The Privilege of the Sword (10 page)

Lord Ferris was, after all, a widower; and if Terence had had the sort of mind that observed the world around him, he would have known to exactly what purpose Lady Godwin had invited the Crescent Chancellor to stop in at her daughter’s party.

H
AVING SAID
I
WOULD NOT CRY,
I
WAS HONOR BOUND
not to. After Venturus left, though, I was ready to cry or spit.

I stalked down to the library. It was a soothing room, quiet and well proportioned, with cozy chairs and an excellent view. But to my annoyance, the duke’s librarian was there. He was a dreamy man who hardly seemed to exist, and usually he did not notice that I did. He catalogued and rearranged, making faces at things no one else knew the meanings of, like flakes on the outside of books and notes on the inside of them. He saw me come in, this time, and said, “Good day, Lady Katherine. Can I help you with your studies? Or are you looking for some more, ah, feminine diversion?” To this day, I don’t think he noticed I never wore a dress.

“Yes,” I said poisonously; “what have you got that’s really feminine in here?”

The librarian’s face took on a worried look, as though if he couldn’t find the right thing, he’d have to kill himself forthwith. “Ah, nature,” he said nervously, “I believe is suitable for young ladies. The late duchess had many rare volumes of plants and animals—and though the classification of birds as animals is still in dispute by Doctors Milton and Melrose, I have put the bird books over here.”

I settled myself in a cushioned window seat with a big illustrated volume. The pictures were bigger than live birds are, and you could see all the details. But it was hard to concentrate after my fight with Venturus, with the librarian there muttering to himself. I looked up and saw him pry a little worn leather volume out from between two grand tomes on a shelf. He flipped it open, then dropped the little book on a table as though it had a contagious disease, making disapproving noises all the while. When he left to wash his hands, I pounced on it.

“
The Swordsman Whose Name Was Not Death,
by a Lady of Quality.” Opposite the title page was a woodcut of a man in old-fashioned clothes bowing to a lady, one hand on the sword at his side.

I opened to the first page. Many hours later, when the sun went down and I couldn’t see the words, I had only gotten to the part where Lady Stella discovers she is with child, and runs away to her cousin in the country so that Fabian does not know it is his, which would ruin his concentration as he prepares for his duel against his great enemy in the University clock tower—although I was fairly certain even then that he would win it, but Mangrove would get away somehow, which he did.

I wrapped the book in my handkerchief and took it to my room. It wasn’t stealing, because the duke’s book was still in the duke’s house, and it had looked to me like the librarian was just going to throw it out anyway.

I wasn’t sure how Fabian got to be such a great swordsman when he never seemed to practice, but I admired the way he could fight up and down stairs, and how he lived by the swordsman’s code but still was so clever about not killing Lady Stella although he was bound to. He took money for his work, but no one could make him do a thing that he despised, or harm the innocent. His word and his sword were his honor, everyone knew it, and they all respected him, even Mangrove, who hated him.

I tucked the book under my pillow, determined not to open it again ’til morning. But after supper I put a fresh candle in the holder, and settled down to find out who won the fight in the clock tower, and what became of Stella’s baby. I cried so hard I had to get up and hunt for a fresh handkerchief. Even when I’d snuffed the candle I lay with my eyes open, thinking of swordsmen in dark cloaks, their perfect form, their steady hands and clear, unwavering eyes.

The next day I finished the book and immediately started it over again.

When the librarian appeared I asked him if there were any more books about swordsmen. He gave me
Lives of the Heroic Swordsmen
, which didn’t mention Fabian or Mangrove, but did have some interesting people in it, like Black Mark of Ariston, who had fought one-armed after his great battle; and Harling Ober, who never refused a challenge, and had carried the sword at the wedding of my great-grandmother, Diane, Duchess Tremontaine. Ober had learned his art by sneaking up to a dangerous rooftop and peeking down at the great swordsman Rampiere, who had refused to teach him. I supposed that I was lucky to have Master Venturus. But my teacher failed to show for my next lesson. Perhaps he had quit, insulted. Perhaps he was staying away just to try and teach me respect. And perhaps he was preparing more mockery about a little scared duke-boy who could not learn the sword. I was all dressed for practice, so I practiced by myself. I wondered how I would fare if I were set upon by king’s guards (if we still had a king), or had to fight with one foot on water, the other on the shore. I thought that I would like a cloak as black as night, and a jeweled pin to bind up my hair.

chapter
VIII

H
AVING SOWN DISSENT AT A MEETING OF THE
Council of Lords that morning, and being in the process of acquiring a new coat that afternoon, the Duke Tremontaine was in excellent spirits. He stood in a sun-washed room in his Riverside house, permitting one of his secretaries to read him the latest set of letters received and logged, while he simultaneously dictated responses, tried to hold still for the tailor and entertained a friend.

The duke’s chief secretary, a balding young man named Arthur Ghent, removed the tapes from another roll of papers and shook them out. “These are the ones addressed to ‘the Duke of Riverside,’” he explained. “I’ve passed the requests for money on to Teddy; he’ll work from your list and include it in the month’s report for you to approve. What’s left are from people I’ve never heard of that maybe you have: the usual litany of complaints and suggestions.” He shook out a ragtag batch of correspondence written on anything that could hold a sentence, from the backs of old bills to leaves torn from books. “Hmm…” He observed the writing on note after note. “Same hand, same hand, same hand…popular scribe. I wonder who it is?”

“Here, let me see.” The duke stretched out his hand for the papers, opening up the seam the tailor had just carefully pinned. “Yes…I know him. Another University man—like you, Arthur, but not so fortunate as to have secured an important secretarial post. First he tried verse, then plays, then drink, which brought him to scribing letters for the less fortunate in Riverside. Let’s see…what is on the mind of the less fortunate these days?” The duke scanned a few lines of one, then another. “They don’t like the tearing down of ruins—too bad. They like the new gutters—I should think so. Sam Bonner fell in one of them and twisted his foot and wants reparation. Bonner…is he still alive? He was already pickled when I was a boy.” He held the letter out to his secretary. “No reparation, bad precedent. No, wait—where’s he writing from?” The duke scanned the bottom of the sheet. “‘At Old Madge’s off Parmeter Street.’ God, he’s living in a cellar. Send him something; send him some wine. But no money.” Ghent made a note on the back of Bonner’s letter.

“It’s a joke, you know.” The Ugly Girl was sitting in the corner, watching the sun move across the patterned carpet. “This ‘Duke of Riverside’ business. It isn’t your real title. You derive no income from Riverside; it’s just your toy.”

“That’s what you think.” The duke eased his long arms out of the coat for the tailor.

“You’re wasting your time on all this. The world will always be full of drunks and liars and people down on their luck who never had any to begin with.”

“Stick to your field, and let me amuse myself with my particular corner of it. Not so tight,” he told the tailor, who nodded, his mouth full of pins. “I must have my hobbies. I don’t ride, I don’t dance, I don’t race, and I don’t collect objects of virtue.”

She snorted at that. “I still say it’s a waste of time. You’d do better to apply yourself to your mathematics.”

Because he was in a good mood, he did not attack her. “But I am so useful. I am useful all the time. Today I managed to scuttle an appalling suggestion from an appalling nobleman who thinks he knows something about how this state should be run, and has managed to convince far too many people that he is right. It’s just the beginning, of course: Davenant won’t stop there; oh, no. He and his very good friend the Crescent Chancellor have a bright new tax plan in mind. One doesn’t go after the Crescent like that, so I have started a rumor campaign against Davenant on the street, and called his allies into question with a plethora of minutiae in Council. It will take them days to get over it, by which time I have every reason to believe his mistress will be abandoning him for one of his supporters, which will make him do something stupid.” The duke preened. “It is so nice to have work to do that is both useful and amusing.”

The Ugly Girl grinned. “All right. I take it back. You are an ornament to society.”

“I will be when this jacket gets done. You,” he told the tailor, as he eased the duke back into it, “are nothing short of brilliant. I shall be the only man in the city able both to move his arms above his head and look well composed. I’ll have another in blue—a different blue, I mean. Lighter. Silk. For when it’s hot.”

The tailor said, “I will have cloth samples sent for my lord to choose from.” He nodded at his assistant, who stood against the wall trying to be invisible, to make invisible note of the duke’s request.

“Ahem,” said Arthur Ghent. “You said you’d decide today about the Talbert money. For your sister.”

“Did I? I thought we’d set the whole thing in motion the day my niece arrived.”

“You said not to. You said to wait.”

“Did I?” the duke said again. “Well, I suppose I was worried that she’d bolt. She hasn’t bolted, has she?”

“No, my lord,” said Ghent’s assistant. “Still at Tremontaine House, studying with Venturus.”

“Well, then. Send the family the big sum, everything they asked for, as a loan against releasing their entire disputed property at the end of the six months.”

“How complicated,” Flavia said.

“It wasn’t my idea; it’s what I have lawyers for.”

Arthur Ghent finished his notes and picked up another sheaf of papers, on better paper, some of it scented. “These are this week’s invitations. Marlowe wants you to listen to his new soprano—”

“No. It’s his mistress. She howls.”

“Lord Fitz-Levi wants you for cards Wednesday—”

“On the Hill? No.”

“Right. But you’ve turned him down twice now.”

“Invite him to the next thing he can be invited to. Not the wife, though, just him.”

“Right.” He made a note. “Private theatricals at the, ah,” he took a deep breath and said it: “the Gentlemen’s League of Self-Pleasure.”

The duke crowed. “Never! Tell them I am decadent, not desperate.” The secretary’s hand wavered above the inkwell. “Never mind,” his master said mercifully. “Don’t answer.”

“Thank you, sir. Now, this is a grateful letter from the Orphans’ Asylum, thanking you for the beds and the new roof and inviting you to their Harvest Pageant, where the children will sing, dance and recite.”

“Regrets.” The duke grimaced. “Just regrets. Ignore the other nonsense.”

The Ugly Girl swung her foot under her. “You founded the place. Why don’t you want to go?”

“I don’t like children,” the duke replied.

“Then why put out all that money to preserve them?”

“Because it is wrong to let them die.” The duke shook the foam of lace at his cuffs, each flower and petal and leaf twisted thread upon thread by the fingers of an artist. “I did nothing to deserve this. I got it all because I had a grandmother with lots of money who left it to me. Before that I lived in two rooms in Riverside. I saw what happened to the products of a moment’s pleasure. Other people do not deserve to starve or to be fucked before they know what the word means, just because they have no one.”

The beautiful Alcuin had wandered in to hear his final words. He placed a proprietary hand on Tremontaine’s silk-covered shoulder. “No one? Then you must get them someone.”