by Mary Gentle
He swept the skirts of his coat back in a magnificent formal bow, beamed vaguely, and wandered away down the terrace. The White Crow rested the folded sweat-stained paper against her lips. Dark red brows dipped.
"You don’t fool me . . ."
She stared at his departing back.
". . . not for a minute."
The carved limestone balustrade pressed hard against her hipbones. Zar-bettu-zekigal leaned over, shading her eyes against the level sun. Day’s heat beat up from the stone. She shrugged the black greatcoat more firmly about her thin shoulders, wrapping it across her chest.
She watched the red-headed woman walk away down the lower terraces towards the fountains and flower-beds, a paper clutched in her left hand.
A voice spoke acidly behind Zar-bettu-zekigal: "Yes: the eminent Master-Physician. I perceive, as our poet says, that there is an upstart crow amongst us–‘a player’s heart, wrapped in a tiger’s hide’ . . ."
"Tiger’s heart wrapped in a woman’s hide!" Zari corrected automatically.
And spun on her heel fast enough to stumble.
A very large brown Rat wheeled a chair to a halt on the graveled terrace. In the wheelchair sat a stooped and frail black Rat, his fur grizzled to gray, and white about his muzzle. A healed scar marked his upper lip above the incisor.
His body reclined half-drowned in the emerald silk and white lace of the Cardinal-General of Guiry’s robes. He lifted yellow-cataracted alert eyes to her face.
"Messire . . . ?" Her voice cracked. "Charnay! Messire Plessiez, you . . . Oh, messire, it is you!"
She flung herself down beside the chair, throwing her arms around him, burying her face in the warm silk and fur. Gravel scarred her knees. His shaking hand stroked the back of her head. Long fingers unsteady, chill. She sat back on her heels, feeling his fragility; her eyes wide.
"Messire, how . . . ? Is it you?"
"Charnay, you may go and gladden your heart by getting drunk."
"Yes, messire!"
"While I talk with Mistress Zari. Apparently I have things to tell her."
Charnay grinned and slapped Zar-bettu-zekigal’s shoulder as she passed. Long-shadowed, she loped down the steps to the lower terrace, scarlet cloak flying; swaggering towards a group of Cadets, lithe young male Rats. Within a few seconds she sprawled at one of their benches, bottle in one hand, and with the other pulling the most drunken of the male Rats onto her knee, her tail waving cheerfully in the air.
"Zari."
The black Rat gripped the chair’s arms and, with effort, stood. His gown rustled against her cheek. She stared up. Age left him sharp, fragile, acute. Abruptly she scrambled to her feet and offered her arm.
He rested weight on it as he walked along the terrace, favoring his right leg. She breathed, dizzy, the warmth of his body, the odor of his fur; all the fragile lilac scents of age. She glanced back. Beside hers, his shadow ran stoop-shouldered and long on the gravel path.
"You will be told all, Kings’ Memory, never fear. Somehow one never seems to keep anything from you."
Awed, she looked up into his gaunt face. Of the sleek duelist, the sharp priest, only echoes remain in that flesh. She wound her dapple-furred tail anxiously about her ankle as she walked.
"You died, messire. Elish saw you."
"Such an accusatory tone!" His sardonic marveling broke in a shallow cough. The Cardinal-General lowered his lean muzzle. She followed his gaze. To the green sash that, under the open greatcoat, she wore as a scarf.
"But how!"
"You ask me that, in this world of Divinity run riot?"
As if some wing brushes between him and the sunset, Plessiez is dazed with a momentary awe.
"The past later. Other matters first, I think; concerning the future, whatever shape that may or now may not hold—"
He broke off.
"I am asking you this very badly."
"So far, messire, you’re not asking me anything at all."
A wheezy chuckle escaped him. He looked back to the interior of the New Temple, where a table composed of Lords Magi, the District’s master builders, and two former acolyte-daemons settled down to banquet. Zar-bettu-zekigal paused as he did.
He spoke without looking at her.
"I ask you to leave your university training. Oh, continue it if it pleases you, but you scarcely need it; Memories like you come once in a generation. Leave. Leave and be my Memory now, for what years of work are left to me."
Her thin lips quivered. A little hoarsely, she said: "I like the plea for sympathy, messire."
Plessiez’s delicate fingers closed over her arm. She opened her mouth hurriedly, falling over syllables, and he halted her with a smile.
"Walk with me. Don’t answer yet. I’ll answer your questions, and tell you what use I put my lost years to– and whether I had sooner died than lost them."
Zar-bettu-zekigal frowned.
Plessiez continued his slow pacing; a thin and fragile black Rat in silk robes and lace, an emerald-studded ankh nestling at his collar. His clouded dark eyes blinked.
"I could lie to you. No other lives who knows the truth except myself. And the Decans, one supposes, who know all. I would sooner tell you now than have you discover it later. I must tell you how the Lady Hyena came to die–came to be murdered. And then make your answer to my request, if you will."
The young Katayan woman loosed his arm and moved a pace ahead.
Hot and level sun blazed in her eyes. In the arch of the sky, the first stars showed. Scents of roses and cooking-oil drifted up from the gardens and courtyard.
His voice finished:
". . . and that is what happened. I can tell you no more."
He waited. She turned.
"Messire!"
All condemnation, all solemnity burned out of her by a fierce joy; grinning widely, fists on her hips, greatcoat swinging open as she moved. The sunset light blazes her shadow long across the terrace, as in future years their influence will cast a bright shadow on the city.
Gracefully and with dignity, she dipped one knee to the gravel terrace, taking the black Rat’s hand and kissing the ring of the Cardinal-General of Guiry.
Plessiez snatched her to her feet, holding both her hands tight in his; long jaw tight with repressed emotion.
"Oh, see you, messire; and I thought age was supposed to make people reform!"
The black Rat recovered himself enough to smile sardonically. The Katayan woman linked her arm in his, walking slowly, giving him all of her strength that he needed for support.
Black bees throng, swarming in the flowers that weigh down the city’s gutters, blossom from ships’ masts in the harbor. Their noise is all heat, all summer, all dusty sunset days.
The Decan of Noon and Midnight, Lord of the Spagyric Art, turns His face to the setting sun. The ancient smile widens. At His feet, children play in the Temple’s spouting fountains, shrill cries undaunted, not yet called in to bed.
Sunset glared from ivory-and-gold statues, from the rippling water of the ornamental lake, and from the bright flowers of the formal gardens.
"Damn." The White Crow leaned forward and bit into the hot vegetable-roll she carried. She spilled grease on to the gravel and her borrowed shirt and breeches. "Ah, I’m still not used to this. Arms and legs and things . . ."
"That’s what you get," the Bishop of the Trees observed, "for being given the bird."
She shied a lump of pastry past Theodoret. It ricocheted off the back of his marble bench, fragmenting. Ducks from the ornamental lake squarked and pecked it up.
"But, you see . . ."
Candia, insouciant in buff leather and scarlet silk, arranged empty wine-bottles along the edge of the lake. His blond hair flopped forward. As he set the first of a handful of long-stemmed rockets in the bottles, he completed: ". . . I know why that happened to her."
The red-headed woman’s eyes narrowed.
"Go on."
"Obviously, because it’s always quicker as
the crow flies."
"Candia!"
Unrepentant, the Reverend Master grinned at the Bishop. Theodoret, on the bench, linked his hands across his stomach. "Therefore, as you might say, she decided to wing it . . ."
"One of you is a man of the cloth," the woman observed, "and the other doubtless recovering from the shock of recent events, otherwise—"
"At least," Theodoret added, "she got me off the hook."
The White Crow bit into her vegetable-roll again, glared at the Bishop, and observed through a mouthful of pastry: "That’s what you get for being stuck up!"
Candia squatted, removing a tinder-box from his breeches-pocket. "Who says you can’t play dice with the universe?"
"Aaw!"
Candia chuckled. "Something the matter with her?"
The White Crow licked grease from her fingers. She stood up. Inside the breast of her shirt, a folded paper rustled, scratching the skin as memory scratches at peace of mind.
"You two deserve each other," she said. "I might come back when you’re being sensible."
Candia struck flint. Theodoret inclined his head graciously at the White Crow’s departing back, and then jumped as the rocket hissed skyward.
Softly explosive, pale against the still-bright sky, the first of Reverend Master Candia’s fireworks exploded in a shower of red sparks.
Gas-lamps gleamed. The sky above glowed almost a pale mauve, the sun sitting on the horizon, heat still soaking from the stones. Stars shone in the top of the sky.
The White Crow walked by the canal, and the Arch of Days, holding the stained paper up to the level sunset light.
Her lips moved as she read, silently testing the words:
"You are a banquet for a starving man,
All sweet savories in your flesh presented.
Of this food I offer you the plan
Anatomized and elemented:
Freckle-sugar-dusted thighs
Cool and cream-smooth: enterprise
The drinking of these syllabub sighs;
This table laid out in the candle’s flicker
Garnished with sweat’s tang and the body’s liquor.
"Lady, your dish delights the tongue:
Hot crevices and subtle flavors.
I taste your breasts, your skin: undone,
Abandoned, gluttonous, to your savors.
Such intricate conceits demand
A Paradox. You understand:
I sit to feast, and yet I stand.
Save that, for me, for this one time at least,
I would not come unbidden to the feast.
"Such banquets, self-consumed in mutual pleasure,
Display a goddess’ skill in their erection:
Giving, receiving; both in equal measure
Of which I’m expert to detect perfection.
But this feast her own guest invites,
None may enjoy without those rights,
So I go hungry from delights.
Lady, I love you: I leave love behind me:
Or, if you love me, follow me, and find me."
Elish-hakku-zekigal, finding her silk coat knotted in the red-headed woman’s fist, pointed away from the New Temple in bewilderment.
"The Lord-Architect that Zar’ keeps talking about? He left. No, I don’t know where. If you look, Scholar-Soldier, you’ll see the moon is marked in blood. A signal."
The woman let go of her coat, scowling.
"Damn, the Invisible College can be anywhere!"
"I remember once he spoke to Zar’ of a city he built as Lord-Architect. Would he return there?"
The White Crow abruptly grinned.
"No . . . Thank you; but I’ve just worked it out. It doesn’t matter where he’s planning to go from here–I know where he’ll be before he leaves."
Clock-mill strikes the hour in Carver Street. Wheezing metal machinery clangs.
She does not even pause to see how sun, moon and star-constellations on the dial are different now.
She kicked the door without knocking and entered his room.
The Lord-Architect Casaubon sat in the iron clawfooted bath. She saw very little water: his bare knees, elbows and stomach jammed together to take up almost all the room. He looked up as she came in, eased himself a little, and brought the soap up from a lap invisible beneath bubbles.
"Yes?" Innocent blue eyes, under a draggled mop of copper-gold hair.
"I want to talk to you."
The White Crow pushed the door shut behind her without looking, and slid the lock-bar across.
"I’m hardly at my best," the Lord-Architect complained.
Amusement tugged up the comers of her mouth. "It’s how I remember you."
She padded across the floorboards. Patches of sun falling in at the window made the wood painfully hot under the bare soles of her feet. A scent of herbs came from the stacked crates, and the less identifiable scents of wax and perfume and badly cured parchments.
The Lord-Architect gripped both sides of the bath, hoisted himself up an inch, and slipped back. Water slopped up, splattered on the floorboards. The White Crow stepped back, laughing. Casaubon folded his massive arms across his pink stomach, with an air of injured dignity. The soap slid down his chest and plopped into the water between his legs.
"Talk to me about what?" he demanded, irritable.
"Poetry!"
She covered her mouth with one fisted hand, looking at him for a minute over her knuckles.
"Too easy," she said. "You’re the same and I’m the same–we’re not, but somehow we’ve grown in the same way. It’s as if I’d never left."
The Lord-Architect Casaubon looked up at her loftily. He flicked water from cushioned fingers and held out a demanding hand. The White Crow grabbed his hand, heaving to help him from the bath.
Her heels skidded on the floorboards, his hand wrapped around her wrist and pulled. The White Crow swore, startled, sprawled face down across his chest, and slid to sit in his lap and six inches of soapy water. The Lord-Architect let go of her hand, and bent a painful inch forward to kiss her, bird-delicate, on the lips.
"Shit-damned-cretinous-moronic—!"
She slumped back against his thighs and knees: padded as pillows. One of her heels skidded for purchase on the boards, but obtained no balance. She sat back in the hot soapy water.
"You might as well," Casaubon said, "have a bath while you’re here?"
"Casaubon . . . !"
The White Crow pushed flattened fingers through the tiny copper curls on his chest. She shook her head. Reaching his cheek, she patted twice, hard enough to sting. He sat very still, arms hanging out of the sides of the bath.
"I can’t be here any longer"–he made a sideways movement of the head that took in the city called the heart of the world–"and not touch you."
His large hands came up, moving delicately as watchmaker’s fingers to unbutton her wet shirt.
The White Crow drew his head forward to her breasts.
Short Bibliography
Ackerman, James S., Palladio (Penguin, 1966).
Anderson, William, The Rise of the Gothic (Hutchinson, 1985).
Barton, Anne, Ben Jonson, Dramatist (Cambridge University Press, 1984).
Budge, Wallis, Egyptian Magic (Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1899).
Davies, Natalie Zemon, Society and Culture in Early Modern France, Polity Press edn (1975).
Evans, E. P., The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals (William Heinemann, 1906).
French, John, John Dee (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972).
Garstin, E. J. Langford (ed.), The Rosicrucian Secrets: Dr. John Dee (Aquarian Press, 1985).
Honour, Hugh, Neo-Classicism (Penguin, 1977).
Horne, Alexander, King Solomon’s Temple in the Masonic Tradition (Aquarian Press, 1972).
McIntosh, Christopher, The Rosicrucians.
—, The Rosy Cross Unveiled (Aquarian Press, 1980).
McNeill, William H., Plagues and Peoples (Peng
uin, 1976).
Mumford, Lewis, The City in History (Penguin, 1961).
Scott, Walter, Hermetica, Vol. 1 (Boston, Mass.: Shambala, 1985).
Seznec, Jean, The Survival of the Pagan Gods (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1940).
Shearman, John, Mannerism (Penguin, 1967).
Strong, Roy, The Renaissance Garden in England (Thames & Hudson, 1979).
Vitruvius, The Ten Books on Architecture, trans. Morris Hicky Morgan (New York: Dover Publications, 1914).
Yates, Frances, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1964).
—, The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979).
—, The Rosicrucian Enlightenment (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972).
—, Theatre of the World (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969).
Table of Contents
Rat Lords Series, Book 01
COPYRIGHT
DEDICATION
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
SHORT BIBLIOGRAPHY
