Phil Starling screamed.
They all gave him their attention.
Master Wallis had borne him to the ground and was wrestling with him in a peculiar way. It was not possible to tell if this were true violence or play. The Thane took a step towards them, then halted as the couple began to roll over and over on the grass.
“How swiftly manners change,” murmured the Thane, who was just back from an adventure. “The Queen permits all of this?”
“She encourages us,” said Lady Lyst, very suddenly serious. She pulled herself up. “It has happened since the Countess of Scaith disappeared. We all grieve for her.”
“Where’s she gone to?” the Thane would know.
“Perhaps to one of your other spheres,” Wheldrake suggested, “for she’s nowhere to be found. Oubacha Khan has been searching for her. He thinks she’s still somewhere in the palace.”
“How?”
“In the walls,” said Lady Lyst. “But where?”
“Montfallcon thinks she murdered Perrott,” Doctor Dee told the Thane.
“Not Perrott,” said Lady Lyst.
“Not anyone,” pointedly remarked her lover.
“Not anyone.” Lady Lyst rubbed at her weary eyes. “We’re suspected of Perrott, Wheldrake and I.” She sighed.
“Montfallcon seems to think Quire came from the walls.” Doctor Dee was dry. “He’ll not believe the truth, that’s why. But Montfallcon and Kansas discussed the matter at the feast today. They were for going in, not to seek the Countess, but to find proof of Quire’s origins.”
The Thane chuckled. “They’ll have to look further afield for those.”
“Captain Quire has powers that are not of our world,” Doctor Dee murmured. “He is a brilliant alchemist.”
“He has said nothing to us.” Lady Lyst became interested, for her own tastes were shared between the wine bottle and natural philosophy.
“He is a greatly modest man,” said the Thane approvingly. “He will give the Queen good advice.”
“Yet some blame him for all this idleness,” Wheldrake told him.
“It cannot be so.” Hermiston was firm.
“Or if it is so,” added Doctor Dee, noting that the Queen and Montfallcon, still arm in arm, were emerging from the maze again, “it is for sane reason and the Queen’s well-being.”
Montfallcon seemed a little mollified. Wheldrake saw Tom Ffynne turn the corner of a hedge, note his old friend, and turn back again, taking a maid or two with him.
Kansas, Hawes and Quire were still within the maze.
“Then we shall see you this evening, madam?” Montfallcon said.
“This evening,” she promised. She asked of Wheldrake: “Where is Captain Quire?”
“Yonder, madam.” Wheldrake showed her. “He followed you in.”
She seemed agitated to be parted from him so long. “Will someone fetch him here?”
The Thane began his stride towards the tall hedges. As he reached the entrance he stopped with a hint of a yell as Phil Starling flew out, still giggling, pursued by Master Wallis. There was sweat on Master Wallis’s pale skin. Some of Phil’s kohl had smeared, giving him the rakish appearance of a dissolute foxhound. The Thane made another effort to enter and did so. They saw the feather of his bonnet for a moment. Panting, Phil and Wallis came on. Montfallcon grew angry. “Master Wallis!”
Florestan Wallis came to a halt, one hand on the boy’s soft arm. He cleared his throat. “Aye, my lord?” Phil continued to grin.
“There is a meeting of the Council called.”
“I shall be there, my lord.” Wallis dropped his hand. Phil stared through bold, luscious eyes at Lord Montfallcon, smiling at him as a harlot might smile on a potential client. This was too much for Gloriana. Once again regal, she dismissed them both with a wave.
“The impiety spreads,” said Montfallcon in his cobra’s hiss. “One understands the Queen’s desire to maintain her whores. She feels responsibility towards them. Let us hope that one day soon the responsibility will be removed-” He broke deliberately from this to his next phrase. “-but when the denizens of the seraglio are brought out into the open, to be displayed for all to see, one wonders if, after all, the Queen is wise to continue with her old customs. What was reasonable and private divertissement now becomes public, senseless and all-consuming rapture! Shall we soon see in Albion some pasha’s opulent and decadent Court? Is this to become Hern’s Albion, where no maid nor youth was ever safe from infamy?”
“We shall meet again, my lord, when the Council meets,” said Gloriana distantly. “Where is Captain Quire? Is he lost?”
No one answered. Lord Montfallcon could not leave, or did not desire to leave, without his friends, and they were in the maze with Quire. The Queen caught sight of Sir Amadis, looking a little sorry for himself, coming along the broad walk, and she seized on him. “Sir Amadis!” He looked up, doing his best to soften brooding features. Alys Finch had slighted him for the third or fourth time that day and had linked hands with Lord Gorius, even as she had flirted at two of the Queen’s maids. He had turned his back on them, though he knew he would return to her if she called. He was helpless. He was that treacherous nymph’s absolute slave. “Sir Amadis!”
He joined the Queen’s party. “Your Majesty?”
“We wondered if you had news of your wife’s kinsmen. Any letter from there?”
The Queen was singularly cruel, he thought, to remind him of his inconstancy, just as he brooded so satisfyingly upon fickle Alys’s. “No letter, madam.”
Under Montfallcon’s dreadful gaze he toyed with an Oriental bangle.
“Her brothers will not let her communicate with anyone at Court,” he continued, anxious to be released from this double ordeal.
“And you’ve no urge to join them, sir?” Montfallcon knew nothing of Sir Amadis’s infatuation, so his question, in that respect, was innocent.
“I serve the Queen, my lord.”
Lord Montfallcon grunted. “As we all do, Sir Amadis. There is a meeting of the Privy Council. All other business set aside until our debate’s over.”
“What’s the cause, my lord?” Sir Amadis became almost sober.
Lord Montfallcon would not discuss such matters before those who were not of the Council. He looked around him, back and front, side to side, to show his fellow Councillor how Sir Amadis momentarily forgot himself. He made some sounds in his throat.
Sir Amadis noted Quire striding from the maze to save him. “Here’s Captain Quire.”
The Queen brightened.
Montfallcon, seeing how swiftly her colour altered, likened this blush to the unnatural shade of those poppies fed by alchemists with blood and rare earth to give forth an intoxicating and intense perfume for a few hours before withering. “Be wary, madam,” he murmured before he remembered to check himself.
She ignored him.
Montfallcon looked for Kansas and Hawes, but they were not yet free of the maze. Tonight, he thought, he and Kansas would go into the walls, as they had agreed, and there discover the evidence he must have before Quire could be convicted and disgraced. In the meantime he had sent for Tinkler. He would use Quire’s former servant against the plotter.
Captain Quire came up and stood close by the Queen.
Montfallcon turned to Doctor Dee. “Are all our members now aware of when we hold the meeting?”
“I think so, my lord,” said Dee, a little taken aback by Montfallcon’s civility. Montfallcon, these days, found new virtue in old enemies.
The Queen cried: “Ladies. To my chambers. I must change.”
With Quire still beside her she was strolling for her terrace, the maids gathering to attend her. Lifting their backs, the various courtiers looked one to the other, perhaps wondering at how much a number of them had altered in the past few weeks. The Orientals confronted the sober mourners almost as two alien armies might draw up their ranks before a battle.
Sir Amadis, hearing a familiar cry from the maze, made his excuses and, with Indian gold rattling upon his flesh, went running as a dog on the scent.