Quillifer the Knight

by Walter Jon Williams

  Mistress Ransome suddenly fixed me with her dark, intent eyes. “Your coronel,” she said, “is not such a fool.”

  “My dear,” said her brother. “Horagalles waiteth not.”

  Ransome and his sister bowed to the princess, and then made their way to where the telescopes waited. I fetched my good wool boat cloak and joined them.

  There were half a dozen telescopes on the lawn, the largest five yards long with its barrel supported by a wooden framework, with footmen to help manhandle it about. Though the air seemed heavy with woodsmoke, the sky was clear above us, with the lake a dark, still plain, and on the far shore the palace twinkled like a constellation. Agoraeus, the sun’s messenger, had set long since, but Horagalles and Ourania were bright in the sky, and Mavors was far in the west, near to setting. Accordingly, we viewed Mavors first, a dusky red disk shimmering on the edge of the horizon. I marveled at how different it looked from one instrument to the next, sometimes dark, sometimes wrapped in mystery, sometimes glowing like embers on the hearth. The telescopes, like witnesses at a trial, each told a different tale.

  Then the telescopes were shifted to Horagalles and Ourania. Horagalles the King was nearly full and in some of the telescopes was a pale blaze, but in others seemed swirling shades of cream. The bright stars that were his companions were plain to see, bustling about their chief like courtiers around a monarch.

  Ourania was a bright, full disk, almost too brilliant to view properly. She had no satellites visible, but swam alone in the heavens like a dazzling swan upon the water. Her outline was somehow less distinct than that of Horagalles, as if she were made of swirling white smoke.

  Afterward the instruments were pointed at the stars, and so we viewed the Boar, the Ephebe, the Brilliant Triangle, the Horologist, the She-Goat, and other autumn stars and constellations. Never had I seen the stars so brilliant, or in their colors so distinct from one another: white, red, dusky, brilliant blue white. While I watched the sky, many of the guests drifted homeward, or went indoors where it was warm, but other than a journey or two to refill my cup with hot punch, I remained out of doors, perfectly happy with the revelations that I found in the heavens.

  The taste of citrus and ginger was pleasant on my tongue, and the warmth was welcome in my belly. I found myself with a group of guests around one of the telescopes, and in the dim starlight I recognized Prince Alicio by his white leather jerkin and his Lorettan accent. “It is all interesting in its way,” he was saying, “but I wonder that we spend so much time gazing at the unknowable sky and so little in perfecting ourselves.”

  “I think Mistress Ransome would disagree with you about the sky being unknowable.” The voice came from near my right elbow, and in my surprise I realized the speaker was Princess Floria.

  “It is the Pilgrim’s doctrine,” said the prince, “that the only thing we can know for certain is that we exist—or, to be more precise, that our minds exist, for our knowledge of ourselves in extensio—in our bodies, and our bodies in the world—we know only because our minds perceive them. Existence, for the Compassionate Pilgrim, was a mental phenomenon. And so, as we know only our own minds, it is to our minds that we must direct improvement.”

  “Yet how many people can be said to know their own minds?” Floria asked.

  “Very few,” the prince conceded. “Yet the Pilgrim’s path is the most conducive to understanding.”

  Even in the darkness, I felt Floria’s keen gaze settling on me. “And you, Sir Quillifer? Do you know your own mind?”

  “Some corners better than others,” I said. “At the very least I endeavor not to tell myself lies.”

  She was amused. “Ha! You reserve the right to lie to others!”

  “When people so ardently desire a thing,” I said, “why should I not give it to them?”

  “Mundus vult decipi,” said Alicio. “It was Eidrich the Pilgrim who said that the world desires deception rather than truth. But he said also that the consequences of deception strike both the deceived and the deceiver, and that it was better to be neither.”

  “It seems to me that we are removing deception tonight,” said I. “For we have long deceived ourselves about the heavens, and now we see them better revealed, and so many of those stories are now uncloaked, and shown to be phantoms.”

  “I am right glad to hear you say so,” said Mistress Ransome, who had come up through the darkness. “If everyone could see in the sky what we see tonight, there would be much less nonsense in the world.”

  “We see stars and planets,” said Prince Alicio. “But what are stars and planets? Of this we know nothing.”

  “Yet we know more than we did,” said Mistress Ransome. “We know they are not objects, flat but somehow perfect, pasted for some inexplicable reason on crystal spheres. We know they are globes, like our earth, and we know also they are not perfect, for some, particularly the moon, show features, and so we know they are not uniform.”

  “You disparage the crystal spheres,” said Prince Alicio. “But how do you imagine the stars and planets are suspended?”

  “I do not think they are suspended at all,” said Mistress Ransome. In the starlight I saw her pale, gaunt face turn to me. “I think your cannoneer friend was correct that heavenly bodies are impelled to move in arcs by some force. But I know not what that force might be.”

  “No celestial bombards?” I asked.

  I sensed a smile. “Would it were that simple.”

  “From the perspective of a sailor,” said I, “I wish to know more about the stars and planets, so that I can more accurately determine my longitude. Sometimes in bad weather we cannot take the noon sight on the sun, but must hope the clouds open up at night, to enable us to take a sight on a star. But the instruments we use to read the heavens—astrolabes, alidades, and the cross-staff—are inadequate, and such star tables as we find are filled with errors. Hundreds of mariners die every year because they cannot find their way.”

  “That is one of my projects,” said Mistress Ransome. “With Her Highness’s help, I will construct a quadrant that will measure the height of the stars with great precision, and produce correct star tables that will succor those mariners of yours.”

  I turned to Floria in surprise. “Your Highness concerns yourself with the height of stars?”

  “Why should I not?” She waved a hand. “It is a thing I can do. I am building Mistress Ransome’s quadrant at my home of Kellhurst.”

  “And there I shall reside, and make my tables.” Mistress Ransome seemed very pleased by the prospect.

  It would be a mural quadrant, I was told, mounted on a wall that was aligned with the meridian, and which could sight on each star as it journeyed about the earth. It would be the largest quadrant in the kingdom, and would be housed in a building that Princess Floria was constructing on her palace grounds.

  “Most of my ladies-in-waiting wait, but only for husbands,” Floria said. “I am pleased to help one of them to achieve a more original ambition.”

  “I will be thankful for the tables when they come,” I said, “and I will see that each of my ships has a copy.”

  * * *

  You were amused at my discourse on lies. Ay, I deceive as other folk deceive, to please myself or to please others, or to evade too long an explanation when such an explanation would be tedious.

  You, too, employ deception. You are not so well placed that you can afford to speak the truth to those about you.

  But our lies share one other quality, which is that we both know a lie when we speak it. Other people babble falsehoods without thinking, because these are the sort of lies that people believe without thinking about them, where a moment’s reflection would reveal their falsity.

  When you and I choose to tell a lie, we do so knowingly, and we know also that a lie can be a weapon, sharper than a razor. And thus, with our falsehoods, we are armed against those who oppose us.

  * * *

  We watched the stars till the middle of the night, and then we
nt indoors to browse the duke’s banquet and to warm ourselves before going to our beds. Mistress Ransome, her brother, and the footmen busied themselves by shifting the telescopes and other apparatus to a room where they could be safely stored till they could be removed, perhaps to Kellhurst. I watched as Floria thanked the duke and duchess for their hospitality, and as her ladies, the gold-skinned Countess Marcella and the disdainful Elisa d’Altrey, prepared for their departure. And then I remembered the name d’Altrey, and began to wonder.

  For the Marquess of Melcaster had been surnamed d’Altrey. He was one of Clayborne’s supporters, and had served in his Privy Council and fought on the field of Exton, where he was captured. He was among those proscribed, and after the war I had probably viewed his head set on a pike before the Hall of Justice.

  I certainly remember looting his house and carrying off a silver-gilt nef big enough to hold in my two arms, which I had loaded with precious objects of silver, gold, and ivory.

  I wondered if the black-haired Mistress d’Altrey was the daughter or granddaughter of the proscribed peer. She had not been introduced as a member of the nobility, as Lady Elisa, but then I supposed Melcaster had suffered attainder and lost his titles and land. If she had once been a Lady Elisa, she was now a commoner, no better than me.

  No wonder she was disdainful. Disdain was probably all that supported the ramshackle remains of her pride.

  But one of Floria’s ladies had gone astray. Marcella and Mistress d’Altrey were sent in search of Chenée Tavistock, who had not been seen in some time, and I found myself in the hall with the princess.

  “It is very good of you, Highness,” I said, “to support Mistress Ransome in her project.”

  The hazel eyes looked into mine. “There are so few educated women,” said she, “and of these so few wish to do anything with their education.” Her face bore a self-amused smile. “Perhaps because I am permitted no ambition, I therefore admire the ambition of Mistress Ransome—and if I can be of service to her, perhaps other women will seek to emulate her, and I will have more learnèd companions at dinner.”

  “I wish you the very best of learnèd companions, Your Highness.”

  “And you, Sir Quillifer?” she asked. “Why have you returned to court? You did not receive such a warm welcome last time.”

  I made a gracious wave of my hand. “Those were misunderstandings, Highness. I hope I have grown in wisdom, and will be able to avoid such misunderstandings in the future.”

  She offered a little laugh and pointed at me her marabou-feather fan. “Do you hope to save my sister from another plot?”

  “It is my understanding,” said I, “she now has another gentleman for that duty.”

  A cloud passed across her face, and she gave a curt nod. “She does indeed.”

  I am permitted no ambition, she had said. For she was the queen’s heir, at least until Berlauda and Priscus succeeded in producing a child, and that meant that Floria’s only task was to wait, either for the child or for a crown. And if the queen’s child made her redundant, then a mind attuned to danger and conspiracy might see her ambition as a threat to the child and to the safety of the realm.

  Coronel Lipton maintained that Lord Edevane placed spies in the households of prominent men. Surely Floria was of greater interest to the throne than any number of the nobility, and I began to wonder who in Floria’s household had turned spy. Possibly one, or indeed all, of the three ladies who now came bustling back from the parlor. Mistress Tavistock, spy or not, had been found asleep on a sofa.

  “And that actor Blackwell is unconscious in front of the hearth,” said Elisa d’Altrey, and for the first time I heard her cold disdain distilled into words. “He is ataunt, and reeks of brandy.”

  “I suppose I shall have to take him home,” I said, and hoped I had not just volunteered to share my carriage with the poet’s puke.

  I bade good night to the princess and her ladies, and then sought out the duke and duchess to offer them my thanks. Her Grace had gone to bed, but her indulgent husband was in his study, conversing with Prince Alicio. I thanked His Grace for the pleasures of the evening, and then said I would take Blackwell home. “Apparently whatever he was drinking has submerged him,” I said.

  “His play failed,” said the duke.

  “Well,” said I, “that is reason enough to be submerged.”

  I went to the parlor and prodded the poet awake, then supported his arm as we went outside. The linkboys had all gone home, and the carriage came up slowly in the dark, hooves ringing hollow on the deserted road. The footman and I boosted Blackwell’s lean form into his seat, and I climbed in opposite him. The playwright was the picture of misery, his head hanging partway out of the window, half-closed eyes gazing in bleak torpor at the fine homes as we drove on.

  “The next play will be better,” I said, and Blackwell gave a half-laugh.

  “Not if the new master of the revels has his way,” he said. He cleared his throat with a great bearlike rumble and spat out the window. “For Queen Berlauda has appointed a prim little miss in the form of a half-monk named Shingle, who wishes there to be nothing in a play that may offend the royal sensibility.” He pointed a wavering hand at nothing in particular. “I had, you know, a little success with The Red Horse a few years ago, about the queen’s ancestor Emelin. You might think the queen would enjoy more plays praising her antecedents, but most of our celebrated kings won their laurels fighting Loretto, and now the queen has married Loretto, and it is impolite to hear of any such strife between the kingdoms in the past. Then there were the kings who fought in civil wars, but Master Shingle finds these civil wars uncivil, for no suggestion may be made that ever there was discord in the realm. Of the foolish or feeble kings who started the wars in the first place—well, we pass them in silence. And even the ancient world—even if I paint up the actors as Aekoi and have them enact a scene out of classical poetry, there may be no uncivil strife.” He snarled. “Gods, I am in too sober a state to discuss Master Shingle. Have you a flask with you?”

  “Nay.”

  “Let us go to Gropecoun Street and drink until we fall asleep in some harlot’s arms.”

  “Now that you mention it,” I said, “there is, I suppose, comedy.”

  Blackwell gave a bitter laugh. “Ay, there is, but Master Shingle permits no intemperate behavior. Lovers may not defy their parents and run away together, for it sets an unwholesome example for the young folk. Old husbands may not lust after young ladies, duchesses may not long for commoners, rogues and inebriates may not sully the scene with their indecorous braying.”

  “What is left?” I asked, in perfect puzzlement.

  He waved a listless hand. “I write a masque now and again, in which a character called Rectitude evades the schemes of a fellow called Vice, and the verse is pretty, but very dull. But I fear the only story that Shingle would find really congenial would be one in which a pair of young people follow their parents’ advice and marry each other, and they then produce nine children and raise them to follow the Pilgrim’s footsteps.” He spat again. “See if an audience will sit still for that.”

  “That would depend,” said I, “on how much of the interval you show, in regard to how the nine children were kindled.”

  He barked a laugh. “Ay, I would like to write such a thing, if only to watch Shingle change color when he reads it.” He looked at me again from out of a cloud of brandy fumes. “Have you a flask? I feel the dread hand of sobriety clutching at my vitals.”

  “I have no flask, but I have a bed, and I’m going to it.” The carriage wheels crunched over gravel as we pulled into the drive before Rackheath House, and I swung myself out without waiting for the footman to open the door. “Take Master Blackwell where he wants,” I told the coachman.

  “Take me to hell!” cried the playwright.

  “Take him home,” I said firmly. “He lodges at the Cat and Custard Pot.” And I sent the carriage on its way.

  I looked up at the stars
as the carriage drew away and felt a touch of my earlier wonder. They glittered above me in their inverted black bowl, and I wondered if they would be less wonderful once Mistress Ransome had numbered and catalogued them.

  They would be no less beautiful, I thought, for that which is useful has its own beauty, and Mistress Ransome would make the stars useful to mariners.

  CHAPTER NINE

  I wore Lady Westley’s sunburst pendant a few days later, at the season’s first regatta on the lake, held at midmorning before the afternoon winds rose, and so that the court could celebrate afterward with a dinner. The day was sunny, and the morning chill faded quickly as we rowed to the starting line. Even on the lake we could smell our dinner cooking in the palace kitchens. The galleys would travel under oars alone, on a roughly triangular track across the lake. We would cross behind two low islands on the far side, then return to the starting line. Bright red buoys had been laid out around the islands to mark the intended course, and another pair of buoys had been laid out to mark the start and finish.

  There were nearly a score of racing galleys in the water, all sponsored by the nobility or the great guilds of the town. To keep out the meiny, there was a bond of fifty crowns for each vessel, in return for which we were given a printed copy of the rules for the race. I paid very close attention to the rules, studied carefully, and thought I had found something to my advantage, but most of the rules were immaterial today, for they dealt with the management of sails, and today we would be under oars alone.

  Most of the galleys were commanded by the owners of the boats, but some had professional captains. There was a good deal of wagering going on, and I had made my own bets with some of my rivals.

  Their Majesties were also on the water, on their barge, which was ornamented with gilded reliefs of the tritons of Fornland, while its hull was painted in the royal colors of scarlet and gold. Their thrones were set beneath a silken canopy, and the barge’s gilding was blinding in the sun.