The Fall of The Kings (Riverside) (37 page)

Doctor Rugg threw up his hands in despair and applied himself to his brandy. The door of the tavern opened to admit a group of students and their teacher. St Cloud caught a glimpse of a red ribbon-bow in one student’s long, fair hair.
Girlish,
he thought disapprovingly, then realized that the student
was
a girl, that they were all girls—no, not so young as most of his students. Women.

The magister turned, searching for an empty table, affording Basil a clear view of a hawk-nosed, olive-skinned face and a mass of dark hair braided into a heavy crown.

“Doctor Sophia Campion,” said Doctor Rugg, amused. “Would you like an introduction?”

“No,” Basil snapped. “I would not. What’s
she
doing here?”

A buxom woman with brassy hair was leading the female physicians to a table that had been occupied a moment before by a group of young men. “Fraternizing,” said Rugg. “Just as we do at the Nest. I told you she was odd.” He glanced around at St Cloud’s students, who were gaping as though they’d never in their lives seen a woman before. “Those are not women,” he told them. “Those are surgeons. They’d sooner cut you up than kiss you. And there’s not one of them a day under twenty-five.”

“I knew that,” said Vandeleur unexpectedly. “When the Governors let women attend lectures, they stipulated they had to be of legal age.” Everyone stared at him. He shrugged. “My sister wants to be a mathematician. She’s sixteen.”

Ignoring this byplay, Basil studied Theron’s mother, trying to find his lover in her vividly foreign face. She was explaining something to one of her students, shaping the air with her hands, touching the woman’s arm, tapping a finger against the table, never still until the woman spoke, when she leaned forward to listen, all attention.
Like Theron,
Basil thought, and was suddenly overcome with restless desire. He drained his brandy and stood up.

“Where are you going?” Rugg asked. “We have a lot to talk about. Strategy. Plans. Meetings with the Governors. You’ve put a match to dry tinder, Basil. You must help contain the fire.”

“Later, Leonard.” It came out more brusquely than he’d meant, but that was better than pleading. “Come to my rooms tomorrow afternoon—we’ll plan then, as much as you like.” He looked with affection at the concerned faces of the students who had witnessed his challenge. “You have my gratitude, all of you. No finer scholars and friends could exist the length and breadth of University.”

He turned to leave.

Sophia Campion, chancing just then to catch his eye, was astonished to see a handsome young Doctor of Humane Studies turn scarlet and give her a sheepish smile before fairly fleeing the room. Then one of her students claimed her attention, and she forgot all about him.

chapter
II

HENRY FREMONT’S NOTE INFORMING GALING ABOUT the challenge was short and not particularly informative:
Doctor St Cloud has challenged Doctor Crabbe
to a debate about the wizards.

Galing looked at the back of the paper, but there was nothing more. It was not like Fremont to let a chance escape to expand Galing’s knowledge. His reports were commonly as full of ancient history as modern news (
context,
Henry said), and ran to several closely written pages. Whatever else Galing might learn in the course of this investigation, he was learning a great deal about history. But not today. What about the wizards was St Cloud intending to debate? Why had Henry suddenly grown so coy? He laid the letter on the thick stack of Henry’s reports and buried his shapely hands in his curls.

This favor Arlen had asked of him, this matter of tracing and diagnosing a troublesome rumor, was more complex, more obscure than Nicholas could have imagined. No sooner did he root out one stem of it than two others would spring up to claim his attention. First, there were the Northerners, the Companions of the King. Troublemakers, malcontents, full of superstitious customs and beliefs. Now that their ring-leaders were safely stored in the Chop for easy reference, that should be the end of it. But it wasn’t the end, not by a long shot. The world of the Companions was beginning to creep into the drawing rooms of the Hill. While their wives danced, the older nobles discussed in shocked whispers how the Duke of Hartsholt’s “revolting peasants,” as Condell insisted on calling them, had burned Hartsholt’s steward in effigy up north in their MidWinter bonfire. Even Lord Hemmynge, who was more interested in horses than politics, knew that the women of Harden had made a show of stuffing their mattresses with valuable goat hair, rather than spin it for sale on their lord’s estates; they called it “Alcuin’s Bed,” and said they slept easier on it than the old king had. The past was rising; people were talking, and even nobles with no Northern holdings were beginning to say that something must be done.

Under the circumstances, it made Nicholas uneasy that a young Doctor of History was proposing to trot out theories about wizards in a public forum. It made him even more uneasy that the heir to Tremontaine was so consistently attracted to lovers who delved into the past.

But when he imagined explaining his unease to Arlen, he could all too easily imagine Arlen’s response: “Historians talk about wizards. Painters love exotic subjects. Young men are romantics. Where is your proof?”

Right now, all Galing had to go on was Greenleaf and Smith in the Chop, Ysaud in her studio, and Doctor Basil St Cloud in his lecture-hall, all babbling, in their several ways, about wizards and deer and mystic sacrifices. And the subject of the Northern boys’ hunt, of Ysaud’s paintings and St Cloud’s passion, was Theron Campion, heir to Tremontaine.

If Galing could only show some connection between Campion and the North!

He pulled out the transcript of the prisoner Greenleaf’s interrogations and leafed through the pages. His eye caught on a phrase, repeated several times over several days:

The kings
must
come again. The land withers and dies without
their blood; the people weaken without their seed.

Galing dropped the transcript with a sound of disgust. Greenleaf was clearly mad. Magic kings and wizards were the stuff of old wives’ tales, not of political uprisings. To become king, Campion would need allies behind him, followers, an army. There was no sign, in University or anywhere else, of anything so tangible.

Still, he thought, the key to his proof must lie somewhere in the great mass of historical information with which Henry had burdened him. It was significant that Theron was descended from the sister of Gerard the Last King. True, the nobles had signed a document relinquishing any claim to the throne by right of blood for themselves and their descendants. But a signature is merely ink, as an oath is merely breath to a man with sufficient motive to break it. It was not difficult to imagine Theron Campion breaking his ancestor’s word to set himself upon the very throne his ancestor had broken.

If there was anything going on—and Galing could not swear absolutely that there was—Campion must be at the center of it. There was nothing for it, then, but for Galing to scrape a closer acquaintance with the fellow and see if he could discover what he was up to. It was a pity about that exchange he had allowed himself at the Montague ball, but he could always apologize, if Campion even remembered it.

Rising from his desk, Galing went to the case that held his collection of curious books. He unlocked the delicate iron grille, opened it, abstracted a leather case, and pulled out Ysaud’s sketches. Theron Campion’s narrow face looked up at him out of a fretwork of leaves that shadowed but did not hide his eager body. Horns branched from his temples. Ysaud had scribbled a title across the corner: “The Summer King.”

Arrogant bastard,
Nicholas thought, and returned the sketch to the folder.

THERON CAMPION WAS ATTENDING A BIRTHDAY PARTY when he learned of Basil’s challenge, and he was not pleased.

It was the birthday of Lady Genevieve Randall, the girl he’d admired at the Montague ball. Now that term had begun again and he felt he had proven to Katherine that he had no more New Year’s madness up his sleeve, Theron was much less inclined to go to parties on the Hill. But the invitation had been delivered personally by the Randall son, Clarence; Theron had a vague feeling that having made a fool of himself in Clarence’s company in a whorehouse at the Harvest Feast gave the Randalls some rights to him now. And besides, the sister was very pretty. So he allowed his valet to pour him into something tight and stylish with dozens of tiny buttons, and went to celebrate with the Randalls.

Sebastian Hemmynge and Peter Godwin were there, too, along with the usual marriageable girls and eligible young men. Theron realized he hadn’t seen his erstwhile companions since the night of the Deer Hunt. He wondered if they, too, had been scolded and kept home. Had they even been there in the grove? He really did not know. When he tried to picture that night, the images made him queasy. He had no desire to ask what the other men remembered.

The party took the form of a rustic feast, with the servants all dressed as country folk from the Randalls’ estates, serving bread and cheese and cider and preserves from their home. Supervised by mothers and married sisters, Lady Genevieve and her guests danced and even played at forfeits and blindman’s buff. Theron had to redeem his forfeit by kissing “the prettiest girl in the room,” and politeness dictated that he choose his hostess. With everyone watching, he tilted up the chin of the blushing girl, and brushed the lightest of kisses across her lips. Her hand trembled on his sleeve. He looked into her eyes, and felt his rod stiffen like a schoolboy’s. “My token,” he cried breathlessly, to cover his throbbing pulse. “You’ve got to give it back now. Unless you want another kiss!”

Everyone went “Ooh!” and Lady Genevieve fumbled to release from her wrist the ribbon from his shoe that he’d thrown into the forfeit ring.

“Isn’t she going to have to lace it back on for you?” a bold girl cried. (After the party, her mother slapped her for it.)

But Theron was just as glad to be able to bend down and lace his shoe himself.

The dances were country dances. Genevieve’s eyes sparkled and her pale cheeks were flushed, and tendrils of dark hair escaped from her chignon in the most alluring fashion, clinging to her sweating neck. Theron partnered the girl twice, but swung her about and touched her hand countless times as the lines of dancers met and parted. When they played at blindman’s buff he tried to track her by her laugh, but found instead that he had his arms around the waist of the bold girl, who made a great fuss refusing to be kissed, and so he made her sing a song, instead.

He was heading to the punch bowl to get a glass for her when he overheard the words “St Cloud,” and stopped in his tracks. Peter Godwin was gesticulating with great animation to his friend Hemmynge. Theron forgot all about the girl.

“It was magnificent!” Godwin was saying. “He stood up right in front of the entire room and said the wizards were real! You should have seen their faces! If we hadn’t been there, who knows what they might have done to him, right on the spot.”

Theron moved closer. Peter saw him and froze. Godwin had not been one of the bearers of chicken last fall, but he’d certainly heard all about it. “Oh,” young Godwin said stiffly. “Hullo, Campion. Lord Theron, I mean. I was just telling Seb about the challenge.”

“Wonderful stuff,” Hemmynge raved. “I might have to switch to history! Nothing this interesting ever happens in geography! Can you get me a good seat for the debate, Theron?”

“I really have no idea,” he said stiffly, and turned away.

I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU DIDN’T TELL ME.” THERON HAD LOOKED for Basil at the Blackbird’s Nest, but found him hunched over his books on Minchin Street in an atmosphere of dust and ink and musty paper. “You challenge Roger Crabbe to an academic duel, it’s the talk of the taverns, and I find out from bloody Sebastian Hemmynge! Who found out from baby Godwin, and only because they both happened to be at the same birthday party.”

“Well, you know now,” Basil said mildly.

Theron stormed on. “I am not accustomed to getting my University gossip at third-hand on the Hill, Basil. You are much to blame.”

“Because I do not supply you with gossip, my lord?”

Theron stopped as if he had been slapped. “That was not called for.”

Basil saw with surprise that Theron’s face had gone quite pale. Stubble stood out dark on the young man’s cheeks, and his eyes were big with hurt. Wearily, Basil pushed his chair back from his worktable. “I am sorry. It just never occurred to me—I don’t think of University politics when I’m with you.”