The Fall of The Kings (Riverside) (44 page)

“What I really need her for is to take care of
people
. I’m tired of having to know everyone, of endless parties and connections. It wears me out just thinking about it! Genevieve knows them all already, knows their consequence and their place. She has a quick understanding of how things work, and I need that.” His voice was getting shrill, his movements agitated. “I cannot keep it all in my head—I’ve more important things to think about—”

“Theron,” his mother interrupted. “You need not be duke, if the thought of it is such a burden to you.”

He stopped in mid-stride. “But you have always intended me to be. You and Cousin Katherine; it’s quite obvious. You chose to stay in the city to raise me to it. You promised my father. And now that I’ve figured out a way to make it work, you balk and want to talk about love.” He lifted his head haughtily. “I do think, madam, that it—”

She said, “Ah, I see I have come down in the world.”

“What?” he demanded.

“First I was ‘mama,’ then ‘Sophia,’ but now I have descended all the way to ‘madam.’ ”

“I’m sorry.” Abruptly he curled up in a miserable heap at her side. “I am just trying to explain. No one seems to understand.”

“Well, I will try. Why don’t you tell me about it?”

He tried, he really tried, to explain just how difficult it was, trying to live up to everyone’s expectations. “Cousin Katherine wants a politician,” he said at last. “My noble peers want a sportsman, you want a loving, faithful husband. You all want me to be like you. I can see the good in all these things, so I’m doing my best, but it’s hard.”

Sophia took his face in her hands and searched it with dark serious eyes. “And you, my son. What is it you would like to be?”

He looked away. “Left alone. That’s why I want to marry Genevieve. She will give me time, room to discover who I am when I’m not trying to please my family.”

Hurt, she released him. “So you marry her to please me?”

“I marry her to do my duty by my family. That should please you anyway,” he said petulantly. “You’re always talking about duty and responsibility.”

“Am I?” Sophia smiled sadly. “And from this you have learned to marry a young woman you do not love so that she may shield you from the demands of your position? I have not taught well, my son, or you have not listened.”

“That’s not fair, Mama,” he said, sounding very like the child who had been told he might not hit the twins back because they were girls. “You
like
teaching surgery and bringing women into University and taking care of beggars.”

“That is not the point. It is there to be done, and I have the knowledge and the money to do it. That is the point.”

“Oh, Mama.” There was a world of affection as well as impatience in Theron’s exclamation. He made as if to rise, but Sophia restrained him.

“You say you want this girl to take care of the demands of society on you. But are you quite certain she is able to? She is just out of the schoolroom, almost a child, far younger than you. How do you think she will be able to do what you yourself cannot?”

“Because she has been bred to it, as I have not,” he snapped; then, appalled, he put his hand over his mouth and shook his head. “I don’t mean to find fault, Mama. Forgive me. But . . . you don’t know these people as I do. It’s what they learn, these girls: how to run a household, how to get on in society. It’s all they teach them, really; it’s what their ‘schoolroom’ lessons consist of. Her mother’s a knowing one; if Genevieve has any problems, she can just ask her. It will be fine.”

“One more question, my dear. What about the man you stay with at University—the young doctor?”

“Basil,” Theron murmured. “Basil St Cloud. I will continue to go to him. I love him.”

Sophia made a helpless gesture. “Then why do you marry this Randall? Surely you may live with whomever you please and adopt an heir as Katherine has done.”

“Cousin Katherine is a law to herself,” he said. “That’s not what I want. I want to be like everyone else—to have a proper house, a proper wife. Basil doesn’t signify: half the married nobility on the Hill have lovers. Look at Lord Condell and David Tyrone! Their wives don’t care—they have lovers of their own; Condell’s wife has been with Flavia Montague since they were girls. It’s a time-honored custom. Everyone does it. My father did it.”

“Your father,” said Sophia gently, “was also a law to himself. And when he had lovers, he had no wife. After he married, he was absolutely faithful—not because he was too old and ill to stray, but because he did not wish to.”

“Mama—”

“Hush. You have been honest with me; I can be no less. You are my son. I love you even when I do not understand you. It is right and natural that you have opinions that differ from mine. But I would be a poor mother indeed if I did not tell you that this marriage to Genevieve Randall is a terrible mistake. You know nothing of what marriage is, or can be. I am afraid that you will be very unhappy—both of you. I hope that you will change your mind.”

She spoke gently and sadly, and when she had finished, she rose from the chair in which she had sat at her husband’s bedside, kissed her son on the brow, and went to bed.

chapter
VI

BASIL ST CLOUD GREW USED TO THE CONSTANT COMPANY of his inner circle of students—“your body-guard,” as Rugg called them, only half joking. Basil’s students closed ranks around him whenever he appeared in public. Paradoxically, the more they were with him, the less they demanded of him. It was as if, having become a Cause, Basil was relieved of the petty need to actually say anything or engage with anyone. When he or they were not in the Archives, Basil grew used to sitting in the Blackbird’s Nest, half-listening to his students’ joking and arguing with one another. Their voices turned to a comfortable music while he thought about whatever was preoccupying him at the moment: where Theron was, or what Crabbe was reading right now; whether a connection could reasonably be drawn between the Wizard Guidry as described in Hollis, and the “Guidry” mentioned in a pre-Union heroic stanza; a nasty remark Crabbe had made at a historians’ dinner five years back. Most dangerously, he thought about the Book.

He was making progress. He’d applied everything he knew of scholarship to the Book of the King’s Wizard: the rules of rhetoric, logic, analysis. His students had found things, too, that helped more than they knew. Sometimes, deep in the night, he imagined himself on the brink of discovery, of comprehension, of mastery. And imagining this, it was a short step to imagining himself standing before Roger Crabbe, casting a spell from the Book, casting it successfully, and Crabbe’s face turning purple when Basil succeeded. Delicious as that image was, he shouldn’t even think of it. He knew better than to try any of the spells. He had not the training for such things. Best stick to what he was already master of, and that was scholarship.

Anthony Lindley’s voice cut through his musings. “Of course it’s important, Godwin, you idiot. Everything’s important, when there’s so little to go on.” Basil focused on the boy and smiled. He was more Northern than the Northerners these days, tricked out in braids and an oak leaf, spouting obscure Northern folklore as to the manner born. He’d always been a dedicated student, but his research was showing flashes of true brilliance. It was a pity he’d been so ill at the beginning of the term. He still looked unwell—too thin and excitable. Basil knew there’d been something between Lindley and the dour-faced Northerner who’d once been amongst his most fervent students.

“What ever happened to Finn?” Basil asked the table at large.

Frozen in mid-conversation, four startled faces looked up at him.

“Finn?” Peter Godwin repeated stupidly.

“Yes,” said Basil. “Alaric Finn, our resident expert on Northern customs and traditions. Last I saw of him was right before MidWinter break. He hasn’t changed disciplines, has he?”

“No.” Lindley wore a curious look on his face. “That he did not change.”

“Not that I’d blame him,” Basil hastened to say. “Ancient history’s no path to a decent living—you all know that, don’t you?” Dumbly, they nodded. Afraid he’d offended them or seemed to be complaining about his income (which they paid, after all), he added quickly, “And I really thought Finn had the feel for it. Perhaps he had trouble with his fees. There’s many a promising man has been forced to abandon his studies for lack of funds.” Basil looked at their uncomfortable faces, then down at the beer-ringed tabletop. “You know I’d never refuse knowledge to anyone just for the want of a few coins. You’ll come to me if you have problems, won’t you?”

“He went home!” blurted Henry Fremont. Even patient Justis Blake looked at him oddly. “Finn, I mean. His family, or something.”

“Ah.” Basil nodded. “I’d like to go North myself, someday. It’s strange to have read so much and never seen the forests of Redding or Guidry’s Well. Which I suppose,” he said, rising, “is my cue to go back to work, so I can earn my way there.”

His students were never so glad to see him go.

But at the door to Minchin Street, Basil met Theron come to look for him—and all thoughts of any glory but the present were put aside. They lost themselves in a trance of sensation and release that lasted all the afternoon. When Basil knew where he was again, the room was dark, his throat was raw with shouting, and his body heavy and stiff with drying sweat.

“I hate to say this,” said Theron from beneath him, “but I’m thirsty.”

Basil groaned.

“Cold, too,” Theron went on. “And I can’t breathe.”

Basil grunted and rolled away from his lover’s body, groaning again as the chill air hit his sweat-matted chest. The mattress shifted as Theron got up; more cold air signaled that he’d taken the sheet with him. A moment later came the scrape and sizzle of a lucifer; candlelight banished the shadows to the corners and revealed Theron kneeling by the hearth, building a fire. He was wrapped in the sheet, his hair in his face. Basil’s heart contracted painfully: that beauty, that passion, that power belonged to him, to him alone, to use and to enjoy. The time was coming to release it to the Land, to sow new life in the woods and fields.

He rose and put his hands on Theron’s shoulders. “The time approaches,” he said.

“Are you worrying about the debate?” Theron asked.

Basil stroked his lover’s hair. “The debate?” He had to think for a moment. “Oh. No, I wasn’t thinking about that.” He tipped Theron’s head back, ran his palm down his throat.

Theron shook him off briskly. “Not now, Basil. Look at you—you’re half-mad with hunger. What you need is food. And a drink.” He scrambled to his feet and began to look for his clothes.

Basil wrapped himself in Theron’s abandoned sheet. “Perhaps,” he said doubtfully.

“And lights. And people to distract you. We’ll even go to the Nest,” he offered magnanimously, but Basil put his hands over his face.

“No! God, no! My students will be there.”

“All right, all right.” Theron pulled his lover’s hands away. “Come with me to Riverside.”

All Basil’s dreams of power and passion dissipated before an utterly mundane and unscholarly anxiety. “I won’t get killed?” he asked, only half teasing.

Theron smiled. “Not if you’re with me, you won’t. I’m the Prince of Riverside.”

“In that case . . .” Basil laughed.

Theron was pulling on his breeches and his linen shirt. “I’ll take you to a place I know.” He thrust a bundle of clothes into Basil’s hands. “Here, get dressed. No, not in your robe— leave it off, just wear your jacket. There’s no scholars where we’re going! This place is small and quiet, with very good whiskey. After, when you’ve cheered up, we can go round the corner to where there’s dancing.”

Alarmed, Basil said, “I don’t dance.”

“You don’t have to,” Theron said indulgently. “But it’s fun to watch. Lights. Music. Very engaging.”

“Lead on.”

In nearly ten years in the city, Basil had never crossed the Bridge over to Riverside. Why should he? The district had nothing that he needed—except old trunks of books buried amidst the ruins of its tattered townhouses, and the trunks Foster Rag-and-Bone had brought to him. He felt immensely bold, walking arm in arm with his lover, their hats pulled low over their faces against discovery and the biting wind. They went along the University side of the river, then past the Council Hall, where lights still burned.

“You walk this way every day,” Basil said, unexpectedly moved.