The King’s chambers were on a corner of the City-Marshal’s palace, overlooking the reflecting terraces of the pools which led down towards the distant river. Swifts and darts played in the warm air outside, wheeling and tumbling beyond the cool stone of the balcony balustrades. The chamberlain Wiester let us in, fussing as usual.
“Oh. Are you on time? Was there the bell? Or a cannon? I did not hear the bell. Did you?”
“A few moments ago,” the Doctor told him, following him across the reception room to the King’s dressing chamber.
“Providence!” he said, and opened the doors.
“Ah, the good Doctor Vosill!” the King exclaimed. He was standing on a small stool in the centre of the great dressing chamber, being dressed in his ceremonial judicial robes by four servants. One wall of plaster windows, south facing, flooded the room with soft, creamy light. Duke Ormin stood nearby, tall and slightly stooped and dressed in judicial robes. “How are you today?” the King asked.
“I am well, your majesty.”
“A very good morning to you, Doctor Vosill,” Duke Ormin said, smiling. Duke Ormin was ten or so years older than the King. He was a lanky-legged sort of a fellow with a very broad head and a surprisingly large torso which always looked, to me at least, stuffed, as though he had a couple of pillows forced up his shirt. An odd-looking fellow, then, but most civil and kind, as I knew myself, having been briefly in his employ, though at a fairly menial level. The Doctor, too, had been retained by him, more recently, when she had been his personal physician before she had become the King’s.
“Duke Ormin,” the Doctor said, bowing.
“Ah!” the King said. “And I was favoured with a ‘your majesty’! Usually I am lucky to escape with a ‘sir’.”
“I beg the King’s pardon,” the Doctor said, bowing now to him.
“Granted,” Quience said, putting back his head and letting a couple of servants gather his blond curls together and pin a skull cap in place. “I am obviously in a magnanimous mood this morning. Wiester?”
“Sire?”
“Inform the good lord judges I shall be joining that I am in such a good mood they will have to be certain to be at their most sourly pitiless in court this morning to provide a balance for my irrepressible leniency. Take heed, Ormin.”
Duke Ormin beamed, his eyes almost disappearing as his face screwed up in a grin.
Wiester hesitated, then started to make for the door. “At once, sire.”
“Wiester.”
“Sire?”
“I was joking.”
“Ah. Ha ha.” The chamberlain laughed.
The Doctor put her bag down on a seat near the door.
“Yes, Doctor?” the King asked.
The Doctor blinked. “You asked me to attend you this morning, sir.”
“Did I?” The King looked mystified.
“Yes, last night.” (This was true.)
“Oh, so I did.” The King looked surprised as his arms were raised and a sleeveless black robe edged in some shiningly white fur was placed over his shoulders and fastened. He flexed, shifting his weight from stockinged foot to stockinged foot, clenching his fists, executing a sort of rolling motion with his shoulders and his head and then declaring, “You see, Ormin? I am becoming quite forgetful in my old age.”
“Why now, sir, you have barely left your youth,” the Duke told him. “If you go calling yourself old as though by royal decree, what must we think who are significantly older than you and yet who still fondly harbour the belief that we are not yet old? Have mercy, please.”
“Very well,” the King agreed, with a roll of the hand. “I declare myself young again. And well,” he added, with a renewed look of surprise as he glanced at the Doctor and me. “Why, I seem to be quite bereft of any aches and pains for you to treat this morning, Doctor.”
“Oh.” The Doctor shrugged. “Well, that’s good news,” she said, picking up her bag and turning for the door. “I’ll bid you good day then, sir.”
“Ah!” the King said suddenly. We each turned again.
“Sir?”
The King looked most thoughtful for a moment, then shook his head. “No, Doctor, I can think of nothing with which to detain you. You may go. I shall call you when I need you next.”
“Of course, sir.”
Wiester opened the doors for us.
“Doctor?” the King said as we were in the doorway. “Duke Ormin and I go hunting this afternoon. I usually fall off my mount or get torn up by a barb bush, so I may well have something for you to treat later.”
Duke Ormin laughed politely and shook his head.
“I shall start to prepare the relevant potions now,” the Doctor said. “Your majesty.”
“Providence, twice.”
8. THE BODYGUARD
“Am I so trusted now?”
“Or I am. Probably because I am regarded as being beyond the interest of any but the most desperate of men. Or because the General does not intend to visit me again and so—”
“Careful!”
DeWar grabbed at Perrund’s arm just as she was about to step from the street-side into the path of a ten-team of mounts hauling a war carriage. He pulled her back towards him as first the panting, sweat-lathered team and then the great swaying bulk of the cannon-wagon itself raced past, shaking the cobblestones beneath their feet. A smell of sweat and oil rolled over them. He felt her draw away from it all, pressing her back against his chest. Behind him, the stone counter of a butcher’s shop dug into his back. The noise of the wagon’s man-high wheels resounded between the cracked, uneven walls of the two- and three-storey buildings leaning over the street.
On top of the huge black gun carriage a bombardier uniformed in the colours of Duke Ralboute stood lashing wildly at the mounts. The wagon was followed by two smaller carriages full of men and wooden cases. These in turn were trailed by a ragged pack of shouting children. The wagons thundered through the open gates set within the inner city’s walls and disappeared from view. People on the street who had shrunk back from the speeding vehicles flowed back into the thoroughfare again, muttering and shaking their heads.
DeWar let Perrund go and she turned to him. He realised with a flush of embarrassment that in his instinctive reaction to the danger he had taken hold of her by the withered arm. The memory of its touch, through the sleeve of her gown, the sling and the fold of her cloak, seemed imprinted in the bones of his hand as something thin, fragile and childlike.
“I’m sorry,” he said, blurting the words.
She was still very close to him. She stepped away, smiling uncertainly. The hood of her cloak had fallen, revealing her lace-veiled face and her golden hair, which was gathered inside a black net. She drew the hood back up. “Oh, DeWar,” she chided. “You save somebody’s life and then you apologise. You really are — oh, I don’t know,” she said, readjusting the hood. DeWar had time to be surprised. He had never known the lady Perrund lost for words. The hood she was struggling with fell back again, caught by a gust of wind. “Damn thing,” she said, taking hold of it with her good arm and pulling it back once more. He had started to put his hand up, to help her with the hood, but now had to let his hand fall back. “There,” she said. “That’s better. Here. I’ll take your arm. Now, let us walk.”