The Architecture of Desire

by Mary Gentle

  Madam I understand now why you abused me the cause of it being my sickness which will be my death, so i will prevent by going first. I had begun to think of some affection from yr. self but now is much changed. You wd. not tell me my flesh is corrupted, is this your mark of affection?

  Madam it was in my mind to pray you suffer as I do but the prayers of the corrupt in heart make no breach in heaven. I am become abomination. Or man or woman, they scent it out and come to me. If not before, then by this.

  Guillaime

  A coal popped in the grate. She moved her shoulders as one does unconsciously in sub-zero temperatures, tense against the shrinking of flesh.

  "What sickness?"

  She slammed the letter down on the table, springing up; standing over Casaubon where he sat on the bed, legs apart, fumbling between them on the floor for a stout shoe.

  "Rot it, what sickness do you think? I went to the local priest-surgeon in St. Sophia. Who else’d fill her head with damnation for the sake of a mild dose of pox?" The Lord-Architect sat up. Either exertion or anger reddened his face. "He’d seen her two hours before she died. All righteous indignation and piety when I hammered his door down—he welcomed her death."

  The White Crow pressed a fist into her stomach, just under the arch of her ribs. Sweat chilled her. She snuffled a small laugh, shaking her head, blinking eyes rubbed sand-raw with weeping and now dry.

  " "I had begun to think of some affection from yourself.’ " Her fingers scrabbled across the oak, reaching to seize the letter from the table again. " "Yow would not tell me my flesh is corrupted ’—oh, sweet Jesus. Oh, lord."

  Tears spilled down her face. She pushed a wet hand across her cheek. The Lord-Architect bent his head, hooking on his shoe with one plump finger. She slumped down on the bed beside him and leaned against his solid arm and shoulder.

  "You went there? Was it safe not to be jealous when she was dead?"

  "Valentine!"

  "The truth is always appalling. No—I don’t do you justice. You meant to protect me, to find out the truth of this."

  She slowly folded the letter and put it in her doublet’s inside pocket.

  "Will you stop telling me what I did and didn’t mean!" Casaubon trod his heel down into the buckled black shoe and stood. "For my part I’d as soon she was alive and you with a chance to tire of her."

  "I didn’t know she was so vulnerable."

  "Rot it, she’s dead, there’s an end to it."

  Roseveare House echoed to footsteps, calls. The clamour sounded louder from lower floors. The Lord-Architect reached up for his coat, laid it across the back of the chair, took two pistols from the pockets, and checked their priming before stowing them away again.

  "Young Bevil will have me to go Whitehall again and plead a pardon." He looked delicately at her. "What will you do?"

  "When does the man go to Tyburn?"

  "Between two and three."

  "I’ll meet you here before then." She touched her doublet. Paper crackled. "I have somewhere to go, first."

  The hired coach slowed and stopped. Jared leaned forward and peered between the blind and the window. A white world glowed: early morning.

  "You wait here, Jarrie."

  The coach-door swung open. Wet, cold air blasted in. Jared drew his knees together and put his gloved hands on them. Plumes of white breath feathered away from him. He leaned back against the worn upholstery as his mother stepped down into the snow. His throat constricted.

  The coach stood high enough for him to see over the wall of St. Giles Cripplegate, into the churchyard. Heaps of tarpaulin-covered planks lay chalked with snow, the planks covering holes already dug before winter hardened the ground.

  At the end of the row, raw earth stood proud of the snow in a long hump. Jared pulled the blind aside and stared down at the grave. His mother stood in the snow in front of it with her head down.

  She squatted, suddenly, the folds of her leather cloak crumpling on the ground. One of her fists punched the earth’s soft-looking new ridges. She lifted her knuckles to her mouth and sucked grazes.

  Her footprints would be deep in the snow if she walked farther away from the coach.

  He kicked rhythmically at the opposite seat. A splinter of wood sprang loose. He hooked the toe of his boot under it, worrying at it, sliding down in his seat until he lay almost flat. The cold air made his uncovered ears burn.

  Deep footprints leading away, never returning.

  The coach door opened.

  His mother swung herself lightly up, not bothering with the let-down steps. Her face shone red, shiny. Jared stood up as the coach jolted off and stumbled between her knees to put his arms around her neck. Cold air clung to her hair, smelling of ice and damp earth.

  "Is that where the lady’s dead?"

  "I'll watch him hang and be glad of it. " Her voice buzzed beside his ear. She moved her head back. A moving strap of light, between blind and coach-window, striped her face and the shoulder of her cloak. His hands hurt where she gripped them.

  "It wasn’t just me, baby. It was him as well."

  Jared staggered as the coach cornered. He sat half on and half against her knee. "I’m glad she’s dead! She made you unhappy."

  "Jarrie, for the Lord’s sake—!"

  He reached up and touched the cinnamon-red braids, streaked with white; and let his fingers move to that most favorite familiar mystery, the tiny, soft pin-feathers clustered at her temples.

  "I love you. I hate everybody who makes you sad."

  Skin around her eyes crinkled, as if the shifting sunlight blinded. "My commendable son."

  "What’s ‘commendable’?"

  She hugged him hard, one arm about his shoulder. The coach jolted.

  "If I had to go on a long journey, pudding, would you come with me?"

  He leaned against her breast, kicking one foot against her boot. "But will papa come?"

  Still and silent for a heartbeat, she traced his cheek with her knuckle.

  "You’re going to have to wait in the coach again. I have one more place to visit before I take you home."

  Freezing damp breathed from the walls.

  She walked swiftly down one side of Pit Ward. Wet straw rustled underfoot. Water running down from the high, barred windows congealed into ice. Men and women in worn clothes huddled in the straw. Coughs racked the air: prison-fever.

  The cold struck up through the soles of her boots. One elbow on her purse, her hand near her dagger, the White Crow shoved through the crowd of prisoners and turnkeys. Steps ascended under a masonry arch to the Masters Ward.

  The centre of each tread bowed, stone worn down a good five-fingers’ depth.

  She pressed a silver penny into the hand of a leather- coated guard, ducked under his halberd, and ran up the steps two at a time. The pile of papers under her arm slipped and she grabbed at it, showing her teeth in a fierce grin; paid another penny to the guard at the head of the stairs, and halted in the archway. She stretched one hand out to the iron-studded oak door for support.

  Two or three dozen groups of ill-dressed men and women clustered in the hall. Light from half-hooped windows slanted down, barred, upon battered old tables at which prisoners and their visitors drank and played dice. A few tiny braziers glowed with coals. The raucous noise hesitated a second, summed up and ignored her. The White Crow narrowed her eyes.

  A cold and acid pain seared in her stomach; her lungs struggled for air. The straw tangled her boots as she walked towards one window embrasure.

  His scarlet frock-coat covered the granite, spread across the ledge under the window. He sat on it in a filthy shirt and breeches, leaning forward, the curls of his periwig crushed and stuck with straw; and all the strength of muscular arm and back engaged in stillness.

  Pollexfen Calmady placed a greasy playing-card on top of a third, removed his hands with swift care. The card-tower trembled and stood. Five storeys high. She with one wrist- movement skimmed a handful of pamphlets into the
cards, knocking all into the air. The man jumped to his feet. He stood barefoot, leg-irons around his ankles.

  "There."

  The stone wall slammed against her shoulderblades as she threw herself down to sit on the stone. She stared up. He slowly pulled up his coat and draped it around his shoulders. She bent and picked some pamphlets from the floor, flipping the Ace of Spades off a title page.

  "Captain Calmady’s Last and Dying Speech, a Gallows Recantation. And The Ballad of a Gentleman-Murderer. I like that. And more. There are hawkers selling dozens of titles outside the prison gate."

  Pollexfen Calmady sat down facing her at the far end of the window embrasure. His red-knuckled hand moved to separate the pamphlets. Chilblains whitened two of his fingers.

  "Confession at the Tyburn-Mare, or, The Ravisher Undone to Public View." Taunting, she let every syllable sound; mocking the gentleman-mercenaries’ mannered tone. She reached up and tugged her cloak-tie open, struggling for breath. "Do you like it, Captain Calmady? Will you say anything as good, do you think, before you dance on air?"

  The big man shrugged his arms into his coat-sleeves. "I suppose, as they say, I’ll piss when I can’t whistle. So it’s seen: plures crapula quam gladius, drunkenness kills more than the sword."

  Morning sun fell on her cheek from the barred window. Almost warm. The stench of urine, excrement, smoke, and sour wine made her cough. She rubbed at the corner of one wet eye. The stone’s cold sank into her back and thighs.

  The White Crow stared.

  Something loosened in her chest at the sight of him: the dirt-marked and ripped scarlet breeches and coat, and the battered periwig. His sword-belt hung, the hanger empty. The creases in his face deepened, by shadow or by starvation, and he snapped his fingers and looked aside, and took a tin jug from one of the ragged children running errands.

  "I might have known Gadsbury or Lacey would pay to have you in the best Ward. Or is it my Casaubon’s money?"

  "Will you drink with me?"

  She backhanded the jug, knuckles stinging. Brackish water splashed the straw. Her cloak slipped down. She lurched forward, fisting both hands in the shirt and lace at his neck, fingers digging into his flesh; knocked his head back against the wall and spat.

  Spittle dripped down his eye, cheek, and lip.

  "No, I will not drink with you. She’s dead because of you."

  His brilliant dark eyes blinked. Not touching her, his hand moved to feel the back of his head, the blow somewhat softened by his long, curling wig. One foot on the floor and one on the stone window-seat, she let the knowledge of his strength and her unused, unhandy knife show on her face, and grinned, and in the middle of it sat back heavily and caught her breath in the middle of a laugh.

  "I know she’s dead. I have learned to think on it, here." He wiped his sleeve across his face. "No act of mine, but I look on this day as my atonement for it."

  "Atonement?"

  "You revile me rightly. I killed the girl as surely as if these two hands hanged her. And your two hands." The man’s head lifted. "As surely as if you knotted the halter. "

  Blood beat in her ears, and her heart’s fibrillation shook her breathless. She slowly stood up. The light glinted in his eyes, with that manic brightness either humour or despair; subtly altered now.

  "What can you keep from servants? One hears all from them." His shoulders moved under the tom coat. His skin glowed yellow, waxy; and his teeth showed stained. Foul breath drifted across the intervening space. "Madam, whatever passed between you and her, I am responsible. I am glad of this day. Now I would not have it otherwise."

  "Oh, surely."

  She reached to touch his hand. Flesh, cold with stone-fever and shock. She stepped back. A rat scuttled over her boots, and she kicked it absently and instantly against the wall; its fragile skull crushed.

  "No doubt—" He got heavily to his feet, the striped sunlight cruelly illuminating his ripped clothes and dirt. "—No doubt others will visit me today, but I have this, now, to say to you."

  Pollexfen Calmady knelt, in wet straw and on cold stone, on both knees.

  "For any offence I may have done you or led you into, forgive me."

  She stared, appalled. "This is too serious for—"

  And continued to stare, wordless. He lifted his head, meeting her eyes.

  "Valentine?"

  Her feet moved her away, hands making small, unconscious gestures of disassociation. "You weren’t so unconscious of your offence as you pretended, or else you couldn’t have performed it!"

  "You’re not Guillaime, madam. It’s you I ask."

  She looked down at her hands. They shook. She held them out, closing his scarred fingers in her palms; half-said a word, nodded, lifted her wrists so that he must stand, his hands still in her grasp.

  "What did you ever do to her that I didn’t do?" She let go, her hands clasping together. He looked down, his face dazzled. Her voice sharpened. "Was yours an honest error? Mine wasn’t. I knew she trusted a physician and I used that, and I didn’t even think about not doing it."

  His hand lifted. She flinched. His fingers touched the pinfeathers at her temples, a touch as light as Jared’s. She caught a sob in her throat and choked, stammered out, "Damn you, I didn’t know to tell her; I didn’t know she’d go to some Protectorate fanatic; I didn’t know she believed—"

  She wiped her nose on her sleeve.

  "Damn, you gave it her."

  He rested one fist back on his hip, unconsciously showing the rent lining of his long coat. The lines deepened in his face. He smiled a slow smile. "Madam, you and I are, ipso facto, too alike for you ever to forgive me."

  "Alike?"

  She took a breath, deep despite the stink of damp and excrement, held it, and let it out in a long sigh. Anger dissipated; she raked at it without result.

  "That’s true, of course. I’ve seen it for some while."

  He inclined his head. The periwig, dusty on one side, shone in the window’s light. One chilblained finger stabbed the air at her. "Will you hear me advise you somewhat? Purely for yourself, and because I will shortly have to speak truth about greater matters, and may as well begin to practise."

  She nodded silently.

  "You use your magia less and less."

  The dislocation disorientated her. She grinned without humour. "After this, I won’t use it at all; I can’t be a physician now!"

  "You never could. This is not your husband telling tales, madam; I have eyes and ears—let me guess. You left the road and put up your sword, and since then have done less and less of the Noble Arts, until now you do almost nothing but doctor servant’s influenzas and children’s green-bone fractures."

  Precision and control informed him; she could only look. "How do you know? And what’s it to you?"

  "I’m a dying man." He spoke with undramatic sobriety. "One of the things I have thought of, these five days, is you. I know you as I know myself. Find yourself a war—if you wait until spring, or summer, the damned bitches will provide a civil war here between ’em, but you’d fare better fighting strangers. Fight. Aren’t half the Invisible College scholars and soldiers, as you were?"

  "Oh, how can I?" She rubbed her hands over her face, fingers rough against brows and hairline. "I’m a Master-Physician, I heal wounds, I don’t make them. I can’t do the magia that I used. Well then: I can’t."

  A ragged girl of seven or eight shoved between them. Pollexfen Calmady leaned down and picked up the tin jug and tossed it to her. The child ran off. He beat dirt off the fabric of his knee-breeches and straightened.

  "Admirable sentiments. Yes, and what I recommend is a worse way. But answer me: is it in your nature? You do violence to yourself, being what you try to be here. I say nothing in defence of fighting, except that you’ll sicken as long as you don’t carry a blade and use it. Oh, believe it, wars are pig-butchery and stink and no honour; I know! Madam, I beg you ask yourself if you can do anything else."

  "I don’t—I’m n
ot—"

  A handbell clanged at the far end of the Ward. His head turned.

  "I should be glad of your company now."

  "What is it?"

  "The service for the condemned. I doubt my damned fool troopers will be here until later. But this is appointed my day to die. I welcome it."

  "Do you?"

  "Were it vice versa, say, how would you stand?"

  The White Crow looked away. Warders pushed through the crowds of prisoners and visitors, sorting out candidates for the service. The noise-level rose. She rescued her cloak from the straw and put it about her shoulders, shivering.

  "Will you do something for me, madam?"

  With no hesitation she nodded.

  "I have no more money. Everything in this rotten hellhole must be paid for, light and air included. Well," Pollexfen Calmady said, "Gadsbury and the rest have no money, either. Will you tell Casaubon, either I must sell my dead body to the surgeons, or else hang in rags. Tell him I won’t hang without a clean shirt and stockings to die in."

  A tall turnkey grabbed his arm and he shrugged her off, turning to follow nonetheless; shouting back over his shoulder: "Will you tell him?"

  "I . . . yes."

  She elbowed her way in his wake. A woman with a musket barged past; two black-jerkined halberd men at the far door jostled. She dropped a hand to her belt, found her purse gone; walking with numb legs until she knelt on the chapel’s stone floor.

  White granite gleamed.

  The squat round pillars shone, dappled with yellow-and-gold from the stained-glass perpendicular windows. A dozen or so prisoners knelt and their warders with them. The child-priest Ordinary of Newgate strode up the aisle, black robe whisking into her face as he passed. The cold stone hurt her knees. She lifted her head.

  Carved deep into the blank eastern wall, Square and Star shone with inlaid brass. In the center the Circle blazed, polished by unwilling hands; enclosing the image of the Risen Sun. She drew the sign of Bull-horns on her breast, consciously resuscitating childhood practises.

  Pollexfen Calmady and one other condemned man knelt at what at first seemed a low wooden table, set below the wall’s bas-reliefs. Under his wig, his face showed white, calm, poised.