by D M Cornish
“I have it that her coursing party was not near as successful as this little gathering suggests.”
“What was she doing on a private hunt, I ask you, when our very colonial bastions were being assaulted? Why was she not there to avert disaster? . . .”
“How surprised I was to receive her invitation; she never responds to mine . . .”
“I heard our thorn-ed miss sent the Archduke packing at her most recent visit to the ’Dirk, the creature! Left him all in blushes and stutters.”
“Hush, dear! The creature’s servant listens.”
“Isn’t there meant to be something peculiar about her newest factotum? Something untoward . . .”
On the steps between the ludion and billiards and oratory, the young factotum passed the Lady Madigan. Though distinguishable in telltale gray, the fulgarine peer had come in oddly modest attire: a robe of flowing gray, its sleeves baggy to the elbow, ballooning over the sturdy vambrins of gray soe about her forearms and over her hands. Clinched about her chest and middle she wore a stomacher of spangled gray soe stiffened with buff lining fastened with a small bow at her diaphragm. But for the quality of the cloth, the obvious shimmer of gauld on harder proofing, she looked a poor moiler scratching a life out in the Paucitine. Even in such dowdy attire, whenever Rossamünd spotted her, she was encircled by a host of admiring men, each making loud and flowing praise of her clever variation on the theme. She smirked and smiled and gave clever answers and kept each fellow hanging on every word. Threedice, her factotum, seemed to have come as himself, though in slightly heavier proofing than such an evening required. Staying a respectable but constant pace behind, he glowered unremittingly with more than professional intent at his mistress’ gallants.
Rossamünd spotted Mister Carp in the ludion, the man-of-business dressed as an elephantine, his oversized coat stuffed with great paddings of pillows and cloth, conspicuous as the only one of such fellows at the gala, real or contrived. He had come with his wife—a wife Rossamünd did not know he had. Introduced as Madam Germinë Carp, she was a small slender woman almost lost inside a great pile of gauzy cloth. What she was meant to be Rossamünd could not tell, yet he did not think it polite to ask. Of few words and wide wet eyes, Madam Carp looked uncomfortable to be squeezed with so many of the lofty and grand. Rather strangely, Carp himself did not possess his usual swagger, and the two sat on their own at the edge of the gaieties exchanging looks and brief remarks with each other. Rossamünd tried to swap a friendly word with them as often as he could and was happy when he finally saw them in close conversation with Crispus down in the billiard room.
Several times Rossamünd thought he spied the brightly armored colonel of the lesquin company Europe had met with several times over the week talking closely with Mister Rakestraw, the sleuth in drab and heavy proofing.
“Well now, Mister Bookchild! A sparrow seems a rather dowdy creature for such a fine rout,” a jolly voice declared with breezy pointedness, picking Rossamünd in the crowd of the hiatus despite his sparrow mask.
Turning, the young factotum found Baron Finance, come as the most fluffy, dandidawdling fluff it was possible to be, his silvered wig so high and his cheeks so rouged as to be almost feminine. “Where is your mistress at, sir?” the Chief Emissary pressed with affable persistence as Rossamünd lifted the mask up over his crown to greet him properly. “Still at her evening toilet despite the festivities?”
“I am sorry, Baron, sir,” Rossamünd offered, reiterating the formula he had repeated many, many times already that night.
“I am sure she will,” Finance replied knowingly, then said more seriously, “Though I cannot say her guests will make much good from such excuses . . . Ah, but what can we do, Mister Bookchild?” He smiled suddenly. “We are merely satellites trapped in her inexorable gravity.”
For a moment they watched a trio of smirking flitterwills sit themselves before Madam Lux and submit to the benign mesmerist’s outré expertise. Clearly skeptical as they watched the old wit close her eyes and touch lightly at her left temple with shaking hand, the three young women were soon exclaiming and drawing attention to themselves at the imagined sensations stirring in their thoughts.
“I hear trumpets!” one girl declared in frank wonderment, looking up as if the room were full of heralding cornets and flugels.
Whatever misery Madam Lux might have brought to monster-kind in her prime, reduced by time and infirmity to such trickery—however skillfully achieved—seemed an ignoble end for a once-mighty neuroticrith.
“If I might say, sir . . . ,” Baron Finance interposed on Rossamünd’s thoughts, his tone lowered discreetly. “Whatever predicaments your irregularities might have brought her”—and me, his eyes said—“the home of our duchess-daughter is a most cheery place since your replacement of the previous fellow”—Rossamünd knowing full well he spoke of Licurius—“and, quite confoundingly, she is of much better countenance too. At my report, our benevolent mistress, the Duchess herself—ever concerned after her daughter, however much the scion of the house of Naimes persists in a life of her own—desires me to welcome you as an appendant to the Court of Naimes.”
“Uh . . .” Rossamünd bowed to this lofty acknowledgment. “Tell her graciousness thank you, sir,” he said, straightening, and, with a sick thrill of dismay, discovered Scrupulus Sicus, Imperial Secretary, emerging from the endless flow of people leaving coats and making first meetings in the hiatus.
What is he doing here! Europe cannot have invited him?
Complete with olive wreath and voluminous wrappings of white robes, Sicus had come as a gilded glaucologue of the Empire’s first formation.Yet, far from the authoritative hauteur of the inquiry at Winstermill, the Imperial Secretary looked patently nervous to find Rossamünd in the press. Bending humbly at the middle, he held out his invitation like a patent of nativity demanded by gate wardens and inquired after the “rightful and most gracious lady of the house.” His flattery was a long way from the strident terms he used at the lamplighters’ once-great fortress.
Flagitious shrew was one such strident term that rose in Rossamünd’s mind. He beheld the man stoutly, seeing full well that this fellow knew exactly who he was and in what circumstances they had last met.
The Imperial Secretary squirmed for just a moment and then, with several clearings of his thickly wrapped throat, said, “Well, young master, at the Duchess-Heir’s most gracious invitation I can only offer her my unqualified support against such a scoundrel as Honorius Swill. He fooled us all, I would say”—the fellow’s face paled slightly—“with his apparently learn-ed convictions.The authority of the well-read, ha ha . . .”
Rossamünd did not smile.
“Your benevolent mistress, however,” the man pressed on awkwardly, glancing to Finance only a few feet away, “has showed her abounding and much-praised quality in seeing through him in the first. I can only regret any . . . misunderstanding that may have arisen betwixt your mistress and the Emperor through myself over this affair, and can only assert in the most earnest terms that the Lady of Naimes has once more—indeed, never lost—the Emperor’s full and complete confidence. This elaborates most fully on the matter.” He held up a red-wrapped buff wallet. “I am sure the Duchess-Heir will find it most satisfactory.” Upon discovering Europe had yet to display herself, the Imperial Secretary showed open relief and gave the red-buff wallet to Rossamünd.
The young factotum smiled inwardly at the irony as he took the Imperial parcel. Would the Emperor be so quick with this confidence if he knew the nature of the soul to whom his agent was speaking? “I shall give her your apology , sir.” He bowed, alert to this Imperial bureaucrat’s clear discomfort at the emphasis of this word. “I am sure she will give it the proper merit.”
“Ah, most excellent, young fellow,” Sicus returned, brows creasing slightly as he tried to fathom whether his interlocutor was being genuine or pointed. “I—uh—thank you.”
“May you have a good night, sir,” Ro
ssamünd returned, trying to achieve the same unequivocal poise of his mistress.
“Ah, yes . . .” Bending a final unfinished bow and giving a last uncomfortable look to Finance, the Imperial Secretary left them.
“Swill’s allies forsake him utterly now he is dead,” said the Chief Emissary in low voice, his expression grim indeed as he watched Sicus retreat into the ceaseless motion of fancied guests to find more comfortable company.
“Secretary Sicus seemed a mite happy to not properly meet with Miss Europe,” Rossamünd observed, savoring this rare moment of vindication.
The Baron Sainte could not help a grin. “That, Mister Bookchild,” he said happily, observing Madam Lux convince a dashing young fellow swatting and ducking at empty air that he was bothered by a host of buzzing flies, “is the nearest a person might come to an endorsed and proper sorry in this Empire of ours.”
A little past eight-of-the-clock the Archduke himself—and his large retinue with him—arrived, gracing Europe’s soirée costumed in a long black tourette upon his crown and dressed in an antiquated harness hung with many bright-black stoups. Rossamünd instantly recognized him as Harold, champion of the Battle of the Gates, perceiving the Archduke’s intent to style himself in the same heroic line as a staunch defender of the people against all foes. Of his retinue came a veritable quarto of men of the highest stature with such titles as Prime Minister, Captain-Marshal of the Lifeguard, Chief Draw of the Purse—people Rossamünd recognized by face if not by name from his brief visit to the Brandendirk. With them too was a woman of dark and foreign beauty whose presumably natural dress of gold scales and diaphanous cloth of mauve and gold was sufficiently exotic to class as fancies. “The Princess Awahb, Fatemah of Pander Tar! Heiress to the Peacock Throne!” the doormen on every floor announced as she ascended, to the general wonder of all.
Receiving the heiress of Naimes’ formula for nonattendance with smiling grace, the Archduke nevertheless appeared slightly provoked not to be personally greeted by Europe.
He hopes to show off his princess and trump Europe with her, Rossamünd could not help but think.
Indeed, the ruler of the mighty city of Brandenbrass, with his Princess—quickly becoming the darling of the gala—had to wait for nigh on an hour to play his trump, for it was not until nine-of-the-clock precisely that the Branden Rose made her appearance. Loudly announced by Master Papelott, she stepped gracefully into the now hushed ludion, astonishing everyone with her costume.
Assuming she was to be wearing the gorgeous harness she had tried three days earlier, Rossamünd was himself taken aback.
Clad in a wide skirt of deep red and a lorica of burnished bronze scales draped in a thick hackle of leonguile hide, she wore a high bronze helm pushed back upon her head, its crown crested with horsehair of black-and-white stripes.
Recovering, Rossamünd understood immediately who she intended herself to be.
Euodice, the historied speardame to Idaho.
To those in the company of revelers who knew their matter, the import of Europe’s fancy dress was bold and clear. I am of the Old Blood, it said; my line is more ancient than the Empire. It was an incontestable claim and it was also a challenge.
People began crowding into the ludion, all eager to hear what the Branden Rose might have to say at such an uncharacteristic social display.
His mistress finally debouched from her boudoir, Rossamünd felt the release of some inward knot he did not know he had. At last! A part of him could not help but wonder if she had marked the painting waiting by her door.
Handed by the Archduke himself onto the orchestra’s rostrum, the Duchess-in-waiting of Naimes looked like an Attic empress staring complacently out at the great company in their fancies. To Rossamünd it seemed by the glimmer in her cool hazel gaze that she was laughing inwardly at the ludicrous spectacle of costume before her.
“I thank you all for condescending to my little event,” she said with bold clarity, “to help me rejoice in the success of another course and to bring a correction to the current of recent ill wind.” She glanced ever so briefly—the merest nigh-undetectable flicker of her eyes—to the Archduke. “Many of you might marvel at such a turn of character; yet I seek only—with this little affair of mine—to offer to you that which so many of you have so unflaggingly offered to me over the long years.” Europe smiled with such winsome warmth that it left little room for any offense. “I place no limit on this night. Remain in my hospitality for as long as you will. So now, continue as I presently attempt a feat greater than the slaying of any prowling bogle and speak with you all before the night is through. I thank you.”
EUROPE IN SPEARDAME FANCY
While the Branden Rose descended, nodding and smiling piously to general applause, an immense white molded dessert was brought up to the ludion. Carried in a broad tray upon the shoulders of four footmen, it was made in the shape of the trefoiled heart of Naimes and swam in a bath of deep pink raspberry glatin. “Victory Flummery” Papelott called it, “in honor of our gracious hostess’ success!” Served in fine Heil glassware of the most rarefied rosy tint, it was flavored with what was proudly declared as vanilla. People oohed at so rare and fashionable a novelty. Dressed in a maschencarde mask of a horse, a learned fellow near where Rossamünd stood at the summit of the steps loudly enlightened all in earshot—listening or otherwise—that it was gained from the pod of some singular orchid growing in the febrile islands of the Sinus Tintinabuline. Opposed to the flummery model of the Sloe Sapperling at the Patredike, this dessert looked positively delectable, and the young factotum eyed it hungrily on his way to his mistress’ side.
Proudly he followed behind her as she proved herself true to her determination to exchange a word or two with all, her manner as bland and accommodating as he had ever known it to be. It was wearying to watch and to hear; he was amazed at the duchess-daughter’s fortitude.
One aged dame in virginal white, whose gelid expression told far more clearly her true sentiments toward Europe than her silken words, dared a remark on Rossamünd, declaring with saccharine notes, “So young in his trade, my dear, and we’ve heard such things about him . . .”
“Only good things, I am sure,” the Duchess-in-waiting returned wintrily, her smile thin.
“Oh, ah, yes yes.” The woman blanched, realizing she had miscalculated. “. . . Certainly.”
As for the Princess of Pander Tar, sat at one end of the hall among a throng of admirers both adoring and purely inquisitive, Europe did not—of course—prove at all trumped. Paying no more respect than she received, the Duchess-in-waiting was perfectly measured at their meeting, her greeting as cool as the Princess’.
“I know you will not mind my bringing such an august guest uninvited to your night, dear cousin Naimes,” the Archduke purred smugly in aside to his hostess. “As especial guest in my courts I could not very well leave the Fatemah behind . . .”
“A new bosom to distract you, sir,” Europe returned discreetly. “Be careful, Lady Madigan might grow jealous.”
“Hmm.”The Archduke smiled through his teeth. “Indeed . . .”
Though many looked at her with unaffected awe and respect, there were a few with whom the heiress of Naimes exchanged genuine felicitations. Much of the way about the ludion—and with the other floors still to visit—Europe abruptly insisted Rossamünd take his leave of her. “It shall be easier for me to make my path among the rest if I am unattended,” she said.
Both relieved and a little perplexed to be so released, Rossamünd descended to the floor below, moving through the billiard room with its swaggering young players to look in on the oratory happening in the parlor beyond. His own oration done, Doctor Crispus was arguing robustly with those guests who reckoned themselves erudite or scholarly, who had perhaps sat a foundation at an athenaeum or abacus. It was a rigorous conversation that Rossamünd little understood, perpetually on the brink of devolving into more physical arguments. As for Mister and Madam Carp, they had apparentl
y departed almost immediately after Europe had presented herself.
In the rear quarters the young factotum made another inquiry on his old masters’ weal. Finding them both pale and flagging, he sent Fransitart and Craumpalin both—despite their grumbling about missing out—to their pallet to rest, ensuring healthy portions of the night’s fare were sent promptly for them to sup on.
Under the sway of the latening hour and many a jovial glass, the solemnity of the gala began to unravel, and its graceful grandeur descended to something more akin to a country fête. As one of-the-clock was announced by Master Papelott, the more sensible people began to have thoughts for home. As was only proper, these prudent souls sought to say good night to their hostess. Disgruntled murmurs began to ripple through the collected gentry that the Duchess-in-waiting could not be found. Calls for a search came from bolder throats, and though Papelott and Rossamünd, the footmen and most of the house staff sought high and low for her, it was to no avail.
The heiress of Naimes was gone.
Greatly affronted—all the work of Europe’s bland affability undone in a moment—the sensible departed anyway, sniffing at apologies and claiming this as typical of such a fractious and unmanageable creature as the Branden Rose.
