In his bed-chamber, hung round with tapestries that emblazoned tales so ancient that the matter of them had been long forgotten, the Old Lord lay dying. His breathing made the only sound in the room save the mantel clock, and his bloody spittle flecked the linens.
At the foot of his bed, the Lady Myrilla sat in her cushioned chair, making the last neat hem stitches in his burial shroud; black work for a dark day. Her hair white as the linen, her eyes the faded blue of summer sky, she awaited the inevitable change of worlds. Her hands fell into the rhythm of the mantel clock while thoughts tumbled over in her mind, pleasure and pain, bitterness and joy in turn. The past washed over the present, yet she held the future at bay: the new age she could not bear to imagine.
Beyond the mullioned window, past the crenellated wall of the outer keep, the sea beat its own measure on the rocky strand. The waves advanced and withdrew, moving the shells and twisted, bleached driftwood now forward, now back. Straining her eyes, the Lady could see at the limit of her vision the mist-shrouded topmasts of carracks and ships of war, dancing to the long, steady swell.
He was a better Prince than a husband, though he never did me harm by word or deed. He would talk to me as though I were one of his Privy Council, and I loved that in him. My mourning I have done already, but I will never stop listening for his step.
A soft, almost tentative knock sounded at the door. “Enter,” the Lady said, threading her needle through the cloth.
Aramond, the Lord Chancellor, pushed the door open, his ironwood cane tapping on the stone floor. Myrilla presented her hand, and he made his way across the room, taking her hand in his own and kissing it. His middle finger bore the ring of his office, heavy with gold and holding an anachite diamond, sovereign against all poisons, natural or compounded by men.
He then went along to the head of the bed, steadying himself with one hand on the carved serpent that wound its way ’round the bed frame in a reflection of that great Worm which circumbinds the world. With an effort, he bent to touch the Lord’s brow.
“How long?” the Lady asked.
“An hour. Two perhaps, but no more.”
“Can you not, then, conjure against death?”
“Never so, most serene Lady.” He leaned on his cane, and pulled a chair next to Myrilla, with the dragon’s head of his staff against the arm. “We must talk, and not in fancy-dress phrases.”
“Go to! You were never a plain-spoken man.” In spite of the shadow that lay on the room, she smiled. “Let me have your last counsel.”
In his distant apartments, Egan the Young Lord paced the floor, waiting for another’s death to set him free. In the half-light of curtained windows, his eyes fell on those curious and perverse objets d’art with which his whims had furnished the chamber. A painted satyr whipped a nymph; a sculpted adder writhed like a living thing as the light shifted here and there.
Across from him, on a soft-pillowed couch, Dame Rosalura, secretary of his inmost desires, lay curled in the way of a wild-cat, her skin pure and lustrous and her eyes cold as his were fiery. Her high-waisted gown of scarlet sendal dangled a little off one shoulder as she stretched her arm toward a wine bottle.
Between this Scylla and Charybdis, Gabriel the Court painter stood at his easel, slender arms shaking a little as he held his brush and pallet. “Will it please Your Highness be still for just a moment?”
“It will not,” the Young Lord said. “Let me see the damned thing, and it were best for you that it be finished.” He pushed the painter aside and studied the canvas. “It is done, and never so poorly as I’d feared. You’ve caught my lady wife’s simpering smile to the very life.”
Rosalura left her couch in a sinuous motion and stood beside her lover. “And there too am I, as you so sweetly commanded.” Indeed, to a discerning eye, her face emerged out of the murky background behind his, subtly rendered, but there to see. “This is well enough done. No more necessary.”
Egan motioned the painter to go. “Hurry to your catamite. You’ve done well for half a man.”
Dame Rosalura took a single long step to block the painter’s way. “My Prince,” she said, eyes flashing wide with pleasure. “Ah, I have o’erlept my time to name you so. Then call me prophetess to be the first.” She put a finger on Gabriel’s chest, where his smock hung open from the neck. Her other hand touched beneath his waist, and he hardened in spite of himself. “Shall I make a whole man of him?”
“As you wish,” Egan said. “But not just now. It were not seemly in my poor sire’s last hours.” He laughed. “Another time?”
Rosalura laughed. “When was I ever seemly? Save to feign it when needs must.” She pushed her hand forward, feeling the painter tremble and grow at once. “It would be so easy. Don’t be afraid. Egan will tell you I make an excellent gentleman atwixt the blankets.” She licked her lips, blood-red without rouge. “Oh, get out,” she said with another laugh, throaty and low. “You’ll keep. Think of me when you cover some boy with your paints. Make him look thus.” She raised her arms and held her scented black hair back from her face. “’Twill hold you for a while.”
Leaving his palette and brushes behind, Gabriel hurried out the door, slamming it as he fled.
Left alone with his mistress in that most private place, Egan ceased his pacing. “You said once that you might kill a man like that with your bare hands? I should wish to see that.”
“A man like that? Like that perhaps, but not our poor Gabriel. I never would murder a man with such art in his hands. Choose another some time, and we shall see.” As she said this, she drew back her shoulders a little, letting him better see her shape through the thin material of her gown.
Damn her. My tongue thickens with desire. Egan walked to the wall where hung a great map of the Adrian Sea and its shores. “Let us choose another subject for the mean while. See you here where the Papal States lie ripe for the plucking? Place but the crown on my head, and they fall. By this blow, would we not strike Venezia herself into the hazard?”
Rosalura chose her words with care. In a nigh-submissive tone, she said, “I am scarcely a soldier, but might not a stroke northward give us a buffer against the Germanies? Your father oft said that there the danger lay.”
Damn her twice. When I am Lord here, I shall have every foot of this fortress turned ‘till I find those papers she keeps in reserve against me. Then we will see which of us has the mastery. “When I need such a minx as you to teach me the art of war, I will happily resign my throne. Until then, I pray you watch your words, lest you find yourself returned to that gutter whence you came.”
“Well,” Rosalura said. “There was never horse nor man that threw me yet. I sought not to teach you, but only to remind you. So let you recall this: I know where your dead lie buried; who your intelligencers are, and who informs against you. So do others, lest you think the knowledge dies with me. Also, you are not the only one who knows how to compound an insalata Fiorenzana. Those herbs wait for any to pick them.
“You have nothing to fear from me. I will follow withersoever you choose, but never think I will be silent. This is the hour of our triumph; let us not quarrel over minutiae. She pulled him to her with surprising strength, kissed him hard with her tongue down his throat, then pushed away. “Now let me dress properly for the day.”
She closed the door behind her, and held herself from shaking until she was well down the corridor.
In the death-room, behind doors of dark walnut, carved with the shapes of the fantastical beasts of old, the Lady and her Chancellor spoke together. They kept their voices low, in respect to the dying, and to avoid prying ears.
“Aramond,” Myrilla said. “Can you tell me what is that ship yonder whose masts reach so above the others?”
“That is His Brittanish Majesty’s vessel Nonesuch, or some other ridiculous Anglish name. Seventy-four guns; her Captain bears a similarly absurd appellation.”
“And her business? Surely something I should know?”
“Indeed. Since the Emancipation, there has been a lack of commerce between the Anglish and their old partners in trade; viz, Moroc, Tunis and the like. It is His Majesty’s—or more correctly, the Prince-Regent’s—intention to improve the traffic in ivory, spices et cetera. He seeks to use our excellent deep-water anchorages, to (he avouches) mutual benefit.
“Quite naturally, upon hearing of the Lord Orvald’s illness, the Ambassador Plenipotentiary insisted on waiting until our master should enjoy better health. Should Your Serenity choose to believe that, I would denounce you as an imposter.”
Myrilla sighed, took up her sewing, then laid it aside once more. “They wait for young Egan? Or some other condition of weakness?”
“May I speak without reproach or censure?”
“When was it otherwise?” The Lady’s face showed naught save a deep calm that belied her inner storm. I was never a patient woman, yet all my life it has been forced on me.
“This then,” Aramond said. “Our realm stands in the same case as the Lord Orvald; that is, in extremis. We live or die by trade and shipping. Our soldiers are unexcelled, but they are also few in number. The mountains and fortalices keep us safe enough, but without access to the sea, we starve and die. No man gladder than I to know that the loathsome traffic in human cargoes is ended, but we must find new commodities. I fear that the Young Lord has not the least sense of this.
“He loves his luxuries, his cruelties and his mistress far above any duty he might feel. Certes he will take us to war, if only to please the masses, and so will wake that sleeping lion in our harbor with his seventy-four guns.
“I am told he intends against the Papal dominions, and there is no surer way to embroil us in the endless divisions of the Italiani ‘Domestic fury and fierce civil strife’, as the poet says, and we without the resources to maintain it. There is also information that should we open certain abandoned workings in the mountains, we might discover the bones of our lost comrades; and that if we were uncautious our own might soon be laid with them.”
The Lady Myrilla put her hand over his, reaching across the table. She had never found herself able to talk to Egan, to evoke any reaction beyond a bland smile. To the Lady, it was as though her son was not hers, but some changeling out of a dark world. “I will not contradict you. He is a chaos I cannot order or control.”
The old Chancellor closed his eyes, listening to the breath of the dying and he thought, the stuttering beat of his own heart. “Then his accession must be prevented? Could you die to see that accomplished?”
Myrilla considered that fate. Were Egan to die, his cousin Ibian would be, by operation of law, the next in line. A bookish lad, though competent in arms at fourteen, he had not been raised to rule, but there were sound heads to guide him. “They tell us that Death is only a door. I could open it with an easy conscience.”
“Then listen.” Aramond pushed back his robe and drew a scroll tube from his pocket. “I wrote this in a fair clerk’s hand two days afore now. It waits only for the Lord’s seal and sign-manual.”
He handed a paper to the Lady, and she read it over. “This is a codicil to my husband’s will. Names me regent for—whomever? The county Medor to follow in my stead should I be also gone? Surely it cannot have force unsealed and unsigned?”
“In ordinary circumstances, you are correct. We are not, however, in such circumstances. You know I am somewhat fond of conundrums? Here is one: should the Crown be set on Egan’s head, you and I would be banished or condemned on the instant. I cannot even guess how many would shortly follow us.
“This being so, he must die afore-hand. And with clear presents of the means, methods and above all the workers of his death, so that there can be no suspicion fall on you or yours. Hence the regency to stand, whatsoever else befall. Medor I trust more than any other, saving yourself.”
So I am to kill my own son, and die myself in the attempt.. We made him together out of desire, and it did not suffice to make him whole. He is all that is left from when I was young. Now I have only hours for what ought to be a lifetime of mourning.
Myrilla picked up her needlework, knotted and snipped the thread. They say the Gods of the North did thus. She looked again on the harbor and the mountains beyond shrouded in fog, seeking haply the farther shore. I am not ready to die, but then, how many ever are?
“Can you tell me your plan?” the Lady asked.
“To do so would be your damnation, or at least so the Fathers say. Myrilla, my oldest and greatest friend, you must trust me now.”
She raised her hand, and he kissed it. “You know,” she said, “Egan is no fool.”
“He sees the surface well enough,” the Chancellor said. “Makes him a good tactician, but a poor strategist. Dame Rosalura is far more to be feared. I have written instructions for Medor.” He unrolled the codicil once more and laid it on the table. “So hardly is the law administered, and so honored that neither we nor Egan may seem to violate one jot of it. You keep the Lord’s seal?”
“Yes, but—”
“But me none of your buts, madam, I pray you.” He smiled, and she took the seal from her purse. A candle, a bit of wax and a scrap of ribbon and the task was complete.
When the wax hardened, the old Chancellor rose, looking now as though he ran a race with his master for who should sit first before the Thrones. “Turn away, Lady. This is black art, and should you witness it, it would imperil your soul as it does mine.”
He hobbled again to the head of the bed, leaning more heavily on his cane. Inking a pen, he pressed it into the dying man’s hand. “Scribé.” The pen moved across the paper. “It is done, and no man may question it.” He returned to the table and sanded the ink dry.
“You have the wine for the memory-cup? We will drink to Orvald when he is gone, and if Fortune favor, there are some will join him.”
Myrilla rose from her chair, crossed to the locked cabinet and brought out the bottle, stoppered with its cork, foil and waxen seal. Aramond took a syringe from his pocket and thrust the needle through the cork, taking care to leave only the barest mark. This he hid with a pinch of lamp-black rubbed well. “The death-lily. Not an unpleasant end. Very like hemlock, but more swift and sure.”
“End of our little tale, then?”
“No, madam: rather the beginning. We have only to wait.”
The wait lasted not long. Harder and more irregular came the Lord’s breath as though, the Chancellor’s plan being set in train, he himself was no longer required. All sound stopped, excepting the ineluctable tick of the mantel clock. The Lady walked to her Lord’s side and held her glass before his face. She grabbed the bell-pull and tugged twice to summon the inevitable. “Our Lord is dead. Call his Guardsmen in, and let the teller bells be rung.”
“Donn. Donn.” The bells tolled low, reverberating amongst the hills, past great houses and less over the pastures and steadings, even to the far borders and beyond.
At the sound, women fell to the earth, stricken with birth pangs though they carried no children. Beasts groaned in the field, and men stood wondering as the furrows bent and weaved as though waking from slumber. Such was the bond between the Lord and the land, sundered only by death which stopped ordinary time. All things waited until the clock could be once more wound.
In her own inner room, Dame Rosalura stared into her scrying glass, where the image of Lord Orvald’s deathbed hung, as though detached from the world like a painting in oils. Gone then, and peacefully. This gladdened her. She would’ve welcomed the painful death of an enemy; indeed, she had caused a few such. However, the Old Lord was not an enemy, only an impediment that time had removed.
Half-rising from her seat, she bent closer to the mirror, letting her hair fall like raven’s wings to either side. In the glass, the Chancellor and the Lady floated as in a magic lantern show. What would I do in their place? Why am I unsure? They are like me; they will not passively await the future. They will try to make it. It must be they have some stratagem in mind, but I cannot divine it.
As she watched, the Lady’s face filled the glass, and those eyes seemed for all the world to look into hers, though it was a thing impossible. She wants to know. Rosalura stared back, letting a smile steal across her lips. Why do I do this, tying myself to a man cruel, selfish and vain? For power? A little. The only power I have had is from my wit and my body; I should like to taste another. For pleasure? Yes. When I hunt boar or stag, the ride excites more than t