by Stephen Hunt
‘Have you washed this morning?’ demanded King Marcus.
‘Come closer and find out,’ she laughed.
Soon, the final croaking shudders of the dying guardsman weren’t the only moans drifting across the palace gardens.
Willow waved at her maid and the woman immediately had the carriage halted in the middle of the street. Willow flung open the door, stumbled outside to be sick across the pebbles. Four weeks into her pregnancy and the terrible nausea seemed to rise every afternoon in heavy waves before returning twice as bad during the evening. Breakfast was the only meal she could face and keep down. At least she could handle that solitary meal with a clear head. Since Willow’s condition had made itself known, the viscount’s servants had not dared use sedatives to keep her manageable, for fear of poisoning the nobleman’s firstborn inside her womb. And Willow’s pregnancy had the additional benefit that Wallingbeck’s foul attentions had drifted away from her and back onto the capital’s courtesans. But the servants at Belinus Hall watched her even more closely now. She had only been able to make one attempt to flee her despicable so-called husband, during a night of patriotic music performances at Arcadia’s concert hall, and the staff hadn’t even felt they could beat her when they caught her trying to slip out, disguised in a silk shawl she had stolen from another private box.
‘You make such a damnable noise when you’re sick,’ said Leyla Holten, sticking her head out of the open door. ‘It’s unladylike and really quite disagreeable.’
Willow glared back at the carriage. Her stepmother was as swollen as a whale, only weeks from giving birth. Perhaps Holten felt the need for company in her misery. That would be one explanation for the unwanted marriage slipped like chains around Willow’s neck – beyond Holten’s need to expel the previous brood from the Landor nest. ‘Then you should have left me to throw up in my bedroom.’
‘I couldn’t do that,’ said Holten, her eyes flashing with dark mischief. ‘I have a couple of highly congenial surprises planned for you this afternoon.’
‘Keep them,’ said Willow.
‘Where would the fun be in that, your ladyship?’ Holten kicked the maid’s ankles and indicated Willow on her knees in the dust of the street. The servant went to help Willow to her feet while a couple of footmen from the back of the carriage stood sentry around her. They needn’t have bothered; not on her account – she could hardly stay away from a bathroom for longer than an hour – and the brutes didn’t need to shield her modesty from onlookers. All the crowds were at a crossroads down the street, lining the pavement and cheering a regiment of blue-uniformed soldiers marching off to war, the crunch of boots in unison and the rap of drums at the side. There were only loyalists to King Marcus left inside Arcadia. What happened to any gainsayers didn’t bear thinking about.
They rode on, eventually pushing through a crowd of onlookers surrounding a square. There was a fountain in the middle pouring water into a round pool, a crust of ice around its edge, but the rest of the scene was anything but peaceful. A long wooden gallows had been raised, men suspended from ropes hanging dead in the breeze. In the platform’s shadows, women had been lined up, guarded by a company of soldiers, waiting their turn for their heads to be shaved to the jeers of the mob beyond.
‘What is this place, why have you brought me here?’
‘I promised you a couple of surprises today,’ said Holten. ‘This is the first of them. Those being hanged are looters and rebels, traitors who have given succour to the enemy. The women having their heads shaved are the traitors’ abandoned wives … every treasonous dog fled north to fight for the enemy.’
‘Does this foul sight amuse you? The suffering of poor unfortunates drawn into this awful conflict?’
‘I think it’s an excellent lesson to see what happens to those that rise up against their lawful assembly and king.’
‘I need no lessons in cruelty from you or your royal warmonger.’
‘I disagree. But I haven’t brought you here today to see Gaiaist conspirators swing in the wind, as much as the sight warms my heart.’ Holten swung open the door. ‘Out with you.’ The footmen entered the cab and practically lifted Willow off her feet, forcing her into the open square in front of the gallows. She averted her eyes from the women being humiliated, a carpet of their hair blowing across the paving stones and across her shoes. Holten dismounted and crossed to the company’s officer, pointing back at Willow and saying something sternly. The captain frowned, but reluctantly submitted to whatever sly scheme Holten was about today.
‘Here!’ said Holten. She indicated a wagon being loaded with the bodies of those hanged. Its back-board bore the little guild sigil of the barber-surgeons. The cadavers were to be used for practice by surgeons in training. No doubt the nation would develop a strong demand for freshly qualified doctors in the months ahead. ‘You have been writing incessantly to poor Benner, driving him to distraction with your maddening pleading for news of what happened to the Carnehans …’
‘No, please!’ Willow stared at the mound of bodies, fresh corpses tossed onto the flatbed as she watched. He can’t be dead. Willow couldn’t let their last meeting be when Carter had stumbled into the fact of her forced marriage.
‘Not the looters, you foolish girl,’ snapped Holten. ‘Them.’ She indicated two workers loading the wagon. They wore drab convict’s clothes, little more than uncomfortable hemp sacks with sleeves and course leggings. Neither of the two men were Carter or his father, though. Willow drew closer, uncertain what painful humiliation her stepmother could have planned for her here. Then she realized she recognized the men, if barely. Their heads had also been shaved to ugly stubble, presumably to ward off lice. The first man was the young courier from the Guild of Librarians who had arrived with Carter and Jacob Carnehan outside the Winteringham to try to free her. The second man was someone she knew from frequent visits to Hawkland Park. Charles T. Gimlette, the assemblyman who had long represented Northhaven. She rushed towards the cart despite its awful cargo. Willow nearly gagged when she stopped. Flies buzzed over the bodies despite the cold, and the stench of it was sickening.
The guild courier stepped forward, his forehead pale and sweating from the hard labour. ‘I’m Tom Purdell, I travelled south with Father Carnehan and Carter.’
‘I remember your bravery well from the hotel, guildsman. And Mister Gimlette! What in the name of the saints are you doing in a convict’s rags?’
‘Miss Landor! A bad bargain, I say,’ wheezed the assemblyman. He was a lot thinner now; she remembered an overweight politician during his stays at the great house. ‘Here I am hauling dead Weylanders, branded a traitor over a terrible misunderstanding. Condemned solely for my party membership. But all those who sought office in our prefecture embraced the Gaiaists. There hasn’t been a Mechanicalist elected in our neck of the woods for three hundred years.’ He noticed Holten standing behind Willow and fell wearily to his knees. ‘Please, madam, you must tell Benner Landor that I’m still his man. Haven’t I served his interests well? Done everything he ever asked of me?’
‘Stand up,’ barked Holten. ‘You’re not even an assemblyman anymore, you fat fool. Those traitors back home have cast you aside and installed another turncoat in your place to conspire against the kingdom. What good are you to me now?’
‘I can still be of use to your house,’ pleaded the broken official.
‘You may,’ said Holten, imperiously. ‘You and your courier friend here, tell this girl what happened to Father Carnehan and that impudent whelp of his.’
‘We were in the national assembly, Miss Landor,’ began Gimlette, ‘when—’
The captain in charge of the detail drew his pistol and whipped the assemblyman across the side of the head with the grip, sending the politician stumbling down to the street. ‘This is Lady Wallingbeck you address, you rebel dog. You will use her title.’
Willow helped the courier lift the old politician back to his feet. ‘Leave him alone! It’s no title I ever as
ked for. Please, Assemblyman, tell me what happened to Carter and the pastor …’
Gimlette moaned, clutching his bleeding head. ‘The king ordered in his guardsmen to dissolve the council. There was a huge fracas between the parties. Father Carnehan and his young fellow had just finished giving evidence when the troopers marched in. Your people were swept up by the king’s men and arrested. Everyone in my cursed party, too, that didn’t take to their heels fast enough. Ah, curse my comfortable belly. I’m no sprinter, not after a good lunch, not young or spry enough anymore to outrace a battalion of brutes armed with rifles and bayonets.’
‘It’s true,’ said Tom. ‘I was in the witness box with Jacob and Carter; I heard them testify for Prince Owen’s claim. But nothing went as it was meant to. The father was dragged away as a wanted murderer on the run. The assembly was dissolved before it could vote on the king’s abdication. We were unarmed – we didn’t stand a chance. The usurper’s soldiers surrounded us and gave us a beating for our troubles. Then we were dragged away and locked deep below the palace. The king’s men tossed me out of the dungeon and transported me to one of the regular prisons when they realized I was merely a guildsman travelling with your friends. Carter and Father Carnehan are still under the palace, enough chains piled on them to anchor a frigate in a cyclone.’
‘Please,’ pleaded Gimlette, ‘beg your father to release me, your ladyship. I am loyal to him still.’
‘He won’t listen to me anymore,’ said Willow. ‘I’m sorry, Mister Gimlette. I’m as much a prisoner in the south as you. Captain, what is to happen to these two poor gentlemen?’
‘The rebel sympathizers in Arcadia have been routed, your ladyship,’ said the officer, indicating the dead dangling lifeless from the gallows. ‘After tomorrow, these two dogs and a good few like them will be transported east to the stockade at Greealamie to build a prisoner-of-war camp to hold the rest of their disloyal friends. The cowards will be surrendering by the battalion-load as our boys press north.’
Holten thrust a finger at the two convicts. ‘Tell Lady Wallingbeck what you heard from Prefect Colbert inside the assembly.’
‘There’s no need to repeat the newspapers’ foul propaganda,’ said Willow. ‘It’ll sound no truer parroted by a prefect. I know the truth, Mister Gimlette, Mister Purdell. I survived as a slave, with Carter, struggling to stay alive while I watched my friends and countrymen worked to death, beaten and executed for attempting to escape. I know all I need to know about Carter and Owen Hawkins, as well as the pastor and his people who arrived to rescue us from the sky mines. Our feet never touched an inch of soil in the Burn, and the Vandians were only ever our captors, not our rescuers.’
‘But the prefect’s accusations weren’t all lies,’ said Tom. ‘Black Barnaby gave us air passage when nobody else would thanks to the father’s influence. I heard the pirate leader himself call Jacob Carnehan “brother”. The pastor fights like no priest of my acquaintance – I think he must have been a mercenary across the water. And if that much was true, what else …?’
‘Do you see what I and your father have saved you from?’ said Holten in triumph. ‘Carter Carnehan is not merely some ruffian commoner, he’s the son of a murderer, convicted in absentia after fleeing our lands to slaughter foreign peasants for money. Carter – son of a murderer and nephew to a pirate. That’s who we saved you from.’
‘Carter still loves you,’ said Tom, the soldiers preventing him from reaching out to touch her. ‘That’s what matters, Willow. Whatever Carter’s father has done, he hasn’t forgotten or forsaken you. Carter understands your marriage was forced on you against your will.’
‘By the saints, I’m pregnant now, Mister Purdell. How in the world will Carter feel about—?’
‘Enough,’ snapped Holten, snapping her fingers. Her footmen dragged Willow away from the wagon, leaving behind shocked expressions on the politician and courier’s faces. ‘Now you may rest secure in the knowledge that your thieving commoner lover has found his level: in the king’s jail and the king’s chains.’
‘Why?’ demanded Willow. ‘Why tell me he’s still alive? There’s not an iota of mercy to be wrung from your heart.’
‘You may yet find out,’ smiled Holten. ‘Now, on to your second surprise of the day.’
Willow was bundled back in the carriage and as they rattled through the streets, tried to hold back her renewed nausea. She wasn’t just suffering morning sickness. The stench of dead bodies seemed to cling to her. And yet … Carter’s alive. She felt joy at the unexpected news; clung to it tight through the waves of biliousness; a tiny pearl of hope. But they were still apart, each weighted with very different chains. Holten and the viscount would never agree to let Willow visit Carter in prison, even if the authorities proved willing. Maybe that was for the best? Carter wouldn’t have to see her condition; suffer the torment of seeing what Willow was suffering at the hands of another man; worry that she had embraced her marriage and abandoned him to his fate. But wasn’t abandonment exactly what she had done to Carter? Not willingly, but did it matter, when that was the reality of her situation?
They entered a richly appointed shopping district, luxury arcades nestling inside five-storey-high facades of white stone, tall glass windows shaded by colourful awnings. Their four horses clattered down a road of drapers, cloth merchants and tailors, with prices no doubt as exclusively costly as the private carriages idling along the street while wealthy clients perused within. Willow was forced out of the carriage and into a tailor’s shop called Nimrod Lock and Company. A narrow wooden corridor and then a large room surrounded by shelves filled with fabrics of every type from tweed to silk, measuring tables in the middle, tailors and customers milling at the far end.
‘And here we are,’ said Holten, indicating two men in uniform. The pair turned around to reveal her father and William Wallingbeck, as proud as peacocks under the weight of braid, epaulettes, sashes and shoulder boards. Blue double-breasted frockcoats with two lines of silver buttons, each with a white sword and holster belt, a bold stripe of yellow-piping on their trousers. ‘See how well they stand. Benner has been elevated as Marquess of the Northern Borderlands and also granted a colonelcy in the army by King Marcus; while William has been made a lieutenant-colonel attached to the general staff of the Army of the Bole.’
Willow ignored the brute Wallingbeck, incredulously approaching her father. ‘A uniform outfitters? Tell me you’re not really going to fight in this insane war?’
‘The insanity is wholly that of our neighbours,’ said Benner Landor. ‘Northhaven has declared for the pretender. I leave the prefecture alone for a few months and you see what evil flourishes in my absence … madness and rebellion. But I will quash the troubles. Hugh Colbert has been made General of the Army of the Bole. We intend to travel home and restore order rapidly. Northhaven’s own prefect marching at the head of the lawful forces sent to root out rebels and criminals, with myself and your fine husband by the general’s side.’
‘Are you not gratified by your father’s achievement?’ said Holten, her voice swollen with a pride so false she could have buttered bread with it. ‘A peerage as grand as any, and made responsible for crushing the rebellion in our home acres? It is recognition of your father’s talents that the House of Landor has deserved for decades. Think of it … Marquess of the Northern Borderlands! Your family now has title to a tenth of the north.’
‘And you a lady with it,’ added Viscount Wallingbeck, slyly, as if the thought wasn’t uppermost in the mind of the scheming bitch.
‘Far more importantly, a son shortly to be born to wear the title of the second marquess,’ said Holten, smiling at Benner Landor. ‘This happy age.’
A tailor stepped behind Willow and began to measure her. She pushed him back. ‘What is this?’
‘For our dress shop next door, your ladyship,’ said the tailor. ‘Your travelling clothes.’
‘What? Travel where?’
‘The ladies of the court are to
tour with the army,’ announced Benner Landor. ‘They have elected to show their support. You shall accompany us on the campaign. You will not disgrace your husband and your family again, old or new.’
‘I will play no part in your war, this madness!’
‘Silly goose, you do not need to fret for our safety,’ said Holten. ‘We will have grand picnics overlooking the battlefields, well beyond the range of stray bullets and shells, as we watch our fine gentlemen rout the rebels. It will be glorious. I will have given birth before we leave and the war will be over long before your child arrives.’
‘To hell with your “surprise” and your war, both.’
‘Oh, but the Landors’ rise at court isn’t your surprise, my dear. That is only testament to Benner’s dedication to his duty, which can be of no surprise to anyone who knows and loves your father. Do you wish to tell to Lady Wallingbeck the happy news we have received, husband?’ There was a little twitch of Holten’s mouth as she spoke, making Willow suspect that Holten might not find the news quite as welcome as she was pretending to.
‘The Empire of Vandia is dispatching a force to assist us in chasing the pretender and his slavers and his filthy rebel friends all the way back to the Burn,’ said Willow’s father, grandly. ‘And the Vandians have rescued Duncan from the slavers. The king himself gave me the joyous news at the palace when I was elevated to the peerage. Do you understand, girl? Your brother is coming home.’
‘No!’ said Willow, rocked by the news. ‘The Vandians are coming …?’