His grace went on to explain that while Berlauda had got most of what he wanted from her Peers and Burgesses, Clayborne’s subjects had been less tractable. A politician does not support a rebel unless he scents some advantage to be had in the rebellion, and for most people advantage lies in money. A fractious Mercer resentful of the taxes imposed by Berlauda’s government would not join Clayborne only to vote higher taxes for himself, and Clayborne got only a part of what he’d asked for. Now Clayborne was raking out the bottom of his treasury, and since many of his soldiers were mercenaries who insisted on being paid, his rebellion was teetering on the edge of collapse.
“Perhaps Clayborne’s cause will crumble without fighting.”
“We can so hope,” said the duchess. “But the Countess of Tern will not surrender without fighting, nor her husband the Duke of Andrian. The soldiers can, at the last extremity, loot the country for their pay. So, I fear there will be blows and terrors yet.”
The duke observed a young man standing by the podium “Ah,” said he. “Here is Master Robin, ready to bring us gladness.”
We returned to our seats, and a poet struck a chord on a cittern and chanted, rather than sang, with a melody.
O cruel Love, on thee I lay
My curse, which shall strike blind the day;
Never may sleep with velvet hand
Charm thine eyes with sacred wand;
Thy jailors shall be hopes and fears;
Thy prison-mates groans, sighs, and tears;
Thy play to wear out weary times,
Fantastic passions, vows, and rimes . . .
I felt unease at this theme, and for a moment, I wondered if Orlanda had chosen this verse especially for me.
Yet, I thought, I was sleeping well enough, with few groans or sighs. It was my waking hours in which I waxed full of anxiety for Amalie.
Robin performed more verses, was followed by an elderly nun who wrote metaphysical verse, and then again the group met for refreshment. The duke’s friends surrounded him, and he was fully taken up by a dissection of some intricate business at court, and so I took a glass of sherry from the cup-board and drifted ’cross the room to the sideboard, where her grace was chatting with several of her friends about a dinner given the previous day by Queen Natalie, the mother of the princess Floria.
“The Marchioness of Stayne attended,” she said, “though great with child and her husband busy elsewhere. Queen Natalie was very kind, and made sure Lady Stayne was comfortable on her couch.”
She said this last with a little under-eyed look at me, as if concerned that I knew that Amalie was well and free to move about the city. You remember that she had been present when I first met Amalie, and since that meeting she had been curious how our acquaintance had progressed. I had of course denied anything improper, but I fear I was not very convincing, for the duchess clearly suspected otherwise.
I wondered if the duchess had heard of my conversation with Stayne the other night, and what conclusion that news had led her to draw. But I was so grateful for this report, and the knowledge that Amalie was at liberty to visit her friends, that I spent the next few minutes inwardly rejoicing in this information, until the next poet took his place behind the lectern, and strove to wring our hearts with another ballad of the torments and miseries of lovers.
* * *
The Festival of Mummers lies on the first of February, halfway between midwinter and the spring equinox, and in ancient times the holiday marked the first day of spring. Though we now have a different calendar, the day is still kept, and begins with the Mummers’ Parade, which marches down Chancellery Road past the castle, and from there winds into the town. I had bought a mask, that of a learnèd Doctor of Law with a long, enquiring nose to sniff out cases and fees, and in my gown and cap I joined the crowds near my lodgings as the linkboys, guisers, wren-boys, and mummers marched past, all masked, all in their brave finery, garbed as lords and knights, fishwives and trolls and monsters. Floats were drawn past by caparisoned horses, and stopped every so often so that the mummers could enact a brief play, most of which were so full of references to local people, and local events, that I found them incomprehensible. But I cheered a play by Blackwell’s troupe, which featured that famous monster-slaying Roundsilver ancestor extolling peace in the realm and killing a dragon, which was understood to be Clayborne. And there were other floats that featured comedy, with knockabout acrobats and dancers, and these I cheered with great appreciation.
One float was sponsored by the Butchers’ Guild, and was apparently a satire on some recent scandal of the town. This I failed to understand, but I cheered out of loyalty.
The day was dark, but the mood of the crowd was not darkened, nor the performers silenced by occasional spatters of rain.
After the parade passed, I paused by the Tiltyard Moot, which allowed hawkers to sell their wares at tables set on the street before the building. I bought a pasty, a mug of beer flavored with rosemary and lupins, and marchpane molded in the shape of a wyvern. I tilted the mask atop my head in order to eat and drink, the lawyer’s long nose thrust up into the air, as if hailing a client.
At sunset, there would be a supper at the Butchers’ Guild, and afterward carousing, and songs, and merry-making till dawn. But it was barely noon, and there were hours yet before the supper began, and in the meantime the streets would be alive with celebration. If the meiny were ever to drink to Berlauda’s forthcoming marriage to a foreigner, it would be on this day.
I returned the empty beer mug to the vendor and pulled my mask over my face. I had no sooner done so than I felt a blow between my shoulder blades, and was nearly knocked over the vendor’s table. I straightened, only to feel a hand on my shoulder, and I was spun round to face a group of ferocious masks, an eagle, a serpent, a panther, and a boar with upturned tusks, each glaring at me with murderous, glittering eyes.
“This will teach you to play with the wives of your betters,” cried the eagle. The delivery of this message took long enough that I recovered a little from my surprise, and I ducked the blow that followed, which nevertheless struck me a glancing blow on the ear. Though the fist missed its intended target, my head still rang like a bell. The eagle seized me by the nose—not the nose on my face, but the long nose of my mask—and pulled me into another blow, which I managed to parry. The others clustered around, their fists gathered to rain blows on me. Then I undid the ribbon that tied the mask on my head, and left the eagle louting back with an empty mask between his fingers.
The serpent-mask jostled closer, and I recognized the forked beard that hung below the mask and seized both tails to jerk his head down. Fork-Beard gave a cry as he stooped before me, and then I raised a knee and smashed it into his face. He recoiled upright, leaving me with handfuls of his beard, and I kicked him in the direction of his fellows and gained myself a little room to maneuver.
I turned and leaped onto the table of the beer-seller, and from the table to the butts of beer that were set on racks behind the vendor. From there I leaped for the architrave over a window, pulled myself up, and used as finger- and toe-holds a series of ornamental rosettes, an astragal, and a godroon to put me on the tiled roof of the Tiltyard Moot, two storeys above the street. From this place of vantage I turned to view my attackers, who were staring up at me—except for Fork-Beard, who was hunched over and clutching his broken nose as blood streamed from beneath his serpent mask.
The eagle gave a shout and waved on the panther and boar, and now they all leaped up onto the beer-seller’s table and started a frantic climb toward me. I wrenched up a large terra-cotta tile from the roof and hurled it into the face of the boar, which sent him spilling down the front of the building and onto the beer-butts, from which he rebounded unconscious onto the road. The eagle fended off the next tile but gave up climbing and dropped to the ground, and the panther climbed down likewise. I pulled up another tile in case they came again, but instead they conferred, and then separated to run to the buildings on either side of the Moot, one of them dragging the wounded Fork-Beard with him. Both these buildings overlooked the roof on which I stood, and rather than let them surround me, I tossed my roof tile onto the building the panther was climbing, and then climbed it myself. The house was thatched, and once I’d shot my roof tile, I would have no more ammunition.