“Well, what d’you think? Got ’im, eh?”
“But I don’t know who you’re talking about,” she said. “A rival poet? Really, Wheldrake, you become increasingly obscure and decreasingly inventive as times goes on.”
“No! It’s him!
“You, too. And I don’t know
“Damn him!” Wheldrake stalked, as best he could, through the rubble of her room. Parrots and macaws cackled and fled for the thicker growths of ivy near the ceiling. “He’s rich-because he panders to the public. Makes ’em think they’re intelligent! Bah! While I’m here, forever, dependent on the Queen’s patronage, when all I want is her respect.”
“She said how much she liked the last Masque, and Montfallcon murmured of an imminent knighthood.”
“I’m wasting my time, Lucinda, writing indifferent attacks on rival poets, self-pitying verse against women who’ve rejected me, and earning my keep by writing elephantine, grandiloquent farts to be performed by the Court’s Philistines. My poetry, my old poetry, is slipping away from me. I lack stimulus.”
“Arioch, Wheldrake! I’d have thought you’d have had enough of that to last you through a hundred sonnets at least!”
He frowned and began his return flight, ink from his pen splashing upon her upturned chests and draperies, her half-read metaphysical tomes, crumpling the paper as he came. “I told you. No more scourges.”
She turned again to the window. She was neutral. “Perhaps you should return to your North country to your borders?”
“Where I’m even more misunderstood. I’d considered a journey to Arabia. I have an affinity I believe, with Arabia. What did you think of the Grand Caliph?”
“Well, he was very Arabian. He had a good opinion of himself, I think.” Lady Lyst vaguely scratched her ribs.
“He was confident.”
“Aye, he was that.” She yawned.
“He impressed the Queen, you could tell, with his exotic sensuality. So much more than poor, bumbling Poland.”
“She was kind to Poland,” said Lady Lyst.
“Yet both departed, frustrated in their ambitions, with Albion unconquered. They made the mistake of laying siege when they should have delivered themselves as captives at her feet.”
Lucinda Lyst was dry. “You invent a Gloriana for yourself, I think. There’s no evidence…”
He blushed so that skin and hair were, for one radiant moment, of the same colour. He began to uncrumple his satire. A maid came in. “A visitor, your ladyship. The Thane.”
“Good. It’s the Thane, Wheldrake. A fellow countryman.”
“Scarcely.” Wheldrake sniffed and came to join her on the window seat, lounging a little theatrically, unaware that he had exposed a scrawny knee.
Gaunt but hearty, in strode the Thane of Hermiston, in flapping philibeg and monstrous bonnet, his sporran slapping and his hands already on his hips as he jutted out his red beard and grinned down at the couple. “Ye’re a pretty pair, just fresh from yer beds, eh, like lazy kittens. Well, well, well!”
Wheldrake brandished his accomplishment. “I have been writing, sir, a poem!” His voice squeaked with passionate indignation. “It has taken me all morning!”
“Oh, has it indeed? It has taken
Lady Lyst clapped her hands once, then paused, startled by the sound. “And what have you brought back from those metaphysical regions?”
“Your usual rude romances?” Wheldrake was sceptical. “Tales of gods and demons, of swords and sorcery?”
The Thane of Hermiston ignored the jibes. “I thought I’d captured a beast, but when I arrived here, it was gone. I intend, later, to confer with Master Tolcharde, who invented the carriage in which I travelled to those spheres.”
“A carriage pulled by spirits, eh?” said Wheldrake. “The spirits which drugged you and made you dream.”
The Thane laughed heartily. “I like ye, Master Wheldrake, for ye’re a fine sceptic, like meself I’d brought this beast, I told you. A great reptile. A veritable dragon. ‘Tis called an aligarta.”
“Virginia has them in her southern counties,” said Master Wheldrake. “They swarm in the swamps and rivers. Huge beasts. I have seen one stuffed. Like the Tigris crockodyl.”
“But this is bigger,” said the Thane, and sulked. “Or was,” he added. “Master Tolcharde’s carriage rocked and roared so, and I’d swear its invisible attendants played tricks upon the poor mortal they escorted. I caught my head a terrible blow, having already battled two demi-gods and survived unscathed.”
“By Hermes, sir, I’ll never know if you believe it all, inspired by that foul distilled grain you drink, or if you lie because you think it entertains.”
The Thane took this well. “Neither, Master Poet-it’s simpler. I tell the truth. I had a unicorn, too, but it was eaten by the aligarta.”
“You journey through lands that are nought but mere metaphors! The sort we poets can invent daily!”
“But I’m no poet to invent such places. I visit ’em, instead. Lady Lyst, d’ye come with me to Master Tolcharde’s manufactory?”
“I’ll dress.”
“I’ll come too.” Wheldrake was jealous, though he knew the friendship was innocent. “Unless there are secrets the chosen alone may share.”
“There are no secrets, Master Wheldrake-only knowledge. It is the open knowledge men always reject, though they look everywhere for secrets.”
As they dressed, the Thane poked about the room, picking up half-written theses, abandoned by Lady Lyst, opening books of philosophy and mathematicks and history, on alchemy and astronomy, being interested by none of them. He was a man of action. He preferred to test a metaphysical guess with the point of his sword if possible. Out they came again, Lady Lyst in rumpled blue silk, Master Wheldrake in black velvet, the pleats of his ruff unstarched and hanging loose around his throat, and they followed the gaudy Thane as he marched from the apartments, through the royal corridors, up the royal staircases, along the royal galleries, until they reached an older part of the palace, the East Wing, and could detect acrid smells, as of smelting iron and cooking chemicals, took one wide, near-derelict marble staircase, two flights of granite steps, and came to a gallery hung with faded lace, with a great dusty fanlight above it, to let in the morning’s watery rays, to a tall door which, in contrast to the roof and columns of the gallery, was cast in an ancient near-barbaric mould, the pointed style, with pitted timber, brass and black iron.
Upon this the Thane of Hermiston flung a fist, so that it shook and rattled and was opened almost immediately by a bespectacled, blinking youth, one of Master Tolcharde’s many apprentices, in leather apron and shirt-sleeves, whose scowl cleared as he recognised the Thane. “Good morning, sir.”
“Good morning to ye, Colvin. Is your master at his business or can we enter?”
“He’s expecting you I think, sir.” Young Colvin stepped aside and they all filed in, to dusty gloom, while he closed the door carefully behind them and locked it. A little smoke drifted into the ante-chamber, almost as if brought by curiosity to spy upon the visitors. Yellowed astrological tables peeled on the walls, while below them were stacked dusty, unused boxes and books. The smell was more intense, and Wheldrake began to cough, putting
