The Privilege of the Sword (23 page)

Artemisia drew in what felt like her first full breath of air. “Yes, Mama. Thank you, Mama.”

Her father leaned over the back of the couch. “How about a kiss for your dear papa, then? Pretty chit, I don’t know how he could resist you—Of course, he couldn’t, could he? Ha ha!”

Her father smelt of whiskey and barber’s scent. Lord Ferris, she thought, was possibly even older. But contrary to her father’s cozy sloppiness, Ferris was lean and fastidious; elegant, even. He was always dressed to the fashion, and knew exactly what to say.

Her mother picked up a flat box from the sideboard and brandished it in front of her. “He left you a gift, miss, and not only flowers this time.”

Artemisia took the box and opened it.

A necklace nestled in the velvet folds: a delicate collar, designed just right for a young girl’s daily wear, in the very latest style. But the twisted web was gold, the dangling jewels sapphires.

For the most exquisite woman in the city,
the note with it said,
with the heart of Anthony Deverin, Lord Ferris.

Artemisia breathed in her gilded fate. She wondered what Lydia would say.

chapter
III

E
VEN WHEN
I
WAS HEALTHY AGAIN, MY UNCLE’S
manservant still came to see me. Marcus liked to read, it seemed. He brought me a book of poems and wondered if we might discuss them.

“It’s a new movement,” he said. “The scholars are all mad for it; they think it mixes sentiment with science.”

I did try. The new poetry seemed to have a lot to do with spheres: the motions of the heavens and the motions of the heart. But I’d never learned much about the motions of the heavens, except by observation. I thought of the glittering night skies at Highcombe, the keen air and the silence by the fire. I looked at the words on the page, and felt too defeated to keep at it.

Nothing was said about sword lessons, so I practiced on my own. The hall outside my room was long and no one much seemed to come there; after a while, Betty got used to checking before she turned the corner. I began not only to drill, but to construct opponents in my mind and fight my shadow self. Sometimes their style was like the master’s, as he was the best I knew. I wondered what it would be like to fight Venturus now. Sometimes I played that game, and then I always won.

I went out a lot, wrapped in coat and scarf and hat. Most people made Ginnie’s mistake, calling me “sir” because they could see nothing of me but clothes and sword. I did not have cause to draw it again; with the duke’s men so thick about the place, Riverside was not what it had been in the master’s day. There were guards and footmen and messengers in livery, but not all the duke’s people wore the Tremontaine silver and green. On the streets I recognized men I had seen in the house, and knew they were about Tremontaine’s business. Just what that business was I only got inklings of from Betty; it was all a lot of names I didn’t recognize, and money, and veiled threats, and threats enforced. When I mentioned Ginnie to her, Betty said, “Poor thing. You stay away from that Ginnie Vandall. She knows how to make herself useful, but not to you.” I didn’t ask her any more; none of it made sense, anyway. It was all my uncle the duke’s business, not mine.

M
ARCUS BROUGHT ME A GOLD-CHASED CLASP.

“What’s this?”

“It’s for your hair. If you’re going to go around with hair like a student, you should at least do what they do, and tie it back.”

It was too rich to be a gift from Marcus. “Is it one of
his
?”

“He won’t miss it.”

“I don’t want it.”

Marcus grinned. “I thought you might say that.” He fished a bit of crumpled black ribbon from his pocket. “Here. Try this.”

Without looking in a mirror, I pulled the hair back from my face and tied it.

“Where are you going, anyway, Kate?”

“I don’t know. Out.”

“You could get lost down here.”

“I’ve been out. I always find my way back. It’s not as though everyone doesn’t know where this place is.”

“True.” He went over to the windows, started scraping patterns in the frost with his fingernail. “Last year, the river froze solid and we skated under the bridge.”

“I can skate. We skate on the duck pond, at home.”

“That’s right, you’re from the country. I’ve only been once. Hated it.”

“Why?”

He frowned. “Too noisy.”

I had to laugh. “Riverside’s not noisy?”

“Well…” Marcus scraped spirals around spirals. “But the noise here is—it’s only people. You know where you are.”

I said, “They never sleep. I hear them at all hours of the night. I woke up, went to my window last night, and there were men staggering by with torches.”

Marcus shrugged. “The duke gives parties. It’s different, here, from on the Hill. Especially in winter. The rooms here are smaller. Do you want to see?”

“Explore the house? I thought—I thought I was supposed to keep out of his way.”

“Did you?” He turned his plain face and brown, open gaze to me. “I don’t have any orders.”

He did it a little too well. I thought suddenly, Oh, you do too have orders. The duke’s personal servant wouldn’t be spending free time with me because he wanted to. I wondered, was he supposed to find out if I was mad or vengeful? To keep me distracted? To cheer me up?

“Show me your room,” I commanded. “You’ve been in mine. Now show me yours.”

A hundred years ago, when I was a girl at home, I would never have invaded a servant’s privacy. But in the Mad Duke’s house, who Marcus was and what I was were not so clearly delineated. And if Marcus was spying on me, I wanted some parity.

“If you like.” My rudeness did not seem to bother him. But he was used to my uncle’s whimsies.

Some of the halls were white and new; others were strings of little old chambers, paneled in worm-eaten wood. As we passed from house to house what was under our feet changed, too: some floors were stone, some wood, some tile. There were steps and doorways to mark the passages, but you had to watch for the sudden shifts. The sounds of the street were muffled here, and there were closed doors everywhere. Once, though, we burst into the light of a gallery which ran the length of a courtyard in which people were drawing water from an old stone well.

I was fairly certain that Marcus was taking me the long way round to his quarters. I couldn’t blame him.

In a hall with diamond-paned windows, he stopped at a tall dark door.

“Here.”

I had expected a small room under the eaves, or at least at the top of the simplest of stairs, whitewashed and minimally furnished. Marcus’s room was larger than mine. The walls were polished oak, hung with contemporary landscapes and a couple of maps. There was a row of books, and a jet-and-ivory shesh set on a table by the window seat. The bed was new, as well, with good woolen hangings and a huge feather quilt, puffed almost to perfect symmetry at the corners.

I couldn’t say any of the things I was thinking.

There were thick cushions on the window seat. Marcus plopped himself down on one, utterly comfortable. The richness of the room did not embarrass him, nor my conjectures about his special status with the duke. Which could, of course, be wrong—

“Do you play shesh?” he asked.

“Only a little. I know the moves, but I’m not very good.”

“Sit down,” he said. “You’ll get better if you play more.”

I sat. He put a black and a white peon in either fist, and I picked for color and first move, and then we started to play. He watched me carefully, like a swordsman. It made me nervous, but I pretended to ignore it.

A blow on heavy wood made the sheshmen shiver. Through thickness of wall I heard a scream. I’d missed the other door to the room—bad observation, always dangerous, my master reminded me. Marcus just sat there, swinging his foot. He wasn’t pretending not to hear, but his only response was a little smile. There was a shout, and yet another crash on the other side of the door.

“I’ve got the room next to his,” he explained.

“Really?”

“In case he needs anything.”

It sounded as though someone had just dropped a sheet of glass. I put my hand on my knife, I couldn’t help it. “Do you think he might—need anything now?”

Marcus shook his head. “Naw. It’s just Raffaela. She gets mad when he lies on the floor and laughs at her. Then she starts throwing things, and then
he
does.” I jumped as another one hit. “I wish he wouldn’t. He’s always sorry afterward. He doesn’t really like things to get broken.”

You wouldn’t guess from the sound of it. “I thought he didn’t like women,” I ventured.

Marcus righted a shesh piece that had fallen over. “At this point, I’m not sure he can really tell the difference.”

“Oh.” They were making a lot of noise. “Doesn’t he ever
stop
?”

“Not since you came back. He’s been taking a lot of stuff, smoke and all, plus drinking. I have the feeling,” Marcus said, carefully positioning a piece in the exact middle of its square, “that he did not really have a very nice time at Highcombe.”

Now I understood. That was why he was sticking so close to me. Marcus wanted to know what had happened to the duke.

“I don’t know,” I said truthfully. “I was asleep through most of it. And I got sick.”

Marcus nodded. “So did you know he’d brought young Davenant and two friends down with him for Year’s End? Brought them, and abandoned them there in the Great Hall. Dark and freezing. No fire, no food, no beds, no light. They had to find their own way back to town.” He shrugged. “Of course, they should have known better than to go with him. Probably they did. That seems to be what draws them. Now Davenant’s father has sent him a nasty letter, and Galing’s lawyer is requesting damages. Which is very stupid; it’ll be all over town how the duke made fools of them. People do talk.”

Something was beginning to make sense to me. “Is that why he does it?” I asked slowly. “Because no matter how badly he behaves, no matter what he does, he always gets other people to be worse? Or to feel as if they were?”

Marcus looked at me as though I were suddenly more interesting than the sheshmen. “I think so. But something at Highcombe made
him
feel bad. I didn’t think it was Petrus Davenant.”

I thought of the duke’s face, lit by a tentative wonder and by the Year’s End fire.

“No. I don’t think it was.”

“Marcus!”
It was the duke shouting. “Marcus—show the lady out!”

“Oh, no.” Marcus shook himself. “Not me. Last time I took hold of that one, she got me. She scratches. I’m calling the guards; they’re dressed for it.”

I sat alone in the middle of the sun-drenched room. Pointless to try to ignore what I could hear clearly enough: the woman screaming,
“Bastard! Bastard! I hate you!”
and the old wall shuddering as something struck it. I stood by the door, wondering how tiny a crack I could make opening it, but not quite willing to do it for fear of what I would see.
“I’m not some nobody, you know! Who’s good enough for you, bastard, if I’m not?”

I closed my eyes, listening in the dark as my master had taught me. The duke tripped over something, fell hard and cursed.

I thought suddenly, I’m training to be his guard. Should I rush in there? Would I be expected to stand watch over these—proceedings, someday? I snorted. What could I do with his discarded mistresses, skewer them from a standing thrust?

Then Marcus arrived with real guards, and I heard how it went. Definitely a job for someone else.

At last the next room was quiet, and Marcus sat back down on the window seat.

“Is she beautiful?” I asked.

“She’s a singer. Famous, I think. Anyway, he heard her at a party, and next thing you know…!”

“What happened to Alcuin?”

“Who? Oh, him. Gone. Right after you, actually. He was a piece of work.”

Marcus took a pear from a bowl, and handed me another. We ate in silence, then I said, “Let’s go out.”

Marcus shook his head. “Can’t. He might need me.”

I looked around at the luxurious room with its many diversions. “Do you want me to stay?” I tried not to let my reluctance show. “We could finish the game.”