Anne took her hand. ‘I have guesses, my dear. I grew up at court. But you do not seem . . . broken.’
‘The King tried to rape me,’ Clarissa said. Her voice caught on the word, but she managed to go on. ‘Uncle saved me, but then arranged that I be dismissed from court.’
Anne nodded decisively. ‘This much I have in a dozen letters from supposedly helpful friends.’ She sneered. ‘Your father will not let me send them poison.’
It was difficult for Clarissa to know how much to believe her mother, who spoke as if she was as bloodthirsty as some Wild creature.
Anne leaned forward. ‘We are told you attempted to seduce the King.’ Anne put a hand on her daughter’s hand and clasped it. ‘Sweeting, I am a woman. I know that these things can happen-’
‘Mama!’ Clarissa didn’t quite shriek. ‘I was playing music and he tried to throw me to the floor and put his knees between mine!’
Anne sat back and smiled. ‘Yes,’ she said.
‘He smashed my best-’
‘He is, for good or evil, the King,’ Anne said. ‘Why Galle, which should be the greatest land in all the world, has to have a line of fools as kings . . . Well, it has been discussed by greater heads than mine or yours.’ She leaned forward again and kissed her daughter. ‘I didn’t see you as much of a seducer, my love.’
Clarissa could writhe even at that. But the incident itself was still so sharp – so clear – that she ignored her mother’s words. Her mother seemed to believe that only she, Anne of Soave, had ever possessed the ability to charm men, but Clarissa steadied herself. My mother is trying to be on my side.
I’ll take that.
She reached out and hugged her mother, and hung on her neck for a moment.
‘Now we must marry you to someone, quickly,’ Anne said.
That night, Clarissa was summoned to her father. He sat in the Great Hall with a dozen of his knights, playing cards. There were women present; mostly wives, but not all. Her father called these ‘camp evenings’ and insisted, when he held them, that his hall became a military camp, with its relaxed etiquette and air of masculinity.
Even as she entered the hall, she felt the tension. And smelled an odd smell – a feral, musky smell.
Clarissa curtsied. Her father was sitting with Ser Raimondo, his first lance, and Ser Jean de Chablais, one of the best knights in all Galle and her father’s closest friend and adviser. Raimondo’s wife Catherine smiled at her.
‘Come share my cup, poppet,’ she said.
They were all very clingy. Catherine put a hand on her shoulder. Jean de Chablais kissed her hand.
She felt the warmth of their affecton and she needed it.
‘We are considering sending a challenge to the King,’ her father said.
De Chablais nodded. ‘My lord, you must. My lady Clarissa I beg your forgiveness, but as your father’s champion I must ask-’
Clarissa sat straight. ‘Ask,’ she said.
‘The King-’
‘Tried to force his sex on me,’ Clarissa said. ‘And was only prevented by monsieur my uncle.’
De Chablais coloured – he was not a soft man, and not given to blushes. He bowed his head.
‘I beg your pardon, mademoiselle, even for asking.’ Turning to his lord, he said, ‘By God, if you will not challenge him in your own name, I will challenge him myself.’
The count sat back and made a steeple of his hands. ‘Jean, you know it is not that simple.’
‘It is simple. Sometimes, it is simple. This is what knighthood is for: to protect the weak. To war on the strong when they abuse their power.’
Ser Raimondo nodded, his red hair glinting in the firelight. There was more grey there than Clarissa remembered. ‘My lord, we must. Or others will think the slanders true.’
The count frowned. ‘And the other matter?’ he asked.
Catherine stiffened.
Clarissa leaned forward. ‘What other matter?’ she asked.
Ser Raimondo made a wry face. ‘Didn’t your mother tell you of our family’s other new affliction?’ he asked.
His wife put out her arm. ‘Don’t!’ she said, but the knight reached for a crumpled cloth on the floor and flipped it back.
Underneath it lay a thing out of nightmare – all teeth and green and yellow mottled skin and blood and entrails. The smell, the musky animal smell, filled the hall.
Clarissa shrieked. Then she stiffened and cursed inwardly, disdaining to be the kind of woman who shrieked.
‘What is it?’ she asked.
Her father pointed to the illustrated manuscript under his hand. ‘We think it is an irk,’ he said.
Liviapolis – Julas Kronmir
Kronmir lived on the edge of his own fear. He’d almost killed the boy in the ruins because he couldn’t get over the notion that the boy had been sent to watch him, even when it became obvious that he was bent on sketching the antiquities in the temple.
Kronmir was a scholar, and he was not unmoved by the wonders of the temple, but his employer’s entire plan depended on the pressure that the Etruscans could exert on the palace. He cursed their arrogant foolishness silently as he watched their fleet come up the channel with no attempt at diversion or surprise – and ploughed straight into the chain that the mercenary had placed across the mouth of the naval yard.
The chain’s presence had been reported to him by a whore and a suborned workman, and he’d reported it three days earlier. Along with a complete rundown of the foreign mercenary’s intentions towards the Academy, and towards the Etruscan merchants, gleaned from his two sources inside the palace. And his report on the unreliability of several of the company’s archers and of a faction in the Nordikans troop who were willing to change sides. And his losses – four men in two days, and his only hermetical assassin.
Kronmir was a professional, and he predicted the result of the Etruscan attack even as he watched it. He shook his head.
‘Is this how God feels, watching men commit sin?’ he asked the gathering darkness.
He had one consolation – he hadn’t killed the harmless boy sketching the ruins.
He slipped back into the city to write another report. His dockyard worker would probably never report in again – that would be the least consequence of the Etruscan defeat.
Perhaps the whore would.
North of the Great River – The Black Knight
Ser Hartmut Li Orguelleus stood on Oliver de Marche’s quarter deck watching the land roll past them on both sides – forests so deep and still as to seem holy. The Black Knight was in full harness, as always, and now every sailor, every marine, and even the ship’s boys wore whatever scraps of leather and mail they could muster.
‘It is magnificent,’ Ser Harmut said. ‘I had no idea. As vast as Ifriqu’ya?’ he said, turning to the captain.
De Marche shook his head. ‘I don’t know. The Etruscans have sent a dozen expeditions around the northern capes, and more to the south. That much I’ve heard from our fisherfolk, my lord. But either none of them have returned, or they keep what they have learned close to their greasy Etruscan chests.’
Early autumn had gilded the forests, so that birches and maples were just turning gold or red, and the effect in the distance was to touch the green vista with a warmth that the chill air belied. The enormous river ran between heights – vast heights – that rose from wide plains on either shore, as if they sailed in a long and narrow bowl. A west wind filled their sails, and they had white foam at their bows from the rapidity of their passage.
‘Are we close to our port?’ asked the Black Knight.
De Marche shook his head. ‘My lord, I don’t know. This expedition was based on information provided by a traitor – an Etruscan seeking refuge from a family quarrel. I had expected him to travel with us. Unfortunately, he seems to have been killed – murdered, I believe.’
Ser Harmut nodded. ‘The Etruscan guilds have very long arms,’ he admitted.
‘There will be no port, per se,’ de Marche added. ‘A clearing in the woods, and a beach, is the best we can expect. But the Genuan ships we found – their destruction means we will be first to the market.’