The Gypsy King
Page 30
“Yes,” smiled the king, with a sigh of satisfaction. “Though I’ve known her only a very short while, I feel as though I’ve known her my whole life. And though I’d thought that I only cared for her as a friend with whom I had much in common, this morning, upon learning that she’d been widowed, I suddenly realized that I’d only been keeping my true feelings at bay. I love her, Your Grace, with all my heart. She is beautiful, spirited, kind and caring—the perfect royal consort. I wish to have her by my side always, and that is why I intend to ask her to marry me.”
“No,” snarled Mordecai, who was so incensed that for an instant he forgot to disguise his tone.
“Excuse me?” said the king, visibly suppressing a cough.
Fearing that he would not be able to mask the hatred in his eyes, Mordecai quickly bowed his head. “Forgive me, Your Majesty,” he said through his teeth as his mind raced for a way to avert this disaster. “It … it is just that I do not wish to see you humiliated.”
“Humiliated?” said the king in surprise.
“By being turned down,” clarified Mordecai, cringing to emphasize to the fool just how mortifying such a rejection would be. “Lady Bothwell has only just learned of the violent death of her beloved husband. She is grieving, Your Majesty, and however flattered she might be by your proposal, I am quite sure that she is nowhere near ready to share another husband’s bed.”
Instead of being crushed by this sad news, the king laughed. “Fear not, Mordecai, for I am not such a boor that I would insist upon wedding and bedding the lady while she is still wearing widow’s weeds!” he exclaimed. “I shall not propose to her—or, indeed, even make her aware of my true feelings—until it is apparent that she has fully recovered from her grief.”
“That is most … thoughtful of you,” said Mordecai, trying not to snarl again. “Even so, Your Majesty—”
“And while I am waiting for her to recover,” interrupted the king, “I will be attentive and kind and do all I can to prove to her that I am a good king and a man deserving of her love. Now, what was it that you wished to speak to me about?” Mutely, Mordecai shook his head, recognizing the futility of even hinting at a match with Lady Aurelia.
“No?” said the king, arching an eyebrow. “Pity—I thought you might have come to inform me about poor Lord Pembleton.” When the Regent went very still but did not reply, the king continued. “As I’m sure you’re aware, his infant grandson was recently struck down by a mysterious ailment, and grief has reduced the poor man to such a low state that he is unable to speak, bathe or even feed himself,” said the king, who paused before quietly adding, “I want you to personally see to it that he is tended to by the finest physicians in the realm and that his son’s bereaved widow is adequately provided for, Mordecai. I think it would go some way toward atoning for the execution of young Pembleton, don’t you?”
Mordecai stared at the king, wondering if he realized just how close he was to death.
It did not seem to Mordecai that he did, for the next thing the fool did was chastise Mordecai for failing to keep him adequately informed.
“I am quite sure that neglecting to tell me about Lord Pembleton’s situation was an oversight on your part— as was neglecting to tell me about the death of Lord Bothwell,” said King Finnius. “However, if you wish to continue to serve me in some capacity following the end of your regency this night, I would not have such oversights continue, for much as I like my servants, I do not think it appropriate that I should have to learn of such things from them, do you?”
“No,” said Mordecai, the word barely more than a puff of air.
The king nodded. “I appreciate your understanding in these matters, Your Grace,” he said as he turned and resumed staring out the window. “You are dismissed.”
I am dismissed, raged Mordecai. I am dismissed?
“Where is General Murdock?” he screamed, flinging an ink pot at a nearby servant, who had the good sense not to flinch but rather to allow the ink pot to hit him squarely on the side of the head. “I summoned him ten minutes ago!”
“I am here,” said the General, who’d somehow crept into the room without Mordecai noticing.
Mordecai glared at him. Then he turned to the bleeding, ink-splattered servant and bellowed, “Out!” After the servant had fled, Mordecai informed Murdock of the king’s plans to marry Lady Bothwell.
“I want him dead,” he spat.
“Of course you do,” soothed General Murdock, touching a finger to his thin lip. “And yet, such a thing would not serve your purpose.”
“I know it would not serve my purpose,” snarled Murdock. “I said I want him dead. I did not order you to kill him!”
General Murdock tilted his small, narrow head in acknowledgment.
“Nevertheless I shall have my revenge for his ill treatment of me,” continued Mordecai in a ragged voice, “and for his lack of gratitude for all that I have done for him, and for his suggestion that I have something to atone for, and for his thinly veiled threat to dismiss me following the end of my regency, and for his plans to coerce Lady Bothwell into marriage with him even though she has made it abundantly clear that I am her preferred choice!”
General Murdock—having no interest whatsoever in Lady Bothwell and her romantic inclinations—nodded blandly. “And what form shall your revenge take, Your Grace?” he asked, getting to the important point.
For a long moment, Mordecai said nothing. Then he said, “Is the Gypsy prisoner dead?”
General Murdock looked mildly uncomfortable. “Not yet, Your Grace,” he admitted, “for I have been busy tying up loose ends on a number of recent … projects. However, I had planned to descend into the dungeon tonight in order to finish him.”
“Then I will come with you,” announced Mordecai, smiling for the first time since his encounter with the king, “that I may be soothed by the sound of the child’s screams—and by the knowledge that the smallest, weakest, most helpless of His Majesty’s precious subjects died in terror and pain because of him.”
THIRTY-SEVEN
PERSEPHONE HAD THOUGHT that a day spent alone in her chambers playing the grieving widow would seem interminable.
Instead, the hours had flown by. After Azriel had left to steal wine and make the other preparations, she’d sent word to Martha and the sisters that she did not wish to be disturbed again that day. Then she’d wandered around the room touching and admiring things—the beautiful tapestries, the fine table linen, the polished tabletop, the great, comfortable bed upon which Cur blissfully snoozed and even the needlepoint basket full of brilliantly coloured yarns and threads. As she’d wandered, she’d marvelled at how much she would miss it all. She, a slave born and bred, who, not so long ago, would have been overjoyed by the prospect of a bowl of hot hare stew after a hard day’s work.
It was astonishing how quickly things could change.
And now they were set to change again, for she and Azriel were about to descend into the dungeon to rescue the child and when it was all over, well … one way or another, it would all be over.
“How do I look?” she asked, trying not to sound anxious as she plucked at the loose sleeves of the coarse brown robe that Azriel had given her.
“Like a dirty noblewoman dressed as a slave,” smiled Azriel, leaning forward to rub a little more soot on her cheeks.
Ivan, who’d been perched on the windowsill disdainfully observing Persephone’s reverse makeover, screamed his agreement with this assessment and took flight into the dusky skies.
“How do I look?” asked Azriel, pulling the hood of his robe farther down his face so that his chiselled features were further accentuated by the shadows and his very blue eyes shone like flames in the night.
Gazing up at him, Persephone flinched as though the flames had suddenly leapt out of the shadows and burned her. Then she took a step back and smiled faintly. “You look perfect,” she said, hefting one of the burlap sacks full of stale bread onto her back before wryly adding,
“but I daresay you already knew that, pompous, overstuffed peacock that you are.”
Azriel grinned at this—a dazzling spectacle. “I am very glad to see that you’ve not lost your sense of humour, Persephone.”
“I pray to the gods that I do not lose something more precious this night,” she replied grimly. “Come. Let us go.”
After checking to make sure that the corridor was empty of witnesses who might wonder why a pair of filthy dungeon slaves had been visiting the grieving Lady Bothwell, Azriel and Persephone slipped out the servants’ door at the back of the room. Keeping their hoods forward, their heads down and their backs bent in a posture of servility, they shuffled through the dimly lit corridors, rounding this corner and that—past the chambers assigned to the great families, past the chambers assigned to the lesser families, past alcoves and nooks and hallways of indeterminate purpose, until at length they reached one of the wide, winding staircases that led to the ground floor of the palace. Upon reaching the bottom of the stairs, they plunged into the noisy stream of noblemen and noblewomen hurrying toward the Great Hall to partake of the king’s birthday feast, which would begin shortly.
If only the corridor wasn’t so crowded with those who have dined and sported and spoken with “Lady Bothwell,” thought Persephone nervously as she transferred the bag of bread from one sweaty hand to the other. If only—
An impatient shove from behind caused her to stumble. She recovered almost immediately, but not before the heavy bag swung forward and knocked into the reeling nobleman in front of her. With a hoarse cry, he spun around, revealing himself to be none other than the drunken, leering Lord Atticus. Horrified at finding herself face to face with the only nobleman who’d ever seen her dressed as a servant, Persephone tried to dart away from him but he was too fast for her. Grabbing her by her free arm, he clouted her across the side of the face so hard that her head snapped backward and her hood fell back.
Over the ringing in her ears, Persephone heard Azriel grunt softly, as though suffering from the strain of holding himself back. Most of the hungry, hurrying nobles nearby paid no attention whatsoever to the scene unfolding in their midst—but some did.
Persephone ducked her head in an attempt to hide her face. “Apologies, m’lord—”
“Your useless apologies mean nothing to me!” bellowed Lord Atticus. Lifting his hand high in the air, he was about to clout her again when he froze. Dropping his hand, he grabbed her chin, jerked her head up and studied her face with his close-set, bloodshot eyes. “I’ve seen you,” he announced at length, his brow furrowed with the effort of trying to remember.
“I don’t think so, m’lord,” gasped Persephone as she tried to jerk her chin out of his grasp. “You … you must have me confused with someone else—”
“Confused with someone else?” Lord Atticus screeched in sudden outrage, causing everyone in the vicinity to stop and stare. “Who do you think you are to suggest such a thing to me, you filthy little drab? I ought to have you horsewhipped for your insolence!”
Before Persephone could reply—or someone could realize that the filthy little drab was actually the beautiful Lady Bothwell in disguise—the bugles sounded, heralding the arrival of the king. At once, the drab was forgotten and all eyes turned toward the smiling young monarch. As he swept past on his way into the Great Hall, all the men bowed and all the women—including Persephone— curtsied. As she did so, she felt a rush of affection for King Finnius—and also a pang of regret at the thought that this was the last time she’d ever see him, and that he’d never know that her affection for him had been genuine even if she, herself, had not been.
These thoughts were fleeting, however, for almost before she’d finished curtseying—and well before the befuddled Lord Atticus remembered that he wanted to have her horsewhipped—she and Azriel were on the move once more. Ducking into the bustling royal kitchens, they wound their way around bloody butcher blocks, barrels of salted meat and half-empty sacks of flour while at the same time dodging the red-faced cooks, scampering scullery maids and sweaty, sooty little lads who tended the cook fires. At length they reached a door at the very back of the farthest kitchen. Stepping outside, Persephone was shocked to find herself standing in the same courtyard in which young Pembleton had been executed just days earlier. Licking her suddenly dry lips, she stared at the long shadow cast by the scaffold that had not yet been taken down, and she tried not to remember his pulpy eye and his broken, nail-less fingers—and the fact that, unlike her and Azriel, he’d almost certainly been innocent.
“Are you all right?” asked Azriel, who was gazing at her with a calm, expectant expression on his handsome face.
Persephone nodded, not trusting herself to speak.
Turning away from the scaffold, Azriel walked around the outer wall of a nearby turret and up to a small outer building that Persephone would have taken for storage if not for the fierce-looking guards posted outside the door. Pulling the hood of her coarse robe even farther forward, she managed not to flinch or break stride as she and Azriel approached the guards, but her heart began to pound so hard that she was sure the guards would hear it and wonder why.
“We’ve come—” began Azriel in a mumble.
“To feed the prisoners,” said one of the guards, in a voice that made it clear that he thought it was a waste of bread.
The second guard said nothing until Azriel and Persephone were halfway through the heavy door. Then, without warning, he thrust the point of his pike so deep into Persephone’s bread sack that she felt the sharp point of it touch her back. Her heart—which had been pounding just moments earlier—abruptly stopped beating and for one forever instant, she thought it was all over.
Then the stinking brute yanked his pike free of the bread sack, gave her a hard shove and laughed. “Just checking to make sure you’re not trying to sneak anyone inside to enjoy our hospitality, slave!”
“’Course not,” mumbled Azriel, grabbing Persephone’s hand to keep her from reaching for her dagger and plunging it into the brute’s belly. “Be back as soon as may be.”
THIRTY-EIGHT
AS IT HAPPENED, Persephone and Azriel were not the only ones preparing to descend into the darkness.
“You’re late,” said Mordecai as Murdock silently crept into his office.
“My apologies, Your Grace,” replied the General blandly. “I had assumed you’d want to wait until after the king’s birthday feast.”
“Well, you assumed wrong,” snapped Mordecai, using one gnarled hand to awkwardly knead a painful cramp in his neck. “After the monstrous way the king behaved toward me earlier, I’d sooner see his liver served raw on a golden platter than dine with him.”
General Murdock nodded, unconsciously licking his thin lips at the mention of liver.
Mordecai pursed his own lips in distaste. Murdock really is a disgusting specimen, he thought. Out loud, he said, “So tell me, Murdock, do you think the Gypsy brat we will attend to this night is of an age that he will understand what is happening to him?”
General Murdock’s eyes gleamed. “They are always of an age to understand pain, Your Grace.”
“Yes,” said Mordecai in a satisfied voice as he rose to his feet and began lurching toward the door. “I suppose they are.”
THIRTY-NINE
DEEP WITHIN THE MAZE of dungeon tunnels, Persephone stifled a scream for the third time. First it had been the filthy, withered hand that had shot out of the tiny, barred window to claw at the air mere inches from her nose. Then it had been the small, rusted cage that she and Azriel had nearly bumped into—a cage that dangled from the ceiling and contained a twisted, half-rotted corpse with its mouth hanging open in a silent scream. This most recent time she’d had to stifle a scream at the feel of sharp little teeth sinking into the tender flesh at her heel.
Twisting her head around, Persephone saw what she’d known she would see: a grotesquely fat rat latched on to her foot, blood welling from the corners of its mouth.
CRUNCH.
Panting heavily, Persephone stared down at the twitching tail of the rat whose head had just been crushed beneath Azriel’s bare heel.
“Come on,” said Azriel softly. He paused to mark the wall with charcoal so that they’d be able to keep track of where they’d already been, then started forward once more. “We have to keep moving.”
Persephone followed him without speaking. She didn’t know how long they’d been wandering around this terrible place already nor how many glaring guards they’d passed nor how many corridors they’d explored nor how many barred windows they’d looked through in the hope of seeing the child nor how many clutching hands they’d shoved bread into. It seemed as though they’d been down there for an eternity but Persephone knew from experience that places like this did strange things to the mind.…
Even as this thought occurred to her, she heard something that did not fit at all with the place she was in.
Stopping abruptly, she cocked her head to one side and listened harder.
And heard it again.
It was the sound of a child—singing. It was very far away and she could barely hear it over the sound of another, louder voice singing, but she could definitely hear it.
One look at the electrified expression on Azriel’s face told Persephone that he heard it, too. As quickly as they could do so without arousing the suspicion of the guards, they began walking toward the eerie sound of the singing child. The sound grew louder with each step they took and—miraculously!—did not stop until they were directly outside the locked door from behind which it issued.
After quickly looking up and down the corridor to make sure it was truly deserted, Persephone pressed her ear to the door and heard a gravelly-voiced man say, “No, no, Mateo. I know you’re doing your best, lad, and I don’t like to hurt your feelings, but I must tell you that you’re every bit as tone deaf as your kinsman Balthazar used to be. Listen to me again, and try to sing as I do.”