[Galazon 00] When the King Comes Home

by Stevermer, Caroline

  I was leaving Giltspur Street for the palace when Gabriel caught up with me.

  “Ho, Madame Rosamer.” He fell into step beside me. “Off to the palace? What time is your audience with the prince-bishop?”

  “I’m to deliver this message to Lord Stanimir.” It was better not to correct Gabriel. Firm statements of fact worked best.

  “I know. I heard Madame Carriera. But you haven’t been to the palace yet, have you? How could you know the way?”

  “I can’t miss it.”

  “Do you know the way inside, I meant. The palace is a city within a city.”

  “I’m sure I can ask for directions if I go astray.”

  “Ah, but whom will you ask?” He pinched my cheek. “You don’t realize how tempting a morsel like you can be. If you ask the wrong man, you may be led even further astray before you know it.”

  I caught his earlobe and held on firmly, letting him feel my nails. A good hard pinch there hurt more than it did on the cheek. “Keep your hands to yourself.”

  “Yes, Madame Rosamer. By all means, Madame Rosamer.” Gabriel eased back a step, and I released him. Chastened, he asked, “Would you like me to show you the best way?”

  “You don’t have to. The palace doesn’t intimidate me.”

  “Doesn’t it? That’s odd. Palaces are supposed to intimidate everyone.”

  “Then I’m surprised you are so eager to go there.”

  “It’s for Madame Carriera, isn’t it? Lord Stanimir awaits her message. Why delay?”

  “That’s true. The sooner he gets the message, the sooner they can agree on terms. Very well. Since you know the best way there, I’d be grateful for your help.”

  “Think nothing of it, Madame Rosamer. Pray, take my arm.”

  I didn’t take Gabriel’s arm, but I did let him show me the way into the palace.

  Hardly had we been admitted (through the servants’ entrance, naturally—so much for Gabriel’s savoir faire) when his motives became all too clear. Foolishly, I followed Gabriel blindly through corridor after corridor, not marking my way. Then I allowed him to hold the door for me, as I preceded him into what he referred to as Lord Stanimir’s antechamber. While I gaped around me at the splendid room, Gabriel plucked Madame Carriera’s message from my hand and closed the door behind me, latching it so that I could do nothing but rap on the ironbound oak and call out in vain.

  Need I explain that I was not in Lord Stanimir’s antechamber? Far from it. I found myself alone and locked in, for the time being, in one of the most beautiful rooms in Aravis, if not the world itself. Gabriel had lured me into the Archangel Chapel, the chapel royal, in which I found that wonder of the world, the two-century-old altarpiece painted by Miriamne Giuliana at the order of Queen Andred herself: the Archangel Nativity.

  I daresay there were benches, choir stalls, and a pulpit too. I saw nothing but the altarpiece. It drew me from my tantrum at the locked door. I forgot the message Madame Carriera had entrusted to my care. I forgot the perfidious Gabriel. I forgot everything but the play of light on that treasure of an altarpiece.

  There, at the heart of everything, was the Christ Child in the manger. Miriamne Giuliana must have known her stables. This was a real manger, and she had caught the glint of a divine light on real straw. Beyond that central radiance, the Holy Family was there, and beyond them, slightly—but only slightly—shadowed, the shepherds and the three kings. The ox and the ass, the sheaf of wheat on the stable floor, symbols that hold their meaning as the rosebud holds the rose, all were there in the perfect chiaroscuro that had made Miriamne Giuliana famous. And in colors that only Giuliana’s palette could have captured and kept down the years, angels filled the panels, spilled outward and upward over the walls and ceiling. Seraphim, cherubim, thrones, dominions, virtues, powers, principalities, archangels, and angels—partaking in a heavenly flight, an orderly beat of wings toward the miracle in the manger, a dance of light.

  It might have been only a moment that I stood there, transfixed. It might have been a year and a day or an eternity. Most likely, it was an hour.

  The choristers roused me, throwing the chapel doors wide and filing in for their rehearsal. I seized the choirmaster’s sleeve and tugged him close to the lower left corner panel of the altarpiece. “Tell me,” I demanded, “who are they?”

  I knew the repertory players in the company, the shepherds and the kings. I had picked out the attendant saints and deciphered their identities by the attributes they carried: St. Barbara and her tower, St. John all unkempt and cuddling his lamb, St. Rieul and his frog. But in the lower left corner, modestly trailing the saints, were three figures I could not identify, a man and a woman, richly dressed and crowned, and behind them, another man, bareheaded, a crusader’s tabard over his armor. They were painted as well as the saints, yet there was something more in their faces, something that made me sure that Miriamne Giuliana had taken care to portray them exactly as she saw them.

  “Those are the donors,” the choirmaster told me. “That is King Julian the Fourth and his queen, Andred the Fair.”

  When I was a girl, we would often say, when some good though unlikely thing was anticipated, that it would happen “when the king comes home.” I remember my mother telling me as much when I, at the age of eight, announced that my next pair of shoes would be red. “Perhaps,” Mother said, which I was already old enough to know meant no, “when the king comes home.”

  Master Nicholas had once enlivened a school day by explaining to us some of the history behind the unconsidered phrases in common use. “Ashes, ashes all fall down,” for example, was a relic of the Black Death. That contagion, as we have never yet forgotten, announced itself in its earliest stages with a fit of sneezing. Thus, “ashes, ashes” was a relic of “achoo, achoo.”

  The king of “when the king comes home” was Julian IV, Good King Julian himself. He was reckoned Good King Julian for winning us honorable peace with the Austrians after persuading the Viennese of his subjects’ might and valor. He died unexpectedly, some said of a fever, some said of poison, on that visit to Vienna, and there was difficulty involved in returning his remains to be interred with appropriate ceremony at the Abbey of St. Istvan in Dalager. He died in high summer, and the means of preserving bodies were no more advanced then than they are now. His bones were preserved and, at the conclusion of a lengthy series of treaty negotiations between his royal successor and the Austrian government, returned for burial at Dalager. Hence, the belief that there had been a delay in the king’s coming home and, inevitably, the rumor that the bones the Viennese sent to Lidia belonged to someone else, that the true King Julian IV did not rest with his royal kin in the dimly lit Abbey of St. Istvan.

  In its own way, this story tells you everything you need to know about how we Lidians of Aravis think of the Austrian Empire. Yet perhaps in the expression when the king comes home there was captured another grain of truth, which Master Nicholas never dreamed of. Or perhaps Master Nicholas was merely wrong from first to last in that lesson. He sometimes was mistaken.

  One day, all well-meant promises would be made good; that’s what it meant, when I was a child, to say “When the king comes home.” Wishes granted. Dreams made real.

  I never hear the phrase used any more. No one refers to it. It is as if it has been lost to all memory save mine, vanished away, like the bits of some broken spell, some prophecy fulfilled. When the king comes home.

  “They commissioned this chapel,” the choirmaster told me, as if I were about six years old and a bit backward. “King Julian the Fourth is holding a votive crown. Queen Andred holds a model ship, for the dowry she brought to Aravis was a fleet of ships. This chapel is not open to all. How do you come to be here alone?”

  I pointed to the armored man. “Who is he?” The chiaroscuro was much deeper in the lower corners, but I could see that he was watching the king and queen, guarding them, and that his nose was crooked, as if it had been broken in a fight, but crooked in a noble, aquil
ine fashion that would have pleased even Saskia. “Who is that?”

  “That is King Julian’s champion, Istvan. They called him the Seraph in the old stories.”

  “Because he was so beautiful?” I ventured.

  The choirmaster looked at me as if I had taken leave of my senses. “Beautiful? Hardly! Because he was as deadly in battle as the Angel of Death.”

  THREE

  (In which I discuss politics.)

  The choirmaster must have had a quiet word with someone, for as many times as I came to the palace with messages—I never allowed Gabriel to trick me again in that particular fashion—I was able to visit the Archangel Chapel. I tried my hand at copying the donor panel into my notebook—several times. Never to my own satisfaction. I could render the pale queen’s profile adequately, but the king and the knight never looked a bit like the painting.

  Gabriel’s visit to Lord Stanimir’s quarters resulted in a commission, though not merely the one Madame Carriera arranged with Lord Stanimir.

  As he approached the end of his seven years’ apprenticeship, Gabriel was anxious to choose a good subject for his masterpiece, the sooner to win entry to the guild and establish his own fame. In Lord Stanimir’s retinue were several dashing young bravos, one notable for his golden hair and the perfection of his features. Gabriel had taken advantage of Madame Carriera’s message to Lord Stanimir to speak to this perfect young man, whose name was Tallant. Tallant had agreed, eventually, to sit for Gabriel, who planned to paint him as Apollo, or else the Angel Gabriel, a tour de force that would, with luck, become Gabriel’s masterpiece.

  At the appointed hour, Saskia, Piers, and I watched from the landing of the stairs as Gabriel answered the door. It was not every day that a young man with perfect features was expected. We wished to see the paragon.

  We were surprised, all four of us, when the dark young man who entered swept off his hat and shook the rain from his cloak, for no one ever had less perfect features. Not that he wasn’t passable. Taken individually, his features were well enough. His dark eyes were particularly fine. But it was a trick of personality and proportion that made him interesting to look at; there was nothing of the classical in that long nose or stubborn jaw.

  The young man was a trifle under middle height, but he carried himself so that he seemed taller than he was, an illusion aided by the breadth of his shoulders. Of course, the cloak helped too. He was booted and spurred, as if for the hunting field, as young bravos at court usually were. Slung behind him, scabbard half-concealed in the damp gray green folds of the cloak, was the largest sword I have ever seen in my life. Beside me, Piers gave a squeak of pure envy.

  Gabriel stared for a long moment, then caught himself and apologized. “I’m sorry. I was expecting someone. May I help you?”

  “Are you Gabriel Wex?” The man with the sword had a northern accent, pleasant to my homesick ears.

  “I am.”

  “Then I think you may help me. My name is Ludovic Nallaneen. I have come to sit for a portrait. Otto Tallant sent me.”

  Gabriel made a helpless little gesture. “I’m afraid there’s been some confusion. I am expecting Otto Tallant. I agreed to paint his portrait.”

  “As Apollo.” Ludovic Nallaneen had a most ingratiating smile. “No confusion. He sent me in his place.”

  “I’m sorry. It isn’t possible. I agreed to paint Tallant.”

  The young man’s air became confiding. “Yes, but Tallant owes me money. That’s not something that happens very often, other people owing me money. But since he owes me, it stands to reason he owes everyone else more. So he can’t pay me. Are you following this?”

  Gabriel hesitated. “I’m afraid it isn’t a question of money.” I could tell he was thinking of Otto Tallant’s fair hair and perfect features. Not much of the masterpiece about Ludovic Nallaneen.

  The confiding air became, if anything, more conspiratorial. “Of course it is. It’s almost always a question of money. Now, since he has no cash to speak of, we agreed between us that I’d take the portrait sittings he’d arranged with you in exchange.” That smile again. “I quite understand your dismay. I’m no Apollo. Yet I’m sure you’ll paint Mars just as well, won’t you?”

  Gabriel regarded Nallaneen with stiffness bordering on hauteur. I knew that expression well. He’d used it often enough on me. “It simply isn’t possible.”

  “Are you sure?” Nallaneen shrugged slightly. It was hardly a lift of the shoulders, but somehow the hilt of the great sword seemed to strain eagerly forward. “How unfortunate. Because I want my portrait done. It would make my mother so happy.”

  All hauteur vanished. Gabriel swallowed with almost audible difficulty. “I … it isn’t possible.”

  I felt sorry for him. Gabriel knew the risk he was running, offending a man trained to fight at the slightest nudge to his honor. Yet he couldn’t agree to paint Nallaneen’s portrait under threat. His pride wouldn’t permit it.

  Nallaneen knew all that as well as any of us. He seemed to enjoy Gabriel’s wide-eyed discomfiture, but he didn’t press his argument. He waited, smiling gently, as if he were at a play, interested to see what Gabriel would say next. It had to be acceptance. Gabriel was no fighter.

  “I’m afraid I keep my apprentices much too busy to accept commissions of their own,” said Madame Carriera from behind us on the landing. She stepped daintily past us and made her way down to join Gabriel and Nallaneen.

  Nallaneen had already removed his hat, but he flourished it a little as he swept Madame Carriera a bow worthy of royalty. “I am your servant, Madame.”

  “And Gabriel is my servant. I’m afraid I cannot allow you to take up any more of his time just now. But perhaps you would agree to a sitting with me instead.”

  Another bow, deeper still. “Madame is graciousness itself, but I could never afford such an honor. Otto Tallant’s entire substance is not worth a tithe of it, and he didn’t lose a tithe of that to me.”

  “Tell me,” Madame said thoughtfully, “if you were seriously displeased with someone, would you draw that sword?”

  Wide-eyed, Nallaneen touched the hilt protectively. “Madame, that would be foolish of me.” Reproachfully, he added, “I am never seriously displeased with anyone.”

  “Draw it now. In friendship. Such weapons were rare a hundred years ago. I never thought to see one at close quarters.”

  “It is not wise to see one too close, Madame. But to please you…” Ludovic Nallaneen drew his great sword and wielded it as easily as Madame Angelica Carriera wielded her brushes. It made a blue gray arc, and another, and another, as he ran through the sword drill from start to finish. The very air seemed to glint with steel, a dark glint like sun on deep water. Deep, cold water.

  He held the final position a long moment, allowing Madame Carriera to look her fill at the light on the blade. Then he sheathed it, and the room seemed the least bit darker, as if the daylight faded a little when the sword went back into the scabbard.

  Madame Carriera’s eyes blazed with excitement. “Thank you. That was well worth a portrait. I will be glad to paint you.”

  For a moment, her generosity seemed to take him aback. He hesitated, as if on guard against hidden mockery. “As Mars? Or Apollo? Or in some other shape?”

  “As yourself. Come up to the studio now, and we will begin. Hail, attend me. Gabriel, go about your business, if you have so much to do you can turn away a client. Saskia and Piers, busy yourselves elsewhere. I can’t work while you gossip. Quickly, while the light lasts.”

  Delight seemed to overcome Nallaneen’s hesitation, and he swept her another bow. “You do me and my family a very great honor, Madame. It will make my mother so happy.”

  Once in Madame Carriera’s workshop, Ludovic Nallaneen took his time looking about before he accepted the chair he was offered. It was the only chair on the low dais, but the exposed position did not appear to make him uncomfortable. Even seated, he continued his study of the room. Though he made no remark, he
seemed to miss nothing.

  I busied myself assembling Madame Carriera’s tools. She wouldn’t need her palette, not so soon, but I set forth the materials for the preliminary sketches.

  Madame Carriera took her place behind the easel and studied him. That keen scrutiny did not appear to discomfit him either. “Standing,” she said at last. “I’m sorry to renege on the offer of a chair, but I’ll have to paint you standing.”

  Nallaneen rose promptly.

  “Hail, move the chair back. He can use it when I give him time to rest.”

  Under Madame Carriera’s direction, I pulled the chair away and made slight adjustments to the fall of the cloak Nallaneen still wore. It was excellent material.

  “That’s fine. Out of the way now.”

  In the silence that followed, I took up my notebook and a stick of charcoal. The folds of his cloak were good practice for me.

  Madame Carriera made several studies of the first pose, surprisingly detailed for the speed with which she worked, and said, “Rest now.”

  Ludovic Nallaneen looked surprised. “So soon? You haven’t finished?”

  “I’ve only started. You should move around a bit. Stretch while I give you leave. It’s hard work, keeping still.”

  “A good deal of it goes on in the army, and for longer periods than this.”

  Madame Carriera looked amused. “Truly? I had no idea a soldier’s life was so sedentary.”

  His innocent air was perfect. “Oh, yes. Complete inactivity punctuated by bursts of terror. That’s the military life.”

  “You’ll make an excellent model, then. If you’re ready, we’ll start again. Turn to your left. A bit more. You may keep talking.”

  “I can see complete inactivity goes on here routinely,” Nallaneen said. “Where do the bursts of terror come in?”

  I wanted to remind him of Gabriel but decided it would be unwise. I held my tongue.

  “It’s a dangerous business, portraiture. What if I offend my subject? You’re armed.” Madame Carriera started another sheet. “Hail, pull his cloak back and pin it—I must see the leg.”