The Architecture of Desire

by Mary Gentle

  Abruptly a bell rang out, tolling harshly in Newgate’s tiny chapel tower.

  Split pine planks wept pungent scent into the air. She craned her head. The heads of new copper nails glinted in the open wooden coffin.

  Chapter Eleven

  Jared shivered after the long wait. His mother eased down in the coach-seat, digging into a concealed pocket. She counted a handful of pennies, half-pence, farthings, and extracted one remaining rose-noble.

  "Give this to the coachman when he leaves you at Roseveare House."

  Jared folded his hand around the coin. The septagon’s edges dug into his palm. "What about you, mama?"

  "Looks like I’ll have to walk."

  She flashed a smile that, from warm eyes and wry mouth, reached in and tugged his gut. He clung to her for a kiss.

  "Don’t worry! Tell your father I’ll be back before noon. And I will be, pudding."

  The coach-door opened: shut. Tack jingled. The coach’s wheels rachetted on gravelled snow, skidding and then gripping. One of the leaders neighed. Jared jerked the blind and it rolled up.

  Tiny between the grandeur of stone lions and frozen fountains, the woman walked fast, shoes skidding, towards Whitehall.

  * * *

  "What do you mean, she won’t see me?" The White Crow glared at the elderly lady-in-waiting. "She damned well will see—Denzil!"

  Sir Denzil Waldegrave walked through the courtyard from the Banqueting Hall to Whitehall Palace’s east wing. His amber cane poked delicately at the gritted cobbles. The wind moved the long, golden curls of his wig, and the azure ribbons at cuffs and cane.

  "Sir Denzil." She abandoned the woman and loped across the yard, pushing between Protectorate guards and royalist courtiers to lay a hand on the man’s arm. "I need to see Her Majesty."

  His leisurely stride never altered.

  "Dammit!"

  "Lady Roseveare—"

  The mid-morning sun gleamed from the dyed-gold horse-hair curls of his wig, and made his rouged cheeks into a clown’s garish mask. From this, shrewd brown eyes surveyed her.

  "—I can’t conceive your business here. If it be for yourself, abandon hope. If for a friend, let your friend find some other advocate." He paused to kick horse-dung from the heel of his court shoe, speaking in a measured undertone. "The gratitude of monarchs is, never to forgive a favour. You have been of use. You have affronted her dignity. She has said that if she lays eyes on you again, she will send you to Newgate or the Tower. Be warned."

  The White Crow stared.

  "Truly?"

  "Send in to know as many times as you please. But expect her in due course to send out a sergeant-at-arms." He extracted a watch from his waistcoat pocket, flipped up the silver lid, and in louder tones remarked, "Five-and-twenty to eleven, an it please your ladyship."

  "This isn’t for me."

  "Then, whoever’s cause it is, your name will do them more harm than help. Madam, I beg you to excuse me."

  She slowed, elbowed by passers-by, staring after the man, buffeted aside. Sun glinted from the rows of windows. Ice hung jagged from gables, six-foot spears that could fall and impale a man. The cold wind sank bone-deep into her body.

  The grave, not yet sunken, scars yesterday’s snow. Frozen clods of its earth are rimed with white. No headstone. A pauper’s grave.

  Bevil Calmady absently fingers a hole in his blue silk waistcoat. His thick scarlet coat, hanging open, could wrap his thin torso two or three times. It is not his. He reaches up and removes his hat.

  The broken plume annoys him; he snaps it off.

  Whispering, "I apologise for him," he feels in his pocket for the crackling paper that, signed, will apprentice him to Captain Huizinga’s surgeon (a Paracelsan of limited temper and great skill) for seven years. He adds, "I apologise for them all."

  St. Giles Cripplegate looms, cold black stone. The dragon- weathervane squeals, shifting to south-south-east, and cries in brazen tongues:

  "Eleven o’clock and all’s well! Eleven o’clock and aaaak—"

  Bevil Calmady lowers his arm from a stoop and throw that is all one movement. The stone from Desire Guillaime’s grave rebounds and rattles down the church tiles.

  Sand melted old snow to the colour of excrement, a sick yellow on the cobblestones. Grit crunched under her boots.

  The White Crow elbowed between groups of people crowding the bottom of the Charing Cross Road. Virgin white on the gables of shops, snow stood out against a sunny sky. Wind gusted coldly.

  Her stomach growled with the smell of new-baked bread. She slowed under the white plaster and black-beamed overhang of the nearest shop.

  A shape moved behind the irregular glass shop-window; pushing open the door to the street. The Lord-Architect tilted his head back, bit into a pastry, and caught sight of her.

  "Valentine!"

  A spray of crumbs dotted the slush and her cloak. She brushed herself off thoughtfully.

  "I want—" She put a last fragment of pastry in her mouth, chewed, and raised her eyebrows. "I need to talk to you."

  The wind blew tendrils of copper-red hair across his forehead. Cold reddened his faintly freckled face. A scarf muffled his chins; the green frieze coat’s hem showed black with wet; snow and muck covered his large boots. Passers-by divided like a river to go into the road and around him.

  "Any time these five days you could have talked to me." The syrup pastry broke in his hand. He held up his large, dripping fingers and licked them.

  "I know. I’m sorry."

  The Lord-Architect Casaubon probed with his tongue between ring and little finger, gave up on the last fragment, and brushed absently at the flakes of pastry around his lips and chin. His blue eyes glanced north towards the turn-off into Roseveare Court.

  "Here."

  He pushed the shop-door open again, bowed to an elderly man leaving with arms full of loaves, and shifted himself sideways to climb crabwise up narrow stairs towards the first floor, not looking back to see if she followed.

  At the head of the stairs, private coffee-rooms opened off the landing. She beat her hands against the warmth of returning circulation and walked into the front room. A fire burned in the hearth. Bottle-glass windows looked down into the crowded streets. The fat man sprawled across one complete side of the oak-panelled cubicle nearest the window.

  "I hope you can buy me coffee." She sat heavily on the opposite side. "I don’t have any money left. You know how much it costs in petty bribes in Newgate."

  His copper-red brow hooked up. "You’ve spoken to him?"

  "I’ve spoken to him." "And?"

  A leather-aproned man put his head around the door. The Lord-Architect Casaubon listed rapidly: "Coffee, dates, pork chop, steak; what sweetmeats you have; the coffee with cream if you have it fresh."

  "Sorry, master." The man shrugged. "Lot a custom on a hanging-day; always is. Take your coffee black, will you?"

  "Black and without interruption."

  The White Crow sneaked a sight of the coin handed over: too large to be a rose-noble, more probably a sovereign. She leaned her chin on her hand, staring through distorting window-glass into the street.

  The door clicked shut.

  "And?"

  "And—he has me forgetting that it was he who broke into a sick woman’s room and raped her while she was unconscious. And forgetting that he gave her the pox when he fucked her. And that she died as a direct result of what he did."

  She sat back on the settle, burying her chin in the small ruffles at her neck.

  "And forgetting that on campaign he wouldn’t think twice about it. How many little girls has he fucked or killed, do you think, in forty years?"

  "Fewer than you imagine." Casaubon’s voice rumbled. "I won’t call him innocent of what you say."

  "Innocent!"

  Sickness roiled under her breastbone.

  "And yet there’s the reason why I forget. Because he does want to die. He’s content. It makes me wonder what I should be?"
>
  Casaubon snorted. His distorted reflection in the window scowled. She shrugged.

  "How am I different from him? Shall I hang myself, all three? Wouldn’t that make a tragedy for Master Kinsayder’s theatre. Casaubon, what can I do?"

  His tone came very drily. "Little one, you can stop being ridiculous."

  She felt her cheeks heat. "So I’m not about to hang myself. I won’t say it doesn’t have its temptations. I won’t go to a man’s hanging when I feel as guilty as he is."

  The fire’s heat soaked through her damp breeches. She slid sideways on the padded seat and pulled off first one shoe and then the other, and massaged her sweat-dark hose. Exhaustion burned sweetly in her muscles. Brief sleep pulled at her eyelids. The door slammed open, the coffeehouse owner carrying a tray; and she sat with her eyes shut and listened to his loading down the table. Hunger tipped into sudden revulsion with the smell of cooked meat.

  She opened her eyes, poured out coffee into chipped china, and sipped at the too-hot liquid. The Lord-Architect prodded his heaped plate with a fork. With her free hand she reached across and snared his deep cuff.

  "And you? What will you do?"

  He brandished a fork dripping gravy from the chop.

  "Rot the man, if I hadn’t written, he’d be here in town still, and the Guillaime girl alive."

  "You’re angry. And not just with me. Where did you go this morning?"

  She felt down the cuff to his other hand, winding her fingers between his; resting their joined hands against her cheek. His voice, more vibration than sound, came quietly to her:

  "To General Olivia. She claims no more say in the matter. Then I went to your Carola and she refused point-blank to see the General’s renegade architect. The man was my friend. Guillaime never was, nor," his blue eyes met hers, "was ever likely to be."

  The White Crow frowned.

  "Something else?" she asked.

  He pulled his hand from hers. Her skin suddenly chilled, she tucked her fingers up into her armpit, in the warmth of cloak and doublet. He planted one plump finger on his steak and sawed at it with the blunt knife.

  "I’m wondering—" he rested the knife, picked up the steak and bit it, and continued through a mouthful of fibres and gravy "—how you contrive to be so comprehensive a fool."

  "Me?"

  "I will bear with you when you must come home to this commonwealth, it being your home; and I’ll even bear with you when you fall for a pretty little face—and the idea that there’s more brains than fanaticism behind it."

  He picked out a string of gristle from between his teeth and dropped it. It lodged in the wrinkles of his unbuttoned coat. He prodded the air in her direction with the fork.

  "But when you go off into the sulks, and lock yourself away with that bawling brat of mine: no. When you claim to be the Invisible College’s physician-magus and confine yourself to doctoring influenza and greenstick fractures: no— what did I say?"

  Tears started in her eyes. The coffee burned her upper lip. She sniffed and took a deeper drink. "Nothing."

  "I’ll stand no more."

  He stuck a forefinger into his coffee-bowl, winced, drank it straight down and poured another, his cheeks reddening. She blinked, Sudden sunlight whitely illuminated the swell of his chest, the half-undone lace stock at his throat, and the delicate flesh of his throat, chins, and earlobes.

  "I’m not your refuge to come home to when all else’s exhausted!"

  "No, I—yes," the White Crow said. "Yes, I did think . . . not to say think, but assume. Oh, damn you."

  He reached across and cupped her cheek with gravy-smeared fingers. "Great Architect, but you’re white."

  "Only in places." Her voice wavered on the caustic tones. She sat back and smudged at her cheek with her sleeve. The sunlight brightened, leeching colour from the room; the crackle of the fire sounded loud in her ears.

  Breathing slowed: she leaned her head back against the oak headboard.

  "You’re not glad I’m back then?"

  The large man stopped with a coffee bowl halfway to his mouth. He put it down as delicately as if the chipped china had been porcelain.

  Without raising her head, his eyes lifted to hers. "You might at least ask me whether I still want you."

  She smiled, mouth closed, a fold of interior skin nipped between canine and lower tooth, biting against tears. At last, and aiming for sardonic superiority, she said, "I don’t have to ask. I know. Which may be terrible, but is none the less true."

  The Lord-Architect Casaubon snorted.

  One hand slammed down, palm flat on the table. Cutlery and cups jumped, spilled, rattled. His other hand grabbed her scholar’s braids, pulling her up, half-standing over the wrecked table; he kissed her, and pushed gently. She hit the oak headboard partition between her shoulder-blades and sat down hard.

  "Valentine. At least I’ve taught you one thing sufficiently well. Yes. You know. Now why did you ever forget it?"

  Through the glass, the south-hanging sun warmed her cheek.

  Fragile as ice, her composure started to return. She grinned, wiped her nose; and touched a finger to his. Sallow flesh against cherub-pink. She stared at his strong nail.

  Grit-carts rumbled past in the street. Horses whickered.

  "Did Jared tell you? I went to Whitehall Palace. Damn stupid thing to do; I ought to know Regina Carola by now."

  "If you’d stood witness, it couldn’t have been in his defence."

  "I know that. You neither."

  She picked desultorily at the edge of a pastry, staring out of the window. Cold condensation webbed the edges of the glass. Wavering images of men and horses passed below. Shadows slanted northwards.

  "It must be close on midday." The Lord-Architect belched and got up from the alcove, scattering a handful of silver coin across his denuded plate.

  She swivelled round and hurriedly pulled her boots on. "Now what?"

  Casaubon, standing by the table, held open his lefthand coat pocket and tipped the dish of dates into it; and slipped the remains of the pork chop into his righthand pocket. He picked up the last jam pastry and bit into it.

  "As to that—"

  Crossing to the door, he cracked his head against a low beam and winced.

  "—I have something more to tell you."

  Outside, air dropped to freezing. The White Crow tugged on fur-lined leather gloves and stamped her feet. Gulls skimmed the roofs, skreeling north towards the river: flashes of white against the blue sky. Far down, past fountains and statues, the hundred chimneys of Whitehall Palace bled smoke into the midday haze.

  The Lord-Architect, buttoning his coat, strode off up towards Roseveare Court. He spoke without looking at her and without slowing his pace.

  "Did you know that Calmady raped the Guillaime woman twice?"

  "What?"

  "That first night that we got to town. I heard this about ten o’clock today, from Gadsbury and Bess Winslow. Rot it, the both of them are falling-down drunk; I think it’s true."

  "What the—?"

  Breath sawed in her throat. She grabbed his arm as he wheeled into the road and heaved him back from the path of a carriage. In a niche between a saddlery shop and a milliners she let go of his coat-sleeve, shoving him back against the beamed wall.

  "What do you mean, he raped her twice!"

  Plumes of white breath spiralled into the air. She moved from foot to cold foot, hugging herself, staring up at him. The fat man shook his head.

  "The pair of whoreson bastards say he tracked her down to St. Sophia, threatened to tell her priest-confessor she was nothing but the mercenary company’s whore; then had the two of them hold her down while he stripped her and lay with her, so that they could swear on oath to her nakedness. Her whorish nakedness."

  She leaned forward against his chest, resting her forehead against the cold fabric of his coat. The rapid rise and fall of his breathing shook her. The weight of his arms around her shoulders pressed her to him, breath moi
stening the freize cloth.

  A sedan-chair carrier elbowed her, passing. She straightened.

  "That first night?"

  "I think so. This was two hours ago, Gadsbury so drunk he lay in his own piss and t'other no better; but yes, how else would they speak the truth?"

  "Dear god. She couldn’t tell me." Dazed, she stared up into his face. "He played young Bevil for a fool. Confessing and being arrested. He could count on her refusing to speak against him."

  "That’s all one now."

  "Oh, sweet Christ!"

  She reached up and linked her hands behind his neck. On her toes, breathing the cold wind, leaning up to kiss him on the corner of the mouth. "Christ, what a thing for you to hear. I wish I’d been with you."

  He bent and rested his face in her neck, burrowing between ruff and braids; the warmth of his breath feathering her skin. She strained to encompass him in one embrace, slid back as he straightened up.

  "What will you do?"

  Casaubon shrugged massively. "I don’t know yet. I make a beginning and tell you."

  She linked her arm through his. The main bulk of the standing crowd left behind, she walked with him now between high brick frontages; the sun starring windows all down the road, hanging low in the southern sky and blinding her. Two horsemen spurred past. Clots of snow flew up, spattering her cloak.

  "I . . ."

  She stopped and stared back towards the square and Whitehall. "He knows me almost as well as you do. Pollexfen Calmady."

  Casaubon cocked his head, mutely questioning.

  "He said we were alike. Him and me. Alike."

  White haze blurred the far roofs. A keen wind blew up from the frozen Thamys. She hugged Casaubon’s arm.

  "Is that it? Do we just go home now?"

  She frowned.

  "And to Roseveare, in due course. Do we? If anything happens, it has to happen now: these next few hours."

  "Rot it, don’t say we when you mean I."

  The White Crow winced. She narrowed her eyes against the winter sunlight, looking up at him.