After the sun rose, he finally left Algornia’s home, the master alchemist by his side once again. They arrived at the plaza and found a very large crowd already in place, eager to see what would happen in the next chapter of the drama. People had even climbed up into the cherry trees to have a better view of the gate to the palace.
Marco arrived at the gate, and found the same veteran Guard on duty as had been there the previous day. “Your friend just arrived a few minutes ago,” the Guardsman said to Marco when he reached the front of the crowd.
“What friend?” Marco asked.
“The witch – the Lady Laris, from the Temple of Ophiuchus. She just came in a few minutes ago, and said the Doge would send an emissary down to speak to you,” the man explained.
Marco looked at Algornia, whose eyebrows came together in a frown, a sign that he didn’t like the information Marco had received.
They stood outside the gate for several minutes, until Lady Laris herself appeared with her escort at the main door of the palace, and then casually approached the gate with an escort of plumed Palace Guards.
“The Doge has instructed me to tell you that his advisors do not feel that a meeting with you today will be prudent,” the Lady said. She gave a smile that was almost a sneer, and then, in a split second that took Marco’s breath away, her facial complexion seemed to change, morphing from its perfect pale tone to a striped pattern that exactly matched the pattern that both the Lady Iasco and her sorcerer brother Iago had worn. The exposure lasted for only a fraction of a second, but Marco was sure of what he had seen.
He went rigid with anger and fear and anxiety. “Let us leave now Master, and we will return tomorrow morning at the same time,” he said to Algornia, then turned and walked away from the gate, leaving the crowd bewildered by his exit.
“What is it Marco? Why are you leaving so quickly?” Algornia asked as they departed from the square.
“That woman back there – she’s a sorceress!” Marco exclaimed. “She showed her true self for just a second there at the gate. I don’t know if it was an accident, or if she was warning me, or taunting me,” he said. “But I think she’s clearly working to prevent me from seeing the Doge.”
“A sorceress! Lady Laris is a sorceress! I never heard that before!” Algornia said.
“I don’t think so, Master,” Marco said. “I don’t think that is Lady Laris!”
Chapter 22- Joining the Cult
Algornia stopped walking, and turned to stare at Marco.
“What are you saying?” he asked his former apprentice.
“I think that is an impostor who has taken Laris’s place,” Marco said. “King Moraca of the Docleatae uses sorcerers to fight his battles for him, so it’s not surprising that he would use a sorceress as well.
“That would explain why she has blocked me from seeing the Doge, even though Lady Iasco, the head of the Order, is the one who sent me,” he mused aloud.
“I don’t know if the real Laris is dead, or being held captive, or something else,” Marco tried to think his way through the puzzle as they started walking again.
“What are you going to do? Denounce her?” Algornia asked.
“I don’t know,” Marco admitted. “I need to think about it,” he said, and they walked back to Algornia’s shop without speaking further.
Marco sat in the work room, and tried to help produce further potions for Algornia, but his attention was too diverted by the problem he faced, and he could not make any progress, having to start and restart his efforts until he finally gave up. He got up from the work bench and walked away, leaving the apprentice Boyd to work alone. He reached the hallway and walked toward the back of the building into the kitchen, where he saw Teresa watching the cook cut freshly baked bread.
He remembered his battles with Teresa over the question of her providing any assistance to him, such as helping prepare a meal for him, and he thought about how angry he had grown because she was able to use her favored status as Algornia’s granddaughter to avoid so much work. And then he thought of Teresa, and the angriest she had ever made him, when she had trapped him into modeling dresses for her mother, Abrianna.
And as soon as he recollected that event, he grinned. He spent several minutes working furiously on a collection of alchemy supplies, then he ran upstairs to his guest room and gathered a few belongings before he hurried back down to the kitchen.
“Teri, tell your grandfather I won’t be home tonight,” he spoke aloud, surprising the girl who hadn’t realized she was under scrutiny.
“Don’t call me Teri!” she automatically answered.
“Okay,” Marco said, “but do me a favor and tell him to have the alchemists meet me at the palace gate again tomorrow morning. I think things will turn out differently next time,” he requested. “Will you tell him for me?”
“Yeah, sure,” Teresa affected a pose of nonchalance, but Marco sensed that she would do as he asked.
“Thank you,” he said, and then he headed out the door of the kitchen, out the back way into an alley, and he was on his way to a familiar place where he hoped to take a bad experience and make something good out of it.
Marco headed towards the fashionable shop of Abrianna, Teresa’s mother. He had been there many times, but one of the last times he had been there had been a traumatic event, a trying, embarrassing event in which he had been required to dress like a girl and model dresses for noble and rich women. Marco had been horrified by the event. It had been his embarrassment that had been at least partially responsible for driving him to seek refuge in the small hidden room under the harbor pier, so that he had become a part of the story of the Corsair raid that night.
But now, that traumatic story might prove to have a valuable lesson. Marco had learned that he could be dressed and made up to pass as a girl. And as he contemplated the secrets that existed behind the walls of the Temple of Ophiuchus in the Lion City, that unpleasant, gender-defying memory suddenly became an asset. If only women were allowed in the temple, and if Marco was able to pass as a woman, then the way was open for him to try to infiltrate the temple and learn what had become of the real Lady Laris.
Marco entered the back door of the dress shop, anxious to avoid drawing attention to himself, and cautiously moved towards the front of the shop.
“My lord, may I help you?” a seamstress asked calmly, looking up from the sewing she was working on by the light of a window.
“I wish to see Mistress Abrianna,” Marco replied. “Would you go tell her than Marco the alchemist is in the back of the shop?” he asked politely.
The woman looked at him, clearly perplexed at his stealthy arrival at the back of the shop, yet she decided to humor him, and placed her sewing on her chair as she stood and glided towards the front of the shop.
Five minutes later Abrianna came back into the workroom where Marco waited, and greeted him in a warm but surprised manner.
“I have a favor to ask,” Marco wasted no time in putting forth his request.
“I understand you saved Teresa’s life yesterday. I’ll not turn down any request you make. What is it that you need?” the shop owner asked.
“There was a time, once,” Marco began, blushing faintly, “when you used me as a model, and made me look like a girl.”
“Oh heavens! We still laugh about that sometimes!” Abrianna’s eyes sparkled with humor at the memory.
“I would like for you to do that again for me, this afternoon,” Marco explained.
Abrianna raised an eyebrow. “Really?” she asked skeptically.
“There’s someplace I want to go, and I want to look like a woman to go there,” he answered sketchily.
She looked him up and down. “Annie,” she spoke to the seamstress who had resumed her seat by the window, “here’s a project for you. Take young Marco here and dress him up in a nice dress, nothing too flirty, and then come get me. I’m going back to the front of the shop.
“We’ll have you taken care of in a
jiffy,” she smiled at Marco, then left him standing with Annie the seamstress coming over to examine him.
Annie addressed the unusual request as though it were something she dealt with every day. “Do you want something for a festival or party, or what kind of setting do you have in mind?” she asked matter-of-factly.
“I want to go to a temple,” Marco answered.
“That changes things,” Annie spoke to herself more than Marco. She left him to go look at a rack of dresses that hung nearby, then came back with three candidates.
“Try these on,” she commanded.
Marco looked around for a place to change into the dresses, even though he remembered with a sinking feeling the lack of privacy he had endured during the modeling fiasco.
“Come along now, let’s get going,” Annie prompted him. “I haven’t got all day.”
And so it was that an hour later, Abrianna stood in front of Marco, examining him critically. She reached over to his neck to adjust the hair of his wig. “That’s the best we’re going to do. What do you think, Annie?” she asked the seamstress.
“A very nice-looking young lady,” Annie said with a straight face. “Very passable.”
Marco took a deep breath. “Thank you ladies,” he said. “Now just a couple more things,” he said as he hitched his dress up high and buckled his sword belt on underneath the fabric, then tied a small bag to the belt and let it dangle down around his legs.
The two women looked askance. “That’s going to be awkward,” Annie said.
“This whole thing is awkward,” Marco answered with a grin. “Thank you both for your help. This is the only way I can think of to go where I want to be.” He left them to walk out to the front of the shop, then walked out through the main door, out into public view.
He stopped to look around. No one was staring at him, despite how obvious he felt. He looked down at himself again, unable to believe what he had resorted to, and prayed that it would work. And then he noticed the shiny golden hand that stuck out from the end of his sleeve, and he shuddered at the sight. He had only a few coins available, but it would be enough to buy a pair of gloves.
He went down the street to a millinery shop, and stepped inside. “May I see a pair of gloves?” he asked the sales lady, who had to bring him four pairs to finally find a pair of gloves that would fit his hands, and he made the woman gasp when he pulled his skirt up to retrieve his coins from the small bag he had tied to his sword belt, but he walked out of the shop with gloves on his hands and a story that the sales lady repeated a dozen times the rest of the day.
By early afternoon Marco was on his way to the Temple of Ophiuchus in the Lion City. The temple was located on the edge of the city, and Marco had never paid attention to it when he had lived in the city, though he knew where it was. He walked slowly, and when he reached the temple he walked completely around it, examining the few building features he could see, trying to get an idea of the layout of the compound behind the high walls.
He stopped in a small, discreet park and pulled the bag of supplies out of hiding, then began to mix another allotment of the memory-erasing potion he had used so effectively to hide the location of the merfolks’ village. There was a potential for the same potion to prove beneficial again in the next few hours, he hoped, as he finished mixing the ingredients together and placed the container of the memory-erasure potion back into hiding, then walked around to the main gates of the compound.
He knocked on a door, which silently opened after a few seconds pause and allowed him to enter a small hallway that was open overhead without a ceiling. It was a long, unadorned chamber between two bare walls, and led to another door, one that stood slightly ajar.
Marco cautiously walked down the aisle, then stopped at the door, and slowly pressed it open, revealing a bare room inside with another door on the opposite wall.
“What’s the matter child, don’t you trust us?” a woman’s voice sounded overhead, and Marco looked up to see a lady wearing a white gown, her hair covered with a white veil, watching out a window on the third floor. “Go in. Go into the room and I’ll join you in a moment,” she gestured, to prompt Marco to move along.
Knowing that he was watched, and knowing that he had already set his plan into motion, Marco stepped across the threshold, and in his mind he heard the sound of a gate closing behind him, committing him to going forward with the wildly speculative plan he had developed.
There was a table and a pair of chairs in the room he entered. The walls were gray, and there were two windows, one at either end of the room, letting in the light of the dying day. Marco heard the sound of steps overhead, then nothing, and then the other door opened, and the mature woman from the window stepped into the room, carrying a candle.
“Welcome to the Temple of Ophiuchus,” the woman spoke. “Please have a seat, and tell me why you have come to see us.”
Marco took a deep breath, and told himself to remember to keep his voice as soft as possible. “I want to live a better life, and I want to feel safe among other women, without men around,” he answered. “I have heard that you offer a sanctuary here.”
“We are a sanctuary,” the woman agreed. She appeared to relax. “We are usually seen as the sanctuary of those who are sick and desperate and frightened. We do everything we can to cater to those people. Our Order is known to bring them miraculous cures and answers to prayers. We love the works we do to heal and comfort those who are sick and injured.
“But you are very astute, or very desperate, or very lucky,” the priestess said, “to think of us as a sanctuary, a safe place, a home for women who do not wish to suffer the indignities of the world. We would welcome your return to us to begin the process of exploring and considering the suitability of our life,” the woman said. “It is not for everyone,” she emphasized the word “not”, “but it is suitable, attractive and healthy for many of us. Perhaps you are one of us,” she said, “or destined to become one of us.”
“May I stay here tonight?” Marco carefully asked, keeping his head lowered. “I would like to sleep here, some place safe, tonight.”
The woman examined him with a pitying expression. “We have some empty cells, and I’m sure we can find a space for you tonight,” she said, making Marco smile with satisfaction.
“I’ll have a girl show you to your chambers. We’ll have dinner tonight soon, and then prayers, and in the morning we can start to discuss your options for the future. What is your name, my girl?” she asked.
“Marcia,” Marco answered.
The woman stood up. “Please stay right here, and someone will be in to see you,” she promised, then left Marco alone in the room, pleased at how his plan to infiltrate had progressed.
Minutes later the far door opened, and a young woman, only a few years older than Marco, opened the door. “I am Penelope, and I’m here to show you to your room for the evening,” she said.
Marco tried to note their passage as she led him on a circuitous path through the temple grounds, but soon lost his way among the various buildings they passed through as they walked silently to a large stone building.
“Your room is on the fourth floor,” Penelope said apologetically as they began to climb the stairs. “We have many openings there because most folks prefer not to have so many flights to climb if they can avoid them.”
She showed Marco to a plain, square room with a simple bed, a desk, a chair, and a cross on the wall. “We’ll gather for the evening meal in half an hour, and then chant prayers after that,” the girl explained. “I’ll be back to lead you to dinner soon.”
“I’m not really hungry,” Marco offered. He was very hungry, but sought to avoid being around the other women as much as possible for the evening.
“Oh you must come!” Penelope said. “Everyone goes, because it’s mandatory to go to prayer service afterwards.
“They say,” she lowered her voice almost to a whisper, “that one sister was so sick when she came to prayer that she
died! Isn’t that devoted?” her eyes sparkled with appreciation of the dead sister’s sacrifice.
“Okay,” Marco agreed. There was no point carrying on an argument he wouldn’t win. After Penelope left he pulled his sword off and hid it under his mattress, and did the same with his alchemy materials so that he could walk more comfortably. Shortly afterwards, Penelope returned to lead him to the dining hall.
“What’s this building?” Marco asked several times, trying to learn the layout of the campus behind the walls, and listening to Penelope’s patient answers about the various structures.
“Where does the Lady Laris live?” he asked, shortly before they reached the dining hall.
“It’s over the other direction. I’ll show you after we finish prayers,” Penelope said, and then they entered the dining hall.
Over a hundred women were seated or standing in line to get their meals when the young pair entered. “There’s the Lady there,” Penelope pointed. “Shall we go introduce you?”
“No,” Marco said hastily. “I’m a little shy. Let’s just get our meals and eat.”
Penelope dutifully led Marco through the line where they received bowls of hearty soup and chunks of bread, then sat down with a trio of Penelope’s friends.
“What do you do here?” Marco asked Grace after the introductions were made.
“I’m in training to become a healer. I’m going to go to the enchanted isle next year for training,” she said.
Hope was in a similar position, while Joy intended to remain at the Lion City temple and tend to visitors and patients there.
“Which would you like to do?” Penelope asked Marco.
“I hardly know. The Isle sounds like a marvelous place. Has Lady Laris been there?” he asked, looking over at where the Lady sat a table with a half dozen others.
“They say she has. She met with the high priestess, Lady Iasco, I heard,” Penelope replied.
Marco studied the women with the Laris impostor. They looked hard and unpleasant to him, and he saw their eyes shifting around, looking at others in the room.
Scarlet From Gold (Book 3) Page 27