Spring (54 page)

‘It is
here
,’ replied Dowty. ‘Montague III is our own section here.’

Watery, racing, mottled light replaced the steel wall as it disappeared somewhere above them. For what it now revealed was a second wall, this one of thick plate glass, across part of which the river flowed, the higher section being spray and sky and not much else. The river’s constant roar sounded loud.

‘Do not take the lower route to Curzon Street,’ advised Dowty. ‘Instead take the upper one by Proof House Lane. Do you know it?’

Brunte confirmed that he did.

‘Until later then,’ he continued, ‘when all will become clearer than it is now. You had better get your replacement ready, Councillor.’

‘That I have done long since,’ said Dowty. ‘Now, if you will forgive me, we have reports from Deritend.’ He turned away to attend to them.

But Brunte stayed where he was, his eyes glinting suddenly red and flinty.

‘Councillor!’ he said sharply.

Dowty turned back, slight alarm in his expression.

‘Never turn your back on me again,’ said Brunte, ‘not ever. It is . . . impolite.’

Dowty stared at him, processing this new information.

‘I never will,’ he promised.

T
he climax of Festoon’s party was the parade of the Sisters Chaste before his mock throne so that amidst much jollity he might choose one of them to be his Birthday Bride.

This ritual was an ancient one, dating back to medieval times when the question of succession was an important one for cities such as Brum. For without a successor there was no continuity and without more than one heir there was insecurity. The Chaste Sisters were the young virgins among the Sisters of Charity, and the selection of one of them each year by the High Ealdor was a means to that end.

The Chosen One was allowed to spend a single night in the High Ealdor’s bed, after which she was sequestered for nine lonely months, watched over by the most senior Sisters of Charity. Many produced no heir and were returned to ordinary sisterhood; a few bore young, and these became heirs to the throne of Brum. On them the future relied.

By Raster Avon’s time the ritual had lost this traditional significance and was simply an occasion for japery and fun – the Chosen One being a mere symbolic bride for the day whose reward was not a night in the bed of a ruler but a pendant disc of gold-plated base metal, fashioned and bejewelled in the imagined guise of the mythic pendant that Beornamund had made for Imbolc and with which, it was still hoped, she travelled down the years.

Under Festoon the ritual had an edge that was bitter-sweet, for how could it ever be that one such as he, so obscenely obese, so evidently the last in the now corrupted Avon line, should have need of a bride, or the interest or even the competence to father a child upon her?

So while most folk clapped and laughed, those of them who knew the history of the tradition and understood its importance could hardly bear to look.

With a roll of great tibla drums of the Russian steppe and a fanfare of tuble horns the crowd was marshalled around the edges of the Orangery and an expectant hush fell.

For a brief moment total darkness descended, until one by one spotlights shone onto the floor into which red-silked tumblers somersaulted and held still. Then they began tumbling in and out of the orange trees, plucking fruit as they went which they hurled high above everyone’s head such that they arced into final descent to the hands of jugglers who threw them back up again to arch back and forth across the room, caught in light and an endless stream of colour.

‘Splendid!’ cried the delighted Festoon, so taken with the clever display that he half rose from his throne, clapping his fat hands together, his face beaming, his stomach swaying from side to side before, tired from this unplanned exercise, he slumped back down again.

Then, with a further fanfare, and drum rolls on the tibla, the crowd began clapping as the first Sister Chaste was led in on the arm of a grey-haired military man, his uniform in the bright, dashing style of Burmese dacoits.

Katherine had been having a great time. She had never been much of a party-goer but this, by far, was the best she had ever known, her normal reservations having been left behind when Sister Mary chopped more off her hair, drugged her and then fitted her with a black wig.

She had somehow teamed up with Sister Mary at the party and the two, realizing more fun was to be had in company, had stuck together and joined the dance which brought the Chaste Sisters together in the centre of the gallery before Lord Festoon as the central attraction.

At first Katherine hardly cared.

The music was as intoxicating as the costumes, the decorations, the astonishing feats of acrobatics all about her and the amazing way in which one of the jugglers, having reached one end of the gallery, was now somersaulting back and juggling oranges at the same time.

When the Sisters Chaste drew level with the throne Katherine said, ‘So that’s Lord Festoon! He looks truly awful!’

‘There is no other like him!’ giggled Sister Mary.

‘What do I do if he asks me . . . well . . . you know . . . I mean I don’t really have to . . .’

They laughed some more at that even more awful thought.

‘It is an honour you cannot refuse . . . but nothing actually happens except you get given a golden pendant you can keep and you have to sit on his knee.’

‘Yuk!’ said Katherine. ‘I wouldn’t go anywhere near him.’

‘Well you won’t get chosen anyway, because he prefers us short ones apparently, so relax.’

‘I am relaxed,’ said Katherine, adjusting her wig and praying that Jack was a million miles away but safe. ‘More or less.’

‘Same, same,’ replied Mary. ‘My family won’t like it if I get chosen though, they’d prefer to continue thinking of me as pure.’

‘Quite right! You’re meant to be chaste.’

Mary grinned knowingly.

‘I am,’ she said, ‘. . . more or less.’

They laughed again, as everyone else was doing, and cheered and joked and linked arms with other Sisters, aware now that everyone’s eyes were on them and that the men in the crowd, especially those up around the High Ealdor, were pointing to various of them and assessing which was the worthiest to be chosen.

But then as the music swelled and things got wilder still Katherine felt her head begin to clear and reality to set in.

She was here against her better judgement, they had criticized her body shape, they’d cut her hair, and she had on more make-up than she thought was possible for a single face to wear.

‘Time to get out of here,’ she told herself, trying to turn the mounting anger she felt to good effect.

But she knew she had to keep up the pretence that she was enjoying herself, so she laughed and clapped and linked arms with Sister Mary and danced about while her eyes darted in every direction looking for ways to escape.

The Master of Ceremonies announced, ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, the High Ealdor is making his choice!’

This moment was part of the fun of the ritual as the more senior members of Festoon’s court gathered about him looking conspiratorial while they whispered among themselves, pointed at various of the Chaste Sisters, nodded or shook their heads in exaggerated approval or not as the case might be, and generally made a comic meal of it.

It was made all the funnier by the costumes that these supposed courtiers had been dressed in, which were exquisite in their over-the-top detail – brocaded silken jackets with puffed sleeves, silks and dark blue stockings beneath flowery breeches, silk slippers with salmon-pink tassels, and magnificent turbans of loose purple silk which looked like vulgar decorations on a cake – as in a way they were, for they echoed the iced-sugar confections on Festoon’s huge birthday cake.

They conferred, Festoon frowned and stroked his chubby hairless chin, they pointed at one or two of the Sisters very ambiguously, nodded their heads and pulled back from their lord. Festoon now smiled and nodded towards one of the courtiers, who came near and consulted.

‘Ladies and Gentlemen, the High Ealdor has chosen his Birthday Bride and is now advising the equerries who the lucky Sister will be.’

Katherine watched carefully but with only detached interest, hoping that the chosen one would be Sister Mary but also thinking with a beating heart that if she was going to get away from the Sisters the near-chaos of the party was going to be her best bet. She began looking around the huge room for different entrances to the one she had come in by.

She saw that Sister Supreme and her arrogant assistant Sister Chalice were close nearby, watching them it seemed. Beyond them were all sorts of distinguished-looking people, while at the only entrances she could see folk were more subdued, perhaps because there were Fyrd guards there, their numbers increasing all the time.

Getting away was not going to be easy.

Sister Mary touched her arms and said, ‘Uh, uh! He’s coming our way.’

An equerry had detached himself from Festoon’s side and was slowly crossing the Orangery floor and heading in their general direction.

His turban was even more monstrously woven up above his head than the others, and his impressive beard waxed so much that it shone in the light, as did his red cheeks. The trouble was, Katherine saw, that his eye was not on Sister Mary, but on herself.

‘You’d better duck!’ said Mary, grabbing Katherine’s arm. ‘Otherwise he might choose you!’

Katherine looked at Lord Festoon and he was smiling and looking straight at her, confirmation that she might have, unfortunately, caught his eye.

‘I’m not going to allow that to happen,’ she said to Mary, trying to sink towards the floor.

The horrible equerry was almost upon her.

‘He’s wearing earrings,’ whispered Mary, ‘and his stomach’s on the way to being as large as the High Ealdor’s!’

The equerry stopped in front of them.

‘But I don’t
want
to,’ Katherine whispered urgently to Mary, everything having fallen silent and with everyone crowding round to see which of the Sisters was finally going to get chosen.

The equerry reached for Katherine, and had turned dramatically towards Festoon for him to confirm that she was the one, when a curious wave of movement spread through the crowd and then came a shout from the entrance.

It was sufficiently loud and urgent for people’s heads to turn, including Katherine’s. Fyrd guards had entered in numbers at one end of the Orangery and seemed to be pulling someone out of the chamber against their wishes. Then they went for someone else and people began to retreat, while other more senior officials tried to go and see what was going on.

The turbaned equerry was pulled away from Katherine by the swirling, panicking crowd. But when he fought his way back quite fiercely and momentarily grabbed her arm she decided enough was enough and this was the best moment she was going to get to flee the Sisters.

Earlier, when she had looked for escape routes, she had noticed a tapestry, hanging near where the bulk of the Fyrd were, which occasionally moved as if caught in a draught. She saw her chance, stamped on the equerry’s foot, snatched her arm from his grasp, ducked low and ran.

T
he Deritend Feast at the Muggy Duck was a very informal affair compared with the event at Lord Festoon’s. The party consisted almost entirely of Mallarkhi’s relatives and friends and started long before the Bride herself got there.

When she did there was a great commotion at the door and another crowd of people came in, leading a girl more beautiful than Jack had ever seen.

‘There she be!’ cried Old Mallarkhi. ‘The Chosen One herself. Our Perfection! Our own Bride! And don’t she look the part!?’

She was dark like Ma’Shuqa, and had the same full figure, and bright ribbons in her dark hair. Her smile was wide, her eyes sparkling.

‘Gentlemen and Ladies, one and all, there’s not one of you that don’t know Hais, the best-made Bride there ever was . . .’

Jack, who was standing next to Master Brief, grabbed his arm and said, ‘How long is this going on for? I want to go and find Katherine, I can’t stay here . . .’

But it did no good.

‘It’s under control, Jack. Trust us. She’s at Lord Festoon’s and we’ve people there who will get her to safety at the right moment. It would be deeply insulting to leave a Deritend party early, and give great offence. Only a life-and-death emergency will get you away from here and not have folk talk about it badly. The idea is to build your reputation, not destroy it. Relax, Jack! Enjoy yourself! Katherine will be all right.’

There being nothing else that he could do, Jack allowed himself to follow this advice.

Hais was led to the place of honour, the rest of them taking their places where they liked, Jack and Brief finding seats opposite her along with Pike.