The Alchemist of Souls: Night's Masque, Volume 1 (23 page)

  "You cut my balls off and I'll shove 'em down your throat. Sir."

  "That's not what I meant," Parrish replied. "I meant that your next performance will be your last."

  The blood drained from Philip's face. At a twitch of the cudgel, he scrambled to his feet and all but fell down the stairs in his haste to get away.

  "You didn't really mean that, did you, sir?" Coby asked in a low voice, as they followed Philip out of the brothel. "About… you know?"

  He paused on the threshold and winked at her. "What use is there in being a player, if you cannot adopt a role at need?"

 

By the end of the afternoon, Mal had learnt more about customs duties on
aniig
, the grading of tobacco and the keeping properties of dried potatoes than he ever wanted to know. The ambassador did not seem interested in the discussions either, but protocol demanded that he be included and so he had to offer an opinion when asked. He proved surprisingly knowledgeable on every topic, and quoted Vinlandic traditions from memory when the English merchants disputed their skrayling colleagues' claims. Mal wondered if the skraylings had universities or similar places of learning, and what was taught there. Did they learn merchantry and magic, the way English students studied theology or law?

  The coach came to collect the ambassador at five o'clock, and they returned to the Tower for a quiet supper alone. Afterwards, at Kiiren's insistence, Mal played his lute for a while. At first he felt uncomfortable being watched so intently, but after a while he forgot the skrayling was there. He thought instead of Sandy, away on the northern outskirts of the city, alone. The thought was almost enough to make him wish he had accepted the French ambassador's offer. An estate in Provence, where he and Sandy could live together in peace and comfort; was that not worth a little treason?

  The curfew bell had scarcely finished tolling eight when there was a knock at the door of the ambassador's quarters. Two cloaked and hooded but recognisably female figures, accompanied by a similarly clad man, entered the outer room. Mal leapt to his feet and put a hand to his rapier hilt.

  "Hold!"

  The newcomer lowered his hood, and Mal sank to one knee.

  "Your Highness," he murmured. That explained why the guards had admitted the visitors despite the lateness of the hour.

  "Enough, you may stand," Prince Arthur said. "I am not here on state business."

  Mal got to his feet but kept his eyes lowered. The two women had not removed their hoods or spoken.

  "Your Excellency!" The young prince strode across the room to greet the startled ambassador. "It was so good to meet you on Wednesday. How are you enjoying London?"

  "It is very… different to what I expect, Your Highness," Kiiren replied, bowing.

  "Splendid. Travel broadens the mind, or so my tutors always said." He looked around the dining room. "I see they've done the old place up. Don't think anyone's stayed here overnight since Grandfather's day."

  He strolled around the room and paused to admire one of the skrayling lamps. His hair looked even redder in this light than it had at noon, and Mal wondered if the prince really resembled King Henry as closely as everyone said. He was certainly the image of his mother in masculine form.

  "I suppose you are wondering what brings me here so late?" Prince Arthur said, turning his attention back to the ambassador.

  "Your Highness is welcome to visit at any time."

  "Yes, I am, aren't I? Privilege of being a prince. Well, I have a gift for you. Two, in fact. Only for the night, I'm afraid. This is England, not the Turkish Empire."

  "I do not understand," Kiiren said, his brow furrowing at the prince's seemingly random train of thought.

  "Forgive me, I do rattle on," Prince Arthur said, and clicked his fingers. "Ladies!"

  The two women shed their velvet cloaks in midnight pools about their feet. They were younger than Mal expected, barely eighteen, and decidedly pretty. Their hair was almost as black as his own, and their lips had been stained crimson with kermes. Underneath the cloaks they wore shifts of the finest milk-white silk, so transparent Mal could clearly make out the dark circles of nipples and darker triangles below. The blood stirred in his veins, and he dropped his gaze once more. Lord, must you so torture a starving man with the sight of a feast meant for others?

  "I trust these are to your taste, Your Excellency," he heard the prince say.

  "You are most generous, sir," Kiiren replied, staring at the girls.

  "Well, I won't keep you from your pleasures. My men will return at dawn to take the ladies home. Good night, Your Excellency."

  Prince Arthur bowed curtly and swept out without another word.

  "Ladies," Mal said with a bow of his own, "I suppose I have no excuse to search you for concealed weapons, not in those garments."

  The girls exchanged glances and giggled. He turned to Kiiren. The young skrayling looked about as comfortable as a virgin on his first visit to a brothel. Mal supposed it was up to him to take charge of the situation.

  "This way, please, ladies," he said, shepherding the girls towards the ambassador's bedchamber.

  When Kiiren did not follow, Mal went back to the dining room.

  "Sir?"

  "I am… uncertain of what this means, this gift of women."

  "Well, I suppose His Highness thought it unmeet for an ambassador to haunt the stews of Southwark."

  "Stew?"

  "Brothel. House of pleasure. Place of resort."

  The young skrayling continued to look puzzled. Mal sighed.

  "A place to buy a woman's favours, to bed her as you please."

  Kiiren sat down by the hearth and looked up at Mal. His eyes reflected the lamplight like a cat's.

  "It does not seem right to me," Kiiren said, "this buying and selling of flesh. Women are honoured amongst our people."

  "And amongst some, at least, of ours," Mal replied.

  "I cannot accept this gift."

  "It is unwise to offend a prince, sir."

  The young skrayling looked wretched but did not answer.

  "Is it…?" Mal hesitated, unsure he wanted to pursue the topic further, but was not any intelligence valuable? "You are not like other skraylings."

  "No, I am not." Kiiren stared down at the ground.

  "I reckoned as much from the first."

  "I have been set apart from birth, raised to the role I now play."

  "You said as much at the banquet," Mal replied. "You were taught English by our sailors."

  "There is more to it than that."

  "How so?"

  Kiiren sighed. "Amongst my people, as yours, women do not act upon stage. Men take their parts, or rather senlirren do."

  "Sen… leeren?"

  "Man who has been… changed as boy, to make him able to speak like woman."

  "Oh?" He thought back to his brief glimpse of Kiiren naked. He had not been able to see much from behind, admittedly, nor was he sure what to expect a skrayling eunuch to look like.

  "You need not be sad for me," Kiiren said. "It was long time ago, and I chose it freely. And we have herbs to take away pain, and heal mouth so it is as if–"

  "Mouth?" Mal stared at him.

  "Why, yes." Kiiren bared his even, yellowish teeth. "Our women have no long-teeth, so I must have mine taken out."

  Mal's blood ran cold at the image: bloody trophies being ripped from a skrayling's mouth. Had Charles and the others known the symbolism of what they did?

  "You are upset, Catlyn-
tuur
," Kiiren said. "I am sorry for talking of painful business. You must think we are barbarians."

  "Not at all," Mal replied, trying to shake off the memory. "We do the same – or worse – to our own children, for much the same purpose. At least, the Italians do. It is not practised in England."

  He recalled Lodge's account of the "women" of Antilia.

  "Is this commonly practised in the Seven Cities?" he asked.

  Kiiren looked at him curiously. "I am from Vinland, not Antilia."

  "Then those were women Lodge saw, when he approached the city. Short hair, no tattoos…?"

  "Of course. All our women live in safety of cities." He smiled. "Humans are thought most strange by my people, to live together. Your men seem so – what is word? – effeminate, to us."

  "Begging your pardon, sir, but I'm not the one dressed like a woman."

  He fell silent, fearing he had said too much and Kiiren would take offence, but after a moment the ambassador returned his smile.

  "So," Mal said, "
senlirren
or not, sir, do you wish to lie with the whores tonight?"

 

The familiar scents of the theatre enveloped Coby and she stood for several minutes, back to the door, letting her eyes adjust to the gloom. All around her the huge wooden building creaked like a ship under sail as it cooled. Coby told herself firmly there was no one else here and nothing to be afraid of.

  After a moment's thought she fetched some cushions from the box-office, and arranged them on the floor of the lowest gallery between the front bench and the low wooden partition that kept the groundlings out. Sleep did not come easily, however. She kept thinking back to Betsy's words. Philip was determined to go to the fair and, lo and behold, the rehearsals were cancelled. What was more, the most sorely defamed of the players was the man who had been set to watch over Philip. And who but the players knew where he had slept last night?

  No, that couldn't be right. How had Philip managed to sneak out of the house and back under Master Parrish's nose? And then there were the prints of hooves and booted feet. It had to be coincidence. Unless… Philip had money. Quite a lot of money. Enough to bribe someone to post a libel? Perhaps. But then who wrote it? She sighed. Philip might recite his lines with surprising delicacy of feeling for such a villainous illheaded lout, but he could barely write a letter to his mother, never mind a poem.

  She would find an excuse to go back to Thames Street during tomorrow's rehearsals and search the boys' room. At least that way she could eliminate one suspect. She was only glad this watch duty would keep her well out of the apprentices' way for a while. After what had happened at the fair today, she knew the reprisals would not be long in coming.

 

Mal paused at the foot of the steps. How to politely decline a gift from a prince? He supposed the girls would have to stay the night; he could hardly send them home now. And what if they were not common whores, but the daughters of ambitious noblemen hoping to win the ambassador's favour? It was scarcely good Christian behaviour, but it had been done before; indeed, it was said that the princes' own grandmother, Queen Anne, had been thus put into King Henry's path to snare him.

  Nor could he tell these girls the truth. God knows who they might report back to, and Walsingham and the Queen would not thank him for revealing that the Ambassador of Vinland was some kind of eunuch. The skraylings received little enough respect in some quarters; he would not let Kiiren become a laughing stock. He realised with a shock he had become rather fond of the young skrayling during their short acquaintance. There was something familiar about him that Mal could not put his finger on. He felt like they had met before, long ago, impossible as that was.

  He took a deep breath and entered the bedchamber. For a moment he thought the girls had somehow slipped past him, or out through the door to the Wakefield Tower. Then he saw them. They had shed their thin garments and were sitting in bed as naked as the day they were born. He swallowed, feeling his own skin burn in response.

  "Ladies," he began. "I am afraid His Excellency is indisposed. Our English food does not agree with him and he has a dreadful bellyache and other… illnesses that I could not in all courtesy mention in female company."

  The girls sighed with evident relief, though the prettier of the two mustered a pout of disappointment. Mal had a sudden inspiration. Waste not, want not…

  "He has therefore asked me to fulfil his duties on his behalf, so as not to insult the prince's generosity."

  After a moment's puzzlement the girls' eyes widened with delight. As they scrambled, giggling, across the counterpane he approached the bed, then stood in a haze of blissful anticipation whilst they attacked the buttons and laces holding his clothing together.

 
 
 

Coby woke at first light, and immediately went to check the outside of each of the theatre's doors. Nothing. She went back inside and waited for a good couple of hours, listening to the cows lowing in the fields nearby and the sparrows quarrelling in the hedgerows. The folk of Bankside would not stir for a good while yet. When no hammering came to disturb her watch, she tidied away the cushions, hung up the keys on a hook by the back door, and prepared for another working day.

  The actors arrived promptly for their rehearsal at nine o'clock, the principals looking as though they had slept far worse than Coby. After a few minutes she realised Master Parrish was not amongst them.

  "Hiding his face in shame," Eaton muttered. "Naismith's got one of the hirelings to take his part for the nonce."

  In the wake of the libellous notice, Suffolk's Men were more nervous than usual. Philip, who had been given the lead role as the eponymous Queen of Faerieland, kept forgetting his lines, and Coby had to be drafted in as prompt after Master Eaton had a blazing row with the company's book-holder. She was not at all happy with the arrangement, but since Master Dunfell had taken over most of the backstage work, she had no excuse that she was needed elsewhere.

  She took some small comfort in the fact that Dunfell did not seem to be happy with his new duties either. Unaccustomed to the ups and downs of theatre life, he treated every little setback as a catastrophe.