“Of course, Highness.” We left Mountmirail chatting happily with Mistress Ransome, and as we strolled back to the house, I told her how I hoped to save my native city. “But no one knows how to build a canal,” I said.
“Of course we do,” Floria said. “Howel is full of canals.”
“But they are ditches that connect two bodies of water that are at the same level. The Ethlebight Canal will have to go up and down hills using locks, which we don’t know how to build. But Mountmirail tells me that the real problem will be the danger of the water leaking out.”
Floris looked at me in surprise. “Leaking out? Water does not leak out of the canals in Howel.”
“Nay,” said I, “but that water is the same level as the lake, or the Dordelle, and these are the same level as the water below the soil. There is no place for the water to leak to, for below the ground everything is wet. Whereas if we are to build a canal where the water flows above the level of the water under the ground, the water will ooze out unless we seal the canal with some kind of impermeable substance.”
I was about to step ahead to open a door for Her Highness, but my footmen were alert and swept open the doors and bowed as Floria passed. As she walked into the game room, she gestured to the yeoman of the buttery, who refilled her goblet. She took a sip, then turned again to me.
“What sort of impermeable substance?” she asked.
“The old Aekoi engineers lined their canals with a kind of mortar that repelled water,” said I, “and you can see this in the old canals that survive in Bonille, but the secret of its manufacture is lost. I had thought about lining the canal with Ethlebight brick, but bricks must be fixed with mortar, and if the mortar is washed away, the canal will still fail.”
“Master Mountmirail admits he has no solution?”
“The canal could be lined with clay,” I said, “but the clay would have to be renewed every few years as it washed away. But Mountmirail will begin work on the problem once I have built him a lime kiln, and I’m confident he will find a solution before the first spadeful of earth is turned.”
Floria smiled. “It must be useful to have such a prodigy in your service.”
I waved a dismissive hand. “He is not in my service, Highness. He labors for me only so long as I provide interesting work for him. And if you look for genius, have you not Edith Ransome?”
“She is brilliant, ay. But her interests and conclusions are of little practical use to me. Whereas you will get a canal, an astronomical engine to sell to every mariner in creation, and ink in bottles.” She sipped her wine again, and then the dinner gong rang. She touched my arm. “Perhaps I will sponsor this canal of yours, Quillifer. But you will have to forego your plans to name the canal after yourself, and instead name it after me.”
I was so astonished that it took me a moment to recover. “Your name may grace the project, of course. Though I had no plans to name the canal after myself.”
Floria’s eyes widened in feigned surprise. “How unlike you, Quillifer, not to trumpet yourself. Are you sure you are feeling entirely well?”
Roundsilver approached to take Floria into dinner. She took his arm, then turned to me. “I desire immortality, Quillifer,” she said. “And if it must come in the form of an astronomical observatory and a stretch of water, then I will take what I can.”
* * *
Between my duties as host, the discussion of Laelius and politics, and the necessity of explaining the canal project to possible investors, I was unable to find a private moment with you till the afternoon was far advanced. I found you in a corner of a parlor, and I hastened to embrace you and feast upon your lips. “Can you stay the night?” I asked.
“Floria will have us all return in a body,” you said. “She will not have it said that she lost one of her ladies at a gentleman’s house.”
“You would not be lost,” said I, “for I would keep you under my eye every moment you are here.”
You smiled and kissed my nose. “Yet I must attend Her Highness tonight. I might have some time free tomorrow afternoon, and I will send a message if I can call upon you.” You freed yourself from my arms and adjusted your myrrh-scented hair.
I told you that Floria had offered to sponsor the canal, and you laughed. “I have been urging her to make use of you, and now you make use of her. The canal will provide your excuse to visit us, and so we two may see each other all the more.”
“And without the tedious necessity of my seducing a royal princess,” said I, “and as a consequence, being condemned to death.”
You gestured with your fan. “We may keep that plan in reserve then,” you said. “For there is no gain without risk.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Two days later I called upon my lord Edevane at his home and sold him some gems. I asked more money than was usual for me, and rejoiced in depriving him of some of the profits of his extortion schemes. He dressed grandly in black velvet and sat enthroned in his cabinet, surrounded by chalices of gold, mirrors framed in silver, and carvings of ivory and alabaster. Costly carpets were piled on the floor, and the impression was that his house was worth a lord’s ransom—Lord Thistlegorm’s, as it might be. An angry light shone behind Edevane’s spectacles, for he was livid that Countess Marcella had presented her bills to the treasury, and that word of Berlauda’s extravagant losses had reached the people. “This is what I most feared,” he said, “that Her Highness Floria is subject to the daily influence of this creature who cheated Her Majesty.”
“Her Majesty has passed from this world, along with her extravagance,” I said. “There will be other issues raised by the Estates.” I looked at him. “For instance, my lord—is it true that we are now at war with Sélange and its four allies?”
The light behind the spectacles faded, and I repressed a chill as those dead eyes sought mine. “Where have you heard that?” he asked.
“There is free passage between Loretto and Duisland,” I said, “and news does not stop at the border.”
“Floria’s ladies, I’ll warrant,” said he. “Countess Marcella again.”
“I did not have it from her,” said I. “But if it were intended to be a secret, it is the worst-kept secret in the world.”
Edevane pursed his lips in thought and tapped the fingers of his left hand against the fingers of his right. “The viceroy will not be pleased,” he murmured.
I wondered now at the precise nature of Edevane’s position. For his post was that of principal private secretary to Queen Berlauda, and Berlauda was dead. It might be argued that his position had died with her, but yet he remained in his office at Ings Magna, and continued to manage the documents wrapped in red and blue ribbon. His position depended on the continued favor of King Priscus and his viceroy, the abbot Fosco, and delivering bad news was notoriously a way to lose favor.
“I have also obtained a means to regularly access Her Highness’s house,” I said.
“Besides Mistress d’Altrey?” His tone was ill-tempered.
I told him of my canal project, and how Floria had suggested she might sponsor the work. “Should the bill for the canal pass the Estates, and receive the royal assent,” said I, “I will be making reports to Her Highness on the progress of the work, and have every excuse to be in her household.”
His ill-tempered tone did not fade with this news. “And what will the canal cost the crown?” he asked.
“Not a penny,” said I. “We would not bother the government at all, if it were not for the matter of receiving permission to purchase right-of-way along the line of the canal.”
He regarded me with his cold eyes. “You have not the funds to buy those notes of Marcella’s,” he said, “and yet you plan to build a canal.”
I donned my innocent-choirboy face. “My lord,” I said, “I did not say I would build it with my money. I propose to recruit investors, largely from those merchants of Ethlebight who will profit most from the project.” I inclined my head toward Edevane. “You might consider
investing yourself, my lord.”
“My interests are closer to home than Ethlebight,” said he.
“As you wish, my lord.”
Again he tapped his fingers together. “His Majesty desires twenty-five thousand new troops,” he said. “We assume the government can count on your vote.”
I noted the royal “we” and replied. “I will do everything I can to oblige His Majesty. But before they send more troops, the Estates may wish a reckoning of what happened to the last batch.”
Edevane chose not to respond, but instead dismissed me with the wave of a ring-bedecked hand. “Come to me when you have news.”
I rose and bowed. “Your servant,” I said, and made my way out. As I passed through the parlor, I found waiting the Count of Wenlock, his black mourning dress a contrast to the brilliance of Edevane’s tapestries, carpets, and mirrors. His hands crumpled his cap, working at it like a baker kneading dough. I nodded.
“I believe you still owe me twenty-five royals,” I said.
A cold light glittered from his blue eyes. “I spent it repairing the boat you wrecked,” he said.
“Well, it would be tedious to call all the witnesses to testify to the wager,” I said, and then turned my eyes deliberately to the door of Edevane’s study. “Yet it would be a shame to have to inform your master that you are not a man of your word.”
The red of rage filled Wenlock’s face, but before he could say anything more, Edevane’s page came to announce that Edevane would see him. I made my own way out.
The Estates would meet the next day, and we would see if Fosco could manage them any better than Priscus had.
* * *
The previous autumn I had ridden as part of an armored column to the House of Peers, a thousand men clad in steel thundering down the avenues of Howel as escort to King Priscus while the crowd cheered and waved banners and handkerchiefs. This year the column of riders came with Viceroy Fosco to the Estates, but I was not among them, and instead waited for them inside the House of Burgesses. The old college hall was surprisingly small, its five hundred members crowded nearly atop one another, and the old tapestries on the walls made it dark. The venerable oaken benches, carved with the initials and mottoes of long-dead Burgesses, were long and hard, and each member brought his own cushion, and some brought footstools. As a new member, my bench was high up in the chamber, where I had a very good view of the coffered ceiling, with its tessellations and gilt rosettes, and could look straight down at the wan winter light gleaming on the Speaker’s bald head.
The visitors’ gallery was nearly empty, for no business would be conducted in the house that day.
I had nothing to do, so I made the acquaintance of the members around me. One had a flask of brandy, which he shared, and so we passed the time pleasantly till the herald of brass pounded on the door and was turned away, to be followed by the herald of silver and the herald of gold, at which point we rose and walked in procession to the House of Peers. We walked along practically under the noses of the mounted force that had come with the viceroy, and if the purpose of those stern knights in armor was to intimidate the Burgesses, they certainly succeeded, at least in my case. They were in a bad temper, for unlike the previous year there had been no cheers from the meiny, no waving of handkerchiefs, nothing but jeers and sour looks. I remembered Greene saying that the Burgesses could not be ruled through terror, and I maintained a blithe countenance, and waved a greeting when I recognized a face beneath the visor of the helmet.
The House of Peers is a motley, shambling structure, very old and rather dirty, but it has one magnificent feature, which is the great hall in which the peers sit. The hammer-beam roof with its gilt carvings rises thirty yards or more from the paving, and frames the huge canopy of scarlet and gold that overhangs the throne. There Fosco sat, in dark, silken monk’s robes, with the white rod of his office in a hand glittering with jeweled rings. He was flanked by the seated peers, two hundred or more, all wearing their coronets and their red, ermine-trimmed robes. Among them were a few in the robes of monks, for abbots of some of the oldest monasteries were ranked among the peers. The scent of olibanum wafted on the air, from a ceremony that had been performed earlier.
We Burgesses, in our black, clustered before the Bar of the House like a murder of crows. We were permitted to go no farther than the Bar, and no chairs were provided for us, so we remained on our feet for the entire ceremony.
The Speaker bowed to the viceroy as a signal that the Burgesses were prepared to hear the latter’s address. Fosco rose and began to read his speech aloud.
His command of the Duisland tongue was uncertain, and he had a strong accent that at times made it impossible to make out exactly what he was saying. But most of his speech was plain enough to his listeners, for he spoke without the rhetorical flourishes that a native politician might employ, and his message was direct.
Duisland was at war, he said, and its king in the field with his army. In order to bring the war to a successful conclusion, His Majesty required twenty-five thousand more troops, plus supply and cannon and transport. The Estates were enjoined to provide these, and to make certain they were paid for.
As the previous year’s taxes were in arrears, the government would introduce reforms in the collection of revenue to make certain that these new taxes would be collected.
In addition, the government intended to introduce a new bill making it treason to publish libels against the government. It was already illegal to libel the crown, of course, with the penalties ranging from fines to prison to the pillory, but the new law was clearly aimed at the author of Laelius, and at bringing him to the scaffold to be torn to pieces by the executioner. I worried for Blackwell, for it was clear that the government’s hunt would be thorough and prolonged; but I feared also for anyone who dared to criticize Priscus or Fosco by any means whatever.
The virtue of Fosco’s address was that it was short, after which Lord Chancellor Oldershaw thanked the viceroy, and the Burgesses were dismissed to return to our own chamber. After which we held our adjournment, and I went to the quay where my galley waited, and was taken to the house of Her Highness Floria, a small, shabby old palace called Wenweyn Hall, which would require a good deal of work before it was truly a suitable lodge for a member of the royal family. My crew was made welcome in the servants’ hall while I told Floria about the viceroy’s speech. You were present, of course, along with Mistress Tavistock and Countess Marcella, who asked a number of questions about our Estates, to compare it with the ancient senate of her own country.
“It is good that you have come, Quillifer,” Floria told me. “The viceroy does not consult me on these matters, and I am as ignorant of the political life of the capital as a country squire from the West Range.”
I think that was not precisely true, for I was not the only visitor. Roundsilver arrived, and that Lord Mellender who was engaged to marry Chenée Tavistock, along with a few barons, a count and countess, and a marchioness or two. Princess Floria, in her stainless white satin gown, began to look like the shining monarch at the center of a miniature court.
Floria led the party into the game room. It was then that I was finally able to speak to you alone, as we faced each other over a game of bagatelle. “You said that Her Highness didn’t wish to lose a lady at the home of a gentleman,” I said. “I wonder if you can contrive to lose yourself here, for the space of a few hours?”
“It would be noted if we vanished together.”
“I believe our love is hardly a secret.”
“Secret or not, I prefer not to behave scandalously in front of others. And I know Floria wouldn’t like it.”
I sighed. “What is the point of having a liaison known to everyone, if we can never actually liaise?” “Liaise” being a word I invented on the spot.
I took a shot, and my ball bounced off the pins and came to a rest more or less where it had started. Triumph glittered in your black eyes, and you readied your cue.
“Let
us play another hour or so,” you said, “and then I will claim fatigue and withdraw. You will play on for a while, but at five o’clock I will meet you on the quay, and then your galley may carry us to whatever pleasures the evening may offer.”
And then you struck the ball with your cue, and it sank into the hole for eight points.
There were a surfeit of delights upon our return to my house, but one was unexpected, and that was a bill on the Bank of Howel from the Count of Wenlock for my twenty-five royals. His fear of Edevane had caused him to open his purse, and I began to think how we might best enjoy this unexpected bounty.
* * *
“I would like to propose to this house,” said Umbrey, “that the bill under consideration be tabled for the present, until the crown answereth those questions which perplex our members.”
Umbrey, the merchant from Selford, stood beneath the coffered ceiling of the House of Burgesses, prepared as he had been before to lead the opposition to the government.
“We desire to know how many nations oppose us in the field. Is it one? Six? Ten?” He made a grand gesture. “And have there not been battles? Battles at Diewil, at Monsour, at Mont Arlen, at Mennhaym, at Thurnhout? What were the results of these battles, and how many of our country were engaged, and how many were killed and wounded? Since His Majesty’s glorious success in his campaign this last winter, is it true that the fortunes of war have not favored us, and that we now fight on the defensive? When does His Majesty propose to bring the war to a victorious conclusion—will there be need for more troops next year, and the year after?”
The new chancellor of the exchequer, an infestulous little man named Morley, glared at Umbrey from across the aisle. He had laid the bill for the soldiers and new taxes before the house, and now Umbrey was proposing to ignore it.
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