by Carol Berg
Nor had she, of course, wed to King Soren as a child of eight years, and widowed and wed again at twelve. I couldn’t think of anything to say that wasn’t maudlin. Perhaps such pure affection was what she sought with her gentleman friend. But what did he seek? His face was so familiar, yet I’d never glimpsed him in the corridor or salons. Was he one of the conspirators as well?
Gentle, kind, damaged Eugenie was surely a pawn in this great struggle, only I could not see where she fit. Was this estrangement with my goodfather a true rupture, or did he stay away in some attempt to protect her from arrows aimed at him? Someone had certainly fed her falsehoods to soothe her fears for his safety. My father had told me that not even the royal herald rode into battle ahead of Philippe de Savin-Journia.
Dismissing her pain with a smile, Eugenie enfolded me with a warm embrace. “So, tell me, now, Anne, what games did you play at Montclaire ? I’ll confess to enjoying quiet distractions, silly things like cards and charades and sonnets whispered in moonlight. . . .”
As I laid a sheet and the featherlight coverlet over her, I told of guessing games, word squares, and card stacking, of mock debates and blind chase and mute plays. Memories of Montclaire would ever be fraught with sorrow, yet the pain of loss had already dulled. That life was gone, so remote in the face of my current preoccupations as to seem like a myth.
Once Eugenie had slipped into a peaceful slumber, I arranged the bed curtains, keeping a wary eye on the sorcerer’s ring in the floor. Could it be a device like the barbed bracelet, set to channel wickedness here? Yet it was so brazenly displayed. The bracelet had been hidden, though not well hidden, come to that. Perhaps that was part of the scheme. Who would expect a nasty charm in the bedchamber when a sorcerer’s ring was fixed in place so openly?
It was tenth hour of the evening watch by the time I had put everything away and bade a peaceful night to Arabella de Froux, the lady-in-waiting who sat in the retiring room through the night hours. Though I relished the thought of my own bed, once shed of gown and hairpins, I found myself too tight wound to sleep. The chamber in the Bastionne—spirits of night; Papa’s boots and dagger—and the encounters with Dante and Kajetan and Duplais churned in my head.
What a pleasure it would be to leave Castelle Escalon for a while, to spend an hour wholly engrossed in matters other than murder, grieving, and conspiracy. I’d last experienced such removal at Cecile’s journey feast, while talking with the quiet intruder. Astonishing to think that had been only yesterday.
The more I relived that strange interlude, the more I longed to revisit it. Quickly resolved, I shut down the lamp, reached into the dark, and invited the mindstorm. Friend . . . are you there? I formed the words, careful to speak only truth. I can’t sleep and need . . . company.
Chaotic noise filled my head. With swelling disappointment, I began to shove the unruly emotions and clamoring voices behind my inner walls again. But a sharp jolt of confusion stayed my closing, as if I had collided with someone in a dark tunnel. A surge of astonishment was followed by a profound stillness in the heart of chaos. He was there. So much communicated without a word.
I’d like to get to know you better, I said. Is this all right?
When he did not respond immediately, I felt an idiot. The sun had long set over Merona. He might be asleep . . . or with friends . . . or a wife. . . . Or, if my suspicion was correct, he might be sitting in his east-wing office, laboring over the royal household accounts or trying to unravel Dante’s latest move. I quickly shut that image out of mind, lest it color my speech. Better we remain anonymous. Never mind. You’re likely busy. I am so sorry. I didn’t think—
No, no, it’s well-done. Truth. Every word. He was pleased. Quiet joy washed through my body like warmed wine on a cold night. His joy, so much deeper and more powerful than words, more a surging ocean than a rushing river. You’re not afraid of me.
Shivering, I drew my shawl around me and gazed out at the lights of the city, winking beyond the dark palace gardens. This was so immense. There are so many things in the world to be afraid of, I said. I thought, perhaps, we could talk of something wholly ordinary, as if our true lives did not exist. You weren’t asleep?
Ought to be. But I don’t sleep easily. I’d as soon work. Or read.
What kind of books? My question followed so naturally it startled me. And it frightened me a little, too. Every word between us needed consideration. If I had asked what kind of work or why he did not sleep well, he might well ask the same of me. And if he were not Duplais, then he could be anyone . . . a gossip, a thief, an enemy. I didn’t want to know.
Tonight, a treatise on the heavens. His answer felt constrained somehow, though it carried no hint of untruth.
A vast topic, I said, whether astronomically speaking, or religiously speaking . . .
. . . or addressing the weather or the possibility of astral divination or a more philosophical tack—the nature of pleasure. Interest and amusement surged as he completed my thought.
Divine Creator, how could I know that?
All fine aspects of the topic and worthy of exploration, I offered. All of them the interests of an educated man. All far removed from Castelle Escalon and its sordid secrets. A certain hunger drove me onward, making me bold as I had never been with men. Should we address them alphabetically or in order of importance?
Any. Certainly. I’ve never— I’d surprised him again. I suppose . . . I’d a thought to take a walk to study some night-blooming plants. I could be persuaded to look up instead.
It was a glorious night my friend walked—balmy, star-filled, scented with woodsmoke and autumn apples. That same night flowed through the open casement into me, around me, shared as we spoke of Gossorein, who had sketched the movements of the planets around the sun, using the language of mathematics as charcoal and paint. And I leaned on the sill and watched the same star-sprinkled sky he observed as we discussed Fleure’s impossible project, a catalog of the stars. In a rapid-fire exchange, we proposed schemes of naming, measuring, and distinguishing between them. Our repartee infected me with the fevered delight of a new-healed paralytic stretching long-dead muscles. With a finishing flourish I proposed hiring a sorcerer to snuff out the stars and relight them in more regular patterns.
Abruptly he fell silent, closed as absolutely as a book between its covers.
No sorcerer could do that, he said after a moment, not if the stars are truly suns like our own.
It was only a jest. Silliness. It had been Lianelle’s idea when she was five.
Ah. Spoken as if I had referred to some odd custom he had heard of, but didn’t quite comprehend. Which told me much of him.
I fumbled at what to say next. I yearned to probe his knowledge of magic and its limits, but this was far too early for a topic fraught with risk. He assumed I was a practitioner. The idea did not repulse me as it once would have done—a surprise in itself—but my mother’s family had tested me as a child and found no predictors of magical talent. He must himself be one, though, an adept or mage or student . . . perhaps a member of the Camarilla . . . perhaps an illicit practitioner, which would explain his shyness at discussing himself. Or he could be a once-failed student who had come to his talent late and in secret. Dangerous ground.
Thus I diverted our talk to the constellations, and he marveled when I told how Hematians saw quite different things in the same arrangements of stars—sea creatures, ships, or anchors, where Sabrians might see plows or warriors or cups overflowing with grapes. He knew only the commonest Sabrian names.
You must have made a special study of constellations, he said. Are there so many books about them? My own studies have not explored folk tales.
My family would often sit outside at night, I said. More treacherous ground. But yielding or withholding came easier with every word. My parents would point out the Archer or the Dragonfly or the Creator’s Hammer and require one of us children to tell the story. When we traveled, they insisted we learn the local stories and tell
those, too.
Another long pause. It is not our talk of star patterns that leaves you melancholy.
He did not couch this as a question. Yet a sense of his puzzlement prompted a response. I’m fostered, I said. Truth. And many noble families sent their daughters to live near collegiae or mentors or marriageable suitors. My guardian is generous, but I miss my family very much.
Ah, he said again.
This time he diverted the conversation. We were both somewhat skeptical of astrologers who claimed to read the future in the stars, but he mentioned, with excitement, how a philosopher in Eldoris had recently proposed that planets obeyed the same physical principles as a stone dropped from a watchtower.
Germond de Vouger, I said. An astonishing thinker. When I expressed my uncertainty that this new theory could ever be proved, my friend provided such a clear explanation, I felt as if I could draw de Vouger’s diagrams myself. Papa had given me de Vouger’s letters outlining his grand theory, and I had studied them for half a year, yet still I had floundered.
How can one person come up with such a grand idea? My friend’s wonder was as clear as the stars. Are insights born in our bodies like the language we speak or the ability to walk, ready to display themselves when we’ve reached a proper turning point? Or must one find a teacher who sculpts and hones the growing mind?
I told what I knew of my father’s correspondent. De Vouger’s father had been a sailor who lived by the stars and taught him young to watch the sky. His mother had been an acrobat who spent her life being tossed into the air until she broke her back in a fall and died of it, not a month after his father drowned in a storm. Another of the acrobats had taught the youth to juggle, and his juggling took him to Eldoris, where he entertained the students and scholars of the Collegia Astronomica . . . and met Gossorein himself, the astronomer and teacher who changed his life.
My friend contemplated this story for a moment. You know the names, he said, whereas I know only the ideas. I never considered that names and histories could connect ideas, like markings on a map. And yet my own story— For a moment, scarce any sense of him remained, as if all I could hear was his breathing.
But I babbled on, unwilling to relinquish the best pleasure I’d had in months. De Vouger still teaches at the Collegia Astronomica de Eldoris, I said. You could travel there and hear him lecture. You have such an astonishing grasp of the subject. Great Heaven, did you study with him there?
Alas, I am not free to travel so far as Eldoris. His voice had turned cool. Distant. Perhaps you could go and ask your questions.
And then did the magnitude of my discourtesy overwhelm and shame me. When he had backed away from a mention of his own life, I had selfishly pressed him with a direct question, a question I would not wish asked of me. If he answered, he could not lie. Yet the matter was more complex than that. If he said anything, while leaving himself so open as he had been on this night, I could perceive emotions that he might rather keep private. As he had perceived my melancholy about my family. His comment had given me fair warning.
Forgive me, he said, before I could choose how to remedy the problem. To speak of myself . . . Please understand—it’s awkward. I am a teacher of sorts. Were word of this curse to get out . . .
The fault is mine, I said, hurrying to make it up to him. You don’t know me. And you’ve been everything of patience since the beginning. I promise I didn’t mean to push or pry. Indeed, I, too, live in awkward circumstances . . . unmarried.
Ah . . .
We should swear on our mutual gift to leave sordid mundanity out of our conversation , I said, whimsy giving my words flight, and pretend we are wholly normal people in a pleasant sitting room, which, as it happens, we can reshape according to our imagination. Do you so swear?
I imagined him smiling . . . though puzzled, too. He was clearly unaccustomed to whimsy.
I swear, he said.
And I do, as well.
The tower bells struck the third quarter of the hour. Eyelids heavy with sleep, I wasn’t even sure which hour. He said he had come to the end of his walk, and so we bade a hasty farewell. Embarrassed at my missteps, I did not press for assurance that we would talk again. That he had taken pleasure in the exchange, as I had, led me to hope such urging was not necessary.
CHAPTER 23
21 OCET, AFTERNOON
As I put away Eugenie’s jewels and garments from her morning activities and readied what she might want for her evening supper party with the Duc de Aubine, brisk footsteps in an outer room brought Lady Antonia into the bedchamber. She surveyed the room, her plucked eyebrows, as ever, giving her an appearance of surprise. I gestured toward the closed bed curtains. Eugenie, exhausted from receiving a delegation of Journian vintners, was napping.
With a jerk of her head, Antonia beckoned me into one of the adjoining rooms.
“Dear Anne, I must apologize,” she said as soon as we were out of the bedchamber. “My objections to your service must seem quite harsh.”
“Your care for Her Majesty’s reputation reflects credit on you, my lady,” I said, swallowing my true feelings in the way of all servants. “None would dispute your concerns about my reputation. Believe me, I am humbled by Her Majesty’s trust and will do everything in my power to deserve it.”
She beamed at me and reached for my hands. “Of course you will, caeri. I was sure you’d understand. Eugenie is of such sweet and ingenuous disposition, she is easily taken advantage of. With the continued elusiveness of your despicable father—I know you share this view of him, else I’d not state it so frankly—and the brazen unpleasantness of this Mage Dante, the scandal of my daughter’s unfortunate choice in magical counselors has not died down over these four years, as it should have. Every spiteful word lacerates my spirit on her behalf. But as ever with her wishes, I am quickly reconciled. I beg you consider me your mentor, not your overseer.”
This effusive declaration radiated such motherly concern as I might welcome did I believe one eyelash’s worth of it.
“So, have you any concerns or questions for me?”
I demurred. Taking my arm, she strolled through the rambling apartments, as if we were old friends exchanging girlish gossip. “Such tedious events we endure these days! Today these groveling vintners who cannot trim their fingernails without Philippe’s approval and cannot bother to clean them before seeking it. And yesterday that roomful of maudlin women, bemoaning their men going to war with their king. The whining cows should be clapped into the Spindle for treason.”
“Her Majesty tires so easily,” I said. “And seems constantly fevered. Whom should I call if she falls ill—saints protect and defend—and you are not available to advise me?”
She halted in midstep, giving the question genuinely serious consideration. “Both,” she said at last, “Dante and Roussel. Though she may instruct you otherwise, I’ll not have my daughter left at the mercy of any man without proper supervision. Despite her unfortunate experiences, Eugenie views the magical arts with the most profound respect and admiration. Those of us privileged to live in her household must, perforce, do the same, even when the purveyor is himself somewhat common . . . and entirely disagreeable.”
“Of course.” Interesting that Antonia was so reluctant to engage her partner in mayhem.
“Which reminds me that you’ll not be needed after Eugenie returns from supper tonight. The maids of honor have no activities on their schedule, and my own entertainments for the evening have fallen through. I do so enjoy performing this little nighttime service for her comfort. After all, I’ve put Eugenie to bed since she was eight.”
“Certainly, my lady. I understand.” All that remained on Eugenie’s schedule was supper with her cousin and Prayers at eleventh hour. “Naturally, I’ll stay alert until the hour passes.” Especially now I knew Antonia didn’t want me there.
Antonia began walking again, this time more purposeful. “Your family maintains a man of business here in Merona, yes?”
“We
did. But he’s no longer on retainer.” I’d had to drop Simon’s contract two years previous, when roof repairs devoured the last of our ready money. “May I ask why?”
“Philippe’s resident secretary must review the existing Ruggiere grant before any papers are signed. We understand there were codicils appended after the original was placed in the archives. So we need your man’s name.”
Ah yes, that other grief—my lost home. “Simon de Bois of Laurent Square. So, is it announced who is granted Montclaire?”
“Oh, caeri, this is not about the demesne grant!” She wrapped her long arm about my shoulders in an affectionate squeeze. “This is about you. Eugenie and Philippe will be so pleased. The Barone Gurmeddion has made an offer this very morning. We’ll sign the betrothal contracts tomorrow. You’ll be married before the new year dawns.”
“No! I can’t! I won’t!” Horror banished all caution.
“Certainly you can, caeri.” Antonia, smiling, squeezed a little tighter and gave me a shake. “And you shall. The king’s secretary in residence has already given his approval.”
My life dissolved into a puddle of spit at my feet.
She abandoned me with a cold, triumphant kiss on each cheek. How could I have thought to match wits with a woman of her experience?
No, no, no, no, no. Denial hammered with my life’s blood, with my footsteps, with the fury pounding in my head. Had I held an ax, I could have razed a forest. I would not be bound to that crude and mindless grotesque for the rest of my days. Her colleagues of the Camarilla might have plans for me, but Antonia just wished me dead. Poison was a woman’s weapon, my mother had always said, and failing poison, who better than a woman would understand the particular death of forced marriage?
I returned to the queen’s wardrobe rooms, forcing myself to ready Eugenie’s toilette for the evening. Eugenie would sympathize, but she bore no influence with the king’s advisors. Neither could I use Lianelle’s potion to run away, not with Papa’s life and Ambrose’s life and other important matters resting on my investigations.