by Mary Gentle
"You’d better take this." From the tail-pocket of the coat, he retrieved a metal flask and handed it to the cloaked woman, beaming hopefully. "Pure alcohol. No smell on your breath! Keep you warm, though."
He leaned out, looking towards the end of the street. Wrapped in coats, in snow deep enough to hide her heeled boots, Desire-of-the-Lord Guillaime stood by a closed carriage. Percherons in black drapes breathed plumes of steam into the cold air.
The Lord-Architect Casaubon, moving a step lower down, clumsily wrapped his arms around White Crow and baby both. He kissed her.
"We shall be received separately at court, I take it. The Guillaime woman your sponsor. And Polly Calmady, mine."
Towards mid-morning the falling snow obscured the upper storeys of the White Tower and the spire of St. Peotyr’s Chapel. Yellow cloud pressed low. Smoke whipped up and down from chimneys, fraying into the wind.
Shuddering against cold, Pollexfen Calmady stared through the whirling particles. Arbella Lacey and Calmady’s son escorted the White Crow rapidly into the White Tower, towards warmth; the redhaired woman huddled about her baby.
The Lord-Architect stepped away from the carriage, heels crunching down the snow and ice. In his gloved hands he held the handle of an immense black umbrella. A few specks of snow blasted under the gabardine to cling to his unprotected hair and the shoulders of the black brocade frock-coat.
"She won’t interview me out here, I trust?"
"Here comes the bitch-General now."
Men and women, heads down, plunged from the shelter of the chapel. Snow crunched under heavy boots. Black cassocks and robes, torn at by the wind, flared open; black dresses scuffed up clinging wet sleet. A heavy figure stomped in the lead, the obscure morning light glinting from black steel breastplate and gauntlets; striding without pause across the grassy patch—hidden under a foot of virgin snow—of Tower Green.
Pollexfen Calmady called, "Madam!"
The armoured woman lifted a hand in acknowledgement. She raised her head, looking up into the bite of the wind, eyes narrowed. "The White Tower, if you please, Captain."
He nodded, striding after the Protector-General, among the black-clad and silent men and women, clattering up the steps to the tower’s entrance. The Lord-Architect walked unsteadily across the treacherous stones of the yard after him, at the arched doorway, folding his umbrella, shaking it vigorously over assembled Protectorate soldiers, and entering with a film of snow melting on his coat and head.
Pollexfen Calmady removed his plumed hat and shook out the curls of his periwig.
"Madam General—"
The Protector-General Olivia halted, a short distance into the crowded hall.
He glanced ahead, following her gaze. The Lord-Architect’s wife stood, cloak now thrown back, holding the baby up under its arms, rubbing her cheek to the child’s.
She carried her weight on the balls of her feet. Chains and belts jingled, slung on diagonals across her taut hips, encased in sober black leather. Her skin gleamed in the dark room: black rose wound into the fastenings of her tight bodice. Black-iron studs ringed her wrists; clipped up her spice-red hair.
Pollexfen Calmady surprised himself with laughter. "A scandal to the view, and without infringing even one of the sumptuary laws—Madam White Crow, my congratulations."
She raised innocent brows.
Olivia’s weather-hardened voice cut across low gossip. "You would be more comfortable in another room, madam; there are fires, and I would not have your child take cold. Captain Calmady, escort her."
Pollexfen Calmady bowed, a movement calculatedly just too precise for the Protectorate court. "Certainly, madam."
His gaze followed the General for a moment: a small woman, brushing snow from her wool cloak, followed towards the guardroom-office by the Lord-Architect. The black-clothed court shifted out of the way of the fat man’s oblivious progress.
"This way," he said to the man’s wife.
As he turned, he saw in snow-yellow light a young woman, black-haired and swathed in layers of skirts, who followed the Protector-General as far as the guardroom door.
The Protector unbuckled her gauntlets and held her hands out to the fire. She looked over her shoulder. Morning’s subdued illumination touched her wispy hair, bulbous features, and eyes the colour of light. Her weathered complexion put her anywhere between forty and fifty: a woman not plain, but ugly.
"Master architect."
He hooked his furled umbrella over one immense arm, and made a flourishing bow. "Baltazar Casaubon."
"And the woman with the child—your wife?" Without waiting for acknowledgement, the small woman went on: "I cannot like her dress. And yet I like the humour of it."
The fat man beamed. "My thought exactly!"
"As to your task—"
She stepped to the scrubbed guardroom table and unrolled the first of a set of blueprints.
Spidered in thin lines, the skeleton of a temple rose over the city. A great columned temple from which a white dome would rise, its topmost span open to the noon sun. The Lord-Architect reached down one fat finger and turned the paper slightly, aligning it to compass-points.
"The site was chosen for you, by necessity . . ." He squinted. The rolls of fat on his cheeks almost hid his china-blue eyes. "And the time of construction, also?"
"I am given to understand dire portents if the building is not completed this summer two years on."
"And you have what?"
"The foundations and some lower walls."
"Nothing of the dome?"
"Nothing. What is built, collapses."
He fumbled in an inside pocket and extracted a small steel rule. While bending over the plan and measuring scale, he murmured, "How many other master-masons have you called in on this?"
"Two. One’s dead, one is not dead yet—she being confined to Bedlam, and so like to die eventually. Does that dishearten you, master architect?"
Copper-gold eyebrows flicked up: he glanced at her and returned to the plans.
"Then I shall add dead workmen, to the number of five, all expert in their craft; more accidents than can be criminally accounted for; a site no man will approach after dusk; and there you have the truth of it."
The Lord-Architect snapped the steel rule shut and tucked it back into his pocket. He straightened his back cautiously. "And the eye of the sun has been building, what, three years?"
"All of that during period of the truce."
"Under the Protectorate."
"The worse for us if we confess a failure now. The godless monarch Carola will make much capital from it." Olivia reached across, rolled up the plans, and presented them to him across her buff-coated arm, as one presents a sword. "Suitable rewards, for success. Upon failure, follows—nothing but that I try again with another architect. Doubting, sir, that you will have survived, more than the first two, if you fail in this."
"So let the Guillaime bitch complain."
Arbella Lacey leaned back across the Florentine cannon in the Ordnance, one knee up, boot supported against its iron wheel. She picked under her black nails with a dagger.
"There’s fourteen of us to swear an oath you never touched her, Captain. No, nor never even thought on it."
"And the fifteenth?"
The big woman shrugged, her gaze dropping from his. Pollexfen Calmady smiled.
Down the ranked cannon, that stood displayed now in the vaulted halls, the gentlemen-mercenaries stood in groups: bright as oriels among the black dress of the Protectorate. Calmady looked for his son. A boy with curling fair hair to his shoulders, in silver lace and blue satin; the worst excesses of his dress curbed.
"Gadsbury has been tasking him over fashion, I perceive." Pollexfen Calmady tugged his long scarlet coat straight. "Well, will you wager with me on how large a bonus the bitch-General won’t give us, for swift completion of her request?"
Muted sun shone in on the scrubbed floorboards, and on the whitewashed vaults of the ceiling. Outsid
e the arrow-slit windows, he glimpsed the snow-shrouded Bloody Tower, and flakes swirling to hide the heads above Traitors Gate. Loud footsteps broke his concentration.
"Master Calmady."
"That is Captain Calmady, Master Humility, as I hope to give you cause to remember."
"Sir." Humility Talbot bowed a frozen inch. Black coat, hose, and stockings; not a silver buckle to his shoes, or a silver top to his cane. He sniffed, as if at some odour. "He has accepted her commission—you may escort the Protector-General’s architect home."
Pollexfen Calmady whistled sharply, once, through his teeth. Arbella Lacey slid to the floor, lithely dangerous; Gadsbury and Lord Rule appeared out of the crowd. Heads turned.
Calmady let one hand fall to his sword-hanger, the weight of metal at his hip a reassurance and an enjoyment. Seeing the scandal in Humility Talbot’s expression, he smiled the wider; swept his plumed hat off and made a low leg. Something in the cold air, the unornamented walls, or the isolation of the mercenary troop at this court of black daws, made a shiver walk the bones of his back.
"Talbot, my orders are given by the General herself. I would be obliged, sir, if you would take your rotten carcass out of the way while I receive them."
The crop-haired man snorted, turned his back, and stalked off.
General Olivia closed the small room’s door behind her as she entered. The redhaired woman looked up from the hearth-seat, where she sat by the fire, baby cradled in her lap. Olivia gazed for a moment.
"I see you don’t carry a sword. I understood you to be a Scholar-Soldier."
The woman put one foot up on the seat. Thin black-iron chains jingled; leather creaked. She grinned. Infectious: the skin around her eyes creased with warmth.
"Promoted Master-Physician, madam Protector. Does that make me useless for what you have in mind?"
"Not, I think you may regret to hear, necessarily."
Olivia brushed wispy yellow-grey hair out of her eyes. She dropped her unbuckled back- and breastplate behind the door with a hefty clash of metal, crossed to the writing-desk, and slumped into the chair. Ignoring piled-up parchments requiring signature, she steepled her gnarled fingers and rested her chin on them. She studied the magus.
"You have a child."
"I have two."
"Nor that, neither, would not have prevented me calling on your assistance. You’re Roseveare—how is it you like to be called now? Valentine? Or Crow, is it?"
"White Crow."
"Mmm."
Olivia laughed: a gruff, flat sound that surprised her in the snow-muffled air. A cold draught blew across her shins.
"Unsurprisingly, then, I would use the crow as my messenger bird. You know Carola."
"I haven’t seen the woman since—"
"Since your twelfth birthday. In the Banqueting Hall, the night of The Masque of Death and Diamonds."
"Now how the hell did you know that?"
The woman reached down, picking the black rose out of her bodice and placing it on the bench beside her. Fire heated her skin to rose. Fingers unlacing the leather, she lifted the half-sleeping baby to her nipple. It sucked.
"Not that I suppose it matters. Your little girl—your messenger, Guillaime—told me, General. You want Carola in exile. Now, for one thing, the Invisible College doesn’t get involved in civil revolt. For another, I hold no brief for the Queen or the Protectorate. And for a third . . ."
"Enough."
Olivia slid down in the carved chair. Black hessian cloth galled her shoulders. She scratched at her nose, and then snapped her fingers. A servant entered silently with a tray of tea and sweatmeats.
"The Invisible College frequently interferes." She waved the man away, and poured tea. The golden liquid steamed. "I don’t care about your loyalties, either. I have all the loyal people I can well cope with, mistress magus. For once, I would deal with someone who understands plain dealing and advantage."
She paused, testing the liquid’s temperature with her finger against the side of the cup. The fire crackled. From outside, flat in the snow-filled air, came the clash of troops drilling in the bailey.
"I would be perfectly happy to go on fighting this civil revolt with mercenary troops. Why bleed my commonwealth to death? The false ruler Carola thinks differently. She’d rouse us all to fight. Well, we have this amnesty now, and the royalists know how badly they’re placed: it’s no secret. So, if funded, the Queen might flee into exile."
"Funded?"
"Afer civil revolt, all of us are poor; but I have control of the town’s funds, while I hold the town."
Olivia sipped at the cup. Still too hot, the tea scalded her lips. She snorted, put it aside, and sat up. A rummage among the papers excavated a previously drawn-up commission. She tossed it to the redhaired woman.
"Roseveare doesn’t have any money."
"Carola doesn’t know that. I’m a plain woman. I won’t use subterfuge with you. Here is a draft for six thousand guineas. Take it to the Mint: the Master of the Mint will let you have coin. Take the coin to Carola, persuade her to take it on what pretext you will. Then go home to your estate. And stay untouched by the commonwealth’s troubles."
She watched the woman. A vagueness in the tawny eyes she put down to the nursing child; not deceived by it.
"Or else not?"
"Or else not," Olivia confirmed. "No penalties."
"Anybody could do this. Why me?"
" "Anybody’ did not meet the godless Queen Carola at The Masque of Death and Diamonds. Nor "anybody’ has not been out of the commonwealth these twenty years, close on, and so is part of no faction."
She swept the cup up and drained it at a gulp. Standing, she moved to the window. Specks of snow whirled black against the clouds. Faces, shapes, trees, demons, battles: all visible in that mutable white. From behind her, the husky voice said:
"I take it the Protectorate’s grip on the capital isn’t secure, but it’s secure enough to lay hands on anyone other than Carola absconding with six thousand guineas?"
"I assure you."
Warmth and movement at her buff-coated elbow: Olivia glanced sideways to find the woman beside her at the window. The baby, swaddled and up against a black-leather shoulder, burped. The Master-Physician Valentine Roseveare stared out through the leaded glass.
"If I can’t persuade her?"
"No harm to you or yours. I’m not vindictive. If truth were told, I hold this as having one chance in five of success; enough to make it a worthy attempt. I would save future bloodshed, if I could."
Creases crinkled around the woman’s eyes. The faintest rose-pale illumination clung to her skin: a reflection from the child’s red-orange hair. Olivia reached out and rubbed at the frost-patterns on the glass.
"Then you understand—"
Sudden laughter sounded by the hearth. She looked over her shoulder. An unsubstantial boy of perhaps ten, in an antique velvet suit, played with a rough-coated dog beside the fire. His ghostly elder, a brother some twelve or fourteen years old, looked down and laughed. The White-rose badges of Princes hung on chains around their spectral necks. The elder boy wore a circlet of gold around his brow.
"General—!"
"Holding court in the Tower has notable disadvantages. Take no notice. It’s a common occurrence. Tell me if I have your agreement to this enterprise?"
Olivia took the woman’s arm and turned her back to the window. Behind her, the laughter faded. Before it quite crossed the verge of hearing it became smothered: screaming began.
"I’ve seen women—and men—raped with knives. With broken bottles! Cut, butchered. Women raped by half a company, and then murdered. Male soldiers sodomised. The blood’s hot after battles, so . . . that’s rape."
Pollexfen Calmady put his fists on his hips. Turned-back satin cuffs shone scarlet. He glared across the crowded audience hall, following the Lord-Architect Casaubon’s gaze.
Bevil Calmady, with Gadsbury and the White Crow, stood waiting by the main door for
the carriage.
"How can I ever be a boy again?" His breath clouded the air with a scent of alcohol. One puritan courtier drew back; he sneered.
"Too much happens to us, Baltazar. And we do too much, ourselves. Men have their peccadillos; if he’s weak- stomached—man, what am I going to do! For a piece of woman-flesh to come between me and my son . . ."
He shook his head. The periwig’s loose ringlets flew.
"If I were you," Baltazar Casaubon said, "I’d discover what he says now to your lieutenant Gadsbury."
Pollexfen Calmady nodded. The icy air coming in with the continual opening and shutting of the doors breathed across his face, the skin fever-hot. The Tower’s stone smelled dank. Hushed voices echoed between the whitewashed walls.
He stared wistfully up at the nearest arrow-slit window and the falling flakes.
"I was born on an estate of three hundred and sixty-five fountains dedicated to the moon . . . A place in the mountains. Bevil, also. He left too young to recall it. Gambled away. Some city bitch has it now."
"Polly—"
The creases in his lined face deepened. His voice sounded harsh. "I got myself into this one. No one had to do it for me. But, fortuna imperatrix mundi. I gambled away estate and wealth, tell me I’m not about to gamble away my boy."
Two strides away he checked, turned, and added, "Not a word to him. I tried to weep for it. My eyes are dry."
He jostled a cassock-clad man aside and pushed between two crop-haired women, ignoring their pious curses. A neigh echoed from the yard beyond the White Tower’s doors. Blue-grey light flooded in with a snarl of fine snow as the doors opened.
"Gadsbury, is he telling you what I conceive he is?" He caught the boy’s blue-satin sleeve. "Don’t be a fool."
"I’m leaving the company, Father."
Air rushed into his lungs, only the bitter hurt of that to tell him that his breathing faltered. Pollexfen Calmady coughed. He looked down at the flagstones, seeing fine snow whisk about his boots. And raised his eyes to stare at the young man’s pale, determined face.
"In Christ’s name, why!"