The other honored guests on the dais, the large Carrera y Carrera families and their aging doctor, always applauded loudly and called “Bravo!” to the Captain as his gray pranced by, tail high in the air. But they gasped in so much unison that Max knew it was a well-practiced spontaneous cry of delight. And what they said, leaning toward one another’s ears, speaking with mouths hidden behind a fan or a hand, did not bring any joy, or smiles of warmth, to their faces.
It was Colly who put it into words. “They don’t want to come to the attention of el Capitán. I think the soldiers fear him, too.”
“What about the General?” Max wanted to know.
“I don’t hear any talk about the General,” Colly reported. Tomi guessed Max’s next question, the one Max didn’t want to ask, and told him, “They despise the King, who’s hiding behind his palace gates and his guards. They pity the Queen. Before she became sickly, they say, she was kind to her servants, and very beautiful, but what good did her beauty do her? And her kindness is powerless against the soldiers. That’s what they say.”
On their third day in Andesia, Max was watching the parade, and enjoying it, and fretting about his parents, willing himself to be patient. He knew that until the embassy came into the King’s presence they couldn’t begin to think about a plan, and he knew also that until Balcor returned they wouldn’t be allowed an audience with the King. He had to wait. He could do nothing but wait.
He was no better here at waiting than he had been at home. In fact, he was getting worse, especially now that there was no solutioneering to distract him, now that his parents were so close and so inaccessible, now with not even a plan to be making. He could only study Captain Malpenso’s easy seat on his long-legged, restless gray horse, as his troops paraded in front of him. But what did he care about the man’s skill on horseback? And this performance, he bemoaned silently, was the high point of his day.
“¡Pelotón!” came the order. Three hundred soldiers stopped moving and stood to attention. “¡Marchad el paso!” they were told, and six hundred booted feet beat out the rhythm, without moving forward. “¡Derecha ar!” they were ordered.
All heads turned to the right, where the hawk-headed Captain sat astride the gray. Silver spurs shone against the stallion’s flanks, ready to dig in. The bit pulled tight against the horse’s mouth. “¡Saludad!” The soldiers, straight row behind straight row, saluted and the drums fell still.
Into that silence came a distant thundering of hooves. The soldiers did not look away from their Captain, but the people on the dais, and the crowd around the sides of the parade ground, all turned toward the sound.
“¡Al frente!” came the order. “Eyes center!” Then, “¡Ya! Forward, march!”
The sound of hoofbeats rose up against a background rhythm of six hundred booted feet, marching, the way the voice of a singer rises up over the orchestra. Then a great black beast of a horse galloped into view. It charged onto the parade ground and was pulled to a halt so abruptly that its forefeet lifted from the ground. A man sat tall in the saddle, his black uniform trimmed in shining silver, his black boots gleaming, and their spurs, if such a thing was possible, even larger and more cruel than Malpenso’s. The Captain might wear a metal helmet topped by a spike, but this man had a shako on his head, a tall black column out of which rose a thick black plume. He raised his right hand, greeting the Captain with a salute.
“¡Pelotón!”
The army stood like rows and rows of wooden soldiers.
Malpenso, motionless, let the seconds tick slowly by.
The audience waited, silent.
This had to be the General, and this was the choked silence of fear and hatred combined. Choked, and choking, too.
The Carrera y Carreras were clearly waiting. But waiting for what? Even Mr. Bendiff seemed uneasy, although neither the General nor the Captain had turned to look at the dais. Beside Max, Ari was alert, like a hunting dog with his nose stretched out toward the quarry, quivering. Max recognized his own feelings from countless evenings backstage at the Starling Theater: the curtain was about to go up, the audience waited in silent darkness, the actors were in position on the lighted stage, the drama was within a breath of starting—and how it would fare, for good or ill, would soon be determined.
After what felt like a full minute, although it could never have taken so long, Captain Malpenso raised his right hand to return the salute from his commanding officer. The General spurred his horse forward until he halted beside his Captain, dwarfing him. Captain Malpenso gave his next order, “¡Presenten armas!”
Now Max could see Balcor’s square, broad-cheeked face and the round dark eyes that seemed more sad than fiery. The General sported no mustachio and his mouth was a straight line, not smiling, not frowning, under a broad nose. The face did not match the proud military bearing and the great beast of a horse, or the high plume that rose like cannon smoke above the tall shako. The General watched his troops on parade with an intensity that surprised Max, since the parade was a daily exercise and he must have seen these same performances untold times. His black-gloved hands rested on the high pommel of his saddle and the horse was as motionless as its master. Behind this whole scene, like the backdrop of a stage, three jagged gray mountain peaks sliced into the blue sky.
For the entire last half hour of marching and wheeling, one rank moving around the other and then itself being encircled, of presentations of arms, and rifle drills, and quick commands to fix bayonets and load rifles, Max watched General Balcor. The tall figure remained motionless, as if it were already a statue in the public square, both man and horse carved in black marble. The eyes did not move from the lines of soldiers, not even when all three hundred swords were drawn out of their sheaths and raised high, as practiced as a corps de ballet, to shout, “¡Muerte! ¡Victoria! ¡Muerte!” Not even the blinding reflections flashing from those swords raised into bright sunlight diverted the General’s attention.
When the parade ended that day, to the usual extravagant applauding and cries of admiration, there were two officers leading the long double line of soldiers out of the parade ground and back to their barracks. Once the military was out of sight, a silence fell over the crowd. People left the parade ground quickly.
Those descending from the dais were the last to exit, the throng of long-nosed Carrera y Carreras followed by the three outlanders. Max was impatient to get back to the guesthouse and share his opinions of the General, and hear what the others thought. But the great black beast was returning. It was approaching them. Its rider reined it to a halt directly in front of them and blocked their way.
The three visitors looked up at him. They removed their hats. The General did not remove his.
“I will arrive at your lodgings in two hours,” Balcor told them. “I hope you will be prepared to receive me?”
Ari, the Ambassador and the next Baron Barthold, answered for them all. “You will be most welcome, General. May I present myself?”
“I know who you are, Baron,” General Balcor answered. “And you, I think, will be Señor Hamish Bendiff, representing your country’s commercial interests, and this”—his glance turned to Max and, unaccountably, lingered—“this is the young…Secretary. Who is also a gentleman.” Was that doubt Max heard in his voice?
Max didn’t know how to respond. Then he remembered The Queen’s Man, how the spy-hero of that play had greeted the King’s untrustworthy younger brother, and he bowed deeply from the waist, and, rising, looked into that face—that sorrowful face? that proud and hungry face?—to say, “Sir.” Then he stepped back, so the General could speak privately with the two men.
But the General had nothing more to say. He turned his horse and trotted off to the stables.
—
The entire rescue party gathered in the dining room of the guesthouse, regardless of what the two servants might think. This was too important an occasion for anybody’s opinion to go unheard. Suela and Devera were busy in the kitchen, preparing a
stew of yams and chilies for the supper of those who were left out of the nightly feasting. Max reported what General Balcor had said to them, the promise—or was it a threat?—of a visit. This had even Mr. Bendiff on edge. “I can’t make sense of him,” Pia’s father complained. “There’s all that tyrant stuff—that warhorse, the uniform, and the total silence all around him. The arrogant way he announced that he will call, when he knows we’ve been twiddling our thumbs here for days. But I’ve never seen sadder eyes.” Mr. Bendiff was puzzled. “His face doesn’t match anything else about him, including his reputation.”
Grammie’s mind was clear. “He’s our only way to reach the Queen.”
“Remember my name, everybody,” Max said. He was convinced, for some reason, that a name would protect him, and he was convinced also, he realized, that he needed protection. “Alexander Ireton, Alexander. We have to be careful.”
Ari observed, “The General doesn’t have the face of a bad man. Not like Malpenso. Do you think?”
But Max knew better. “ ‘There’s no art to find the mind’s construction in the face,’ ” he recited. “It’s Shakespeare,” he reminded them, and then realized, “It’s Macbeth,” which in turn recalled to him that Macbeth is a play about the murder of a king, and the question burst out of him: “What is it about kings that makes people want to murder them? It’s not just Macbeth, it’s in The Queen’s Man, and even King Teodor has guards.”
“Think of how many Roman emperors were murdered,” Grammie added.
Ari took a look at Max’s face and decided, “Let’s not.” He took a long, considering breath. “Here’s what I think,” he said. “All we can do right now is wait for the General to show up to say what he has to say. I suggest a round of poker.”
“Good idea,” said Tomi, and Colly said, “I’ll get the cards,” as he dashed out of the room and up the stairs. Tomi arranged chairs around the table.
They were deep in the game and Colly had just spread a flush down in front of him, reaching out to gather in Max’s chips, when the front door of the house was thrown wide and soldiers marched in, their boots loud on the stone floor.
Ari rose from the table, pushing his chair back, drawing himself up to his full height. “What is the meaning—” he began, and General Balcor stepped out from behind the soldiers and stood in the doorway of the dining room, a full hour earlier than expected.
Mr. Bendiff also stood up. Grammie and the others followed suit.
“—of this intrusion,” continued Ari, a Barthold in outrage.
The General did not apologize but he did explain. “My business needed less time than I’d thought.” He spoke to the soldiers: “Dismissed,” and they turned on their heels to march smartly away. The house door closed behind them, and only then did Max see what had been hidden from him before: General Balcor was not a giant of a man. If anything, he’d be described as short and stocky, not at all built to the elegant lines of the Carrera y Carreras and also not to the rapier sharpness of Captain Malpenso. He was several inches shorter than Mr. Bendiff. He was not, in fact, much taller than Max.
“I will take advantage of the presence of your entire party to hear the names of all. You will introduce me,” he said, but before Ari could speak, he clicked his booted heels together and bowed. Then, “Señor Hamish Bendiff,” he said as he stripped the glove from his right hand and extended it to Mr. Bendiff, who took it, murmuring, “General.”
“My Secretary, Alexander Ireton,” Ari said.
The General didn’t offer a handshake, although Max felt himself being looked at closely. “He seems young,” the General remarked.
Ari did not answer this observation, as if it was too irrelevant to confirm or deny. “My housekeeper, Mrs. Sevin,” he said, not even stumbling over the name.
If Max had been the director and Ari his lead actor, he would have interrupted him to shout out, “Well done!” He himself had only just remembered, and too late, that it was her name he had used when he wrote to the King, his father. This was also the name the King had used in writing a response that must have been read by General Balcor before the letter was given to Stefano to be carried to Cúcuta and mailed to Queensbridge.
“Señora,” the General said, with neither handshake nor bow.
“General.” Grammie bobbed a brief curtsey. She kept her eyes cast down. A housekeeper did not look a tyrant in the eye. “Come along, boys,” she said to Tomi and Colly. “Let’s return to the kitchen.”
“Not quite yet,” the General said. “I like to know the names of every foreigner in the country for which I have such—” and here he hesitated, at last saying, “responsibility.”
“Colly,” Ari said, and Colly bowed his corn-colored head in acknowledgment, then it was “Tomi,” who also bowed his head. But except for that brief second, Tomi did not look away from the General’s face. He wanted the man to know that he was not cowed, not one bit.
“Also in the party, although not here at the moment, there is the artist. Joachim,” Ari said. “He goes out to the countryside and records what he sees there, plants and animals, insects, vistas.”
“So I have heard,” said the General. He looked for what felt like a long time at Tomi, and then at Colly. After that, “You may go,” he said, waving Grammie away from the table, waving the two servants after her, and Max stepped around to join them. He wanted to be out from under this man’s eye.
“The Secretary will remain with us, I think,” General Balcor observed.
Max transformed his exit into the job of gathering up the cards and chips, putting them into a drawer.
“You are most democratic with your party, I see,” General Balcor announced.
“I am,” Ari agreed, and he waited.
“I hope you are comfortably accommodated?” the General asked.
“Quite,” Ari said. “Except in the matter of an audience with the King,” he added. And he waited.
“The servants are satisfactory?” the General asked.
“Yes,” Ari said, “although I think Mrs. Sevin would appreciate a boy for the woodpile and the waste buckets.” He waited.
Max understood that Ari expected to hear, eventually, the reason why the General had fallen down upon them as he had. He understood also that by suggesting another servant in the house, Ari was letting the General know they had no fear of spies.
“And you, Señor Bendiff, you are being shown what you need to know of our city and our people?”
“The Carrera y Carreras have been most generous with their time,” Mr. Bendiff answered.
“They were instructed to be so. It is good that they comply,” the General said. Then, at last, he got to the point. “The King will greet you tomorrow, at two in the afternoon. I will arrive here at half after one to escort you into his presence. Unless you object?”
“Why would I object?” Ari asked. “I will be pleased to present the greetings of King Teodor the Third and my own credentials to the King of Andesia.”
General Balcor shook his head. “This is not the formal reception,” he said. “Only the King will be present tomorrow. There will be no presentation of documents or of royal greetings, although expressions of goodwill are appropriate.”
“I see,” Ari said. “And the formal reception?”
“That is up to the King,” General Balcor answered. “The King will determine if that is what he wishes.”
“Of course,” Ari agreed.
His business concluded, General Balcor drew the glove back over the fingers of his right hand and pulled it taut. Max looked at Ari. There was a question he wanted to ask, but he couldn’t. A secretary did not question the General. But Ari knew what Max wanted to know. “If not tomorrow, then at the formal reception may we hope to be welcomed also by Her Majesty, the Queen?” he asked.
General Balcor hesitated. Then, “Unfortunately,” he said, “Her Majesty has of late been unwell, and has kept to her own apartments. Certainly if she feels up to it, His Majesty will allow her to
greet her own…” He turned to Max, as if Max might give him the word he was searching for.
Max couldn’t look at either Ari or Mr. Bendiff. It was all he could do to keep his own face wiped clean of any alarm, to keep his hands from clutching one another in anxiety. What if they had been seen through? Or even were merely suspected? In this country, it seemed, they could be thrown into prison at the whim of the General, or the Captain, or the King, and left to rot.
“…countrymen,” the General at last concluded. “Gentlemen, farewell.”
He left as abruptly as he had arrived. For a long time, the three who remained in the room looked at one another in silence. Tomorrow, Max told himself, tomorrow he would see his father. But what was wrong with his mother? She was never ill, never missed a performance. And how would he tell his father what plan he’d made for their rescue when he still had no idea what that plan could be?
The Rescue
• ACT I •
SCENE 1 THE CUE
Max did not see the splendor of the high halls through which General Balcor and Captain Malpenso led them, not the murals of gods and goddesses on the walls, not the life-sized portraits of unlikely ancestors, not the gilded sofas and chairs and side tables. He did not gasp in shock or admiration, as Mr. Bendiff did, or sniff in distaste, as Ari did, at the waiting room, where the walls were entirely covered by smooth silver panels. Neither had he felt the rain through which they hurried on the short walk from the guesthouse doorway to the high gates, across a courtyard, and into the palace. Nor had he noticed the lines of soldiers through which they walked, or wondered, like Ari, if they were there to protect the King, or thought, like Mr. Bendiff, that their weapons were in service to the General.
The Book of Kings Page 14