“For shame!” cried an old woman draped in a thick shawl, gesticulating at the young robbers. She paused momentarily before the seated dead man to offer him words of kindness, even though he seemed not to hear her, then shook her head, crossed herself, and was again on her way.
In the near distance before them rose walls of darkness, punctuated, up in the lofty heights, with moving and stationary lights signaling the upper edges of battlements. During day, the walls would have gleamed silver-white with mortar-bound granite, their angular elegant bulwarks jutting out in regular intervals along the perimeter. But at night, the defensive walls of the citadel that was the Silver Court were shapeless black giants, with only necklaces of distant lights to mark edges and openings.
“Behold—we have arrived at the Silver Court,” the knight remarked. “The Kingdom of Lethe ends at these walls. And just beyond these great outer walls lies the greatest jewel of the Realm.”
Percy, groggy from the sway and movement of the horse underneath them, nodded wearily. Her face, in the flickering torchlight all around them, appeared leached of color. Her round cheeks were paler than usual, despite the regular chill of frost that had reddened the tip of her nose and chapped her lips.
Beltain looked down at her, and saw her drooping eyelids and lethargy.
“I’ll find an inn for us, so we can stop for the night.” And he added: “Now that we are here, can you sense if the thing you seek is here, or nearby?”
He was referring to the Cobweb Bride—the one distinct death-shadow that Percy was following, on her quest on behalf of Death.
Percy turned her face toward him . . . then looked partly away.
She appeared abstracted, trained inward with an unfocused gaze. After a few moments she shook her head negatively. “No, it is not here. She is not here. She is further that way—south.” And she pointed at the walls of the Silver Court and beyond, toward the Kingdom of Morphaea.
Beltain sighed.
“Well then, we still need to rest overnight, so we are going inside.”
“Must you not, in any case, seek audience with the Emperor to give him news of his daughter?”
“No. . . . Her Imperial Highness had instructed me not to bother. I am solely intended to accompany you.”
“Oh. . . .” Percy nodded again.
They rode to the massive metal and oak gates, pausing with other traffic to be allowed to pass and enter the grounds of the citadel. It was chaos of men and beasts and wheeled wagons. At the gates they had to wait for a troop of infantrymen in formation, and then watch the pikemen on the march followed by their arquebusier rear columns.
Finally they moved past the gates and entered the citadel.
Percy opened her tired eyes in slow growing wonder, for it was akin to discovering a single blooming rose amid a wall of ivy. Beyond the crude outer walls, the inside of the citadel was an artful marvel—an intricate series of structures of mathematical symmetry, illuminated on the inside by glittering light, each structure a delicate core around a disembodied source of illumination—or so it seemed, through laceworks of glass windows. Domes and columns, arches and friezes—these were not mere palatial buildings but temples to beauty. At night lines were sharp and silhouettes prominent; streets went on, broken by perfect right angles, creating parallel lines of perspective upon rounds of winter gardens and fountains that were snowed over. Fresh fallen powder dusted the domes and cornices of marble, while icicles decorated ironworks and each upright streetlight wore a cap of snow.
Somewhere in the center of this clockwork jewel, lay the Imperial Palace. If Percy trained her gaze in the distance, she could just make out the sharp spires of the cathedrals and the dome roof of the Basilica Dei Coello, illuminated from the ground up and fading overhead . . . dissolving into the blue twilight sky cast in the shadows of early evening.
It had grown dark enough now that the stars had come forth like shards of ice. But the moon was not out yet, and it had suddenly gotten to be very cold.
“I cannot even comprehend this place. . . . It is not real, not like anything I’ve seen or imagined,” whispered Percy, waking up with all her senses. “Letheburg and its Winter Palace are small, so small compared to this—all this.”
“Yes,” Beltain replied, glancing at her with bemusement. “On my first visit to the Silver Court, when I was a lad of twelve, I remember hiding behind my father’s back and gawking at everything, even though he’d warned me not to show any reaction or, Heaven forbid, undermine our family honor by revealing ourselves as distant country bumpkins. It mattered not; my fool mouth remained open and I think I caught more flies than a pot of honey that day.”
A faint smile came to Percy’s lips. “I cannot imagine you, My Lord, as a lad of twelve. Or, on second thought, maybe I can. . . .”
He did not reply, merely continued riding along an open plaza immaculately cleared of snow, then turned past rows of lovely curving lanterns with fleur-de-lis frames into a side street of stone houses, each one more impressive than any single building in Letheburg short of the Winter Palace. Expensive carriages were parked in even rows along the street, and pedestrian walkways marked by more streetlights separated the roadway from the houses.
The buildings here, Percy noticed, all had proper façades, with moldings near the roofs and beautiful framing overhangs above raised doorways, which were in turn preceded by at least three stairs over ground level.
Here too, carriages moved along the street and well dressed ladies and gentlemen were seen along the sidewalks together with the more ordinary working class.
Beltain approached one such fine building, bearing an elegant sign of an inn, and dismounted, then lifted Percy down. Two liveried footmen approached immediately, and bowed before him, and he conveyed Jack wordlessly into their care, together with some coins. “Come along, girl,” he said, walking up the stairs to the door, which was opened by another bowing servant before him. Percy wordlessly followed, with a sudden pang of discomfort of the same sort that she’d felt when entering Lethe’s Winter Palace.
They were trailing filthy wet snow inside, she thought, probably about to damage fine Persian carpet and leave mud stains on polished marble. . . .
Well, it turned out, they were, and they did.
The bewigged and liveried butler gave a single look of distaste at the condition of their travel clothes, and especially Percy’s “rags,” but quickly averted his gaze and bowed in perfect decorum, while His Lordship asked for rooms for himself and “the young lady,” plus two suppers and baths to be carried up immediately.
Next, they were taken up a flight of stairs along more fine Persian carpet, and shown within a suite that rivaled the Winter Palace, with brocade upholstered sofas on curving legs of polished wood, fancy chintz curtains and embroidered silk throw pillows. There were two boudoirs, decorated in tertiary tones of delicate silver-threaded lavender brocade and pale green. Both were connected through a small interior dressing room parlor, and each one, in addition to all the other furnishings, sported a massive canopied bed, a carved marble fireplace, and great windows of glass, revealing a picturesque view of the street scene below and the magnificent rooftops of the Silver Court.
“Oh, this is too much!” Percy whispered, holding her hands over her mouth, for these accommodations were worthy of a Royal.
But Beltain ignored her, and informed the valet and maid assigned to them that they required laundering services and a change of clothing for the night.
Within a half hour, two exquisite porcelain claw-foot tubs were carried into each boudoir, along with endless basins of hot water. Then a row of maids arrived with towels and robes.
The black knight disappeared into one of the boudoirs where his valet assisted him with the divesting of his armor and under-layers. While he was being stripped, Percy was taken by a maid and wordlessly assisted out of her own rough wool and burlap dress, stockings, socks, and crude shoes. “I shall turn around, Miss, while you take off your shift and drop i
t here, and enter the bathtub.”
“Oh!” Percy was blushing all shades of pink, mostly from mortification. What will the maid think, seeing all such horrible filthy underclothing? As soon as the maid turned her back discreetly, Percy stepped out of her dirty threadbare nightshirt and hurriedly entered the steaming hot water. She had never had such a luxury bath in her life. Indeed, a large wooden barrel filled with boiled water in their barn was all that she had known at Oarclaven of bathing.
As soon as Percy was submerged up to her chin, the maid curtsied again, picked up the strewn clothing without any comment, and left the room while holding it in a pile. Moments later another maid came in, bearing a silver tray of soaps and fragrant oils.
“Allow me to scrub your back and help with your hair, Miss.”
“Oh, no, thank you . . . oh, goodness!” Percy’s muttering however was tactfully ignored, while the servant went to work, pouring basins of water over her hair, and massaging her scalp with some kind of sudsy soap that had the extraordinary consistency of cream and smelled of sweet alyssum, orchids, and lily-of-the-valley. She then dutifully scrubbed Percy’s back and other parts with a sponge, periodically pushing the girl underwater to wash off the residue. At last, when the rising steam began to cool, the maid held up a fine soft robe and Percy was told to rise and wrap herself in the fabric.
As soon as Percy pulled the robe around herself and settled in a chair before the fire, the bath was taken away, and her maid stayed to brush her hair with infinite gentle strokes, and tell her what a sweet and pretty head of hair she had.
Percy thanked her in some confusion, since her mousy hair had never received a compliment from anyone. But she was feeling so warm and languid after the wondrous bath, her skin all flushed and rosy, and her cheeks touched with a healthy glow they rarely displayed, that she did not protest the kind words.
Percy’s hair, fine and listless, usually wrapped around her head or braided and tucked out of the way, had seemed to take on a strange new life and sheen from the creamy soap. As it dried, it sparked with electricity under each brush stroke, and spread in large waves upon her back.
“What an unusual color your hair, is, Miss,” said the maid. “It is nether dark nor light, neither fair nor raven, but almost like a warm breath of shadows. . . .”
“Thank you kindly,” Percy said, “but I believe that color is called ‘ratty poop.’”
But although the maid, being quite her age, giggled, she also shyly protested, “Oh, no, Miss, it is so very beautiful! I do think many Court ladies would love to have this shade in their wig!”
Percy decided to imagine she was stolen away into faerie paradise. And thus she sat with a softened countenance, dry and warm and perfectly relaxed before the fire, and as squeaky-clean as she hadn’t been in weeks.
Very soon afterwards, as the sky outside the great glass windows went perfectly dark while the citadel lights cast a golden radiance upon the snowed rooftops, supper was served.
A small mobile table cart was rolled in, on Beltain’s side of the suite, and then the knight’s valet knocked on Percy’s parlor interior door from the dressing room separating them and invited her to dine with His Lordship next door.
Percy arose, wrapped herself closer in the fine lady’s robe of the faintest shade of mauve, and then put her feet into a pair of embroidered slippers that had been brought for her.
While the valet bowed before her, she shyly walked through the small middle parlor and emerged in Beltain’s boudoir, feeling like a crown princess of an imaginary kingdom that took up exactly three rooms.
But a shock greeted her on the other side—something for which she had no warning, no means to prepare herself.
Lord Beltain Chidair—newly bathed, clean-shaven by the valet, clad in a plum velvet robe, his softly curling brown hair groomed in High Courtly fashion, and the skin of his face polished and glowing from the warmth of the bath—was seated in a tall-backed chair near the fireplace.
He was a man of devastating beauty.
And Percy stopped at the entrance, because her breath had been taken from her.
She stilled with all her being, looking at him. And then, very slowly, she curtsied deeply. Never again would she casually meet the look of his clear pale blue eyes, for now it was denied her. Always, from that point onward, must she steel herself into a blank artful semblance of composure, and put on, like a mask, an abstract shallow gaze that did not register the full depth of him.
After a strange pause that she did not particularly notice—for she was submerged inward, thinking all this—he spoke to her.
“Come, Percy, our excellent supper is here, and I am starved. . . . Sit down.”
Beltain watched the girl enter his quarters, and the sight of her caused an unexpected jolt in his gut. It was followed by an effusion of sudden warmth flooding his chest, or maybe a constriction within his solar plexus. It was impossible to describe the series of sometimes painful, sometimes joyful sensations of turmoil that came to him. . . .
Gone were her colorless rags and her many layers of peasant winter clothing. Her hair, a strange, soft intermediate hue, fell long and loose around her shoulders like that of a wild maiden nymph from a ancient woodland portrait.
Her form was Venus on a shell riding the foam, as painted by the Florentine over a century earlier, only richer, fuller, and as sweet as churned cream—even though it was now hidden so well by the voluminous folds of her lady’s robe.
Her face—its childish roundness, and its unconscious emergence of womanly lines—was averted, as she curtsied so deeply before him—so well and with such genuine intent.
“Come, Percy,” he had told her, saying he was starved. And she obeyed, sitting down at the short table across from him, her hands in her lap, and her gaze still lowered.
He watched her with pleasure, sitting thus before him, as he took the bread and the ripe fruits on his plate, and cut into the well-aged smoked meat and cheese, taking up pieces on the end of his knife and tasting the juices that ran down his fingers and glistened on his lips.
But she remained motionless, even as the valet poured red wine into silver goblets and stood aside discreetly.
“Are you not hungry, girl? Or thirsty?”
She did not reply, simply took up a chunk of bread, some cheese, and placed it in her mouth, then chewed without appearing to savor.
“What’s wrong, now?” Beltain sensed that something was amiss, something new. Could it be she was rendered shy by their fine new circumstances, the exquisite fabrics and clothes, the palatial surroundings? He realized she was immensely weary, drained by the events of the day.
“I . . . I am so very tired, My Lord,” she said, looking at her bread.
“I know. But you need to eat before you rest.”
She nodded, took another bite, then picked up the goblet, swallowed and grimaced. “What is this?”
“Wine. Have you never had wine?”
“No. . . . It is so bitter.”
Beltain turned to the valet and asked for tea to be brought for the lady.
“Thank you,” Percy whispered.
They ate thus, she nibbling at her food, he eating ravenously, sensuously, watching her as he consumed the flesh and the fruit and the generous chunks of bread.
When the tea came, she drank a cup gratefully, along with a slice of flaky pastry followed with a small dish of crème brûlée.
He watched her rounded cheeks and the innocent movement of her lips, soft and puffy from the warmth and comfort of the tea.
At last they were done eating, and she simply got up, and once again curtsied, and then backed out of his room and fled into her own boudoir.
Beltain was left alone with the mostly consumed supper service and the courteous valet.
Beltain was awakened in the night by the soft sounds of weeping coming from the other boudoir. He rose, casting off his silken sheets and bedspread, and stood listening, his silhouette bathed in the moonlight. He knew her voice
, heard the soft repressed sounds of despair. . . .
Taking up his robe to cover himself, he did not pause for a second, but went to her, through the small parlor dividing their suite.
Her room was a temple of the moon.
Bright as day, the light came through the open windows, as the full moon rode high over the Silver Court, eclipsing the myriad tiny golden lights of the city with its immortal glamour. It filled the bedchamber, and illuminated Percy, sitting on the bed, her hair strewn about her like translucent cobwebs, her face half-turned to the window, shining with streaks of bright liquid.
She looked impossible for a moment, impossible and not of this world. . . .
He had made no sound, but she sensed him enter, and gave a small start, turning her face with her haunted liquid eyes to him. Her fine new nightshirt slipped low over her shoulders, and they gleamed alabaster white.
“Percy . . .” he said in a voice belonging to someone else. “What is it?”
She took in a shuddering breath.
He took the few steps toward her, then sank down on the bed at her side, never touching her, only so very close. . . .
“Forgive me for waking you,” she replied in a faint whisper that was leached of strength. “I could not sleep.”
“Is there something wrong? Something that pains you?”
“The . . . little boy,” she said. “André . . . I think of him.”
Cobweb Empire Page 25