You were amused, I saw, by my haplessness when faced with Lady Westley’s court dress. But as you know firsthand, I have surmounted my handicap in the time since, and I can tie up a lady’s points as smartly as I can a bowline. At need I could earn my living as a lady’s maid, if any lady were deranged enough to employ me, and for that I must thank the practice I had with Lady Westley.
I have, after all, repaired your own costume on more than a few occasions. Occasions which, I hope, we both found unforgettable.
“I have just viewed the lord great chamberlain’s head,” I said, “on a spike in front of the Hall of Justice. He did not contribute to the beauty of the scene.”
“Yet it is more wholesome,” said Lipton, “than to see a forest of heads in the square, as we did after the rebellion.”
Which was true enough. The bastard Clayborne and many of his supporters had once graced a thicket of pikes in the square, but most of the heads had been removed, and now only the usurper and his close kin were visible, removed from the square to the top of a crow-stepped gable over the hall’s entrance. The Marquess of Scutterfield was the only recent head to be found on the square, and I hoped he was not a harbinger of more to come.
Lipton and I were dining in Rackheath House’s great hall. Surrounding us was a riot of embroidered herbs, flowers, stags, and knights, all embroidered on brilliant silk tapestries, with the gold threads kindled by the noontide sun. We were served by two footmen, the master carver, and the two yeomen, respectively, of the ewer and of the buttery, who were to aid us in washing our hands between removes and to keep our glasses filled. Thus my intimate dinner with a friend was attended by five eavesdroppers.
The carver laid his knife to a carbonado of mutton, poured on a sauce of claret and camphire, and garnished it with lemons and capers, after which the footmen marched our plates to the table. “By your leave, my masters,” they said, nearly in unison, and put the plates before us, before marching back to their place at the carving table.
The carver, I observed, was competent enough, but I could have done a better job.
“Did you know Scutterfield?” Lipton asked.
“Nay. By sight only.”
Lipton looked to make sure the servants were not too close, then leaned across the table to me. “He ran afoul of Her Majesty’s principal private secretary, Lord Edevane. He is said to be Berlauda’s spymaster.”
“And who does Edevane spy upon?”
Lipton spread his hands, as if to encompass the whole world. “He may have someone here, in your own household.”
“Here?” I spread my own hands. “But I am harmless. I have no power. And I have demonstrated my loyalty to Her Majesty more than once.”
Lipton applied himself to his mutton while he considered the matter, then he leaned again across the table. “There are many sorts of servants, youngster,” he said. “There are the lazy servants, who will not work unless someone stands over them. There are servants who do their duty and nothing else, because that is what they are paid for; and there are also servants who will do their duty and seek to do more, in hopes of notice and advancement.” His face turned sober. “And then there are servants who so understand their masters’ minds that they know their masters’ secret desires before even their masters know them, and they then act in advance to fulfill these unvoiced wishes. Their masters are oft surprised when such a thing happens, but ultimately they are gratified, and the servant prospers. And such a servant is Lord Edevane.”
I ate my mutton while I considered the matter of Berlauda’s secret desires. She had taken the throne in the midst of a civil war, when one city after another was deserting to Clayborne, and great men of the realm were flying to his banner. In the midst of this—and I must here admit my own part in bringing these facts to light—she had discovered murderous treachery on the part of her own mother, and also her most intimate friend.
After the victory at Exton Scales, she had not forgiven those who had betrayed her. While another monarch might have executed the leaders, then fined or forgiven the rest, Berlauda had hunted down everyone who had supported Clayborne’s cause, executed or enslaved them, and confiscated their property to pay for the war. Even those who survived their ten years of hard labor would have to live with a T for treason branded on their face.
Berlauda’s desires, I thought, were not complicated. She wished a realm that was her own, where her enemies were destroyed and she was free to live with her husband in security and pleasure. A gentleman who could provide that realm, or a plausible illusion of it, might prosper in her reign.
Lipton leaned across the table again. “Bear in mind also that a man whose job it is to root out conspiracy must find that conspiracy, or lose his employment. Scutterfield accused Edevane of sharking up cases against innocent men, and soon lost his head.” He looked at me with unease plain upon his face. “Edevane is the only man at court who frightens me. If he has an ally who wants my place, I can be indicted for some peculation or other, be convicted on the testimony of paid informers, and Edevane’s friend slipped into my place as easy as winking.”
“Sooner or later such people go too far,” said I. “And that is the end of them.”
“Ay, but how many heads will roll in the meantime?”
I leaned away from the conversation, sipped my wine, and signaled for the footman. “By your leave, my master,” he said, and carried away my plate. Another dish was brought up from the kitchens. The yeoman of the buttery came out to refresh our wine, and the yeoman of the ewer brought his bowl and pitcher to wash our hands.
Again we put our heads together. “Are you sure you want to come live at court, youngster?” asked Lipton. “Walk open-eyed into this tangle of conspiracies, falsehoods, and right murder?”
“No man has reason to hate me,” I said.
“Ha! You overvalue reason.”
I threw out my hands. “What other game is there? I will play my best, alongside the best.”
“You but make a target of yourself. Better to sail again to Tabarzam and defy the pirates.”
The footmen were coming with the next dish, meatballs made with a paste of regia, the paste itself made of the meat of quails, partridges, a capon, and a few cock sparrows, all mashed together with pistachios and sugar-paste. (I do not know why hen sparrows are to be avoided.)
“By your leave, my masters.” The footmen put down the plates and withdrew.
The meatballs were an interesting combination of sweet and savory. I considered Lipton’s warnings, then looked up at one of the room’s tapestries, a scene of astrological figures dancing through the sky. “Perhaps the stars decide all such matters,” I said. “Do you believe in such things?”
“I was born under the sign of the Boar, sure,” said Lipton. “I therefore possess wisdom, and great appetite.”
“My father had my horoscope cast when I was young,” I said. “It said that I was studious, abstemious, steady in my habits, and that I would make a good monk, or a chandler. Every so often my father would take this document out of his strongbox, read it aloud at dinner, and laugh.”
“A chandler can make a good living,” Lipton said, “and not have to risk his neck at sea. Allow me to recommend this employment to you.”
“I am invited to an astronomical evening tonight,” I said. “At the palace of His Grace of Roundsilver. We are to hear a lecture about the Comet Periodical, and if the sky is clear, we will view the planets with telescopes.”
“Comets fly like a flaming shell,” Lipton observed, “and the planets are round like gunshot. Maybe the gods have artillery, and fire their bombards across the heavens.”
“And the stars are the glow of their linstocks. You should recruit the gods into your Loyall and Worshipfull Companie of Cannoneers.”
“Ay.” He laughed. “You should sell this conceit to the playwright Blackwell. He would get a soliloquy out of it.”
“Only if he has a cannoneer for the subject of his play.”
Lipton laughed again. “And why should he not? Let the cannon rattle the theater, and strike the clowns dumb! They would not be any worse for having to perform in silence.”
I picked up a meatball on a fork and contemplated it. “I will suggest to Blackwell that he employ artillery,” I said, “but I think he would not agree unless he were allowed to direct his fire at certain members of the court.”
“Well,” said Lipton, “if the gods oblige us not in this matter, perhaps a poet will have to serve, if he have good aim.”
The air tasted of smoke as I came to the Roundsilver palace after dark and found linkboys lining the road outside, their torches shining on the glittering dress of the guests as they stepped from their carriages. I stepped from the coach and let one of the linkboys conduct me to the door. I gave the boy his vail and a footman my wool boat cloak, and entered to the pleasing sound of women’s laughter.
I turned into a parlor and saw the duchess in a wrapper of white samite trimmed with frogging and fringes, speaking with a group of ladies that included the princess Floria, Her Majesty’s half-sister. For a moment I considered turning away and leaving the house, but I had been seen, and so I approached to bow to the princess and to greet my hostess.
“I see you have made something of yourself, Quillifer,” Floria said. “Judging by those shiny boulders you wear on your fingers.”
“I have achieved some little success, Your Highness,” said I.
Queen Berlauda was tall and blond and stately, like her royal father; but Floria was short and dark and quick, like her mother, with hazel eyes that snapped from one point of interest to the next and missed nothing. She wore a gown of the royal gold and scarlet ornamented with embroidery of white flowers, a gold belt studded with rubies, and hung from her wrist a marabou-feather fan. A golden circlet and a net of gold mesh made an attempt to confine her tight, rebellious, dark curls, and she wore a galbanum scent that conjured shady pine woods, soft moss, and freshets of sweet water. Floria had played a vital part in the benign conspiracy that had given me a knighthood and a manor, but I had always suspected that she viewed me as a tool for her amusement, and I had been wary of her interest. I had once refused to be the plaything of a goddess—and having refused a goddess, would I then allow myself to become the court fool of a fifteen-year-old girl?
She might be eighteen or nineteen now, I realized, but those hazel eyes still viewed me as she might view a clown in Blackwell’s theater company. I suspected that at any moment she might command me to perform a somersault.
“Sir Quillifer has brought a great treasury of gems from a voyage to Tabarzam,” said Her Grace. “Perhaps Your Highness would care to view them?”
Floria gave me one of her sharp glances. “Are you a jeweler now? I thought you were a lawyer, or a soldier, or a sailor.”
“Alas, Your Highness,” said I, “I am myself.”
“Next week,” Floria decided, “you might be a haberdasher.”
“Have you met Her Highness’s ladies?” said the duchess. “Sir Quillifer, this is Countess Marcella, Mistress Chenée Tavistock, and Mistress Elisa d’Altrey.”
Mistress Tavistock had light brown hair and an engaging overbite, and Elisa d’Altrey was tall, black-haired, and black-eyed. With pride she wore her classical features, the pale tall brow, the straight nose, and the full lips, and she viewed me with obvious disdain. Countess Marcella was the most striking, for she was an Aekoi, with golden skin and a lithe frame that did not sort entirely with the stiff corsets and gowns worn by ladies of Duisland. I knew of no Aekoi peers in our country, but supposed she might have come from Loretto. She was somewhat older than the others, who were twenty or younger, but I have no great skill at judging the age of Aekoi and guessed she might be around thirty.
I supposed there was a story behind Countess Marcella, but I would not learn it that night.
I bowed to the ladies, and then we made pleasant conversation as more guests arrived. I noticed that Floria’s ladies all wore a badge of the same white flower with which the princess had embroidered her gown.
“It is appropriate that a great lady bearing a floral name should adopt a flower as a badge,” said I. “But why a busy lizzie?”
Floria looked sat me in surprise. “It is a double impatiens.”
“In Ethlebight we call them busy lizzies.”
“Well,” said Floria, “so you would.”
Her ladies laughed, though I did not quite understand the joke, which made little sense unless the inhabitants of my native city were known for giving quaint names to vegetation, which they are not.
“Well then,” I said. “Why an impatiens?”
“That is explained by the motto.”
I saw now that a motto was stitched in silver thread on the badge, but in letters too tiny for me to read.
“To read the letters,” I said, “would require me to peer in a rude fashion at your gown, which—”
Before I could finish, Her Highness snapped open the marabou-feather fan. The feathers were each affixed to a scarlet ribbon to keep them in order, and on the ribbon were embroidered, in New Aekoi, the words SUB UMBRA CONVALO.
“ ‘I thrive in shade,’ ” I translated. “Very appropriate, Your Highness.”
“The more so,” said she, “as I am always surrounded by big fellows like you, to stand between me and the sun.”
But I thought there was more to the motto than that, for Floria would always stand in the shade of her elder half-sister, the queen. And though there was no overt hostility between the sisters, neither was there any visible affection. Berlauda won’t mourn if I break my neck, I had once heard Floria say after a riding accident.
It occurred to me also that, as convalo had more than one meaning, there was another possible interpretation, which was “In shadow I gather power,” which seemed more the motto of a villainous duke in a play—though if Floria had not intended the double meaning, she could have chosen a different verb, for example vigeo. I wondered what message this innocent white flower was intended to send.
My musings on Floria’s choice of verbs were cut short as another group of guests strolled into the room. I recognized Master Ransome, the engineer whose alchemical skill had won him the post of queen’s gunfounder, and who now cast giant artillery for the defense of the realm and for his own glory. He was a plump man with glossy mustaches and a self-satisfied air, as if the secrets of the universe had been opened to him alone, and he found them just as he had expected them. On his arm was a somewhat older woman, as gaunt as he was stout, with a narrow, rather beaked nose. The playwright Blackwell arrived shortly afterward and was clearly drunk. Prince Alicio de Ribamar-la-Rose shimmered in his white silk doublet.
Then I saw Roundsilver come out of his cabinet with Lord Hulme, the chancellor of the exchequer, and I assumed they had been discussing the forthcoming meeting of the Estates. Their Majesties wanted money, and it was Lord Hulme’s task to rake it out of the peers and the Burgesses.
I excused myself and went to salute Hulme and His Grace. Roundsilver was dressed in a scarlet velvet doublet slashed to reveal his gold satin shirt, for as cousin to Her Majesty he was permitted to wear the royal colors. Hulme wore a black gown and skullcap, with rubies and smaragds shining on his gloved fingers. He was tall and carried himself with dignity, and his hair and beard had more gray than I remembered. The two made a strange pair, the small man shining in his finery, the tall man in darkling dignity.
The chancellor looked at my glittering rings with dry amusement and spoke in his deep voice. “Your privateering enterprises seem to have done well for you, Sir Quillifer.”
“I have been lucky, your lordship.” I gestured at his own ring-bedecked hands. “And in matters of fashion, I follow the wisest man in the realm.”
The chancellor laughed. “There is no point in so flattering me, sir. I can bring you no advancement.”
“Fie, my lord!” said I. “Have I asked you for work? I would bring no credit to the exchequer, I assure you.”
The chancellor chose to change the subject. “And Ethlebight? Your city does well? The revenues from the port have risen this last year.”
I was not surprised that Hulme had the figures firmly lodged in his mind, for he was a very good businessman in addition to being a superior royal servant.
“Very good progress has been made, my lord,” I said, “especially since many of the captives have now been redeemed. But I’m sure the revenues are far below what they were before the reivers came.”
“True, they have not recovered entirely. But the port is still silting up, is it not? Any recovery will be temporary.”
“The port may be threatened, my lord, but the Ostra country is still rich, and produces a plenitude of wool and grain in most years, though this year the storm has ruined the crops, and there may be famine, even if aid is sent promptly.”
“Her Majesty hopes that the Estates will vote money for the relief of the people,” Hulme said.
“It is my home country,” said the duke, “and the storm was a great blow, but the silt is killing it.”
I had some idea for Ethlebight’s revival, but to disclose it was premature. I thought therefore to encourage premature disclosure of a different matter, and so I looked at the two of them and put on my attentive-courtier face. “What are the prospects for the Estates, my lords?”
They were both practiced politicians, and I sensed nothing from them but amusement. “I hear there will be a fete tomorrow,” said the duke, “at the Guild of Goldsmiths.”
“Ay,” said the chancellor. “I hope the weather stays fair.”
“Perhaps we should go fishing on the lake beforehand.”
“That will give you the privacy you desire,” I said. I bowed in compliment. “You are too practiced, my lords. I give over.”
The duke craned his neck and looked at his guests. “We have a goodly crowd, gentlemen,” he said. “Perhaps it is time we call on Doctor Heskith to enlighten us.”
In each of his palaces the duke had a room called the Odeon, intended for concerts, lectures, exhibitions, and readings. Straight wooden chairs were set out before a small stage, that night with a lectern and a candle. The straight chairs creaked, and when a speaker heard the creaking growing in frequency and volume, he would know he had lost his audience.
Theodore Heskith had the ill luck to provoke a deal of creaking. He was a young physician who displayed a thin, pale face above the fur-trimmed robe of his profession, and who had taken up philosophy and the problem of the Comet Periodical. This apparition had been shown to reappear in the heavens every seventy-seven years, and caused a great vexation for those who concerned themselves with matters transterrene.
For it had been held for millennia that our world was at the center of a universe, and that the moon, planets, and stars were fixed to a concentric series of crystal spheres perpetually revolving about our world in celestial harmony, and turned in some accounts by gods or spirits. This description of the universe had recently received two blows. The first was the invention of the telescope, which revealed that the moon was not a flat object fixed to a crystal sphere but was itself a sphere, and furthermore a sphere with mountains and plains and other features similar to those of the earth. Furthermore, the planets, heretofore visible as mere bright dots wandering about the firmament, were now visible as disks, sometimes full and bright, and at other times a crescent, and this transformation implied that they were spheres as well. And moreover, some planets seemed to have companions of their own, bright spots that drifted about them, as if they were satellites.
All this, the transterrene geometers maintained, could be explained by multiplying the number of crystal spheres, and so tradition was maintained until Magnus Prest of Steggerda, searching through old records, discovered the regularity of the Comet Periodical. For the Comet, in order to traverse its path every seventy-seven years, necessarily had to pierce all those spheres, which by now were numbering in the dozens, like a roundshot flying through a row of wattle cottages. It seemed that the spheres, being perfect and eternal, should have repelled the Comet, or failing that, should have been shattered, and the entire Cosmos broken into pieces.
Heskith attempted to retrieve the situation with a new theory, which stated that the Comet Periodical, and comets in general, were made of a new element called “non-corpuscular matter,” which had the special property of being able to pass without hindrance through the material of the spheres. He maintained that the existence of non-corpuscular matter was proven by the existence of the comets’ tails, for since no other object in the heavens was observed to have a tail, the tail was clearly a phenomenon peculiar to this special non-corpuscular element.
The questioning that followed the lecture was opened by Mistress Tavistock asking how the comets would affect the casting of horoscopes, and whether non-corpuscular matter, floating through the atmosphere, could harm people on earth. Heskith responded that there could be no interaction between his new element and any other, and that therefore no harm or benefit was possible. His answer to the question of the horoscopes was complex and recondite—which was not unexpected, for a physician would of course cast a patient’s horoscope before prescribing any treatment, and would be familiar with astrology’s intricacies—but insofar as I could understand it, Heskith did not seem to come to any conclusion.
“For the art of astrology is based on thousands of years of observation,” he concluded, “of the stars and planets, of the tides, and of human character. No study seems to have been made of cometary influence.”
I was more than a little surprised at this answer, for I had never known a physician to admit to any lack of knowledge, but instead to promptly contrive a diagnosis, whether or not it flew in the face of reality, then prescribe a remedy and pocket his fee. This seemed even more remarkable in a physician who could invent such a concept as non-corpuscular matter.
Ransome the engineer was quick to respond. “What evidence have you that this new element exists?” he said. “It cannot be found on earth. So it seems you observe a phenomenon, and then you claim it is something entirely new in the universe.” He preened his mustaches with a plump finger, like a smug cat cleaning his face on the hearth. “Why” he said, “anyone could make such a claim, and about any phenomenon at all. You could observe a waterfall, and claim that the water that falls is a special form of water unlike water that flows through flat country.”
Heskith did his best to ignore Ransome’s insinuant tone. “Philosophy strives for logic and completeness of theory,” he said. “My theory of non-corpuscular matter is in accord with all observations, and preserves the scientific traditions that have been passed to us by the great minds of the past.”
Ransome’s gaunt companion was eager to lodge her own objections. She spoke very quickly and in a voice that rang in the room like a clarion. “What evidence have you that even the crystal spheres exist?” she demanded.
“Why, Mistress Ransome,” said the physician, “surely the planets and the stars must be suspended from something. And that something must be transparent, else it would be visible.”
“What then suspends your comets?” she demanded. “It cannot be crystal spheres, if your non-corpuscular matter cannot be influenced by ordinary matter.”
Heskith seemed not to have considered this, and his desperation became plain. “Perhaps there are spheres of non-corpuscular matter,” he said, “which would account for their ability to pass through the spheres of crystal.”
“If there are non-corpuscular spheres,” demanded Ransome, “then why do they not have tails?”
That completed Dr. Heskith’s rout, and the duke, in his mercy, rose to announce an end to the lecture. He added that there was a banquet awaiting us on the sideboard in the next room, and reminded us that telescopes were set out on the broad lawn that ran from his palace to the river.
The banquet was a new idea in Duisland and consisted of a meal without meat, at which the guests served themselves. The duke’s banquet featured nuts, fruits, bread, cheeses, pastries, and sweets, all served cold, alongside hot wassail with cloves, nutmeg, allspice, ginger, cherries, oranges, sherry, and brandy to keep us warm as we viewed the skies. I thawed myself with the punch while nibbling a bit of cheese, and then I felt a degree of alarm as the princess Floria came marching up to me along with her three ladies.
“Sir Quillifer,” said she, “why were you so silent during the lecture? I fully expected you to put forward your own thesis of the universe, and vaunt your superiority over everybody.”
“To submit my theory at this time might be premature, Highness,” I responded. “I should acquaint myself further with the subject, perhaps read a book or two.”
Her darting eyes settled upon me. “That is uncharacteristically modest of you.”
“I am very humble, Your Highness.” I bowed and “cast my eyes down,” as the saying is. “I am a mere naufrageous knight. My humility,” I expanded, “is without doubt the greatest in the land.”
She nodded. “I observe that it is.”
I straightened and glanced over the crowd. “Is Mistress Ransome married to Ransome the gunfounder?” I asked. “I had not heard that he had wed.” And indeed they seemed an unlikely couple, for I thought Ransome was too self-regarding to marry anyone who did not more closely resemble a bauble or an ornament.
“That is Edith Ransome,” Floria said, “Master Ransome’s sister.”
“Ah. There is little family resemblance.”
“Other than that they both enjoy an argument. I will introduce you.” The princess suddenly cocked her head, like a bird, and fixed me with one eye. “Naufrageous?” she said.
“It’s a new word. I made it up. It comes from—”
“Naufrage, in maritime law. I know. But you have been shipwrecked? Or is your new word but a metaphor for a life gone tragically on the rocks?”
“I lost Royal Stilwell in the great storm in July,” I said. “Though we saved all the crew, and most of the cargo.” I showed her my hand, with its rings and crooked finger. “Including my box of shiny boulders.”
“I am heartily sorry that the great ship named for my father has been lost,” said the princess. “But was not Royal Stilwell a ship owned by the crown before it somehow came into your hands?”
“It was acquired legally,” I pointed out.
“All great thefts are legal,” the princess observed. “I should enjoy your tale of the shipwreck, as well as hear you boast of how you came by the ship in the first place, but at another time. For here is Mistress Ransome.”
The gaunt woman joined us, wrapping herself expertly in shawls and pinning them in place. “Horagalles is well above the horizon,” she said. “We should have a good view.” Her voice was more pleasant when she was not shouting at hapless prey. I observed that she wore the badge of the double impatiens, and therefore was one of Floria’s ladies.
Mistress Ransome came in company with her brother, who looked very sleek with his finely groomed head above the immaculate lace of his collar. “Quillifer!” he said. “I haven’t seen you in ages!”
“You look well fed,” said I. “I believe you’ve just devoured a theory of the empyrean.”
Ransome was amused, but I was answered by his sister. “People say the most absurd things about the heavens,” she said, “and as in truth we know so little, they feel they cannot be contradicted.” She gave a thin-lipped smile. “But I will contradict them. If I cannot yet prove my own theory, I can at least reveal their ignorance.”
“That is fine practice,” I said. “In theory.”
Floria gave me another of her looks. “Sir Quillifer says he may read a book or two, and thus arrive at a thesis of his own.”
Mistress Ransome snorted. “The world hardly needs another thesis!” she said. “What we need is knowledge!”
“May the Pilgrim illumine you,” said I politely.
Mistress Ransome snorted again, which I understood to be a comment on the likelihood of the Pilgrim to illuminate anyone at all. “And your thesis?” she asked.
“I have none,” said I, “as Her Highness surely knows. But I spoke to Coronel Lipton this morning, of the Royal Regiment of Artillery, and he offered the observation that the planets travel through the skies like roundshot fired from great bombards, and that comets trail fire in an arc like bursting shot.”
Mistress Ransome suddenly fixed me with her dark, intent eyes. “Your coronel,” she said, “is not such a fool.”
“My dear,” said her brother. “Horagalles waiteth not.”
Ransome and his sister bowed to the princess, and then made their way to where the telescopes waited. I fetched my good wool boat cloak and joined them.
There were half a dozen telescopes on the lawn, the largest five yards long with its barrel supported by a wooden framework, with footmen to help manhandle it about. Though the air seemed heavy with woodsmoke, the sky was clear above us, with the lake a dark, still plain, and on the far shore the palace twinkled like a constellation. Agoraeus, the sun’s messenger, had set long since, but Horagalles and Ourania were bright in the sky, and Mavors was far in the west, near to setting. Accordingly, we viewed Mavors first, a dusky red disk shimmering on the edge of the horizon. I marveled at how different it looked from one instrument to the next, sometimes dark, sometimes wrapped in mystery, sometimes glowing like embers on the hearth. The telescopes, like witnesses at a trial, each told a different tale.
Then the telescopes were shifted to Horagalles and Ourania. Horagalles the King was nearly full and in some of the telescopes was a pale blaze, but in others seemed swirling shades of cream. The bright stars that were his companions were plain to see, bustling about their chief like courtiers around a monarch.
Ourania was a bright, full disk, almost too brilliant to view properly. She had no satellites visible, but swam alone in the heavens like a dazzling swan upon the water. Her outline was somehow less distinct than that of Horagalles, as if she were made of swirling white smoke.
Afterward the instruments were pointed at the stars, and so we viewed the Boar, the Ephebe, the Brilliant Triangle, the Horologist, the She-Goat, and other autumn stars and constellations. Never had I seen the stars so brilliant, or in their colors so distinct from one another: white, red, dusky, brilliant blue white. While I watched the sky, many of the guests drifted homeward, or went indoors where it was warm, but other than a journey or two to refill my cup with hot punch, I remained out of doors, perfectly happy with the revelations that I found in the heavens.
The taste of citrus and ginger was pleasant on my tongue, and the warmth was welcome in my belly. I found myself with a group of guests around one of the telescopes, and in the dim starlight I recognized Prince Alicio by his white leather jerkin and his Lorettan accent. “It is all interesting in its way,” he was saying, “but I wonder that we spend so much time gazing at the unknowable sky and so little in perfecting ourselves.”
“I think Mistress Ransome would disagree with you about the sky being unknowable.” The voice came from near my right elbow, and in my surprise I realized the speaker was Princess Floria.
“It is the Pilgrim’s doctrine,” said the prince, “that the only thing we can know for certain is that we exist—or, to be more precise, that our minds exist, for our knowledge of ourselves in extensio—in our bodies, and our bodies in the world—we know only because our minds perceive them. Existence, for the Compassionate Pilgrim, was a mental phenomenon. And so, as we know only our own minds, it is to our minds that we must direct improvement.”
“Yet how many people can be said to know their own minds?” Floria asked.
“Very few,” the prince conceded. “Yet the Pilgrim’s path is the most conducive to understanding.”
Even in the darkness, I felt Floria’s keen gaze settling on me. “And you, Sir Quillifer? Do you know your own mind?”
“Some corners better than others,” I said. “At the very least I endeavor not to tell myself lies.”
She was amused. “Ha! You reserve the right to lie to others!”
“When people so ardently desire a thing,” I said, “why should I not give it to them?”
“Mundus vult decipi,” said Alicio. “It was Eidrich the Pilgrim who said that the world desires deception rather than truth. But he said also that the consequences of deception strike both the deceived and the deceiver, and that it was better to be neither.”
“It seems to me that we are removing deception tonight,” said I. “For we have long deceived ourselves about the heavens, and now we see them better revealed, and so many of those stories are now uncloaked, and shown to be phantoms.”
“I am right glad to hear you say so,” said Mistress Ransome, who had come up through the darkness. “If everyone could see in the sky what we see tonight, there would be much less nonsense in the world.”
“We see stars and planets,” said Prince Alicio. “But what are stars and planets? Of this we know nothing.”
“Yet we know more than we did,” said Mistress Ransome. “We know they are not objects, flat but somehow perfect, pasted for some inexplicable reason on crystal spheres. We know they are globes, like our earth, and we know also they are not perfect, for some, particularly the moon, show features, and so we know they are not uniform.”
“You disparage the crystal spheres,” said Prince Alicio. “But how do you imagine the stars and planets are suspended?”
“I do not think they are suspended at all,” said Mistress Ransome. In the starlight I saw her pale, gaunt face turn to me. “I think your cannoneer friend was correct that heavenly bodies are impelled to move in arcs by some force. But I know not what that force might be.”
“No celestial bombards?” I asked.
I sensed a smile. “Would it were that simple.”
“From the perspective of a sailor,” said I, “I wish to know more about the stars and planets, so that I can more accurately determine my longitude. Sometimes in bad weather we cannot take the noon sight on the sun, but must hope the clouds open up at night, to enable us to take a sight on a star. But the instruments we use to read the heavens—astrolabes, alidades, and the cross-staff—are inadequate, and such star tables as we find are filled with errors. Hundreds of mariners die every year because they cannot find their way.”
“That is one of my projects,” said Mistress Ransome. “With Her Highness’s help, I will construct a quadrant that will measure the height of the stars with great precision, and produce correct star tables that will succor those mariners of yours.”
I turned to Floria in surprise. “Your Highness concerns yourself with the height of stars?”
“Why should I not?” She waved a hand. “It is a thing I can do. I am building Mistress Ransome’s quadrant at my home of Kellhurst.”
“And there I shall reside, and make my tables.” Mistress Ransome seemed very pleased by the prospect.
It would be a mural quadrant, I was told, mounted on a wall that was aligned with the meridian, and which could sight on each star as it journeyed about the earth. It would be the largest quadrant in the kingdom, and would be housed in a building that Princess Floria was constructing on her palace grounds.
“Most of my ladies-in-waiting wait, but only for husbands,” Floria said. “I am pleased to help one of them to achieve a more original ambition.”
“I will be thankful for the tables when they come,” I said, “and I will see that each of my ships has a copy.”
You were amused at my discourse on lies. Ay, I deceive as other folk deceive, to please myself or to please others, or to evade too long an explanation when such an explanation would be tedious.
You, too, employ deception. You are not so well placed that you can afford to speak the truth to those about you.
But our lies share one other quality, which is that we both know a lie when we speak it. Other people babble falsehoods without thinking, because these are the sort of lies that people believe without thinking about them, where a moment’s reflection would reveal their falsity.
When you and I choose to tell a lie, we do so knowingly, and we know also that a lie can be a weapon, sharper than a razor. And thus, with our falsehoods, we are armed against those who oppose us.
We watched the stars till the middle of the night, and then went indoors to browse the duke’s banquet and to warm ourselves before going to our beds. Mistress Ransome, her brother, and the footmen busied themselves by shifting the telescopes and other apparatus to a room where they could be safely stored till they could be removed, perhaps to Kellhurst. I watched as Floria thanked the duke and duchess for their hospitality, and as her ladies, the gold-skinned Countess Marcella and the disdainful Elisa d’Altrey, prepared for their departure. And then I remembered the name d’Altrey, and began to wonder.
For the Marquess of Melcaster had been surnamed d’Altrey. He was one of Clayborne’s supporters, and had served in his Privy Council and fought on the field of Exton, where he was captured. He was among those proscribed, and after the war I had probably viewed his head set on a pike before the Hall of Justice.
I certainly remember looting his house and carrying off a silver-gilt nef big enough to hold in my two arms, which I had loaded with precious objects of silver, gold, and ivory.
I wondered if the black-haired Mistress d’Altrey was the daughter or granddaughter of the proscribed peer. She had not been introduced as a member of the nobility, as Lady Elisa, but then I supposed Melcaster had suffered attainder and lost his titles and land. If she had once been a Lady Elisa, she was now a commoner, no better than me.
No wonder she was disdainful. Disdain was probably all that supported the ramshackle remains of her pride.
But one of Floria’s ladies had gone astray. Marcella and Mistress d’Altrey were sent in search of Chenée Tavistock, who had not been seen in some time, and I found myself in the hall with the princess.
“It is very good of you, Highness,” I said, “to support Mistress Ransome in her project.”
The hazel eyes looked into mine. “There are so few educated women,” said she, “and of these so few wish to do anything with their education.” Her face bore a self-amused smile. “Perhaps because I am permitted no ambition, I therefore admire the ambition of Mistress Ransome—and if I can be of service to her, perhaps other women will seek to emulate her, and I will have more learnèd companions at dinner.”
“I wish you the very best of learnèd companions, Your Highness.”
“And you, Sir Quillifer?” she asked. “Why have you returned to court? You did not receive such a warm welcome last time.”
I made a gracious wave of my hand. “Those were misunderstandings, Highness. I hope I have grown in wisdom, and will be able to avoid such misunderstandings in the future.”
She offered a little laugh and pointed at me her marabou-feather fan. “Do you hope to save my sister from another plot?”
“It is my understanding,” said I, “she now has another gentleman for that duty.”
A cloud passed across her face, and she gave a curt nod. “She does indeed.”
I am permitted no ambition, she had said. For she was the queen’s heir, at least until Berlauda and Priscus succeeded in producing a child, and that meant that Floria’s only task was to wait, either for the child or for a crown. And if the queen’s child made her redundant, then a mind attuned to danger and conspiracy might see her ambition as a threat to the child and to the safety of the realm.
Coronel Lipton maintained that Lord Edevane placed spies in the households of prominent men. Surely Floria was of greater interest to the throne than any number of the nobility, and I began to wonder who in Floria’s household had turned spy. Possibly one, or indeed all, of the three ladies who now came bustling back from the parlor. Mistress Tavistock, spy or not, had been found asleep on a sofa.
“And that actor Blackwell is unconscious in front of the hearth,” said Elisa d’Altrey, and for the first time I heard her cold disdain distilled into words. “He is ataunt, and reeks of brandy.”
“I suppose I shall have to take him home,” I said, and hoped I had not just volunteered to share my carriage with the poet’s puke.
I bade good night to the princess and her ladies, and then sought out the duke and duchess to offer them my thanks. Her Grace had gone to bed, but her indulgent husband was in his study, conversing with Prince Alicio. I thanked His Grace for the pleasures of the evening, and then said I would take Blackwell home. “Apparently whatever he was drinking has submerged him,” I said.
“His play failed,” said the duke.
“Well,” said I, “that is reason enough to be submerged.”
I went to the parlor and prodded the poet awake, then supported his arm as we went outside. The linkboys had all gone home, and the carriage came up slowly in the dark, hooves ringing hollow on the deserted road. The footman and I boosted Blackwell’s lean form into his seat, and I climbed in opposite him. The playwright was the picture of misery, his head hanging partway out of the window, half-closed eyes gazing in bleak torpor at the fine homes as we drove on.
“The next play will be better,” I said, and Blackwell gave a half-laugh.
“Not if the new master of the revels has his way,” he said. He cleared his throat with a great bearlike rumble and spat out the window. “For Queen Berlauda has appointed a prim little miss in the form of a half-monk named Shingle, who wishes there to be nothing in a play that may offend the royal sensibility.” He pointed a wavering hand at nothing in particular. “I had, you know, a little success with The Red Horse a few years ago, about the queen’s ancestor Emelin. You might think the queen would enjoy more plays praising her antecedents, but most of our celebrated kings won their laurels fighting Loretto, and now the queen has married Loretto, and it is impolite to hear of any such strife between the kingdoms in the past. Then there were the kings who fought in civil wars, but Master Shingle finds these civil wars uncivil, for no suggestion may be made that ever there was discord in the realm. Of the foolish or feeble kings who started the wars in the first place—well, we pass them in silence. And even the ancient world—even if I paint up the actors as Aekoi and have them enact a scene out of classical poetry, there may be no uncivil strife.” He snarled. “Gods, I am in too sober a state to discuss Master Shingle. Have you a flask with you?”
“Nay.”
“Let us go to Gropecoun Street and drink until we fall asleep in some harlot’s arms.”
“Now that you mention it,” I said, “there is, I suppose, comedy.”
Blackwell gave a bitter laugh. “Ay, there is, but Master Shingle permits no intemperate behavior. Lovers may not defy their parents and run away together, for it sets an unwholesome example for the young folk. Old husbands may not lust after young ladies, duchesses may not long for commoners, rogues and inebriates may not sully the scene with their indecorous braying.”
“What is left?” I asked, in perfect puzzlement.
He waved a listless hand. “I write a masque now and again, in which a character called Rectitude evades the schemes of a fellow called Vice, and the verse is pretty, but very dull. But I fear the only story that Shingle would find really congenial would be one in which a pair of young people follow their parents’ advice and marry each other, and they then produce nine children and raise them to follow the Pilgrim’s footsteps.” He spat again. “See if an audience will sit still for that.”
“That would depend,” said I, “on how much of the interval you show, in regard to how the nine children were kindled.”
He barked a laugh. “Ay, I would like to write such a thing, if only to watch Shingle change color when he reads it.” He looked at me again from out of a cloud of brandy fumes. “Have you a flask? I feel the dread hand of sobriety clutching at my vitals.”
“I have no flask, but I have a bed, and I’m going to it.” The carriage wheels crunched over gravel as we pulled into the drive before Rackheath House, and I swung myself out without waiting for the footman to open the door. “Take Master Blackwell where he wants,” I told the coachman.
“Take me to hell!” cried the playwright.
“Take him home,” I said firmly. “He lodges at the Cat and Custard Pot.” And I sent the carriage on its way.
I looked up at the stars as the carriage drew away and felt a touch of my earlier wonder. They glittered above me in their inverted black bowl, and I wondered if they would be less wonderful once Mistress Ransome had numbered and catalogued them.
They would be no less beautiful, I thought, for that which is useful has its own beauty, and Mistress Ransome would make the stars useful to mariners.