The Mirador (16 page)

“Why would any woman agree to that?” Mehitabel said.

The more you thought about it, the more it itched at you. I can’t abide mysteries anyway. “And why would you
have
to?”

“It would appear,” Lord Antony said, “and forgive me for thinking out loud, that it was vitally necessary to someone that Amaryllis Cordelia’s death be made invisible. By the way, I think I know why she’s in the Cordelius crypt—you were right, Mehitabel.”

“I was?” Mehitabel said. “About what?”

“She was pregnant with Charles’s child.”

We sat there for a minute, blinking like owls.

“I admit I didn’t examine the corpse closely enough to tell, but that dress she was wearing—I knew it was familiar.”

“What was it?” Felix said.

“You know the state portrait of Queen Thamasin in the Judiciary? ”

Felix, Mehitabel, and Gideon all looked blank. “Oh,” I said. “Yeah. You mean the one,
Pregnant in the Sixth Month with His Majesty’s Heir
?”

“That’s it. We probably wouldn’t have it if that first child had turned out to be a girl, but it was Matthias just as expected. The body was wearing an exact replica of that dress.”

“Pregnant in the sixth month with his majesty’s heir,” Mehitabel said.

“It’s exactly the sort of grandly greedy gesture Amaryllis
would
make,” Lord Antony said. “I suspect her murderers appreciated the irony.”

Another silence.

“They couldn’t let the child be brought to term,” Lord Antony said, “because the laws about minorities and regencies are entirely different if the ruler in question has an heir.”

“But—” Mehitabel began.

“Remember that my ‘they’ are the men who created the Puppet Kings,” Lord Antony said. “They wanted power, just as poor Amaryllis did. We know she wanted it badly enough to murder Laurence, and history shows us how much easier it is to murder by committee.”

“How do we know she murdered Laurence?” Felix asked.

“Because she was pregnant,” Lord Antony said.

“Beg pardon?”

“When Amaryllis Cordelia became pregnant with Charles’s child,” Lord Antony said, “there were several things she had to accomplish in order to parlay her child into power. After all, merely announcing that she was pregnant by someone other than her husband wouldn’t get her very far.”

“True,” Felix said.

“What she really needed was to marry Charles. At the very least, if a king acknowledges an illegitimate child as his own, then that child can legally be entered into the succession.”

“I sense a ‘but’ coming,” Felix said, and I thought it figured that him and Lord Antony would be getting along like a house on fire. Mehitabel liked guys who were good with words, and Kethe knows Felix could keep himself entertained by talking for just hours on end. Door slammed in your face again, Milly-Fox? Keeper’s voice said sweetly, and I wished my own stupid head would leave me the fuck alone.

“None of that applies to a king’s heir,” Lord Antony said. “The bastard son of a prince is just that: a bastard son. And her ideal option, to become Queen Amaryllis . . . Charles, as the king’s heir, couldn’t marry without the king’s consent.”

I said, because I couldn’t stand not to, “And Laurence would never let him marry her.”

“Exactly. Laurence set up the conditions of regency several months before his death, and he worked very hard to exclude the possibility of Amaryllis—or any woman—ruling through Charles. Most historians think he was too trusting of his advisors and simply failed to see what scope he was leaving them—but he knew his son, as well. I don’t know. In any event, Amaryllis would never have been able to get the king’s permission to divorce her husband—she’d have had to petition Laurence for that, too—and marry Charles. I’d never quite understood before why she couldn’t just
wait
.”

“Oh, I see,” Mehitabel said. “Being pregnant, she had only a limited amount of time to get what she wanted.”

“So, to her mind,” Felix said, “Laurence had to go.”

“Yes,” Lord Antony said. “If Charles became king before her child was born, he could divorce her from Wilfrid and marry her himself. No problem in the world.”

“So she had Laurence murdered,” Mehitabel said.

“And then,” Felix said. “Well, what
did
happen?”

“I’m still working on the chronology of events,” said Lord Antony. “If she was really six months pregnant when she was murdered, something had obviously gone very awry with her plans.”

“Something
did
go very awry with her plans,” Mehitabel said. “She ended up dead.”

“Yes, but I think that was only because she was finally getting what she wanted,” Lord Antony said. “They’d have no reason to murder her if Charles wasn’t showing signs of caving in.”

“Or already had, Gideon says.”

“
That
would do it,” Lord Antony said. “If Charles
had
divorced her from Wilfrid, that would explain this bizarre need to pretend that she was still alive and still married.”

“I’m not following,” Mehitabel said.

“All right.” Lord Antony sprang up and began to pace. “Imagine you’re a councillor of King Charles. The only name I can remember right now is Gorboduc Briskett—so, imagine you’re Gorboduc Briskett. King Laurence, whom you served faithfully for many years, is dead. His wastrel son has taken the throne and incidentally handed you an astonishing amount of power. You are, in a vulgar phrase, sitting pretty. I imagine you know, or strongly suspect, that Amaryllis Emarthia murdered King Laurence, but you aren’t one to cry over spilt milk, and trying her for murder will make a filthy row. Then one day Charles says, ‘Oh, by the by, I’ve divorced my cousin Amaryllis from her husband, and I think I’ll marry her tomorrow—so our child will be legitimate, you understand. Wear your best for the wedding.’ You, Gorboduc Briskett, are now in a terrible mess.”

“How so?” Felix said.

Lord Antony wheeled around, his eyes lit up like chandeliers. “One. You cannot under any circumstances have Charles produce an heir
now
. You need the last three years of his minority to consolidate your power. I’ll even grant that you may sincerely have the best interests of the kingdom somewhere in the general vicinity of what passes for your heart. Two. You know perfectly well that Laurence didn’t want Amaryllis Emarthia anywhere near the seat of power, and I suspect you concur with your late sovereign’s judgment. And furthermore—let’s call it two-and-a-half—you remember your suspicions that she murdered Laurence, and for certain you don’t want a regicide on the throne. Three. If Charles has already divorced her from Wilfrid, privately, then your chance of patching things over is gone. You know you won’t be able to convince her to hush things up and raise Charles’s bastard as an Emarthius. She’s a strong-willed woman, and she knows what she wants. Where was I?”

“That was three,” Felix said, dry as salt.

“Thank you. Four.
If
Amaryllis Emarthia is pregnant with Charles’s child—or is patently willing to claim to the death that she is—then you cannot under any circumstances try her for Laurence’s murder, which would otherwise be the ideal way to scotch this unpleasant marriage.”

“Why not?” Mehitabel said.

“Two reasons. One is that everyone will believe the murder charges are trumped up to keep Amaryllis from marrying Charles. If you try her, and she’s acquitted, she marries Charles, and you’re out on your ear—or, more likely, executed yourself. The other reason is that, if you try her, it will come out that she’s pregnant with Charles’s child. Whether she’s convicted or not, it is entirely illegal to kill a prince of the blood, i.e., any child of a king. And you can bet any sum of money you like that Amaryllis Cordelia’s dying request would be that Charles recognize her child as his heir. Then, poof, Charles has an heir, and you’re right back where you started: he’s got the power and you’re out on your ear.”

“So,” Felix said, “you have to erase Amaryllis Cordelia.”

“Precisely. But you have to erase her without allowing her to disappear. If she simply vanishes—well, she was not an obscure figure at the courts of Laurence and Charles. People would wonder, and they’d pry, and they’d find out. If you simply smother her and try the normal trick of ‘died of fever,’ some clever-boots doctor is going to notice she was pregnant— it was so common for members of the house of Cordelius to die, er, unexpectedly that postmortem examinations were a normal part of the proceedings. And there must have been plenty of people around the Mirador who knew exactly what Amaryllis’s relative relations were with her husband and her king.”

“But,” Mehitabel said, “if she was six months pregnant and wearing that dress—”

“We don’t know that she was six months pregnant. I don’t think she
can
have been. I’d be willing to bet it was more like three or maybe four. The dress was just a means of flaunting her victory.” The light died out of his face. “I think they moved very fast. I think she was murdered the same day Charles divorced her from Wilfrid.”

“And a new Amaryllis Cordelia took her place,” Felix said.

“But who?” Mehitabel said. “And how? How could they carry it off?”

Lord Antony said, “I suspect that’s why Wilfrid lost his government post and returned to Diggory Chase. He seems to have been a remarkably obliging man. Although I suppose he had little reason to mourn her.”

“And Charles, who was going to marry her?”

“The kindest thing I’ve ever seen written about Charles— that wasn’t intended for public consumption, of course—was that he was a pragmatist. Once Amaryllis was dead, and his potential heir with her, there was no profit for Charles in making a fuss. And he married Jemima well before Amaryllis’s alleged death.”

“A bribe,” Mehitabel said.

“The councillors would have had it in their power to delay Charles’s marriage until he turned twenty-one. All things considered, the fact that they didn’t suggests that they had reached some kind of agreement with him.”

“The whole thing hardly seems credible,” Mehitabel said.

“I’m still working through it,” Lord Antony said, sitting down again. “Plainly they did it, whether we believe it or not.”

“Well,
someone
did it,” Mehitabel said.

Lord Antony nodded. “But I still think it’s Gorboduc Briskett.”

I was late, but Thamuris greeted me without rancor or any sign of impatience. I told him a little bit about Amaryllis Cordelia, and he was fascinated, remarking wistfully that it was a pity there were no books of Marathine history in Troia.

“Most of it is just as unpleasant as that poor woman’s fate, if not more so. I suppose it makes sense, really, that the Mirador has so many ghosts.”

“Ghosts?”

“Oh, it’s heresy to admit it, although they’d probably just call me mad. Again.”

“You’ve seen actual ghosts?” he persisted.

“Assuming they
were
more than elaborate hallucinations, yes. And I’ve seen ghouls. I was sane, then. Why? Does Troian thaumaturgy deny the agency of the dead as Cabaline thaumaturgy does?”

“Does it?”

“Very much so.”

“No wonder your ancestors are angry,” he said somberly.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Your ancestors. They cannot rest, and that’s bad enough. But it’s even worse to be denied.”

“You realize I have no idea what you’re talking about.” It was not an admission I made easily, but I trusted Thamuris not to use it against me.

For his part, he seemed merely puzzled. “You do not venerate your ancestors? At all?”

“I don’t
know
my ancestors,” I said, but he waved it aside.

“Not ancestors of the blood. Ancestors of the spirit. Like your Cabal.”

“I beg your pardon?” I said again, helplessly.

“Are they not . . . I thought they were your Tetrarchs.”

“I thought your Tetrarchs were gods.”

“Gods?”
He was shocked enough that I realized the suggestion was blasphemous.

I said hastily, “I didn’t know. No one ever said . . .”

“The Tetrarchs are the founders of the four covenants.
Not
gods.”

We were both silent for a moment; I was afraid that anything I said would only make matters worse. But finally my curiosity, and the uneasy, never-absent wondering if my katharsis was truly enough to keep Malkar away, drove me to ask, “You don’t have ghosts?”

“Only very rarely. If the thanatopsis isn’t performed properly.”

“Thanatopsis?”

“The . . .” He grimaced, searching for words. “The ceremony. Would you say ‘funeral’?”

“Not if it prevents ghosts. How does that work?”

“What do you mean, how does it work?”

“Well, I know how to lay a ghost, but how do you go about
preventing
one?”

“You start by honoring the dead,” he snapped.

I was more than taken aback; I was shocked. “Thamuris? What did I say?”

“Nothing. You just . . . Do you approach
everything
as if it was a puzzle box?”

I considered the question. “Most things, I suppose. I wasn’t trying to . . . I didn’t mean to be callous.”