CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Orlanda’s words pealed like bells in my head all that long evening, even as the court continued their joyous holiday, as strangers offered their admiration for my killing of the Stag Royal, and as actors rolled from room to room as drunk as kings. Amalie I found comfortably seated in a parlor, with her slippered feet on a hassock, and in the company of some women, with whom apparently she was now friends. She sipped from a glass of wine and pretended not to see me, so I pretended not to see her.
Indolent, slinking, sloe-eyed bitch who loves you not. I found myself thinking of Amalie in light of those words, the words like poison to my soul, and in a fury of resentment I decided that even if it were true, it was hardly Orlanda’s business.
As I walked through the crowded, noisy rooms I found myself alert for signs of conspiracy, for assassins, for armed henchmen loitering in the corners. I searched the faces of those who entered the room in order to recognize a possible attacker: the Lord of Mablethorpe Cross, those lackeys of the Count of Wenlock who had so rudely entered my chambers, even Sir Basil of the Heugh come for his lost money. No one looked at me with less than a friendly countenance.
I thought that perhaps I should arm myself with something more deadly than the small knife I carried to cut both my meat and the quills I used for writing. All sorts of weaponry were displayed on the walls, but a half-pike or a boar spear would have been too absurd.
In the end, I went to my room, already filled with rioting actors, and did my best to sleep as the actors sang and joked, and the rising wind howled and hunted among the chimneys.
By morning, the wind had strengthened and freezing rain was slashing down. The lake was so turned to froth that it looked like milk, and the Queen’s swan-boat pitched at its mooring while the wind tore its feathers free. The lodge was filled with hunters unable to hunt, and their mood was sour and irritable. Some played at cards for more money than I could afford, and others played chess.
The Queen was not in view, for she was closeted with her spiritual advisors for a round of chants and prayers. Her favorite, Broughton, must have been praying alongside of her, for he was not present either.
I watched a few games of chess, but I found myself frustrated in the same way that I had been when I’d first learned the game. The board presented a rigid field of sixty-four squares, and the pieces maneuvered in ways that were inflexible. A knight had to move a certain way, and the abbot another, and the king a third. Yet I had never understood why any of this was necessary: why should not a queen move like a knight, or a cunning abbot dissolve the boundaries between its white square and the black square adjacent, and so occupy it? Wherefore should not a mighty king move with the same range and power as the queen—and for that matter, why should only one piece move at a time? A proper King should be able to marshal his forces and move his whole army at once, to the thunder of drums and the clangor of trumpets.
It seemed to me that chess did not represent the world as I understood it, or at any rate as I wished it to be. Were I a pawn on that board, I would have slipped away from that confining arrangement of sixty-four squares, taken advantage of cover available on the tabletop—a cup here, a candlestick there—to march unobserved behind the enemy, and from there launch a surprise attack to capture a castle or stab the enemy king. But alas, the pieces are confined to their roles, and pawns may not leave the board unless captured, and once captured they may not escape. I could not help but feel that all the pieces lacked proper imagination.
Chess is a game I could much improve upon if only given the opportunity.
While the chess games went on the wind died down, and the rain decreased to a misty drizzle. Some of the guests began to talk hopefully of going out to shoot some rabbits. I grew tired of watching lords play chess badly, and walked through a series of drawing rooms toward another room where I had seen a table of skittles. So involved were my musings on chess that I had forgotten Orlanda’s words, and I was taken completely by surprise when, behind me, I heard the shrieks of women.
I spun toward the sound, and a door banged open right in front of me. A tall cavalier, hat and long coat starry with rain, burst out of the door and ran into me as he dashed through the room. I felt a savage impact on my shoulder and the breath went out of me in a great rush. I had just turned about and was unbalanced even before the stranger struck me, and the blow knocked me sprawling. The shrieks continued, accompanied now by the clank of the cavalier’s rowelled spurs, and the noises scraped my nerves as I strove to still my whirling mind. I got my feet under me and stood, and only then remembered Orlanda’s warning—and as I staggered toward the screams, I was groping at myself to find if the stranger had stabbed me.
I reeled through the open door and found myself in a withdrawing room full of ladies. The Viscountess Broughton sat on the carpet clutching at her abdomen with both hands, and everyone else was frozen in postures of surprise and horror.
Only a few seconds had passed since I first heard the screams.
I knelt by the stricken noblewoman and touched her cold, pale hands. “Are you all right, my lady?”
She looked at me with wide eyes. “He stabbed me!” she said.
I gently parted her hands. I saw no blood, no deadly gash in the daffodil-yellow silk of her gown. I looked then at her lap, and saw the blackened steel of a dagger blade lying in the folds of her skirt. I plucked it forth, and saw that it had broken near the hilt.
“I think you may be unwounded, madame,” I said.
She gasped and searched her gown, finding only a small tear over her abdomen. Tears spilled from her eyes. “My busk!” she said. “I’m wearing a steel busk!”
“There will be knives.” Orlanda’s words echoed in my senses. For a wild moment, I wondered if Orlanda’s chosen instrument had missed completely and stabbed Lady Broughton instead of me.
But at this point other men arrived demanding to know what had happened, and more kept arriving over the next few minutes, and everything kept having to be explained all over again. They were all members of the nobility, and all wanted to be in charge. One of them snatched the knife-blade away, and I never got it back.
Then someone called out “Hue and cry!,” and half the gentlemen ran from the room. The words “hue and cry” were then shouted out all over the lodge, pointlessly because a hue and cry was supposed to be raised when the criminal was in sight, to keep him from escaping, and the cavalier had not been in sight since he vanished from the room with spurs clanking, and not one of the pursuers knew what he looked like.
Then more cries rose—“Guard the Queen!”—and more men ran off to form a wall around the monarch. Lady Broughton ignored all the questions hurled at her and continued to weep, slow tears dropping steadily from her eyes. The floral aroma of a cordial floated through the air, and I looked to see the Duchess of Roundsilver holding out a delicate crystal cup. I had not noticed her in the room till that moment. “I think perhaps Lady Broughton needs a restorative,” she said.
I passed the glass to Lady Broughton, and she drank. This action seemed to bring her a little more into an awareness of her situation, and she looked around at the circle of ladies. “Who was he? Does anyone know him?”
No one seemed to have recognized him, and they all began to discourse at length concerning how little they knew. “Perhaps we could shift Lady Broughton to a couch?” suggested the duchess, and they all agreed. The ladies clustered around the stricken woman—neither I nor any other man was permitted to assist—and they helped her to rise and placed her on a couch, where they arranged satin cushions beneath her back.