more than is true, as a man will become drunk on his own poetry and add substance to his stories and thus maintain the song.”
Montfallcon sat down behind his desk. Patch ran for the lackeys to bear away his master’s chair. Tom Ffynne stood beside the empty fireplace and listened to the ticking, to the grinding levers, of the clock above his head.
When Lord Ingleborough had gone, Sir Thomasin Ffynne looked down at his remaining friend. “There can be no more killing, Perion. Another death here and our plans are defeated forever.”
“I’ve killed nobody. Not the ones Ingleborough speaks of, at any rate.”
“I said nought of culprits.” Tom Ffynne stretched himself. “Besides, in conscience, I can’t imitate Lisuarte’s tone. I’ve done my share. And come adrift. This last venture was a stupid trick and I’ll not sail out again. I’m shorebound from now on. I merely said we must have no more. We must see to it that there is no more. We clear the air, Perion. We must bring back the light. We must make the Queen happy. For all our sakes. It cannot be done with the old ways of iron.”
“What other ways are there?” Montfallcon sulked, but he did not deny, in his stance, the truth of Ffynne’s words. “Iron threatens: iron defends.”
“Gold defends, too.”
“We pay our way clear? That’s never worked in all history!”
“Golden ideas.” Sir Tom laughed at himself. “Golden dreams. It’s what we’ve lived on, you and I, for many years. Golden faith.”
Montfallcon agreed. “The Queen responded. She brought us back our faith for a little while. It seemed that all was well again. Then the Countess of Scaith is proven a murderess and the Queen crumbles. She’s been moping ever since. She’ll see no one. Count Korzeniowski wishes an audience on important matters concerning Poland- perhaps he wishes her to stop this duel, for he loves his Casimir. Oubacha Khan talks openly of Tatar armies gathering at Arabia’s borders while spreading rumours, got from his crony, Lady Yashi, that Lady Lyst and Master Wheldrake aided in Perrott’s murder and threw his body down a disused well, so now Lyst and Wheldrake go fearful for their lives, lest the Perrotts catch the rumour.”
“You believe them innocent?”
“Aye. Those two have no murder in them.”
“There’s gossip of perversity.”
“Mild. I know his tastes. He would be chastised by the Queen every day, and Lady Lyst’s his substitute. And her taste’s for nought but wine. The Queen could make such gossip disappear, but she will not. She has not carried her sceptre for more than a week. She has not received ambassadors. She has not entered the Audience Chamber. She refuses to listen to me. And now there comes a deputation of Saracens, some fifty strong, to speak urgently- doubtless on the same matter as Korzeniowski-and she spurns them, virtually insults them, and they wait daily in the Second Presence Chamber-all etched steel and warlike battle-silks (though they bear no weapons), like an army giving siege.”
“The Countess of Scaith. If she were found?”
“She’s gone for good.”
“You’re prejudiced against her.”
“So I am. But I can read character. She was softening the Queen.”
“The Queen believes now that she was a traitoress?” Ffynne was perplexed.
“The Queen says nothing to me.”
“She thinks you deceive her, Perion, perhaps?”
“Perhaps.”
“Does Ingleborough have her ear?”
“He dodders.”
“He did not today.”
“He has spoken some conventional comfort to her, Tom, but she dismissed him, also. Apparently she half suspects that the Countess of Scaith was murdered, too. She thinks the blood in the room was her friend’s.”
“Could it not be?”
“There would have been signs of a struggle.”
“And no signs of Perrott’s death, then?” Ffynne was sceptical of the theory.
“The whole mystery has been debated.” Montfallcon rose slowly. “She had all the time in the calendar to make sure she was not detected in Perrott’s death. She would not flee unless she felt suspected. Would she?”
“But was she suspected?”
“By me. I have always been suspicious of her.”
“And no news of her in Scaith?”
“None. None. She’ll be abroad. She has estates everywhere. Some even say the Emperor of Tatary is her lover.”
Tom Ffynne wiped his face with his sleeve. “The Queen needs support, Perion. If she’ll not accept it from me, she’ll find it elsewhere. Una of Scaith was her closest friend. Perhaps her only friend, in private life.”
“The Queen is not a private personage,” said Lord Montfallcon. “She’ll recall soon enough that Albion’s friends are her friends. It’s a simple equation.”
Sir Thomasin Ffynne pursed his lips. “It could be, my lord, that we have made our equations too simple. Where, by the by, is Doctor Dee? I should have thought he’d be pleased to comfort Her Majesty.”
“Obsessed with his experiments. He scarcely emerges from his lodgings, these days.”
“It seems we’re all divorced from her at once.” He limped towards the door. “What explanations are there for that, d’ye think, Perion?”
Montfallcon looked up. “What? You blame me, too?”
Tom Ffynne turned back to study him. “You’re quick to suspect accusation. I but asked the question, hoping that your subtler brain might find an answer.”
“I’m plagued by many questions.” Montfallcon had become ashamed of himself. “Forgive me, Tom.”
“Well, think on it. Your mission is, after all, to maintain the unity of the Court and the Realm. And the core of that unity is, as always, Gloriana. Should the core collapse, the whole structure collapses, eh?”
“I have always said so.”
“Yet we are not thinking too much of protecting the core. Of healing it, if it is wounded.” Tom Ffynne spoke kindly. “We must be gentle. She is still, in one sense at any rate, not a woman. So think of her as a child, Perion.”
But Lord Montfallcon drew in a weary breath. “The tenderness is all gone, Tom. Now there is only Duty.”
“By such means are marriages turned sour and cynical, I think.” Tom Ffynne was leaving. “But, like Lisuarte, I never married, so I’m not the best judge, perhaps.”
“I have been married many times,” said Montfallcon, his voice deepening with grief.
THE TWENTY-THIRD CHAPTER
In burning gold and blazing silver, in shimmering jet and glinting steel, in plate and chain, in surcoats of the finest rippling silk, in bright blues and reds, in greens and yellows, in purples and browns, in a dancing sea of rainbow plumes, with lances bound with samite scarves, with shields fabulously charged, with standards starched and brilliant, their horses clad as gaudily and armoured as fancifully as they, the Queen’s Jousters clattered through the wide gates into the Great Square and began their procession around the perimeter. Above them, on walls and roofs, according to ancient privilege, from four sides the commons roared and cheered their favourites. From the old balcony on the East Wing, where her father and grandfather had sat, Queen Gloriana waved to her knights, distributed roses (flung at random) and was saluted, to louder shouts and wilder huzzahs by a crowd delirious from the pageantry and the heat of high summer. Lances were raised and dipped; bucklers were displayed while heralds
