Weaver, Leda and the Swan, all at odds in mood and style and no consolation to a chaotic mind.
“The evidence is against it.” Lord Rhoone stood between reassuring Queen and despairing Countess, anxious at once to be soothed and to soothe. The solution was natural and cheered him. “I must return to them.”
“May we meet this seer and reward him?” The Queen smiled as Rhoone bent his leg, preparatory to leaving.
Lord Rhoone scratched his head. “He’s gone-perhaps back to his own sphere. He did not linger for thanks. A good man. A true follower of Asclepius.”
The Queen frowned. “Let us hope he comes again. I’ll speak to Doctor Dee. Have him invited, Una.”
“I’ll enquire,” promised her Private Secretary, grateful for a duty to perform. “I’ll speak to Doctor Dee today, Your Majesty.”
Lord Rhoone bowed twice while behind him a footman opened the door, then closed it gently on the two women.
“Lady Castora and her children’s escape has excited your blood and put you in poor humour.” Gloriana came to her friend. The Queen was evidently also weary.
Too much nobility all round, thought Una, created over-refined sensibilities, pitched like tight-strung instruments and prone to snapping. And yet she could not confide her fears to the Queen, for all that her silence produced unspecific yet significant pauses in the conversation which gave Gloriana doubts and thus increased her own imaginings. So she replied: “It has, madam.”
“You’d best return to bed and rest. It’s my intention to do the same. My night…Well.” A stiffening: further recourse to Lethe. Una had no more sympathy. Her fears for the Rhoones had exhausted her for the moment, though she felt guilt from being unable to console the human creature she loved most in the world. It was best for her to leave, for she suspected her mood drained the Queen. “I will, madam. I thank you and pray we’ll both be recovered by this afternoon. Then I’ll make enquiries of Doctor Dee and seek out this foreign philosopher. I’ll bring him to you, if I can. With all speed.”
“Mayhap we can encourage him to divine some of our other mysteries.” Gloriana spoke seriously. She kissed the Countess. They parted.
Una of Scaith returned to her apartments, noting how merrier was the general mood of the Presence Chambers as she went through, and wishing that she could share in the atmosphere; resisting her impulse to warn them of the danger she guessed threatened the whole Court but which she could not name. She saw the outer palace as the surface of a sunny lovely pool in which bright little goldfish swam, unaware of the lurking predator in unseen weedy deeps.
Now that Lord Rhoone, from mercy, could not be recruited to help flush the monster, she yet feared to seek allies elsewhere; none at this moment could be trusted for silence. And discretion, though her temperament hated it as that which destroyed more than it protected, was of the greatest necessity until Tallow’s murderer and, she was certain, Lady Mary’s was identified. She must have perfect proof and knowledge of where to strike, or he’d be lost again, in those secret, unwholesome tunnels; escaped forever. She took the wide curving Queen’s Staircase, on which courtiers, including sir Amadis Cornfield and Master Auberon Orme, passed the time of day, wittily and cheerfully, down to her own lodgings’ lower floor, there to dismiss Elizabeth Moffett and her other maids, changing into the costume she had come to associate with her foreboding and her fresh-discovered melancholy: her hose and doublet, her sword and boots. The weapons could be used (she added two daggers to her belt), for she had been trained in arms as a girl in Scaith and more than once, an Amazon in full armour, had entertained the Queen in the Accession Day Tilt. This year she was to play the Peasant Knight in Sir Tancred’s stead. She dismissed these expectations, went to her writing desk, considered a note, then left quill on empty paper, and pushed the chair to the place it had occupied when Tallow came through. There were bloodstains to be seen, still, on the tapestry, if the eye sought for them. She pulled away the grille, considered putting it on the bed, then remembered discretion.
From a basket brought by a maternal Elizabeth Moffett, the little black-and-white cat mewed, as if to warn her. She stroked his head, pondering the problem of leaving an unwanted trail. She took a long cord from one of the bed curtains and tied it to the grille, looping the other tasselled end about her wrist. Then she returned to the chair, a candle and flint and tinder in her purse, to stand there, to put her hands upon the ledge, to scramble, feet snagging in the tapestry so that, to her dismay, it came partially loose from its moorings. But she was up and would have to risk the tapestry’s clue. She squeezed through the hole, the grille bumping and following behind on the cord, to clatter against the gap as she passed down the tunnel. In dust and rubble she wriggled on until the passage widened and she could turn, drawing the cord to close the panel and securing the loose end to a piece of jutting beam which stuck from the stones. Her means of entry disguised and her means of return assured, she continued in darkness for a while, moving by memory along the route that last night brought the dying Tallow to her.
She lit a cautious candle and found herself in the narrow passage, able to stand upright. She wished she had thought to bring a dark lantern, for the candle could betray her. She crept on a short distance, then drew her sword. This action reassured her. The balance of the steel in her hand gave her the illusion of invulnerability, and thus she progressed on lighter feet until she reached the gallery with its little prison chambers off to one side, where the carvings seemed no longer quaint, but menacing. More tunnels, another gallery and then, leading from this landing, a stairway into a wide, dark, deserted hall which might, two or three centuries earlier, have led to an outer door. Mistaking this for the hall to which Tallow had led her and the Queen, she descended the stair to a midway landing, then peered over. The hall was smaller than she had imagined, and unused. Albino rats rose on hindquarters to stare at her with pink, unfrightened eyes.
She began to return up the shivering staircase, to find her bearings. There came some scufflings, which she ignored, ascribing them to the rats. She heard a whisper which could be either human or bestial in origin, but it was of a sort she had detected on previous adventures, so she was not discouraged. However, she made the light of the candle fall on her blade, in case malicious eyes watched and considered attack. She noted another glint at the top of the stair and then she felt her heart’s beat increase.
“Eh?”
She raised her flame. A glimpse of silver. Her voice echoed from below, as if changelings mocked her, readying themselves to replace her. Then blackness was utter again.
She paused, realising the foolhardiness of this venture into the walls. She should have slept first. She should have sought advice, if only from Wheldrake and Lady Lyst. They would have accompanied her, too. But she could trust neither to be level-headed: one too imaginative, the other too drunk. This need to know what had killed Tallow could betray her to her own death. Yet there was nothing to fear from the wretches she had seen. What if one had murdered Tallow? What if another, or the same, had killed Lady Mary when detected, as Una thought, in some crime? Her head, like a mine-stream, ran clear and then cloudy again, moment by moment. She began to tremble. She considered her danger: Tallow had not been armed as she was now armed; Lady Mary had not been armed at all. The nomads of the walls would be in awe of a gentleman with a sword. They were not courageous, on evidence, for why else would they be in hiding here?
“What?”
The echoes seemed to increase. More shadows gathered at her back. She was at last upon the boards of the gallery again and moving forward. She felt the presences fall away and she was alone once more, calling herself a fool, panicked by childish fancy.
Then a slender, ragged figure was revealed by her candlelight, shielding eyes, gibbering as it retreated. “No!”
It was gone. A creaking hinge sounded from somewhere.
If this were a fair example of the enemy, she was much encouraged. She moved more swiftly through the passages, ignoring doors on either side of her as she sought the large hall again.
The passage opened out and she saw that she stood in a stairwell. The staircase zig-zagged up, storey upon storey, and through the rococo railings faces peered, as prisoners from bars, regarding her with frank but neutral curiosity. The faces were oddly distorted, not by the filigree of the banisters but in keeping with their bodies. She realised that she was observed by a large tribe of dwarves, male and female, children and youths, which she had disturbed in some progress between the floors, for they all bore bundles and packs. She became relaxed and smiled up at them. “Good morrow to you!”
Her voice’s echoes were high, now, like tremolo’d viol notes, and were sweet to her ears. Several of the
