innocent, flame-haired giantess as tightly as Lord Montfallcon had tied her to his Duty.

Montfallcon was on the balcony again. He had emerged to listen to Ernest Wheldrake’s verses, but now he felt alarm as he watched the merry Court surround and fetter his Ideal (for all that the chains were made of daisies and silk), and he shuddered deeply as he restrained his impulse to rush down into the park and shout for them to release her. He controlled himself, took a deep breath and smiled at his stupidity. Sir Tancred would emerge from the palace at any moment, after the Queen had spoken her lines, and free her. This time their lines would be by Master Wallis, Secretary for the High Tongue. (Montfallcon found them dry and sterile in comparison with Master Wheldrake’s.)

“Is there no noble knight of Chivalry

Who’ll come to set the May Queen free?”

cried Gloriana, and looked expectantly towards the door into the park through which her Champion must emerge.

Sir Tancred did not appear.

The Countess of Scaith found that she had grown alert, suddenly, and wondered why. Perhaps it was that Sir Tancred, always eager to represent the Queen in these familiar roles, was inclined to enter the scene too early rather than too late.

Gloriana shook her head and sang out her couplet for a second time.

There was a silence now. Water could be heard dropping from the surrounding trees, from the boards of the high Tree Walk. The rustling movement of the fallow deer gave emphasis to the general stillness. The sun disappeared.

And into that hushed, bewildered throng, Sir Tancred staggered. He wore no golden helmet and his golden, fanciful armour was only half buckled. Loose plates flapped about him and clattered as he walked.

Lady Lyst’s high, gasping scream was echoed by more than one other in the company.

“Sir Tancred!” The Queen tried to struggle out of the bonds, but she was completely trapped.

There were bloody smears on Tancred’s golden armour. There was blood on his face, on his moustaches, and on his hands. Tears sprang from his staring eyes and his red mouth gaped as if pain turned him dumb.

The Countess of Scaith was first to reach him, to take his arm. “Sir Tancred. What has happened?”

The Queen’s Champion groaned and heaved words out of him. “She is dead,” he said. “The Lady Mary. I have…I have come…Oh, she is murdered!”

“Free me!” cried Gloriana, struggling from behind them, the great pole swaying. “Free me, someone!”

THE SEVENTEENTH CHAPTER

In Which Lord Montfallcon Begins to Fear a Return of Terror and the Queen Begins to Question the Value of the Virtuous Myth

It has been thirteen years,” said Lord Montfallcon distantly, “since I have seen so much blood.” He looked down at Lady Mary Perrott’s head, half-severed at the neck, at Sir Tancred’s sword, which had created the wound, and he was sad, not for the girl who had died so terribly, nor for Sir Tancred for his sin, but for the security of his great dream. Vice had been discovered to be disguised as Chivalry. He was resentful of both the killer and the killed, who so ominously disturbed a harmony he had maintained with such fortitude since Gloriana’s accession.

Lord Ingleborough, gasping in his formal wear-with casque and breastplate squeezing throat and chest and threatening to bring another heart attack upon him-still uncertain as to what had taken place, said: “Why should Tancred destroy her? It is frequently jealousy, of course, which makes a man go mad….”

Montfallcon was impatient of his old friend’s platitudes. “I must report to the Queen. Is Sir Tancred restrained?”

“Lord Rhoone took him.”

“He must be questioned.”

“He is mad.” Ingleborough sat himself weightily upon one of the few chairs which were still standing upright, for Lady Mary’s room was all wreckage. “Oh, the poor child. And gay. A favourite of the Queen’s. The Queen…?”

“She is in her apartments,” said Lord Montfallcon with a sigh. “The Countess comforts her, most likely. The Perrotts are one of the most powerful families in the land. They will need more than a conventional explanation for what has happened here.”

“We’ll try him, eh? In the old secret court.” Ingleborough mopped his head. He was sweating, perhaps with fever.

“If the Queen allows it. But I see no good can be served by undue punishment. He can be confined to apartments in Bran’s Tower. Where Prince Lamartis is-and those two nobles brought us by the Thane of Hermiston.”

“But Tancred’s no outland lunatic.”

“Bran’s Tower. ‘Tis best,” said Montfallcon firmly.

“If he’s guilty.” Ingleborough stooped, grunting and feeble, and attempted to pick up the sword, but he could not lift it. It fell back upon the blood-soaked damask of Mary’s dress.

“Who else?” Montfallcon said. “In Hern’s time there might have been an hundred to suspect. Now there are none. I am fearful, Lisuarte.” With a final, disapproving glance at the young girl’s corpse, Lord Montfallcon began to move through the apartment, a surviving ship sailing through carnage after a sea-fight. Ingleborough hauled himself out of it, like a weary, beaten beast.

“You are unwell.” Lord Montfallcon gave his friend an arm. They stood in the corridor where green-clad Patch, a little faun, awaited them. “Patch, take your master home. Sleep, Lisuarte. Be firm with him, Patch.” He smiled at the handsome boy.

“Aye, sir.”

“You’ll accompany me?” enquired Lisuarte Ingleborough, gripping Patch’s slender shoulders and looking back at his friend. “Eh?”

“I must to the Queen to make my report.”

“The Quintain is cancelled, then?”

Montfallcon was dry. “Aye, since the chief participant, the Champion, is indisposed.”

Lord Ingleborough shrugged. “The Quintain is all I care for in these entertainments. And even those are tame compared to the Tilts of my youth.”

“By the Queen’s command we mourn, all of us, for Lady Mary.”

“Aha!” Ingleborough retreated.

Lord Montfallcon wondered if he, too, had become a dotard. He looked sadly after his hobbling friend.

“My lord?” It was Wheldrake, half-stripped of his feathers, his bird-mask under his arm. “Is Lady Mary truly murdered?”

“Aye.”

“By whom?” The poet’s voice was so high as to be almost inaudible. “By Tancred?”

“It would seem so. His sword. Her throat.”

“Hermes!”

Lord Montfallcon put a steady hand on the tiny poet’s twitching shoulder. “A funeral ode, perhaps, eh, Wheldrake? The Court’s in mourning from this hour, by order of the Queen.”

“She was a child. Sixteen summers.” Wheldrake trembled. “A merry child. And she loved Sir Tancred so, with such innocence. They were model lovers, we thought, and happy friends. She gave him all.”

“But not enough for the romantic soul, perhaps. Such as Sir Tancred demand a response as intense as their own. Recall how he burns to serve the Queen. His belief in Chivalry is absolute. It is why such as he are so often rejected, so often thwarted or wounded in love. Too passionate, too furious in their loyalty…”

“No,” said Wheldrake, “she was killed by another, I’d swear.”

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