“That may not be possible, Highness, at least in Howel.”
She gave me a sharp look. “You believe I should fly?”
I evaded a direct answer to the question. “It is better to fly, not away from something, but toward something else, some object,” said I. “In any case the decision would be up to you. I hope you will remember that I own ships, and that I am at your service.”
“That is very kind,” said she.
“In the meantime,” said I, “is it possible that you give me something that will satisfy Lord Edevane? Cannot you receive a letter that might cast some doubt on one of the viceroy’s most loyal supporters?”
“Such ingenuity is only to be expected from you,” Floria sighed. “But such a plan is more likely than not to go astray. I prefer not to be interrogated about my correspondence.”
“You would know best, Highness.”
She cast a glance at the squint. “You and I should only speak directly to one another. I would not compromise Mistress d’Altrey by sending messages to and fro. She is already in danger enough, in my service and also born to an attainted family.”
This, I thought, reflected well on Floria’s kindness, though of course I have told you everything anyway.
I said that I would make it my business to visit two or three times each week, or whenever I had news. And then she bade me good afternoon, and I bowed and made my way out, casting a glance through the squint to see you still reading your book. And then your eyes flickered upward to meet mine for the span of a heartbeat, and I read there a promise that you would fulfill later that night.
* * *
“You are in an admirable position,” you told me that evening. “For if Floria ends in a position of power, you will have your canal and probably your monopoly; and if you provide Edevane with information, you will have the same.”
“That information would be perjured,” said I.
“What?” You laughed. “Are you the only honest man at court?” But you saw on my face the inward struggle these words had provoked, and you put a hand on my arm. “Ay,” you said, “who would not prefer Floria? She has been kind to me. But the fate of my father and brothers taught me a terrible lesson, which is that we cannot save everybody. If Her Highness is doomed, then we must look out for ourselves.”
We spoke in Lord Rackheath’s great carved bed, with the velvet curtains drawn open to allow the flickering light of scented candles to dance in your eyes.
“We must see Floria is not doomed,” I said as I gazed in futility at the dark canopy overhead. “But I know not what to do. If I had money, I could attempt something.”
A glimmer of interest shone in your eyes. “I have spoken to my friend at the bank. He said he might be able to help us with the letter of credit.”
In burning joy I kissed you. “I will bring you that letter tomorrow.”
* * *
In joyless procession we trooped across the square to the House of Peers. The viceroy’s armored escort, looking down at us from their chargers, were no less miserable, for the skies mizzled down on them, cold raindrops ringing off their steel helmets.
We Burgesses entered the House of Peers and gathered before the Bar. Collectively we smelled like a pack of wet dogs. I saw that the viceroy already sat in his throne, his hand firmly closed about his white staff. Only half the peers were present, their fine scarlet cloaks and gold coronets dull and dark on this dreary day. A storm of rain pattered on the windows as the Lord Chancellor asked Fosco to speak.
“We mourn the loss of our king and queen,” Fosco said, “but we rejoice in the continued health of our new royal master, King Aguila. I am pleased to inform the Estates that the regency council has been formed in Loretto, and Her Majesty Queen Arletta has been placed at its head. The late king’s brother Prince Tiburcio has been placed at the head of the army, and from his generalship much is expected.”
He raised his head and favored the peers with a defiant look. “No alteration in the government of Duisland is contemplated. The arrangements made by the late king and queen will remain in force. We reserve to ourselves all the power of the Crown of Duisland, and we will continue to be advised by the Privy Council as it now stands.” His glance turned to those of us mustered before the Bar.
“We again urge the Burgesses to do your business quickly, and raise the funds necessary for victory against Thurnmark and her allies. Do your duty to King Aguila, worship the Compassionate Pilgrim, and, lastly, contemplate no strife, and the blessings of peace will rain upon these houses and the realm.”
Perhaps the word “rain” was ill-advised. A squall stormed in the square as we left the House of Peers, and we scurried over the cobbles in an undignified mob. The armored escort, plumes drooping, ignored us as they formed to escort Viceroy Fosco’s carriage back to Ings Magna.
Back in the House of Burgesses, we threw off our dripping cloaks and spent the rest of the day trooping one by one to the Speaker’s bench, and there swearing formal allegiance to an infant. I cared no more for the oath than I did for the child.
I didn’t go to Floria’s that day, for I was sure any number of people would flock to tell her that there would be no regency council in Duisland.
I had an unexpected visitor at Rackheath House that next day: Baron Becket, who had held my seat in the Burgesses until his elevation to the peerage. He wished me to sign a petition directed at Queen Arletta and her regency council, asking them to dismiss Fosco and set up a regency council in Duisland, headed by the great lords of the realm.
“What?” I asked. “Do you think I have a spare head?”
“I think if we stand all together—” he began.
“Loretto thinks of Duisland as a fountainhead for money and soldiers,” said I. “Neither Queen Arletta nor any other member of their council cares for Duisland’s rights or privileges, and all hope that you will surrender your liberties and your fortunes and get on with the melancholy business of turning our country into a conquered province.”
Perhaps I was oversharp with him, but I think I was right in not wanting my signature attached to anything like an act of subversion. I could see his face tighten in anger.
“I am sorry, my lord,” I said, “but this is business for the peers. If all the peers stood together and refused Fosco’s misrule, that might attract the notice and even the sympathy of the Lorettan peers; but I saw your house this morning, and it seems half the members are missing—run away, or hiding, or having already surrendered all power to the viceroy.”
His lips worked, and then he shook his gray head. “Ay, you may be right,” he conceded. “Yet this tyranny must be opposed.”
“If the peers will not oppose Fosco, then the country must. But that opposition must be in the country, not in the capital, where Fosco has his power.”
Becket made a disgusted noise. “Fosco is already raising his twenty-five thousand soldiers. He has the household troops. He could use them against us.”
“They will be worth little if he can’t pay them.”
Beyond the monarch’s bodyguard, and some companies of royal troops holding royal castles and the citadels of the major towns, Duisland had never had a standing army. We were proud of the Trained Bands, our militia, but these were under the orders of the city corporations or the lords lieutenants, depending on where they were raised, and they were not obliged to serve abroad. The forces of the country significantly outnumbered the forces of the king, and this had been a significant check on the monarch’s power. King Stilwell had raised a large army to invade Loretto, but he had been a popular king who fought a traditional enemy, not a foreign despot intent on subduing the entire population.
“You think we must resist paying these taxes,” said Becket.
“I think there are ways in which tax collectors can be convinced not to oppress their friends and neighbors,” said I.
Becket rubbed his chin. “Do you think I should return to Hurst Downs? Meet with our neighbors?”
“Wait
until the Burgesses vote,” said I. “And then you can tell the voters of Hurst Downs just what the Crown expects of them, and let them make up their own minds what to do about it.”
* * *
The next day the Burgesses met to vote on a hearth tax and a window tax, that tax that had darkened the dwellings of all Loretto. But worse than the window tax was the hearth tax, which would lie heavily even on those common people who could not afford windows, or even a chimney.
Both bills were recorded as passed by acclamation, as no one asked for a division.
It seemed that Fosco or Edevane had overheard my comment about the discretion of tax collectors in oppressing their neighbors, because the next vote was to have the taxes farmed. Instead of collections being made by local authorities or by the revenue service, the taxes would be let out to private companies, who would have the authority to invade the houses of every citizen of the realm in order to count the hearths and windows, and to make certain the land tax was properly paid. Once the tax farmers turned over to the crown those revenues that were due, they would keep any additional monies they had extorted from the people, and would live on their spoils like little kings.
Even the Burgesses that had been tamed by the executions of Greene and Umbrey raised objections to this, until Morley firmly called for a division, and we filed into the lobbies to be counted. Though no one liked the bill, only a dozen or so defied the viceroy by voting nay. They were so few I reckoned it would hardly be worth Fosco’s while to cut off their heads.
As for myself, I meekly voted with the majority, though in my defense I can say that I never once considered bidding for one of the tax farm contracts. It would have made me rich, but I would have despised myself.
From the palace, Viceroy Fosco announced that he was issuing writs quo warranto for the surrender of the charters and foundations of all the major cities in Duisland. He would “adjust,” he proclaimed, these charters, removing irregularities and corruptions, and reissue them in purified form. In the meantime, legally speaking, the cities would cease to exist—and it was plain that no city would be rechartered unless their mayors and aldermen were heart and soul the viceroy’s men.
Similarly, the Commission of Inquiry moved to impound the charters of all monasteries throughout the kingdom, in order to seek out what they called “irregularities.” The monasteries were to be “reformed” and brought into compliance with Fosco’s notion of the divinity of the Pilgrim. Abbots and other monastic officers would, no doubt, be interrogated on the validity of the Fiat of Abbot Reynardo, the Pilgrim’s eternal existence before and after time, and other articles of Fosco’s creed. Those who failed the test would be replaced, possibly by divines from Loretto. I wondered if dissenting monks would lose their heads, or merely be walled up in their cells.
The viceroy did not see fit to consult the Estates on these matters—and in truth, the foundation of monasteries and the granting of city charters had long been the business of the crown.
In subsequent days we of the Burgesses voted for higher taxes on wine, felt hats, and bedsheets. We voted to impose a salt tax, in which all salt was to be sold by government warehouses at a price to be determined by the crown, and every household in the nation would be obliged to buy five pounds of salt each year.
The Committee on Monopolies delivered its report, which was turned into a bill allowing the purchase of monopolies on spices, silks, foreign wines and brandies, oil, furs, sugar, saltpeter, and gemstones. I assembled such mercers as I could to bid for a monopoly on trade with the Empire, Tabarzam, and the Candara Coast, and I wrote to everyone in Ethlebight and Selford I thought might be willing to buy shares.
Only you kept me from the disgust I felt at my submission to Fosco and Lord Edevane. You reminded me that I was powerless to oppose those votes, or change the viceroy’s policy, and that if there were to be monopolies anyway, I might as well profit from them. And besides, if the Ethlebight Canal were created, good would result.
And when I took you home, I found your kisses were honey and amber, your tresses myrrh and olibanum, and your body gold and ivory; and I was so besotted with thoughts of you that I walked through my miserable days in a stupor.
I met every few days with Floria, and we had private discussions in her office, or strolling on her lawn wrapped in our cloaks. In these visits I kept my eyes open, and I observed the box that Floria kept in a drawer of her desk.
I paid a call upon Lord Edevane, who received me in his warm office, with his dead eyes gazing at mine and his hands pressed together below his chin. I might have thought him praying, save that in his particular case the very thought was ludicrous.
“I believe I am now the most faithful of Her Highness Floria’s visitors,” said I. “Most of the others have fallen off, now there will be no regency council and Her Highness will have no hand in awarding offices.”
“Who remains?”
I told him what, I am sure, he already knew. Floria had been deserted even by one of her ladies in waiting, for Lord Mellender had decided that his fiancée Chenée Tavistock’s association with Floria put her in too much danger and taken her away with the excuse that wedding preparations would require her full attention.
I then added the news that had brought me to his office. “I believe I have found where Her Highness keeps her private correspondence,” said I. “It is in a coffer that she keeps in a drawer of her office desk.”
A gleam of interest flashed into Edevane’s dead-fish eyes, then vanished. “Can you get into this coffer?”
“She keeps it locked, and the key is kept on her person.” I looked at him. “Can you send someone to my house to offer instruction in picking locks?”
He nodded. “I will arrange it.”
“I’m sure that I can arrange some sort of distraction that will give me a chance to get into Her Highness’s office unobserved,” said I, “though I may have to pick the door lock as well. But as I will have access only for a few moments, I must ask what you want me to do with the letters? Steal them? Read such of them as I can, and then return them to the coffer?”
Edevane reached for a pen and scratched himself a note. “I will give the matter thought, and send instructions.”
“Very good, my lord.”
I returned to Rackheath House with my mind buzzing, and I thought perhaps I had just secured my monopoly.
* * *
“You are trying to scour your freckles,” said I.
“With a mixture of buttermilk and lemon juice,” you said. “I have made a good start at eradicating them.”
“But I love your freckles,” said I. “I love each and every one.”
“I do not.” You touched your fan to my arm. “Now hush, for Bonny Joe is playing.”
We were spending an afternoon at Wenwyn Hall, in the reduced company of Floria’s remaining friends. Floria’s house was in deep mourning, and so there could be no feasts or extravagant entertainments, but a banquet had been provided—no meat, but plenty of fine pastries, nuts, cheeses, and wines. Since the theater was closed, Blackwell’s company provided entertainment in the great hall. The clowns knocked each other about, the orchestra played, the actors declaimed, and Blackwell read his latest verse. But the great conclusion was the company’s new sensation, the young actor Bonny Joe Webb, who sang in his sweet boy’s soprano and accompanied himself on the lute.
Truly he was an enchanting child, with his fine golden hair, blue eyes, snub nose, and dimples. He sang with such sentiment and feeling that he convinced me he had suffered the pangs of love, the loss of hope, and the shattering of his heart, even though my own good sense told me he could not have experienced any of these things. When he finished, he was applauded to the rafters.
“I want to take that boy home with me,” you said, your black eyes shining.
“I remind you that you are already at home, mistress,” said I. “And I find it intolerable to be supplanted in your affections by a suckling babe.”
You leaned close
to me, and whispered behind your fan. “I have heard from my banker friend. He will take forty percent of your money, but will have it ready tomorrow.”
“Forty percent?” I sighed. “Worse than I’d hoped, but better than I’d feared.”
“That leaves you nearly nine thousand royals—or rather, because the bank has not that much gold, a hundred and seventy-three thousand crowns, which is a great weight of silver—he said just over a ton. You will have to send a carriage for it.”
We made arrangements for the delivery of the silver, and just as we finished, Viscount Drumforce entered. Drumforce was the son of Lord Scutterfield, who had been lord great chamberlain until Edevane brewed up a charge of treason against him. Scutterfield had been attainted after his death, which meant that he had lost his titles and lands, and his son was now merely Amador Wending, but everyone called him Drumforce anyway. He was a tall man with fair hair and drooping mustaches, and possessed an air of ferocity. I do not know if this was his manner before his father’s execution, but now he prowled about the capital with his jaw grinding and fury blazing from his eyes, and it was hard to view him stalking through room after room without thinking that he was bent on a bloody vengeance.
Drumforce went straight to Her Highness Floria, and then the two went into her office. You cast me a resigned look and went into the next room, where you could view the meeting through the hagioscope.
I stood for a moment fingering the picklocks in my pocket. Edevane had sent a lock-maker to my house, with a selection of locks to practice on, and I was growing in confidence, though I could hardly pick the lock with so many people in the house. I had also equipped myself with a short fashion cloak to wear as a flourish, with certain pockets sewn into the lining.
Drumforce had been in Floria’s cabinet no more than two minutes when she appeared at the door and beckoned me to her with an impatient flick of her fan. Drumforce bowed his way out of the room, and I closed the door behind me as I entered.
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