The crow shook its head and pecked again at the glass. I remember you, those eyes said. Even when no one else does.
The murmuring voice in the hallway grew audible again. “A carriage, you say? A highwayman? I’m afraid I don’t have the stomach to hear more crow stories, but thank you for the offer. You corvids are a sanguine bunch, aren’t you?”
The crow spread its wings and lifted from the ledge with a few powerful strokes. Diane fell back against the pillows. When she had recovered, she rang the bell by her bedside. She asked the night maid to send for Duchamp and waited until her steward arrived a commendably short amount of time later, somewhat disheveled, but dressed for service.
“Mistress?” he asked.
“My husband’s chatter distresses me,” she said shortly. “He won’t calm himself. Please, prepare a sleeping draft and insist that he take it, Duchamp. The duke needs his rest if his mind is to recover from this . . . strain.”
Duchamp hesitated a fraction of a second before nodding. “As you say, mistress. I’ll take care of the matter. I . . .”
That hesitation again. Duchamp, Diane recalled, had been in the duke’s service since his father’s days. He had known William as a young boy. Seeing William deteriorate so quickly had to be distressing for him.
She raised one pale eyebrow. “Is something the matter, Duchamp?”
“Of course not, mistress. Should I be going, or is there anything else you require?”
“Ah, there is, in fact, one small thing. By any chance, have you heard from my second swordsman? Or does it seem that Reynald has run away from us?”
Duchamp’s lip curled, a reaction he did not bother to hide. “I have not, my lady. But you know swordsmen. They do not live regular lives, mistress.”
Diane’s expression did not change in the smallest particular. Such unnatural impassivity might be the only way that a careful observer could have divined the disquiet that this news provoked. It was not that Reynald had probably died, of course—it was that she didn’t know why. But even that relaxed in the next moment, as she shrugged and feigned a yawn.
“In that case, Duchamp, could you please make it your duty to inquire—discreetly—about candidates for the position? Tremontaine can’t leave itself undefended, after all.”
Duchamp bowed. “Of course, mistress. Will you require anything more?”
“And . . . there has been no . . . news from the Balam household? Their members seem well?”
This question did not appear to surprise Duchamp as much as it might have. “I haven’t heard anything of the sort, mistress, but I would be happy to inquire with a few of my acquaintances who have regular business with the compound.”
Now it was Diane’s turn to hesitate. Then she shook her head. Even Reynald would not have taken it into his head to execute the Balam girl without explicit orders. After five days, wouldn’t she have heard of any harm come to the girl? But just in case the Balams were guarding the news, Diane wished for no one to make even the most casual connection between that event and the Tremontaine household. “No, there’s no need. That will be all, Duchamp.”
He bowed and she watched him leave. Perhaps she fell asleep, or perhaps she kept her eyes on the empty ledge of that empty window the rest of the long night and only surrendered to dreaming when the sun had risen to keep vigil.
“Are you quite sure you don’t take sugar? I find it undrinkable otherwise, myself.”
Kaab, uncomfortable enough in the tight stays and highly starched fabric of her nicest Local calling dress, stared down at the cup of thick chocolate in her hands. If the Lady Ernestine Hemmynge had offered her cacao-blossom honey, perhaps she would have agreed. But the sugar these Locals loved to put in their chocolate was nauseatingly sweet, and with none of the complexity of honey or the nectar of maguey used at home. So she maintained her polite smile and shook her head firmly.
“I am quite content, thank you,” she repeated.
Lady Ernestine shook her head and spooned another heap of sugar into her cup. “And no cream, either? Goodness, how bitter. Though I suppose if your people invented it, you ought to know how you like to drink it.”
Kaab found this bit of common sense quite surprising for a Local, and her smile lost its waxen edge. Lady Ernestine Hemmynge was as old as Kaab’s aunt Ixnoom, and at least as vigorous. Her dress seemed to contain twice as much fabric as Kaab’s, heavily embroidered and stiff enough to stand up on its own. Perhaps this accounted for her perfect posture as she perched on the parlor chairs, whose stiff cushions seemed to have been designed with a subtle but inexorable downward slope. Kaab found herself surreptitiously wiggling and pushing herself backward so that she didn’t fall off entirely. Lady Ernestine’s keen eyes surely noticed this, but she merely sipped her chocolate and pretended not to. The Locals, Kaab thought as she shifted again, had peculiar ways of asserting social dominance. The lady’s eyes were a dark brown flecked with green—even in her seventh decade, she retained some of what must have been a great beauty in her youth.
“I did not know her very long or very well,” said Lady Ernestine, quite abruptly. Kaab froze with her chocolate cup halfway to her lips. “I don’t know what you wish to learn about Diane—the duchess, I should say—but you should know that we avoid each other, to this day.
“When I knew her as a girl, she was young and vain and I thought a little stupid. Perhaps she was just young. My niece and nephew took in so many children over the years! The North is a harsh place, and they were generous, although it meant a host of brats underfoot.” She laughed shortly and shook her head. “But who was I to complain? A childless, dowerless widow, given refuge by her brother’s son like yet another orphan in that Northern fastness? So there I stayed—little dreaming I would find myself back in the City again, now, after all this time, and in such fine state as this!”
Kaab nodded politely and took a sip of the chocolate. It seemed a waste of such good cacao to make it without foam, but it otherwise had a good consistency. Clearly the lady was dying to tell her own tale of rags to riches, but that was of no use to Kaab. She asked instead:
“How long did the girl stay with your nephew’s family?”
The lady looked past Kaab’s shoulder, toward the mullioned windows with their view of a small Middle City garden. “Six years? Seven? She was young when she wed the duke, wasn’t she? Sixteen, or thereabouts. Her parents died when she was ten, I believe, and so my nephew took her in, maintaining her on the little income left from her family’s mingy estate. But if young Diane felt gratitude, she never showed it! She never tired of remarking upon the remoteness of Lullingstone, the lack of Important People, the lack of True Refinement. And never tired of reminding everyone that she was a descendant of the last queen, sister of the King Killer. My niece Carla, as I recall, had resigned herself to accompanying the girl to the City for her season just to find some gentleman to take her off our hands for her beauty and lineage alone . . . I know for a fact that her dowry was small! But to our utter astonishment, one day there came a messenger with the news that the Duke Tremontaine had chosen her for his son. Sight unseen. Some nonsense about the family bloodline . . . saving us the trouble, certainly, but . . . well.” The lady took a sip of chocolate and licked her lips. “Tremontaine has always had a streak of oddness.”
“It doesn’t sound as if you cared much for her,” Kaab said carefully. Kaab couldn’t say that she cared for Diane herself, but it surprised her that this woman had noticed none of the qualities that now made the duchess such a subtle and formidable political player.
Lady Ernestine replaced her cup in its saucer with a firm click and laughed shortly. “I did not. I admit now that I may have misjudged her in some way, for she certainly has performed better as Duchess Tremontaine than any of us expected. When I knew her, Diane seemed to do nothing without first considering how she might use it to make someone else feel smaller. She cultivated friends and discarded them the way you might a hat. And she was vain and irredeemably si
lly—you would have thought her hair was truly spun gold the way she fretted over dressing it. She would keep that poor little chambermaid of hers for hours trying to achieve the most complicated styles, just to go out to a country dinner party. When one of the neighboring girls got her own personal lady’s maid, Diane insisted on finding one too. Of course, she had to choose her from among the orphans at a nearby penitent hospital, trained lady’s maids not being exactly thick on the ground in Lullingstone!” Lady Ernestine chuckled throatily.
“I remember that’s where the girl came from, because Diane had gone with her friend on a charitable visit—such activities were popular among young girls: begging cakes from the cook, and distributing them to the poor. She returned with this skinny, silent girl in tow. She knew nothing about being a lady’s maid, of course, poor girl, but that didn’t matter to Diane. She just liked having her own personal hairdresser, sewing maid, and errand girl. Well, who wouldn’t?”
The woman finished her chocolate but did not ring for more. She stared far away, as if Kaab weren’t even in the room, and Kaab listened, silent, almost holding her breath to keep from interrupting the memories that were flooding through her hostess. “The odd thing was,” Lady Ernestine said, “how much the wretched maid was like a reverse coin of Diane. Same height, same golden hair . . . but where Diane was rosy and round, the girl was thin as hunger; where Diane was bold and demanding, the girl always kept her head down, flinching, never looking anyone in the eye.” The woman smiled ruefully. “You know, I sometimes felt that Diane was too silly to even remember that other people existed the way she did. If you haven’t met such people, it can be hard to describe them.”
Kaab took a quick sip of chocolate to cover her surprise. Vanity, she could credit in the duchess. But silliness?
“Did she really seem that way to you?” Kaab asked, after a moment of silence. “I don’t know the duchess well, of course, but still it seems to me that she is . . . much changed.”
“You said in your letters that you wished to inquire about Diane—the duchess—because your family is considering entering business with her. Forgive me, child, but I have a hard time imagining how reminiscences of an old woman about a child she barely knew twenty years ago could be pertinent to your negotiations in the present. I was astonished that you had obviously inquired long enough to discover the identity of her foster family. She is hardly open about the connection.”
She certainly isn’t, Kaab thought with a grimace, remembering the work she had put in to identify and then find this Hemmynge woman. She nodded and smiled, as though she had not quite understood the subtext of the question.
“My family is very thorough,” she said. “We always want to be very sure of those with whom we do business. We were speaking of the . . . great change in the duchess?”
Now the Lady Ernestine smiled, fully and unself-consciously, painting her face with wrinkles in skin so paper thin that it glowed translucent in the light from the window to the east. “Of course we were,” she said, and laughed. “My, you would have been a far more diverting child to have in the house than that pestiferous Diane. As for her great change . . . I expect that it must have been the disaster of her journey to the City. Even Diane couldn’t have survived such horror without a little self-reflection ensuing.”
Kaab set down her cup. “Her journey to the City?” It sounded familiar. Had someone else mentioned this to her, back when she first began inquiring about the duchess? Something about a robbery on the road? But she had dismissed it at the time without pressing for details—such events were common on major trade routes, even at home.
“Why . . . you don’t know the story? I would have thought you did, but of course, the last generation’s new scandal is this generation’s old story. Well, child, I will tell you, and you may draw your own conclusions. We sent Diane Roehaven off from Lullingstone in the best carriage, with well-wishes and sighs of relief, along with her hastily sewn trousseau, what little jewelry she possessed, her lady’s maid, and even a young footman with a short sword to protect them. I believe most of the journey passed uneventfully. But just a day away from the City, they were set upon by Rupert Hawke, an infamous highwayman. He was known for his brutality. Well, he murdered the footmen and the coachman and the poor maid of course, and I expect he would have murdered Diane, but she ran away and hid.”
At this, Kaab had to interrupt. “Rupert Hawke, Gentleman Robber?”
Lady Ernestine gave a tiny but emphatic grimace. “You have heard of him, then?”
She still vividly recalled Ben’s wake at the Three Dogs, with his old friends sharing stories of his highwayman father. “‘Steals your money but spares your daughter,’” she recalled, slowly. “That was his reputation. But you say he tried to kill them all?”
“For heaven’s sake, child, you can’t expect those ditties they compose for the gibbet to reflect a criminal’s actual behavior! He was a notorious murderer. I assure you, he killed women—and children!—when there was profit in it for him. The real crime is that he was never hanged.”
Kaab judged it politic to nod meekly while she considered this new information. “As you say, my lady.”
“In any case, having barely survived the attack, poor Diane made her way to the City alone, on foot, with just her bloodstained dress on her back. It caused quite a sensation at the time. Tremontaine offered a reward for the apprehension of the highwayman, but nothing ever came of it. Those bloodthirsty lowlifes protect their own.” Lady Ernestine shook her head. “The new young duchess sent us brief letters for the first few years of her marriage, but we never saw or spoke to her again. Still, I always imagined that Diane must have had more to her than I thought, to survive such an ordeal.”
Now that Kaab could imagine very well. A young Diane Roehaven, just sixteen, trekking for days along a stretch of lonely highway. She wouldn’t just be determined to survive after witnessing the death of her entire party. She would become a duchess even if it meant staggering into the City on bloody feet and throwing herself upon the mercy of a man who had only seen her portrait.
It felt important. She couldn’t use this story as leverage with the duchess, of course, but it seemed to expose the duchess’s heart and her face. Her true self, in other words. And only by following that truth would Kaab discover a secret sufficient to manipulate her.
The duke was ill, the duchess had said. The duke would see Rafe once he had recovered, the duchess had said. For five days Rafe had stayed away, assured that the duke was in no danger but that he required absolute rest—a regimen, the duchess had heavily implied, that Rafe’s presence would be sure to disrupt. Against his every desire, he had agreed to leave Will to rest without the delicious distraction of his lover. Their relationship didn’t mean they had to see each other every day, now did it? Wasn’t Rafe his own man? A Master of the University, busy with preparations to open his radical school, certainly did not have to importune his lover while he was ill. But he dreamed of Will on the fifth night, dreamed that he couldn’t sleep on the straw-filled mattress in his University rooms (which, on top of a distinct aroma of old milk, seemed to have acquired fleas with the spring). He dreamed that a light shone through the window, so bright he could hardly see. And when he went to the window, he could see that the light was a star, a violet pendant hanging low in the sky. It wasn’t really a star—it was a planet, it was a living fire that traversed the sky in the night and the underworld during the day. It was a sphere that revolved around the sun, like the earth itself.
Do you truly want to know me? it asked. Do you truly want to follow me across the sea?
And Rafe said, I want the world to know you. I want to change the face of natural philosophy. I want to make my lover happy, and Will was so happy to know about you.
And the star said, Then you have killed him with happiness.
Rafe woke up. He was sharing the bed, and the fleas, with Thaddeus, who had collapsed there drunk the night before and proved impossible to rouse. The sky
was gray with clouds in the just-brightening dawn. Rafe couldn’t find the morning star in that misting rain—he could hardly find the sun. He wasn’t inclined to believe in prophetic dreams, which smacked of fireside tales. But he dressed clumsily and quickly in the dim, wet light. His stomach jumped and twisted. With hunger, he told himself, because there were no such things as portents or planets that communed with humans like gods. He counted the minnows in his pockets to see if they would be enough for a roast potato. Maybe even enough for bad Inkpot chocolate, just something to wake him up, to drown the strange bitterness that rose from his chest like indigestion after a night’s drinking.
He stumbled into the front room, expecting to see Micah still sleeping on his makeshift pallet in the corner. But the boy was already awake and at work, scribbling furiously in mathematical notation so crabbed that Rafe needed a magnifying glass just to read it.
“Are you sick?” Micah asked, without looking up from his work.
Rafe froze. “Sick?” Then you have killed him; then you have killed him with happiness. That voice was as cold as a spring morning; it was the fire of the grave. Rafe shook his head. Will had been acting oddly in the days before the duchess dismissed Rafe. But surely he wasn’t seriously ill. Surely Rafe would have heard something? Felt something?
“You don’t usually wake up until two or three hours after sunrise,” Micah said. “And you look sick. Are you hungover like Thaddeus?”
“Thaddeus is asleep. You can only be hungover when you’re awake.”
Micah’s furious pen stopped its movement, and he gave Rafe a considering stare. “Really? They’re discrete states?”
Tremontaine Season 1 Saga Omnibus Page 46
