Quillifer the Knight

by Walter Jon Williams

  In this great rush of events and of people I was little remarked on. The great of the land flocked about Floria, offering homage and hinting at office, and none of them looked to me for anything. As was proper, I lodged apart from Floria, for the knowledge that she had taken a butcher’s son as a lover would have shocked the sensibilities of the peerage, and brought out the monks and mendicants to denounce her. Floria’s manner was so brisk and businesslike that I feared she had resolved to put love firmly to the side, but the day after her coronation, she assigned me lodging in the inner ward of the castle, in a room overlooking the courtyard. The room was surprisingly dainty, for there was a bed carved with arbutus and budding roses, and brilliant tapestries embroidered with a riot of fruits and flowers, birds and animals. A fireplace of pink marble was carved with gloxinia and camellia. A motif of day lilies was carved into the crown molding, and facing the door was a life-sized portrait of King Stilwell, blond and magnificent and fingering a pomegranate. Candles, already lit, flickered on tables and on the mantel. The room bore a faint musky scent, like an old trace of perfume.

  I had few possessions to move into this grand room, for I had only the clothing I’d taken with me from Howel, plus a few clothes I’d commissioned since my arrival. I had taken only a few of my rings, the rest being held in a secret place near Howel, and I had also left behind my chain of office.

  In bemusement I wandered over the room, surprised at the richness of it, and then the portrait of Stilwell swung open like a door and revealed Floria. She wore a dressing gown of dark green satin, with embroidery in silver thread, and on her short hair, worn like a panache, was the crown of Emmius. At the sight my breath stopped in my throat.

  Amusement shone in her eyes. “Don’t look so surprised, Quillifer,” she said. “My father built a number of these passages, so that he could privately visit his mistresses.”

  “Did they all have his portrait?” asked I. “They could not escape him even if he was away.”

  “I think that was the point,” said she. “If the sight of my royal father makes you uncomfortable, we could replace it with a portrait of me, once I have the chance to sit for one.” She swung shut the secret door.

  I embraced her gratefully and kissed her. Her galbanum scent sang in my senses. “It has been a hardship these last days,” said I, “to be near you always, and unable to touch you, or show myself anything but the proper, dutiful subject.”

  “Do you think it is any easier being a monarch?” she asked. “To have the command of half a kingdom, and to send my subjects dashing from one place to another on my errands, but to be obliged to conceal the one thing I most desire?”

  “In shadow we gather power,” said I. “Some day concealment may not be necessary, and in the meantime our love will thrive in the shade.”

  Her arms tightened about me. “But now we must be very, very careful. Kings may have lovers, but queens must be chaste in the eyes of the world.”

  “I shall await Your Majesty, then, every night in this chamber of flowers, and I will test your chastity to the utmost.”

  She looked up at me, eyes a-shimmer with candlelight. “Lay aside this ‘majesty,’ ” she said. “At least for tonight.”

  “Yet I would kneel to you as my queen,” said I, and fell to my knees before her. I drew back the dressing gown to reveal a translucent nightdress of sheer lawn that revealed her small form, the high breasts and narrow hips, the dark moss beneath the dimple of her navel. I laid my cheek against the soft warm flesh of her belly, and let my arms sweep around her waist.

  “I wish we were back at sea,” I said, “tacking back and forth in that baffling wind, back and forth forever on that sweet ship.”

  She caressed my hair. “We will always be able to fly on that ship,” she said. “When we meet together in safety, we may set sail, and go to whatever paradise we desire.”

  “Let us go there now,” said I.

  And so I rose, and took her hand, and led her to that rose-carved bed.

  * * *

  So I think I may safely report that Floria loves me. And slowly I have brought her around to the idea that, so that she and I should not be suspected, I should be seen to have a lover. And that lover is—will be—you. I will be seen with you, and will be seen entering your chamber at night. We may spend together all the time we like.

  Mundus vult decipi. I trust this meets with your approval.

  Oh—and I should recommend that you see Blackwell’s new play. It is but a single act performed as a preface to his other comedies, and it is called The Doctor and the Fever-Struck Princess.

  It is a version—fairly accurate, he tells me—of Bonny Joe Webb’s adventures impersonating Floria, with the hero playing himself. For after word reached Ings Magna that Floria was ill in her chambers, the palace began to doubt its own agents’ reports that she had been seen, and insisted on sending one of the royal physicians to examine her. While Mistress Ransome—who is a servant called Goldy in the play—holds the doctor outside the door, Bonny Joe touches up his paint and tucks himself in bed with the counterpane drawn up to his chin, and with hot bricks hidden beneath the topmost mattress to give him a sweat. At length the doctor was allowed to enter the room, but could only interrogate his patient through a screen—there is some fine comedy there, with the doctor ducking and leaping to get a glimpse of the princess, and Goldy dodging about to block his view. But at length the doctor insists on seeing the patient, and Bonny Joe does a perfect imitation of Floria, and summons him into the room. He pronounces the fever dangerous and prescribes an emetic and a phlebotomy. Bonny Joe is unable to resist the doctor bleeding him, but there is more fine comic juggling as Goldy hides the emetic and replaces it with something harmless.

  At length the Yeoman Archers come to arrest the princess, but Bonny Joe has only to swab off the paint, resume his boy’s dress, and make his escape in the confusion. Goldy also gets away, although I understand that Mistress Ransome was, in fact, arrested.

  I would not like to be the man assigned to interrogate her, for she has the sharpest tongue of anyone I know. She will berate him, and he will have to put up with it.

  I understand that Bonny Joe was able to keep up the impersonation for eight days, which meant that by the time Floria’s absence was discovered, she and I were in our carriage riding into Mankin Clough, and with every hope of escape.

  Alas, this also means that I had killed the two messengers for nothing, for whatever their dispatch said, it had nothing to do either with me or with Floria. Their deaths weigh on me like a stone.

  Blackwell’s company toured the provinces six weeks after Bonny Joe’s escape, as the ports were closed, but after word had come that Floria had been proclaimed in Selford, the ports of Bonille were opened to allow commerce to resume and the taxes to be collected. And so Blackwell and his troupe made their way here, and perform now in the castle, or in the courtyard of their old inn in Mossthorpe.

  In the last months Floria has built a government, and is building a fleet and an army. In Selford we have the treasury and the mint, for all that little bullion remains there. The great nobles and merchants of the land have opened their purses—and it is strange, is it not, that people will give freely of their fortune more than they would under the compulsion of taxation.

  All but one of the members of the new Privy Council are great nobles—Roundsilver has the exchequer, for he understands the ways of money. He has my friend Kevin Spellman to help him as cofferer. Lord Slaithstowe is chancellor, and hopes thereby to win back his thirty-thousand-royal ransom, and Waitstill is privy seal. Drumforce, that fierce man, is constable, and at the head of the army will pursue his vengeance to hell itself. And that one among these not born to the nobility is Sir Quillifer of Ethlebight, who is Her Majesty’s principal private secretary.

  Ay, I have Edevane’s office. And I strive to fill it with what skill I can, for all that I am not a soiled soft-tongued thief and manslayer.

  The viceroy must know that
, come the first breath of spring, a fleet shall set sail from Selford and land an army in Bonille. What he knows not is where that army will land—and that, when it happens, will amaze him. For we will land in Longfirth, where Count de Cibel has agreed to betray the city and its citadel. Ay, I know that de Cibel has married a Lorettan woman, and is a friend of Edevane and was raised to his peerage by the viceroy. But he has approached us, and we have agreed on his price. The fleet has only to come over the horizon, and he will wave the white flag.

  But enough of these developments. You are new arrived, and must be weary. Let me kiss you and take you to your lodging. I dare not dally with you here, for fear Floria will come through that portrait. Our true reunion must come later, once you have rested.

  But know that you are my all, my other half. We have come through storms together, and now we shall be rewarded by our grateful and love-besotted queen, and all fine things may be ours.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Once again, my love, I welcome you to this my chamber. Your nostrils flare, I see, at the scent of galbanum, and I own frankly that Floria spent this last night here. It must chafe you, I know, to serve her every day, and to see her happiness, and to know that she comes down that hidden passage most nights to see me.

  Yet rewards have come. Am I not brave in my new ribbon, as a knight of the Order of the Red Horse? The order was established by King Emelin himself, and now I may lord over lesser knights—which is to say all of them, for the Red Horse has precedence over the other orders, and of course the knights-bachelors, too.

  Floria has let slip that you shall be rewarded as well, though she has not said with what. I hope it may bring you joy.

  Come, sit by me in the settee, and let me take your hand. Floria is all bustle now, putting the realm in order, and so must her ladies bustle along with her. I am sorry I have visited your chambers only thrice in the twelve days since your arrival, but I have been engaged in a task of great importance, and though it has driven me half-mad, I think I have finally seen it through.

  To be brief, in my capacity as private secretary I have uncovered a nest of Edevane’s spies here in Selford. We have been following them for some time, and I think I now know them all.

  This troupe of turncoats was led by a lawyer at the Tiltyard Moot, who was passing messages through a pawnshop on Chancellery Road, and thence to a ship-chandler in Innismore, who carried the treasonable correspondence to the captain of a crumster, who took dispatches to Bonille. They will all be in my net by midnight, all but the sea-captain, who I fear may have got away on the afternoon tide.

  You tremble, mistress. I hope you have not a chill. Let me put my arm around you to warm you.

  Yet still you shiver even in my arms. Have you perhaps something to say to me? No? Then I must be the one to speak.

  Ay, you were followed from the moment you arrived in Selford. We noted everyone you spoke to. If I have uncovered that spider’s web of intelligencers, it is because you led me to them, and I was able to follow your dispatch from one hand to the next, and onto that swift crumster that even now follows the Saelle to the sea.

  That message you sent is poison, and deadly not to me or Floria, but to Edevane. For I told you that our force would strike at Longfirth, and that Count de Cibel would surrender the place to us, and this was all a flat lie. Once that dispatch comes to Howel, the viceroy will replace a loyal servant, and perhaps cut off his head, and he will rush reinforcements over the Cordillerie to the city, and once marched over the Cordillerie they are not so easily recalled.

  Nay, Floria’s army will land elsewhere. Where we have proven friends, who will open their gates and join our forces to theirs.

  You wonder, I suppose, how I knew you to be a creature of Edevane’s. Floria and I both knew that Edevane would have a spy in Floria’s household, and that spy would likely be a corrupted servant. But two of Floria’s ladies also were suspect.

  Marcella, first of all, for no one knew where she came from, or for certain who she was. And while she proved to be a treacherous, angry, and spiteful creature, she was no pawn of Edevane.

  That left you. Floria had taken you into her household on the recommendation of her sister, but why would Berlauda, who hated all Clayborne’s faction, recommend the grand-niece of an attainted traitor? Only on the suggestion, I submit, of Lord Edevane

  It was Floria, before I joined you on that journey to Loretto, who suggested that I get into your confidence.

  But still there were doubts. True, you were always prompting me to treason, and urging plans to put Floria and myself in danger, but that might be put down to your ambition.

  But we took no chances. You know that Floria and I met together, and that, for your own protection, you were not to be told the subject of our conversations. But when you and I met, out of my love for you I told you what was said between the princess and myself—and, now and then, I lied.

  And that correspondence I stole from Floria’s study and delivered to Edevane, and which turned out to be letters writ to her when she was a child? She had placed those letters there deliberately, knowing I would take them, and that they could do her no harm.

  But that still left your own status unresolved—we knew better than to trust you, but we knew not where your true loyalties lay. What finally betrayed you was your offer to negotiate Sir Basil’s bill for fourteen thousand royals. I knew full well that you, from a family of high-ranked peers, would have no relations in the Oberlin Fraters Bank. Such factors and speculators are far too common for you. So that money had to come from Edevane, and no doubt you took your share before passing it to me.

  Edevane planned to have me and Floria arrested somewhere on the trip from Howel to Bretlynton Head, or even on my ship Sovereign. He would recover the money and have proof of treason. But it was not Marcella’s journey to Kellhurst that was intended to mislead, but your voyage to Bretlynton Head. Edevane would set his trap in the wrong place. Once you were safely away, Floria and I were away on horseback to Longfirth.

  It was no accident that we met Able there, for though I told you the pinnace was about to sail, I had secretly sent instructions for it to wait for me. And Sovereign did not leave Bretlynton Head by accident, for that also happened on my orders.

  I knew that my letters were being read, and that meant I could post false messages with the knowledge that they would be read by Edevane, while sending my real instructions by private messengers. My groom Oscar, for one, or Boatswain Lepalik, traveling as a guest of one of the barge-captains on the Dordelle.

  Nor was it an accident that Able met Sovereign in the Sea of Duisland. They were meant to convoy together, along with my privateer Ostra, which missed the rendezvous but joined us in Selford later. All will form part of the fleet that will soon set out for the conquest of Bonille.

  And are you as amused as I at the thought of Edevane frantically searching the islands of Lake Howel for the chests of silver that I told you were sunken there, and which he foolishly let slip from his possession and which he will desperately need to pay his own troops? For I never did such a witless thing. When the chests were carried into Rackheath House, they were met by officers of the Bank of Innismore, who counted the contents and carried them away to their own strong-room. Parkins, Edevane’s informer in my household, had been sent away on an errand to buy wine and was unaware of the transaction. I had the letter of credit in my doublet all the way to Selford, and as soon as I arrived here, I arranged to collect my fortune from the bank.

  For you see, my poverty was a pretense. I sold my cargoes and my gems for good money, but I complained to you and to Edevane that I was without funds, all in hopes that you would cash Sir Basil’s bill, provide me with money to aid Floria’s cause, and thereby prove that you are false. And so it has all come about, just as I planned.

  I have been accused of preening and vanity, but I think in this case the charge is justified.

  Ah mistress, you are unsettled. You are pale, and your trembling has not c
eased. Are you perhaps anticipating the crudities of the interrogators, the tall black candles of the Siege Royal, the grim hemp dangling from the scaffold?

  I will save you all that. If you will look under the pillow to your left, you will find your passport and a little money. Two of the Yeoman Archers wait outside to take you to Innismore and a ship. There you will be held until Floria’s army departs, after which the ship will take you to sun-kissed Varcellos. You will be put ashore there, and after that you may go anywhere you like.

  I do not necessarily recommend that you go to Howel. By the time you arrive, the capital may have fallen, and Edevane been put to flight, or in a cell at Murkdale Hags. And even if he still inhabits that snug little office, I do not know with what charity he will view an agent who has so completely failed.

  I suppose I may be criticized for this mercy. They will call me sentimental. After all, you did your best to see me hanged.

  Yet despite your treachery, I do not wish you dead, only out of my sight for all time. So let me rise and open the door, and introduce you to the sentries who will see you to your new lodging.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  I returned to my apartment and sat again on the settee, musing on the candles’ dancing flames while Elisa d’Altrey’s myrrh scent faded from my senses. The great portrait of King Stilwell swung open on its noiseless hinges, and you stepped out. Your new ladies—for a queen must have a dozen or more—had removed your court gown and combed out your growing wiry hair. You wore your emerald dressing gown and shoes with little bows, and you glowed in the light of the candle in your hand. I rose and bowed to Your Majesty.

  “Is she gone?” you asked.

  “I saw her into the carriage and on her way to Innismore. I doubt that any of Edevane’s party are left to rescue her.”