly in unison, and put the plates before us, before marching back to their place at the carving table.

  The carver, I observed, was competent enough, but I could have done a better job.

  “Did you know Scutterfield?” Lipton asked.

  “Nay. By sight only.”

  Lipton looked to make sure the servants were not too close, then leaned across the table to me. “He ran afoul of Her Majesty’s principal private secretary, Lord Edevane. He is said to be Berlauda’s spymaster.”

  “And who does Edevane spy upon?”

  Lipton spread his hands, as if to encompass the whole world. “He may have someone here, in your own household.”

  “Here?” I spread my own hands. “But I am harmless. I have no power. And I have demonstrated my loyalty to Her Majesty more than once.”

  Lipton applied himself to his mutton while he considered the matter, then he leaned again across the table. “There are many sorts of servants, youngster,” he said. “There are the lazy servants, who will not work unless someone stands over them. There are servants who do their duty and nothing else, because that is what they are paid for; and there are also servants who will do their duty and seek to do more, in hopes of notice and advancement.” His face turned sober. “And then there are servants who so understand their masters’ minds that they know their masters’ secret desires before even their masters know them, and they then act in advance to fulfill these unvoiced wishes. Their masters are oft surprised when such a thing happens, but ultimately they are gratified, and the servant prospers. And such a servant is Lord Edevane.”

  I ate my mutton while I considered the matter of Berlauda’s secret desires. She had taken the throne in the midst of a civil war, when one city after another was deserting to Clayborne, and great men of the realm were flying to his banner. In the midst of this—and I must here admit my own part in bringing these facts to light—she had discovered murderous treachery on the part of her own mother, and also her most intimate friend.

  After the victory at Exton Scales, she had not forgiven those who had betrayed her. While another monarch might have executed the leaders, then fined or forgiven the rest, Berlauda had hunted down everyone who had supported Clayborne’s cause, executed or enslaved them, and confiscated their property to pay for the war. Even those who survived their ten years of hard labor would have to live with a T for treason branded on their face.

  Berlauda’s desires, I thought, were not complicated. She wished a realm that was her own, where her enemies were destroyed and she was free to live with her husband in security and pleasure. A gentleman who could provide that realm, or a plausible illusion of it, might prosper in her reign.

  Lipton leaned across the table again. “Bear in mind also that a man whose job it is to root out conspiracy must find that conspiracy, or lose his employment. Scutterfield accused Edevane of sharking up cases against innocent men, and soon lost his head.” He looked at me with unease plain upon his face. “Edevane is the only man at court who frightens me. If he has an ally who wants my place, I can be indicted for some peculation or other, be convicted on the testimony of paid informers, and Edevane’s friend slipped into my place as easy as winking.”

  “Sooner or later such people go too far,” said I. “And that is the end of them.”

  “Ay, but how many heads will roll in the meantime?”

  I leaned away from the conversation, sipped my wine, and signaled for the footman. “By your leave, my master,” he said, and carried away my plate. Another dish was brought up from the kitchens. The yeoman of the buttery came out to refresh our wine, and the yeoman of the ewer brought his bowl and pitcher to wash our hands.

  Again we put our heads together. “Are you sure you want to come live at court, youngster?” asked Lipton. “Walk open-eyed into this tangle of conspiracies, falsehoods, and right murder?”

  “No man has reason to hate me,” I said.

  “Ha! You overvalue reason.”

  I threw out my hands. “What other game is there? I will play my best, alongside the best.”

  “You but make a target of yourself. Better to sail again to Tabarzam and defy the pirates.”

  The footmen were coming with the next dish, meatballs made with a paste of regia, the paste itself made of the meat of quails, partridges, a capon, and a few cock sparrows, all mashed together with pistachios and sugar-paste. (I do not know why hen sparrows are to be avoided.)

  “By your leave, my masters.” The footmen put down the plates and withdrew.

  The meatballs were an interesting combination of sweet and savory. I considered Lipton’s warnings, then looked up at one of the room’s tapestries, a scene of astrological figures dancing through the sky. “Perhaps the stars decide all such matters,” I said. “Do you believe in such things?”

  “I was born under the sign of the Boar, sure,” said Lipton. “I therefore possess wisdom, and great appetite.”

  “My father had my horoscope cast when I was young,” I said. “It said that I was studious, abstemious, steady in my habits, and that I would make a good monk, or a chandler. Every so often my father would take this document out of his strongbox, read it aloud at dinner, and laugh.”

  “A chandler can make a good living,” Lipton said, “and not have to risk his neck at sea. Allow me to recommend this employment to you.”

  “I am invited to an astronomical evening tonight,” I said. “At the palace of His Grace of Roundsilver. We are to hear a lecture about the Comet Periodical, and if the sky is clear, we will view the planets with telescopes.”

  “Comets fly like a flaming shell,” Lipton observed, “and the planets are round like gunshot. Maybe the gods have artillery, and fire their bombards across the heavens.”

  “And the stars are the glow of their linstocks. You should recruit the gods into your Loyall and Worshipfull Companie of Cannoneers.”

  “Ay.” He laughed. “You should sell this conceit to the playwright Blackwell. He would get a soliloquy out of it.”

  “Only if he has a cannoneer for the subject of his play.”

  Lipton laughed again. “And why should he not? Let the cannon rattle the theater, and strike the clowns dumb! They would not be any worse for having to perform in silence.”

  I picked up a meatball on a fork and contemplated it. “I will suggest to Blackwell that he employ artillery,” I said, “but I think he wou
ld not agree unless he were allowed to direct his fire at certain members of the court.”

  “Well,” said Lipton, “if the gods oblige us not in this matter, perhaps a poet will have to serve, if he have good aim.”

  * * *

  The air tasted of smoke as I came to the Roundsilver palace after dark and found linkboys lining the road outside, their torches shining on the glittering dress of the guests as they stepped from their carriages. I stepped from the coach and let one of the linkboys conduct me to the door. I gave the boy his vail and a footman my wool boat cloak, and entered to the pleasing sound of women’s laughter.

  I turned into a parlor and saw the duchess in a wrapper of white samite trimmed with frogging and fringes, speaking with a group of ladies that included the princess Floria, Her Majesty’s half-sister. For a moment I considered turning away and leaving the house, but I had been seen, and so I approached to bow to the princess and to greet my hostess.

  “I see you have made something of yourself, Quillifer,” Floria said. “Judging by those shiny boulders you wear on your fingers.”

  “I have achieved some little success, Your Highness,” said I.

  Queen Berlauda was tall and blond and stately, like her royal father; but Floria was short and dark and quick, like her mother, with hazel eyes that snapped from one point of interest to the next and missed nothing. She wore a gown of the royal gold and scarlet ornamented with embroidery of white flowers, a gold belt studded with rubies, and hung from her wrist a marabou-feather fan. A golden circlet and a net of gold mesh made an attempt to confine her tight, rebellious, dark curls, and she wore a galbanum scent that conjured shady pine woods, soft moss, and freshets of sweet water. Floria had played a vital part in the benign conspiracy that had given me a knighthood and a manor, but I had always suspected that she viewed me as a tool for her amusement, and I had been wary of her interest. I had once refused to be the plaything of a goddess—and having refused a goddess, would I then allow myself to become the court fool of a fifteen-year-old girl?