The Twylight Tower
Page 27
She smacked her goblet down for effect and started for the door. Caius—even the portly Pascal—raced to keep up.
“Your Grace,” Caius cried, “you have put our credo so perfectly, has she not, Doctor Pascal?”
“Ah—indeed. We care deeply for all ill persons in our charge and care.”
“As I care for and keep a good eye on all, even physicians, in my kingdom,” the queen concluded and strode down the escutcheon-hung hall toward the street door. She wanted the final word, the fine exit, and these doctors clung like their own blood-letting leeches.
“Then, Your Gracious Majesty,” Caius went on as he reached the door with her, “there is one request that would help us to fulfill your every desire for our work.”
“Which is?” she snapped.
“I—we humbly request that we might have bodies,” Caius said, “corpses here for dissection to learn the things you would have us to do.”
“Corpses?” she cried, her hand flying to her bodice when she tried never to show dismay in public. “Corpses to dissect? I’ll no thave bodies so abused. Whose?”
The man dared to shrug. “I know not, Your Gracious Majesty, as the human body is all the same. The poor found dead in the streets. Prisoners or executed felons. Country rabble. Whoever.”
“I shall think on it,” she declared, raising her voice to its ringing tone, “for quite a long while. You may shrug, Fellows of the College, at the earthly remains of your fellow human beings so abused, but I do not. And now,” she concluded again, irked she had to find yet another closing line, “I shall take my leave and, next time I want to see you in the palace or here or anywhere, I warrant you will not be so busy.”
Her guard on the front door barely pulled it open before she got to it. On the stoop, watching the crowd, Robin saw her and swirled open her cloak he’d evidently been holding. He offered his arm to escort her out, but she kept going on her own. Furiously blushing and wanting no one to see so in the light, she made for her coach. It waited for her but one house away, behind the line of unmounted horses, as they had obviously expected her to ride back. Coachmen and grooms alike scrambled from their lolling stances and grabbed for reins and bridles. Boonen, the burly coachman, swept open the door for her and banged down the folding, metal steps.
Robin haphazardly settled her cloak about her shoulders, and Mary and Anne tried to help control her voluminous skirts for her climb up and in. But she was too quick even for them. Though her cloak spilled back into Robin’s hands, she felt him give her a hoist up, one hand on her waist and one under her left elbow.
And then she nearly stepped on the horrid thing lying on the floor of the dim coach. Gaping at it, despite her long-tended command of herself, the queen screamed.