The Emperor's Agent

by Jo Graham

  He nodded and his face cleared. "We can," he said. "I'll go change, then." He followed Reille into the room beyond as Subervie came out.

  Subervie was one of the few who had already discarded his uniform for something more atmospheric, an ankle length robe of heavy white silk of the sort worn by choirboys in churches, the high neck fastened with a white silk frog. It should have looked ridiculous, but instead it looked formal and seemly, like a priest clad in white instead of black. His waist was cinched by a white silk sash, into which he had incongruously tucked his dress sword.

  "All right, Madame?" he asked.

  "Yes," I said. "But I haven't a robe of my own. Do you perhaps have one I could borrow?"

  "I don't," Subervie said, "But let us ask M. Noirtier."

  We found Noirtier by the big table, his white robe tied with a black sash weighted with gold bullion fringe, fussing with the charcoal in a censer.

  "Do we have a spare robe for Madame St. Elme?" Subervie asked. "She hasn't got her own."

  "She won't need one," Noirtier said without looking up. "Doves work nude."

  "Oh for Heaven's sake!" I said. It was worse than Lebrun's amateur theatricals, with the pretty elemental maidens.

  Subervie looked shocked. "What?"

  Noirtier straightened. "Doves work nude. Wearing clothing, particularly heavy silks, interferes with the ability to leave one's body astrally."

  "I've never heard of any such thing," I said.

  "It is the tradition of the Pléiade," he replied stiffly. "It is not for prurient purposes. It is merely because it makes the work easier."

  "For me to sit about naked among the crowd of you? All dressed up in your robes like anti-priests? It is like something designed by the Committee of Public Safety for a ridiculous spectacle!"

  "Those spectacles were not ridiculous, Madame," Noirtier said. "I had the honor to work on several of them with Jacques-Louis David."

  "That may be as it may," I said, "But I have never before needed to be nude to see things."

  "What are you talking about?" I had not seen Michel come up behind me, now dressed in his robe with a sash of crimson silk.

  Noirtier, of course, had heard none of our previous conversation, and had no idea we were not mere acquaintances. "Madame is protesting the necessity of proper dress. The Dove must be nude."

  Michel's face turned as red as his sash. "I should think she would! How can you even suggest that?"

  "It is the tradition of the Pléiade," Noirtier said stubbornly. "We are trying to do this right, for maximum effectiveness. I would do it myself, if it were necessary."

  "But who cares about seeing you nude, Noirtier?" Michel demanded. "It's not the same thing at all. That you should ask a lady to disrobe completely in a room full of men is incomprehensible. Apologize to her immediately."

  "I will not," Noirtier said. "This discussion is between me and Madame, about the role she is taking tonight. You are not her husband, and you do not dictate her dress."

  I had to admire his tenacity, and he had a point. It was a bit rich, seeing Michel acting proprietary when he had no cause to be. "Michel, M. Noirtier has made a request which I am considering. Pray stay out of it," I said.

  "Elza, I will not allow this!" His face was scarlet.

  "You will not allow it?" I felt the blood rush to mine as well. "You will not allow me to take my clothes off if I so choose?"

  "No, I won't! Not in front of all these men!"

  "You don't get to tell me who I can undress in front of," I snapped. "You have no right." I cast my shawl on the floor and put my hands to the buttons on my back just above the waist.

  "Lannes!" Michel bellowed.

  The entire room stopped and looked at him, Subervie with a jug of water in his hands.

  "What?" Lannes asked. He had been across the room, and heard none of it.

  "Will you permit your woman to strip like a harlot in front of your friends? As though she were nothing to you but a ten sou whore?" Michel stormed around me, his hands clenched.

  "My what?" Lannes glanced from him to me. "Madame St. Elme? She's not my companion, and it is entirely up to her to dress as she likes."

  I reached for Michel's arm. "Michel, don't carry on this way."

  "The Dove is supposed to be nude," Noirtier said. I was beginning to think him quite a terrier, with an idea in his teeth that he would not let go of no matter how unwise.

  Michel spun round. "And do you want to be?" he demanded. "That's not what it sounded like. It sounded like Noirtier bullying you in to stripping in a room full of men."

  "I should rather wear a robe like yours," I said. "I do not wish to disrupt the atmosphere, but I am quite capable of doing what I do while wearing some clothing. Or if you do not have a spare, I am content to work in my chemise as I have done in the past."

  "I don't think we've got a spare," Subervie muttered. "I can go look though." He hurried out through the door to the dressing room.

  "Then I will wear my chemise," I said. "It's fine."

  "You're going to stand in front of all these men in your underwear?" Michel still looked murderous. "So that they can look at you lasciviously, imagining what they'd like to do with you?"

  "Is anyone having that problem but you?" I demanded.

  "How about a sheet?" It was Reille who spoke. "If you put a sheet about you like a toga, nobody will be able to see anything. And linen is not a conductive material. In terms of not interfering with the ability to project her soul, a linen sheet should be materially neutral."

  Noirtier threw up his hands. "If we are abandoning the principle of nudity, I suppose so."

  "A sheet would be fine," I said. "I would be happy to wear a sheet."

  "A sheet," Michel said.

  Reille met his eyes, entirely unintimidated. "A sheet. She'll be covered from neck to ankles. She'll be more covered than we are."

  "I suppose," Michel said. It was clear that Reille had more chance of calming him down than anyone else. He must respect the young general as much as Corbineau had said.

  "Gervais! Grab a sheet!" Reille yelled through the door.

  "Can we get started?" Lannes asked. "If we are through arguing about Madame St. Elme's clothes?"

  "Let me go change," I said, and hurried through the door, taking the sheet from the bewildered Subervie as I went in and closed it behind me.

  I took a deep breath. Calm. I knew I must be calm. It was a bad idea to go into something like this already agitated and upset. I need to calm down and try to mentally prepare for the task ahead. One thing Michel had done, I thought, was to completely distract me from my fears about the ritual.

  He'd probably distracted everyone else too.

  I took off my dress, stockings and shoes, and my soft bustier. There were no candles lit in the dressing room, and through the curtains of the one small window I could see that the sun was westering behind the walls. A stableboy went by, bucket in hand. It was evening.

  Very well, then. It was time to get on with it.

  I draped the sheet about me, wrapping it like Roman palla, hoping that it looked more Classical than silly. I glanced in the mirror and thought it did. I stopped then and unpinned my hair. It was not so long, but it did fall below my shoulders. I never wore it that way, unbound, and so I thought it suited this new persona, the one I would be when I did this, the one who knew how to do it. I looked at myself in the mirror, blond hair unbound, enormous blue eyes, the unrelieved white of the sheet falling in graceful folds. "Who are you?" I whispered. "Who are you, the one who can see?"

  She did not answer, only regarded me solemnly.

  I opened the door. The witches of England were waiting.

  The Witches of England

  "Asclepius, Healer of Bodies and of Hearts, Wisdom old as time and ever-revealed, harken to our call and grant us the benison of your grace this night."

  I sat in the middle of the circle, a little table with a blackened mirror in front of me and Noirtier beyond that. There
were no lights besides a taper on the table, and one fat white candle in the stand beyond Noirtier that a young man was lighting, his invocation hanging in the air.

  He turned, the censer in his hand, and slowly began to walk around the outside of the circle. The heady scents of frankincense and myrrh filled the room. He passed each of the other seven men in turn, their heads bowed, hands clasped before them. Noirtier sat opposite me, likewise still, his eyes closed. The man with the censer passed behind me and around, returning it to its place hanging from a tripod beside the candle.

  "Athena, Quickener of Minds and of Spirits, Guardian of the worthy, harken to our call and grant us the benison of your grace this night." Reille, off to my right, took his cue and lit another white candle from the passed taper. It flared into life as though it were a lamp, not a candle. I saw his face for a moment in profile, solemn and reverent, as a man who hears music only he can hear.

  He was always the pious one, I thought, though I did not know where the thought came from. Doors opening, opened by the words, by the scent of the smoke.

  From the scabbard tucked into his sash he drew forth his sword, gleaming and bright. It was pretty, but it was not a dress sword, not a toy. It was a saber with a curved blade, hilt with only a bar guard. He lifted it before him like a crusader, point uppermost, light reflecting off the steel, and in its gleam I almost saw the talons of an owl, the bright flash of its stoop. Then, sword before him, he passed behind me, going around the circle.

  I closed my eyes. Now it was Lannes behind me, the sound of water pouring from a pitcher into a basin. "Aphrodite, Measurer of All Who Love, Lady of the oceans of the world, harken to our call and grant us the benison of your grace this night."

  Pelagia, something whispered within me. Lady of the Sea who belongs to no man…. I felt it like a breath, like a whisper over my bowed head, as though someone had opened a window and let in the salt air.

  But of course it was only the rustle of Lannes' robe as he passed about, a sprig of rosemary in his hands with which he sprinkled sea water. I wondered irrelevantly whose job it was to procure rosemary and sea water. Probably Subervie's.

  "Serapis, Harvester of Lands and of Souls, vine and vinestock, harken to our call and grant us the benison of your grace this night." Michel was off to my left, lighting the last of the four candles. I opened my eyes to see him straighten, a bowl of salt in his hands which he sprinkled before him, passing in front of me and around.

  A frisson ran down my spine. They are real, I thought. All the old gods and spirits, all the ancient names read in dusty books. They are real. They awaken.

  Noirtier stood, his hands before him. "Selah. So may it be. We stand here, my friends, one in purpose and one in heart, that the fortunes of our nation may prosper, and so the cause of liberty on Earth. To that end, we have with us a Dove, who will, with our aid and protection, attempt to penetrate the defenses of the enemy." He glanced around the circle. "Your job is to protect her, and to grant these mighty patrons whose aid we have requested whatever they may need. Pray be seated, gentlemen."

  With a sigh, they all sat down on the ground, a ring about us, the four white candles on their stands gleaming like pillars of light behind them. I would have looked at Lannes for a cue, but now he was directly behind me. It was Michel who put the taper back on the table beside the blackened mirror, carefully not looking at me as he placed it.

  A moment of terror gripped me. I did not know what to do. Beside Michel, Subervie gave me an encouraging smile, and I remembered what he had said about nothing happening. If I produced nothing, it was no different than what they had already done. I would be no worse at least.

  "Look into the mirror," Noirtier said. "Don't try to focus your eyes on it. Just let them play over the surface. Look, and dream."

  I tried. We sat in silence what seemed a long time. My hands sweated, and I saw nothing but a mirror before me, Noirtier's lap and the eastward candle beyond him, the young man with glasses who had lit the flame for Asclepius. I am doing nothing, I thought.

  The flames were better. I started to raise my head to tell Noirtier nothing was happening, but the reflection of the fire off the brass candlestick stopped me. It played on the brass, flickering and dancing.

  You do not need this mirror, something whispered inside me. You only need the fire.

  Fire, and the memory of fire. I let it grow in my mind, my eyes watering and closing when it grew too bright. Fire, and the memory of fire. Sparks of light flickering off water, coals coiled in matching darkness in a brazier. The memory of fire. Light on a pool, sun streaming through a window of stained glass, fire leaping on an altar. Fire.

  Light played on the back of my closed eyelids.

  "A hanging lantern," I whispered. I could see it in the darkness, swaying with each movement of the ship. "A lantern, the kind with shutters." It swung back and forth gently over the head of the man at the desk, his dark blue coat off, white shirt and waistcoat pale in the dark. Beyond him the stern windows of the ship showed nothing but darkness, sea and night beyond. There were papers beneath his fingers, pages in neat writing, one with a row of words and numbers. I saw his face a moment as he glanced up, fair haired, young, with the broad homely face that should belong to a farmer, nothing keen and bright about him but his eyes.

  "Captain Arnold," I whispered. "Captain Edmund Arnold, of the HMS Lion." Captain Arnold sat at his desk a few miles away, a cipher key in his hands. "He has a message from his spy," I said. "A new one. He just got it a few minutes ago and has gone below to decipher it."

  Somewhere, far away from this cabin on Lion, I heard a rustle and a stir, some low muttered words, but they were much less real than Captain Arnold, turning numbers into words. "No…something …." I could not read much, though I could see the words plainly, as I did not read English.

  A different voice, this one at my elbow. "Can you tell where Lion is?" Lannes, I thought.

  "South," I whispered. "She's tacking against the wind, going down the coast, close hauled to the port bow." I did not even know the meaning of what I said, but it was there in Arnold's mind, on the very surface, where his ship was, what it was doing. A moderate wind and high seas, tacking and tacking across her course southward. Even now, above, they were passing the word to come about, Mr. Walker's voice clear and strong.

  "Can you look further?" Lannes asked. "Go further out to sea? It is only a few miles to England. Dover should be visible from Lion's topmast."

  It was like uncoiling, like movement swift and sure, rising up from Captain Arnold, up the length of the ship's mast, sails taut in the wind. She was tacking out to sea, her wake a zigzag down the coast. And behind her and northward, lights on the horizon, lights along the shore spread like a crescent, brighter and then dimmer as they curved westward, the southern coast of England laid out before me like a map

  I stood on the wind like a gull in the night, white wings spread over Lion below. Fifty feet above her decks I hovered, watching sailors running about, the complicated and graceful business of changing her course again.

  There was England. A few beats of my wings and I soared toward it, low and fast as a gull, not even leaving a shadow on the water. There was Dover, port marked by so many masts, Dover Castle above all. There was the curve of coastline, chalk cliffs glimmering white in the darkness. They were almost beneath me.

  And then something rose out of the darkness, vast and strange as a great wind. It hovered, impenetrable, a shape of cloud and trouble.

  I veered off, and it tore at me, gull's wings wildly beating. Time to go, I thought. This is what Lannes means by superior force. I darted, diving low, and for a moment beneath its rolling clouds I saw something different, a garden enclosed by hedges, an old woman looking up, a swan's feather in her hand.

  Then the winds hit me, tumbling and shaking, buffeting at me with unearthly force. The sea came up like a wall beneath me, flat and hard and cold. I righted myself at the last second, almost beneath Lion's prow, streaking l
ike a shadow over the waves. The winds tore at me one last time, and then it was beach and marshland beneath me, the coast south of Boulogne sleeping under a quiet moon.

  I turned and looked back.

  There was nothing to see, except perhaps far out to sea a shape of cloud that momentarily obscured the waxing moon.

  "Elza? Elza?" There was a voice, a touch on my shoulders, and reeling I spun away, drawn suddenly northward at a terrible pace.

  "Don't do that." It was Noirtier's voice. "Let her find her way back in her own time."

  "Elza, can you hear me? Can't you see she's in trouble, man?"

  I opened my eyes, though the room still spun. "Michel?"

  He was kneeling beside me, a worried look on his face. "Are you all right?"

  My hands were clenched, and I opened them gingerly. "I think so?"

  "What happened?" Lannes asked. "You stopped talking." He too had come around to my other side.

  "I think I ran into that superior force you were talking about," I said, and related to him what I had seen.

  Lannes looked grave. His eyes met Michel's across me. "We feared something like that," he said.

  Michel nodded. "An air elemental?"

  "It looked like a storm," I said. "A very small, concentrated storm, like one of those deadly thunderstorms, the ones that spawn cyclones."

  Lannes looked thoughtful. "It is summer. And it has been hot."

  "This wasn't natural," I said. I was quite sure of that.

  "The woman with the swan's feathers…." Michel mused.

  "Swans have a lot of correspondences," Reille said. He had not left his place at south. "I wouldn't know what else was done right off, but there are a lot of stories with swans in them, some of them Northern European."

  "And some unique to the British Isles, no doubt," Lannes said. He stood up. "Corbineau, can you ask that Free Irish friend of yours about stories with swans?"

  "Of course," Corbineau said.

  "Subtly," Michel said.

  "Of course!" Corbineau looked mildly offended. Michel was not the most subtle man in the world himself.