The Fall of The Kings (Riverside) (23 page)

“I’ll just bet,” muttered someone, but everyone ignored him.

“And when the old king gave his body and blood to the Land, the candidates went into the grove, and suffered the Trial, which is a Mystery and not to be spoken of. He who walked alive from the forest became king, and his wizard became master over the other wizards. In times of war, the young king led the army of Companions in battle and in times of peace he went on royal progress to spread his seed throughout the land. The crop was sons of the royal blood, little kings who would grow to provide new Companions and a fresh, young king when the time was right. And the kings’ blood watered the land and the kings’ flesh fed it, so that it grew fat and pleasant and friendly to man, and sent sheep down from the mountain passes and the wild horses from the high meadows to serve man and clothe him, and deer from the deep forest to give him meat in winter, when no thing grows that is green.”

There was a little silence when he’d done. Looking at the faces of his friends, Justis thought they were more than half convinced by Finn’s tale. He certainly was. To his farm-bred soul, the whole thing made an odd kind of sense. You feed the Land; it feeds you. And University had taught him that there are many kinds of feeding, many kinds of food.

Then Vandeleur smiled and said, “You’ve missed your calling, Finn. You ought to be a story-teller or a writer of romances.”

Finn glared at him, beetle-browed and sullen once more. “I didn’t make that up,” he said. “It’s all true.”

“Where’s your proof?” Vandeleur asked pleasantly. “Where are your documents and references? And what did these wizards actually
do?
Other than make hay with the kings, I mean?”

The spell was broken. Men elbowed each other, snickering. Above their laughter, Finn said, “Don’t mock me, Vandeleur. It’s in Hollis, too. The wizards chose the kings and bound them to the Land with a chain of gold.”

Lindley exclaimed, “The window in the Great Hall! There’s proof, Vandeleur. It’s got a wizard and a grove and a deer in it. It even has the golden chain.”

“Has it?” said a student behind Justis. “That’s interesting.”

“But it doesn’t prove anything,” objected Godwin, “except that whoever made the window knew the same old stories Finn’s people tell.”

“The window was brought down from the North,” Lindley pointed out. “Alcuin brought it as a bride-gift to Queen Diane—it says so in the Official History of the University.”

“You actually read that?” someone asked.

“Still,” said Vandeleur. “Godwin’s right. It proves nothing. I don’t deny the window’s antiquity or its symbolism—it illustrates Finn’s fairy tales very neatly. I do, however, deny its literal truth. My grandmother has a lovely statue of the Green God in her garden, blessing the roses. That doesn’t mean there’s actually a god sitting in a heavenly garden combing his leafy hair with fingers made of twigs. It’s just something an artist made up to illustrate the idea of growth and plenty.”

Godwin laughed suddenly. “Don’t let the priests hear you say that, Vandeleur, or your grandmother either.”

Vandeleur turned to Finn. “You’ve persuaded me that the wizards effectively ruled the ancient North because they figured out how to make barren soil fertile. I’ll even accept that you Northerners believed, back in the mists of time, that blood sacrifice and ritual sex gave good husbandry a helping hand. What I will never accept is that there was any more to it than that. In any case, by the time Alcuin came South, the wizards were nothing but advisors and diplomats who lost a lot of their power in the Union and were unhappy about it. And unless you can come up with something more solid than folk tales, Finn, you’ll never make me change my mind.”

“Or,” Godwin added, “convince Doctor St Cloud that you’re any kind of scholar. He’d never let you get away without at least checking . . . Oh!” His face fell. “The magister! How is he?”

Justis, momentarily at a loss, looked down at his hands. Beside him, Lindley went taut and silent.

“Oh, no,” Vandeleur exclaimed, blanching. “He’s not . . . You should have
said
! What shall we do?”

“He’s fine,” Lindley ground out between gritted teeth. “Or he will be, when he’s got it out of his system.”

Everyone looked at him curiously, and Justis hastily added, “A mild fever—you know the kind of thing—you just have to sweat it out. He expects to be back in two days’ time.”

“And the chicken?” someone wanted to know. “The wine?”

“I imagine he’s enjoying them right now,” said Justis rather desperately as he felt Lindley tense against his arm. “Lindley,” he said, taking the goat by the horns, “I wouldn’t be surprised if you were sickening for it, too.” He stood and put his hand on the redhead’s shoulder. “Off we go, Tony. I’ll see you in bed with a hot brick to your feet, or know the reason why.”

But Lindley shook him off. “There’s nothing wrong with
me,
” he said pointedly. “I’m going to stay here and have a drink. And discuss history with those who know something about it. You may go tuck yourself in if you choose.”

Justis shrugged. As he climbed the steps to the tavern door, he glanced over his shoulder to see Anthony Lindley and four or five others sitting on the bench where Alaric Finn was resting his feet, looking up at the Northerner and talking animatedly.

chapter
XIII

DURING THEIR MAGISTER’S ABSENCE, THE HEART’S CORE of St Cloud’s students continued to meet, though not at LeClerc. Max, who owned the Blackbird’s Nest, sighed when he saw them appear for the second day in a row at ten o’clock in the morning, hungry for food and drink and talk, with not enough coin among them to pay for a cup of gruel. He was willing to extend credit—he’d have no custom if he did not, and he knew someone would pay up eventually. So he served St Cloud’s ancient historians and refilled their tankards as often as they emptied them, even when one of them grew so drunk that he could hardly lift the drink to his mouth.

The drunk was Henry Fremont, drowning the loss of an innocence he loudly denied ever having possessed. Fremont prided himself on having been a hardened cynic from birth. No one believed this except himself, and he was alone in being shocked at the depth of his fury at what he considered the magister’s betrayal. He’d gone to tell Vandeleur the truth about St Cloud’s absence that same night, seeking Benedict out in the room he shared with Justis Blake.

Vandeleur’s response had been disappointing. “You’re a bit behind the fair, Fremont; Blake’s already spilled the beans. So the wondrous Doctor St Cloud is human after all. With Theron Campion, too. That boy does get around. I don’t see it myself, but then I prefer the girls at Mother Betty’s. There’s a neat little blonde there, Henry, could console you for the end of the world. My treat. What do you say?”

Fremont had said no, and a lot of other things Vandeleur would only forgive a man in pain, and left in search of a more sympathetic ear. Which he did not find. With the exception of Lindley, who wasn’t speaking to him, all Basil’s students were inclined to look upon their magister’s fall from perfection with an indulgent tolerance.

“And why shouldn’t he spend two days in bed with his new lover?” Peter Godwin wanted to know. “It’ll do him good, and give us time to work on some of those questions he’s having us research. You wouldn’t believe the mess the Godwin archives are in.”

“That’s not the point,” Henry said. “We thought he was writing, and instead he was rutting! He’s supposed to be teaching, not scratching his itch with Theron Campion. Theron Campion. I ask you. Why, the man isn’t even a historian!”

“Jealous, Fremont?” inquired Alaric Finn, which inspired Henry to try and rip Finn’s nose from his face. Luckily, he was too drunk to do anything but fall sideways off the bench, which hardly even created a disturbance.

A couple of Henry’s fellows picked him up and dusted him off and propped him up next to the wall. Sullenly, he accepted a fresh tankard and brooded into it while the conversation swirled around him. And then he said, loudly and suddenly, “Tha’s it. I quit. No more fucking dead kings. No more fucking ancient historians or metaphysicians or eth— ethicists. I’m taking up astronomy.”

“Give it a rest,” said Vandeleur. “We all know you’re no more interested in the motions of the stars than you are in drinking well-water. If Doctor St Cloud isn’t pure enough for you, go pay your silver to Doctor Crabbe, or Wilson or Ferrule.”

Henry surveyed him with a bloodshot eye. “Doctor Crabbe? I’d rather suck a billy goat. It’s all politics and ambition with him. He doesn’t give two straws for the truth. All he cares about is kissing the right asses so he can settle his own ass in the Horn Chair.”

Blake looked up from the corner where he’d been reading. “That’s not fair, Fremont,” he said. “I can’t stand Crabbe either, but he’s a good scholar in his way.”

“That,” sneered Henry, “is like saying a man who steals his bread is as good a baker, in his way, as the man who rises at dawn to knead dough.”

“At least he only steals from the best bakeries,” Godwin piped up, and was rewarded by general laughter.

Henry, predictably, was not amused. This was his life they were talking about, his future, his integrity. “That’s it, then,” he said gloomily. “I’m left with astronomy. Or the priesthood. Or suicide.”

Vandeleur sighed. “You’re getting boring, Fremont. Leave the University, go be a clerk or haul freight at the docks. I’m sick of your self-righteous anguish.” He glanced around the small group. “There’s a fiddler at the Spotted Cow could make a dead frog leap again. And plenty of sewing-girls to dance with. What do you say?”

Fremont’s response was predictably foul. Vandeleur batted him gently on the head, which caused him to make a small, complaining noise and fall forward on the table, where they left him, snorting into a pool of beer.

THE NEXT MORNING FOUND BASIL ST CLOUD BACK IN LeClerc as promised, probing the finer points of Alcuin’s marriage negotiations with Queen Diane. He was gloved, capped, and muffled against the cold, heavy-eyed and hectically cheerful. Had Vandeleur and Godwin been able to resist spreading the news about just where he’d spent the last two days, his students might have thought him heroically risen from his sickbed to teach them. As it was, every man of them knew it was passion, not the ague, that roughened the young magister’s voice and brightened his eyes. Other than a tendency to snicker when he used the words “come” or “bed,” the students managed to comport themselves fairly well. If Theron Campion had chosen to attend that day’s lecture, there might have been an incident; but, wisely, he did not.

Anthony Lindley was there, sitting by Alaric Finn, with whom he’d struck up an improbable friendship. Justis Blake was there, his heavy face unreadable, stolidly taking notes. Peter Godwin and Benedict Vandeleur were there, and all the rest of the paying students, except for Henry Fremont.

IN A SMALL ROOM ABOVE A PAWNSHOP, HENRY FREMONT woke at last to the sound of bells telling him that he was very late for Doctor St Cloud’s lecture. First panic filled him, and then the knowledge that his head was full of knives, his mouth of dry leaves, and his stomach of cockroaches. By the time he’d disposed of the latter in his chamberpot and sluiced out his mouth with the small beer his roommate had thoughtfully left him, he’d remembered that Doctor St Cloud was a hypocrite and a lecher who cared more for his pleasure than for his students. After he’d staggered down to the yard and pumped a bucket of frigid water to wash his face in, and eaten an end of dry bread, he’d pretty well pieced together the events of the previous evening and begun to wonder what he was going to do now.

He couldn’t stay at University, that was clear. He’d been betrayed and humiliated, not only by St Cloud, but by the men he’d considered his friends. They’d been laughing at him—he could see that now—laughing at his pain. Even Blake. Even Lindley, who was sticking closer to that madman Finn than his Northern stink. Briefly, Henry considered throwing himself out the window or into the river, but that was just the hangover. He wasn’t entirely worthless—he remembered someone telling him so last night, someone who had found him kneeling by a gutter, spewing up beer. He’d lent Henry a handkerchief to wipe his face and a shoulder to support him to the door of the pawnshop. A stranger—tears came to Henry’s eyes—a stranger had cared for him when his so-called friends deserted him.

Henry leapt to his feet, hung onto a chair until his vision cleared, retrieved his jacket from the floor, and turned out its pockets. His purse was there, with two brass minnows in it and a stub of charcoal and a fine cambric handkerchief, very foul, and a square of pasteboard engraved with the name
Edward Tielman
and an address on Fulsom Street.