Read The Kingdom of Little Wounds Online
Authors: Susann Cokal
The Kingdom of Little Wounds (16 page)
“Enough,” says Nicolas, despite his sore throat. “Show
some
respect to the lady if not the spymaster.” Chivalrous Nicolas!
But there come the predictable sniggers, the jealous pleasure one rogue takes in another’s triumph.
Christian feels himself turning red. To think it is his own Secretary who is talked of in such a way! Chief secret-keeper, Christian’s Groom of the Stool and official spymaster. This indignity weighs heavy on his mind, though he tells himself it does not matter. For a time the men (disobeying Nicolas) speak only of the lady’s beauty, her famous icy pallor, and how a bed might turn her chill into a fever.
“No harm in a little heat, eh?”
But what secrets might the Secretary murmur under fever’s influence . . .
“With a fair nurse like that at his pillow!”
Christian thinks of the hideous stumps where Count Belnát’s beautiful limbs used to join his body. Christian has never cared for the Countess, though her skin is fair enough to outshine the moon and she had suitors aplenty in her day.
“We must all have a care for our hearts — and our pillows!” Willem Braj crows. Rolling onto his toes, he mimics laying his head down for a rest on the high shelf of the Countess’s bosom.
Not receiving the laughter for which he’d hoped, Willem nudges the dwarf Le Fariné with a velvet-toed slipper. The small man plays along by tightening himself into a ball and tumbling till he knocks over Rafael af Hvas. Rafael rips a hole in the knee of his hose; the others laugh heartily at last. Rafael kicks Le Fariné’s backside.
Nicolas makes an impatient gesture and stands up. “With your permission, Majesty, I would like to go.”
The solemn night has been completely ruined. The men are making Christian’s belly hurt. He prays and wishes as hard as he can that they will vanish or he will.
His wish, his dream, is granted: Christian feels himself sucked up through the perspective glass. He becomes a black speck crawling across the luminous surface.
Imagine his wife, his son, his courtiers watching him from so far below. What must they think! The black-speck part of him dares to wave its arms at Nicolas.
There was once a princess who married a duke much older than she. At the ceremony, the girl promised her new husband the same obedience she had shown her father, the king, but she’d heard the duke whispered about and had some fears as to what he might require of her. He had already buried two wives and had no children thus far; it was said his desires were somewhat peculiar and not likely to produce offspring.
On the evening after her wedding, as she sat primly expectant in the great hall of the ducal palace, the princess received a visit not from her husband but from his steward, a cheerful man of flaxen hair and a ready smile.
He began with a bow, then asked, “Do you have anything you would like me to tell the master?” When the princess simply blinked, he clarified: “Any secrets not yet disclosed?”
She blinked again. “I have no secrets.” In fact, she might as well have had no conscience at all, for she had never been known to commit a sin.
At that, the steward handed over a candle and a basket containing keys to all the rooms in the castle, with instructions to use them judiciously and only after full consideration. The princess spent the rest of the evening exploring. She found that many doors were already unlocked — the kitchens, the laundry, her own bedchamber and dressing room, where maids waited to help her change into her night shift. She decided to lock none of these essential rooms; she searched on.
High in the castle attics, she discovered a door, a plain door, that did not open readily.
Deciding that this must lead to the most important place in all the castle, the princess rummaged through her heavy basket, trying key after key. The bright ones of brass and steel were all too big, but there was one small key of dull black metal that might . . . might . . . did fit.
Before the princess released the latch, she remembered the steward’s warning about judicious use of her new rights of entry. She also remembered a tale often told by her nurses about a locked door, a bloodstained key, a roomful of wives hanging from meat hooks and gutted like game.
She jiggled the black key, the works inside turned over, and the lock slid open like a bride.
When they come, it be a storm day with clouds black overhead. Elinor is standing in the yard with the Queen and tossing rocks in to the bed of the witch, to watch the earth bubble and her toys sink. She do this for amusement, to see what the witches take and what they let float on the skin of they bad-smelling hollow-bed. A stone go down, a chip of shatter bowl from the Crown Prince’s breakfast.
Elinor take the glove from the Queen’s clean hand. “Now you toss something, Highness,” she say, and put a pebble in Isabel palm.
Isabel close her hand upon the pebble. “No,” she say, thinking aloud, “this hole is a bad omen.”
The ladies rush to tell her all is well. Bridget Belskat, old Lady Drin, Duchess Margrethe, Countess Ditlevnavn, all the others given by her husband. They make a circle drawing her away.
Behind, some maids repeat the Queen’s word
omen.
Whisper but not heard. They fear that wet hollow.
It be more than omen when the King’s guards come through the inner gate. March, march, scuff, stop. Halberds point at cloudy sky, faces point at us; maids and ladies cross they arms and draw breath tight. No thing move then, not even Elinor. The air go quiet and the wind die. Only that stink wave up from earth’s belly.
The Queen make little screamings inside her throat. She think the guard bring messages about her children.
“What do you men want?” Elinor ask with a voice like a pan-cracker, crisp but easy to break.
“Elinor Parfis,” say the Marshal of Guards. “You are summoned to the King’s Lower Chambers.”
Queen Isabel cry out, “Elinor!” Lady Drin take her arm as if the Queen might faint.
The Countess have no look for Isabel just now. Lower Chambers be where criminals are taken and disappeared. “Explain yourself,” she says quiet, and if the men do n’t see the heart-pulse in her neck, they may think she taking charge as has been her right elsewhere.
The
maréchal
keep staring straight. May be he hate doing this thing. May be he owe a favor to the Countess’ husband.
“My lady,” he say, “I am ordered to arrest you for conspiracy and for poison.”
Every one gasp, ladies and maids just the same, and they mouths make black O’s in astonishment. They thought the poisoners all ready gone. They taste their breath and wonder if they be dangered too.
It be like a scene on stage, and others now come along to watch it play. Arthur Grammaticus, historian, flaps down the outside staircase like a crow who want his share of meat. He come in time to hear the charge, and I see he write it down fast.
The rain begins with big fat drops.
The Countess toss her head back and smile cold, all brave. Bosoms at her chin, hands flashing jewels: “That is ludicrous.” She turn to go inside the palace, but the man stop her with one hand on her arm. She yank away and tell him, “I will speak only to the King himself. Or to Sir Georg Oline — I know
he
would never order my arrest.”
The Marshal say, “Madam, come with me. No doubt you will see Sir Georg in your new quarters.”
The Countess never reached her place of honor by obeying such a man. She turn to the Queen and say, “Your Highness, you can stop this.”
The Queen scratch her ear and wrinkle her face to a rosebud. “Elinor!” she wail as if she make a sudden thought. “I should have a corps of my own guards!”
“Say a word, Your Highness,” Elinor command. “Just one word.”
The Queen’s rosebud face go to a twist of straw, ready to burn at a spark. “Elinor, you must not leave me!”
But no body minds her. Elinor have spent some years making her weak, so now the Queen do n’t know any thing else but weakness.
“Countess, I order you to come,” say the Marshal.
And Elinor decide she ’d better. She gather her skirts up for walking. “Yes,” as stern she can. “Yes, I will discuss this with the King right away.”
When she walk, I see one scorch mark that nursery work have left on her fine skirts.
Come, come,
my lover say when I describe how my heart split to see her go.
How can you, of all people, be sorrowful, when you know her better than any of the others?
He is right, but I am in mixed feeling. First I know glee that she gone and will not slap and make me do her business — I mean that secret watching business beyond the nursery tasks. I fear for my self cause be she were my protector, of sorts, cause be she think me useful; and if a woman do n’t have a friend she is lost.
I explain this in his chamber, while I turn a broken doll in my hands. This doll were once Gorma’s toy but remind me now of Elinor, her half-face and clothes cover in vomitus and filth. I flake it from her belt and see yellow, green, and blue glass.
My lover pull me to him, in to the dark robe he wears, against the prickling beard at his mouth. “
You
have a friend,” he says. “
We
have secrets.”
This kind of secret do no special good. Inside his arms, I hug the wax doll like it belong to me before I hug him.
There be still many stories I have not told.
HRISTIAN
L
UNEDIE
A
messenger brings news of the arrests to Nicolas Bullen, who brings it to the King.
Christian sits on the velvet-padded close-stool in the narrow cabinet of his inner chamber, expelling the rich food that has seemed ever more reluctant to leave his body as the years stretch on. Tonight’s dinner was especially heavy: beef with a sauce of pepper and cream, a sugary compote of pears, a thick wet cheese from Poland. Christian has the tense, nauseated, but bored feeling of someone waiting for particular information, and his belly has been cramping with anxiety.
“They found him?” he asks. “He went quietly? And she?”
“Quietly enough.” Nicolas rocks gently on the balls of his feet, making candle shadows craze over the brightly painted paneling, the red bed drapes, the painting of the martyred Saint Sebastian; the King himself on his hollow stool. Normally it is the Secretary who attends the King here. In Georg’s absence, Christian has declared that Nicolas is the only man with the right — the duty — to come here. And Nicolas is conscious of the privilege.
Thanks to widespread rumor calcified into fact, Sir Georg Oline, Christian’s old friend and former — very much former — confidant, is now known to have swived and schemed with his lover, Countess Elinor Parfis, to murder the children. This creates a paradox, because he who was in charge of arrests has now been taken himself. It also creates an opportunity: there will have to be a new secretary to attend Christian at these times and to direct his net of spies. For now, for the first task, Christian has chosen Nicolas, who in many ways seems suited to the other as well.
There is no one better,
Christian thinks,
to trust with a suspicion or a secret.