Now his valet threw the curtains wide—and froze in astonishment, the sunlight streaming past him to the Protector, who was just rising from his bed. He frowned and asked, “What is it, Valard?”
“The square, Protector! It’s full of men!”
“Let me see!” The Protector pushed Valard aside and stepped up himself to look down upon the square in front of his palace. It was jammed from edge to edge with heads wearing the notched caps of magistrates, faces staring up at the palace in expectation.
The Protector stared back, speechless and frozen. Then he turned from the window in a royal rage. “How on earth did they manage to slip past my soldiers! What the devil are they doing here? No, I know you don’t know, Valard—but help me dress! I must confront them instantly, and learn what they want!”
It was a measure of the man’s character that his first thought was to confront the danger that awaited him. It was only as a second thought that he said, “Tell the Captain of the Guard to send his men out around the square, behind the library and the treasury and the secretariat, then through the alleys between them to surround this crowd. Oh, and make sure the palace wall is fully manned, of course.”
He burst out of his dressing room in his most imposing robes and with his chain of office glinting richly on his breast, the Captain of the Guard beside him, listening to the last of a stream of orders. “—and have them await me in the audience chamber!” the Protector finished. As the man nodded and hurried off, he snapped to another official who stood near, “How stand the provinces?”
“Messages have just come, Protector,” the man said quickly. “Rebel magistrates have led mobs against reeves’ castles in Autaine, Grabel, and Belorgium…”
“Three-quarters of the realm!”
“Yes, Protector, but the reeves and their guardsmen have put them down. There were only a handful of malcontents, of course, and the people themselves joined in their overthrow.”
The Protector nodded briskly. “That is well. Now if only the people of this city come to overturn these rebels… Open the windows!”
The valet threw open the French doors that let onto the balcony, and the Protector stepped out—and felt as though he had run into a solid wall of sound. The massed shout of “Liberty and rights! Liberty and rights!” slammed into him, repeated over and over until he staggered away from it, dazed and panting. The valet quickly pulled the windows shut, and the Protector gasped, “What the devil do they mean? There is only one right! How can there be more? And what nonsense is this about liberty? Personal liberty is chaos and the door to suffering!” Then, recovering himself, he roared, “Who taught them this nonsense?”
No one answered. For a moment, the hall was quiet. Then a footman stepped forward to say hesitantly, “Protector … there are three men awaiting you in the audience chamber, and one is clothed as a magistrate… They ask to speak with you about ‘mutual concerns.’ ”
“Concerns?” The Protector stared; then his brows drew down, and he shouted, “They had best be concerned indeed! How did they come into my audience chamber?”
“No … no one knows, sir,” the man faltered. “The men you had sent to wait for you discovered them there.”
The Protector stood rigid, staring at the man, and for the first time, he felt cold tendrils of fear. He shook them off, spun on his heel, and hurried toward the audience chamber with a snarl.
He burst into the chamber with footmen and men-at-arms scurrying after him, and brought up short, staring. The room was a hall with a fifteen-foot beamed ceiling, the Protector’s high chair and bench at one end and banks of seats at the other. Between them stood three men, two seeming very small compared to the other; who must have been seven feet tall if he was an inch. He was dressed as a soldier in doublet and hose, but no livery, only russet cloth. One of the ordinary-sized men was dressed in the same fashion, though in leaf-green, and the third man was dressed as a magistrate.
Facing them was a row of ministers, gowned even more sumptuously than reeves or magistrates. Seeing them filled the Protector with renewed confidence. He waved the footmen and men-at-arms away, suspecting that what transpired here would be something he would not want to have leak out by gossip.
One sergeant lingered. “Sir … your safety…”
“The ministers will ward me! Out!”
The sergeant’s face expressed his misgivings, but he left. The Protector marked him for preference—here was a man who knew both loyalty and obedience.
As the door closed behind the men, he rounded on the intruders. “How did you get in here?”
“We came by night,” the one dressed as a magistrate replied. “Came by night! Into the Protector’s palace? How did you get past my guards?”
“Very carefully,” the other short one answered, and nothing more.
The Protector’s eyes narrowed; he felt his emotions calm to ice. He had played this sort of game before, many times before, and these were men half his age, who certainly could not be as skilled at it as he was. “Who are you?”
“I am Miles.” The shortest one bowed slightly. “These are my companions, Dirk and Gar.”
“What have you to do with this rabble out in the street?”
“They aren’t rabble, Protector, but men who have served you as magistrates and reeves for as many as five years.” Reeves, too! That shook the Protector, but he kept it from showing. “Why did you come here?”
“To confer with you, Protector, about policies that give us great concern.”
“Politely phrased,” the Protector said, thin-lipped, “but I know demands when I hear them, and your mob in the square has told me what those demands are—liberty, which would cause this realm to tear itself apart, and ‘rights,’ whatever that may mean!”
“It means that we feel the people must have guarantees of their safety written down, Protector, as the fundamental laws of the land—matters which it is right for them to decide for themselves, and which no government should force upon them.”
That rattled the Protector. He couldn’t stifle a gasp of shock. “You want to change the foundation of the Law of the Realm!”
“We feel that is necessary,” Miles said, almost apologetically. “Then I shall build you the finest gallows in the land, for you must be the grandest traitor ever to walk! You must know that I would rather die than agree to such a change!”
At last the giant spoke. “We hope that will not be necessary, sir.”
The Protector turned on him, face swelling with rage. “You had better believe that won’t be necessary, though your own deaths are another matter!”
The third one spoke up. “You might not say that if you heard which rights we wish to guarantee, Protector. They’re modest enough, after all.”
“If your ‘rights’ restrict the power of the state to hold itself together, they’re scarcely modest!” The Protector turned to him, eyes narrowing again. “But have your say, sir! What’s your list?”
“First, that all people have the right to try to be happy.”
The Protector sifted through the words in his mind, frowning, trying to find the barb in them and failing. “It seems harmless enough,” he said grudgingly. “What next?”
“That everyone has the right to choose their spouses for themselves, and the government can never make them marry someone they don’t want.”
“But by that law, there would be many who would never marry!”
“Yes, Protector,” Miles said evenly, “and there would be many who would find that loneliness is less miserable than a loveless marriage.”