When they reached the quay, the crowd pressed toward them, but the city guard pushed them back, and a path cleared. A few moments later, the gate creaked wide, and they entered the city itself.
Their way led them into a courtyard, and beyond that, through a second gate. The walls above them bristled with guards, but clearly they recognized Artwair, and so the inner gate was opened.
The main thoroughfare to the castle wound through the city as if it were a great snake crawling up the hill. Leoff propped his back against the wagon to sit for a better view as they jounced past chapels of ancient marble streaked and decayed by a thousand years of rain and smoke, houses with steepled roofs stabbing skyward, low cottages with white walls and red trim crammed tightly together save where narrow alleys divided them. Most buildings were of two stories, with the upper stories overhanging a bit—some few were of three.
They rolled into another plaza, in the center of which stood a weathered bronze statue of a woman with her foot upon the throat of a winged serpent. The beast coiled and writhed beneath her boot, and her face was as cold and imperious as the north wind.
Near a hundred people were gathered in the square, and for a moment, Leoff thought it a mob, but then he heard a bright soprano and pulled himself up farther. On the broad pedestal of the statue, a troop of players was performing, accompanied by a small ensemble of instrumentalists and singers. The instruments were simple—a lesser and bass croth, a drum and three pipers. When Leoff arrived, a woman had just finished singing as another woman in a green gown and gilt crown acted out her words. The player seemed to be addressing a man on a throne. Leoff had missed the words of the song, for the crowd roared in response and drowned her out, but the tune was a simple one, a well-known tavern ballad.
The man on the throne drew himself up, grinning stupidly. “Hold a moment,” Leoff said. “Can I hear a bit of this?”
Artwair shot him an ironic look. “You may as well have your introduction to the court, I suppose. The lady in green represents our good queen Muriele, I believe.”
The man coughed, as if to clear his throat. Down among the musicians, a chorus of three men sang.
The player broke off into the helpless laughter of an idiot and gamboled a bit while the chorus repeated its verse. A ridiculous figure in a huge hat joined the “king” in his dance.
“Our good king Charles,” Artwair said wryly. “And his jester.”
The instruments fell silent, and the player acting the king suddenly spoke what seemed to Leoff to be gibberish.
A sinister figure in black robes with a long, ridiculous goatee ran onto the stage. He fawned up to the queen. He did not sing, but spoke in a theatrical fashion that resembled chant.
“Let me interpret!” the black-robed figure cried. “Good Queen, your son has proclaimed, in the voice of the saints, that I should be given the whole of the kingdom. That I should be handed the keys to the city, that I should have leave to fondle your—”
The audience finished his sentence for him in a roar.
“Our beloved praifec Hespero,” Artwair explained.
“What’s this!” A group of three men dressed as ministers rushed up, tripping and bumbling into one another. Below them, a chorus began singing,
They paused, and the music changed meter, became a rather jolly dance.
The “nobles” covered their eyes, and the chorus began another verse as they capered around the queen.
“Our wise and beloved Comven,” Artwair said.
The queen drew herself up in the midst of this.
“The Queen implores!” she chanted. “Is there no one to save us in our time of darkness?”
The chorus then launched into a song of loss and mourning for the queen’s children, while she danced a pavane for the dead, and the other songs came back as counterpoint.
“Is that the sort of thing you compose?” Artwair asked.
“Not really,” Leoff murmured, fascinated by the spectacle. “Is that the sort of thing that’s common around here?”
“The lustspell? Auy, but it’s a thing for the street, you understand. The common folk like it. The aristocracy pretends it doesn’t exist—save when it goes too far in mocking them. Then the players might have a more tragic end to their play.”
He glanced back at the singers. “We’d best move on.”
Leoff nodded thoughtfully as Artwair spoke to the driver and the wagon creaked back to life, climbing through steadily wealthier neighborhoods.
“The people seem to have scant faith in their leaders,” Leoff remarked, reflecting on the content of the tale.
“Times are hard,” Artwair answered. “William was only a middling-good king, but the kingdom was prosperous and at peace, and everyone liked him. Now he’s dead, along with Elseny and Lesbeth, who were truly beloved. The new king, Charles—well, the portrayal you just saw of him was not unfair. He’s a nice enough lad, but saint-touched.”
“Our allies, even Lier, have turned against us, and Hansa threatens war. Demons come from the woodwork, refugees crowd the streets, and the marshwitches all foretell doom. People need a strong leader in times like this, and they don’t have one.” He sighed. “Would that unflattering portrayals of the court were the worst of it, but the guilds are up in arms, and I fear bread riots are not far away. Half the crops withered in the field the night of the purple moon, and the sea catch has been bad.”
“What of the queen? You said she was strong.”
“Auy. Strong and beautiful and as distant from her people as the stars. And she’s Lierish, of course. In these times, with Liery making renegade noise, some don’t trust her.”
Leoff absorbed that. “The news from Broogh won’t make things any better, will it?”
“Not a bit. But better than if Newland had been drowned.” He clapped Leoff on the shoulder. “Worry not. After what you’ve done, we’ll find you a stipend of some sort.”
“Oh,” Leoff said. He hadn’t been thinking about his own worries.
The eyes of Broogh would not let him.
9
Proposals
The view from the throne was a long one, a vista of knife-points and poison.
The buttresses of the greater hall rose like the massive, spreading trunks of trees into a pale haze of cold light coming from the high window slits. Above that smoky atmosphere lay another, deeper vault of darkness. Pigeons cooed and fluttered there, for they were impossible to keep out of the vast space, as were the cats that prowled behind the curtains and tapestries in search of them.
Muriele often wondered how such an immense space could feel so heavy. It was as if—in entering the great bronze valves that were its entrance—one were transported so far beneath the earth that the very air itself became a sort of stone. At the same time, she felt perilously high, as if in stepping through one of the windows, she might find herself falling from a mountaintop.
It seemed like all the worst of Heaven and Hell were present in the symmetries of the place.
Her husband—the late King William—had seldom used the great hall, preferring the lesser court for his audiences. It was easier to heat, for one thing, and today the great hall was freezing.
Let them freeze, Muriele thought of the assembled faces. Let their teeth chatter. Let pigeon shit fall upon their brocades and velvets. Let this place crush them down.