The Architecture of Desire

by Mary Gentle

  The woman stood. The covering sheet slid from the couch to the dusty floorboards. She made to step over, holding up her breeches; half-halted, and bent to pick up a bottle. She held it up to the light as she walked across to the bench, shook it, eyes narrowing.

  "Veneral infection. Nothing too serious; I can make her an infusion to clear it up. I must let her know. Casaubon—"

  She slammed the bottle down, turned.

  The Lord-Architect walked across the creaking floorboards to her, and cupped her chin in large, strong fingers. His ink-stained thumb rubbed her jaw thoughtfully.

  "Did you?"

  She pulled away. "Yes!"

  The Lord-Architect eased himself down into the large chair beside the hearth, sinking into voluminous night- robes. His gaze never shifted from her face. She, finished with buttoning herself and now buckling her belt, sat in the window-seat.

  "I don’t love her."

  The White Crow rested her chin on her wrists, staring down from the window-ledge as she talked. On the other side of chill glass, snow fell into Roseveare Court, and torches flared gold on the shoe-tracks and bookstalls and open bookshop doorways. Two black-mantled soldiers and a woman in a buff coat trampled the snow towards the main thoroughfare.

  "I hurt her. She obsesses me. I can’t tell you that she won’t always do that."

  Casaubon sat still. His eyes narrowed very slightly.

  "I can’t give her up," the White Crow added, "and I’ll die if I don’t have you. I don’t even pretend that that’s fair ."

  A tiny snap sounded in the room, in the silence that snow produces, muffling all other sound. The Lord-Architect looked down at the louse nipped between his thumb-nails, and smeared the body on his furred nightgown. Thighs spread, arms resting back on the arms of the chair that his body barely fitted, he looked up at the White Crow over a mountain of belly.

  "I didn’t win you for my beauty." Pink coloured his creased cheeks. He looked at her sadly. "I made you laugh. I make myself indispensable, because I can always make the melancholy Valentine laugh. But, of course, beginning so, you always see me so, I make you merry. There’s an end to it."

  The White Crow lifted her head from her arms, and looked at him over her shoulder. "You underestimate me. I know what you are. You’re the man who pretends to be my solid rock and foundation, and proves ultimately as flighty and eccentric as—as anyone could wish. Did it never occur to you that I love you because you’re an infuriating lunatic?"

  The Lord-Architect cocked one dark-red eyebrow in her direction, paused for a calculated moment, and remarked, "No. But I had hopes."

  "That's exactly—that’s what I—you’re the only man I know," she said, "who’s smarter than I am, and that’s something I won’t tell you every day. But she . . ."

  Casaubon rumbled. "Did you really think I would be complaisant enough, or sufficiently insecure, to say that I would share you?"

  "You may have to. For the moment, anyway."

  The Lord-Architect leaned back, to the creak of oakwood, and gave her his most childlike and innocent gaze. "You may think so."

  She shifted to her feet in one easy movement, tugging her belt straight as she walked to the door and lifted her cloak from the door-hook. She swung the cloak, muffling herself to the ears, and then stopped with her hand on the jamb as she went out.

  "Thank you," she said, "for not mentioning Jared and the baby."

  Chapter Nine

  Towards the middle of that same afternoon, with the snow easing and people once more on the streets, the Lady Arbella Lacey swaggered out of the little streets behind Eleanor’s Cross. A keen wind cut at her nose, cheeks, and chin.

  "Sir!" She caught the elbow of a man in frock-coat and plumed hat. "Is there a hostelry hereabouts where an honest soldier can get a drink? And would you have a copper for a woman who’s fought hard in the late wars?"

  She let her shabby velvet cloak slip back and show the sword in its hanger at her side. Cold reddened her bare fingers. She sniffed and wiped her nose, mucus running from the keen air and from half a day’s drinking.

  "There. That’s all." The elderly man, somewhere between sullenness and good humour, pressed cold coins into her hand. "My child went for a soldier, too; I’d not willingly see her comrades beg. And to your question—no, there is no inn hereabouts for honest soldiers, but there is The New-Founde Land Arms down yonder that will take a mercenary’s coin."

  "The Bull bless you, sir!" Arbella Lacy grinned, breath huffing onto the cold air. "Mercenaries, say you? Yonder there? I recognise the nags outside; you’ve found me my comrades and I bless you for it—"

  "No more money. Go."

  The man shuffled away. He leaned heavily on his ebony cane. Trooper Arbella Lacey amused herself for several steps with a parody of his walk, slipped, swore to herself, and plodded through the broken snow down towards the Whitehall Palace and the inn.

  She stopped in the hostelry’s porch to kick clogged snow from her boots. Some noise in the almost impassable road behind her made her turn, and narrow her streaming eyes as she stared back across Whitehall.

  She spun to kick the inn’s door open and rush inside.

  A quarter of a mile away in the kitchens of Roseveare House, the White Crow cradled her sweat-damp baby in the crook of her arm. Exhausted, it whimpered; the whimper sawing up the scale towards a full-scale scream.

  "Oh, shit." She hefted the baby gently in both arms, glancing at Abiathar with red-rimmed eyes. "You wouldn’t think it had the energy, would you? Three solid hours . . . I’ll see if I can feed her."

  "You’ll feed her anger with your milk."

  "If I wanted blame I’d have stayed upstairs." The White Crow unlaced her doublet without looking at the older woman, pulled the ties on her shirt, and offered the baby her nipple. The child refused, square-mouthed, beating with clenched fists.

  "Here." Abiathar reached down and lifted the child. Jadis fumbled uselessly at the woman’s bodice for some moments, murmured indignation, and slid off into a half-doze. "She knows your anger. It’s in your touch."

  The White Crow ignored her own resentment and looked up at Abiathar. The older woman walked back and forth in front of the kitchen range, humming. Fire’s shadows and winter afternoon light dappled the baby’s bright hair.

  "Did my husband say where he was going when he left?"

  Abiathar shook her head. "No word. I ast him if he wanted Kitterage and a hired coach, but he said no. Will he have gone to his old building site, then?"

  She paused, looking down into the baby’s face, and added, "Won’t be the first Roseveare to have married an odd man, you won’t."

  "I’ll leave her and Jared with you."

  Her face burned warmer than the kitchen stove could account for, feeling the country woman’s gaze on her.

  "For an hour or so. I’ll walk over to the site and find him. I want . . ." She stood and stretched out her arms, feeling bones click and tendons stretch. "I’ve done what I came to London to do. He’s been to that site twice, and I don’t know if he’s any closer to an answer than when we came. I want to know how much longer we have to stay."

  Half a mile south of Roseveare, Shrine Paddifer leaned his elbows on the table in the St. Sophia communal dining-room.

  "The St. Sophia commune has petitioned the Protector for aid against criminals." He brushed his short grey hair out of his eyes. "As we petitioned for the Queen’s grace in the same matter, not so long since. All the blocks suffer the depredations of priggers, Abraham-men, footpads, and Tall Men. We tried our own vigilante patrols, to little effect."

  The very large man seated opposite coughed resonantly. "The whole pox-rotten place invites ’em in! Provides walkways, blind comers, unlit passages; corridors where no one can see attacks; a dozen paths to flee by. The old proverb has it: postern doors make thieves and whores."

  The Lord-Architect Casaubon occupied all one side of the oak-panelled bench opposite, a broken meat-pie steaming on a dish before him.
He waved an emphatic hand, meat and pastry held between large fingers.

  "Madam Olivia will shortly be in need of—" Meat slipped, the Lord-Architect made a swift bite at it; grease rolled down his chin. "—much in need of a worthy building project. A public one. Rot it, if she cleans up St. Sophia, she’ll look sweet in the City’s eyes! That’s to your good, Master Paddifer. Take advantage of it."

  He sniffed, beaming, and wiped his nose on the back of one lace-ruffled cuff.

  "You must excuse me. Haven’t been well. No appetite."

  Shrine Paddifer eased as far back against the oak partition as possible, wiping at his spattered black shirt and undershirts. Raw wood, graffiti-hacked, caught threads in his clothing. Voices rang out loudly from the room’s other tables, in their own cubicles; and a pair of children in layers of rags ran from the battered kitchen door to the far wall, sliding on slush-wet flagstones.

  "You spoke of something attendant on this. A bargain?"

  "A private bargain."

  The man scratched at his straggling cropped hair, smearing gravy and a fragment of mushroom in the copper-red strands. His lace collar untied, and buttons undone on his viridian waistcoat, the Lord-Architect leaned back with a contented sigh. Shrine Paddifer reached across and poured another cup of acorn-coffee.

  "There was born and bred in St. Sophia a young woman by the name of Guillaime."

  The faintest lift of tone implied a question. Shrine Paddifer, surprised, nodded. "Yes. Down in the third tenement-block."

  The big man’s hand slammed down on the table. "Damnation, I knew it! Master Paddifer, I recognised her as a Rookery-bird by her dress."

  A smile spread across his face, creasing the rolls of fat around his blue eyes: immensely and innocently pleased with himself. Shrine Paddifer abandoned any idea of being insulted. He allowed himself an ironical smile.

  "We give the Protector a number of her best people. What about Desire-of-the-Lord Guillaime, master architect? How is she part of the bargain for your services?"

  Footsteps clumped across the floor above. A child cried.

  Two young men and a woman clattered down the narrow, winding stairs; threw the outer door open to afternoon’s pale light as they ran into the yard. Shrine Paddifer eased himself out from behind the table and walked to close the door.

  Behind him, the deep voice rumbled:

  "I shall need to consult with the Sun of Science on the blueprints—that is, the Head of the Byzantine College. Young Mistress Guillaime seems very trustworthy. I want her to act as my messenger to Byzantium, while I remain here."

  The large man buried his nose in the cup of acorn-coffee. Shrine Paddifer returned to the table. Standing, his eyes were much on a level with the seated man’s.

  "She’ll be honoured."

  "London can spare her for a few months. Travel broadens experience." The Lord-Architect, as much as possible for a man of his size, hunched down in his green frieze coat. His eyes flicked up and remained on Shrine Paddifer’s face: a steady and uncompromising gaze. "That is my condition of employment."

  The afternoon light shone winter-brilliant. Desire-of-the-Lord Guillaime lay on her back.

  "Put your feet in the stirrups. Now part your knees."

  The leather couch chilled her back and buttocks. She shifted awkwardly down. Her bare feet slid into wooden stirrups. Her threadbare shift only covered her breasts and belly, and she put one arm across her face, staring into the welcome dark of flesh.

  "Be still."

  The immediate chill of grease made her startle. The muscles of her thighs tightened. Cold metal probed between her legs, pushing the walls of her vagina apart. She closed her hands into fists, never wincing. The speculum pushed deep inside, hurting. It halted, moved painfully to one side; moved again and drove deeper.

  "Still!"

  The Protectorate doctor’s instrument snicked vaginal flesh as it withdrew.

  "Dress. Wait outside."

  She shifted her cramped legs down. She fumbled on layers of skirts, belts, and buckles done up anyhow. An antiseptic scent choked her nostrils. The surgery door creaked as she pushed past it, and in the empty room beyond cupped both hands to her pubis and leaned her head against the cold window-glass. She made one sound, a sob or sharp intake of breath.

  Under her hands, cloth warmed, slightly numbing the pain of flesh.

  Silence muffled the St. Sophia Rookery. White light blazed from beyond the window. Roofs, gables, all ice-fanged; all familiar. Known streets, trodden into slush and frozen again. Piled drifts of snow against tenement walls all burning with interior diamonds. A faint mist hazed Monmouth Street and the spire clock at the seven road’s junction.

  Desire-of-the-Lord Guillaime straightened. She brushed wet hair back from her forehead, and adjusted her belt-buckle, and pulled on fingerless leather gloves. She stared down at her discarded coat.

  The surgery door opened.

  "Master Hargrave?"

  The priest-surgeon lifted his head, looking down at her; a tall man, white-haired, and with deep creases in his face. All his old warmth vanished, all consolation gone.

  "I am ill? She would not tell me, she—"

  "Ill? Yes, grievous sick!"

  He made to turn, to go back into the surgery. She stepped forward. He caught the side of his white robe, jerking the hem away from her.

  "Master Hargrave!"

  "The Lord has visited justice on you. Your woman’s parts, those parts that tempted the man of blood, are diseased. It is written that a harlot shall rot in her pride. Yes, you are sick."

  His nostrils widened slightly, whitening.

  "You may not go to the Lord for many years. All that time you shall remain in sickness and sores. If the devil give you children, as it may be the man of blood has left his seed in your body, then the children of your body shall carry the disease. You shall become a stink and an abomination. And die, in the end, mad with your sin, the judgement come upon you."

  A snowball jarred the window. She tangled her fingers in her hair. Outside, a child shrieked, a dozen more ran, scuffing up snow. They would be making a slide in the old places, outside this surgery and at the Shaftesbury Avenue junction. A horse neighed: a carter swore. Apt enough to make her mouth tremble, a hymn sounded from the nearest of the Rookery’s thirty-seven chapels.

  "Is there no cure?"

  He stared down at her: a young woman now, black hair disordered; a shirt buttoned crudely across her small breasts, and belted skirts hanging down to her heeled ankle boots. Her hands in fingerless gloves made fists.

  "Cure?"

  He bent, scooped up her coat, and threw it into her face. She stepped back, heels clattering.

  "Cure! Why speak of cures. Your soul is irredeemably diseased. Desire-of-the-Lord, I knew your mother. The Lord rest her, she doesn’t live to see this. I know your father and your grandmother, honest people, who live in the fear of the Lord: think, how will you shame them! No man can cure you of this sin."

  She leaned her back against the front door of the surgery.

  Staring up into the sun, with no memory of leaving the place.

  Away down the road, near one of the brick tenement entrances, a bundled-up girl of perhaps seven drilled a dozen like her: broomsticks for pikes, shovels for muskets; the smallest girl throwing snowballs; four eminently self-righteous boys singing a Protectorate marching hymn.

  Her lips moved with ancient memory, mirroring the words.

  "Remember the crow is a carrion bird . . ."

  Valentine of Roseveare, called White Crow, stopped at the unlocatable murmur. She held her link-torch higher against the early winter dusk.

  The site of the eye of the sun spread out around her, deserted.

  "Who’s there?" With the hand that did not hold the torch, she rubbed finger and thumb together. A rose-light glowed, gleamed with marsh-fire blues and greens. She lowered the flaming brand. The sweat on her right hand crackled, turned to ice.

  ". . . crow is . . . carr
ion bird . . ."

  The sky shone a dirty, darkening grey. A mist blurred the lines of cranes and gantries, scaffolding platforms and sighting-towers. No man nor woman moved on the site. She trudged forward to where the churned clay-and-slush gave way to sandstone pavement.

  Mirror gleamed.

  The White Crow held up her hand that flamed blue. The chill of the fire hurt. She stuck the link-torch into a gap between stacked masonry blocks and walked forward without it, her shadow jolting across the inlaid steel and silver of the dome-floor.

  The knowledge that work such as could be done in this weather would have finished some two hours gone, and the lack of the Lord-Architect’s presence; this and the grey evening might have accounted for the chill on her spirit. The White Crow showed teeth in a fierce smile.

  "I know your kind," she said softly, "better than you know me. Show yourself."

  Feathers scratched at the underside of glass.

  She walked forward on the pavement until she stood where the inset mirrors merged. In the dome to come, this would be the edge of prayer. And from the high opening, sunlight would stream down, illuminating the whole vast interior with a Light of eyes and feathers and angels’ wings.

  She squatted down on her haunches.

  ". . . a carrion bird . . ."

  Practised, she reached a pin from her hair and let blood from her left index finger. Two signs she traced on the sand-stone paving. The third, a swift curve with complicated lettering, she wrote on the mirror surface itself.

  Mist and ice ran away from the mirror as frost melts at noon.

  The White Crow looked down into the clarity beneath.

  "The crow is the bird that travels between the living and the dead," she formally stated. "If you have something to show: show. If you have something to tell: tell. But I hear with the ears of magia. Lies and trickery will not bite on me."

  Black feathers flicked at the underside of the mirror’s thick glass. She wasted no time looking up into the London sky for them. A flight of black birds, beaks and talons glinting obsidian-bright; filling all the well of the mirror; and as the flock diminished—