Inversions

mind that she was indeed a foreigner. Then the young man started to weep and said, 'It was only for his pleasure, sirs, please!'

Through his tears he looked in turn at each of the faces watching him. 'Sirs, he said he liked such sport, and would reward us. We knew nothing, nothing until we heard him cry out. He was there. There, behind there, watching us from behind the screen there. He knocked it over when he — when he-' The young man looked round as best he could at a screen lying on the floor near one corner of the room, by a door, and started to breathe very quickly.

'Calm down,' Adlain snapped. The young man closed his eyes and slumped in the grip of the two guards. They looked at each other, then at Adlain and Polchiek, who was also, I thought, distinctly pale and haggard.

'And there, was a dark bird,' the young woman said suddenly, in a strange, hollow voice. Her eyes stared straight ahead out of her pale, sweat-sheened face.

'What?' Polchiek said.

'A dark bird,' she said, looking straight at the Doctor. 'It was very dark because the gentleman wished only for one candle to light us, but I saw it. A dark bird, or a nightwing.'

The Doctor looked puzzled. 'A dark bird?' she said, frowning.

'I think we have learned all we can from you, madam,' Quettil said to the Doctor. 'You may go.'

'No,' the King said to her. 'Stay, Doctor.'

Quettil's jaw worked.

'Were you doing what I think you were doing?' the King asked the young woman. He glanced at the Doctor. The orchestra faltered in the ballroom.

The young woman turned her empty-looking face slowly towards the King. 'Sir,' she said, and I knew she did not realise who she was talking to. 'Yes, sir. On the couch there.' She pointed to a couch in the centre of the room. A candelabrum holding one extinguished candle lay knocked over nearby.

'And Duke Walen was watching from behind the screen,' Adlain said.

'It was his pleasure, sir.' The young woman looked down at the man kneeling weeping by her side. 'We saw no harm in it.'

'Well, there was harm, madam,' Quettil said quietly, his voice hardly more than a breath.

'We'd been doing it a while, sirs,' the young woman said, her empty, staring eyes directed towards the Doctor. 'There was a noise. I thought it was somebody trying the window doors again, sir, but then the old gentleman cried out and the screen came tumbling down and I saw the nightwing.'

'You saw the Duke?' Polchiek asked her.

She swivelled her head towards him. 'Yes, sir.'

'You saw nobody else?'

'Just the gentleman, sir,' she said, looking back to the Doctor. 'In his shirt. He had his hand up here.' She shrugged on one side only, and looked down to her left at the top of her chest near her shoulder. 'He was crying out that he'd been murdered.'

'The door behind him,' Adlain said. 'There, behind where the screen was. Was the door open?'

'No, sir.'

'You are sure.'

'Yes, sir.'

Quettil leaned towards the King. 'My man Ralinge will make sure this is the truth,' he murmured. The Doctor heard this and glared at the Duke. The King only frowned.

'Is the door locked?' Adlain asked Polchiek.

Polchiek frowned. 'It should be,' he said, 'and the key should be in the lock.' He crossed the room to the door, found that there was no key, looked to the floor for a few moments, then pulled and pushed at the door.. He felt inside a fat pouch at his waist, pulled out a ring bristling with long keys and eventually found one which he tried in the door's lock. The lock clicked, the door opened inwards and a couple of armed guards dressed as servants looked quizzically in, straightening when they saw their Commander, who spoke briefly to them and closed and locked the door again. He returned to the group round the table. 'The guards have been there since a little after the alarm was raised,' he told Adlain. His big, clumsy-looking fingers fumbled with the ring of keys, trying to fit it back into the pouch at his waist.

'How many keys to that door are there?' Adlain asked.

'This one, one for the palace seneschal and the one which ought to be in the door, on this side,' Polchiek told him.

'Droythir, where was this dark bird you saw?' the Doctor asked.

'Where the gentleman was, ma'am.' Suddenly her face seemed to collapse and a look of uncertainty and sadness wrote itself across her features. 'Perhaps it was just a shadow, ma'am. The candle, and the screen falling.' She looked down. 'A shadow,' she murmured to herself.

'Let the Duchess in,' the King said, as one of the guards dressed as a servant approached Quettil and muttered into his ear.

'The Duchess has fainted and been taken to her room, sir,' Quettil told the King. 'However, I am told there is a young page who may have something to tell us.'

'Well then, bring him in,' the King said, sounding annoyed. Droythir and Uoljeval were pulled back towards the centre of the room by those holding them. The young man staggered to his feet, still weeping quietly. The girl stared ahead, silent.

Feulecharo approached from the doors, looking smaller than I had ever seen him look, his face almost translucent, his eyes bulging.

'Feulecharo?' Adlain said. He looked round the others. 'Page to the late Duke,' he said by way of explanation to those who needed it.

Feulecharo cleared his throat. He looked nervously round us all, then saw the Doctor and gave me a small smile. 'Your majesty,' he said, bowing to the King. 'Duke Quettil, sirs, madam. I know something — very little, but something — of what happened here.'

'You do?' Quettil said, his eyes narrowing. The King shifted from one leg to the other, winced, then nodded in appreciation as the Doctor brought up a chair for him to sit in.

Feulecharo nodded towards the far corner of the room. 'I was in the corridor, behind that door, sirs, earlier.'

'Doing what, might one ask?' Quettil said.

Feulecharo swallowed. He glanced at Droythir and Uoljeval, who had been brought forward again to the side of the table, their arms still held behind them. 'I had been asked by the Duchess to…' Feulecharo licked his lips. 'To follow the Duke and see what he was doing.'

'And you followed him here?' Adlain said. He knew Feulecharo a little, and sounded purposeful but not unkind.

'Yes, sir. With the two young people.' Feulecharo glanced at Droythir and Uoljeval, neither of whom responded. 'The Duchess thought perhaps there was some arrangement between the young lady and the Duke. I watched them enter this withdrawing room, and found my way to the corridor outside. I thought I might hear something, or see something through the keyhole, but it was blocked.'

'By a key?' Adlain asked.

'I think not, sir. Rather by the little shutter on the far side. However,' Feulecharo said, 'I had with me a small metal mirror and thought to see something under the bottom of the door.'

'And did you?' Quettil asked.

'Only a single light, like a candle flame, Duke Quettil. I could hear the young man and woman making the sounds of love, and sense some movement, but that was all.'

'And when the Duke was stabbed?' Polchiek asked.

Feulecharo took a deep breath. 'Just before that, sir, I think, I was hit on the back of the head, and rendered unconscious. I imagine for just a few minutes.' He turned and held his hair up at the back, exposing a scab of glistening, half-dried blood and a large lump.

The King looked at the Doctor, who went forward and looked at the wound. 'Oelph,' she said. 'Some water, please. And a napkin or something similar. Is that a bottle of spirit wine there on the floor? That, too.'