The man, clearly one of the doctors, tilted up his eyepiece and stood to one side with a disapproving frown as the commander approached with Evan. They bowed deeply, and de Sola said, “Here is the interpreter of dreams, Your Serene Highness.”
The young man glanced at Evan with infinite weariness, the hollows under his eyes even more apparent in the gentle lamplight, then at his companions. “Leave us. Commander, you may remain.”
The man at the door stirred, and the doctor straightened in protest. “But sir, we cannot leave you alone with this—”
“I will not be alone. Are you saying the commander of my military garrison is not capable of his duty?”
De Sola, hands clasped behind his back, did not move, but his face became so forbidding that the doctor wilted. “Si, Your Serene Highness. We will be waiting outside should you need us.” He indicated the glass of liquid. “Do not neglect your tonic.”
The Viceroy ignored him. It was not until the door was firmly closed that he indicated the chairs that had been set facing his, comfortably close to the crackling fire. “Thank you for coming at this hour.”
“We are at Your Serene Highness’s service,” de Sola said gently. “We will help in any way we can.”
“I wish I did not have to ask for help,” the young man said, rather plaintively, Evan thought. “A prince should ask assistance only from a king—or from God.”
“A prince may certainly ask, and receive,” Evan said, “especially when the Lord may send human hands and hearts for the purpose.”
A faint smile. “You may be right. Tell me, what is the nature of your relationship with Senora Fremont?”
Evan blinked at this sudden swerve from the celestial to the secular. “Why—why, we are friends. We came to the Texican Territories on the same ship. Of course, she was not married then.”
“She said she is but newly married.” His gaze drifted away. “She is very beautiful.”
“She is,” Evan said, trying to imagine what he could mean by such impertinent remarks. “As well as clever, and brave, and good.”
The Viceroy nodded. “Well said.”
“To say nothing of a crack shot. She knows more about weapons and arms than any man I ever met.”
“Her father trained her well.”
“You knew her father, I understand,” Evan said cautiously. “He passed away recently.”
“I met him once. Her father and mine were as alike as—what is the expression?” He glanced at de Sola.
“Two kernels on a cob?” the commander suggested.
“Si, indeed.” The Viceroy seemed to sink into himself again, as though contemplating a view he did not favor much.
Evan plucked up his courage. Talking about Gloria was not safe, and prisoner or not, he had a service to offer. The sooner he offered it, the sooner he could go back to sleep.
“Sir, if I may ask about your dream … is it one that has been recurring, or was it of an original nature?”
“Ah yes. The dream.” The prince straightened in his chair and wrapped his robe more tightly around himself. “Parts of it I have dreamed before, and parts of it … perhaps a prince may dream of golden hair and blue eyes as freely as other men?”
“Perhaps he may. He would not be alone.” Evan smiled at him, but the Viceroy did not smile back.
“I have seen her before, you know. In dreams.”
“As have I,” the commander said.
“That was Gloria?” Evan exclaimed, turning to him. “You did not say so.”
“I did not know it—until the moment I stepped into the courtyard here and saw her in the receiving line. I must say, she was dressed much more suitably tonight than she was in my dream—and she was not painted.”
“Sir!” the Viceroy exclaimed. “You malign the lady!”
“I humbly beg your pardon, sir, but in my dream, she was a witch. She wore white—a petticoat and chemise—and about the waist a leather corselet. And boots. And a man’s bowler hat topped by lenses much as your doctor wore. Most unsuitable and outlandish.”
“And what was she doing?” the Viceroy asked, his indignation lightening into interest.
“She was looking for something you had lost, sir, as was I, and when neither of us could find it in the road under the light of the moon, she turned into a dragon and incinerated me.”
The Viceroy frowned at this conclusion, which he clearly had not expected, and turned to Evan. “This is the dream which I am told you interpreted?” At Evan’s nod, he frowned. “Let me tell you mine, though I hardly know where to begin.”
“Start with how you felt,” Evan suggested.
The Viceroy gazed into the flames. “Fear? No, not that. I have nothing to fear. Confusion, perhaps. I was lost—in a castle.” Relief at having remembered something clearly smoothed the frown from his brow. “I wandered down corridor after corridor, looking for the door.”
“There were no doors?”
“Yes—to rooms that had no exit. To staircases, which I took.”
“Up or down?”
He thought for a moment. “Up. But instead of the rooms becoming lighter, they became darker, with fewer windows. Until at last I walked into one that had a door on the other side. Somehow I knew that this at last was the way out—though how it could be, when it was at the top of the castle, I did not know.”
“Did you open it?”
Commander de Sola sat silently, his gaze moving from one face to the other. Perhaps he was remembering his own dreams. Or perhaps he too had fallen under something like a spell, listening to a story that seemed to have no point, as dreams often seemed.
Though Evan already suspected it did have a point.
“I crossed the room, my steps quickening in anticipation, when I noticed that a picture hung on one wall. A still life of an enormous vase of flowers.”
“What kinds?”
“Roses, for one. Yellow roses. Hundreds of them, it seemed, and then I realized that they were not still at all. They were multiplying in the frame, and then flowing outside it, and until the very walls of the room were blooming in yellow roses, in dahlias, in rosemary. It was then that some part of me remarked on the fact that I could see color in the dream. I do not remember ever having done that before.”
Evan nodded thoughtfully. “It is said to be the sign of an intelligent and creative mind.”
The Viceroy lifted a brow. “Indeed. And what significance can you attach to the flowers? For I cannot ever remember such a painting, or even such flowers in the palace in San Francisco de Asis. My mother was no gardener.”
Evan remembered talking with his cousin Maggie at Gwynn Place about one of her favorite subjects, after the events that had preceded her discovery of her real parents, and that her beloved poultryman on the estate was in reality her grandfather. The two of them had walked the paths in Lady Flora’s garden while Maggie had picked a stem here, a blossom there, and told him a little of the language of flowers.
“There are those who say that while red roses stand for love, and white for innocence, the yellow ones stand for jealousy.”
“Jealousy,” the prince repeated. “There were many, many yellow roses, growing and melting and accumulating in the corners of the room. If what you say is true, I do not like that at all.”
“It is also thought that the dahlia stands for betrayal—though some say travel or a journey—and rosemary, of course, means remembrance. All of which leads me to believe that your sleeping mind is locked in a struggle with a truth that your waking mind cannot bring itself to grapple with.”
“That someone harbors jealousy against me, and plans a betrayal?” A wry smile touched his mouth. “This should not surprise any prince—and indeed does not. But I have not told you what happened next.”
He glanced at his glass of tonic, then looked away with a frown. Evan wanted to ask if he knew what was in it, then decided not to draw the subject away from dreams. Those he was equipped to deal with. Reality could come when it would.
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br /> “The flowers dribbled and flowed out of the painting’s frame and across the walls—and then, as though they were made of some acid, they melted the plaster and revealed the structure beneath.”
“Brick?” Evan guessed. “Stone?” One made by man, one by nature—either might add a little to the interpretation forming in his mind.
“Neither,” the Viceroy said, his voice low. “For as the flowers melted and ate away at the walls, more and more was revealed, until finally I realized the castle was made neither of brick nor of stone.” He looked directly into Evan’s eyes. “It was made of bone. Or bones—thousands of them. I was trying to find my way out of a castle built of dead men’s bones.”
Evan felt his jaw slacken a little—knew the prince’s horror was reflected in his own gaze. “And then?” he whispered.
“And then I woke, calling for I know not whom.” Visibly, he attempted control of himself. “For you, perhaps.”
Evan released a long breath. “I can understand why. I should have done the same—though I confess I have no one to call for. My mother died when I was very small, and the grandmother who raised me did not hold with running to comfort those who suffered from nightmares. She said facing my fears would enable me to overcome them.”
“And did it?”
With a rueful smile, Evan shook his head. “Even yet my blood runs cold at the thought of dark tunnels, or of being underground.”
The commander nodded, as though Evan might not be alone in his fears.
“But what can you tell me of this dream?” the Viceroy asked. “For I can assure you that the palace in which I grew up is made of solid stone, with not a bone to be found outside the kitchens.”
“But you live in a kind of palace that is not constructed of stone, and travels with you every moment,” Evan told him. “A palace made of the regard of your people, of the soul of your kingdom. Is that not so?”
“Ye-e-es,” the young man allowed. “Though I have not been taught to think of it in such a way.”
“And yet, far from the reality of daylight, your mind acknowledges that your kingdom has been won by the sacrifice of men’s lives.”
“True. Though this thought does not horrify me as did those walls of bone, keeping me from escaping.”
“Perhaps your sleeping mind anticipates the future,” Evan suggested gently. “Could you be trapped in a façade of beauty that yet harbors a deadly jealousy? Turn and wander as you might, you cannot escape it. And under it all is the prospect of more death—more bones upon which to build a larger kingdom. A bigger palace. And deep down, that is the prospect which horrifies you.”
The young man frowned, his chin dropping to his chest as he considered pattern in the thick rug under their feet. “I do not like this interpretation,” he muttered.
“The truth was a shock to me, too, sir,” the commander finally ventured to say, in a low voice.
“But how did you know it was the truth, what he told you? What did he tell you?” the prince demanded. “What is it that I have lost?”
The commander glanced at Evan. “I knew … because it was the truth in my heart,” he said simply. He pressed a hand to his chest. “Some weight I had not known was there was lifted as my waking mind understood what my sleeping mind had been trying to tell me. In my dream, both I and this woman—even now I find it difficult to say it was Senora Fremont—were looking for what you had lost in order to return it to you. And what you have lost…”
He took a breath, and Evan realized he was gazing at a very brave man. Perhaps one of the bravest he had ever known.
“What you have lost, sir, is your power.”
“I beg your pardon?” The Viceroy had clearly not been expecting this. “I have done no such thing. Why, with a single word I could have you executed at dawn, and there is no one save God who could refuse me.”
The commander did not flinch. “I have no doubt of that, sir. But can you say the same of every person in the Royal Kingdom? Can you command every soldier’s allegiance … or does that power belong to another?”
Oh, this young man was not stupid. Evan watched as one conclusion after another tumbled through his mind, as possibility connected with supposition, as he walked through the hallways of fact and memory just as he had done in his dream.
Only this time, was there a way out?
After long moments, in which the only sounds were of men breathing and the fire popping and crackling, the Viceroy seemed to journey back as from a long distance. He gazed at Evan, then at the commander. “If I did not know better, I would say that the two of you are colluding together in sedition and treason.”
Evan schooled himself not to flinch, following de Sola’s excellent example. “I am glad you know better, then, sir.”
Unbidden, a smile touched the young man’s lips. “I have asked for an interpretation, and you have given me one. The fact that it can be linked to a dream of a commander of my own garrison is strange, to be sure. And perhaps, miraculous.”
“It could be the God of Heaven moving you, sir,” de Sola said quietly, “or it could simply be the realization of two rational men that something is amiss in your kingdom, and must be dealt with.”
“You know that the people say I am touched by God himself? That I see visions and have revelations sent by Him?”
“I do, sir.”
“The question I might ask, though,” Evan put in, “is how long have these visions been going on? Your entire life?”
The Viceroy shook his head, and ran a hand through his curly mop. “No. Only since I inherited the throne and was anointed. More than one of my ministers and councilors believe this is a sign from God that I am the true heir.”
“There has been some doubt?” Evan asked, surprised.
“No indeed. Though before my father acceded in 1869, there was quite a to-do in Holy Mother Spain about who was the legitimate heir. His success and my heavenly favor have since laid the last of those doubts to rest among the oldest in church and state.”
“Heavenly favor … or a more prosaic explanation?” Evan reached over and lifted the little glass filled with dark green liquid. He sniffed it, smelling the crisp scent of lemon at the top, the heady golden wine they had served at the fiesta, and under it something else. Something musky and dark and rotten that he could not identify. “Who makes this for you?”
“My doctors. They compile it themselves. You are not saying it has something to do with my visions, are you? That is mad. It is to help me sleep.”
“I am simply saying that a healthy young man has no need of medicines and tinctures, and sleep comes as a result of an active life.”
“I need it to feel better.”
“Did you feel poorly before? You have been on the throne less than a year—what was your condition then?”
“You speak like a doctor yourself.”
Evan’s stomach plunged, yet he could not stop now. “I am a scientist specializing in the mind. A tincture that causes vivid dreams and saps the health of a young man is of great interest to me … if indeed that is what it does. If you would allow me to advise you, sir, I would ask you to refuse it. Pour it away. To be honest, I should like to take this away and discover its ingredients.”
“Have you a laboratory here?” The prince looked amused.
“I can find an apothecary’s laboratory, with your permission, sir,” de Sola said. “It may be that it is indeed necessary for your health. But I see for myself the possibility exists that there may be those close to you who do not wish the best for you.”
At this reminder, the young man sank once more into gloom. “I do not wish to think of that. Do as you like. Let us turn instead to happier topics. As a friend of Senora Fremont, do you know how long she and her husband plan to stay here in San Luis Obispo de Tolosa?”
“She is here for only one reason, sir, and that is to express her misgivings about the weapons sold to you by her father.”
“To my knowledge, they are to be used in exactly t
he manner for which they were designed.”
“True, but need they be?” Evan persisted. “Could their use be part of the expansion of the castle of bones? So that instead of lush farmlands and a loving people, you are left with fields of iron and castles of bone—with thousands of lives lost?”
“I said I did not wish to discuss this,” he said crossly, shifting in his chair.
“Very well,” Evan said in his most soothing tones. “I believe Mrs. Fremont will state her case, and then depending upon her success, will either return to Philadelphia or stay to assist you in whatever manner she can.”
“She cannot go to Philadelphia.” The young prince’s brow furrowed. “I wish her to stay.”
Evan felt that now was not the time to remind him that she was a free citizen of the Fifteen Colonies, and as long as the trains were running, she could board any one of them whenever she wanted to.
“She is certainly an ornament at the fiesta,” the commander ventured. “And is it true that before she was lost in the Rio de Sangre Colorado, Ambassador de Aragon was bringing her to you in connection with these very weapons?”
“Yes, he was,” the Viceroy said absently. “He has remained in San Francisco de Asis to attend to matters of state while I am on progress. I have trusted him …” He seemed to shake himself. “Tell me, does Senora Fremont seem happy in her marriage?”
Evan blinked, a little taken aback. “That is hardly my affair, sir, though a woman of such strong convictions and moral fiber would hardly choose a man with whom she could not be happy.”
“Yet de Aragon would have brought her to me a month ago had she not been lost to the river. Had they been known to one another before?”
Evan began to perspire. “Sir, I am hardly equipped to comment on the lady’s attachments. I only met her a week or two before that, when we landed in Philadelphia from England.”
“You must know something. Speak, and I will have you released from your imprisonment. You and your translator may leave here as free men if you do me this small, simple service.”
Fields of Iron: A steampunk adventure novel Page 21
