Quillifer

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

o ended the Battle of Exton Scales, which concluded Clayborne’s hopes to rule a kingdom. I was dismissed, and by next morning, Utterback’s Troop had ceased to exist, and was amalgamated with that of Lord Barkin. Barkin was sympathetic, but already had a secretary, who was busy calculating his share of the loot.

I had failed to gather any loot for myself, and now would get none.

By next morning, the principal rebels were in our hands. The Knight Marshal had received our message just as he was about to launch his attack on Peckside, and he saw no sense in wasting his dispositions—he smashed his way through the entrenchments, and broke the enemy there in a single grand assault. Wenlock, the cavalry, and the reserves were turned about and sent to Exton Scales, but arrived far too late. So, when Clayborne’s army fled from us, they ran right into the Knight Marshal’s hands.

Clayborne; his stepfather, the Duke of Andrian; Lord Rufus Glanford; and the other leaders were executed as soon as the Marshal could call for a headsman. Queen Berlauda, who had no intention of forgiving her half brother or his supporters, had signed the death warrants in advance. The only chief rebel to escape was Clayborne’s mother, the Countess of Tern, who we later learned had fled to Thurnmark.

Those not named in the warrants were made prisoner, except for the mercenaries Clayborne had employed. The mercenaries of both sides had insisted on their standard contract, which stated that any mercenaries on the losing side—whichever that was—were to be given their liberty, and so those who had fought for Clayborne were allowed to march back to Howel with our army, carrying their weapons and such gear as had survived the looting.

Even professional soldiers, it seemed, were obliged to follow the rules of their guild. All the sell-swords stood to lose was whatever monies Clayborne owed them.

I stayed with the army, but as Lord Utterback no longer provided a means of entry to the higher class of officer, I rode for the most part with Captain Lipton and the Cannoneers. These were good company, and as the April skies had ceased to spit rain at us, it was a pleasant journey, descending the Cordillerie now into the high, watery plateau that sheltered the winter capital.

A delegation from Howel offered the Knight Marshal the submission of the city several days before he arrived, which provided Lipton and me with an idea. We knew the names of the proscribed rebels, and so he and I and a few Cannoneers rode ahead of the army, past the famous water-gardens of the palace, to the capital, where we marched into the house of Baron Havre-le-Creag, told the servants that we were now billeted in the home, and ordered them to bring us dinner and wine.

The Baron, who had been executed for treason following the battle, could scarcely object.

Water-girdled Howel is a beautiful city, with its canals, fountains, bridges, and its stately, well-proportioned buildings of golden sandstone, and for a few days, that city belonged to us. There had been a great fire sixty years before, and most of the old city burned. It had been rebuilt on a more spacious plan, with wide streets, plane trees set along boulevards, and green lawns that went down to the river.

The royal palace at Ings Magna is three leagues northwest of the city, across the lake, and the high nobility have lined the road along the lake with their homes, one imposing structure after another, each with a lawn along the river and a structure to house a grand galley, so that they could be rowed to the palace by a crew of oarsmen in livery. The house of Baron Havre-le-Creag was one of these.

From our billets we went wherever we pleased with our list of the proscribed, demanded entry to the great houses, and carried off whatever we liked—coin, plate, silken hangings, jewels. If we found a strongbox, we broke it open and took what we found. I was the only one of us interested in the papers we unearthed, and I discovered myself the owner of several deeds and a number of loans and mortgages.

Officers may fight for glory or advancement, but ordinary soldiers fight for money. Wenlock had demoted me to the status of an ordinary soldier, and I felt a perfect right, indeed a duty, to fill my pockets.

We left alone the Duke of Roundsilver’s fine house a short distance from Havre-le-Creag’s residence. It was easy to discover his grace’s house, for it had been faced with brilliant Ethlebight brick in a rainbow of colors. I wanted to go into the duke’s cabinet and discover what curiosities he might keep there, but I decided it might be best to wait for an invitation.

When the Knight Marshal entered the city, the official and organized looting began. Military patrols marched up and down the street, homes of the proscribed were put under guard, and clerks began inventories of the possessions of the proscribed. Some of the loot would be awarded to the Knight Marshal, and the properties to Berlauda’s supporters, but most of it would go to the Crown, to help pay for the war. Our own goods were carefully hidden from the confiscating officers.

Our house now became the headquarters of the artillery, and we put a placard on the door to that effect. When other soldiers were assigned to our house by the billeting officers, we told them the house was ours, and they should find another. No one challenged us. We ate and drank well on the late baron’s largesse.

The heads of Clayborne, Andrian, and the rest were set up on pikes before the Hall of Justice, and my travels took me there one day. I looked up at Clayborne’s handsome head, its glossy dark hair falling about its ears, and wondered about ambition and its limits, whether Clayborne or his supporters had ever concerned themselves with the human coin they spent, the men whose lives they were to throw away on Exton Scales in their last wager against Berlauda’s army.

I thought the heads would soon have company. The Knight Marshal pursued not merely loot and property, for he also sought out Clayborne’s adherents, and anyone who had sworn him an oath of allegiance or served him in any way. Those who had voted for his laws in the Estates were also in jeopardy, and it did not take long for the cells at the Hall of Justice to fill with Clayborne’s friends. The remains of Clayborne’s army were held in the old stadium across the river from town, awaiting Berlauda’s judgment.

And as for Queen Laurel and her purported child, the infant crowned Emelin VI, not a word was spoken, and nothing was known. They were believed to have been under guard in the palace when the army marched in, but no one seemed to know anything about their fate.

April was dwindling to its close when a letter arrived for Baron Havre-le-Creag, which I was happy to take from the messenger. It stated that the baron’s galleon Constantia had arrived at Bretlynton Head with a cargo of almond, pistachios, olive and safflower oil, and a small but valuable lading of precious myrrh, and that the master wished to know whether the cargo should be sold there, or carried somewhere else.

I was on the next barge down the Dordelle, on a boat which held a number of merchants and also, I suspect, a few refugees from the Queen’s justice. Within a week, I sailed into the city of Bretlynton Head, with its castle on its scarp overlooking the bay, and set out in search of Constantia and its master.

I had the honor of being the first to inform Captain Newbolt that the ship-owner had been executed following unsuccessful rebellion, and that the ship and its cargo would soon be confiscated by the Crown, a sad and discouraging end to a ten-month voyage. Neither the ship nor its crew would realize a penny of profit, and Newbolt himself, though blameless, might find himself imprisoned.

His only option, I said, was to flee the city at once, before royal officers could arrive. “But unless you want to turn pirate,” said I, “you should sail to Amberstone and say that you head a prize crew put aboard by the privateer Meteor. Report with the ship’s papers to the prize court established at Ethlebight, along with a letter from me as part-owner of the privateering commission. And when the ship is condemned, you and the crew will receive your share.”

“How big a share?” asked he.

So, we argued over that over the course of an hour, and in the end I wrote the letter, Newbolt took on a stock of fresh water, and was gone the next forenoon. I spent a few more days in Bretlynton Head, and acquainted myself with the city. It was in a near-lawless condition, for the Sea-Consuls who had pledged their allegiance to Clayborne had fled, the Warden of the Castle was nowhere to be found, and such aldermen as remained were not enough to establish a quorum. Privateers had been hovering off the coast for weeks, taking prizes, the news of which pleased me enormously. Eventually, I took passage back up the river. It was a slower journey, and I enjoyed the view, sitting on the foredeck with my copy of Bello’s Epics, the stately classical hexameters running through my head while I viewed the old robber-castles on their crags, the sheep in their pastures, the vineyards that ran down to the bank of the Dordelle, cherry- and apple-trees in blossom, the hills and mountains verdant with the new spring. Bonille well lived up to the promise of its false etymology, but by the end of the journey, I was burning to get off the boat and to my business ashore.

I arrived at Howel just ahead of Queen Berlauda, who was to make a grand entry into the city to meet with her lieutenants and review her army. The artillery were busy organizing a salute of gunfire, and the courtyard behind the baron’s residence was now covered with the gunpowder that had suffered the separation of its elements on its journey to the capital, and was being remixed by hand. I preferred not to be blown up, and kept my distance.

I amused myself by viewing the sights. Bonille had once been a part of the Empire, and many old imperial structures still stood. Most were temples, but there was also an aqueduct that still functioned, a theater that held two thousand people, a basilica filled with shops, parts of the city wall, and a stadium across the river. I saw everything I could but avoided the stadium, for this was where Clayborne’s army was being held under guard.

The day of the review came. The enormous guns that His Grace of Roundsilver had given to the Crown were deployed with the rest of the artillery in the grand review, and between those two enormous bronze weapons I sat on my savage horse Phrenzy, very martial in my battered armor. I lifted my sword to the salute as Berlauda rode by propped up in her carriage, her blond hair agleam in the May sunshine, her handsome face displaying its accustomed serenity. The Knight Marshal rode next to her, for once without his fur coat, and dressed in a brilliant outfit of sky blue, glittering with gems and silver thread. He had arrayed his lucky medallions all over his doublet, and no doubt thought himself very blessed to have had their protection. The tale in the army was that he would be made a marquess, and receive lands from the Duke of Andrian’s domaine. Neither he nor the Queen betrayed any sign they had recognized me.

Berlauda’s half sister Floria followed in the next carriage, along with a group of court ladies. The princess wore a gown of dark red, piped with the bright royal scarlet, and a scarlet cap tilted over one hazel eye. Her dark hair was braided atop her head. The eye passed over me, then snapped back to my face. She stood and craned toward me as the carriage moved past, her mouth open in surprise, and then she laughed and fell back into her seat, convulsed with mirth.

Doubtless, as she rolled away, she was gasping out a joke about frumenty.

The day after the review was Lord Utterback’s grand memorial. The Count of Wenlock set up the hero’s casket in the city’s largest temple, with its fluted pillars and boxy pediment, now desanctified and used as a setting for lectures, readings, and concerts. The royal standard I had taken from the Carrociro, the shield on white with its gold thread and braid, lay draped over the coffin. An abbot with a sonorous voice presided, the same who had addressed the crowd on the day Berlauda had been crowned. The Knight Marshal came in his sky-blue suit, with a grandson at each elbow. Her majesty attended the service for the victor who had secured her throne, as did many of the court. She wore the cream-white silken gown permitted to royalty as mourning dress.

The veterans of Exton Scales came, some of them wounded and supported by friends or by crutches. They wore their bandages defiantly, for these were the true laurels of victory. Most were not permitted in the confined space of the temple, but stood in a silent congregation outside.

I arrived with Lipton, and as he wore an officer’s sash, he was allowed past the door, and he took me with him. I wore my armor, and carried my sword at my side and my burgonet under my arm. As a token of mourning, I wore sprigs of rosemary on my collar. I did not care if the sight of me drove Wenlock to a fury, for I had come to say farewell to a comrade and a friend, and to honor his courage and his victory.

I stood in the back of the dark old temple as incense and a sonorous choir wafted over me, and the abbot, the Marshal, and Wenlock eulogized the hero of Exton Scales. I did not quite recognize the man they described, this decisive and infallible titan, so intent on bringing to a fulfillment the martial grandeur of his ancestors; and I thought that the man I remembered, with his sardonic wit and his philosophical discourse, was much more interesting, and perhaps more worthy of note than the ivory statue conjured by the speakers’ fulsome rhetoric.

I had not expected to be mentioned, and I was not, though I found it a strange sensation to be thus written out of history.

Trumpets blared, drums boomed, and Wenlock put on his purfled round cap and walked out the temple, followed by the casket on the shoulders of six titled pallbearers, including Lord Barkin. I don’t think Wenlock saw me in the crowd of mourners.

Outside in Curzon Square, the coffin was laid on a wagon that would take it to the city’s harbor, for transport down the Dordelle to Bretlynton Head, and from thence across the sea to Ethlebight, where Lord Utterback would ultimately be laid to rest at his ancestral home, some leagues up the river from the city.

I remembered the young man who had ridden to the city’s defense with thirty well-armed followers, and faced Sir Basil calmly in the old fortress, and who resolved to fight Clayborne’s army even though the battle was nigh hopeless. If he had been overwhelmed by his responsibility, he had never lacked for courage, and he had never failed once he understood his duty.

Queen Berlauda followed the coffin from the old temple, walking with the old Knight Marshal between two files of Yeoman Archers, and we all knelt as she passed. Lipton and I made our way out and paused on the portico, beneath the pediment with its worn, ancient statues of headless heroes. The day was bright and warm, the air fragrant with the scent of spring flowers. A line of carriages was drawn up between the temple and the group of soldiers who waited in the square. The Queen entered one of these along with the Marshal, and waving pleasantly, they left the scene. Great nobles and leaders began to fill the others.

Lipton and I turned to those leaving the building, and we greeted Frere, whose great black beard was as magnificent as ever, bald old Captain Snype, Ruthven in his muscled leather cuirass, and some of the other officers. Lord Barkin, who had helped to carry the pall, was already gone.

We held a colloquy for a while, and I think we all sensed that this would be the last time we would all be together. The war that had brought us to our rendezvous at Exton Scales was over. Ruthven would soon return to Selford with his regiment, Frere had received an appointment as Warden of the fortress of Dun Foss up on the border with Bonille, and the professionals like Snype would be looking for another war. Lipton would remain in Howel with his battery of demiculverins, and fire salutes at royal parades.

For myself, I prayed never to see another battlefield, but otherwise knew not what I would do with myself. There was nothing to keep me in Howel, not with the Queen viewing me with loathing and Wenlock wishing to hurl me into prison for theft or any other crime that occurred to him. But there was no reason to travel anywhere else, especially as Orlanda might whisper poison into the ears of everyone I met, and make any new place as inhospitable as the court. When Frere asked me what I would do next, I said that I didn’t know.

“Idleness will only serve to get you into trouble,” said a familiar voice. “You had best find an occupation and stick to it.”

I turned and bowed to the princess Floria. She wore greens and blues, with a carcanet of emeralds. Sprigs of rosemary were pinned as tokens of mourning to her hat and her gown. Two burly Yeoman Archers stood three yards behind her, and neither eyed me with favor.

“Does your highness have a suggestion which profession I might adopt?” I asked.

“I do not,” she said, looking steadily up at me with her hazel eyes. “I know only that, judging by that broil on the Mummers’ Day, you make a damned poor bodyguard.”

“But you, highness, make a very good one,” said I. “You interceded on my behalf, and saved me from the stocks, at the very least.”

“Nay,” she said, “they would have cut off your head, and her majesty would have signed the warrant with a blithe heart. Yet I thought that a man who has such a useful way with bandits and assassins should not be so carelessly tossed away.”

“Then I thank you for my life. I wrote you my thanks at the time.”

“I read the letter. I thought that to reply might have brought trouble on you, for none of my correspondence is private.”

“I thank you for that courtesy.” I bowed again. “May I introduce these officers?” For the others had been standing, heads bowed, while this conversation went on, and our words must have been a great stimulus to their imaginations.

I presented the others, and said that we had all been together at Exton Scales. She looked at them with interest.

“It speaks well of Lord Utterback that you gentlemen attend his memorial,” she said.

“He was our comrade,” said Coronel Ruthven.

Her highness’s bright eyes flicked from one to the other. “At court, Count Wenlock is like a battery of artillery when it comes to his son: he bombards us daily with his son’s many virtues, and his own woes, and with the debt her majesty owes to his house. He lays siege to the throne and comes nigh to demanding honors for himself. Yet should we further ennoble an already-noble father for the sake of his dead son?”

We had no answer for that, though personally I wished Wenlock in the Mare Postremum without a dinghy. So, Floria turned to me.

“Was my lord Utterback the hero of the battle? Was he everything his father says?”

“My lord was the hero entire,” said I. “He fought bravely all day long, he led the final charge that broke the rebellion, and he died at the moment of victory.”

“But surely he was not the only hero of the day.”

“There were a thousand heroes that day,” said I. “But all of them are dead.”

There was a moment of silence. Floria’s quick, birdlike gaze settled on me. “And you, Goodman Quillifer? You are ever in the midst of quarrels and dissensions, and you have crossed swords with infamous bandits and murderous rogues. Were you not in the forefront of the battle? I see that your armor has been battered, and there is a crease across the skull of your helm.”

“I had the ill fortune to be struck by the enemy, and the good fortune not to have been murdered,” I said. “But as for bravery, there were many on the field more worthy than I.”

She looked at me for a long, thoughtful moment, and then nodded. “Your loyalty to your commander commends you. I apologize if you find my questions impertinent—I want simply to learn things, you see. We in the palace know only what we are told by people like Wenlock, and by the Marshal, and neither of them were there.”

We looked at her in silence. For my part, I would say nothing that would serve to diminish Lord Utterback’s honor or memory, and I suppose the others felt much the same way.

“May the Pilgrim enlarge your knowledge,” said Frere finally.

A little wry smile touched her lips. “He hasn’t yet,” said she. “But the world may hope.”

We bowed, and she withdrew to her carriage, which soon drew away.

Lipton looked after her thoughtfully, and tugged his cap down over one eye. “That is a very strange little girl, sure,” he judged.

“She wants to do Wenlock down,” said Frere. “I care not what happens to the count, but I know I want nothing to do with any court conspiracy.”

I had even more reason to keep away from such a conspiracy than did Frere, and so I nodded agreement.

“What was meant,” asked Snype, “when you thanked her for saving your life?”

“Not so much saving as sparing.” And I told her about Lord Stayne, the attack on the Festival of the Mummers, how the princess had intervened to prevent my being executed, and how I had come to join the army as a refuge from being killed on the streets of Selford.

“It ended well for you,” said Frere, “so I will not say your decision was unwise. Yet it is a strange enough reason for joining the Queen’s Army.”

“A great many soldiers seem to have joined to flee from their former life,” said I, “whether they were being hunted or no.”

“You left out the reason why Stayne has taken so against you.”

“Because,” said I, “a great lord needs reason in nothing he does.”

This they found amusing. “Is Stayne still after your life?” asked Ruthven.

“I have no knowledge one way or another, but I am sure he does not wish me well.”

“Your bodyguard here is being disbanded,” Ruthven pointed out. “You might wish to take care.”

Lipton clapped me on the shoulder. “The Cannoneers will look after him!” he said. “Whoever wants him will have to face the great guns!”

After bidding my friends farewell, I went out into the square where the soldiers waited, and I shook many by the hand, and spoke with all those who desired to talk to me. I wished them all a safe journey home, or to their next posting, and afterward went back to the baron’s house, and gazing out the windows at the pretty houses glowing gold in the noon sun, tried to decide where next my life would take me. For it seemed that since I had left Ethlebight, I had been blown from one course to the other as if by a perverse wind, and if there was any sense to it, I could not find it. Yet neither could I find a course I strongly wished to take, and so I dealt with whatever business came to hand.

The next few weeks, I spent with the documents I’d acquired when I had looted the homes of the proscribed. I had deeds to properties, and I surveyed as many as were within a few hours’ ride, and decided to keep some of them. I hired a man to manage them for me, and a lawyer to help me sell those properties in which I had no interest. I also held mortgages and documents relating to loans, and these I investigated through the lawyer, kept some, and sold others to bankers. There was a branch of the Oberlin Fraters Bank in the city, and I arranged for any income to be deposited there, and investigated the means by which I might transfer the money, by note, to another branch.

While I thus occupied myself, it was announced that Priscus, Loretto’s heir, was on his way to Howel to claim his bride. The marriage contract had been made with the promise that Priscus would lead an army against Clayborne, a promise that Priscus had failed in every way to fill. Even though he had done nothing, apparently Berlauda was obliged to marry him anyway.

The city was soon bustling with preparations for welcoming Priscus and his entourage, and Lipton and his artillery were sent out to practice their royal salutes. I decided I might as well stay for the celebration, as a great festival seemed a fine antidote to the great miseries of war.

Yet there were reminders of the war almost daily, for following Berlauda came her new Attorney General, Lord Thistlegorm, with a company of judges to sit on special treason courts. Anyone who had sworn allegiance to Clayborne, or to the infant Emelin VI, was found guilty, as were a number of those for whom the evidence was far less direct. Informers haunted the courts, and rumor had it they were paid by the conviction. Even Clayborne’s childhood nurse was brought before the bench, and found guilty of inciting treason on the part of her infant charge.

As an apprentice lawyer, I knew that the treason laws were severe, and that guilty verdicts were all but inevitable in many cases, but that such verdicts were intended to be mitigated by the monarch’s prerogative of mercy. Berlauda had the authority to pardon any of those convicted, or to alter the sentence to one less severe; but she almost never intervened in these cases, and the result was executions nearly every day. A forest of pikes sprouted around Clayborne, each with its grisly fruit.

The remains of Clayborne’s army were tried by a military court headed by the Knight Marshal. As they had all been found in arms against the Queen, the verdict was never in doubt. One in ten, chosen by lot, was to be executed, and the survivors branded on the cheek with a T for Treason, after which they would be enslaved for ten years, to work in the Queen’s silver mines in the Minnith Peaks, to maintain harbors, erect buildings, and harvest timber from the royal forests. Few, I guessed, would survive this hard labor.

Berlauda was beginning her reign with a massacre. I wondered what Priscus would think, strolling up to the Hall of Justice to find himself face-to-face with the decaying, eyeless evidence of his bride’s implacable will.

If he had any sense, he would jump back on his boat and row for home as fast as he could.

Priscus was sailing in a galley along the Dordelle from Bretlynton Head, but ahead of him came the Duke and Duchess of Roundsilver across the Cordillerie from Longfirth, and bringing with them Roundsilver’s Players to declaim the patriotic pageant of The Red Horse in the old Aekoi theater. I paid a call on their graces when I saw they’d arrived, and was invited one afternoon to what is called a banquet. A banquet is not a meal, for no meat is served, but instead nuts and sweets and cakes were laid on a board for our pleasure, and wine was served by the steward at the cup-board. Blackwell was present, but he had come down with a quinsy on the journey, and he now wrapped his throat with flannel and could barely speak. He ate nothing, drank only tisanes, and was as great a picture of misery as you could imagine. The duchess fluttered about him to make sure he was comfortable, the kindest nurse in all the world.

The duke at one point took me aside, and said, “You wrote that you were leaving Selford, but we were greatly surprised to hear that you had joined the army.”

“I surprised myself in that very choice,” said I. “But the army and I have now parted, and I stand before you an ordinary subject of the Crown, one who no longer rises early to the sound of trumpets, and can sleep as late as he pleases.”

“You will want to hear news of Lord Stayne,” said the duke. “The Chancellor and I contrived to send him a warning, that any further pursuit of vengeance by him would not be viewed favorably by her majesty. I know not whether he heeded the warning, but perhaps in the last months he has had time to reflect, and come to a more civil attitude in the matter.”

“I thank your grace for your kind intervention,” said I.

“You may also wish to know that Lady Stayne is delivered of a son,” said the duke, with rather more care than usual, for he actually pronounced the r in “delivered.” “Stayne has an heir, and perhaps he will refrain from any action that might tend to place his son’s rights in jeopardy. Certainly, if Stayne were attainted for violence, his son would lose all property and titles.”

I considered that this was as likely a settlement as I was ever to receive, and I said so. “And how is Lady Stayne?” I asked. “For she is blameless in all of this, so far as I can tell.”

“Her ladyship survived the birth,” said the duke. “More than that I cannot say, but she is in the bloom of youth, and I’m sure cannot help but thrive.”

“I cannot help but be glad,” I said. I thought that perhaps we were speaking in a kind of code, the duke to reassure me of Amalie’s health without acknowledging in speech the interest that I might have in her well-being. I was grateful for the knowledge, yet I hoped there was no great speculation abroad concerning my connection with Amalie, for Stayne’s feud had no doubt caused enough interest on the part of the court.

Priscus arrived two days later, his grand galley sweeping up the Dordelle to the ponderous beat of kettledrums. The population thronged the green river-lawns to see him, but I did rather better, for I went to the boat-house of the Baron of Havre-le-Creag, fitted out the baron’s galley, and crewed it with some of the Cannoneers drawn from those who would not be firing salutes on that day. So, we swept out very grandly onto the lake in a boat of bright blue, trimmed with white and accented with gold leaf, and followed the prince as he approached the water-gardens around the palace. The prince himself I viewed through my spyglass, and I found him swarthy and dark-haired, with both hair and beard cropped shorter than was the current fashion in Duisland. He had a vast, beaky nose, like the prow of a ship. He wore a glittering doublet of royal purple, slashed to allow the white satin of his shirt to gleam through the openings, and a conical hat with two feathers, the red and gold of Duisland, as a compliment to his bride. He wore a short cape of white samite trimmed with purple.

In fact, conical hats and short capes seemed to be universal among the Lorettans. Priscus and his gentlemen formed a glittering company, and seeing them all together made me realize that they stood in a somewhat different manner than we men of Duisland. For we stand square, with the weight on both feet, but these Lorettans had one foot before and the other behind, and seemed to arch forward, so that their breastbones were well to the front, with their hips, shoulders, and heads drawn back. The conical hats and short capes seemed designed to call attention to this posture. They made an elegant sight, curved like so many yew bows set up on the forecastle of the galley, and I wondered if this stance was one that would soon be adopted as the fashion by our own nation.

Among this group were monks of the Pilgrim, but monks unlike any I had seen before. The monks in Duisland wore robes of unbleached wool, but these wore robes in brilliant colors, scarlets and blues and verdant greens; and they wore gold also, belts and prayer beads and amulets. Certainly, they seem to have transcended certain notions of humility and poverty.

The Lorettan galley swept up to the quay built by the water-gardens, and a royal salute banged out from batteries set up by the lakefront. I could see Captain Lipton bustling about in his battery, and signaling each of his guns to fire at the appropriate time.

The Queen waited, serene as ever, on a white palfrey, and Priscus disembarked, swept off his hat, and kissed her hand. Another white steed was brought forward for Priscus, and the two rode off together into the water-gardens, and were lost from sight.

Days of festival followed, and the Lorettan gentlemen, with their capes and curved posture, were seen everywhere in town. There were jousts in which the knights of Duisland fought those of Loretto, and the victor was judged to be Lorenso d’Abrez, one of the prince’s followers, who skillfully broke lance after lance. A water-organ was placed on a boat, and anchored in the river to play a concert for the town. There were horse-races and prize-fights, and a piper sat outside every tavern to provide music for dancing. Blackwell’s masque, The Triumph of Virtue, was performed in the ancient theater, with the nobles of both nations playing parts in their own glittering costumes. Castinatto reprised his role as the villain, and little Floria again played Virtue, but her acting this time was more lively, as if she realized that mocking her sister, as she had at Kingsmere, was no longer wise.

All those heads on pikes before the Hall of Justice would, no doubt, agree with her.

This was the first time a masque had been performed in public rather than privately at the court, and two thousand of Howel’s citizens, who were admitted without charge, watched the performance with astonishment.

A few days later, there was a regatta on the lake, in which His Grace of Roundsilver’s galley took the laurel of victory from a young woman dressed as a Mermaid. The sight of a woman in Mermaid costume brought to mind the last sweet night in Ethlebight, and in an instant I felt a great swell of sadness, while tears stung my eyes. I wondered where Annabel Greyson was now, in what horrid picture of captivity I might find her, and then I thought of my family, and the thousands of others who had been carried away. I felt that no matter how well I had done, no matter what successes were laid to my account, I had lost much more than I had won.

After this, I went for a long walk to the town, drank a few mugs of ale, listened to some music, and tried to abolish the melancholy that had crept over me. I met with but light success, and when I returned, I found a carriage waiting outside my residence. No sooner had I come into sight than the Count of Wenlock burst from it, shouting.

“There you are!” he roared. “I wanted to see you!” He arrived in front of me, and waved a finger at my face. “I wanted to see the man who traduced my son! I wanted to see what sort of monster it is who steals my son’s victory, and claims it for his own!”

Surprised beyond measure, I stared at Wenlock as he shouted at me, and then managed to gather my wits for a reply.

“I have done nothing of the kind! Whoever has told you this has lied!”

“It is you who have lied!” cried the count. He brandished a fist. “You have been spreading slanders behind my back, and trying to claim the victory at Exton Scales for your own! You will never succeed, do you hear me? I will crush you, and reveal the truth to all!”

I was on the verge of summoning another denial when he turned and marched back to his carriage, after which he spun about again. “A statue!” he shouted, stamping on the ground. “A damned statue!”

I watched the vehicle disappear in a cloud of dust, then walked into the house in a daze, Wenlock’s shouts still ringing in my head. There I met Captain Lipton, who whooped at the sight of me.

“Congratulations, youngster!” he said, and waved a paper. “Your future is made, and I have made it!”

I was more intent on Wenlock’s hostile arrival than on Lipton’s fancies, and I tried to explain what had just occurred in the road outside the house, and Lipton thumped me on the shoulder.

“It is the honors list published this morning, and posted by the heralds!” he said. “You have been made a knight for your actions at Exton Scales, and given a manor!”

I looked at the list as he brandished it before my eyes. There I saw that for valorous and meritorious service in time of war, Quillifer the Younger of Ethlebight was to be made a knight bachelor, and awarded the manor of Dunnock, in the shire of Hurst Downs.

“Where is Hurst Downs?” I asked, completely baffled.

“I care not!” Lipton proclaimed. “It matters only that I have got it for you!”

“How have you—” I began, but could go no further. I was beyond words, for this matter was beyond all sense.

“I remind you that you twice promised me a bottle of claret on the field of Exton Scales,” said Lipton. “You have never made good your promise, and I think it is time you did. For we must drink to your advancement, and this speedily!”

My head spun, but the easiest thing to do was surrender to the moment. “Let us go then to the buttery of my lord Havre-le-Creag,” I said, “and I will fill my promise directly.”