The Countess Helge and her attendants traveled in convoy with other residents of Thorold Palace that evening, to the Östhalle at the east end of the royal run that formed the artery linking the great houses at the center of Niejwein. Niejwein was the royal capital of the kingdom of Gruinmarkt, which occupied most of the territory of Massachusetts and chunks of New Jersey and New York, over here. As near as Miriam had been able to work out, the first Norse settlements on the eastern seaboard had died out in the eleventh or twelfth centuries, but their replacements—painstakingly carved out by the landless sons of the northern European nobility around the start of the sixteenth century—had flourished, albeit far less so than in her own world. They had no skyscrapers, spacecraft, or steam engines; no United States of America, no Declaration of Independence, no church or Reformation. Rome had fallen on schedule but the dark ages had been darker than in her world. With no Christianity, no Judaism, no Islam, and with no centers of scholarship to preserve the classics, the climb back up had been correspondingly more painful and protracted.
This was the world the Clan came from, descended from an itinerant tinker who had by accident discovered the ability to walk between worlds—to her own New England, land of dour puritan settlers, to the north of the iron triangle of the sugar and slave trade. He was lucky not to be hanged as a witch, Helge thought morosely as she stared out of her carriage window, shielding her face behind a lacquered fan as the contraption jolted along the cobblestone street. Or institutionalized, like a Kaspar Hauser. Strange things happened to disoriented adults who appeared as if out of thin air, speaking no known language, bewildered and lost. It had nearly happened to Miriam, the first time she accidentally world-walked. But at least now I understand what I'm doing, she thought.
World-walking was a recessive gene-linked trait, one whose carriers far outnumbered those who had the ability. To have the ability in full both parents must at least be carriers: the three-generation long braids knotted the Clan's six inner families together, keeping the bloodlines strong, while the outer families occasionally threw up a cluster of world-walking siblings. In the past hundred and fifty years—since the world Helge had grown up in as Miriam had industrialized—the Clan had used their ability to claw their way up from poor merchants to the second seat of power in the kingdom. The ability to send messages from one side of the continent to another within a day gave their traders a decisive edge, as did the weapons and luxury goods they were able to import from America.
The maids squeezed into the bench seat opposite Helge giggled as one wheel clattered off a pothole. She glanced at them irritably from behind her fan, unsure what the joke was, her hochsprache inadequate to follow the conversation. The carriage stank of leather and a faint aroma of stale sweat beneath the cloying toilet waters of the ladies. Helge used no such scents (it was Miriam's habit to bathe daily and wear as little makeup as possible), but Kara was sometimes overenthusiastic, the young Lady Souterne who traveled with them this evening seemed to think that smelling like a brothel would guarantee her a supply of suitors, and as for the last Clan notables to borrow this coach from the livery stable attached to the palace . . .
The four horses harnessed to the coach—not to mention the outriders and the carriages in front—kicked up a fine brown dust, dried out by the hot summer afternoon. It billowed so high that the occupants were forced to keep the windows of the carriage closed. They were thick slabs of rippled green glass, expensive as silver salvers but useful only insofar as they let beams of dusty evening sunlight into the oppressively hot interior. Helge could barely make out the buildings opposite behind their high stone walls, the shacks and lean-tos of the porters and costermongers and pamphleteers thronging the boulevard in front of them.
With a shout from the coachmen up top, the carriage turned off the boulevard and entered the drive up to the front of the Östhalle, passing cottages occupied by royal pensioners, galleries and temporary marquees for holding exhibitions of paintings and tapestries, the wooden fence of a bear pit, and the stone-built walls around the barracks of the Royal Life Guards. People thronged all around, the servants and soldiers and guards and bond-slaves of the noble visitors mingling with the royal household in residence and with hawkers and beggars and dipsters and chancers of every kind. A royal party could not but transpire without a penumbra of leaky festivities trickling down to the grounds outside.
The carriage stopped. A clatter of steps and the door opened: four brass horns cut through the racket. "Milady?" Kara asked. Helge rose first and clambered out onto the top step, blinking at the slanting orange sunlight coming over the trees. For a moment she was sure she'd caught her dress on something—a hinge, a protruding nail—and that presently it would tear; then she worried that a gust of wind would render her ridiculous on this exposed platform, until finally she recognized one of the faces looking up at her from below: "Sieur Huw?" she asked hopefully.
"Milady? If it would please you to take my hand—" he answered in English, accented but comprehensible.
She made it down the steps without embarrassing herself. "Sieur Huw, how kind of you." She managed to smile. Huw was another of those interchangeable youngbloods who infested Clan security, hot-headed adolescent duelists who would have been quite intolerable had Angbard not the means to tame them. When they grew up sufficiently to stop seeking any excuse for a brawl they could be useful: those who had two brain cells to rub together, doubly so. Huw was one of the latter, but Helge had only met him in passing and barely had his measure. Beanpole thin and tall, with brown hair falling freely below his shoulders and a receding chin to spoil what might otherwise have been rugged good looks, Huw moved with a dangerous economy of motion that suggested to those in his path that they had best find business elsewhere. But he wore neither sword nor gun at his belt today. Bearing arms in the presence of the king was a privilege reserved for the royal household and its guards. "Where's everything happening?" she asked him out of the side of her mouth.
"Around the garden at the back. Most notables have arrived already but you are by no means late. We can go through the north wing, if you want to give the impression you've been here discreetly all along," he offered.
"I suppose you were looking for me," she said, half-jokingly.
"As a matter of fact"—his gaze slid across the footmen holding the huge doors open for them—"I was." He nodded, a minute gesture toward a bow, as he crossed the threshold, then paused to bow fully before the coat of arms displayed above the floor. Miriam—remembering her manners as Helge—dropped a brief curtsey. Are we being watched? she wondered. Then, sharply, Who told Huw to wait for me? Huw waited for her politely, then offered his arm. She took it, and they walked together into the central hall of the north wing of the Östhalle.
The hall was a hollow cube, the walls supporting a wide staircase that meandered upward past three more floors beneath a ceiling glazed with a duke's fortune in lead crystal. Other rooms barely smaller than aircraft hangars opened off to either side, their windows open to admit the last of the evening sunlight. Discreet servants were already moving around the edges, lighting lamps and chandeliers. Others, bearing platters loaded with finger food, moved among the guests. More youngbloods, looking slightly anxious without their swords. Clusters of women in silks and furs, glittering with jewelry, enthusiastic girls shepherded by cynical matrons, higher orders attended by their ladies-in-waiting. Countess Helge paid barely any attention to her own retinue beyond a quick check that Lady Kara and Lady Souterne and Kara's maid Jenny and Souterne's maid whoever-she-was were following. "I'm sure there are more interesting people for you to wait upon," she said quietly, pitching her voice so that only Huw might hear it over the chatter of conversations around them. "I'm just a boring dried-up old countess with poor manners and a sideline in business journalism."
"Ha-ha. I don't think so. Your ladyship is modest beyond reproach. Would your ladyship care for an aperient?" He snapped his fingers at a servant bearing a salver laden with glasses.
"Obviously my company is so boring that it's driving you to drink already," she said with a smile.
"Milady?" He held a glass out for her.
"Thank you." Helge accepted the offered glass and sniffed. Sherry, or something not unlike it. A slight undertone of honeysuckle. Would they serve fortified wines here? "You were looking for me," she said, gently steering him back toward the far side of the hall and the garden party beyond. "Are you going to keep me on tenterhooks, wondering why?"
Huw sniffed, his nostrils flaring. "I do confess that you would have to ask her grace the duchess for an explanation," he said blandly. "It was at her urging that I made myself available. I'm sure she has her reasons." He smiled, trying for urbanity and coming dangerously close to a smirk. "Perhaps she thought that a, ah, 'boring dried-up old countess with poor manners and a sideline in business journalism' might need a young beau on whose arm she might lean, thereby inducing paroxysms of jealousy among the youngsters who feel themselves snubbed, or among those pullets who would imagine her a rival for their roosters?"
He repeated me word-perfect, she thought, so astonished that she forgot herself and half-drained her glass instead of sipping from it. (It was a dry sherry, or something very similar. Too dry for her taste.) He looks like a chinless wonder with a line of witty patter but he's got a memory like a computer. She raised one eyebrow at him. "I'm not in the market," she said, slowly and clearly.
"I beg your pardon?" He sounded genuinely confused, so that for a moment Helge almost relented. But the setup was too perfect.
"I said, I'm not in the marriage market," she repeated. "So I'm no threat to anyone." With some satisfaction she noticed his cheeks flush. "Nice wine. Fancy another one?" If I'm going to be a boring dried-up old countess with poor manners I might as well make the most of it, she resolved. Otherwise the evening promised to drag.
"I think I will," he said hesitantly. "I beg your pardon, I intended no disrespect."
"None taken." She finished her glass. Better drink the next one more slowly.
"Her grace observed that you were looking for gentles with an interest in the sciences," Huw commented, half-turning to snag a fresh glass so that she had to strain to hear him. "Is that so?"
Oh. The penny dropped and Miriam felt like kicking Helge for a moment. Trying to be two people at once was so confusing! "Maybe," she said guardedly. "I'm thinking about trying to get a discussion group going. Just people talking to each other. Why do you ask?"
He shrugged. "I was hoping—well. I'm going stale here. You know about the heightened security state, I believe? I don't know much about your background—I was forced to interrupt my studies and return here." He grimaced. "It's summer recess on the other side, so I'm not losing much ground—except access to the labs and to the college facilities—but if it goes on much longer I'm going to have to take a year out. And you're right in one supposition, my father's been pressing me to complete my studies and settle down, take a wife, and accept a postal rank. It's only the generosity of the debatable society that's allowed me to keep working on my thesis this far."
"Uh-huh." Miriam, wearing the Helge identity like a formal dress, steered her interviewee around a small knot of talkative beaux and through a wide-open doorway, through a state dining room where a table set for fifty waited beneath a chandelier loaded with a hundred candles. "Well, I don't know that I could say anything on your behalf that would help you—but if it's any consolation, I know the feeling. We're cut off and isolated here. For all that we're a social elite, the intellectual climate isn't the most stimulating. I was hoping to find people who'd be interested in helping organize a series of monthly lectures and weekly study group meetings. What were—are—you studying?"
"I'm midway through a master's in media arts and sciences," Huw admitted, sounding slightly bashful about it. "Working on fabrication design templates."
"Oh." It sounded deathly boring. Miriam switched off as they threaded their way around a gaggle of female courtiers attending on some great lady. "What does that involve? What college did you say you were studying at?"
"The MIT Media Lab. We're working on a self-contained tool kit for making modern electronic devices in the field—I say! Are you all right?"
Miriam wordlessly passed him her glass then fumbled with a silk handkerchief for a few seconds. "I'm. Okay. I think." Apart from the aftereffects of wine inhalation. She dabbed at her sleeve, but the worst seemed to have missed it. "Tell me more . . ."
"Sure. I'm doing a dissertation project on the fab lab—it's a workbench and tool kit that's designed to do for electronics what a blacksmith's forge or a woodworking shop does for ironmongery or carpentry. You'll be able to make a radio, or an oscilloscope, or a protocol analyzer or computer, all in the field. Initially it'll be able to make all of its own principal modules from readily available components like FPGAs and PCB stock—we're working with the printable circuitry team who're trying to use semiconductor inks in bubble-jet printers to print on paper, for example. I was looking into some design modularity issues—to be blunt, I want to be able to take one home with me. But there's a long way to go—"
By the time they fetched up in the huge marquee at the rear of the palace, two drinks and forty-something invitations later, Miriam was feeling more than a little light-headed. But her imagination was running full tilt; Huw had taken to the idea of monthly seminars like a duck to water and suggested half a dozen names of likely participants along the way, all of them young inner family intellects, frustrated and stifled by the culture of conservativism that infused the Clan's structures. Most of them were actively pursuing higher education in America, but had been blocked off from their studies by the ongoing security alert. Most of them were names she'd never heard of, second sons or third daughters of unexceptional lineage—not the best and the brightest whose dossiers Kara was familiarizing her with. Huw knew them by way of something he called the debating society, which seemed to be a group of old drinking buddies who occasionally clubbed together to sponsor a gifted but impecunious student. It was, Miriam reflected, absolutely typical of the Clan that the sons and daughters with an interest in changing the way their society worked were the ones who were furthest from the levers of power, their education left to the grace and charity of dilettantes.
Most of the introductions were not Clan-related in any way, however. As the evening continued, both her smile and her ability to stay in character as the demure blue-blooded Countess Helge became increasingly strained. Huw had other obligations of a social nature to fulfill and took his leave sooner than she'd have liked, leaving her to face the crowds with only occasional support from Kara. Sieur Hyvert of this and Countess Irina of that bowed and curtseyed respectively and addressed her in hochsprache (and once, in the case of a rural backwoods laird in loewsprache, confusing her completely), and as the evening wore on she was gripped with a worrying conviction that she was increasingly being greeted with the kindly condescension due an idiot, a mental defective—by those who were willing to speak to her at all. There were political currents here that she was not competent to navigate unaided. English was not the language of the upper class but the tongue the Clan families used among themselves, and her lack of fluency in hochsprache marked her out as odd, or stupid, or (worst of all) alien. Some of the older established nobility seemed to take the ascendancy of the Clan families as a personal affront. After one particularly pained introduction, she stifled a wince and turned round to hunt for her lady-in-waiting.
"Kara? Where are—" she began, sticking to hochsprache, that particular phrase coming more easily than most, when she realized that a knot of courtiers standing nearby was coming her way. They were mostly young, and all male, and their loud chatter and raucous laughter caught Miriam's attention in a way that was at once naggingly familiar and unwelcome. Shit, Kara, you pick your time to go missing beautifully. She glanced round, ready to retreat, but there was no easy way out of the path of the gaggle of jocks—
One of whom was speaking to her. "What?" she said blankly, all vestiges of hochsprache vanishing from her memory like the morning dew.
He glanced over his shoulder and said something: more laughter, with an unfriendly edge to it. "You are—wrong, the wrong, place," he said, staring down his nose at her. "Go home, grovel, bitch." Someone behind him said something in hochsprache.
Miriam glared at him. Rudeness needed no translation. And backing down wouldn't guarantee safety. Her heart hammering, she fumbled for words: "What dog, are, belong you, do you belong to? I am offense—"
Almost too late she saw his hand tightening on the hilt of his sword. A sword? Surprise almost drowned her fear—swords were forbidden in the royal presence, except by the bodyguard. But this wasn't the king's party. The arrogant young asshole began to turn to one side and she realized hazily that he wasn't about to draw on her—not in public—as she got a glimpse past his shoulder of a bored, half-amused golden-boy profile she'd seen once before, saying something to her assailant. Oh shit, it's him. Egon. The crown prince, handsome and perfect in form and a spoiled hothead by upbringing. The bottom threatened to drop out of her world: this perfect jock could literally get away with murder, if he was so inclined.
"He says, you bed him, maybe he not kill you when he king, bitch." Two other bravos, brilliantly dressed, managed to interpose themselves between the self-appointed translator and his pack leader. "With the others."
A black fury threatened to cut off Miriam's vision. "Tell him to get lost," she said sharply, in English, dropping all pretense of politeness. If you surrender they'll own you, she thought bleakly, forcing her momentarily treacherous knees to hold her upright. And if you won't surrender they'll try to break you. "I'm not his—"
"You are the Countess Helge voh Thorold d'Hjorth?" someone behind her shoulder asked in stilted English. She glanced round, her heart hammering in barely suppressed anger. While the jocks made sport she'd completely missed the other group that appeared to want something of her: two gentlemen with the bearing of bodyguards, shepherding four maids who clustered around a stooped figure, moving with exaggerated caution.
"I—" Trapped between the two factions she summoned up Helge, who racked her brain for the correct form of response. "I am that one," she managed, flustered.
"Good. You are—" Then she lost him. The guard spoke too fast for her to track his words, syllables sliding into one another.
She forced a smile, tense and ugly, then stole a glance back over her shoulder, lest one of Egon's thugs was about to stick a knife in her back. But they were talking and joking about something else, their attention no longer focused on her like hunting dogs. "I beg your pardon. Please to repeat this?"
The guard stepped around her. "I'll take care of the boys," he said quietly. Louder: "This is her royal highness, the Queen Mother. She would have words with you."
"I, ah—" hope she's not as rude as her eldest grandson. Numb with surprise, Helge managed a curtsey. "Am it pleased by your presence, your royal high! Highness," she managed before she completely lost her ability to stay in character.
The stooped figure reached out a hand to her. "Rise."
Shit, she swore to herself. How much worse can it get? The one situation where I need backup—a royal audience—comes up twice, and what's Kara doing? "Your majesty," she said, bending to kiss the offered hand.
The Queen Mother resembled Mother Theresa of Calcutta—if the latter had ever sported a huge Louis Quinze hairdo and about a hundred yards of black silk taffeta held together with large ruby- and sapphire-encrusted lumps of gold. Her eyes were sunken and watery with rheum, and her face was gaunt, the skin drawn tight over her beak of a nose. She looked to be eighty years old, but having been presented before her son, Miriam reckoned she couldn't be much over sixty. "Rise, I said," the Queen Mother croaked in hochsprache. Then in English: "You shall call me Angelin. And I shall call you Helge."
"I—" Miriam blanked for a moment. It was just one shock too many. "Yes, Angelin." You're the king's mother—you can call me anything you like and I'm not going to talk back. She took a deep breath. (As Roland had put it, his majesty Alexis Nicholau III of the Kingdom of Gruinmerkt liked to collect jokes about his family—he had two dungeons full of them.) "What can I—I'm at your service—I mean—"
The Queen Mother's face wrinkled. After a moment Miriam realized she was smiling. At least she isn't howling, "Off with her head!" "What you're wondering is, why do I speak this language?" Miriam nodded mutely, still numb and shaken by the confrontation with Egon's bravos. "It's a long story." The older woman sighed breathily. "Walk with me, please."
Angelin was stooped, her back so bent that she had to crane her neck back to see the ground ahead of her. And she walked at a painful shuffle. Miriam matched her speed, feeling knuckles like walnuts in an empty leather glove clutch at her arm. I'm being honored, she realized. Royalty didn't stoop to using just anyone as a walking frame. After a moment a long-dormant part of her memory kicked into life: Ankylosing spondylitis? she wondered. If so, it was a miracle Angelin was out of bed without painkillers and antiinflammatory drugs.
"I knew your mother when she was a little girl," said the queen. Shuffle, pant. "Delightful girl, very strong-willed." She said "I." That means she's talking personally, doesn't it? Or is it only the reigning monarch who says 'we'? If that applies here? Miriam puzzled as the queen continued: "Glad to see they haven't drowned it out of her. Have they?"
That seemed to demand a reply. "I don't think so, your royal highness." Shuffle.
"Oh, they'll try," Angelin added unreassuringly. "Just like last time."
Like what? Miriam bit her tongue. Her head was spinning with questions, fear and anger demanding attention, and the small of her back was slippery-cold with sweat. Angelin was steering her toward a side door in the palace, and her ladies-in-waiting and guards were screening her most effectively. If Kara had noticed anything—but Kara wasn't in sight and Miriam didn't dare create a scene by looking for her. "Is there anything I can do for you?" Miriam asked, desperately looking for a tactful formula, something to help her steer the conversation toward waters she was competent to navigate.
"Perhaps." The door opened before them as if by magic, to reveal a small vestibule. Four more guards waited on either side of a thronelike chair. A padded stool sat before it. "Please be seated in our presence." Two of the guards stepped forward to cradle the old queen's shoulders, while a third positioned the stool beneath her. "Take the chair; I cannot use it."
Definitely some kind of autoimmune—Miriam forced herself to stop thinking. She sat down carefully, grateful for the support.
"Leave us." Angelin's gimlet stare sent all but two of the guards packing. The last two stood in front of the door, their faces turned to the woodwork but their hands on the hilts of their swords. The Queen Mother looked back at Miriam. "It is seven years since Eloise died," said Angelin. "And Alexis is not inclined to remarry. He's got his heir, and for all his faults, lack of devotion to his wife's memory is not one of them."
"Ah." Miriam realized her fingers were digging into her knees, and she forced herself to let go.
"You can relax. This is not a job interview; nobody is going to offer you the throne," Angelin added, so abruptly that Miriam almost choked.
"But I didn't want—" She brought herself up fast. "I'm sorry. You, uh, speak English very well. The vernacular—"
"I grew up over there," said Angelin, then was silent for almost a minute.
She grew up there? The statement was wholly outrageous, even though the individual words made sense.
Eventually, Angelin began to speak again. "The six families have aspired to become seven for almost a century now. I was only eighteen, you know. Back in 1942. Last time the council tried to capture the throne. They didn't want me siding with my braid lineage, so they had me brought up in secrecy, in America; it wouldn't be the first time, or the last. They brought me back and civilized me then farmed me out to the third son when I came of age. Both his elder brothers subsequently died, in a hunting accident and of a fever, respectively. The council of landholders—the laandsknee—screamed blue murder and threatened to annul the marriage: but then the six started tearing each other's guts out in civil war, and that was an end to the matter, for a generation."
The lamplight flickered and Miriam felt an icy certainty clutching at her guts. "You mean, the Clan?" she asked. "You're a world-walker?"
"I was." Angelin's eyes were dark hollows in the dim light. "Pregnancy changes you, you know. And I doubt I'd survive if I tried it, today. My old bones are not what they were. And I gather the other world has changed, too. But enough about me." A withered flicker of a smile: "I know your grandmother. She swears by you, you know. Well, she swears about you, but that's much the same: it means you're in her thoughts. She's pigheaded, too."
"I don't see eye to eye with her," Helge said tightly. The Duchess Hildegarde had once sent agents to kill or dishonor her, thinking her an imposter; since proven wrong, she had subsided into a resentful sulk broken only by expressions of disdain or contempt. What a loving family we aren't.
"She told me that herself," the Queen Mother said dismissively. Her eyes gleamed as she looked directly at Helge. "I wanted to see you myself before I made my mind up," she said.
"Made your mind up?" Miriam could hear her voice rising unpleasantly, even though everything she'd learned as Helge told her she must stick to a cultivated awe in the royal personage. "About what? I've just been threatened by your grandson—"
"Don't you worry about that." Angelin sounded almost amused. "I'll deal with Egon later. You may leave now. I won't stand on ceremony. Thurman, show the lady out—"
"What is this?" Miriam demanded plaintively.
"Later," said the Queen Mother, as one of the guards—Thurman—urged Helge toward the door. "The trait is recessive," she added, slightly louder. "That means—"
"I know what it means," Miriam replied sharply.
"We'll talk later. Go now." The Queen Mother looked away dismissively. The door closed behind Helge, stranding the younger woman at one side of a sprung dance floor where couples paced in circles around each other in complex patterns that defied interpretation. Miriam—at this moment she felt herself to be entirely Miriam, not even an echo of the social veneer that formed her alter ego Helge remaining to cover the yawning depths—took a ragged breath. She felt stifled by layers of artifice, suffocated by the social expectations of having to live as a noble lady: and now she had to put up with threats, innuendo, and hints from the royal family? She felt hot and cold at once, and her stomach hurt.
The trait is recessive. The king was a carrier. That meant that each of his sons had a one in four chance of being a carrier. Have you thought about marriage? Obviously not from the right angle, because You've been too successful, too fast. Wasn't Prince Egon—golden boy with a thousand-yard stare, watching her with something ugly in his eyes—already engaged to some foreign princess? Raised in secrecy. Might he be a carrier? I know your grandmother.
"Lady Helge!" It was Kara, two maids in tow, looking angry and relieved simultaneously. "Where have you been? We were so worried!"
"Hold this," said Miriam, thrusting the empty glass at her. Then she darted outside as fast as she could, in search of a bush to throw up behind.
Translated Transcript Begins
"Has the old goose been drinking too much, do you suppose?"
"Hist, now! She'll hear you!"
"Oh don't worry. She only understands one word in ten. It can't be helped, I suppose. She grew up in fairyland, wearing trousers and chopping up dead men to understand how they work. They didn't have time to teach her how to speak as well."
"What, you mean—" (shocked giggle) "—to the Crone?"
"No, I don't suppose she's that stupid. But she's one of the kind such as have a thoughtful temper. You don't want to get on the wrong side of her, you know. Wait, here she comes—" (English) "—would you like another glass, ma'am?"
(Click.)
"Phew, there she goes again, bouncing after some stuffed-pants longhair. This one looks like he swallowed a ferret, look at the way he's twitching."
"Raw with lust for the old goose."
"Hist! Is that your third glass?"
"Who's counting, madam? Listen, you have that one. Oh, over there! Don't look, don't be so obvious. Himself with the brown hair and the, um, isn't he something?"
"He—"
(Click.)
"Not as if my lady is stupid, but she is strange. Witchy-weird like any of the Six, but more so, if you follow me. Wears breeches and talks the Anglaische all the time except when she's trying to learn. But she does it so badly! Look at the way she carries herself. Wagging tongues have it that she seduced Sieur Roland, but if something like that could seduce anything then I'm Queen of Summer Angels. What do you say, Nicky? Dried-up bluestocking or—"
"Don't underestimate her, she's not stupid, even if she doesn't understand much. She may not look like a lizard but she's descended from a long lineage of snakes. Sieur Roland is dead, isn't he, so I'm led to believe? Do you think she had something to do with that? Suck the man dry and cast aside his bones like a spider."
"Nicky! That's disgusting!"
"Not as disgusting as what that spotty lad wanted with you in the bedchamber when she was away."
"Don't you go talking like that about me—"
"Then don't you go calling me disgusting, miss."
(Sigh.) "I'm not calling you disgusting."
"Then it's a good thing I didn't call you a whore, isn't it? People might misunderstand."
"Here, have another—drink while she's not looking. Who is that longshanks oddboy, anyway?"
"Him? He's one of the hangers-on on at court. Some fancy-boy or other to the king's bedchamber. Dresser-on-of-codpieces or some such."
"You don't know, do you? She doesn't know!"
"Rubbish, he's Sieur Villem du Praha and he's married to Lady Jain of Cours, and he rides with the king's hunt. And look, there's our missy Kara going all gushy over him."
"Kara? She's—"
"You just look, whenever she gets within six feet of him she has to tie her knees together with her stay laces to stop them falling apart. Silly little bitch, she hasn't seen the way he looks at his wife."
"Milady Kara's not one to turn her nose up at a lost cause. But what's with milady the honorable Old Goose? What's she doing with him?"
"Who the—knows, pardon my loewsprache, she's being a witch again. Shamelessly talking to strange men."
"What's shameless about it? She's got her chaperone—"
(Laughter.) "Red-Minge Kara is a chaperone? What color is the sky in your county, and do the fish have feathers to match the birds' scales?"
"I'd like to know what she's talking about, though."
"I've got an idea. Wait here."
(Click.)
"So? What's the story?"
"Give me that."
"Must be a long story to wet your throat like that."
"Long? You haven't heard the first of it—"
"Is she trying to fix Kara up with a paramour?"
"Is she—bah! Even Old Witchy-Goose isn't that stupid, what would people say if her lady-in-waiting got pregnant? I'm sorry I asked. I thought it would be something like that. And the promises I had to make!"
"Promises?"
"Yes, I said I'd ask you to meet Oswelt—him with the belly—behind the marquee in half an hour for a midnight promenade."
"Bitch!"
"Now now, mind your language! Remember I said you weren't a whore? I didn't promise you'd be there, just said I'd ask."
"You did . . ."
"So if you want . . ."
"What about her ladyship? What did you find out?"
"Well, it's as well I asked because something tells me we'll be dragged hither and back in the next months, or I'm not a household hand."
"Really? Why? What's she want from him?"
"He's not with the king's wardrobe, he's with the prince's. And you know what that means."
"Oh!"
"Yes."
"The slut!"
"Absolutely wanton."
"We'll be back here three times a night before the month is out."
"Indeed."
"Hmm. So what else did you tell master Oswelt about me . . . ?"
(Click.)
transcript ends