The archmagus had taken my threats to heart, I saw, and that was wise of him.
‘Aye, that’s good.’
A fanfare of trumpets sounded then, and I turned to see the Princess Crown Royal being led into the room between two of the burly nuns who seemed to attend her everywhere. Her eyes were huge in her face and she had a jittery, nervous look about her now that had been entirely absent when she knighted me.
Vogel’s hand tightened on his glass until his knuckles went white.
‘Doctors,’ he hissed, in the way one might have said ‘traitors’.
‘A mild stimulant, Ailsa told me,’ I said.
‘That’s what we told the fools,’ Vogel said. ‘Gods be good! You’ll have to speak to her, having just been knighted. There’s no way around it. If her idiot father had only kept her away from the funeral. Once more we must adapt and move on.’
After a time Lord Vogel took me by the elbow and led me through the crowd. The nuns saw us coming and steered their young charge towards us so that I could be formally presented to the princess at last.
‘Your Highness,’ Lord Vogel said. ‘May I present Sir Tomas of Ellinburg.’
I looked down at her, at this child-woman with pupils like tea bowls, and I bowed low.
‘Your Highness,’ I said.
‘Sir Tomas,’ she said, reciting perfectly tutored words. She spoke as though in a slow dream, although I noticed a slight tremor in her hands. I thought perhaps the two different drugs she had been given might not be entirely agreeing with each other. ‘A pleasure to make your acquaintance. Have we been introduced before?’
She had already forgotten knighting me not two hours earlier, I realised.
‘No, but I saw you once before, Highness,’ I said. ‘At a reception you gave in the previous summer. You had perhaps eleven years then.’
‘What an honour for you,’ she said. ‘Did I look divine?’
I swallowed, and couldn’t help but feel some pity for this unwell little girl.
‘If I may, Highness, it seemed to me that you must have been in a great deal of discomfort. The weight of the gown and the headdress seemed . . . excessive, for one so young.’
‘Beauty is pain, Sir Tomas,’ she said, ‘and pain . . . is beauty. When I come into my crown I shall have monuments to beauty built throughout the land. Beautiful . . . suffering. I remember you. You were with the shining boy. My mother shone, you know. She shone like a star.’
She turned and swept away without another word, her nuns trailing helplessly in her wake.
She’s got the cunning in her. She’s very, very strong.
Was this what the country faced? An insane witch-queen on the throne, building monuments to pain and suffering throughout the land. It didn’t bear thinking about. I could only watch with mounting dread as she made her way across the ballroom towards where Billy stood at the windows with Ailsa and Anne.
‘Oh gods,’ I said, as I saw them turn to face her and offer bows and curtseys.
Anne bowed, I noticed, the same as Billy did, while Ailsa spread her skirts and dropped a low curtsey.
‘Ailsa will handle it,’ Vogel said, but I noticed that he couldn’t drag his gaze away either and I knew that meant he was every bit as worried as I was.
Words were exchanged, and I don’t know exactly what was said, but after a minute or two the princess departed with her retinue in tow. All the same she had taken Billy aside, away from Anne and Ailsa, who were kept occupied by the nuns, and she had spoken to him for longer than she had me. I didn’t think that was a good thing.
Once we had finally been able to leave and were safely in our carriage and on our way back to the Bountiful Harvest, I asked him what she had said.
‘She asked me who I was,’ Billy said, ‘and I told her I was master William Piety, as Mama taught me was the proper way to introduce myself to the highborn. My name’s Billy, though, so I don’t know why, but that’s what I told her.’
‘Aye, well done, lad,’ I said. ‘And what did she say to that?’
‘Nothing, at first,’ he said. ‘Then she told me that I shone.’
‘Do cunning people shine, Billy?’ I asked him. ‘When you look at them, I mean?’
‘Yes,’ he said, and looked embarrassed for a moment. ‘That’s how I know.’
‘And she shines too, does she? The princess, I mean?’
‘Yes, Da, she shines bright as the sun. Like I said, she’s very, very strong. Stronger than Mina, even. Sorry. Papa, I mean.’
‘Ah, call me what you like, lad,’ I said. ‘When your ma’s not around to tell us both off for it, anyway. You did well with the princess, and I’m proud of you.’
‘Thanks, Da,’ Billy said, and he gave me a grin that left me no option but to hug him.
I thought about the Princess Crown Royal, and what might happen when she came into her crown.
Stronger than Mina, even. It really didn’t bear thinking about one little bit.
I could only hope that whatever the Queen’s Men were drugging her with, they had a fucking lot of it.
Chapter 17
A month passed in Dannsburg, and I began to notice a pattern to what we were doing. Lord Vogel signed the arrest warrants seemingly at random, rooting out corruption here and sedition there, but I came to see that there was nothing random about it at all.
The matter of the queen’s death was done with now, I had thought, that first time I went to the palace with Ailsa.
I had been wrong about that.
Of course, I had written to Jochan shortly after we took up lodgings at the Bountiful Harvest, to let him know where I was. That week his first report arrived by messenger from Ellinburg.
Tomas,
I hope city life is treating you well, that you’re behaving yourself and
