by Mary Gentle
She hovers above a field of bright grass. The white mists of artillery fire blot out horses as they gallop forward; she cannot hear the sound of the guns, but she can hear the caws of crows as the scavengers rob the bodies in the night after when—as always happens after day-long cannonfire— it rains. Rains on the cold, bloody dead.
She recognises uniforms: Protectorate and Royalist.
A coach on a deserted moor is halted, robbed; passengers bludgeoned and left for dead; she is too far from the vision to see, quite, who these people are.
Back alleys, sick beds, camps, sea wrecks; each tantalisingly closer. Almost close enough to see every face, every death.
"You are lying badly . . ."
Her voice is not as steady as she would wish. The White Crow sits for a while on her haunches while the link-torch burns down, watching feces. Because it may be a foreshadowing, it may be the warning that proves such fates avoidable, she watches faces, feces by the hundred, men and women in clothing familiar and unfamiliar; and in all those feces, watch as closely as she might, she sees no face at all that she knows.
A plume of white fire hung, still against night’s blackness, drowning stars. Bevil Calmady swayed in the cleared middle of the square and stared up at the comet.
Motionless, frozen light.
As if speaking the words could ease him, he recited: " "A sacrifice to Law’s Majesty and an example to all malevolent men—
He staggered ankle-deep in new snow, sliding on the packed ice beneath; grabbed at his sword-hilt, and looked dizzily for Gadsbury, Lacey, Rule, Linebaugh: all gone into the comet-lit night.
"Boy!"
An oxyacetylene brightness illuminated the square and the frozen fountains. Ice ridged and rippled. Torches flared. Two linkmen preceded a sedan-chair down the treacherous road. One hauled out a cudgel, torch wavering in his free hand.
A head poked through the sedan-chair window.
"He’s no footpad. Set down, set down!"
The carriers—four men, not two—set the chair down in the snow. Ice crunched as the Lord-Architect Casaubon pushed the door open and stepped out.
"What’s the matter, boy? Answer. Is it the house?"
Bevil Calmady shook his head, conscious of reporting concisely. "Not Roseveare."
The wind cut under his plumed hat, bobbing one broken ostrich feather. An active, wet cold seared his chin, jaw, and ears. Under the comet’s light the large man’s hair shone black as shed blood. Bevil Calmady scented elder-flower wine and warm breath.
Apologetic, devastated, he said, "I know there’s nothing to be done, sir. It’s the Queen’s justice. Can you help him? He claims you for his friend."
"Damnation, slowly, boy. Slowly. Hold and then tell me."
Sword-buckles and spurs chimed, clotted with ice. Bevil rubbed his gloved hand across his forehead, the kidskin cold and wet.
"His trial. My father. They held it this afternoon." "What, the Protector-General—"
"No, sir. The Queen’s men took him."
"The Qu . . ." The fat man squinted under the comet’s brilliance, spun a coin to the lead carrier, and hooked his arm around Bevil’s shoulder, steering him irresistibly along. "Come to Roseveare. Tell me as you walk. What, rot it, they can’t hold any trial, the man’s on bail to my house!"
Shudders took Bevil’s flesh, deep down inside his belly. The wind sheered through his wool cloak and silk doublet. He moved his shoulders out of the big man’s grip.
"I knew nothing of it. Arbella and the company found me, about four of the clock, said, "We’ve seen him taken under guard: quick!" I followed. When we got to the Bailey, it was the Queen’s Justice, John Whorewood, a notorious puritan."
"Ah." The Lord-Architect nodded.
"He had bunches of herbs on the bench, to ward off prison-stink!"
Tall gables in St. Martin’s Lane blocked the night sky. The comet’s light glinted from glass and horn windows. The Lord-Architect’s powerful legs thrust through snow, untra-melled. His breath smoked on the air. "Tried by a puritan judge, but in the Queen’s court. Without witnesses?"
"Oh, yes." Self-assured cynicism slipped. Bevil Calmady clenched his hands. "They’d written depositions as if from the Guillaime bitch. Sir, have you ever heard a man . . . ‘The sentence is that thou shalt return from hence to Newgate prison, and from thence to the place of execution at Tyburn, where thou shalt hang by the neck till the body be dead and in the Devil his hands, and the Lord his mercy on your soul.’ "
Bevil stepped aside to avoid the corner of a standing cart, piled high with grit and shovels for the morning. Someone coughed at a high window. A feather of applause drifted from distant theatres.
"My father trained me to remember words." Unacknowledged pain ripped in his stomach. "He told us the bitch-General would never dare sentence him. Why should her Majesty want him hanged? I don’t understand."
He looked up at the older man, his back stiffening. "Gads- bury says, Queen’s justice. They drink to the Queen and her Hangman. Oh, would to God there was anything I could do!"
"How long has he?"
"Five days. Wednesday next."
Late in empty streets, Bevil pushed heel and toe into ice to stay upright, his voice as slurred as a drunken man’s. Feeling the knot finally cut that tied Gadsbury, Lacey, Winslow, himself: the dissolution of the company, gone with its captain. Or if re-tied, nothing the same.
And Pollexfen Calmady to die.
"What can I do, sir?"
The Lord-Architect Casaubon dug his chins down into his coat-collar, turning into Roseveare Court and the keen wind. "Eat before you fall down. I’ll take you to the kitchen."
Bevil Calmady blinked water from his eyes. "My father . . ."
"We’ll—Valentine?"
Stunned with memories, a half-second passed before Bevil focussed.
The woman sat on a step at the corner of the narrow street. Her cloak matted dark with melted snow. Red hair, damp-darkened, dripped ice-water onto fingers without sensation: she rested her face in her hands. Bare flesh, mottled by cold, shuddered.
The big man took three swift strides to reach her. His hands closed around her upper arms, lifting her; she twisted free and staggered off the steps into Roseveare Court. Cold blotched her face. Her tawny-red eyes fixed on Bevil.
"I have bed news," rumbled the Lord-Architect. "Polly Calmady. He’s to hang."
"H—?"
An aspirate too soft for speech.
"They re-arrested and tried him today. His boy here told me."
"It’s true." Bevil’s voice shook.
The woman giggled. Both hands clapped over her mouth, eyes bright. She snorted. She sprang back in a half-melted snowdrift, oblivious of cold; one hand out protectively: her bare flesh facing his suddenly drawn blade. "No, that’s . . . it’s not . . ."
"You laugh!"
"No, you . . . I had no warning—but you can’t say they lied . . ."
She wiped a bare wrist across eyes that brimmed, water suddenly running down her cheeks, her mouth twisting. Twice on an outbreath she struggled for speech: mewed. Beside Bevil, Casaubon’s immense bulked stilled, his forehead creasing.
"—she—"
The woman shivered. Her jaw rattled. Through shudders, all but unintelligible, she managed to say: "They just took her down when I got there."
Bevil stared. Casaubon’s outstretched hand sank back to his side.
"I found out from the Tower where . . . Desire Guillaime. I never thought of her living anywhere, you know that? I never thought. I had a talisman-cure for her illness, I thought I would go and talk with her on my way back, settle some things, I don’t know."
One of her barleyrow braids, unravelling, stroked her chin with wet tendrils of hair. Melted snow dripped from her cloak.
"They saw I was a Master-Physician so the old woman called me in. They’d taken her down and wrapped her in blankets and warmed bricks, but she was dead. In her room at St. Sophia. She hanged herself. She left me—"
>
Her head went back. She laughed, breathless, great gouts of mist jerking out into the cold night; and the laughter echoing off wood-and-plaster shop fronts. Tears stood in her eyes.
Now her voice never wavered from its high, strained pitch:
"She left Valentine Roseveare a letter. I didn’t own to it. When I left, the old woman thanked me."
Chapter Ten
Muffled church bells rang.
Valentine White Crow scratched through tangled hair and caught up the trailing edge of her nightrobe. Bed’s warmth clung. The bright-haired baby, half-asleep in the crook of her arm, nuzzled at her shoulder; and she put her free hand across the child’s back, nudging the sixth-floor bedroom door open with her foot. The sounds of Casaubon’s dressing came from the floor below.
For the first time in five days, she focussed.
"About, are you?" A dark head appeared in the stairwell: Abiathar with a tray. "This is late. Sorry. I’ve had a kitchen full of runagate mercenaries since five this morning."
Snow-light spiked her puffy eyes. "Mercenaries?"
"Wanting to talk to your husband."
White Crow took the tray one-handed. A few rashers coiled on a tin plate, and a mug of half-warm tea slopped. Hunger suddenly growled in her gut.
"What day is it?"
"Wednesday."
"I think I . . . slept a lot." She hitched her elbow, offering the baby, and the black-haired woman came forward and cradled the child in her arms.
"Will you let me feed her now, then? I thought you were never going to let go of her. "
"I needed comfort. Jadis lets me talk to her. And doesn’t say anything." Both hands to the tray now, standing in the chill, bright hall; her feet cold on the floorboards. She strained her hearing. Far below, resonating up the stairwell, the sharp notes of a harpsichord sounded.
"Wednesday?"
The woman nodded curtly, vanishing down the stairs. "A fine day for a hanging-match. "
Snow and harpsichord music: both sharp, alert.
She set the tray down inside the bedroom door, scratching at her breasts under her nightgown and smelling the frowstiness of five days a-bed. The merry music spiked behind her eyes.
Eating one-handed as she crossed and recrossed the room, the woman threw on long hose under knee-breeches, short knee-hose, two shirts against the cold, and the leather doublet over all. She finished the last of the tea standing, hooking one foot and then the other into shoes; banged the cup down on the tin tray, and took the stairs at a run going down.
Abiathar twisted her dyed-black hair around her fingers, pinning it back with polished bone pins. "Is all set?"
"Ed Kitterage is back in the stables, with a musket. Damned if he don’t freeze before this lot finish. I’ll keep watch upstairs." Hazelrigg spat on the sawdust floor. "You’ll watch here?"
Abiathar nodded. "It’s left to us to protect the children. She must always have been foolish. Why else would she have been thrown out of Roseveare to begin with?"
"Who knows what she’ll do now? Wish I were back home."
"You be careful with the little one, Thomas."
The short dark man grunted. Jadis, in the crook of his arm, grabbed at the gloved fingers that he offered. Thomas Hazelrigg held out his hand for the feeding-bottle.
"She—"
A burst of loud laughter outside the kitchen parlour drowned out speech. Abiathar went to the door. A thin, curly-haired mercenary in pink satin leaned over the ground-floor bannisters. Slush and a searing-cold wind blew in from the front door.
"Have a jug of mulled wine sent up, while we wait on your master. Quick now, woman!"
"Sir." She measured her tone just short of contempt.
"Half of’em well drunken, and it’s only nine of the clock." Hazelrigg teased the bottle-teat around the child’s lips until she fastened herself determinedly and began to suck. He eased back in the wing-armed kitchen chair. Glowing brown eyes met Abiathar’s. He chuckled. "Not one of’em sober to watch their Captain hang!"
"Let him hang. He didn’t kill her, but he might have, so let him hang." The black-haired woman set wine to heat on the kitchen-range, that stank of sea-coal and pine kindling. "Or they can hang her. They killed the girl between them. She’d have welcomed it any time these five days."
The White Crow hit the last stair, swung round into the landing, and stopped. For thirty seconds she stood still, her expression blank. Small noises of occupation came from behind the closed door. She raised her fist, rapped a sharp tattoo, and entered on the rumble of "Come!"
"Hello."
She walked forward. Blankets slumped from the bed to the rugs, showing where the fat man had risen. He sat silhouetted against the windows at the room’s far end, head resting on one fist, staring down at the snow-covered yard and stables entrance. One brow raised as he registered her entrance.
"Breakfast!" She reached across his shoulder, filching a pork chop, and ripped off small bites of the meat, resting her back up against the window-shutter. Indistinctly, she said, "You?"
"I’m not hungry."
"The age of miracles!"
She threw the half-eaten chop back on the plate. A coal fire hissed in this bedroom’s grate, whistling softly with the escape of gasses. Cold at her back, the leaded windows began to mist with the heat of her body: The White Crow chewed and wiped her wrist across her greasy mouth.
The Lord-Architect’s chins rested on his plump hand, drowned in the lace-fall at his cuff. Waistcoat and breeches remained unbuttoned, his shirt-tail hanging into his lap. One garter fixed up a stocking, the other wrinkled about his ankles. He raised his eyes.
"I know. I’m sorry." She swallowed the chewed lump of tough meat, wincing. "I shut myself away from everybody, not just you."
"Liar."
The equable friendliness of his tone made her flinch. Turning, she rubbed a clear space in the window’s frost, staring down at Kitterage as he led another gentleman-mercenary’s horse into the stables.
"I forced her. As much as he did. I really did." She wiped her fingers down her breeches. "I’d sooner have slept and forgotten this day, I think. If it were over, I’d know what I felt."
Her finger traced patterns on the glass: uncompleted sigils of power, of planetary numina: Claviclulae from ancient grimoires, and the Signatures of hedgerow herbs. The wet glass chilled her flesh. She expunged the patterns with the heel of her hand. His gaze prickled the hairs on the back of her neck.
"Is she buried yet?"
"St. Giles Cripplegate. Here . . ."
Some apprehension twisted in her bowels. The White Crow put her hands in her pockets and turned, corning no closer to the seated man. He dug his plump hand into a waistcoat pocket and drew out a folded, stained sheet of paper.
"Here."
"I don’t want it."
Hands on chair-arms, he pushed himself up lightly and quickly; blinking at her against the window’s snow-light. One fat hand flourished impatiently in her face. "Read it!"
"Who brought it here?"
A pause: she snatched the paper from his hand, crumpling it into a ball in her fist, and threw herself down into the opposite seat. She helped herself to acorn-coffee from the jug, drinking from Casaubon’s cup, making a face at how cold and sour it tasted. "Well?"
"The grandmother. Rot it, she could find Roseveare easily enough! If it eases you, she knows nothing to put Roseveare and a Master-Physician into her mind together."
"No one knows. I’d almost rather they were making broadsheet ballads about it."
Without opening her fist, the White Crow rested her mouth against her fingers. Tears thickened in her throat. She blinked rapidly. She dropped the crumpled ball of paper on the table, smoothing it down against the wood. A thin line in black ink superscribed it Valentine of Roseveare. She turned it over.
"The seal’s broken—you’ve opened this!"
The Lord-Architect Casaubon hitched up black woollen breeches, abandoned the two top buttons as impossible,
and shrugged his waistcoat across his mountainous stomach. He scratched through his copper-red hair. Blue eyes fixed on her.
"Of course I’ve read it. What do you think I am? Would I give it to you unread?"
"I never think, do I?"
She put her feet up on the table, booted ankles crossed.
The crumpled paper rested in her lap. Outside, a lump of snow fell without warning from gutter to yard. Dawn dulled from acid-white to grey.
"Are you going to see him?" She snorted, shook her head. "See you, I don’t even know—have you seen him these five days?"
The Lord-Architect finished buttoning his waistcoat, head bent to the task, hair falling over his forehead. He straightened: not only a fat man, but a very large man also fat; blocking the window’s light.
"If he doesn’t hang for this, he’ll hang for another rape. Or theft, or murder over a card-table. In two years or ten." His voice rumbled. "You’d have him hanged, not pardoned."
She tilted her head against the chair’s back. Snow-light gleamed in the ceiling’s ornamental plaster strapwork. Winding patterns with no detectable cause or ending. She pulled a strand of white-streaked red hair to her mouth and sucked on it.
"He raped her. She’s dead. Somebody ought to suffer for that. I . . . perhaps it should be me."
"Read your damned letter. I’m leaving the house this half-hour."
She touched the paper with a fingertip.
"What does it feel like, to write and be knowing all the time that you’re going to kill yourself? Do you even believe it, do you think? These past five days I’ve expected her to walk in. . . and I touched her, I know how cold her body was."
The Lord-Architect moved. The back of his hand rested against her cheek, and the White Crow leaned her head a little to that side, breathing in the scent of soap and new linen.
"I don’t understand why she did it. I know it was my fault but I really, really, don’t know why."
A plump knuckle rapped her ear, too light to be a cuff. The White Crow took the letter up from her lap and flipped it open: thrice-folded, marked with fingerprints, torn down one edge, and the writing clear and uneven and without a blot: