The Queen's Necklace

by Teresa Edgerton

  But then Lucius laughed, a laugh of pure delight. This Raith represented a riddle, and there was nothing he liked more. “My dear sir,” he said with a deep bow, “I believe I desire your further acquaintance.”

  Raith responded with a half bow of his own, and Luke returned to the original subject of their conversation.

  “I wonder,” he said, indicating with a motion of his head the Goblins, who were still gathering together their baggage on the pier below, searching among the casks and the bales the crew had already unloaded, “I wonder that the captain was willing to carry such unusual—cargo. I have always heard that sea-going men are uncommonly superstitious and regard the presence of Goblins on board as the very worst sort of ill luck. And certainly, we’ve had rough weather while they were with us.”

  Raith did not answer at once. He appeared to stare through and beyond the smaller Goblins as though he were hardly aware the Ouphs existed, though once or twice some movement on the part of the Grant attracted his attention. “Perhaps if we had ever been in real danger, the crew might have grown actively hostile. As for the captain: he tells me this is not the first party of Goblins he has taken on board. During the last year, he has fallen quite into the way of transporting Grants and Wrynecks in particular from one port to another.”

  “But how very—curious.” Luke struggled to fit this extraordinary snippet of information in with his present theories on Goblins—theories that had mutated a number of times since he left Winterscar, theories that his cousin Jarred and his tutor Francis Purcell would have scarcely recognized by now—but the significance eluded him. “And did the captain tell you to what he attributes this unusual activity?”

  The tide was rising, bringing with it swell after swell. The ship strained against her moorings, her ropes pulled taut.

  “They appear to be disturbed about something,” the Rijxlander answered gravely. “Also, they are invariably travelling from north to south. From which Captain Pyke concludes that there is something taking place in the far north that is making them all profoundly uneasy.”

  Luke felt a pang across his heart. “In the far north? My home is in Winterscar; my family is there. But I’ve been travelling for many months.” He turned away from the docks, leaned back against the rail. “I’ve received very few letters during that time, and I expect that several have gone astray. If you will excuse my asking, I was told you had recently been in Nordfjall. In Ottarsburg, in fact, which is not very far from the Winterscar border. Would you have any idea what that disturbing ‘something’ might be?”

  “I have not. I went to Nordfjall on personal business, searching for information on certain relatives of my own, from whom I have been long estranged. I am afraid I thought of very little else while I was there.”

  “And was your search successful?” Luke asked politely.

  For the first time, Raith displayed a strong emotion. His eyes flashed in the shadows under his hat; his mouth compressed into a thin, hard line. “Unfortunately not,” he said, in a voice of suppressed passion. “The people I was looking for died many years ago, and those who knew them best have all disappeared.”

  Then the Leveller collected himself, became so cold and calm and stern again, Luke almost believed he had imagined that moment of intense emotion. “I might have stayed longer, have asked further questions, but I had neglected my duties in Rijxland for some months already, and I was naturally eager to return home again.”

  9

  The Pagan Queen weighed anchor the next morning. From the time she entered the Troit, the wide channel between Herndyke and the isle of Finghyll, the wind continued to blow cold and steadily. In the mornings, her sheets and her blocks were misted with ice; in the warmer afternoons, an unpleasant odor rose from the hold. She had taken on a cargo of uncured sealskins in Kjellmark, and because she was driven off course by the storm, and therefore already two weeks late delivering them, they had begun to rot.

  Yet the days which followed were great days for Luke, as he strove to advance his acquaintance with the mysterious Rijxlander. They spent hours together walking the deck, while Lucius asked question after question, attempting to draw Raith out. He was particularly fascinated by the man’s religion.

  The people that Luke knew best changed their religion as they changed their fashions: They were today Proto-deists, next month Neoprotonists, and no one could say what fancy would strike them in six months’ time. These conversions were easy, painless, unattended by spiritual or moral upheaval. Luke suspected that it was all a part of the Grand Scheme of “our damned interfering Ancestors”—though in this case he rather approved. Religion crossed national boundaries. It was therefore a little dangerous—it would be very dangerous, if taken too seriously. Fortunately, few people did take it seriously.

  But Levellers were different. They were born, lived, and died in the same stern religion; from cradle to grave they devoted their lives to the precepts of a single demanding creed. What could possibly be the attraction?

  “The Anti-demonists took me in,” said Raith. “I was a dirty little orphan boy begging for my bread, and they had every reason to despise me, yet they were generous and offered me a home.”

  “Despise you—how?” said Luke. “Dirty and wretched you may have been, but still you were an innocent child.”

  Raith shrugged a broad shoulder under his voluminous cloak. “I was hardly innocent. My parents were—essentially—criminals, and I was born with the sins of my fathers lying heavy on my soul. Yet for all that, those good people were moved to accept me among them, and they struggled—how they struggled, against every inclination of my own wayward nature, against every obstacle I could throw in their way!—to make something decent of me.”

  Luke frowned. The picture in his mind was not an engaging one: a circle of grim fanatics attempting to beat and bully one small boy into submission. “I have been told,” he said tentatively, “that Levellers use their children harshly. That they are swift to punish and slow to forgive, even ordinary childish transgressions.”

  Raith considered a moment, standing still and silent, a dark silhouette against the moving background of blue sky and wispy white clouds. Up on the forecastle, the first mate shouted to his men, ordering them to trim the yards as the wind was getting a bit ahead. There was a sudden bustle of activity on every side.

  “Perhaps the discipline we practice is somewhat harsh. My own temperament being what it was, I needed that discipline, I craved that discipline. I would have been abandoned to sin without it. Being unacquainted with children my own age when I was a child myself, I cannot say if their other fosterlings feel such gratitude. For me, it was a great thing, a miraculous thing, that they were willing to take such pains to save me.”

  “And what of the young prince and princesses you have in your charge?” Luke brushed aside a lock of dark hair, which the wind had loosened from his satin hair ribbon and blown into his eyes. “Do you practice on them the same methods that were applied to you?”

  “I could hardly do so,” said Raith, with the hint of a smile. “Their mother would be horrified if I attempted it. And I must admit I have never found it necessary. My young charges are exceedingly conformable. A word or a look is usually enough to bring them into line—though I have been told they are less easily managed when I am not present.”

  He glanced across at Luke. Not for the first time, Lucius was struck by the depth and darkness of his eyes. The iris was as dark as the pupil; no ring of lighter color relieved the inky blackness. Yet there was a brilliance to those eyes, and something else, which Luke was inclined to identify as a restless intelligence.

  “You, no doubt, were also raised on milder principles, and perhaps that suited you. Tell me, Mr. Guilian, are you entirely satisfied with the results?”

  This, though perhaps not intended to be, was something of a poser. Luke gave a short false laugh. “I’ve never really thought about it. That is, I suppose I am tolerably pleased with the result, though others seem less s
o.”

  “You ask too many questions. I beg your pardon; I do not mean to say that I, personally, am offended. Only that other men, less given to examining their own actions, might find your habit of asking so many questions disturbing.”

  More often, as Luke knew very well, they were put off by his habit of answering his own questions. Yet somehow, in this new friendship, positions had been reversed; it was the Leveller who explained things, and Luke had slipped easily into the rôle of avid listener.

  He laughed again, this time more naturally. “Then my questions aren’t an intolerable annoyance? I am glad to hear it. I don’t mean to be rude—or unbearably inquisitive.”

  Raith looked out across the Troit. The wind was ruffling the sea, and waves were hitting the ship with increasing force, sending up a wild white spray. “It is good to ask questions. The day may come, sooner than any of us think, when we are all required to explain ourselves to a Higher Power, to minutely and mercilessly examine our own hearts.”

  There was another long silence between them.

  “The Apocalypse,” Luke finally said, with a lift of his eyebrows. “So fondly described by all your preachers.”

  “Yes, the Apocalypse,” replied Raith, apparently undisturbed by his sarcasm. “The earth will heave and the mountains slide; the sea will burn like wax. Kings and princes will topple from their thrones. An angry God will level all before him. It is coming soon, I think.”

  Luke cleared his throat, unaccountably embarrassed. “It all sounds terribly unpleasant. And now that I think of it, my old tutor, Doctor Francis Purcell, would dismiss the idea as errant Vulcanist nonsense. But perhaps you’re not familiar with that scientific theory, which states that the present world was built out of the ashes of an older world, destroyed eons past by erupting volcanoes?”

  “I am,” Raith responded coolly, “and with the opposing theory, as well. Your Doctor Purcell, I take it, believes that all modern rock formations and sediments were laid down by ancient seas. I have studied the arguments on either side, but I fear I cannot call myself either a Vulcanist or a Sedimentarian, believing as I do that both the Fire and the Deluge are yet to come.”

  At this, Luke was again thrown into some slight confusion. As much as he respected his companion’s mental powers, he had not supposed him a highly educated man—perhaps because he was employed to instruct such very young children, perhaps because of his devotion to his religion. To Luke’s way of thinking, the basis of all religious doctrine and practice was a profound ignorance of the natural world.

  So now he could not help feeling ashamed of himself. The question had not been asked in any generous spirit. There was something perhaps a bit petty, perhaps a bit mean, in trying to trip up this man who had answered all of his questions so patiently, so courteously.

  “I beg your pardon,” he said contritely. “I had no idea you were a scholar—and a natural philosopher at that.”

  “I have been many things in my time,” said Raith, with his quiet smile. Though he did not expand, then or later, on that interesting statement.

  In the evening, Luke invited Raith down to his cabin and presented him with a handful of dog-eared and blotted pages from his revisionist history. Having gained so high an opinion of the Leveller’s perspicacity, he was naturally eager to share his theories. The Rijxlander read straight through the first fifty pages without so much as lifting an eyebrow. Luke watched him with growing impatience; he had expected some strong reaction, positive or negative, and was sharply disappointed at not having gained one.

  “Your arguments are—original,” Raith said at last. “I am particularly struck by this idea of yours that much of the history of the last fifteen hundred years is a flimsy tissue of lies. May I ask how it was you arrived at this startling conclusion?”

  Luke, who had seated himself on the lower bunk, so that his long-legged visitor might enjoy the benefit of the one rickety chair, searched through his mind for the proper words. “In Kjellmark there is a great pile of stone: the remains of a fortress battered by cannon in a conflict that has—somehow—been overlooked in all of the history books. In Tölmarch, Lichtenwald, and Wölfenbrücke I have seen whole cemeteries filled with unmarked graves, whether of revolutionaries or plague victims no one could tell me. On Finghyll, I learned that it is a crime to carry the portrait of a certain early patriot, Carolus Vosdijk by name.

  “I used to think,” Luke continued, “that other historians were merely mistaken. That all of the things that I knew to be true, yet were somehow omitted from official histories, were only the result of careless copying. But I have seen so much, I have learned so much since then, I believe I have uncovered evidence of something far more sinister.”

  He reached into a pocket and drew out a curious old eight-sided coin. “Look here.” He held up the gold coin, the better to display its peculiarities. “I found this in Catwitsen when I was there, six—no, seven months ago. As you can see, it pretends to offer a portrait of Grand Duke Willem, one of their early rulers. But what an improbable picture it is. The face appears to have two left eyes, the mouth is crooked, and the head seems utterly detached from the neck and floats above the lace collar as though it had no relation to the body at all. At the very least, I believe we can safely say that no living man ever sat for this portrait!”

  “But what then?” Raith accepted the coin into his hand, examined it minutely. “Surely this would not be the first time an official portrait failed to do its subject justice.”

  “I believe that whoever designed this coin was trying to leave an encoded message for future generations, attempting to tell us the truth: no such person as Grand Duke Willem ever existed and every story associated with his name is a deliberate fabrication.”

  “But what is the purpose of this great deception?”

  “That,” Luke said darkly, as he took back the gold coin and slipped it back into his pocket, “is exactly what I mean to find out in Luden.

  “But I appear to amuse you,” he added, a shade resentfully. “Surely you, as a rational man, must admit that much of what we have heard about the earliest centuries of Man’s Dominion sounds highly improbable.”

  “As so might the events of our own era, a thousand years in the future. You understand that I don’t dispute your conclusions,” Raith added carefully, “I merely wish to point out that the truth of our own times is considerably stranger than any fiction.”

  “Well, yes,” Luke admitted, putting his chin in his hand. “We do live in bizarre times.” He glanced slyly across at his companion. “The tales one hears out of Rijxland, for instance. I have heard of debtors taking their wives and children into prison with them, in order to keep the family together, but that a devoted daughter should follow her father into a madhouse, and the entire court of Rijxland follow her example? It hardly seems possible!”

  “It is not possible—or at any rate, it is not true,” the Leveller responded. “The Crown Princess and her children do occupy a house on the grounds of the hospital, but they do not mingle with the other inmates. Nor does the king precisely hold court at the asylum—although, visiting the hospital on certain days, one might easily suppose he did. The true situation is rather more complex than that.

  “You must understand,” Raith went on, in what Lucius assumed was his best pedagogical style, “that while the king has been reduced to a figurehead and the real power in Rijxland now lies in the hands of the Parliament, King Izaiah still nominally rules. His foreign doctors entertain a very real and a very lively fear that someone will accuse them of undue influence. At the same time, they are regrettably eager to display their medical prowess to the world at large. For this reason, they have made an ongoing experiment of the king.”

  Luke thought he detected some shade of emotion in the Leveller’s last statement. “You have some quarrel with their methods?”

  Raith cleared his throat, moved the flimsy chair a little closer to the table. “Some of their treatments appear—grotesque—and calc
ulated to do more harm than good. Nor do I like the way they make a public entertainment of the king and the other inmates, by throwing open the doors of the madhouse and allowing great crowds to flock inside.”

  Luke creased his brow. He had to admit the idea was faintly obscene. “I would think that so much attention would be rather trying, even distressing, to a sick old man.”

  “So I think also. Unfortunately, those in a position to act on his behalf do not seem to agree.”

  “And the Crown Princess?”

  “The Princess Marjote is of much the same mind, but her influence at the moment is negligible. She is engaged in an ugly and extended power struggle with her cousin, Lord Flinx, and she appears to be losing.” Raith’s large hands gripped the table for a moment, then relaxed. “As for Lord Flinx, he is a gifted orator, though a very bad man, and his party grows stronger with every passing day.”

  Luke nodded thoughtfully, his dark eyebrows twitching together. Of the king’s nephew, he had heard wildly conflicting accounts. “The stories they tell of Lord Flinx are gross and distasteful, yet one hears, too, that his behavior in Luden is generally impeccable.”

  “He commits his worse excesses on visits to his country estate, or to the house he keeps over the border in Montcieux for that very purpose,” said Raith. “There he indulges his depraved appetites without any shame or disguise. Of course, all this is dismissed as malicious rumor by his supporters.”

  “And the young woman—his protegée? His niece, or his natural daughter, or—”

  “Tremeur Brouillard.” The name seemed to hang in the air, conjuring up any number of scandalous associations. Lucius seldom listened to bedroom gossip, but even he had heard stories about the enterprising and unscrupulous Mademoiselle Brouillard.