by Mary Gentle
A hard jerk shifted her in the saddle; she let go the child’s wrist as the girl’s teeth met in her hand; wrenched her gloved flesh away, swearing; and half-slipped, one foot losing a stirrup.
Screaming, sobbing, in shock, the child fell back into the churned slush under the wooden steps.
The White Crow sat back hard in the saddle. Her chilled foot found the stirrup, boot-toe knocking against the wooden framework of the steps. She shifted her sword and scabbard to lay across her lap. Wet straw, cordite, and urine: the air stank.
"Calmady!"
Bitter wind cut between her cloak-hood and ruff. The hood slipped down. She brought her left hand up to her teeth, tugging off the thick glove. The glove fell to the ground, the mare trampling it among discarded food, broken plumes, a lost shoe. The wind brought tears trickling from the corners of her eyes.
She leaned forward and spat. Saliva spattered the pinned card, trickling across the wet blood and the ink image. Barehanded, she smudged the sigil’s final line.
Wood creaked.
A scent drifted across her nostrils. All the muscles in her back relaxed. She sat easy in the saddle, the scent of cut grass in the wind.
The cold air shimmered.
A furnace-blast of heat hit. The mare’s head lifted; the spare mount neighed and threw up its head, jerking the rein tied to the saddle-horn. Timber groaned, creaked, as ships do in deep waters, as woods do in a high wind.
The split, stripped chestnut darkened.
Green pinpoints ran the length of the step-rail, spread onto the platform, spread under the feet of Pollexfen Calmady and the Queen’s Hangman and the hangman’s assistant; green specks budding into knots of lime-colour, unfurling into tiny, pale-green leaves; sprouting, green nubs rising and lengthening, and the folded-down new leaves unfolding umbrella-upwards into the palmate sprays of chestnut foliage.
She plunged her arms across the edge of the platform into twigs. New wood scratched her skin, her face. The White Crow stood up in the stirrups; shouting, wordless, wild.
The blond-bearded assistant leapt back. His legs and feet lifted, no sooner touching the impossible leaves but he leaped up again; staggering back, mouth widely open, yelling; he fell from the back of the gallows platform. His body thudded down into straw.
"Calmady, damn you!"
The Queen’s Hangman, arms above his head, wrestled white hemp rope down.
Fibres split, greening, twining; winding tendrils up against the hazed blue sky. Sweat and effort reddened the man’s cheeks. The rope, unwoven, living grass, fell apart in his hands.
"Calmady! Here!"
The Queen’s Hangman stood among sprouting twigs, all the platform a mass of five-fingered chestnut leaves. Each upright post twisted, new brown bark wrinkling across it; green shade dappled from the crossbeams, rustling with thick foliage. The hangman slowly began to strip off his tan-and-white long coat, standing in his shirt-sleeves.
The White Crow wiped sweat from her cheeks.
The mare whickered, lifting mobile lips and nostrils to scent at the new leaves. Its brown eyes rolled. The spare mount, a large-boned grey gelding, dipped and shook its head, uneasy. She unknotted the reins from the saddle-horn.
Swearing, his white coat catching and ripping on stout twigs, Pollexfen Calmady thrashed to the edge of the gallows platform.
The cold straps crumpled in her fist. She leaned up and threw the reins of the spare mount. He dropped to his knees among sprouting green leaves, big-knuckled hands scrabbling. Winter sun slanted among leaves. Silver lace and brocade blazed.
The curling wig gone, his shaved head exposed, Calmady’s features stood out with brutal emphasis. Afternoon light shadowed deep creases around his nose and mouth. His ears jutted, prominent against his cropped scalp; muscles shifted across the breadth of his shoulders and back.
"Move!" She reined in, backing the mare.
Pollexfen Calmady lurched forward, belly-down across the gelding’s saddle. He swung powerful legs up; his white breeches and coat now green-stained. Sweat trickled down his face. He panted. He reached across and ripped a chestnut switch from the new wood; buttocks firmly in the saddle, knees gripping; and slashed the gelding’s haunches.
The White Crow wheeled, hacked heels into the mare’s ribs, bowled two men over, galloping on uncertain ground, new icy wind slapping her face; all surprise, all speed, all instant flight.
Chapter Twelve
The gallows posts root.
Canopies of leaves lift from three new, rooted chestnut trees. The winter light through their leaves is pale, all the bright colours of green made into a fineness as of stained glass.
Staves thunk down across heads, shoulders, raised arms; sheriff’s officers riding hard across the wake of the coach that now swings into the first houses and alleys off Oxford Street, the acerbic man clinging to the interior handgrips, swearing all the way.
A woman kneels, face stretched in a mask of pain, cradling a broken arm. Arbella Lacey squats down to help, ripping her brocade coat, that is smeared with slush and horse-dung, to use as an impromptu sling.
Two men carry a hurdle: on it, the trampled body of a third.
In the shadow of a platform become roots, a twelve-year-old girl curls up foetally, squalling; her mouth pressed to the back of her hand. Blood drips and soaks her black, torn coat.
A last breath of green warmth drifts over Tyburn fields.
* * *
"Did you enjoy it, the second time you had her, sober?"
Pollexfen Calmady eased in the saddle.
"Yes."
"Were you sorry when she died?"
His face creased into an expression of contagious irony. "When it seemed I should die to atone for it, I was repentant. Now that it seems I’ll live, I find myself growing reconciled to the fact."
"Ride."
She said no other word for fifteen minutes. No noise but the beat of hooves on frozen ground, hard riding, and the whip of leafless branches to avoid: voices shouting, a distant shot.
"Now."
She swung into cover in a copse at the edge of the Park. Dirty snow clung to trunks and twigs. Ahead, smoke breathed from chimneys. Her cheeks ached with the grin that, do what she would, stayed on her face.
"Leave the hired hacks to find their way back to the stables."
She took Pollexfen Calmady’s shoulder in her hand as he dismounted and came to peer out from cover.
"It’ll be seen fast enough that snow keeps us from leaving town." Her fingers dug into the white cloth of his coat. "And so we must have turned back into town, which we have; and for the next I count on their thoughts running in an old track. Which is, that all criminals and fugitives take refuge in the stews of Northbankside, and to that there’s but one way: the only bridge across Thamys, at Southwark."
The big man blinked dazed eyes. "They’ll have set guards on the bridge by now and we’re four miles away. Do we steal a boat—"
The White Crow turned her head so that her braids flew, cold hair stinging her cheeks. She shook him gently.
"All the Thamys is a bridge now! Ten minutes directly north of here, at Westminster, we can cross the ice and be in Northbankside, safely lost."
* * *
The Protector looked up from her desk at Humility Talbot.
"We have six who claim bastardy by the godless woman’s father." Talbot folded his hands together against the Tower room’s chill.
"Try their blood separately over the next six days. Omitting the sabbath, of course." Olivia turned back to her papers. It became apparent that the man waited. She lifted bulbous, placid features.
"General." Humility Talbot protested. "You know my skill in architecture is scant. Too much knowledge of the Black Art of Geometry corrupts the soul. But even I can tell that a temple consecrated with bastard blood is no temple but an abomination!"
"A temple is a temple," Olivia said tranquilly. "I have no intention, neither, of letting the godless woman Carola use a failure of ours as
steps to her own success. Do as I order."
The last, said kindly, brought a flush to his pale cheeks.
"Take these as you go." She held out a scroll of plans. Visible on one edge, neat inkwork lettered: ST. SOPHIA REBUILDING PROJECT. "They’ll serve to kindle a fire in the outer room."
Breath burned in her lungs, chest tight from exertion. The White Crow ran across herb-gardens, their surfaces nothing but lumpy snow; the paths’ deep mud frozen and crackling under her boots. She leaped a fence to the embankment and ducked into a jetty’s shelter.
Blue sky, fire-coloured to the west, spread out in a huge arc. Tall, tilted houses looked down on a slope that, in summer, would be stinking mud; the jutting piers and steps weed-shrouded. Now foot-tracked snow covered the banks and abandoned wherries of the Thamys.
Spars of wood and thrown bricks starred the ice that, ridged and rippled and deeper than the houses’ height, gleamed black under the crusting snow. Voices rasped her nerves with their nearness.
Deliberately, she did not look back. Running the risk on the knife-edge, aware, alert; the White Crow smiled as Pollexfen Calmady plodded through knee-deep snow and into the jetty’s shelter.
"Northbankside. "
Five hundred yards distant, across flat and exposed ice, the clustered tenements smudged the winter air with smoke. A little downriver the spires of Lambeth Palace jutted up. She cast a glance back over her shoulder. A mess of tiny alleys ran down from Westminster to the river houses here.
"It was as well, perhaps, to dress in white." She slid the leather cloak from her shoulders, reversing it to show the undyed wool lining. "You—"
Almost forgotten: who stands beside her. Almost forgotten, almost taken to be one of the Scholar-Soldiers who, in other days, shared other escapes. The shock of seeing his creased, sweating face made her head sing.
The gentleman-mercenary looked up at the sky.
She snarled. "Damn, there used not to be sentries at Westminster but I don’t know now: move!"
The winter sun shone on his shaved head, skin blotched red and blue with cold. He took three strides down onto the embankment, staring across the frozen river. Hurriedly she swung the cloak about her shoulders and followed.
His shoulder struck her a glancing blow.
She swore, staggered ankle-deep in fresh snow; grabbed to steady herself, and fell straddling a broken oar, frozen into the mud.
The big man sprawled on his knees, his head bowed. "Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy loving-kindness: according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions."
His bass voice boomed, resonant.
"Oh, Lord." The White Crow wrenched her knee and leg out of the snow, shivering, and slipped down beside him. "Now’s a fine time to think of the Hanging Psalm. Captain!"
Metal scraped scabbard.
A glimpse of blue cloth against blackened timbers: the tall soldier in redingote and plumed hat strode out of one alley. Cavalry boots crunched slush. His long sabre sliced sunlight. She in that one instant caught his eyes, bright with cold, registering the kneeling man all in white. The soldier opened his mouth, beard rimed with frozen breath.
"Hold! I arrest you in the Queen’s name!"
She appeared to stumble, rising from beside the kneeling man; drew her sword a fraction of a moment after the soldier raised his; stepped forward to engage and threw the handful of gathered ice into his eyes. She parried his thrust away one-handed, metal showering sparks; bashed his blade down; recovered a two-handed grip on her hilt and chopped an axe-blow up at his throat.
Explosive: hot, salt-wet liquid splashed her face and breast and shirt. She dripped red. His body’s weight pulled her forward. She braced, tugging the blade back, wrist jarred by contact with jaw and skull-bones. He slumped awkwardly on the frozen bank, head fallen back. Pierced jugular spouted rhythmically, dying to a dribble.
Hot wetness chilled. She coughed, choking on the butcher’s-shop stink. She pulled her doublet and shirt away from her body, wiped hopelessly at her breeches.
Blood dried taut on her skin.
She knelt and cleaned her blade on the dead man’s lace ruffles. His body cooled.
Snow, melted in her hands, ran red. She rinsed her face. The chill cut bone-deep. She wiped her boots with handfuls of snow, dabbed at stained shirt and abandoned the idea; and straightened to face the cold wind and the bright sun.
More distant voices: urgent.
She stooped again and went through the soldier’s pockets. Empty. A farthing lurked in the last, among fluff; she held it for a second and then threw it down to sparkle, bronze, on his chest.
His wig tipped back off his head into the snow; disclosing a young face, a scalp furred with baby-fine stubble.
Every muscle shaking, she turned. Pollexfen Calmady stood, barely risen to his feet. Blood soaked into the slush-ridged embankment. She guided the tip of her blade to the sheath with her other hand and snicked it home.
"Deliver me from blood-guiltiness, O God, thou God of my salvation—" Light moved on his face between his nose and cheek. The tear ran down and dropped. Calmady bent and picked up the dead soldier’s sabre. He shouldered past the White Crow, boots skidding as he crabbed down the river bank to the ice.
"I had as soon he’d lived. It was too sudden and I too unsure."
Her words lost themselves flatly in stinging cold air. She snatched up her cloak, bundled it over her reddened clothes; scrambling for the Thamys ice with the sound of other sentries’ calls echoing behind.
"Why should we run, go into exile?" The swarthy woman smiled. "Will you not fight for us if we stay?"
More soberly than one might have expected, Sir Denzil Waldegrave said, "Men will fight for your Majesty. Not win—the rebellious forces are too strong. But not entirely lose either. Bloody battles if you stay, madam."
"Would you have us abandon our father’s kingdom?"
Carola laughed, lazily, and rolled over among silk sheets and ruffled the boy’s hair. Denzil avoided his son’s eyes, glimpsing that young man’s nakedness under the cloth.
"We have it in mind to hold a masque."
He frowned. "Excellent device, your Majesty, had we but the money."
"A masque . . . upon Thamys, we think, the while it remains frozen. We will have the ice carven into fantastic shapes, and ways to bring fires out into midriver without danger—to moor balloons, perhaps, and suspend fires from them? And then to feast there, we think, a week and more; and then to hold the masque with such costumes, jewels, paint, and musicianry as was never seen before . . . The scenery itself carved from ice! Commission young poets to write it."
Sir Denzil Waldegrave lifted his comfit-box and selected a sweetmeat. He stared past the swarthy woman, through the window, towards the sun on the frozen river.
"As your Majesty desires. I . . . forgive me, these poets, cooks, bakers, mechanics; all will demand hard coin. There’s no more credit to be had in this city. I tried for that when it came to refurbishing the ordnance for this spring."
Regina Carola chuckled deep in her throat.
"We have the money. What, man, don’t look so amazed. We are this land’s monarch, and some are loyal still . . . We have six thousand guineas. We will devise this masque ourselves. Now hurry! And it shall be called—yes—The Masque of the Contention between Abstinence and Desire."
Walls of frozen snow bashed her shoulders as she stumbled down the narrow, lumpy corridor. The sky made a pale ribbon above her head. Deep trenches crisscrossed the Thamys: footpaths worn down and buttressed up through the snow that, where untouched, lay the height of a man on top of the river’s black ice.
The edge of the inside-out cloak hood rasped her cheek. The White Crow scratched at her face with fingers whose nails were rimmed brown-red. The cold numbed hands, face, feet. Rounded ice betrayed her steps. She staggered, shoulders tense.
Pollexfen Calmady’s breath echoed in the trench behind her. She spared one glance to see that he kept hi
s head down. The brief sight showed her no glimpse of the far-distant bank, invisible above the ice-trenches. She must assume soldiers outdistanced and Northbankside scant yards ahead.
"Here!"
The trench shallowed, opening up ahead of her. Late sun, pure and clear as honey, shone on the backs of tenement houses. Practised, her eye picked out the safe path to them, the path in cover—from concealing trench to pier to walled river bank, where frost-damaged masonry sprawled in collapse.
"Even if they can cross, that’s useless to them. This place is a maze! But wait."
She moved up a few yards, crouching in the shelter of the shallow trench, the trodden-down snow giving under her. A glance behind showed Westminster distant and deserted. For a moment no cold seeped through. Her breath feathered the air. A breathing, warm body shouldered down beside her. She gazed up, taking him in from slush-blackened boots to disarranged shirt. His lace cravat had burst open and now trailed down his half-unbuttoned coat, his chest heaving. A mutual campaigners’ conspiracy ignored the stink of shit.
She stared with nothing to say, almost shy: the man momentarily become again a stranger.
"I conceive it possible we’ll fight now." Captain Pollexfen Calmady handled the dead cavalryman’s sabre. "No?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"Not because of Desire Guillaime. And not because of Casaubon. And not even because I’ve got two children and know your feelings for Bevil and his for you. And not because of fear."
"That last I credit. The first I don’t apprehend."
She hacked one heel at the river’s dirty, thick ice. Cold gnawed at her feet and fingers and earlobes, reddened her cheeks, fired all her blood.
Away across the white expanse behind them a tiny flame flared. Seconds after, the shot’s echo sounded. Speculative fire. She drew the reversed cloak about her, the undyed wool lining merging into the colours of snow. Half-dry and half-damp shirt cloth crackled.
"Once I had to nurse a sick man in a little room. He died. Everything outside that room seemed to fade away. We were insulated, away from the rest of life." She shrugged.