The encounter had not been pleasant, but Bessie was more troubled by her inability to understand the witch’s motive. Was it concern for Grunewald which led her to speak thus? They had, she judged, been friends, or something like it, for a long time indeed. Perhaps Hidenory endeavoured to forestall a threat to the Goblin King which he had not imagined himself.
Or perhaps she spoke out of some other motive. It was difficult for Bess to imagine that she possessed designs upon the position of Goblin Queen herself, considering her haggish appearance. But appearances could be but little relied upon, especially in Aylfenhame. Virtually anything might lie behind the witch’s wizened façade. If she saw Bess as a competitor, that could certainly lead her to speak as she had done.
Bessie could not know, or guess, what had prompted Hidenory’s visit. But she tucked the experience away, resolving to watch Hidenory just as Hidenory watched Bess herself.
That evening, Drig escorted her to the dining parlours, and she was able to mingle with Aviel’s many residents. The food was reminiscent of the fare she had enjoyed at the Motley, and Bess partook of it heartily, enjoying her opportunity to observe the myriad guests at the King’s Court and their sumptuous finery as she did so. Drig behaved as though he had something on his mind, and she wondered whether he was on the verge of claiming the debt she owed him, and putting forward his request. But he said nothing of any moment.
They encountered Grunewald again some little time later. Drig toured Bessie around the underlevels of Aviel, as they were called, but in time he led her back up to ground level and out into a large, glass-walled conservatory thick with flourishing vegetation. The conservatory was entirely empty, which surprised Bess, for it was a place of particular beauty. Flowers the size of her own head bloomed everywhere she looked and gleaming insects hung upon the air, filling the conservatory with a hushed, dreamy thrum. It was softly lit and scented with a heavenly aroma, and Bessie felt that she could gladly remain indefinitely.
But she understood the reason for its desertion when they rounded a corner and found Grunewald sprawled in a large armchair, his coat discarded and his cravat undone. A small table was poised at his knee, upon which sat a large decanter filled with something purple and probably alcoholic. He had already partaken of it rather freely, Bess judged, considering his air of boneless relaxation. But she doubted whether it had affected his wits, for the gaze he fixed upon her was as sharp as ever.
‘Ah, baggage. At last. You do take your time.’ He sighed, and then added, ‘Pink-footed bottle larvae.’
‘I am at your beck and call at all times, of course,’ she replied promptly. ‘What’s more, I am blessed with an uncanny ability to know the very instant yer expectin’ me.’
‘Yes, perhaps I should have sent for you,’ he agreed. ‘But here you are, nonetheless. And Drig as well. Take a glass, will you? Starberry nectar, with honey vapour. Most pleasing.’ He tapped the table, and two fresh glasses appeared: one for Bess, and a much smaller one for Drig.
But Drig bowed, and made a show of yawning. He had not seemed tired before, and Bessie mistrusted the sly look he threw at her as he straightened up. ‘I am for bed,’ he announced. ‘Saving your Gentship’s presence, of course.’
Grunewald flicked his fingers. ‘By all means.’
Drig trotted off. Bess was not unwilling to stay, but while Grunewald had thought to provide her with a glass, it had not occurred to him that she might also require somewhere to sit. She waited as he filled her glass and handed it to her, then raised a speaking brow at him.
He patted the arm of his chair. ‘Yes, I am improperly supplied with chairs. But this one is quite large enough.’
This was true, for the chair was vast, and each of its fatly stuffed arms was easily two feet wide.
‘I think not,’ said Bessie, in some surprise. She felt a faint flicker of alarm, for she had by no means anticipated such an offer from him; nor could she welcome it, not when it came from a gentleman in whose power she presently remained. Her treatment at the hands of Edward Adair flashed through her brain, and she had to resist the temptation to retreat a step or two.
But Grunewald took her refusal in good part; indeed, his eyes gleamed appreciation. ‘You will stand, will you?’
‘Given a lack of alternatives, yes.’
He grinned, and said in a different voice: ‘Armchair. Well-stuffed. Crimson velvet.’
And an armchair appeared opposite. It was as vast as his own and as plush, but where his was upholstered in night-black silk, the new chair was covered in the rich crimson velvet he had requested.
Bess sat down at once. ‘Very fittin’, for a housemaid,’ she complimented him. ‘Wi’ just the right degree of opulence.’
‘You are no housemaid.’
‘Some’d say I will always be a servant, no matter what I do now.’ She raised the glass to her lips and received an inhalation of a heady honey vapour, followed by a sip of rich, sweet wine.
‘You have spent altogether too much time at that wretched house,’ he retorted. ‘I advise you to give no credence to anything the Adair family might have said to you.’
‘I never was much in the habit of doin’ so.’
He studied her in silence for a time, his drink forgotten. Bessie bore this scrutiny without remark, savouring her drink and the remarkable comfort of her armchair. Truly, she was in danger of growing used to these luxuries.
‘Why are you here, baggage?’ said Grunewald at length.
‘Seekin’ my fortune, like any young woman in a fairy story.’
He smiled faintly. ‘No doubt you have grand dreams.’
‘Nothin’ lofty. I want…’ She paused a while to consider her words. What did she want? ‘Freedom,’ she finally decided.
‘You were not made for the merely mundane.’ A smile glimmered in his eyes. ‘I shall enjoy watching you carve a path for yourself.’
‘As shall I. At present I have little idea how I’m to go about it.’ Something upon the table caught Bessie’s eye: a rolled scroll, yellowed with age and tied with a sage-green ribbon. The sight disconcerted her, for she had not previously noticed it; how came she to have missed something so prominent? ‘What is that?’ she asked, pointing.
Grunewald appeared startled. ‘That… was supposed to be hidden,’ he said with some annoyance. He picked up the scroll and gently tossed it up into the air, whereupon it vanished.
‘Secrets, is it?’ said Bessie happily. ‘How excitin’. I shall be sure to discover all about it.’
Grunewald’s grin was a touch twisted. ‘Doubtless it is impossible to prevent you. It is a scroll, baggage, upon which is written a partial account of an old conflict.’
Bess nodded encouragingly. ‘And?’
Grunewald sighed. ‘It misrepresents me.’ His jaw clenched with anger and he glowered into his glass.
Bessie suppressed the urge to giggle. ‘Truly? Someone somewhere wrote somethin’ untrue about you and you are wastin’ your time worryin’ over it?’
Grunewald stared at her with narrowed eyes. ‘You are dismissive.’
‘Do you know how often I was accused of all manner o’ things I had nowt to do with? Servants are blamed for everythin’ that goes amiss. If I wasted my time carin’ for the opinions of those as does the blamin’, I’d have lain down and died long ago.’
Grunewald made an impatient gesture. ‘All perfectly true, but this scroll was not written by just anybody. It is the official, and broadly accepted, account of my actions in the Times of Trial, and I took it – most reprehensibly – from the Royal library at Mirramay. This account has all the weight of truth behind it.’
‘That is a mite more tryin’,’ Bessie agreed. ‘What does it say of you?’
Grunewald sighed deeply. ‘The conflict was between the King-and-Queen-at-Mirramay and one who sought to usurp their thrones. You know the sort of thing.’
‘Indeed, I am delighted to learn that Aylfenhame has its share of such folk,’ said Bess. ‘I was start
in’ to think it much too charmin’ to be real.’
‘Mm. I cannot agree with you there, for it was a deeply unpleasant war, as all such conflicts are. It failed, fortunately, but —’
‘It failed?’ repeated Bessie blankly. ‘And here I was thinkin’ I was at last learnin’ what happened to yer missin’ Queen.’
‘It failed. This was more than a century ago, or thereabouts. Anthelaena survived that conflict. She broke some thirty years ago, when her husband vanished and her daughter… died.’
‘Oh.’ Bess felt unexpectedly subdued.
‘Anyway,’ Grunewald continued with some emphasis, ‘According to official report, I supported Anthelaena and Edironal at times – and I also supported their would-be usurper. Here it is in the Chronicler’s own writing. It bears the Chronicler’s Seal, and as such, its veracity is beyond question.’ He leaned forward a little, his eyes dark and intense. ‘This has long troubled me. Anthelaena and Edironal were among my dearest and oldest friends! I could never have betrayed them. And yet, Aylfenhame believes it of me. Why? I had thought it merely a cursed deplorable effect of my position; after all, what would you expect of the King of the so-called Darklings but self-interested trickery?’
Grunewald said this in a light tone, but Bessie sensed that the injustice of it troubled him more than he wished to admit, and had done so for a century. She began, dimly, to perceive that there were reasons for his flippant, cynical attitude.
‘But,’ she said with a flash of insight, ‘A Royal Librarian must be proof against such flimsy reasonin’, no?’
‘Exactly! I knew you would see it. The ordinary intellects of Aylfenhame know nothing of me, and may freely believe whatever they choose. But the Chronicler? And worse… Anthelaena?’ He shook his head. ‘Anthelaena never fully believed it of me but… she doubted. And she had never doubted me before. I wanted to know why.’
‘So you stole the scroll.’
‘Indeed. It occurred to me to wonder how recorded history remembered me, and I found a way to penetrate the Library. I did so for other reasons and other information, but I took the opportunity to explore this problem as well.’ A spasm of something like regret crossed his face, which Bess did not know how to understand. ‘And the result! The Chronicler condemns me, in the dry, dispassionate voice of history itself. My misdeeds are confirmed, in ink and parchment.’ He snatched the scroll out of the air once more and stared at it, as though to do so would force it to give up its secrets. ‘It has troubled me ever since, but the more so of late. This business with my fetch has caused me to reconsider the problem.’
‘Aye,’ said Bessie. ‘If someone can pretend to be you so successfully now, might someone not have done so before?’
‘Precisely. And I have seen, with my own eyes, how convincing an illusion it is.’ He tapped the scroll absently against his cheek, his eyes faraway with thought. ‘But what if it is not two separate souls, but one? In short, that the person impersonating me now and the person who did so before are the same person?’
Bess blinked, and said doubtfully, ‘That could be the case, but what reason do you have for thinkin’ it?’
‘Two weeks ago, I would have called it impossible that anybody could so convincingly pass themselves off as me. Now, I must consider the notion that at least two people have successfully done so. I think it… of all things the most unlikely. It is not merely a matter of adopting my face, you understand. Tatterfoal would not be so easily fooled. No, this person wields some element of my powers as well – powers which are tied to my position as Gaustin. And that is… difficult indeed to explain.’
‘Is it? How did you come to be Gaustin?’
‘Goblin society is a fraction more complex than some, but… the position is essentially inherited.’
‘So I assume, from your talkin’ of your grandfather and such. Do you have any siblin’s unaccounted for?’
‘I have none at all. My father was late to wed, and my mother bore but the one child.’
The explanation seemed obvious enough to Bessie, but she hesitated to speak her suspicions out loud. The notion that Grunewald’s father may have sired other children after all did not, in her eyes, lessen his character, but Grunewald may disagree.
‘Are you sure?’ she finally said.
His brow lowered, and his eyes glittered with some emotion Bess could not name. ‘The notion has also been in my mind, baggage. I wonder if he is my elder?’
An interesting question indeed. If Grunewald had an elder sibling, would that person qualify as the rightful Gaustin? Did the principle of primogeniture apply among the Goblins? Considering Grunewald’s question, Bess was inclined to think so. ‘A right mess, that,’ she commented.
Grunewald blinked, and then to Bessie’s surprise he grinned. ‘It is. But in some ways, I feel vastly relieved. An explanation at last! I need only prove it to be vindicated.’
‘I congratulate you, to be sure,’ she said with a smile. ‘And how will you go about it?’
‘That’s more of a problem,’ he admitted. ‘But—’ He broke off as Drig came in at a dead run, carrying his hat in his hands.
‘Majesty!’ he said breathlessly. ‘You have visitors. The Aylfendeanes, out on the Lower Green. Urgent.’ He turned at once and darted away again.
Chapter Seven
Grunewald was on his feet in an instant, Bess only a moment behind him. She made to follow as Grunewald strode for the door, but he turned back and took hold of her arms. ‘I mislike the looks of this. Will you stay, until I have made sure of my visitors and their errand?’
‘Do you think me in danger, my Gent? Naught shall go amiss wi’ me.’
‘I should like to be sure of it,’ he repeated. He did not wait for her response, but squeezed her forearms gently and then immediately walked away. Bessie was left to consider his words, his behaviour and his fears and decide whether she wished to be influenced by any of them.
But first, she turned back to the table upon which his discarded glass still rested. The plans she had begun to form were fresh in her mind; strengthened, if anything, by his confidences. She had a suspicion in mind as to the purpose of the Aylfendeanes' visit, if it was indeed they, and she would require a few preparations. She tapped the table-top firmly, mimicking Grunewald’s earlier gesture, and said clearly: ‘Small glass jar.’
She did not know whether the table’s enchantment would function for her as well as for Grunewald; perhaps it was only for the Gaustin. But a jar appeared, rising smoothly from the solid wood of the table-top, and sat waiting to be collected. It was a few inches across, and fitted with a silver lid.
‘Too big,’ said Bess. She tapped the table again and said: ‘Tiny glass jar.’
The first one melted back into the table-top and a second emerged. This one was more of the proportions Bess required, and she caught it up. It fitted neatly into a pocket of her gown, but she discovered a problem. The gown had not been equipped with pockets when she had received it; it was a discarded garment of the daughter of Hapworth Manor, and fine ladies had no use for such practicalities. Bess had fitted pockets herself. But she was no great seamstress; the work was clumsy, and the fabric had been taken from a chemise already worn through.
There was a great hole in the bottom of her pocket. She tried the matching pocket on the other side, and found a hole forming there, too.
Bessie spent a moment in thought. She had no other means of carrying the jar. She certainly could not adopt the custom of carrying a reticule, as gentlewomen did, without its exciting comments and questions she had rather avoid.
Bess tapped the table a third time. ‘Gown, my size,’ she said. ‘Red. With pockets.’
Everything presently upon the table disappeared, glasses included, and red fabric began to appear. Bess gathered it up as the gown slowly emerged, and held it against herself. It was, she judged, perfectly sized to fit her figure, and of a practical style of which she heartily approved: the sleeves were long to suit the weather, the neckline w
as not too low, and it was made from warm, heavy cotton dyed a deep red colour. It even bore embroidered, leafy fronds around the cuffs and hem, which Bess felt was a pretty touch. Grunewald’s table was blessed with a sharp sense of fashion.
Satisfied, Bessie disappeared behind a row of tall potted shrubs and changed her dress. She left her old, faded and worn gown in a careless heap, hoping she would never have to set eyes upon it again. The new gown was warmer, better fitted and altogether more delightful, and she felt like a new woman wearing it.
She went back to the table, rapped upon it one last time, and said: ‘Sorry for all the work, but I need jus’ one more thing. Cloak, wool. With hood.’
And a cloak emerged! With a wide hood as requested, and made from wool. She had not thought to specify a colour, but the table had chosen a shade of deep brown which matched nicely with her gown. Not only that, it also thought to provide a pair of knitted gloves.
‘You are without question the best table in the world,’ Bessie said, donning the cloak and the gloves. For the first time in years – nay, for as long as she could remember – she felt warmly dressed. ‘Thank you,’ she said cheerily. She bent down, bestowed a kiss upon the obliging table, and then swept out of the conservatory.
Bess succeeded in following the route Grunewald had taken by the simple expedient of asking people. The corridors were full of courtiers – lingering, perhaps, in hopes of catching the attention of their Gaustin at some time or other – and Bess had little difficulty finding her way. Each person she asked assured her that Grunewald had given orders not to follow him. This Bess disregarded, with no thought save for a mild wonder at their collective obedience.
The lower green turned out to be at the end of a series of wide lawns situated behind the palace of Aviel. The moon was high, and by its light Bess could dimly perceive tall, ornately-shaped hedges separating each lawn from the next, and a variety of ornaments – statues and sundials and the like – littering the grass. In these she felt not the smallest interest, and passed them by.
Bessie Bell and the Goblin King Page 13
