Priest of Gallows

by Peter McLean

  I snorted laughter. This was a whole new side of Iagin that I hadn’t seen before. Far from the snake in man’s clothes that I remembered from last year, he sounded like a comrade now, honest and blunt in the way of soldiers. I thought that was a good thing. This was Dannsburg, where no one trusted anyone, and I needed all the friends I could get.

  ‘There must be more than fucking three of us,’ I said.

  ‘Aye, there are, but the road from Drathburg is flooded with the rains, and Varnburg’s a fucking long way away,’ he said. ‘It might be a while before the others come in.’

  ‘There’s no one else operating in the capital?’

  ‘Just Ailsa and me and Ilse, and she’s busy. Come on, I’ll introduce you.’

  ‘Is she one of us?’ I asked him.

  ‘She carries the warrant, if that’s what you mean, but she seldom leaves the house of law,’ he said. ‘Ilse has . . . particular talents, you might say, the sort that are best put to use at home. Down in the dark, where no one can hear.’

  ‘I see,’ I said, a cold feeling of unease starting to build in my gut.

  We reached the bottom of the stair and he pushed open a door and led us down a corridor, then through another door onto a second stair that took us below ground level. The air was stale with the smoke of lamps, and I could smell something that reminded me of the surgeons’ tents back at Abingon. A wooden step creaked under Luka’s heavy tread, but other than that all was silence.

  At the next landing there were two bored-looking guards sitting at a table playing dice by lamplight. They stood up sharp enough when they saw Iagin, though.

  ‘As you were,’ he growled. ‘This is Tomas and Luka. They’re with the family.’

  ‘Sir,’ one of the guards said, and they gave us respectful nods.

  The Queen’s Men weren’t like the army, I had to remind myself. They seemed very informal, to me, all first-name terms, and they didn’t go in for saluting any more than they did for uniforms or ranks.

  ‘We’re going below,’ Iagin said. ‘Give me the pot.’

  The other guard reached up to a wooden shelf and handed Iagin a small glass jar filled with something white and waxy-looking. He dipped a finger into the stuff and smeared it liberally into his thick moustache, then held it out to me.

  ‘Here,’ he said. ‘Rub some of this under your nose, both of you.’

  I lifted the pot and felt my eyes stinging at the smell that came off it, harsh and acrid.

  ‘The fuck is this?’

  ‘Lamp oil and wax with mineral salts or some shit in it, I don’t know,’ Iagin said. ‘Trust me, you’ll be glad of it.’

  ‘I was at Abingon,’ I said. ‘I’ve smelled suffering before.’

  He fixed me with a look.

  ‘Not like this, you fucking haven’t.’

  Chapter 5

  I had to allow that Iagin was right about that.

  The next level down was horrific, even with the ointment burning under my nose to mask the worst of the smell. The narrow stone corridor was lit by lamps and lined with cells, their iron bars letting us see well enough what each contained.

  There were folk with missing limbs, with weeping burns or crushed feet, and maggots swarming over the holes in their rotting bodies. I heard Fat Luka gag behind me. Something wrapped in seeping grey rags, and I honestly couldn’t have said whether it had been a man or a woman before it had been dragged down there, was screaming as it beat its head against the stone wall of its cell.

  ‘In Our Lady’s name,’ I whispered.

  ‘Our Lady don’t come down here, not if we can help it,’ Iagin said. ‘We don’t want them dying before they’ve talked.’

  ‘Aye, well,’ I said, and found I had no more words to say.

  I followed Iagin in uneasy silence, and Luka followed me. I tried to shut out the noise of the screams, the whimpers, the pleading, but it was no good.

  This was Hell.

  This was the true face of the house of law.

  In a room at the end of the corridor, presiding over her domain like the very devil herself, was Ilse. She wasn’t some hideous old harridan drenched in blood with snakes in her hair, and she wasn’t a leather-clad she-devil from one of the big illustrated books the temple priests don’t want folk looking at, either.

  She was just a woman with some fifty years to her, pleasant of face and slightly plump, wearing a woollen kirtle under her stained apron. She could have been a baker or a farmer, a cook or a nun. She could have been anyone, just some woman you passed in the market square and never gave a second thought to, but the hooked knife in her hand was dripping blood.

  The man on the table in front of her was shrieking.

  ‘Ilse,’ Iagin said. ‘This is Tomas Piety, from Ellinburg.’

  She looked up and gave me a motherly smile, and I think that was the very worst of it. I will never forget that smile. There are two bones in a man’s forearm, and Ilse had almost removed one of them from the fellow in front of her. The man’s arm had been filleted like a fish, and the bones glinted reddish-white among the neatly flensed meat. No one should be able to smile like your ma while they did that, but it seemed that Ilse could.

  ‘Nice to meet you, Tomas,’ she said, and the knife in her hand twisted and gristle split with a wet pop. ‘Ah, that’s got it.’

  The man’s head hit the table with a thump as she lifted the bone clear, and I prayed to Our Lady that he had finally passed out.

  ‘What the fuck are you doing?’ I whispered.

  ‘Asking questions,’ she said, as though it was the most natural thing in the world. ‘This is the second houseman of the royal privy chamber. He emptied Her Majesty’s chamber pots, in other words. He had access to her bedroom and to her most intimate things. I’m sure he knows something.’

  ‘You’ve cut a fucking bone out of his arm.’

  ‘Yes, well, he hasn’t been very forthcoming so far,’ she said.

  ‘No one can answer questions when they can’t talk for screaming, for Our Lady’s sake!’

  ‘No, of course not,’ she said, and she showed me her smile again like she was addressing a foolish child. ‘He had ample chance to answer my questions while I was explaining what would happen to him if he didn’t. Still, he’ll talk in a day or two.’

  ‘If that didn’t make him talk then nothing will,’ Luka said.

  ‘Oh, nonsense, dear,’ Ilse said. ‘I’ll pack the cavity with night soil and sew it up, and put him back in his cell for a little while. Infection is guaranteed, that way. Once the rot gets into his blood he’ll talk, believe me.’

  I swallowed. She was going to fill this poor bastard’s arm with shit where his bone should be and stitch it up again. My stomach heaved as I thought about it. There was no way he’d live after that, not even if she took his arm off at the shoulder.

  ‘He’ll be raving,’ I pointed out. ‘Delirious.’

  ‘Well, quite,’ she said. ‘A stubborn enough person can resist almost any pain, but a madman says all sorts of things. It’s always easier to break their minds than their bodies, Tomas. You remember that.’

  Aye, I didn’t think I’d ever forget it.

  *

  I’d had more than enough of the house of law by then, and I was happy to leave it.

  The fresh air was like breathing heaven when we finally got outside again. I wiped the worst of the waxy ointment off my top lip and took a deep breath, turning my face up into the falling rain. Beside me, Fat Luka was the colour of old cheese.

  ‘Lady’s sake, boss,’ he started, but I cut him off.

  ‘Not here,’ I said. ‘Not now.’

  We got into our waiting carriage and let it take us back to the Bountiful Harvest, where the others were waiting for us.

  ‘Been out?’ Bloody Anne asked, in a casual way that meant she had something on her mind.

  Rosie would have known where I had gone, of course, and she had no doubt told Anne.

  ‘Aye,’ I said.

  I t
old the innkeeper to let us into the private dining room, the one where me and Grachyev had had our sit-down the previous year. Those ten crowns I had given him meant I virtually owned the place, for now at least, and I was going to make the most of that. Once we were all inside and the door firmly closed, I took my place at the head of the table and looked at them.

  ‘What’s the news, then?’ Rosie asked.

  ‘Much what you said,’ I told her, ‘or rather what you didn’t. No one outside the house of law or the palace knows what’s happened. The royal family are under house arrest, and half the palace staff are in the cells, and . . . Aye, well. Such are the times we live in.’

  ‘Did you see Mama?’ Billy asked.

  ‘No, lad, I didn’t,’ I said. ‘She’s at the palace, apparently, doing important work. Truth be told, I don’t know when we’ll see her.’

  The look on Billy’s face would have been heartbreaking at any other time, but after what I had seen that day it barely registered. My hands were trying to shake, I realised, and it took all my effort to stop them. That was always the first sign of my battle shock coming out, I knew that. The smell down there, the screams . . . that had been Abingon all over again, when the siege broke, and worse beside. I shot Fat Luka a sideways glance, and I could see in his eyes that he felt it too.

  Breathe, I thought. Just breathe.

  Fat Luka had worked for the Queen’s Men a lot longer than I had, although I hadn’t known it at the time, but only in Ellinburg. I doubted he had ever seen anything like that before either.

  I looked across the table and my gaze met Rosie’s, hard as nails.

  Oh, she knew all right.

  ‘I met Ilse,’ I said to her.

  ‘Nice for you.’

  ‘No, it fucking wasn’t.’

  Rosie just shrugged. She knew who I meant, I was sure of it. Rosie was Dannsburg born and deeper in the Queen’s Men than I had given her credit for, I would have bet gold on it right then.

  I wondered if Bloody Anne truly understood what kind of woman she had fallen in love with, and the sort of people she worked for.

  ‘What do you mean, the royal family are under house arrest?’ Anne asked. ‘He can’t do that, can he?’

  I showed her a thin smile.

  No, she had no fucking idea, had she?

  Chapter 6

  Two days later Ailsa came to see me.

  That surprised me, but I supposed it was only natural that she had heard I was back in the city. All the Queen’s Men were supposedly equal under Lord Vogel, but I wasn’t fooling myself on that score. In Dannsburg Ailsa was considerably better connected than I was, and there she had me at a great disadvantage.

  I had her shown into the private dining room of the Bountiful Harvest, which I had claimed as my office by then. The innkeeper thought me a friend of Mr Grachyev, but it was Iagin who had given him my name, and me who had given him far too much gold. He might not know exactly who I was but he knew well enough that I was someone, and in Dannsburg that was good even if nothing else was.

  ‘Hello, Tomas,’ she said.

  I raised my eyes from the papers on the table in front of me, and looked at her. She was truly beautiful, I thought, even though I knew paints and powders played a part in that. Paints and powders can make a woman look younger than her years, aye, but they can’t change the shape of her face or the expression in her eyes. I looked into Ailsa’s eyes then, and I smiled a cold smile.

  This was my wife, the woman I had almost loved and perhaps still did. The woman who I had adopted a son with, and who had deserted us both without a second thought the moment Lord Vogel crooked his finger.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ I said.

  She sat down across the table from me.

  ‘We work together, Tomas,’ she said. ‘I gave you the warrant myself. Please tell me you aren’t harbouring some petty resentment over the interruption of what was nothing more than a sham marriage to begin with.’

  I swallowed the truth like bitter medicine.

  ‘Of course not,’ I said. ‘There was no love between us, I know that, but Billy took it hard. He’s young, Ailsa, young for his age, even, and no wonder after Messia. Too young to understand these things.’

  I had arranged a tutor for Billy by then, much to his displeasure, so he was away at his studies. I knew how badly he wanted to see Ailsa, but I thought it was probably best that I see how things stood between us before I allowed that to happen.

  ‘Perhaps he is,’ she said. ‘But then perhaps he was too young to kill a house magus last year too. You let him do that, though, didn’t you? You let him go into battle against Skanian magicians. He wasn’t too young to kill for you, was he?’

  She had me there, I had to allow.

  ‘Aye, well,’ I said. ‘We’re neither of us saints of the temple.’

  ‘No, we most certainly are not. This business of ours is ill-suited to saints.’

  ‘So I’ll ask you again, what are you doing here?’

  ‘You’re to be knighted before too much longer,’ she said. ‘It’s a requirement before you can be formally sworn into the Queen’s Men. Lord Vogel thought you would want to know.’

  Just then I couldn’t have cared less about the knighthood. Ilse was a Queen’s Man so she must be a knight too, and to my mind that was no endorsement of the office. Still, I wasn’t going to give Ailsa the satisfaction of hearing me say so.

  ‘You run his errands now, do you?’ I said instead. ‘I’d thought you more than a simple messenger girl.’

  Ailsa sighed, and looked down at her hands.

  ‘Is it too much for you to believe that I simply wanted to see you?’

  ‘Aye,’ I said, and all the bitterness of the past months rose up like vomit in the back of my throat. ‘It fucking well is.’

  ‘Yes, well,’ Ailsa said, and fell silent.

  ‘How can I be knighted, anyway?’ I asked, wanting to talk about almost anything other than her insulting pretence of having feelings. ‘Who’s going to do it, for one thing? We’ve no queen, and the princess is both a child and still under house arrest. We’ve no regent either, and no sign of one being announced. No one is actually running the fucking country!’

  ‘Don’t be silly, of course they are,’ Ailsa said. ‘That’s what the governing council are for, to run things day to day. Anyway, the situation will soon change, I think. I have been talking at length with one of the late queen’s ladies-in-waiting, a Lady Lan Delanov. Since the terrible things that have happened in the palace, she has come to think of me as her closest friend and confidante.’

  I looked at her, at the lioness seated across the table from me, and I took her meaning.

  ‘This is the Lan Andronikov woman all over again, isn’t it?’ I said. ‘Is this one a poppy addict as well?’

  ‘No,’ Ailsa said. ‘She is the youngest of the queen’s ladies and also the lowest-placed in the aristocracy, and she has no friends among the others. Quite the opposite, in fact – she is too young and far too pretty for their liking, and not rich enough or sufficiently well bred to soften that blow. A shoulder to cry on and a sympathetic ear were all she needed from me.’

  ‘All she needed for you to get her to incriminate herself, you mean.’

  ‘I’ve heard enough to make me suspicious, yes,’ Ailsa said. ‘Ilse will get the rest for us, I have no doubt. Once we have the facts, the Prince Consort and the Princess Crown Royal will either be proven innocent, or . . . not. Either way, we will have our answers and can begin to restore order to the palace.’

  This was what she was really here to say, I knew, not all that horseshit about a knighthood that I didn’t even want.

  ‘And if they’re not innocent, then what? The princess is the only fucking heir.’

  ‘The only direct heir,’ Ailsa corrected me. ‘Royal families tend to be large and complicated and I won’t bore you with the details, but suffice to say there is a clear next in line. The Grand Duke of Varnburg, the queen’s cousin.
He is a . . . difficult man, but the succession will be assured either way.’

  ‘Well, that’s good,’ was the only thing I could say.

  Ailsa was going to feed this poor young lady who thought her a friend to that horror under the house of law, that’s what she was telling me. I didn’t really want to think about that.

  ‘Yes, it is,’ Ailsa said. ‘Anyway, the point is, there’s to be a closed trial in four days’ time to hear her confession. The Lord Chief Judiciar will preside, of course, but we both have to be there. I thought you’d want to know, so you had time to get yourself some decent clothes made. Wear something formal.’

  ‘If she confesses,’ I said.

  Ailsa’s smile was pitiless.

  *

  Of course she confessed.

  I had been a fool to think she might not. Whether she was actually guilty was perhaps another matter, but I supposed that by then it was of no consequence one way or the other.

  Those were the times we lived in.

  Four days later I was seated in a small but formal courtroom in the house of law, wearing a new black coat with a stiff brocade collar over a doublet of dark-red silk. Even my boots were new, all of it made in great haste and therefore at enormous expense. Fat Luka was seated at my right hand in his own freshly made finery, fidgeting uncomfortably while we waited. It was very early in the morning, and I didn’t think he was quite awake yet.

  I could see Ailsa on the other side of the half-empty room. She was seated next to an older man who I didn’t know, and I found myself intensely interested in finding out who he was. I had left the rest of my crew at the Bountiful Harvest, seeing no need for them to sit through this obvious mummery.

  Lord Vogel was presiding, as Ailsa had said, in his official role as the Lord Chief Judiciar. The trial was closed, by which they meant secret, the queen’s death still not being public knowledge. That being the case, I could only assume that most of the people in the room were connected to the Queen’s Men in some way, although there were apparently also a number of higher-ranking members of the governing council there who I thought probably weren’t. At the very least, everyone in the room had to be privy to the knowledge of the queen’s death, so that meant they were important in some way, and more to the point, it meant they were trusted to keep the secret. As the small room was half empty I surmised that Lord Vogel trusted very few people, which didn’t surprise me at all. Iagin was there as well, but he seemed to be alone. Ilse hadn’t come, and I found I was glad about that. I didn’t want to see Ilse again, not if I could avoid it.