Quillifer

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

he day before the Mummers’ Festival, I was awakened by artillery fire from the castle, soon echoed by guns firing from the city ramparts. When I opened my window, I saw there had been snowfall in the night, and that the city was cloaked as if with stainless white samite. I could smell gunpowder, and I began to hear the ringing of bells and the bray of trumpets. I thought perhaps there had been another victory over the forces of Clayborne, and so I dressed, armed myself, and walked through the white streets to the nearest square, to wait for the crier.

The herald arrived on a horse splendid with royal livery, and was accompanied by a mounted trumpeter. The breath of the horses steamed in the morning air. After a lively sennet by the trumpeter, the crier stepped forward to announce the engagement of Queen Berlauda to Priscus, Prince of Raverro, Duke of Myrdana and Inner Trace, and heir to King Henrico of Loretto.

As part of the marriage contract, the crier announced, Priscus had agreed to lead an army over the passes in the spring, and attack Clayborne in the rear.

“He can keep his army!” shouted one of the onlookers. “Just send the ransom he owes us for his uncle!”

The herald ignored the voice and called for cheers, which were duly given though I detected no great enthusiasm for the match. The trumpeter blew another sennet, and he and the crier rode off to the next square to repeat the announcement.

“It is the surest way for her majesty to secure her throne,” said the duke that afternoon. “I have urged marriage myself, as has everyone on the Council. Once her majesty produces an heir, she will be unassailable.”

I had been invited to the Roundsilver Palace for an afternoon of poetry, Blackwell and a half dozen others reading their latest verses while their audience sipped sherry and sampled cheese and lacy, delicate cakes. Their graces were kind enough to invite me to gatherings involving music, songs, poetry, and the mechanical arts, perhaps because they viewed me as a superior species of mechanical, apt for killing a stag, planning a naval battle, butchering a goat, or singing a song. These events usually took place in a room they called the Odeon, which was arranged like a small theater, with an elevated stage, rows of seats for an audience, and sometimes a lectern.

At this moment, we were between poets, having risen from our stiff, creaking chairs to the comforts of the sideboard. The poets gathered in a corner and murmured among themselves, no doubt judging the audience much as we judged their verses.

“Must it be the heir to Loretto?” I asked.

“That was her majesty’s preference,” said the duke. “It must be said that Loretto’s ambassador is a handsome young gentleman of great tact and charm, and his eloquence in detailing the advantages of the match was quite unparalleled.” Leaving unsaid, I thought, the question of whether Berlauda would have preferred the ambassador to his master.

“So, now we are to have an army of Loretto march across our borders?” asked I. “Will this not unite all Duisland behind Clayborne, and against our traditional enemy?”

“The army will not fly the flag of Loretto,” said the duke. “It will fly Berlauda’s banner, and Priscus will fly his personal ensign, but not that of his nation, or his father. There will also be loyal Duislanders in the prince’s entourage, to negotiate with Clayborne’s officers and secure their surrender. For now even Clayborne’s most loyal followers must admit they have no hope.”

“Indeed, the odds lie heavy against them. I don’t know why they aren’t besieging Longfirth, and I assume it is because they cannot.”

The duke smiled. “Clayborne’s calling of the Estates did not go well. I have heard from my lord the Chancellor that Clayborne failed to force his will upon them.”

His grace went on to explain that while Berlauda had got most of what he wanted from her Peers and Burgesses, Clayborne’s subjects had been less tractable. A politician does not support a rebel unless he scents some advantage to be had in the rebellion, and for most people advantage lies in money. A fractious Mercer resentful of the taxes imposed by Berlauda’s government would not join Clayborne only to vote higher taxes for himself, and Clayborne got only a part of what he’d asked for. Now Clayborne was raking out the bottom of his treasury, and since many of his soldiers were mercenaries who insisted on being paid, his rebellion was teetering on the edge of collapse.

“Perhaps Clayborne’s cause will crumble without fighting.”

“We can so hope,” said the duchess. “But the Countess of Tern will not surrender without fighting, nor her husband the Duke of Andrian. The soldiers can, at the last extremity, loot the country for their pay. So, I fear there will be blows and terrors yet.”

The duke observed a young man standing by the podium “Ah,” said he. “Here is Master Robin, ready to bring us gladness.”

We returned to our seats, and a poet struck a chord on a cittern and chanted, rather than sang, with a melody.

O cruel Love, on thee I lay

My curse, which shall strike blind the day;

Never may sleep with velvet hand

Charm thine eyes with sacred wand;

Thy jailors shall be hopes and fears;

Thy prison-mates groans, sighs, and tears;

Thy play to wear out weary times,

Fantastic passions, vows, and rimes . . .

I felt unease at this theme, and for a moment, I wondered if Orlanda had chosen this verse especially for me.

Yet, I thought, I was sleeping well enough, with few groans or sighs. It was my waking hours in which I waxed full of anxiety for Amalie.

Robin performed more verses, was followed by an elderly nun who wrote metaphysical verse, and then again the group met for refreshment. The duke’s friends surrounded him, and he was fully taken up by a dissection of some intricate business at court, and so I took a glass of sherry from the cup-board and drifted ’cross the room to the sideboard, where her grace was chatting with several of her friends about a dinner given the previous day by Queen Natalie, the mother of the princess Floria.

“The Marchioness of Stayne attended,” she said, “though great with child and her husband busy elsewhere. Queen Natalie was very kind, and made sure Lady Stayne was comfortable on her couch.”

She said this last with a little under-eyed look at me, as if concerned that I knew that Amalie was well and free to move about the city. You remember that she had been present when I first met Amalie, and since that meeting she had been curious how our acquaintance had progressed. I had of course denied anything improper, but I fear I was not very convincing, for the duchess clearly suspected otherwise.

I wondered if the duchess had heard of my conversation with Stayne the other night, and what conclusion that news had led her to draw. But I was so grateful for this report, and the knowledge that Amalie was at liberty to visit her friends, that I spent the next few minutes inwardly rejoicing in this information, until the next poet took his place behind the lectern, and strove to wring our hearts with another ballad of the torments and miseries of lovers.

* * *

The Festival of Mummers lies on the first of February, halfway between midwinter and the spring equinox, and in ancient times the holiday marked the first day of spring. Though we now have a different calendar, the day is still kept, and begins with the Mummers’ Parade, which marches down Chancellery Road past the castle, and from there winds into the town. I had bought a mask, that of a learnèd Doctor of Law with a long, enquiring nose to sniff out cases and fees, and in my gown and cap I joined the crowds near my lodgings as the linkboys, guisers, wren-boys, and mummers marched past, all masked, all in their brave finery, garbed as lords and knights, fishwives and trolls and monsters. Floats were drawn past by caparisoned horses, and stopped every so often so that the mummers could enact a brief play, most of which were so full of references to local people, and local events, that I found them incomprehensible. But I cheered a play by Blackwell’s troupe, which featured that famous monster-slaying Roundsilver ancestor extolling peace in the realm and killing a dragon, which was understood to be Clayborne. And there were other floats that featured comedy, with knockabout acrobats and dancers, and these I cheered with great appreciation.

One float was sponsored by the Butchers’ Guild, and was apparently a satire on some recent scandal of the town. This I failed to understand, but I cheered out of loyalty.

The day was dark, but the mood of the crowd was not darkened, nor the performers silenced by occasional spatters of rain.

After the parade passed, I paused by the Tiltyard Moot, which allowed hawkers to sell their wares at tables set on the street before the building. I bought a pasty, a mug of beer flavored with rosemary and lupins, and marchpane molded in the shape of a wyvern. I tilted the mask atop my head in order to eat and drink, the lawyer’s long nose thrust up into the air, as if hailing a client.

At sunset, there would be a supper at the Butchers’ Guild, and afterward carousing, and songs, and merry-making till dawn. But it was barely noon, and there were hours yet before the supper began, and in the meantime the streets would be alive with celebration. If the meiny were ever to drink to Berlauda’s forthcoming marriage to a foreigner, it would be on this day.

I returned the empty beer mug to the vendor and pulled my mask over my face. I had no sooner done so than I felt a blow between my shoulder blades, and was nearly knocked over the vendor’s table. I straightened, only to feel a hand on my shoulder, and I was spun round to face a group of ferocious masks, an eagle, a serpent, a panther, and a boar with upturned tusks, each glaring at me with murderous, glittering eyes.

“This will teach you to play with the wives of your betters,” cried the eagle. The delivery of this message took long enough that I recovered a little from my surprise, and I ducked the blow that followed, which nevertheless struck me a glancing blow on the ear. Though the fist missed its intended target, my head still rang like a bell. The eagle seized me by the nose—not the nose on my face, but the long nose of my mask—and pulled me into another blow, which I managed to parry. The others clustered around, their fists gathered to rain blows on me. Then I undid the ribbon that tied the mask on my head, and left the eagle louting back with an empty mask between his fingers.

The serpent-mask jostled closer, and I recognized the forked beard that hung below the mask and seized both tails to jerk his head down. Fork-Beard gave a cry as he stooped before me, and then I raised a knee and smashed it into his face. He recoiled upright, leaving me with handfuls of his beard, and I kicked him in the direction of his fellows and gained myself a little room to maneuver.

I turned and leaped onto the table of the beer-seller, and from the table to the butts of beer that were set on racks behind the vendor. From there I leaped for the architrave over a window, pulled myself up, and used as finger- and toe-holds a series of ornamental rosettes, an astragal, and a godroon to put me on the tiled roof of the Tiltyard Moot, two storeys above the street. From this place of vantage I turned to view my attackers, who were staring up at me—except for Fork-Beard, who was hunched over and clutching his broken nose as blood streamed from beneath his serpent mask.

The eagle gave a shout and waved on the panther and boar, and now they all leaped up onto the beer-seller’s table and started a frantic climb toward me. I wrenched up a large terra-cotta tile from the roof and hurled it into the face of the boar, which sent him spilling down the front of the building and onto the beer-butts, from which he rebounded unconscious onto the road. The eagle fended off the next tile but gave up climbing and dropped to the ground, and the panther climbed down likewise. I pulled up another tile in case they came again, but instead they conferred, and then separated to run to the buildings on either side of the Moot, one of them dragging the wounded Fork-Beard with him. Both these buildings overlooked the roof on which I stood, and rather than let them surround me, I tossed my roof tile onto the building the panther was climbing, and then climbed it myself. The house was thatched, and once I’d shot my roof tile, I would have no more ammunition.

I recovered the tile and found the panther clambering up the half-timbers. He had taken off his mask, and I saw the face of a complete stranger glaring at me, a large man with a jutting underjaw and the scarred face and broken nose of a prizefighter. I had no desire to find myself within arm’s reach of this hard-fisted professional, and so I marked my target and let fly. He warded the tile but slightly, and it struck him a glancing blow on the head and tore free a piece of his scalp. He paid no more attention to this than to a splinter in his thumb, and kept climbing toward me. Over my shoulder I saw the eagle mount to the roof of his own chosen building, and decided that I preferred not to be outnumbered.

Accordingly, I fled across the rooftops. The streets were narrow below Chancellery Road, and the buildings dropped steeply down the castle’s hill, so it was easy to jump down from one to the next, coming ever closer to the river. I was looking for the Worshipfull Societie of Butchers, where I would be safe, but I missed my reckoning and was unable to find it. But hard on the horizon I saw the fortress-like battlements and emplaced artillery of the Companie of Cannoneers, and so I ran in that direction.

I used a cornice, a frieze, and a bolection to drop to the street. The journeymen cannoneers on the door knew me by sight as a frequent guest of Master Lipton, and so they welcomed me, and I entered. I helped myself to a brimming cup of a lively, rather lemony white wine and kept an eye to the window shutters, to see if my pursuers were still in chase. Indeed, I saw them go past, the eagle in the lead, followed by the hunched Fork-Beard and the prizefighter, who held a napkin to his bleeding head.

The hall of the cannoneers, like that of the Butchers, was ornamented with tools of their trade. With the Butchers, the tools included knives, cleavers, and pollaxes, but the cannoneers had ladles, rammers, sponges, worms, and the smaller species of artillery. I took a likely item down from the wall, and asked one of the gunners what it was.

“A linstock, sir,” he said.

“Very good,” said I. The linstock consisted of a wooden handle about a yard long, with a forked metal tip that would hold a slow-match, and it was intended to be used in lighting cannon from a distance safe enough that the gunner would not stand in the way of the recoil.

I left the hall and walked rapidly up behind the prizefighter, held the linstock in both hands, cocked it over one shoulder, and hit him behind the ear as hard as I could. He went down as if I’d pollaxed him, and I sprang over his body to crack Fork-Beard on his crown. That worthy gave a cry and fled as fast as he could stagger, and left me face-to-face with the eagle, who had spun about to face me. I recognized Slope-Shoulder behind the mask, and I raised the linstock as if to swing at him. He raised his hands to guard himself, and instead I dropped the point of the linstock and thrust him hard in the belly. He bent over groaning, and I hit him on the skull, a glancing blow which sent him to one knee.

“Come near me again,” I told him, “and I’ll serve you as I served Sir Basil.”

Then—feeling alive with a perfect righteousness, and tingling with the essential fact of my survival—I returned to the cannoneers’ hall and replaced the linstock on the wall.

My assaulting three people on the street attracted a certain amount of attention—there had been shouting from the crowd, and a few screams—and some cannoneers had come out to watch the fight, and so when I returned, there was a respectful half circle about me.

“Those three attacked me on Chancellery Road,” I said. “I fled here, where I knew I would find friends.”

And friends they proved to be, once I had explained the difficulty, and I was plied with more wine, soft cheese, and cheat bread while I told my story, and while the unconscious prizefighter was carried past the door to a surgeon.

Cannoneer Lipton approached, his white-bearded face rosy with wine, and when he had heard the story congratulated me.

“You armed yourself with a superior weapon and attacked with stealth,” said he. “A useful strategy, sure, though you must beware of your foes arming themselves with weapons superior to yours, and attacking likewise from cover. Which,” he continued philosophically, “will result in your getting superior arms yourself, and so on, till you come here. For there is no superior weapon than a cannon, sure.”

“Difficult to use in a street brawl,” said I.

“It is the simplest thing in the world,” said Lipton. “A charge of hailshot will sweep any street clean of brawlers.”

I laughed. “Let me take one of your guns with me, then, when I go home.”

“Unfortunately, the Queen now commands them all,” he said. “And the Queen commandeth even me, sure, for I am to con a battery of demiculverins in the forthcoming campaign.”

“Congratulations, master.” I raised my glass. “May the rebels’ walls tumble before your gunshot.”

“Thank you, youngster. And now, an I may not charge a gun for you, allow me to charge your glass.”

We talked about the coming campaign, and I mentioned that I had seen and spoken to the Knight Marshal, who seemed rather infirm to hold such a responsible position—and furthermore prone to superstition, given all the luck tokens he’d bestowed about his person.

“He has always been lucky in war, sure,” said Lipton. “And in my experience, you wish not to stand between a soldier and his luck. Yet being a great general is no great matter, for battles are but games of rock-paper-scissors, and that is a game any man can play.”

“Indeed, I have played it. Shall I take command of the Queen’s Army?”

“You may, once you understand the game as we soldiers play it. For look you, there are three arms—the cavalry, the pikemen, and the handgunners with their firelocks.” He took a substantial loaf of raveled bread and placed it between us. “Here are the pikemen.” Forks stood for the handgunners, and knives for the cavalry.

“Firelocks will defeat pikes,” he said, “for they can shoot the pike formations from a distance, without the pikes being able to engage them. Cavalry will defeat firelocks, as the firelocks have no means of keeping the cavalry from riding them down. And pikes defeat cavalry, for the cavalry cannot get close enough to harm them. So you see: rock-paper-scissors.”

I viewed the battle laid out before me. “And how does your artillery play in this game?”

He laughed at me with yellow teeth. “The peculiar genius of the artillery is shown best in sieges, sure. But in actions such as this we may assist in breaking up the hedges of pikes.”

I deployed a pair of knives. “So the pikes being broken, the cavalry may ride the pikes down.”

“Indeed.”

I laughed. “Now I may be Captain General?”

He lifted a hand in a sign of blessing. “You have learned the great lesson. Be a general, youngster, and drive the rebels from the field.”

I remained at the Cannoneers till near sunset, when I headed toward my supper at the Butchers’ hall. The streets were still full of entertainments, including a zoo with the cages on carts, where I viewed a bear that performed a sailor’s dance, seals that juggled footballs on their noses, a lion that lay asleep on straw and ignored us all, and a minikin that was said to be one of the Albiz, a native prince taken from his underground realm beneath the Minnith Peaks. I was inclined, however, to think he was a dwarf painted brown and dressed in worn velvets.

I moved on through ever-thickening, jostling crowds, among people of the city dressed as doctors and fairies and Queens and Yeoman Archers in their red caps, and stopped to enjoy a troupe of jugglers hurling torches through the air. I found myself standing behind some brawny journeyman bricklayers, and had to stand straight to crane myself up to see the entertainment over their broad shoulders. Then I noticed a small woman standing next to me—she was dressed as a bird, with the mask of a wren or a sparrow, and her hood ornamented with feathers. She was standing on tiptoe to watch the flaming torches as they flew from hand to hand. The whole crowd gave a lurch to one side, and she was knocked off her feet and only avoided being trampled because the crowd was too closely packed to allow her to drop all the way to the paving stones. Without thinking, I picked her up and set her on my shoulder.

She gave a squawk, very birdlike, and I hastened to reassure her.

“Fear not, mistress,” I said, “I will not let you fall.”

“Put me down at once!” she called, and boxed one of my ears.

“Mercy, I pray!” said I. There was a great moiling and shifting of the crowd, and I was too busy keeping my feet to pay close attention to my furious passenger. “It’s too dangerous, mistress,” said I as the torches flashed. “Enjoy the show, and I shall try to find you room to breathe.”

At which point a large man in the mask of an Aekoi warrior punched me in the face, and a bright explosion flamed up behind my eyes. I reeled back, and would have fallen had not the crowd held me up. This only made me a target for the man’s fist, and once again he struck me. I staggered back as I tried to keep upright, and tried not to drop my supercargo beneath the boots of the crowd.

“Help!” she cried, as she tried to fend off the blows. “Murder!”

I kicked my attacker, and he punched again, striking me on the breastbone and driving the wind out of me in a rush. We were so close, and so hampered by the crowd, that we could not miss. I kicked again and caught him on the knee. Behind my attacker I saw a man in an eagle mask wave a truncheon, and I realized that Slope-Shoulder had returned for another inning.

It had not occurred to me that he had not learned his lesson, that—having hired a pair of prizefighters, and failed in his attempt to harm me—he would simply hire another set of swashers and seek me on the street.

I saw one of the journeyman bricklayers staring at me in drunken befuddlement, and I tossed my passenger to him. He reached out his big hands and caught her, bearing her weight as lightly as he doubtless carried his hod. I rather wished he and his friends might use that great strength in my defense. The sparrow-woman, at least, did her part.

“Murder, ho!” she cried. “Help!”

I brought a knee up to my attacker’s crutch, which straightened him for a knock on the chin, but there were many attackers—at least half a dozen—and the blows were raining down thick and fast. Bystanders ran, women screamed. A truncheon caught me a blow on the elbow, and the pain rose like a rocket to explode in my skull, and after that I had but a single arm to fend them off. Soon I was blind and bewildered in a circle of them, kicking and lashing out blindly.

“A rescue! A rescue!” I had heard the voices crying out, but had not sifted them from the shouts of the crowd, and then I shook blood from my eyes to see the point of a short sword emerge from the chest of one of my attackers. Red caps bobbed in the crowd, scarlet as the blood on the sword.

“Rescue her highness!” There was a whirl of weapons, and the basket hilt on one of the red caps’ short, curved swords clipped Slope-Shoulder on the side of the head, and sent him sprawling.

In the joyous whirl of the festival I had not considered that the men dressed as Yeoman Archers might, in fact, be true Yeoman Archers, let alone that they were here to guard a great lady who had decided to join the throng in their Mummers’ Day celebrations. A lady who, I realized, I had picked up and dandled like a puppy, and carried into the middle of a brawl.

Weariness bore me down as fighting erupted around me, and amid a bleeding rabble of dead and wounded, I sank to my knees, holding up my one good arm in token of surrender. Red caps formed a circle around us, their blades out, and among them I saw my sparrow-girl in her feathered cloak.

“Well, Pudding-Man,” said the princess Floria. “Once again it seems you have made yourself the center of attention.”