The Fall of The Kings (Riverside) (20 page)

Madge laughed. “I’ll just bet you do, sweeting. You sit here and give me a cuddle, and we’ll come to what you like.”

She engulfed his lap with her huge presence and layers of skirts. The woman smelt like rising dough. Her breasts were huge and soft, and he nibbled them experimentally.

“She loves you, Theron!” Hemmynge roared.

At the next table, a man with his long hair in a dozen thin braids laughed and said, “She always treats the new boys thus. Wait ’til she gets to know you!”

Madge wiggled into Theron’s lap. “Now don’t say you don’t like me,” she cooed, “when I can
feel
you do!”

“I’d never contradict a lady,” Theron said breathlessly.

“Aren’t you the polite one?” she said. “Seeing as how you’re new here, and pretty besides, I’m going to give you a little sample for hospitality.” Under the huge volume of her skirts, she felt expertly for his breeches, and unfastened them, and arranged very neatly for him to sample her wares.

When he sat back, spent, she played with his hair, which had somehow come out of its gold ribbon. “A learned gentleman, for sure. Do you have any money in your purse to buy me a cup of wine or a harvest token?”

Theron felt for his purse and found—nothing. It was gone, and he didn’t know how it had happened, or when. He felt a rising flush of shame and fury. He was a Riverside boy: brought up amongst sharps and former pickpockets, he knew all the tricks, and where to keep his money safe. No one ever, ever had slipped his purse before, not in Riverside, nowhere. And here in this “respectable establishment” he’d been had.

“It’s you!” he roared, ignoring the fact that Madge would hardly have drawn attention to his purse if she’d lifted it. “You whoring thief—thieving whore—”

He was shouting, and a couple of big men were hustling him out the door. He struggled, and cursed, but they did not seem to care. He skidded on the wet street, soaking his knees in a slimy puddle. A linkboy came rushing forward with a smoky torch. “I don’t have any money,” Theron said—but as the boy turned away, he remembered: “No, wait, I’ve got money at home.”

“Yeah, you and your sister.”

“I haven’t got a sister, you punk. Light me home to Riverside, and I’ll pay you when we get there.”

The boy spat. “You nuts? I don’t go there.”

“Just give me the damn torch, then.”

“For no money? Right, asshole.”

Theron stood stupidly while the boy disappeared down an alley. It was black as the inside of a pig’s intestines, and cold and wet.

But if he started off downhill, eventually he would come to the river, and then he could find the bridge to Riverside. Which he did, staggering rubber-legged to his private door as the sky was beginning to lighten. He found his key in another pocket, and so saved himself the indignity of having to rouse the house to let him in. There was nothing he could do about the ruined breeches—he just left them on the floor for Terence to find, and hoped that Terence would have mercy and not comment in the morning.

chapter
XI

THE NEXT WEEK IT SNOWED, THE FIRST SNOW OF THE season. Dirty gray roofs and carvings collected fluffy white trimmings, like fur on an old robe. Basil lay in his low bed under the eaves holding Theron in his arms. Theron was mildly feverish from a cold. The fire was built up and every piece of clothing Basil owned was piled on the bed.

“This is so nice,” Theron murmured. “No one’s ever held me when I was sick—not since I was a child, I mean.” He coughed and sniffled. “Are you sure you don’t mind?”

Basil tightened his arm around Theron’s chest. “In Anselm’s day, physicians believed that the bodily humors must be balanced, cold against hot, dry against moist. It’s all nonsense, of course. We know better now.”

“The greatest School of Physic in the civilized world—believe me, I know exactly what we know now. Or at least, I’m closely related to one who does. You have no idea, Basil, what it’s like to have famous parents.”

Basil nodded ruefully. “I do know. My father was famous throughout four villages for his rages.”

“You come from the country?”

“You know that.”

“No,” said Theron. “I thought you’d sprung full-grown from the University clock tower.”

Basil touched the thin, sensitive lips. “Hush, if you want to hear. I grew up on a farm outside of Highcombe.” He felt a flash of irritable pride. “My father’s the cock.”

Theron heaved himself up on one elbow. “The
what?
”

“The cock of the village, the man everyone comes to for advice. He’s got a fair amount of power, my father, in his way.”

Theron flopped down again, laughing. “The mayor’s son. I’m sleeping with the mayor’s son.”

“You could say that, yes. My father would like that, to be called mayor of Highcombe.”

“I’ve been there,” said Theron. “Highcombe is mine—I hold it in my own right. There’s not much of the Tremontaine lands that are actually mine, not yet, but that is. My father deeded it to me.” He rolled to face Basil and gripped his shoulder, grinning from ear to ear. “How would it be, if we rode to Highcombe together, visiting my property side by side with you as my companion?”

Basil shook his head vehemently. “No. Under no circumstances. Never.”

“Why not?” Theron cajoled. “Your father would be proud of you.”

“My father would have apoplexy. Theron, my father wanted me to be a lawyer. That’s why he sent me to University. I was to return to our farm with a thorough knowledge of the law, at the service of the St Cloud family fortunes—so we could weasel our way around the duchess’s rules and tariffs, I expect”—he smiled wryly—“and add to our holdings and my sisters’ husbands’ holdings and in general to increase and prosper. I fell in love with the dead kings instead.”

“No profit in that,” said Theron wisely.

Basil sighed. “That’s right. No profit in that. My father would kill me if he knew we were lovers. He hates Tremontaine almost as much as he hates the University.”

Theron collected him into his arms. “Your father doesn’t want you to love me. But my father wanted me to love you. And mine outranks yours.”

The light, precise voice sounded unbearably smug. Basil shook off his lover and swung himself out of the bed.

“What?” came Theron’s plaintive voice behind him. “What did I say?”

“Your father—your dead father—lived off the fees my father paid him for the privilege of plowing and sowing and harvesting his land. As
you
live off those fees, if I understand you correctly.” He snatched up a shirt—Theron’s, he realized as it strained across his shoulders.

“I suppose I do,” said Theron helplessly. “I’m sorry.”

“It amuses you, doesn’t it?” Basil went on, flinging the shirt back on the bed. “Having a base-born lover, someone who can adore you and be flattered by your attentions, like the poor fools Hilary commanded into his bed?”

Theron was sitting up now, naked among the bed-clothes, his skin flushed and damp, his long hair clinging to his body like a second vine. “Oh, Basil, I never thought . . . I’m sorry. Look, I never knew until this moment who your father was, and I don’t care. You’re a magister, a full Doctor of the University: here, you outrank me.” He held out a white hand. “I admire you. I’ve said so. Don’t you know I mean it?”

Basil stared down at him. He could see it all so clearly. This boy did not know him. He did not even know himself.

Theron started coughing again. He pulled the blankets up around himself, shaken with his hacking. Silently, Basil came in with him, and held him and warmed him. He handed him a cup of water, and held him while he drank it. “Lie down,” Basil said. “I was wrong. You are not Hilary: not mad, not cruel, none of those things. You are Roland, the poet; you are Orlando the Fair; you are Tybald who died on the field of Pommery; and Alexander, your namesake, who died for love, died as a stag in spring.”

Theron whimpered in his arms, “No. Stop it. You’re making this up. I am none of those men.”

“You are of their line, you carry their seed in you.”

Theron tried to stop his mouth with kisses, but Basil pulled away. “Listen to me.” He pinned Theron flat with his weight, gripping his wrists hard enough to feel the long bones under the flesh. “Now you will listen,” Basil hissed, the words sharp between his teeth. “Do not deny me. I smell it in you, the blood of kings; I taste it on your skin, pounding in your veins; I hear it roaring through your heart.”

Half-angry, half-laughing, Theron struggled under him. “If you keep talking treason,” he panted, “I’ll tell the Council on you.”

“Be silent!”

Theron opened his mouth, his breath coming hard, but he made no answer. His eyes were closed like a dreamer’s, moving under the thin eyelids. Basil kissed them, and kissed him where the bronze-dark hair sprang back from his temples. “Ah,” Theron gasped. “It’s so strange! It’s all green leaves now—”

“Yes,” Basil breathed. “Go on.”

“And I’m running—I’m running—”

“Run to me,” urged Basil.

“I’m trying—I see—but I can’t find—”

But Basil knew what he could see; he saw it, too, and felt it through him: the leaves on the trees, clear as coursing water, clear as the leaves that flashed on Theron’s chest. The men with the banners, the bark on the trees, the moss underfoot, and the almost unbearable pleasure of the course to be run, the transformation turned back on itself through terrible knowledge . . . “Run to me, Little King,” Basil whispered, and Theron said, “Not now, not yet, I’m not ready—”

“Now!” Basil said, and it was finished, in a high, clear cry like a wounded animal’s.

Basil laid Theron’s head on his breast.

For a time, the only sound in the room was the hushed crackle of the fire and the lovers’ slowing breaths. “Was that you?” Theron said dreamily. “You seemed like someone else. Frightening. Exciting.”

Basil thought of his body burning with infinite power, shot through with white lightning. “It wasn’t me,” he said; “it didn’t feel like me.”

“It was you.” Theron snuggled into his arms. “Wonderful. Pure sensation. You make me forget everything: who I am, who I’m supposed to be. Like magic.”

DEEP IN THE NIGHT, BASIL TURNED HIS HEAD RESTLESSLY on his pillow. In his dream, he was thirsty for the water he heard as a bright thread through the dark. As he lifted his hands, he felt leathery leaves against them, flat and smooth and armed with spines. Holly leaves, he thought, and a space opened around him, filled with dim green light and the scent of water.

He was in a whispering, shadowy cave of oak and holly. There was no water in it, only a flat gray stone and a sword of antique design, a wooden cup, and a long, triangular blade that was sharp all along its length, with no handle to protect the wielder from its edges.

Basil took up the cup and walked to the far wall, which opened as he approached into a leafy tunnel. His cloak dragged behind him, catching on the spiny walls, rustling the dead leaves under his sandalled feet.

The Little King was holding vigil as he’d been instructed, squatting patiently by the sacred pool. Hearing footsteps, he dropped to his knees and bowed his head so that his many braids brushed his clean-shaven cheeks. He looked smaller than he ought, slighter, younger. But then he was kneeling and afraid—they all looked younger, kneeling. Basil held out his hand. His hand was broad and ruddy and heavy with gold rings. Basil wondered at this, and opened his mouth to voice his wonder. But the words came out quite differently than he intended, and the voice in which he uttered them was not his at all.

“Will you drink, Little King?”

“If you offer me the cup, I must drink, must I not?”

“If you wish to rule, you must.”

The boy lifted his eyes, green as new leaves. “Will I rule, then?”

“You will rule.”

The boy accepted the cup, dipped it into the pool, and lifted it dripping to his lips. When he’d drained it, he wiped his mouth on his wrist. “They say all kings are mad,” he remarked.

Basil took the cup from him and dipped water for himself. “They are right,” he said. “But you must remember that madness is a gift of the land. You will never come to harm as long as I am here to guide you.” He touched his lips to the edge of the cup, smelled a thick, sharp tang, as of metal or blood, and woke to cold darkness, the smell of sex, and Theron’s gentle snoring beside him. The next time he woke, it was midmorning, and Theron was sitting up in bed beside him, drinking from a wooden cup.