The Fall of The Kings (Riverside) (64 page)

It was the old St Cloud who spoke, charming and self-assured and reasonable. But Henry could not help whispering to Vandeleur, as they followed their magister out into Minchin Street, “What does he remind you of?”

“A man who’s worked himself into a state of exhaustion,” snapped Vandeleur. “What should he remind me of?”

“The window in the Great Hall,” said Henry. “The bearded man. The wizard.”

Peter Godwin, overhearing this last, stopped dead on the landing and stared up at Fremont. “So he does!” he exclaimed. “I’ll be hanged. I wonder if he realizes?”

“So do I,” said Henry grimly. “And that’s not the only thing I wonder.”

“Debate’s today,” Rugg announced from below. “Not next week.”

“Coming!” Vandeleur shouted, and grabbed Henry’s arm. “I swear, Fremont, if I hear another word out of you about wizards, it’s the last word you’ll utter in this life. Am I clear?”

NICHOLAS GALING DRESSED FOR THE HISTORIANS’ debate with all of his usual care. He wore green, for spring, with a waistcoat embroidered with jonquils. In deference to the gravity of the occasion, the green was dark, and he wore no lace. He put on the jet signet his father had given him when he came of age and a jet pin in his neckcloth, then picked up, after some hesitation, the dagger he carried when he made his occasional excursions to the docks.

He stopped at the Gilded Cockatrice and downed a meat roll and a tankard of ale by way of fortification for the trials of the day, then set off for the Great Court. The narrow streets were crowded with Scholars, Fellows, and Doctors, chattering excitedly, hailing their friends, chewing a last mouthful of breakfast, buying steamed buns and slices of tomato pie from stalls the provident hosts had set up in the windows of their taverns.

As Nicholas got closer to the Great Court, the press grew until he could hardly push his way along. Long experience in negotiating crowded Hill parties came to his aid; he slid and darted among the shifting clumps, and finally found a side street that let him out at the corner of the Great Court, right at the foot of the Hall steps.

The steps ran the full length of the building, and were wide and shallow in proportion, creating a kind of natural stage above the Court. Just now, they were packed with Doctors and Governors and minor officials of the University, their bright sleeves waving like flags as they jostled for places.

“You here, Galing?” It was Lord Halliday, who made a hobby of philosophy, and never missed a public lecture on an interesting subject. He was standing on the bottom step as if he’d taken root there, arm in arm with Lord Edmond Godwin. “Some fellow in a red dressing-gown told us to stand here, and we’re holding our position against all comers. Care to join us?”

Nicholas did, and made himself absentmindedly charming while the mess around them settled slowly into an orderly pattern. He studied it and positioned himself carefully, one step below the bottom-most row of Governors, at the inner edge of the little cluster of nobles. Besides Lord Halliday, there were few interested enough in University matters to abandon their holiday amusements to listen to a historical debate. Lord Edmond Godwin was there because he was concerned about his youngest son, Peter. Others were present in their capacity as University Governors—the Duchess Tremontaine, for example.

Galing stole a glance at the duchess, who stood two steps above him, talking to her neighbor. She was small, round-faced, all but overwhelmed by the scarlet glory of her Governor’s robe. He thought she looked strained. She caught him watching her and stared forthrightly back, clearly wondering whether she knew him. Boldly, Nicholas Galing gave her a smile and a bow. Still puzzled, she nodded back.

He turned to look out over the Great Court, which was stuffed as full of bodies as it could hold—a sea of black academic robes, broken here and there by small, bright shoals of civilians. Galing’s eye fell on a familiar face not far from the steps: Henry Fremont, looking sullen as a donkey. And those men around him must be St Cloud’s students.

Edmond Godwin said, “Oh, there’s my boy! There’s Peter!” and waved. The young boy beside Fremont cracked an embarrassed smile and waved back. Galing saw Fremont glance toward him, start, and blanch. Galing nodded to his erstwhile spy in a friendly manner, then watched him flush and shrug as the stalwart lad behind him questioned him.

Whatever else happened, this was going to be fun.

IN THE YEARS BEFORE DAVID, DUKE TREMONTAINE, killed Gerard the Last King, the Spring Festival had been the gaudiest and most licentious of the four seasonal celebrations. A great stag woven of rushes and fluttering with green ribbons was borne through the streets to the music of pipe and tabor. Crowds of women surrounded it, leaping and grabbing at the ribbons. She who succeeded in detaching one and holding on to it was assured of a man or a child— whichever she lacked—by year’s end. Young girls tied their ribbons around their necks, or laced their dresses with them as a signal to the young men. Young wives tied theirs in a more private place, to show their husbands where their duty lay. Long ago, the court had camped in the fields beyond the city walls, and the king and his companions lay with every woman who pleased them, naked on the new-ploughed earth like foxes.

Over the course of the generations, the Great Stag had shattered into a dozen lesser deer—horned heads on poles, antlered dancers, a comic hobby-deer with a huge, stuffed pizzle under its scut—and the green ribbons were tossed to the crowd or given, with a kiss, to the girls who ducked, squealing, under the hobby’s wide skirt. Anyone wore a ribbon who could come by one—granddams, schoolboys, toothless, grinning infants. Justis Blake wore one around his tail of sandy hair, tied in a jaunty bow. So did the fair Marianne, who’d insisted on seeing the debate that had put her Justy in such a swivet.

There weren’t many green ribbons to be seen in the Great Court; hobbies and horned men didn’t come into the University. There was plenty of greenery, though. The two statues of Reason and Imagination flanking the steps were rakishly garlanded with ivy. A clump of men gathered on and below Imagination’s pedestal carried new-budded branches. Justis automatically registered the branches as oak, since oak leafs out later than most other trees, and then noticed that the men were Northerners, braided, gowned, and grim as death. The crowd shifted, and Justis caught sight of Lindley’s hair flaming out among them, then disappearing again.

So he wasn’t the only one to have deserted St Cloud’s flock. It wasn’t a real desertion, he reminded himself: he still agreed in principle with his magister’s philosophy and scholarly method. It was just that St Cloud’s irresponsible attitude had distressed him, and Marianne needed him, and it was nice to be making a little money and not always having to defend every word he said with examples and quotations. Still, he should have gone with the others this morning to lend a hand getting St Cloud to the Master Governor’s house on time.

Marianne squeezed his hand. “Why so down-in-the mouth, love?”

“This is a serious moment. You won’t see many smiles until this is all over.” Justis looked down at her pretty, soft face. “I shouldn’t have brought you. It’ll take hours. You’ll be bored silly.”

“I’ll be with you,” Marianne said. “You’ll tell me what’s happening, and I won’t be bored a bit. Oh, look there, on the steps! That’s never a woman!”

Justis squinted. The sides of the steps were packed with dignitaries, a divided sea of scarlet and black. On the deep top step he saw that wooden seats had been set out for the older or more important officials. The outgoing Horn chair, old Tortua, was tottering toward one of them, supported by a tall, graceful figure crowned with a coronet of dark hair.

“That’s Lady Sophia Campion,” Justis said. “She holds a Chair of Surgery. I’ve seen her once before. She’s a fair piece of work, as my mother would say.”

“She’d have to be, to get around all those old men. Handsome, too, considering she’ll not see forty again. When’s the party start, then?”

Over the ocean-swell noise of the crowd, Justis heard a faint, melodic blaring and the measured pulse of a drum. “Soon,” he said. “Listen. That’s them now.”

“Where?” asked Marianne, tiptoeing vainly. “I can’t see a thing.”

AMONG ALL THOSE PRESENT FOR THE DEBATE, JESSICA Campion had arguably the best view of the proceedings. She stood all alone at an excellent vantage point on the carved stone gallery that ran along the exterior of the Great Hall above the frieze of the kings, right below the glass window of the wizard and the deer. She wasn’t afraid of heights and she disliked being jostled. It had been surprisingly easy to slip into the hall and up the winding steps to the gallery. Now she leaned in the shadow of an arch with her elbows on the balustrade and watched the crowd below shift and settle like a kaleidoscope.

Jessica enjoyed ceremonial display, and the procession currently winding its slow way through the Great Court was as fine of its kind as one of the Prince of Cham’s Public Breakfasts. The University may not have had much recent experience with academic challenges, but it was at great pains to let everyone know that this was a solemn and important occasion.

First into the square marched two trumpeters and a drummer, their long hair clubbed, their black sleeves edged in the green denoting Fellows of the Humane Sciences. Four flags followed—one for each of the four colleges of the University: Humane Sciences, Natural Sciences, Law, and Physic—borne by the College Bursars, robed each in the appropriate color. Behind them came the two disputing Historians, accompanied by their seconds, carrying staves decorated with flowers and ribbons. Even at University, it was Spring Festival.

Jessica enjoyed the show. Theron had been telling her quite a lot about the University and its denizens over the past week; she couldn’t wait to get a look at the famous Basil St Cloud. It was a pity Theron wasn’t there to see it, but there was no question of letting him out before the debate. After it was over, Jessica expected he would either be cured of his delusions or turned over to Sophia for good. He had been making Jessica some very interesting promises, to be sure, but she doubted he could deliver.

THE SPRING FESTIVAL WAS A GOOD TIME FOR EVEN THE most carefully brought up young people to slip loose from the constraints of everyday life. Tutors and governesses were given a holiday, and parents went off to enjoy themselves. Thus it was that, on the Hill, two young girls were lurking on a street they had no business being on, in the shadow of a house they were not supposed to know about.

“Frannie! Come on!”

Looking up at the crumbling wall surrounding Lady Caroline’s Folly, Lady Francesca knew a moment of panic. She wondered if it was too late to go home and slip back into the drawing room where she and Lady Agatha Perry were supposed to be weaving ribbons into festival crowns. But, she reminded herself sternly, people in books are never frightened by adventure; it is only afterward, when they discover the blood running down their backs, or the chunk of their shirt that has been torn away by dogs, that they feel the aftershock of fear. She did not hear any dogs on the other side of the wall. So she followed her friend and climbed it, and tumbled down next to her.

Both girls huddled together on the grass with the wall at their back, staring at the battlements and towers rising beyond the ragged lawn before them, gripping each other’s hands. Their palms were clammy with excitement and gritty from the dirt of the wall they had just climbed.

“See?” whispered Agatha. “Nobody lives here. Not for years. They’re all afraid of
her.
”

“Her?” Frannie shivered. This was possibly the most exciting thing that had ever happened to her.

“Lady Caroline. She built the house. And then she died here. In the upstairs room. That one.”

Frannie swallowed a scream. She’d seen a curtain move, right where her friend had pointed. “Aggie,” she said, willing the words past the tightness in her throat, “let’s go. What if someone lives here after all? Look, see, the gravel’s been raked.”

“The gardeners,” Aggie said sepulchrally. “But they won’t stay here after dark. Because of the ghosts. Just like in your story, only real. And we’re going to see one. Unless you really want to go home now, of course.”

“No.” Francesca swallowed mightily. Her cousin was the only friend she’d made in the city so far. “I’m game.”

They edged along to the stables, where Aggie found an ancient ladder. They half dragged, half carried it over the grass, trying to avoid splinters and discovery—although, of course, no one was there. Aggie laid her hand on the side of the house; the stone was cracked with frost and lichen. “I feel a deathly chill.”

“Naturally.” Now that they were there, it was do or die. They positioned the ladder under the window of Lady Caroline’s room. It reached to the sill, settling into the stone in a comforting way.

“Hold the ladder,” said Aggie; “I’m going up. If I see a ghost, I’ll hoot like an owl.”

“No you won’t, you’ll scream. I want to go first.”

“If you see a ghost, you’ll faint.”

Frannie said with dignity, “I do not ever, ever faint.”

Now was not the time to mention she was afraid of heights. Just think of it as a tower, she told herself, a tower with a princess at the top who needs rescuing. She put her feet on the first rung. It felt reassuringly firm. She reached for the next step. Her skirt was tucked into a pair of canvas gardener’s trousers that Aggie had cached with great foresight for their adventure. She could be a cabin boy climbing a ship’s rigging. There were no ghosts, not during the day. The curtain had not moved.