The Fall of The Kings (Riverside) (63 page)

“I think so,” said the duchess. There was a long and uncomfortable pause. “Will you let me send a physician?”

Jessica turned from the window, all business. “Only if there is someone you trust not to tell the city and not to tell Sophia.”

“Marcus, then?”

“I’d rather not. It’s hard to know how Theron will react to things. How’s this: I’ll ask Theron to write you a letter, and let you judge for yourself. If you genuinely think he’s better off locked up in the attic of Tremontaine House, like his great-grandfather, Marcus can come get him, and I wash my hands of the lot of you.”

Katherine regarded her problematic relative thoughtfully. “Very well,” she said at last. “I believe you’re trying to help. But I’ll want to see that letter. There’s a lot at stake here you don’t entirely understand.”

Jessica picked up the disreputable hat and bundled her hair into it. “I won’t argue with that,” she said agreeably, and left the duchess to her thoughts.

THE COMPANIONS OF THE KING MET IN A BACK ROOM OF the Green Man over cider and venison stew. There were six men in the little room, all sporting braids and carved wooden oak leaves: the First Five of the King’s Companions, plus another, more junior one. They were all tall men save for the youngest of them, a small, bird-boned youth with bright copper-colored hair. They were silent, just now, with that gravid silence that falls over a group of men who have temporarily argued themselves to a standstill.

“Look,” said Lindley. “We don’t have to understand all the details. It’s a mystery. We just have to have faith and be ready for whatever happens.”

The tallest and grimmest of the Northerners held Lindley’s gaze for a long moment. His name was Robert Coppice, and before the arrest of Greenleaf and Smith, he’d been Third Companion. Now he was First Companion, Master of the Hunt and Keeper of the Mysteries, and he felt his responsibilities weigh heavy on his shoulders. After the MidWinter Hunt, Greenleaf and Smith had spoken of a new king who would appear to lead them. The Companions were to hold themselves in readiness for his advent, after which everything would become clear.

These prophecies troubled Coppice. In the manner of all prophecies, they raised more questions than they answered. And Greenleaf, who kept the Mysteries very close, had taken them with him to the Chop, putting Coppice in the awkward and irritating position of being dependent on the Southron scholar Lindley for some of his knowledge of the lore and rituals of the ancient North.

The arrest of Greenleaf and Smith was a thorn under Coppice’s nail for many reasons, not the least of which was his fear that they had revealed everything they knew to the Serpent Chancellor’s torturers. Even after all these weeks, Coppice walked abroad with his shoulders itching, waiting for a Guard’s heavy hand to grab him and a Guard’s Southern voice to announce that he was under arrest for treason. There was something to be said for the fact that he and his Companions were still walking free.

“It is a mystery,” he said heavily. “We are agreed on that, at any rate.”

The Third Companion Farwell laid a comforting hand on his friend’s arm. “We’re agreed on more than that.”

“We are?” said Coppice wearily. “All Greenleaf told us was that the new king is to be consecrated in the spring, and that we must be witnesses. We still don’t know exactly where or when the consecration is to take place, nor who is to perform it.”

“A wizard,” said Farwell, in the tone of one stating the obvious.

The strong-necked natural scientist Hob sneered. “All the wizards are dead, Farwell, unless you happen to be hiding one under your bed.”

“Guidry,” said Lindley patiently. “I keep telling you. Guidry will come again and bind the new king to the Land. It says so in Martindale.” He closed his eyes and recited: “
So
Guidry retired to the Grove Within to rest him there and tarry in a
place beyond the ken of man until that time when the Land’s great
need should call him forth to bind and dedicate a new king to its
service
.”

“And what in the Seven Hells is that supposed to mean?” Hob burst out. “It didn’t make sense to me the first twelve times you recited it, and it doesn’t make sense now. How are we supposed to know that this debate is the right time?”

Coppice’s long hands bunched themselves into fists. “Greenleaf said it was, remember? And there are the other signs.”

Lindley obligingly quoted them. “
A trembling in the earth; a
star that trails bright hair across the heavens; a famine
.”

Hob shook his head. “Foolishness. The earth trembles often in the North, and famine is a more or less constant fact these days. These things are natural science, not a message from the Living Land.”

This opinion inspired Farwell, as it always did, to demand whether Hob even believed in the Living Land, and if he didn’t, why he was a King’s Companion. And that inspired Hob, as it always did, to declare that he believed in the North and the power of the North, and that was what he’d always thought being a King’s Companion was about. The debate went on, treading ground already trodden to bare rock. Lindley quoted extensively from Martindale, his lecture notes, and heroic poetry; points were brought up and argued. Obscure ritual phrases were parsed and analyzed.

“
From the seed of kings comes the fall of kings and their rising
again
,” Lindley repeated. “It’s Campion. Who else could it be?”

“Any noble at all,” said Hob truculently. “They all have royal blood, if you go back far enough. For that matter, so do we. And why now?”

“The star trailing bright hair,” Lindley said patiently.

“It was up there, right at the start of Harvest term,” Coppice reminded them.

“And we know that Greenleaf saw the horns on Campion at Last Night and drank magic from his lips,” said Farwell. “I saw them too. He’s the king, Hob, Southron or not. The Land has chosen, and it is not our place to question its choice.”

There was a rather depressed silence, and then Burl, the Second Companion, asked, “What about the wizard? It’s all very well to say that Guidry will come again, but where, and how? Did Greenleaf know?”

Coppice shrugged. “If he did, he didn’t tell me. Lindley’s got an idea that his magister, Doctor St Cloud, will summon him out of wherever he is—”

“The Grove Within, beyond the ken of man,” Lindley interrupted eagerly.

“—the Grove Within, at some point during the debate he’s challenged Crabbe to. No, Hob, before you ask, we don’t know how he’ll do it. This is magic, man, not a chemical demonstration.”

“Well,” said Hob with some satisfaction, “your precious magister is going to have to conjure up a king as well as a wizard. No one has seen hide nor hair of Campion for days. There’s some scandal with those nobles—rumor has it he’s been bundled off to the country and locked up until it all blows over.”

Lindley smiled a fox’s smile at him. “If you hate it all so much, Hob—me, Campion, magic, Guidry—then don’t come to the debate. Stay home and study whatever it is natural scientists study, and leave your fellows to support their king in the first moments of his triumph. You’ll miss it all, of course, but you won’t mind that.”

Hob stood up, knocking over his stool with a clatter. “You’re right there, city boy. I won’t mind never seeing your carrot top again, or hearing your damned Southron voice braying about magic and wizards. The mysteries of the wood are one thing,” he said, appealing to Coppice. “They are the strength of the North and the bond of our brotherhood. But I’ll be damned if I’m going to wait for a wizard out of the mists of time to appear on the steps of the Great Hall on the word of a Southern boy who has never run the Northern Hills or drunk deer’s blood in the winter twilight.”

When he was gone, Coppice took a deep breath and said, “Right. Does anyone else feel as Hob does?”

“We all do,” said Burl forthrightly. “But we’re mindful of our oaths. And some of us have known things in the mountains and in the rites that make us less sure than Hob is that magic has fled the Land.”

“You’ll go to the debate, then?” asked Lindley.

“We’ll go,” said Burl. “And we’ll entreat the other Companions to come with us. But if it so falls out that this debate comes and goes and nothing comes of it but one Southron Doctor of History being preferred over another, you’ll have us to answer to, Lindley, and you, too, Coppice.”

Coppice glanced anxiously at Lindley, looking for some sign of reassurance. But the young redhead’s eyes were on the candle flame and his hand was on the oak leaf around his neck, and the expression on his face was that of a man who has heard all he needs to hear.

chapter
VII

AFTER A WEEK OF UNSETTLED RAIN AND WIND, THE first day of Spring Festival dawned warm and clear. The breeze could not have breathed more sweetly, the sky shone more blue, the sun smiled more benignly upon the warming earth. It was a day for dancing on the grass and lying with your lover on soft moss—or at the very least, walking out by the river beyond the city walls.

Officially, it was a day for attending services in honor of the Green God of growth and plenty. In these secular days, the only celebrants in the Cathedral were gentleman farmers hedging their bets, the Crescent Chancellor and his staff, and a few old men and women raised to honor the gods. Those who ignored the Cathedral bells pursued other traditional activities: settling bets, announcing betrothals, digging gardens, fighting challenges.

As the University bell tolled six, Master Leonard Rugg stood in Minchin Street, beating a brisk tattoo on the door to Basil’s lodgings. He was attended by Benedict Vandeleur, Peter Godwin, and Henry Fremont, all of them clean as soap and water could make them, and dressed in their festive best. Of St Cloud’s inner circle of followers, two were absent: Anthony Lindley, off with his Northern friends, and Justis Blake, presumably lost in love.

The scruffy boy let them in with a yawn and the news that he hadn’t seen hide nor hair of Doctor St Cloud in days. Vandeleur and Godwin exchanged worried glances; Fremont felt his heart sink to the patched soles of his scarlet boots.

“Don’t worry,” Rugg told them. “He was well enough two days ago to tell me to go soak my head and leave him alone. He wouldn’t even let me in, but I heard him just fine through the door.”

They mounted the stairs. Remembering his visit to St Cloud with Justis Blake, how strange the magister had been, how gaunt and haunted, Henry wondered what they’d find waiting for them.

“St Cloud?” Rugg banged on the door. “It’s Rugg and your students. Let us in. We’ve come to take you Crabbe-hunting.”

A perfectly sane voice bade them enter. Maybe it was going to be all right after all. And, at first, it looked as if it might be. The curtains were pulled back to let in the sun; the casement was open to let in the air. The room smelled of candle wax and ink. The man by the mantelpiece was dressed respectably in brown, with white linen showing at the wrists and neck. It took Henry a moment to realize that St Cloud’s stubble had been allowed to grow into a full beard. And he’d hacked his hair short to his ears, where it curled vigorously.

“My god, Basil, you look like a carter!” Rugg sounded more angry than distressed. “They’ll laugh you out of the University before you even open your mouth. Are you mad?”

It was a real question, delivered with some force. Doctor St Cloud gave it a moment’s consideration before smiling and saying, “No, Leonard. Only preoccupied. It’s been so long since I shaved, I simply forgot.” He ran a hand over his beard, thick and glossy as an animal’s pelt. “I’ve gotten used to it.”

“Well, you can just get unused to it again,” Doctor Rugg snapped. “What’s your excuse for your hair?”

St Cloud shrugged. “It kept getting in the way, and one night I couldn’t find so much as a piece of string to tie it with. So I cut it off.” He smiled ruefully into Rugg’s worried eyes. “It was a daft thing to do, Leonard, and I regretted it at once. But I’m not the only magister in the University to decide that long hair is an affectation he can just as well do without.”

“Quite. The hair’s a minor point,” said Rugg, “but the beard has to go. I was going to treat you to breakfast at Bet’s, but we’ll go to the baths instead, get you decently barbered. Got everything? Where’s your gown?”

St Cloud collected his black gown from the back of a chair and put it on. The long, green sleeves swung heavily, weighted with his purse, perhaps, or books. He noticed his students, standing in an uncomfortable knot by the door. “Vandeleur, Fremont, Godwin, I thank you for coming. You have all paid dearly for my pride, and I am grateful for your patience and loyalty. When this is over, I’ll repay you with all the attention and knowledge at my disposal.”