A voyage of six days brought us to Balfoy, on the river Lesse. We came as the herald of a storm that blackened the western horizon behind us as we raced for the shelter of the harbor; and by the time we achieved our anchorage, sleet was pattering like a rain of small stones on the canvas. Captain Bodil had been lucky and reached port before the wind began to roar. We left the Kiminge for an inn and invited Captain Bodil to join us for supper ashore. There we made a merry party while the storm battered the shutters, and when I went up the steep stair to my room, I swayed not because of drink, but because I had not yet grown used to footing that did not rise and fall to the scend of the sea.
The storm pummeled the town for two more days, leaving it cloaked in white; and then we departed on a barge for the south. We were eleven days on the barge as it went up the Lesse, the master trading at various ports of call, and I viewed Loretto in its winter colors, somber browns and grays, the fields half-flooded, the orchards stark and leafless. The land along the Lesse was fertile, and grand houses and castles overlooked the water, but the ordinary folk lived mean lives in little thatched houses that huddled together as if for warmth, with dogs and pigs walking in and out of the door.
* * *
“It is a fine rich country,” I said to you as we drank mulled wine on a bright winter’s day. We stood on the bow with the barge’s lugsail rising behind us, and the tillerman the only crew on deck, the rest having their dinner in the roundhouse. You were wrapped in a coat of silver fox fur and a hat made of marten. I in my otter-fur cape looked plain as a shepherd.
“There should not be water standing in the pastures like that,” you observed. “The farmers should have plowed for winter, to allow for drainage and keep the roots of the plants from drowning.”
“I see you were raised in the country, Mistress d’Altrey,” said I. “I know nothing of plowing, and it is not an occupation to which I aspire.”
“The plowman toils all year long,” you said. “He must plow to drain the fields, to kill the weeds, to plow dung into the soil, to prepare the ground for seed. If it is not being done”—and here you nodded at a field all a-shimmer with water—“that means the plowman is elsewhere. He has been swept up in the corvée, unpaid labor to maintain the roads and dikes, or to add a wing to the lord’s palace. Or perhaps he carries a pike in the army.”
“I defer to your knowledge of husbandry,” I said.” But as ignorant as I am, to me this seems an unsound practice. The crops will suffer if the farmer is taken away.”
“Ay, but the lords and the corvée care not for the problems of farmers.” You pointed at a great fine house with a lawn running down to the water. “See that tall building on the left? The one shaped like a beehive?”
“I see it.”
“That is a columbarium, a pigeon-house. There might be a thousand pigeons living there, to provide squab for the lord’s table, eggs for his dinner, and a top-dressing for his fields. But as the pigeons belong to the lord, they have the lord’s privileges, and are allowed to dine on the farmers’ seeds, and to pluck the harvest from the stalk before the plowman. If the farmer retaliates by killing one of the lord’s pigeons, he is himself hanged.”
“You make me feel very sorry for those plowmen,” said I.
“It is the way of the world,” you said. “Those who can, take.” I saw a flare of resentment in your black eyes, a flare that quickly died. “At the end of the rebellion,” you said, “the crown took away the land that had been in my family for four hundred years.”
“That must have been hard,” I said.
“It was all the worse because I’d warned my father and brothers it might happen.” The blaze kindled again in your eyes, and I saw your fists clench in your fine calfskin gloves. “Clayborne’s uprising wasn’t a rebellion—it was a sickness! And my grandfather, father, and brothers all caught the disease, were completely swept away by the dazzling prospect of riches and rewards granted by our brave new king.” You laughed. “My brothers thought that gold and knighthoods would fall from the sky! I told them not to underestimate Berlauda, but they scoffed at the idea that a woman could hold the throne. So the queen ordered them all beheaded after Exton Scales, and my mother and I were turned out of our home. If I hadn’t hidden away our jewelry and some money, we would have had to beg for our bread.”
“Where is your mother now?”
“She is a guest of kin who avoided the rebellion and Berlauda’s wrath. For myself, it is lucky that Her Highness took pity on me, and now employs me as one of her ladies.”
“Did Her Highness know you?”
“Nay, but friends at court spoke for me.”
I considered your story. “I am surprised that you went to court at all, with Berlauda having taken your lands.”
You made a disdainful sound. “I went to court for the same reason you did. It is the place where advancement might be found. Which simpleton sits on the throne does not matter, so that simpleton does not simply take, but also dispenses favors.”
I was amused. “You think Berlauda is a simpleton?”
“I think it is the act of a fool to share power with a foreign autocrat.”
I smiled. “It is not the act of a woman in love?”
“If she loves Priscus, that makes her even more foolish. And to engage in a profitless war because that too-well-loved prince wants a pretty army to flaunt in front of his father, that is madness.”
“It takes but a single monarch to make a war,” I said. “Yet it takes two to make love.”
You laughed. “You disregard self-love, Sir Quillifer. That is also a prerogative of kings.”
“My mother always said that you must love yourself before you are worthy to love others.”
Your eyes narrowed. “I think the topic has shifted somewhat from matters of state.”
I waved a hand. “We move from matters in which we find ourselves powerless, to a matter in which we both have some influence.”
Again you laughed. “Her Highness warned me about you. She suspects you of treating love too lightly.”
I feigned offense. “Mistress d’Altrey, it seems to me that I accord love all proper respect.”
You tilted your head to view me. “Yet you behave so recklessly in other things, I would be surprised to find you sober in matters of love.”
“I do not believe love is a sobering thing.” I spread my hands. “But, mistress, if you doubt me, you may lay down whatever rule you like, and see if I obey.”
I could see calculation flickering behind your black eyes, and then you shook your head. “I am without power, Sir Quillifer. I have no one to protect me. I think it would be dangerous to love you.”
“I?” I affected astonishment. “I am notoriously harmless.”
You put a gloved hand on my arm. “One may ask Sir Brynley Wilmot how harmless you are, and he was a man you meant to save.”
I was stricken to the heart, and my words bottled up in my throat. Yet at the last you took pity on me, and your eyes softened. “I am sorry to have mentioned that name, Sir Quillifer. But I wish only to remind you that what we do hath consequence for ourselves and the world, and that applies to our pleasures as well as our duties.”
“I think you are wrong, mistress,” I finally said. “You say you have no power, but I think you are wrong. You are powerful indeed.”
You raised an eyebrow. “You are going to say that I have power over your heart?”
“Something less poetical, mistress,” I said. “I was going to say that you are powerful, because you know what you want.”
You gave a soft laugh and, as you went off, kissed me on the cheek. From that I took a little comfort.
* * *
It is strange to view that conversation now, when we are about to embark on our great emprise. You, who were so cautious, are now the epitome of daring. And I, so sickened over the death of Wilmot, am now ready to lay a nation in waste. If we succeed, tens of thousands will die, and only because we will it.
Neit
her of us would have dared this without the other. In this we complete ourselves, and will do so by shattering the world.
* * *
Prince Alicio joined me a few moments later at the prow of the barge. He wore against the cold wind a hat and coat made extravagantly of ermine, the pure-white fur recalling the white of the Retriever sect, where lay his philosophical sympathies. To hold the opinions of a Retriever in Loretto was of course a capital offense, but Alicio could merely claim that he wore ermine as a privilege of his princely house, for only those within a certain radius of the throne were allowed to wear the skin of that regal animal.
“I wonder, Highness,” I said, “if you would enlighten me concerning a point of the Pilgrim’s doctrine.”
“If I can,” said he. “I am not a divine.”
“I’m confident the answer is within your competence.”
He nodded. “Very well.”
Over my shoulder I glanced at you, standing alone and magnificent by the roundhouse. “Why is it,” I asked, “that the Compassionate Pilgrim is so opposed to the act of love?”
Alicio stroked his goatee. “Because the Pilgrim held that life is little but suffering,” said he. “The act of love may produce momentary pleasure, but it also engenders children, and the children grow to suffer in their turn. Therefore the act of love produces suffering, and should be avoided.”
“I feel that this doctrine may be true,” said I, “yet I find it somehow incomplete. For does not a mother love her child, and take comfort in that child, just as the child derives comfort and sustenance from the mother? And should not people in a world of suffering seek relief in each other’s arms?”
“The Pilgrim approved of the sentiment, as opposed to the act, of love,” said Alicio. “For this sentiment comforts men and women in this realm of misery. But he felt that the carnal act itself led inevitably to suffering.”
“Yet,” said I, “if the Pilgrim’s rule were followed strictly, the human race should become extinct. It is almost a way of declaring that the human race is a terrible mistake that should be corrected.”
“I am not qualified to judge the human race,” said Alicio, “but I rejoice in how much suffering would be ended.”
“Consider how much other human activity results in suffering,” I said. “Emptying cesspits. Working in Her Majesty’s silver mines. Going aloft in a storm to shorten sail. Being clouted on the head by my schoolmaster.”
Alicio smiled. “I perceive you have a grudge against that schoolmaster.”
“I affirm that I do,” said I, “and I heartily wish the Pilgrim had forbidden him to strike me.”
“I believe that if you search the Pilgrim’s writings,” said Alicio, “you will find some remarks on the subject of violence.”
“Well, that is a comfort.” I lifted my mulled wine and inhaled the scent of clove and cardamom. “But my larger point,” I continued, “is that the Pilgrim does not enjoin us from working in mines or emptying cesspits, but instead singles out an act of pleasure for his condemnation. It seems less a program than a prejudice on his part.”
“Aĩ, but it is the only act that brings suffering to the next generation.”
“Suffering, yes. But also love, family, amity, hope, curiosity, and discovery.”
“If you are a lucky child, you may have that,” said Alicio, “But you might also be born a cripple, or wander alone begging on the streets, or be set to climb into chimneys to clean them, or put to some foul purpose in a brothel.”
“But the Pilgrim put forward no program to correct that sort of injustice,” I said, “but instead wishes us not to make happy babies as well as miserable ones.”
“The Pilgrim holds that happiness is transitory, but suffering eternal.”
I ventured upon a laugh. “It seems that you are asking me to surrender much, and in exchange I receive extinction.”
“Quillifer,” said he, “you will become extinct in any case.”
“And that extinction is another complaint I have, and one which, if the Pilgrim be divine—as so many of his followers allege—I wish he would address at once.”
“Freedom can only be found in resignation,” said the prince.
“Whereas I think that freedom is best found on boats,” said I, “and on sailing on the free waters of the world.”
* * *
When we arrived in Longres, I found it a discouraging sight, for behind its crumbling walls were shabby, ancient buildings crowded around narrow, dark lanes. I could all too easily imagine an ambush lurking around every corner. In Selford there were districts like this, like the Ramscallions down by the river, but from what I could see from the Lesse, the whole city was decrepit and stinking.
I have since learned that the city’s appearance has much to do with the system of taxation. Windows are taxed, and so most are blocked up, and the interiors remain dark. Rooms are also taxed, so interior walls are knocked down, and no closets are built, for closets are considered rooms. Fresh paint and new thatch attract the attention of the tax collectors, and so are avoided. Even the wealthy strive to hide their success from the prying revenue agents, and hope to look poor as cotters.
The nobles, who are immune to taxation, live in quite a different world.
The captain had much business to conduct on the quay, and so we passengers disembarked into carriages summoned by the captain of the port and were carried five or six leagues to Longres Regius, where Henrico resided in his palace and the nobility crowded around on their own estates. But as we left the city, we first encountered the execution ground, where those judged guilty were broken on the wheel, and that wheel then mounted atop a pole, so that crows could feast on the victim and the citizens could pass that place of carnage and reflect on the vagaries of life, and of justice. There were dozens of these memorials, all black against the winter sky, some so old they held only bones clad in rags. I wondered how many had died for killing their lord’s pigeons.
I remembered those heads in front of the Hall of Justice in Howel, and wondered whether these Lorettan notions of justice had come to my country along with King Priscus.
The broken bodies fell behind, and we viewed the highway to Longres Regius, flanked by the fine houses of nobles and courtiers, just like the road between Howel and Ings Magna. From the carriage I could see, rising above the bare black trees, the fantastic towers and chimneys of the royal palace, but I traveled on with Prince Alicio to his own house, where I was to be his guest. You, the countess, and Dom Nemorino would be lodged at the palace.
Prince Alicio lived at the Palace Ribamar, a gray stone house befitting his rank, with towers, gables, a thousand panes of glass, and a score of chimneys. Statues of royal ancestors occupied niches on the facade. There was a park, a lake where full-rigged ships lay ready for pleasure-parties on the water, and a garden laid out in an astrological design. A staff of two hundred maintained the buildings and grounds under the direction of the flint-eyed steward Braud, who kept the servants in order much as a sergeant-major disciplines his pikemen.
His Highness’s columbarium lodged no less than two thousand pigeons.
Prince Alicio was an indulgent host, allowed me full use of his house, and introduced me at court. The courtiers were even more glittering than those in Howel, their gowns and jerkins of silk and satin and costly fur. I again made myself a contrast, my clothing comparatively plain but my fingers aglow with gems. I was presented to King Henrico and Queen Arletta, who were tall and lean, like Priscus, and looked so alike, both to each other and to their son, that it was plain they made up a marriage of cousins. As I was the first of the great wave of arrivals from the Duisland court, Her Majesty asked me about Queen Berlauda’s condition, and I was able to report, quite honestly, that when last I had seen her at the new year celebrations, Berlauda had been at a pinnacle of health.
Their Majesties were gracious about my inexpert attempts to speak their language, and thanked me for coming to aid their country in war. Though they seemed to believe
I intended to fight Thurnmark, I felt that small errors such as these were fully the province of majesty, and I did not correct them.
Later that day there was a ball in the great hall of the palace, with its gilded barrel vault a-drip with crystal chandeliers, and the walls splendid with mirrors and brilliant tapestries. Their Majesties opened the ball by leading a grave pavane. It is a simple dance, with couples slowly parading forward or back, and pauses every so often so the gentleman may circle his partner, the better to show off his fine costume. So many dancers followed the royal couple that they resembled the surface of the sea, rising and falling and doubling back as if moving at the will of a tide. Their Majesties paraded the length of the hall and back, and then, as is the universal custom, the pavane was followed by the galliard, a far livelier dance, wherein the lady shows off her dextrous footwork, and the gentlemen the fine shape of their legs in silken hose.
I observed the dances only, for I had no partner. Prince Alicio danced with some royal cousin or other, but I doubted that my touch would be allowed to sully the hands of my superiors, for the protocol in the palace was very strict, and I did not fully understand it, and rather than make an error, I chose to forego the pleasures of the dance.
Their Majesties returned to their thrones. What followed the galliard was a great surprise, for it was la volta, which in the language of the country means “the turn.” The partners danced so closely that I was a little astonished, for that sort of intimacy would have caused a scandal in Duisland—and then I was dumbstruck by what followed, which appeared to be the gentlemen seizing the women by the bosom and groin, and hurling them in the air. The ladies took no offense at this, and many shrieked with delight.
Further observation gave me a better idea of this maneuver: The gentlemen seized not the woman, but either end of the busk that stiffened the front of their gowns and flattened their chests, and they also assisted the woman in her leap by some lift of the left thigh, the precise contrivance of which escaped me.
Quillifer the Knight Page 32
