longtime member of the Saints. He flies three or four falcons and is very wealthy because of it, of course. Owns about a third of Tuscany. My present client is Cardinal Zdenek, and my duties are to dance attendance on Cabbage Head. I try to keep him from breaking his neck in the tilting yard and I keep an eye open for other Speakers trying to tweak him. That’s the most important part. Any day now he’s going to be promoted to king, and then my contract ends. I absolutely refuse to extend it, but my cadger is reluctant to leave a reigning monarch without protection.”
The juvenile seductress had totally disappeared now. The woman who remained seemed hard and glittering, reminding him of a bronze morningstar, a weapon that could extract a man’s brains without removing his helmet.
“I understood that cadger and falcon were equal partners and had to agree?”
“In theory, yes.” The marquessa took a sip of wine while keeping her gaze on Wulf, as if counting every twitch of his eyelashes. “But a cadger has the option of forbidding his falcon to use any power whatsoever. This is especially true when he flies several falcons. All she can do then is try to impale him on a rusty pike, but his other Speakers will defend him. Frankly, I want to marry and have children before I’m too old, and this is not the place to do that.”
All of which might be the truth, some of the truth, or nothing like the truth.
“Surely His Majesty has hirelings to protect him. Won’t they stay on to defend his successor?”
“Their contracts lapse, too, and they have been working twelve-hour shifts for months, just keeping the old warhorse breathing. Zdenek has a couple of his own, but the same thing applies to them. The new king’s first act is likely to be booting Zdenek into the moat, if not arresting him and charging him with treason on any fantastical excuse he can think of. The result will be no Speaker protecting the king and the king not even aware of his danger.”
Wulf was too tired to think straight. “So where do I fit in?”
Darina drained her glass and reached for the carafe. “Last week, during the hunt aingh='1em' t Chestnut Hill, your brother jumped a ditch into notoriety. A dozen fools tried to follow him and met with disaster. Two of the prince’s closest cronies have since died and more are still in plaster. Then the Spider promoted this Magnus madman to earl of Cardice! Cabbage Head saw that as a deliberate stab in his eye and threw a temper tantrum, but as a result the whole court learned for the first time about the Magnus family and its centuries of loyalty to the House of Jorgar.” She smiled cynically. “Stupid, really. If your loyalty is never in doubt, you never need bribing. It’s the shaky ones who get wooed by both sides… Never mind that.” She clattered the carafe down on the table and lifted her goblet again.
“I was hoping that your loyalty might impel you to take the new king under your wing until such time as someone with some sense takes over the kingdom-a new first minister or a warlike neighbor.”
Wulf laughed aloud and tasted the wine. “Last week I was my brother’s varlet. Now you want me to run the country?”
“Somebody will have to.”
“Me?” He grinned at her. “Wouldn’t I have to live here, in the palace? Hang around with the king? Attend court? And he blames my brother for his friends’ deaths. How do I win his trust and approval?”
He expected her to say that he could tweak his liege lord, which he would certainly never do. But that wasn’t what she suggested. “Just smile.”
“What?”
She shrugged. “Cabbage Head has a great fondness for handsome young men. When he sees your silver hair and golden eyes he’ll melt into the carpet. And those calves will make him swoon.”
“Oh, no!” Wulf sprang to his feet. “There are many ways to get burned at the stake, my lady, but sodomy is the last one I’ll ever try. I thank you for the-”
“Wait!” She rose also. “Before you make up your mind, come and pay your respects to your dying lord. He deserves that much.”
Wulf followed her to the door reluctantly, still looking for the trap. Again she expected his arm as they proceeded along a corridor, which was wide and high, floored with tiles of black and white marble, lit by candles in sconces every few feet. The plastered walls bore faded frescoes of battle and tourney.
“I know this may sound incredible in view of his reputation,” Darina said, “but the prince is practically sexless. His lechery is all bluff. I’m officially his mistress, but I swear to you that the door between our rooms stays closed. About once a month he’ll come calling, always when he’s very drunk. He’ll have a quick scramble and then go back to his own bed. I complain loudly in public about how demanding he is; that pleases him, but it’s all pig manure. As for the young men, I’m not sux20s ore he is even aware how he ogles them, although of course everyone else can see. He paws and fondles a little, but that’s as far as he ever goes. He seeks his fun in jousting and hunting. Lists and forests are his playrooms, not bedrooms. Beds are for sleeping off drinking bouts. He’s a magnificent horseman and swordsman. He loves wrestling. Even granting that most of them would let him win in any case, he is really good, very strong for his age, and very fast.”
“Orgies?” Wulf said. “I heard enough wild tales in the stables, when I was Anton’s varlet.” The prince’s mistress was said to be an enthusiastic participant in such parties.
“He likes to watch and cheer them on. His trunk hose will bulge sometimes, but he keeps the laces tied.”
“What about his wife, Princess Olga?”
“He packed her off to a convent three weeks after the wedding. Officially because she was frigid, but in fact because she was too demanding.”
Wulf’s skeptical snort annoyed Marquessa Darina, as it was meant to.
Her tone sharpened. “I was Looking! She was a virgin, so she had no idea what was expected of her, or how to arouse a man. She threw tantrums from sheer frustration, and that shriveled him up even more. Women scare him. Men fascinate him, but he knows they’re off-limits.”
They turned a corner into another corridor, wider and brighter. About thirty feet away, two men-at-arms in shining armor stood guard outside a doorway. They watched suspiciously as the visitors approached, but the marquessa stopped outside another, smaller door. Wulf opened it for her and followed her through, into a room that was barely more than a cubicle: dim, cramped, and furnished with a couch and a low table. It had no fireplace, and thick drapes hid the window, but a smaller window in a side wall admitted a faint light. And to that she led her guest.
In the bedroom beyond, lit by tall candles, lay the dying king, propped against pillows, with his mouth loosely open and his wispy silver beard neatly combed over a coverlet of royal blue. His hands seemed unnaturally large attachments for the slender wrists protruding from the frilly sleeves of his nightgown. Where was the vibrant warrior Wulf’s father had described, haranguing his troops before battles? That Konrad had not been a wasted, prune-faced mummy. Nor was this the royal head on the coinage.
Why didn’t they let the poor old man die in peace?
A nurse sat on a chair on the left side of the bed, embroidering. On a cushion on the right knelt a tonsured friar, telling a rosary. He had a nimbus and he sensed the watchers right away, for he turned to look at them, especially Wulf.
“One of Zdenek’s hirelings,” Darina said. “It’s been a long ordeal for them, but it can’t be much longer now. Even talent cannot keep him alive forever.”
Two’s company, three’s dangerous. The friar rose, strode across the room, and closed a shutter over the window. If he considered that a dying monarch should not be treated as a peepshow, Wulf could not disagree. He muttered an Ave.
“Amen,” the marquessa said. “Now come and see Exhibit Two.”
So she had more entertainment planned. As soon as Wulf followed her back out to the corridor, cheerful male voices warned him what was about to happen. Darina halted him at a corner to listen. By then the male voices had stopped and a woman was lecturing.
“In the spring,” she said, “it matters how long since it was captured. You have to take a hard look at the condition of its fur and how much fat it has on it. If it’s straight out of hibernation, then it may put up a good show, because it’ll be mean as shit, but it will soon tire, so you bet on the dogs. If its handlers have fed it for a few weeks, then it has a much better chance. But even so, I almost never bet on the bear in springtime.
“In the fall, now, you know it will have built up a good layer of blubber and thick winter fur, and that’s when
