Quillifer the Knight

by Walter Jon Williams

  I returned to Rackheath House and ate a simple, solitary supper, after which Rufino Knott and I made music. As we played, Knott leaned close to me and said, “Sir, I have discovered one of Darnley’s informers in the household.”

  “Who is it?”

  “Parkins, the yeoman of the buttery.”

  He who refilled the wine-cups, and was in a position to overhear what might be said between myself and my guests.

  “I hope he has reported that I instruct the servants to offer a loyalty toast before each meal.”

  “If he hasn’t,” said Knott, “I have.”

  “Very well then.”

  We played pleasantly for an hour or two, and then I went to bed. Your faint scent still lingered in the sheets, and when I fell into slumber, it brought me sweet dreams.

  * * *

  When I walked through the doors into the palace at Ings Magna, I saw the great marble staircase rise before me, lined on either side by the bright gilt mirrors. It seemed that ages had passed since I’d last been here, though it had been less than a year.

  I followed a page up those stairs, turned, and progressed through that long anteroom dominated by shelves filled with documents wrapped in blue and red ribbon. The page took me into Edevane’s office, where a fire snapped merrily in his hearth, and he sat behind his desk in a gown of green watered silk. He viewed an orrery, a mechanical model of the sun and planets, with our terraqueous globe in the center surrounded by gears and rods and whirling spheres. I wondered if Edevane was fancying himself as a god in the firmament, with all mortal life at his mercy.

  “Is your lordship studying the heavens?” I asked.

  “The mechanism is a gift from the grand seneschal of Loretto,” Edevane said. “It is ingenious, but useless.”

  I thought that the same might be said of the grand seneschal, who had proven so inept at finding lodging for Princess Floria, but I did not speak the thought aloud.

  “Useless?” said I. “The same might be said of many pretty things. Paintings, tapestries, centerpieces of silver. Yet we fill our houses with them.”

  “I know of no one, not even Roundsilver, who fills his house with orreries.” His lifeless eyes rose from the mechanism to fasten on mine. “May I offer you wine or other refreshment?”

  “It is a little early for wine,” I said. “I will take small beer, if you have it.”

  “Please be seated.” Edevane gave instructions to the page, then turned again to me. “Have you anything to report?” he asked.

  “Ay, as the Warden in Ordinary Against Monsters,” said I. “There are a pair of wyverns in the Toppings, and kitlings in Ethlebight. I shall send my deputy to deal with them.”

  “Wyverns?” he said in his soft, reasoned voice. “Are they not dangerous beasts, like dragons? Should you not go in person?”

  “These are small. I have encountered this pair myself, when they were the pets of Sir Basil of the Heugh.”

  “That robber you killed.”

  “Ay,” said I. “I intended only to capture him, so he might be tried for his crimes, but there was a fight and he died. When he and his band were in the Toppings, he raised the wyverns from eggs, but he abandoned them when he fled, and they are now plundering the cotters’ geese and hens.”

  “And kitlings? What are they?”

  “Furry, winged creatures the size of large dormice. They eat rats and other vermin, but they are growing in size and may soon be a menace. It will be a case for nets and traps, I expect.”

  Edevane tilted his head. “Your plans seem often to go amiss, Lord Warden,” he said. “Especially where force is concerned. You wished to capture Sir Basil, but you killed him. You intended to give Sir Brynley a dunking, and instead he drowned. Harvey Meens you wished to spare, and instead he broke his back. Only Sir Edelmir seems to have escaped, and he fled as if the sheriff were after him.”

  “My plans were fine, I think,” said I. “But I admit the failure of execution.”

  “I trust there will be no more wrathful husbands or brothers?” said Edevane. “At least with Mistress d’Altrey, no male relations will interfere.”

  I was only a little surprised that Edevane knew about you, and the surprise was only that he had found out so quickly. But then I had kissed you in front of half a dozen servants, and so the whole town had probably found out within hours.

  “I am following your advice, my lord,” I said.

  “I advised you to buy a woman,” Edevane said. “It is by far the simplest approach, and is attended by the fewest consequences. But I am glad you are involved with Mistress d’Altrey, for through her you may have access to the household of Her Highness Floria.”

  “You are still concerned for the princess?”

  “Always.” The word was very deliberate, and I detected a flash of determination in those dead-fish eyes. “I had hoped you would by this time have information concerning Her Highness.”

  “She foiled my best efforts by not following me to Loretto.”

  Edevane allowed annoyance into his soft tone. “Her Highness has left the security of Ings Magna and purchased a house on the lake. It is now more difficult to keep her safe.”

  I understood “safe” to mean “under Edevane’s control,” but responded to the more literal meaning. “Well,” said I, “I will do my best to preserve her, an she permits it.”

  Edevane’s plans, I thought, had become unmoored. With his facility for discerning in advance the wishes of his superiors, he had assumed Berlauda would view her half-sister as a threat and had been building a case against the princess that might bring her to the scaffold—but now Priscus had offered marriage, and that meant Floria’s life was suddenly precious to the monarch, and worth her weight in rubies. Edevane was obliged to treat her as a potential queen while still allowing for the possibility that he might have to arrange for her indictment as a traitor.

  “And Countess Marcella?” Edevane demanded. “What information have you about Marcella?”

  I looked at him in surprise. The soft, precise voice had disappeared, and he had turned curt and angry.

  “I have from Mistress d’Altrey that she sleeps little,” I said. “Other than that, nothing.”

  “I believe she is a complete fraudster,” Edevane said. “Over the winter she swindled over five thousand royals from Her Late Majesty.”

  “Swindled? Do you mean at games?”

  “Ay,” said Edevane, “for the countess cannot be honest and still win such sums.”

  “In my experience it is better to be her partner than not,” said I. “But in what game did she defraud Queen Berlauda?”

  “Cards and hazard both. I do not know the details.” Edevane’s mouth twitched in what was probably the beginnings of a snarl, but he was too disciplined to allow his anger full expression. “Marcella has notes for the money with Queen Berlauda’s hand and seal,” he said. “If she presents them to the treasury before the meeting of the Estates, there will be an outcry very inconvenient to the cause of His Majesty.”

  I recalled how the issue of royal gambling had been raised at the last Estates, and reckoned this would be worse.

  “Is there some way to prove fraud?” asked I. “Were there no witnesses?”

  I knew Edevane could call up all the witnesses he wanted with a wave of his hand, but they would all be professional informers and perjurers, and it would be hard to rely on such men when arraigning a noblewoman under the protection of a member of the royal family.

  Edevane looked at me, and there was a calculation in those dead eyes that sent a chill up my back. “Perhaps you could buy the notes?” he said.

  “To be presented to the treasury at a later date, I assume.” My words floated into a great silence. I shook my head.

  “I would like to oblige your lordship,” I said, “but I have little ready money.”

  The response was quick. “Did you not just have a great ship arrive from Tabarzam?”

  I was not surprised that Edevane knew of So
vereign’s arrival. “Sovereign brought a rich cargo,” said I, “but I cannot sell it for what it’s worth. There is famine in the country, and all ready money is caught up in speculation in the grain markets, which drives the price of bread up and up, and the price of everything else down. My goods are intended to adorn the person and enhance the standing of the greatest in the land, but even the greatest have less money now. My own situation is now such that I must borrow to live, and borrow to warehouse my cargo until I can sell it. And of course I own Sovereign in partnership with another, and so the profit does not go entirely into my pocket.” I waved a regretful hand. “I am sorry that I cannot oblige your lordship, but in these desperate times I am near to drowning in debt. I am living from month to month, and I fear that soon I will be unable to meet my rent on Lord Rackheath’s house.” I shrugged. “Yet if the prize court in Ferrick can be persuaded to rule on the two prizes taken by my ship Ostra, I might be able to purchase some of these notes, though hardly all.”

  Edevane’s tone turned curt. “I trust you will soon pay a call upon the princess,” he said. “And now I have other business.”

  “My lord.” I rose, and Edevane held up a hand to prevent me leaving.

  “You have a new set of gems, do you not?” he said. “Bring some to my house within the week. I would buy my lady some ornament.”

  “It would be my pleasure, my lord.” I bowed and made my way out. Around me, clerks scribbled with Q Sable Ink and tied the documents with red and blue ribbon. Blue ribbon is used for matters that are still in progress, Edevane had said. Red ribbon for those matters which have reached a happy resolution.

  Ribbon red as a condemned traitor’s blood.

  * * *

  Blackwell came to my house after dinner, and I told him what would be required to get his octavo edition free of the warehouse, and then handed him foolscap. “I have writ lines for your crew. You may improve them, but do not lose their sense.”

  Blackwell scanned the pages. “How am I to find this cast of characters?”

  I shrugged. “Are you not a member of an acting troupe? And surely someone in your company knows how to drive a cart.”

  He knit his brow. “When should this be tried? The dead of night?”

  “Tomorrow afternoon, I advise just before the watches change at four. The guards will be tired and hungry and less likely to interfere.”

  The playwright sighed. “Must it be turnips?”

  “Cabbages and neeps are also permissible,” said I, “but nothing so small as celeriac or a parsnip.”

  * * *

  Blackwell’s troupe assembled the next afternoon in a former stable used for rehearsals, a large, open-beamed empty space that smelled of old dust and newly painted scenery. Mountmirail’s mechanical dragon hung from the wall on pegs, its fangs bared. Waiting just outside was one of the two-wheeled carts used to shift costumes and scenery from one venue to another. The company were suitably disguised, with Blackwell in a white wig and whitened beard, and his narrow frame bulked out in a suit that made him look like an obese, jolly publican. I, as the most recognizable public figure of the company, had a vast black spade-shaped beard stuck to my face with glue, and a pair of horn spectacles perched on my nose.

  We spent the morning in rehearsal, marred somewhat by the clowns, who tried to improve their lines and create new comic business. Blackwell and I both opposed this on the grounds that real laboring men do not display uproarious well-honed routines in the course of their work.

  The cart was loaded with burlap bags of turnips and trotted away to the waterfront a quarter-league away. The empty cart was back in half an hour, and the company shared some cider, bread, and cheese while Blackwell sat in a corner, beneath an open window, and penned his next work, sometimes counting out the meter on his fingers—he was experimenting with trochaic tetrameter catalectic.

  The guard would change at four o’clock, and so we set out at thirty minutes to the hour. I let the cart and its crew leave first, and then Rufino Knott helped me atop Phrenzy, then leaped upon his cob. I wore a leather jerkin and breeches, carried a whip in a hand marked by a gaudy signet, and affected to be a rustic member of the Burgesses come to town, with Knott my footman in a livery borrowed from the company’s costumer.

  We ambled through Howel’s broad avenues to the docks. The poor and dispossessed were everywhere, haunting the city like a legion of ghosts. When we came to the quay, we saw the cart waiting outside the door of the warehouse, with the driver on the box. Beneath the working man’s disguise I recognized Lexter, the young actor who seemed condemned to always play the male ingenue’s best friend. A cool, gusting wind plucked at my beard.

  The quay was filled with traffic, workers shifting cargo on and off the boats and barges that were packed along the waterfront like sardines. The red bonnets of the Yeoman Archers could be seen up and down the quay, and I saw one of the officers leaning on a bollard while a servant tended to his bay charger. I marked him to approach later and moved down the quay, feigning an inspection of the boats.

  My false beard itched like a flea-infested hound, but I was afraid to scratch lest the whiskers detach themselves from my face.

  Blackwell stepped out of the warehouse door in his portly-publican guise, and I knew that my little play was about to begin. I turned Phrenzy and rode to within a few paces of the officer, but reined up when Phrenzy’s ears pricked up, and I sensed he might be contemplating an assault on the officer’s bay charger.

  “Pardon me, sir!” I waved my whip at the officer. “Have you seen the barge Fair Maude? Captain Whelton?”

  He gave me a condescending look. He was one of the handsome gentlemen with which the late queen liked to surround herself, a lithe, languid young fellow scarcely able to raise a respectable goatee. He clearly considered himself my superior, or at least superior to the rustic squire I was imitating.

  “What boat was that?” he asked.

  “Fair Maude.” I spat out bits of false beard that had pasted themselves against my teeth. “My wife and her sister are aboard. Have you seen them?”

  The officer indicated the crowds on the quay. “I have seen many pairs of women today.” Over his shoulder I saw a net swing out from the upper storey of the warehouse, a net filled with rough hempen burlap bags. This was quickly lowered to the cart and emptied—though over the shouts and bustle of the crowd I could not hear the lines I’d written, I could nevertheless appreciate the superbly performed bit of comic business that unfolded before me, as Blackwell and another of his troupe collided, and one of the burlap bags spilled its cargo of turnips onto the quay.

  There was a shout, a scramble, and laughter from spectators as turnips bounded over the cobbles. Blackwell and his actors dashed to retrieve the turnips, but some vanished beneath the cloaks or skirts of destitute men and women. The officer looked over his shoulder at the chaos, gave a condescending smile, and returned to me.

  “I’m afraid I cannot help you, sir,” said he.

  “My wife is a tall woman,” I said helpfully. “She would be wearing one of those new caps, you know, with a feather.”

  The net rose to the upper floor of the warehouse and was drawn inside to be refilled.

  The bag that had spilled had been filled with turnips, and had been spilled deliberately in order to help convince onlookers that all the bags were filled with turnips, even though many of them had been stuffed with copies of Blackwell’s The Court of Laelius, with turnips thrown on top to give the bags the proper irregular shape.

  To the officer I continued to describe my supposed wife, giving her dimples, curly hair, large feet, and several chins. The officer seemed to be enjoying the description and did not notice as the net descended a second time to the cart. Blackwell and his group shifted the bags into the cart, and then the net rose again.

  A member of the troupe appeared in the door with a burlap bag in his arms. “Here’s the last one, sir!” he said, and let it fall.

  The cart’s box was surroun
ded by “stakes,” that is, upright pieces of wood that rose from the bed and supported horizontal planks that framed the area reserved for cargo. The stakes extended well above the box itself, and could be strung with netting to restrain any large bits of scenery or wardrobes for the troupe’s costumes.

  No one in the cart was expecting forty pounds of contraband to be dropped on them, and Blackwell dodged the bag that seemed to be aimed for his head. It landed not on the other bags, but on one of the stakes that supported the sides of the cart. The bag burst as it was skewered by the stake, and I saw a perfect white cloud of The Court of Laelius rise over the vehicle.

  Lexter whipped up his nag before the paper began to settle, and I knew that it was necessary to keep the officer from viewing the cascade of paper. “Now my wife’s sister, you see,” I bellowed, “also has large shoes, but not because her feet are big, but because she suffers from bunions.” But my words were in vain, for the crowd had cried out at the bursting bag, and octavo pamphlets were still drifting toward the ground when the officer turned to see what was the matter. His supercilious, languid pose vanished, and he pointed at the retreating cart.

  “You there! Halt!”

  “What is it?” I cried eagerly. “Is it a thief?” I urged Phrenzy forward, blocking the officer’s view—and Phrenzy muttered deep in his throat, a sound akin to the growl of a ban-dog, and then sank his teeth into the hindquarters of the officer’s bay charger. The bay gave a shriek and lashed out with both hind feet, and struck Phrenzy on the chest. My steed bellowed a challenge and reared, his forefeet flashing out, and the bay snorted and shifted out of the way. This brought the officer’s groom, hanging on to the bay’s reins, dangerously within range of Phrenzy’s hooves, and he ducked away and tried to calm his animal.

  “Curb your horse, sir!” he told me sharply.

  I had no chance of controlling Phrenzy whatsoever, but I did my best to imitate a proper equestrian and yanked the reins around while continuing to bellow, “Is it a thief? Is it a thief?”