Marvin made to enter the coach and saw a person already within. It was a girl; and peering more closely, he saw-
'Cathy!' he cried.
She looked at him without comprehension, and answered in a cold, imperious voice, 'Sir, I am Catarina d'Augustin, and I know not your face nor like I your style of presumed familiarity.'
There was no recognition in her beautiful grey eyes, and no time to ask questions. For even as Sir Gules made hasty introductions, a shout could be heard behind them.
'You there, in the coach! Halt in the name of the King!'
Glancing back, Marvin could see a captain of dragoons with ten mounted men behind him.
'Treachery!' shouted Inglenook. 'Quick, coachmen, let us away!'
With a clatter of traces and a rattle of bits, the four matched stallions propelled the coach down the narrow alley in the direction of Ninestones and Oceansideways High Road.
'Can they overtake us?' asked Marvin.
'Mayhap,' Inglenook said. 'They seem damnably well mounted, damn their blue blistered backsides! Your pardon, madame …'
For a few moments Inglenook watched the horsemen clatter along not twenty yards behind, their sabres glittering in the dim lamplight. Then he shrugged and turned away.
'Let me inquire,' Inglenook inquired, 'as to whether you are conversant with recent political developments here and elsewhere in the Old Empire; for this knowledge is needful to make intelligible to you the necessity for the particular form and moment of our scheme.'
'I fear that my political knowledge is but indifferent poor,' Marvin said.
'Then permit me to relate to you a few details of the background, which will render the situation and its import more malleable to the intelligence.'
Marvin settled back, hearing the drumming of the dragoon's horses in his ears. Cathy, seated opposite him and slightly to his right, stared coldly at the swinging tassels on Sir Gules' hat. And Lord Inglenook began to speak:
Chapter 27
'The old king died less than a decade ago, at the full flood of the Suessian heresy, leaving no clear successor to the throne of Mulvavia. Thus, the passions of a troubled continent came ominously to the boil.
'Three claimants jostled for the Butterfly Throne. Prince Moroway of Theme held the Patent Obvious, which had been awarded him by a bribed but still official Council of Electionate. And if that were not sufficient, he held as well by the doctrine of Regal Empleatude, since he was the acknowledged, illegitimate second (and only surviving) son of Baron Norway, the old king's sister's half-cousin through the powerful Mortjoys of Danat.
'In less troubled times, this might have been sufficient. But for a continent on the verge of civil and religious war, there were defects in the claim, and even more in the claimant.
'Prince Moroway was merely eight years old and had never been known to utter a word. According to the portrait by Mouvey, he had a monstrously swollen head, a slack jaw, and the unfocused eyes of a hydrocephalic idiot. His only known pleasure was his collection of worms (the finest on the continent).
'His main opposition for the succession was Gottlieb Hosstratter, Duke of Mela and Receiptor-in-Ordinary of the Imperial Marginland, whose dubious bloodlines were backed by the schismatic Suessian Hierarchy, and most particularly by the enfeebled Hierarch of Dodessa.
'A second claimant, Romrugo of Vars, might have been discounted were it not that he backed his petition with a force of fifty thousand battle-hardened troopers from the southern principality of Vask. Young and vigorous, Romrugo had a reputation for eccentricity; his marriage to his favourite mare Orsilla, was condemned by the orthodox Owensian clergy of which he was the absentminded champion. Nor did he win favour among the burghers of Gint-Loseine, whose proud city he ordered buried under twenty feet of earth "as a gift to future archaeologists". Yet withal, his claim to the throne of Mulvavia might have been speedily legitimized had he possessed the wherewithal with which to pay his fighting men.
'Unfortunately for Romrugo, he had no personal fortune. (It had been squandered upon the purchase of the Lethertean scrolls.) Therefore, in order to raise his army's payroll, he proposed an alliance with the wealthy but ineffectual Free City of Tihurrue, which commanded the straits of Sidue.
'This unthinking move brought down upon his head the wrath of the Duchy of Puls, whose western frontier had long guarded the exposed flank of the Old Empire from the depradations of the pagan Monogoths. The stern, singleminded young grandduke of Puls immediately joined forces with the schismatic Hosstratter – surely as strange an alliance as the continent had ever seen – and thus became a direct menace to Prince Moroway, and to the Mortjoys of Danat who supported him. So, quite unexpectedly, finding himself surrounded on three sides by Suessians or their allies, and on the fourth side by the restive Monogoths, Romrugo began casting around desperately for a new alliance.
'He found it in the enigmatic figure of Baron Lord Darkmouth, Prepossessor of the Isle of Turplend. The tall and brooding Baron set to sea at once with a battle fleet of twenty-five galleons, and all Mulvavia held its breath as the ominous line of ships sailed down the Dorter and into the Escher Sea.
'Could the balance still have been preserved, even at this late hour? Perhaps, if Moroway had held firm to his former pledges to the Marche Cities. Or if the old Hierarch of Dodessa, contemplating at last the necessity of an accommodation with Hosstratter, had not chosen that inappropriate moment to die, and thus to give power to the epileptic Murvey of Hunfutmouth. Or if Red Hand Ericmouth, chief of the West Monogoths, had not chosen that moment to banish Propeia, sister of the stern Archduke of Puls, known as the "Hammer against Heretics" (by which he meant all who did not subscribe to his own narrowly orthodox Delongianism).
'But the hand of Fate intervened to stay the inevitable moment; for Baron Darkmouth's galleons were caught in the Great Storm of '03, and driven to take refuge at Tihurrue, which they sacked, thus dissolving Romrugo's alliance before it was fairly underway, and causing revolt among the unpaid Vaskians of his army, who deserted by regiments and joined Hosstratter, whose lands lay closest to their line of march.
'Thus Hosstratter, third and most reluctant of the royal petitioners, who had become resigned to his loss, found himself back in the contest; and Moroway, whose star had glittered high, discovered that the Echilides Mountains were no protection when the eastern passes were held by a determined enemy.
'The man most affected by all of this, of course, was Romrugo. His position was unenviable: deserted by his troops, forsworn by his ally Baron Darkmouth (who had his hands full trying to hold Tihurrue against a determined attack by the pirates of the Rullish coast), and menaced even in his fiefdom of Vars by the long and deadly arm of Mortjoy's conspiracy, while the Marche Cities looked hungrily on. As capstone to his pillar of ill fortune, his mare Orsilla chose that moment to desert him.
'Yet even in the depths of adversity, the self-confident Romrugo did not falter. His mare's desertion was hailed by the frightened Owensain clergy, who granted their dubious champion a Divorce in Absolute, and then learned to their horror that the cynical Romrugo intended to use his freedom to wed Propeia and thus align himself with the grateful Archduke of Puls …
'These were the factors that exercised men's passions in that fateful year. The continent stood poised upon the brink of catastrophe. Peasants buried their crops underground and sharpened their scythes. Armies stood to attention and prepared to move in any direction. The turbulent mass of the West Monogoths, pressed from behind by the still more turbulent mass of hard-riding cannibal Allahuts, massed threateningly on the borders of the Old Empire.
'Darkmouth hastened to re-equip his galleys, and Hosstratter paid the Vaskian troopers and trained them for a new kind of war. Romrugo cemented his new alliance with Puls, achieved a detente with Ericmouth, and took account of the new rivalry between Mortjoy and the epileptic but dourly able Murvey. And Moroway of Theme, unconscious ally of the Rullish pirates, unwilling champion of the Suessian heresy, and
unwitting accomplice of Red Hand Ericmouth, looked to the grim eastern slopes of the Echilides and waited in trepidation.
'It was at this moment of supreme and universal tension that Milord d'Augustin all unwittingly chose to announce the imminent completion of his work of philosophy …'
Inglenook's voice faded slowly away, and for a time there was no sound but the heavy thrum of horse's hooves. Then Marvin said quietly, 'I understand now.'
'I knew you would,' Inglenook answered warmly. 'And in light of this, you can understand our plan, which is to assemble at Castelgatt and then strike immediately.'
Marvin nodded. 'Under the circumstances there could be no other way.'
'But first,' Inglenook said, 'we must rid ourselves of these pursuing dragoons.'
'As to that,' Marvin said, 'I have a plan …'
Chapter 28
By a clever ruse, Marvin and his compatriots were able to elude the pursuing dragoons and to come unscathed into the great moated tiltyard of Castelgatt. There, upon the sounding of the twelfth hour, the conspirators were to assemble, make final dispositions, and move out that very night for the audacious attempt to rescue d'Augustin from the formidable grasp of Blackamoor.
Marvin retired to his chambers in the high east wing, and there shocked his page by insisting upon a basin of water in which to wash his hands. It was considered a strange affectation on his part in that age in which even the greatest court ladies were accustomed to hide smudges of dirt under perfumed gauze bandages. But Marvin had picked up the custom during his stay among the gay and pagan Tescos of the southern Remoueve, whose soapy fountains and spongy sculpture were wonders of wonders to the complacent and grimy northern nobility. And in spite of the laughter of his peers and the frowns of the clergy, Marvin stubbornly insisted that an occasional scrub of the hands did no damage, so long as the water touched no other part.
His ablutions completed, and clad only in black satin half-knickers, white lace shirt, cavalry boots and shoulder-length gloves of Eretzian chamois, and wearing only his sword Coueur de Stabbat, which had been handed down in his family father-to-son for five hundred years, Marvin heard a half-noise behind him and whirled, hand to hilt.
'La, sir, wouldst run me through with thy terrible great sword?' mocked the Lady Catarina – for it was she – standing just inside the panelled doorway to the inner chamber.
'Faith, your ladyship startled me,' Marvin said. 'But as for running thee through, that indeed I wouldst do right merrily, though not with sword but with a trustier weapon which it happens I do possess.'
'Fie, sir,' the Lady Catarina said mockingly. 'Offerest violence to a lady?'
'Merely the violence of pleasure,' Marvin replied gallantly.
'Your words are too glib by half,' said the Lady Catarina. 'I believe it has been noted that the longest and wiliest tongues conceal the shortest and least adequate of Weapons.'
'Your ladyship does me injustice,' Marvin said. 'For I dare say my Weapon is eminently capable of the uses it may encounter, sharp enough to penetrate the best defence in the world, and durable enough for repeated stabbings. And, quite apart from such utilitarian uses, it has learned from me certain infallible tricks, the which it would be my respectful pleasure to show your ladyship.'
'Nay, keep your Weapon in its scabbard,' the lady quoth, indignantly, but with sparkling eyes. 'Me likes not the sound of 't; for braggart's steel is ever pliable tin, shiny to the eye yet damnably malleable to the touch.'
'I beg of thee but to touch the edge and point,' Marvin said, 'and thus submit thy raillery to th' test of Usage.'
She shook her pretty head. 'Know, sir, that such Pragmatics are for greybeard philosophers with rheumy eyes; a lady relies upon her intuition.'
'Lady, I worship thy intuition,' Marvin responded.
'Why, sir, what wouldst Thou, the Prepossessor of a dubious Weapon of indetermined length and uncertain temper, know of a woman's intuition?'
'Lady, my heart tells me that it is exquisite and ineffable, and possessed of a pleasing shape and delicate fragrance, and that-'
'Enough, sir!' the Lady Catarina cried, blushing hotly and fanning herself furiously with a Japanese fan whose corrugated surface portrayed the Investiture of the Iichi.
Both fell silent. They had been conversing in the old Language of Courtly Love, in which symbolic apostrophe played so important a part. In those days it was deemed no breach of the etiquette for even the best-bred and most demure of young ladies to thus converse; theirs was not a frightened age.
But now a shadow of seriousness had fallen over the two participants. Marvin glowered, fingering the grey steel buttons of his white lace shirt. And the Lady Catarina looked troubled. She wore a panelled gown of dove tulip with slashings of chrome red; and, as was the custom, the neckline was cut fashionably low to reveal the firm rosy swelling of her little abdomen. Upon her feet were sandal-pumps of ivory-coloured damask; and her hair, piled high upon a jade ratouelle, was adorned with a garland of spring snippinies. Never in his life had Marvin seen so beautiful a sight.
'Can we not cease this ceaseless play of word-foolery?' Marvin asked quietly. 'May we not say that which is in our hearts, 'stead of fencing thus with heartless ingenuities?'
'I dare not!' the Lady Catarina murmured.
'And yet, you are Cathy, who loved me once in another time and place,' Marvin said inexorably, 'and who now plays me for the unacknowledged gallant.'
'You must not speak of that which once had been,' Cathy said, in a frightened whisper.
'Yet still you loved me once!' Marvin cried hotly. 'Deny me this an you find it false!'
'Yes,' she said in a failing voice. 'I loved thee once.'
'And now?'
'Alas!'
'But speak and tell me reason!'
Nay, I cannot!'
'Will not, rather.'
'As thee wish; the choice is servant to the heart.'
'I would not have you believe that,' she said softly.
'No? Then surely the desire is father to the intent,' Marvin said, his face gone hard and pitiless. 'And standing thus in familial relationship, not even the wisest of men would deny that Love is inbonded to its half-sister Indifference, and Faithfulness is thrall to the cruel stepmother, Pain.'
'Can you so consider me?' she cried weakly.
'Why, Lady, you leave me choiceless,' Marvin responded in a voice of ringing bronze. 'And thus my barque of Passion is Derelict upon a Sea of Memory, blown off its rightful course by the fickle wind of Indifference, and driven towards the rockbound Coast of Agony by the inexorable Tide of Human Events.'
'And yet, I would not have it thus,' Catarina said, and Marvin thrilled to hear even so mild an affirmation of that which he had considered lost beyond recall.
'Cathy-'
'Nay, it cannot be,' she cried, recoiling in evident agony, her colour high and her abdomen rising and falling with the emotion within her. 'You know not of the wretched circumstances of my situation.'
'I demand to know!' Marvin cried, then whirled, his hand darting to his sword. For the great oaken door of his chamber had swung noiselessly open, and there, leaning negligently in the doorway, a man stood with arms folded over his chest and a half-smile playing across his thin, bearded lips.
'In faith! We are undone!' Catarina cried, her hand pressed to her trembling abdomen.
'Sir, what would thou?' Marvin asked hotly. 'I demand to know thy name, and the reason for this most ungentle and unseemly investiture!'
'All shall be speedily revealed thee,' the man in the doorway said, his voice revealing a faint and menacing lisp. 'My name, sir, is Lord Blackamoor, 'gainst whom your puerile plans have been cast; and I have entered this chamber from simple privilege of one who dutifully desires introduction to his wife's young friend.'
'Wife?' Marvin echoed.
'This lady,' Blackamoor declared, 'who has the uncertain habit of not straightaways introducing herself, is indeed the Most Noble Catarina d'Augustin di Blackamoor,
the most loving wife to this your humble servant.'
And so saying, Blackamoor swept off his hat and louted low, then resumed his exquisite's pose in the doorway.
Marvin read the truth in Cathy's tear-stained eyes and shuddering abdomen. Cathy, his beloved Cathy, the wife of Blackamoor, the most detested enemy of those who espoused the cause of d'Augustin, who was Cathy's own father!
Yet there was no time to consider these strange propinquities of sensibility; for the foremost consideration was of Blackamoor himself, standing miraculously within a castle held by his enemies, and betraying no hint of nervousness at a position that should have been perilous in the extreme.
And this infallibly meant that the situation was not as Marvin had supposed it, and that the threads of destiny were tangled now past his immediate comprehension.
Blackamoor in Castelgatt? Marvin considered the implications, and a sensation of cold came over him, as though the angel of death had brushed past him with stygian wings.
Murder lurked in this room – but for whom? Marvin feared the worst, but turned quite steadily, his face a mask of obsidian, and faced the enemy who was his beloved's husband and the captor of her father.
Chapter 29
Milord Lamprey di Blackamoor stood silent and at his ease. He was above the middling height, and possessed a frame of extreme emaciation, punctuated by his narrow, closely cropped beard of jetty black, his deep-swept sideburns, and his hair cut en brosse and allowed to fall upon his forehead in snaky ringlets. And yet the appearance of narrowness was offset by the breadth of shoulder and the powerful swordsman's arm that could be glimpsed beneath his half-cloak of ermitage. He wore his points and josses in the new foppish style, interlaced with macedium pointings and relieved only by a triple row of crepe-silver darturs. His face was coldly handsome, marred only by a puckered scar that ran from his right temple to the left corner of his mouth, and which he had defiantly painted a fiery crimson. This lent to his sarcastic features a look both sinister and absurd.
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