Dalton Campbell looked up from behind a massive desk of shiny mahogany with curved legs and a scalloped skirt. The top had three inset leather squares, smaller ones to each side of a large one in the middle, each with a curly design painted in gold around its edges.
“Fitch, there you are. Good. Come in and shut the door, please.”
Fitch crossed the big room and stood before the desk when he had done as bidden. “Yes, sir? You needed something?”
Campbell leaned back in his brown leather chair. His princely scabbard and sword stood beside a tufted bench, in their own special holder of hammered silver made to look like a scroll. Lines of writing were engraved on the scroll, but Fitch couldn’t read, so he didn’t know if they were real words.
Tipping his chair back on the two rear legs while he sucked on the end of a glass dipping pen, the Minister’s aide studied Fitch’s face.
“You did a good job with Claudine Winthrop.”
“Thank you, sir. I tried my best to remember everything you told me you wanted me to do and say.”
“And you did that quite well. Some men would have turned squeamish and failed to do as I instructed. I can always use men who follow orders and remember what I tell them I want done. In fact, I would like to offer you a new position with my office, as a messenger.”
Fitch stared dumbly. He’d heard the words, but they didn’t seem to make any sense to him. Dalton Campbell had plenty of messengers—a whole army of them, it seemed.
“Sir?”
“You did well. I’d like you to be one of my messengers.”
“Me, sir?”
“The work is easier than kitchen work, and the job, unlike kitchen work, pays a wage in addition to food and living quarters. Earning a wage, you could begin to set money aside for your future. Perhaps one day when you earn your sir name, you might be able to buy yourself something. Perhaps a sword.”
Fitch stood frozen, his mind focused intently on Dalton Campbell’s words, running them through his head again. He never even dreamed such dreams as working as a messenger. He’d not considered the possibility of work that would give him more than a roof and food, the opportunity to lift some good liquor, and perhaps a penny bonus now and again.
Of course he dreamed of having a sword and reading and other things, but those were silly dreams and he knew it—they were just for fun dreaming. Daydreaming. He hadn’t dared dream close to real things such as this, such as actually being a messenger.
“Well, what do you say, Fitch? Would you like to be one of my messengers? Naturally, you couldn’t wear those . . . clothes. You would have to wear messenger livery.” Dalton Campbell leaned forward to look over the desk and down. “That includes boots. You would have to wear boots to be a messenger.
“You would have to move to new quarters, too. The messengers have quarters together. Beds, not pallets. The beds have sheets. You have to make up your bed, of course, and keep your own trunk in order, but the staff washes the messenger’s clothes and bedding.
“What do you say, Fitch? Would you like to join my staff of messengers?”
Fitch swallowed. “What about Morley, Master Campbell? Morley did just as you said, too. Would he become a messenger with me?”
The leather squeaked when Dalton Campbell again tipped back onto the two rear legs of his chair. He sucked on the end of the spiraled-blue and clear-glass pen for a time as he studied Fitch’s eyes. At last he took the pen away from his mouth.
“I only need one messenger right now. It’s time you started thinking about yourself, Fitch, about your future. Do you want to be a kitchen boy the rest of your life?
“The time has come for you to do what’s right for you, Fitch, if you ever want to get places in life. This is your chance to rise up out of that kitchen. It may be the only chance you get.
“I’m offering the position to you, not Morley. Take it or leave it. What’s it going to be, then?”
Fitch licked his lips. “Well, sir, I like Morley—he’s my friend. But I don’t think there’s anything I’d rather do in the whole world than be your messenger, Master Campbell. I’ll take the job, if you’ll have me.”
“Good. Welcome to the staff, then, Fitch.” He smiled in a friendly way. “Your loyalty to your friend is admirable. I hope you feel the same of this office. I will have a . . . part-time position for Morley for now, and I suspect that at some point in the future a position may open up and he could then join you on the messenger staff.”
Fitch felt relief at that news. He’d hate to lose his friend, but he would do anything to get out of Master Drummond’s kitchen and to be a messenger.
“That’s awfully kind of you, sir. I know Morley will do right by you, too. I swear I will.”
Dalton Campbell leaned forward again, letting the front legs of the chair thunk down. “All right, then.” He slid a folded paper across the desk. “Take this down to Master Drummond. It informs him that I have engaged your services as a messenger, and you are no longer responsible to him. I thought you might like to deliver it yourself, as your first official message.”
Fitch wanted to jump up and hoot a cheer, but he instead remained emotionless, as he thought a messenger would. “Yes, sir, I would.” He realized he was standing up straighter, too.
“Right after, then, one of my other messengers, Rowley, will take you down to estate supply. They will provide you with livery that fits close enough for the time being. When you’re down there, the seamstress will measure you up so your new clothes can be fitted to you.
“While in my service, I expect all my messengers to be smartly dressed in tailored livery. I expect my messengers to reflect well on my office. That means you and your clothes are to be clean. Your boots polished. Your hair brushed. You will conduct yourself properly at all times. Rowley will explain the details to you. Can you do all that, Fitch?”
Fitch’s knees trembled. “Yes, sir, I surely can, sir.”
Thinking about the new clothes he would be wearing, he suddenly felt very ashamed of what had to be his filthy scruffy look. An hour ago he thought he looked just fine as he was, but no longer. He couldn’t wait to get out of his scullion rags.
He wondered what Beata would think when she saw him in his handsome new messenger’s livery.
Dalton Campbell slid a leather pouch across the desk. The flap was secured with a large dribbling of amber wax impressed with a sheaf-of-wheat seal design.
“After you clean up and get on your new outfit, I want you to deliver this pouch to the Office of Cultural Amity, in Fairfield. Do you know where it is?”
“Yes, sir, Master Campbell. I grew up in Fairfield, and I know just about any place there.”
“So I was told. We have messengers from all over Anderith, and they mostly cover the places they know—the places where they grew up. Since you know Fairfield, you will be assigned to that area for most of your work.”
Dalton Campbell leaned back to fish something from a pocket. “This is for you.” He flipped it through the air.
Fitch caught it and stared dumbly at the silver sovereign in his palm. He expected that most rich folk didn’t even carry such a huge sum about.
“But, sir, I haven’t worked the month, yet.”
“This is not your messenger’s wage. You get your wage at the end of every month.” Dalton Campbell lifted an eyebrow. “This is to show my appreciation for the job you did last night.”
Claudine Winthrop. That was what he meant—scaring Claudine Winthrop into keeping quiet.
She had called Fitch “sir.”
Fitch laid the silver coin on the desk. With a finger, he reluctantly slid the coin a few inches toward Dalton Campbell.
“Master Campbell, you owe me nothing for that. You never promised me anything for it. I did it because I wanted to help you, and to protect the future Sovereign, not for a reward. I can’t take money I’m not owed.”
The aide smiled to himself. “Take the coin, Fitch. That’s an order. After you deliver that pouch
in Fairfield, I don’t have anything else for you today, so I want you to spend some of that—all of it if you wish—on yourself. Have some fun. Buy candy. Or buy yourself a drink. It’s your money; spend it as you wish.”
Fitch swallowed back his excitement. “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. I’ll do as you say, then.”
“Good. Just one thing, though.” Campbell put an elbow on the desk and leaned forward. “Don’t spend it on prostitutes in the city. There are some very nasty diseases going through the whores in Fairfield this spring. It’s an unpleasant way to die. If you go to the wrong prostitute, you will not live long enough to be a good messenger.”
While the idea of being with a woman was achingly tantalizing, Fitch didn’t see how he would ever work up the nerve to go through with it and get naked in front of one. He liked looking at women, the way he liked looking at Claudine Winthrop and he liked looking at Beata, and he liked imagining them naked, but he never imagined them seeing him naked, in an aroused state. He had enough trouble hiding his aroused condition from women when he had his clothes on. He ached to be with a woman, but couldn’t figure how the embarrassment of the situation wouldn’t ruin the lust of it. Maybe if it was a girl he knew, and liked, and he kissed and cuddled and courted her for a period of time—came to know her well—he might see how he could get to the point of the procedure, but he couldn’t imagine how anyone ever worked up the nerve to go to a woman he didn’t even know and just strip naked right in front of her.
Maybe if it was dark. Maybe that was it. Maybe it was dark in the prostitutes’ rooms, so the two people wouldn’t actually see each other. But he still—
“Fitch?”
Fitch cleared his throat. “No, sir. I swear an oath not to go to any of the prostitutes in Fairfield. No, sir, I won’t.”
Chapter 24
After the boy left, Dalton yawned. He had been up long before dawn, calling in staff, meeting with trusted assistants to hear their reports of any relevant discussions at the feast, and then seeing about the preparation of all the messages. The staff employed in the copying and preparation of messages, among other things, took up the next six rooms down the hall, but they had needed his outer offices to complete the task in such short order.
By first light Dalton had his messengers off to the criers in every corner of Anderith. Later, when the Minister was up and had finished with whoever had ended up as his bed partner, Dalton would let the man know the wording of the statement so he might not be taken by surprise, seeing as how he was the signatory to the announcement.
The criers would read the messages in meeting halls, guild halls, merchant and trade halls, town and city council halls, taverns, inns, every army post, every university, every worship service, every penance assembly, every fulling, paper, and grain mill, every market square—anywhere people gathered—from one end of Anderith to the other. Within a matter of days, the message, the exact message as Dalton had written it, would be in every ear.
Criers who didn’t read the messages exactly as written were sooner or later reported and replaced with men more interested in keeping their source of extra income. Besides sending the messages to the criers, Dalton, on a rotating basis, sent identical messages to people about the land who earned a bit of extra money by listening to the crier and reporting if the message was altered. All part of tending his cobweb.
Few people understood, as did Dalton, the importance of a precisely tailored, cogent-sounding, uniform message reaching every ear. Few people understood the power wielded by the one controlling the words people heard; what people heard, if put to them properly, they believed, regardless of what were those words. Few people understood the weapon that was a properly fashioned twist of information.
Now there was a new law in the land. Law forbidding partial hiring practices in the mason profession, and ordering the hiring of willing workers who presented themselves for work. The day before, such action against a powerful guild would have been unthinkable. His messages chided people to act by the highest Ander cultural ideals, and not to take understandably belligerent action against masons for their past despicable practices of being a party to children starving. Instead, his message insisted that they follow the new, higher standards of the Winthrop Fair Employment Law. And the startled masons, rather than attacking the new law, would be busily and vigorously trying to prove that they were not intentionally starving the children of their neighbors.
Before long, masons across the land would not only comply, but embrace the new law as if they themselves had all along been urging its passage. It was either that, or be stoned by angry mobs.
Dalton liked to consider every eventuality and have the road laid before the cart arrived. By the time Rowley got Fitch cleaned up and into messenger livery, and the boy off on his way with the law pouch, it would be too late for the Office of Cultural Amity, if for some reason the eleven Directors changed their minds, to do anything about it. The criers would already be proclaiming the new law all over Fairfield, and soon it would be known far and wide. None of the eleven Directors would now be able to alter their show of hands at the feast.
Fitch would fit right in with the rest of Dalton’s messengers. They were all men he had collected over the previous ten years, young men pulled from obscure places, otherwise doomed to a life of hard labor, degradation, few options, and little hope. They were the dirt under the heels of Anderith culture. Now, through the delivery of messages to criers, they helped shape and control Anderith culture.
The messengers did more than merely deliver messages; in some ways they were almost a private army, paid for by the public, and one of the means by which Dalton had risen to his present post. All his messengers were unshakably loyal to no one but Dalton. Most would willingly go to their death if he requested it. There had been occasions when he had.
Dalton smiled as his thoughts wandered to more pleasant things—wandered to Teresa. She was floating on air from having been introduced to the Sovereign. When they had returned to their apartments after the feast and retired to bed, as she had promised, she had soundly rewarded him with just how good she could be. And Teresa could be extraordinarily good.
She had been so inspired by the experience of meeting the Sovereign that she was spending the morning in prayer. He doubted she could have been more moved had she met the Creator Himself. Dalton was pleased that he could provide Teresa such an exalting experience.
At least she had not fainted, as had several women and one man when they were presented to the Sovereign. Were it not a common occurrence, it would have been embarrassing for those people. As it was, everyone understood and readily accepted their reaction. In some ways, it was a mark of distinction, a talisman of faith, proving one’s devotion to the Creator. No one considered it anything but sincere faith laid bare.
Dalton, however, recognized the Sovereign as the man he was, a man in a high office, but a man nonetheless. For some people, though, he transcended such worldly notions. When Bertrand Chanboor, a man already widely respected and admired as the most outstanding Minister of Culture ever to serve, became Sovereign, he, too, would become the object of mindless adoration.
Dalton suspected, though, that a great many of the swooning women would be endeavoring to fall under him, rather than faint before him. To many, it would be a religious experience beyond the mere coupling with a man of power such as the Minister of Culture. Even husbands would be ennobled by their wives’ holy acceptance into such congress with the Sovereign.
When he heard a knock at the door, Dalton looked up and began to say “Enter,” but the woman was already barging in. It was Franca Gowenlock.
Dalton rose. “Ah, Franca, how good to see you. Did you enjoy the feast?”
For some reason, the woman had a dark look. Added to her dark eyes and hair, and the general aspect which made her seem as if she were somehow always standing in a shadow even when she wasn’t, that made the look very dark indeed. The air always seemed still and cool whenever Franca was about.
>
She snatched the top rail of a chair on her way past, dragging it along to his desk. She set the chair before the desk, plopped herself down in front of him, and folded her arms. Somewhat taken aback, Dalton sank back into his chair.
Fine lines splayed out from her squinted eyes. “I don’t like that one from the Order. Stein. I don’t like him one bit.”
Dalton relaxed back into his chair. Franca wore her black, nearly shoulder length hair loose, yet it swept back somewhat from her face, as if it had been frozen stiff by an icy wind. A bit of gray streaked her temples, but, rather than adding years to her looks, it added only to her serious mien.
Her simple sienna dress buttoned to her neck. A little higher up, a band of black velvet hugged her throat. It was usually black velvet, but not always. Whatever it was made from, it was always at least two fingers wide.
Because she always wore a throat band, Dalton wondered all the more why, and what, if anything, might be under it. Franca being Franca, he never asked.
He had known Franca Gowenlock for nearly fifteen years, and had employed her talents for well over half that time. He had sometimes mused to himself that she must have once been beheaded and sewn her own head back on.
“I’m sorry, Franca. Did he do something to you? Insult you? He didn’t lay a hand to you, did he? I will have him dealt with, if that’s the case—you have my word.”
Franca knew his word to her was beyond reproach. She twined her long graceful fingers together in her lap. “He had enough women willing and eager; he didn’t need me for that.”
Dalton, truly at a loss, but cautious nonetheless, spread his hands. “Then what is it?”
Franca put her forearms on the desk and tipped her head in. She lowered her voice.
“He did something with my gift. He scrambled it all up, or something.”
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