Labyrinth Gate

by Kate Elliott

  Lady Trent waited a moment to speak. In that time she set her cane firmly against a chair, removed her cloak and hat with neat preciseness, and inspected the stained hem of her gown with what appeared to be disapproval. “And in three months, at the Festival of Lights, you will lift this ban?” Her voice showed no sign of weakness.

  “It is likely,” replied the Regent.

  Lady Trent smiled, with irony. “How carefully you phrase it. If your work progresses and, I assume, succeeds. But meanwhile, how am I to be expected to live under such circumstances?”

  “You can spread it about that you are quite ill. As for day-to-day living, your servants of course can attend to tradespeople and those of their own class as needed. I do not intend to deprive you of your supper, Lady Trent, nor your servants of their no doubt well-deserved half day off.” Her tone was halfway between sarcasm and amusement. “I believe you understand the limits of what I intend.”

  For the first time Aunt Laetitia met the Regent’s gaze, and neither woman looked away. “I understand quite well, your highness. Should I be grateful that you have spared me?”

  “It is a pity,” said the Regent in a ruminative tone, “that you never followed your gifts as far as you could have. I have no intention of attempting a struggle against them now. You might have been an unparalleled mistress of the arts, Lady Trent.”

  “I might have been,” she conceded, “but I did not have such a lust for power that I was willing to cut out my heart to achieve it.”

  “A great loss.” The Regent lifted her hand to her veil, and paused with her fingers poised in the act of drawing it across her face.

  “I should think that would depend on what you valued,” replied Aunt Laetitia. She reached for the bell pull and eased it down. “Master Butler will show you out.”

  The Regent veiled her face. “Remember, Lady Trent, this house will be watched, and the movements of your servants as well. Do not attempt to send them to the home of some relative or friend. I cannot be duped by such stratagems.”

  The butler appeared, bowing, and Regent left, her skirts sweeping the floor as she went.

  “Don’t be so sure,” murmured Lady Trent as the door shut behind her. She rang again. “Ah, yes, Master Butler. Do any of the people in my employ ever frequent the Crusader Inn? It is in—” She hesitated.

  “The Hutment district, my lady,” he supplied. “Be assured, my lady, that no one under my supervision is allowed to harbor any radical leanings …” He hesitated in his turn.

  “But one, or two, have been known to go there? Good.” She smiled. “I have surprised you. But it is always a mistake to discount that class which provides the foundation on which ours lives. I have learned that much in my life. I have a number of orders for you, but foremost among them, when next it is likely that these ‘one or two’ might go to that inn on their half-day off, they must come to see me first.”

  “Yes, madam.”

  “Very well. I will need Miss Botherwell to bring my mourning blacks to me, and then I will attend Lord Felton’s body in the back parlour until his people arrive to take him.” Her eyes shone with the temper of best steel. “Your death will be avenged, Henry. I promise that.”

  Chapter 20:

  The Lover

  ONLY TWO INCIDENTS MARRED the Harvest Fair holiday. When the members of the earl’s party rose that morning, they found the entire valley in bloom: an unseasonable flowering of white climbing roses, spread across the rubble and slopes of the ruins in such profusion that it could have been the welcoming decorations set out in preparation for the visit of the queen.

  When they gathered at midday for the mile walk to festivities at the laborer’s camp, just south over the containing ridge, Kate was discovered missing. The children found her at the Marketplace. She had, it transpired, gone out early with a lantern to dig deeper down the central stairwell, and had slipped on a damp corner of loose dirt, spraining her ankle. Cursing all the while, she endured without much grace Julian’s sardonic commiserations as he carried her back to camp. In the end they put her on the gentlest mare and Lucias led her along the trail that led to the other camp. She went with as much dignity as she could muster, and sat meekly in her chair throughout the festivities.

  “We’re no match for her, Kate,” said Chryse with a mock sigh as, late in the day, they watched Charity crowned Harvest Queen. A very self-conscious and reluctant Thomas Southern was voted King by the unanimous vote of the workers. They crowned him with a wreath of wheat and berries and seated him in a chair next to Charity.

  “What do you mean?” Kate sat with her foot propped up on a stool. Chryse had sat next to her throughout the afternoon’s games and feasting, and now, as dusk lowered, they chatted softly as the Harvest Sovereigns were invested and a large circle of lanterns lit and hung about the dancing area.

  “They look well together, don’t they?”

  Kate nodded. Charity’s fair, pliant beauty set off the obstinate handsomeness of Thomas Southern’s face to perfection.

  “Just that with Charity here, none of the rest of us could ever hope to win such a contest.”

  Kate chuckled. “Do I detect a note of envy? You’re well-looking enough, but you don’t carry the expectation of beauty around with you like she does. Personally, I think her hair is a rather insipid blonde, whereas yours is like real gold. Almost,” she added with another grin, “as beautiful as the earl’s hair.”

  “Flatterer. She must be hot bundled up in all those clothes. She looks positively rotund.”

  “You are in a cat’s mood today, aren’t you?”

  Chryse smiled, looking smug in her trim, tailored gown and matching military-style jacket, the legacy of the treaty of Amyan, the signing of which had caused military fashions to go out of style and Julian’s sister to consign the outfit to her closet.

  Kate’s eye wandered back to Thomas Southern. “Wouldn’t have me, you know,” she added conversationally.

  “What?” Chryse laughed. “You didn’t proposition him?”

  Kate looked offended. “Of course I did. Just look at him. There’s something about an abstentious man that attracts me. I suppose it’s the challenge. But damn me if he isn’t as staid as he makes himself out to be.” Chryse was still laughing, pausing only to brush a tear from the corner of one eye. “It’s all very well for you,” continued Kate, “having Sanjay, but what am I to do? His Blackness is obviously quite out of the question. And Lucias—well, even I have some compunction about despoiling innocent young virgins.”

  “What about Julian?” asked Chryse, suddenly acutely curious.

  “Julian?” Kate’s expression bore honest surprise. “Why would I proposition Julian? Lady, but we’ve known each other since we were babes-in-arms.”

  “Haven’t you ever—I mean, ever even been attracted to him?”

  Kate shrugged. “We grew up together, as close as two foals in a paddock, having no one else to play with. So of course it fell out that the spring we both turned sixteen—” She smiled. It was an expression that softened her face to a remarkable degree. “That was a happy time, that spring and summer. Then in the fall Julian was sent off to university, and I was banished to my grandfather’s estate for expressing a desire to study medicine. We saw each other next—” She shook her head. “—six years later. By that time I was well on my way to being disinherited, and Julian was … well on his way to having a reputation as a cicisbeo of married ladies.”

  “Tell me, Kate,” said Chryse slowly, turning her face away to hide her expression, “does Julian often take married women as his lovers?”

  “He only takes married lovers. I don’t know why. Baste me and burn me—” Her tone altered abruptly. “The earl is dancing with his wife!”

  “To a waltz!” exclaimed Chryse, as startled by the familiar dance as by the sight of Maretha gliding past in her husband’s arms. “I can dance this!” She got to her feet. “I’m deserting you, Kate. This is too good of an opportunity to pass up. Have you s
een—there he is.”

  She hurried over to Sanjay. He was standing to one side, smiling as he watched Julian attempting to teach Pin how to waltz, an effort hampered by Pin’s hiccoughs of excitement at this attention from her hero. Mog glowered jealously at them from his seat next to Lucias.

  “Shall we dance?” Chryse asked, and Sanjay accepted.

  At first they waltzed in silence. The laborers had cobbled together a quintet of amateur musicians from their ranks, and the music was a little rough, but sincere.

  “I should have offered to play with them,” said Chryse, and fell silent again, watching the earl and Maretha through the other couples.

  The earl stared down at his wife, and the only word Chryse could think of to describe his expression was “hungry.” Maretha danced with her eyes lowered, but now and again, as if she could not help herself, she glanced up, then down again as quickly. At those moments, the earl’s hand would shift at her waist, Maretha’s at his shoulder, in a way that somehow combined the standoffishness of strangers and the intimacy of lovers.

  As the dance ended, Chryse followed Sanjay off into the shadows beyond the light of fire and lanterns.

  “How long do you suppose a marriage can go on without being consummated?” she asked as they strolled through the quiet of the laborers’ camp, the sounds of dancing and laughing and festivity fading behind them.

  “It’s too late now,” said Sanjay quickly. “But if I’d known how you felt, I wouldn’t have insisted.”

  She made a face at him. “Where are we going?”

  “I have a fancy to hike up the ridge and see how the valley looks in the moonlight.”

  “What did I do to deserve you? That’s a mile away!” Nevertheless she did not halt or even slacken her pace. “Good thing it’s a temperate night.”

  “What makes you think that the earl and Maretha haven’t consummated their marriage?”

  “Because she told me.”

  “They don’t act like lovers,” he said, thoughtful, “but then, Julian and Kate often interact in such an intimate way that you might suspect they’re lovers, but they aren’t.”

  “I worry,” said Chryse in a subdued voice. “I worry about what he really wants of her.”

  “I wonder.” He lapsed into a silence made deep by his contemplation.

  The trail led into a light scattering of trees. The first fallen leaves rustled under their feet, and they walked for a long time just listening to the rhythm of their strides on the path.

  “Sometimes,” said Sanjay at last, taking her hand, “I feel that I wouldn’t care if we never went back.”

  The height of the ridge opened before them, and they scrambled up the slope and arrived gasping to look out over the valley called the labyrinth gate. Gasping, now, not just from being out of breath. In the twilight of Harvest Fair evening, the city had come to life below them.

  Chryse did not see so much as hear it; festival music, bright songs of thanksgiving, but also solemn music that inspired dread as well as glory. And from another direction, festive dance music. She slipped her hand out of Sanjay’s and, slowly at first, tried a few, tentative steps, as if by finding the dance she could understand the music.

  Sanjay scarcely noticed her separating from him. The entire city was laid out before him: the simplicity of its structure, its architecture, as profoundly beautiful as any natural object’s, formed to nature’s laws, magnificent and cruel. The buildings, the thoroughfares, were suffused by light, glowing from within like a translucent, whorled shell. They stood for a long timeless space.

  “It’s a beautiful place,” said Sanjay at last, “and a terrible one.”

  As if triggered by his words, the vision faded, and they saw only shadow in the great hollow below, the dull mirror of the pair of lakes that surrounded the valley reflecting a strange pattern of stars.

  Chryse shivered. “Let’s go back.”

  They walked for a time before they spoke again.

  “Do you think,” asked Chryse finally, “that a treasure hidden in such a place as that, whatever it proved to be, is a safe thing to possess?”

  Sanjay did not need to reply for her to know his answer.

  At the laborers’ camp, no one seemed to have noticed their defection. Chryse went to stand by the musicians; soon enough one offered her his extra hornpipe, and she played with them for the rest of the evening while, under the light of dim lanterns, Sanjay sketched, on paper borrowed from Thomas Southern, a rendering of the city he had seen, one quite at odds with the professor’s interpretation of the ruins.

  The weeks passed. Julian waited for a letter, some message, from his great-aunt, but none came. In fact, all correspondence from Heffield ceased. Colonel Whitmore’s regiment remained encamped some fifteen miles away, but even Kate’s infrequent visits there stopped as the weather turned more and more to rain and blustery winds.

  Autumn grew towards winter, but still the earl refused to call a halt to the dig for the season. At last, under pressure even from Professor Farr, whose enthusiasm was daunted only by his arthritis, the earl agreed to set a date for departure. He settled on St. Maretha’s March, the church holy day commemorating the legendary knight’s rescue of a thousand doomed children from a valley cursed by the Daughter with the Black Death.

  The morning of Marching Eve dawned clear and still. The laborers from Heffield set off in a compact train just after sunrise. Most of the local workers had gone the day before; a handful remained—Mistress Cook and four or five brawny lads to take down the expeditionary tents, as well as the four coachmen and grooms for the trip back. The day passed quickly to afternoon as the members of the earl’s party readied themselves to leave the next morning.

  “It is cold.” Chryse emphasized each word as she rubbed her hands together before attempting to latch the handles on her trunk. “There. Everything is packed. Now we have time to walk over the whole site in what’s left of the day—a sort of farewell.” She blew on her hands and pulled on a pair of dark gloves.

  Sanjay sat at the table, bare now of its usual scattering of papers. He flipped through his last sketchbook; the others had been packed away together with their clothing and sundry goods. “Farewell? We haven’t found anything Madame Sosostris would call a treasure, my love. And neither has the earl. We may very well be back here next spring.

  She sat down on the trunk. “You say neither we nor the earl has. What about Professor Farr?” She answered herself before he could reply. “I suppose this place is treasure enough for him. The excavations, the frescos, the catalog of glyphs Maretha has collected. He can write monographs for years just on what we’ve done this past season. And next year—”

  She broke off at the sound of shouting. They rose together and went out. Kate stood in the cleared space between the tents, her audience Julian, Maretha, and Thomas Southern. Mog and Pin jumped up and down behind her.

  “It’s incredible!” In her excitement she was gesticulating wildly. “The central stairwell is completely excavated—clear, all the way down. I went down as far as I could, but without a lantern—” She shrugged eloquently. “I was there yesterday and I know it was only cleared to the seventh step. I just walked there today with the children and—” She broke off. “Where is Lucias?” Her voice was uncharacteristically sharp.

  “I’m here.” He appeared from around the corner of Julian’s tent, looking a little embarrassed.

  “I told you not to go out of sight,” snapped Kate. “Do I have to remind you again that on every one of the old holidays someone has attempted to murder you?”

  “They didn’t Harvest Fair.”

  “Only because you were in our sight every second of the day. Bloody hell!”

  “I thought tomorrow was the holiday,” said Sanjay as he and Chryse joined the circle.

  “It’s a churchday,” explained Maretha. “After—” She blushed a little. “—after St. Maretha. But isn’t Marching Day Eve really one of the ancient holydays disguised?”

&
nbsp; “I know which one,” said Chryse abruptly. “Lord Death’s Progress. You remember the card, Sanjay. Death riding a fine horse with a procession of the—ah—unfortunate trailing behind.”

  “Oh, yes. I remember that one. Kate is right, Lucias. You’d better stick with one of us.”

  Lucias paled and moved to stand close to Kate.

  “You found the treasure?” Charity’s soft voice barely stirred the air. She had pushed aside the entrance to her tent and stood under the awning so wrapped in clothes and cloak that she had no shape at all.

  “Lady bless us,” said Kate. “What if the treasure is down there?”

  “Let’s go look! Let’s go look!” shrieked Mog and Pin.

  Maretha turned to Thomas Southern. “Thomas, we’ll need lanterns besides those we have here. Are any of the wagons still here?”

  He nodded. “Some of the local lads are coming back up tonight to drive them out in the morning. I can get half a dozen more, I believe.” He glanced at Charity as she came forward. She had developed an awkward walk, a little off-balance: the result, she had told Chryse, of back pain. “Will you need assistance, Miss Farr?” he asked in his most reserved voice, but even as he said it, she walked past him to Julian.

  “Perhaps you would escort me, Lord Vole?” The full rosiness of her cheeks belied the lassitude of her voice. Julian bowed and offered her his arm. Southern left to get the lanterns.

  They went as a procession to the central excavation: Kate and the children first; Lucias next, alone, frowning like an angel perplexed by some high moral question; Chryse and Sanjay, thoughtful; Julian with Charity; and Maretha last of all, her face expressionless as she walked with a lantern in one hand and a journal in the other.

  Southern had arrived before them, with a number of lanterns. With him stood Professor Farr: he had lit one of the lanterns and was about to descend. As the others hurried up to crowd around the stairwell, they saw another light below, growing smaller. It had a strange wild quality to it that was clearly magical in source.