He expected her to say that he could tweak his liege lord, which he would certainly never do. But that wasn’t what she suggested. “Just smile.”
“What?”
She shrugged. “Cabbage Head has a great fondness for handsome young men. When he sees your silver hair and golden eyes he’ll melt into the carpet. And those calves will make him swoon.”
“Oh, no!” Wulf sprang to his feet. “There are many ways to get burned at the stake, my lady, but sodomy is the last one I’ll ever try. I thank you for the-”
“Wait!” She rose also. “Before you make up your mind, come and pay your respects to your dying lord. He deserves that much.”
Wulf followed her to the door reluctantly, still looking for the trap. Again she expected his arm as they proceeded along a corridor, which was wide and high, floored with tiles of black and white marble, lit by candles in sconces every few feet. The plastered walls bore faded frescoes of battle and tourney.
“I know this may sound incredible in view of his reputation,” Darina said, “but the prince is practically sexless. His lechery is all bluff. I’m officially his mistress, but I swear to you that the door between our rooms stays closed. About once a month he’ll come calling, always when he’s very drunk. He’ll have a quick scramble and then go back to his own bed. I complain loudly in public about how demanding he is; that pleases him, but it’s all pig manure. As for the young men, I’m not sux20s ore he is even aware how he ogles them, although of course everyone else can see. He paws and fondles a little, but that’s as far as he ever goes. He seeks his fun in jousting and hunting. Lists and forests are his playrooms, not bedrooms. Beds are for sleeping off drinking bouts. He’s a magnificent horseman and swordsman. He loves wrestling. Even granting that most of them would let him win in any case, he is really good, very strong for his age, and very fast.”
“Orgies?” Wulf said. “I heard enough wild tales in the stables, when I was Anton’s varlet.” The prince’s mistress was said to be an enthusiastic participant in such parties.
“He likes to watch and cheer them on. His trunk hose will bulge sometimes, but he keeps the laces tied.”
“What about his wife, Princess Olga?”
“He packed her off to a convent three weeks after the wedding. Officially because she was frigid, but in fact because she was too demanding.”
Wulf’s skeptical snort annoyed Marquessa Darina, as it was meant to.
Her tone sharpened. “I was Looking! She was a virgin, so she had no idea what was expected of her, or how to arouse a man. She threw tantrums from sheer frustration, and that shriveled him up even more. Women scare him. Men fascinate him, but he knows they’re off-limits.”
They turned a corner into another corridor, wider and brighter. About thirty feet away, two men-at-arms in shining armor stood guard outside a doorway. They watched suspiciously as the visitors approached, but the marquessa stopped outside another, smaller door. Wulf opened it for her and followed her through, into a room that was barely more than a cubicle: dim, cramped, and furnished with a couch and a low table. It had no fireplace, and thick drapes hid the window, but a smaller window in a side wall admitted a faint light. And to that she led her guest.
In the bedroom beyond, lit by tall candles, lay the dying king, propped against pillows, with his mouth loosely open and his wispy silver beard neatly combed over a coverlet of royal blue. His hands seemed unnaturally large attachments for the slender wrists protruding from the frilly sleeves of his nightgown. Where was the vibrant warrior Wulf’s father had described, haranguing his troops before battles? That Konrad had not been a wasted, prune-faced mummy. Nor was this the royal head on the coinage.
Why didn’t they let the poor old man die in peace?
A nurse sat on a chair on the left side of the bed, embroidering. On a cushion on the right knelt a tonsured friar, telling a rosary. He had a nimbus and he sensed the watchers right away, for he turned to look at them, especially Wulf.
“One of Zdenek’s hirelings,” Darina said. “It’s been a long ordeal for them, but it can’t be much longer now. Even talent cannot keep him alive forever.”
Two’s company, three’s dangerous. The friar rose, strode across the room, and closed a shutter over the window. If he considered that a dying monarch should not be treated as a peepshow, Wulf could not disagree. He muttered an Ave.
“Amen,” the marquessa said. “Now come and see Exhibit Two.”
So she had more entertainment planned. As soon as Wulf followed her back out to the corridor, cheerful male voices warned him what was about to happen. Darina halted him at a corner to listen. By then the male voices had stopped and a woman was lecturing.
“In the spring,” she said, “it matters how long since it was captured. You have to take a hard look at the condition of its fur and how much fat it has on it. If it’s straight out of hibernation, then it may put up a good show, because it’ll be mean as shit, but it will soon tire, so you bet on the dogs. If its handlers have fed it for a few weeks, then it has a much better chance. But even so, I almost never bet on the bear in springtime.
“In the fall, now, you know it will have built up a good layer of blubber and thick winter fur, and that’s when the dogs have a problem. That’s when you look at the dogs-how many of them there are, and what scars do they have to show their experience? Too many wounds make a dog shy, a shitty fighter. Just a few will give it experience and teach it some tricks. So you have to sum up the pack and bet accordingly. Unless there are at least six dogs and they look lean and fit and have never been too badly mauled, then I bet on the bear in fall.”
A man asked, “And what about summer, sire?”
Sire? Wulf looked in shock at his companion. They had just come from the king on his deathbed. There was only one person in the kingdom who might usurp the title of “sire.” If that was Crown Prince Konrad speaking, he must be a countertenor.
“Summer?” the prince shrilled. “Oh, only fools like you would bet on a bearbaiting in summer, Gus.”
Men laughed.
“In summer you have to look at both the bear and the dogs. And remember that sometimes when a bear wins in the spring, it will heal enough to be fought again by summer, but of course it has a very slim chance of winning a second time… although I did see a bear that won twice. Must have been almost ten years ago…”
The crown prince babbled on, more nonsense. A womanish voice would be a serious handicap for any leader. Vlad shouting orders sounded like a mountain torrent rolling boulders. No matter what his state of mind, young Konrad would always sound panic-stricken. Wulf stole another look at Darina, who raised a painted eyebrow as if to say, Now you know why we call him Cabbage Head.
But even he exhausted the fascinating topic of bearbaiting eventually. “Well,” he said, “let’s go and insp; s ifyect King Konrad the Late, shall we? Then we can go back and get on with some serious drinking and buggery.”
Around the corner he strode, leading an entourage of about a dozen men-six or seven young, brightly dressed male courtiers plus a squad of men-at-arms bearing silvered pikes.
The younger Konrad was a surprise: firstly because he looked no older than Wulf himself, secondly because he was short and one expected royalty to be tall. His tunic, cape, and hat were superbly tailored, but cut from drab grays and browns, as if in deliberate contrast to the peacock grandeur of his escort. To a man, his multicolored companions were all taller and slimmer, but even the men-at-arms were mere fresh-faced youths. He was a moth among butterflies.
The prince’s face was pathetically ugly, lopsided and fleshy, as if it had been ill-favored to start with, and later hideously scarred by smallpox. Short, but immensely wide and thick, he had a neck and shoulders that would flatter an ox, and his fancy tailoring could not conceal the barrel-like bulge of his chest, yet his hips and waist were trim. Darina’s praise of his wrestling skills was believable.