The King stood nose to nose with the Captal.
Their eyes locked.
‘Back down, Captal,’ he said. ‘I am not some other knight. I am your King.’
You could hear men in the room breathe. The two men were of a size – the King was older, his golden hair a darker bronze, and his features were less fine, but you could see that they were cousins, however distant, and you could see that they were men who were not used to being said nay.
A political eternity passed. The Count of the Borders, despite his rage, had to consider what war with the Galles would mean and how much of Harndon they held; Gaston d’Eu tried to imagine being dead, or losing his cousin’s faith and going home in disgrace.
‘Very well,’ said the Captal. ‘I do God’s work here. My own angers are of no moment. I submit, Your Grace, and I confess that the women of Galle are as likely to be pert and forward and rude as the women of Alba.’
The silence was more stirred than broken by the Captal’s apparent submission.
‘The Sieur de Rohan is banned from court for Christmas,’ the King continued. ‘As is the Lady Mary.’
The Queen’s sharp intake of breath was as audible as the flat crack of a crossbow bolt releasing from the string.
An hour later, she turned on her husband. ‘Two of my knights are dead, my lord, and you banish my best friend from court? At Christmas?’
The King sat quietly, hands folded in his lap. ‘I’m sorry, my love. Sometimes the appearance is more important than the reality – that’s being King. The Galles must feel I’m even-handed-’
‘Must they?’ she spat. ‘Why not just order them from court, embrace Towbray, and tell the Captal to sail home and trouble us no more?’
He nodded slowly. ‘Can I tell you a hard truth, love?’ he asked. ‘Only the Captal’s knights kept us in the war in the spring. Three hundred steel-clad lances were the margin. Without them, I’d probably be dead on the field at Lissen, and this kingdom would be split in two or worse. I fear to send him home. And he says he was sent by God . . .’
She stood up. ‘He’s deluded – some false demon whispers in his ear. He is a fine knight, but his ways are not ours, and his knights – especially the new men – they all but hunt me with poisonous words. I have never had a lover but you, my husband. You know this. You know that they slander me every day.’ She was breathing deeply. She had never felt so alone, and she was tempted to play on her pregnancy, but she had Diota’s word that most women who miscarried did so in the first three months. She wanted to present the King with a swollen belly and a fact, not a supposition and a disaster. And yet the rumours of her infidelity were like a poison against her baby.
He looked away. ‘He brought Towbray to heel fast enough.’
The Queen leaned over. ‘He will end by bringing you to heel and making himself King,’ she said.
He shook his head. ‘My ruling stands. At this point, I cannot appear weak.’
Desiderata paused. She was as angry as she had ever been, and the words that formed on her lips were: If you cannot appear weak, then you are weak.
An hour later, still flushed with rage, she walked down the long corridor under the Old Hall with Becca Almspend. Lady Mary was with her father, and unavailable.
‘Are you sure this is wise, Your Grace?’ Almspend asked.
‘I am done with wise,’ the Queen answered.
They passed the Green Man on the stones, and the stone dedicated to the Lady Tar. Further along the corridor they came to the place where the stones were cold, and this time it was Becca who lingered, running her hand over a stone with carving worn almost smooth, and another where lettering had been effaced.
‘This is where the cold is born,’ Almspend said.
The Queen crossed her arms over her bosom. ‘Let’s be quick.’
‘A moment, Your Grace. I’ve wondered since we were last here.’ Almspend knelt, took a silver pencil from her belt. ‘Do you ever consider that these other worships must have been based on something? Natural magic must have worked.’
‘I think you are very close to heresy, my dear. What are you doing?’ asked the Queen. ‘I do not like this place.’
‘Testing a small suspicion, my Queen.’ Almspend frowned and drew a short invocation in letters of fire – but they paled immediately and flickered, and she had trouble speaking the words.
Trouble saying them – but speak them she did.
The stone flared, and for a moment the words, carved more than two thousand years before, were visible even where the chisel had destroyed them.
‘This is not for the Green Man,’ Almspend said, her voice suddenly hoarse. ‘This is for a darker entity entirely.’
The two women read the name, and the Queen put her hand to her throat – then raised it, and poured raw sunlight on the stone. It seemed to grow blacker. The Queen grew taller – her skin took on a remarkable bronze hue, and her hair suddenly seemed to be made of raw metal.
Becca Almspend took a step back. ‘Desiderata! Stop!’
The Queen was almost as tall as the corridor. The stone was as black as night and the very ground rumbled.
The stone made a pop like overheated stone.
Almspend turned her head, and the Queen was her normal self.
‘What was that?’ Rebecca asked.
‘Something that the Archbishop should have seen to long ago. A tunnel that needed to be closed.’ The Queen put her hand to her head. ‘I have been reckless.’ She was trembling, and Almspend put her shoulder under the taller woman’s armpit and supported her.
‘Come – there’s a bench in the store room,’ she said.
The Queen went, but she shook her head. ‘I no longer want to know. I think I know the answer, and I can’t – face it.’
Almspend, to whom history was like a law, shook her head. ‘What’s past is past. Whatever the King did, it was done before he met you.’
The Queen nodded. She was obviously unconvinced. But she sank onto the bench after Almspend opened her own hermetical wards and the great iron-bound door.
Almspend set a mage light, and then a second. The first trip, they’d only made a hasty catalogue of the papers. The librarian in Rebecca Almspend made her take time to neaten each pile, and riffle through them, sorting paper and parchment scrolls by date and author – Harmodius, Harmodius, Plangere – her fingers skimmed over them. The Queen’s colour improved and her head came up.
‘Ah! I have found Plangere’s papers for sixty-four forty-two.’ Almspend smiled. ‘That wasn’t so hard – I think he was better organised than old Harmodius.’
‘I never knew how much I would miss Harmodius,’ said the Queen. ‘I miss him now.’ The Queen stood. ‘Becca, I was reckless just now, and I am nearly drained. Let us get above ground, to the light, before something evil comes.’
‘The Wild?’ Almspend said, her guards coming up.
‘Older and far more wicked.’ The Queen raised her own wards. ‘Come!’
Almspend swept all of Plangere’s private notes for the year into an ancient willow basket and nodded. ‘After you, my lady.’
The shadows in the corridor were deep. Too deep. It was as if light itself had begun to leach away from the edges of the tunnel, despite the cressets they’d lit as they advanced.
‘There’s something nasty here,’ the Queen said. ‘Mother Mary, stand by me.’
She raised her hand and it again glowed a soft gold. The shadows retreated.
‘What’s happening?’ asked Almspend.
The Queen shook her head. ‘I have no idea,’ she said, and the two of them passed rapidly down the corridor, pursued only by fear. Yet something whispered in the darkness and, behind them, the cressets guttered out without their quenching them. The darkness behind them became absolute – and began to close on them.
The Queen turned and stood her ground. ‘Fiat lux!’ she called.