‘How old is Harndon, then?’ asked Lady Mary.
‘The Empress Livia and her legions established a fortress here one thousand and fifty years ago. Or so.’ Almspend shrugged. ‘Actually, there’s a great deal of argument among scholars about the date of the expedition, and whether Harndon was established in the first or second expedition to the Nova Terra.’
‘Really?’ asked the Queen. She rolled her eyes at Lady Mary, but Almspend either didn’t notice or didn’t care.
‘At any rate, my lady, Harndon is a very old name and probably pre-dates the Archaics. When good King Ranulf returned from the Holy Land and built the New Palace, his chamberlain, Hildebald, writes that the deepest excavations found both tunnels, a temple foundation, and a road of logs laid side by side and planed flat with an adze of great antiquity. The temple still held enormous latent potentia and had to be cleansed by the archbishop. He died of the task, and the Patriarch had to come from Liviapolis.’
The three women walked along the corridor for a few more steps.
‘How terrifying!’ said Lady Mary. ‘Where was this temple?’
‘Oh, just behind us, about twenty paces. Some of the old stones were reused in the corridor – look – see the Green Man? That’s one of their old signs.’
The Queen put a hand on the stone. She closed her eyes. ‘They still have power. They called this place—’ She paused. ‘Harn Dum.’
‘Why yes!’ Almspend was delighted. ‘Did you read that in Tacitus?’
‘No,’ said the Queen, clearly shaken. ‘I just heard a voice in the stone.’
‘You mean to say that our world sits atop yesterday’s world, and that one sits atop another, and another? Under our New Palace is an older palace, and then a temple – what’s under the temple?’
‘Something wrought by the Wild, perhaps, or by the Old People.’ Almspend laughed.
‘The Wild cannot build anything,’ said Lady Mary.
‘Nonsense! The Wild makes wonderful things. The new scholarship studies these things. Irks build, they have music, and they have towns and castles.’ Almspend nodded, happy to be able to discuss the things that delighted her with her friends, who too often talked about dancing.
‘That is merely the imitation of man,’ said Lady Mary.
‘Not at all. That’s a very dated theology, my dear,’ said Almspend. ‘In fact, it is far more likely that our works are an imitation of theirs.’
‘Poppycock!’ snapped Mary, who was tired of being patronised by her father and didn’t intend to let Becca Almspend get into the habit. ‘Rubbish!’
Surprisingly, it was the Queen who agreed. ‘Before he left, Harmodius was experimenting with issues raised along these lines,’ she said. Almspend nodded. ‘The Archaics understood these things far better, Mary. I could—’
‘By the virgin, Rebecca, in a moment you’ll tell me that you worship Tara.’ Lady Mary crossed herself.
Rebecca smiled. ‘Mary, would it shock you to know that some scholars think that the Virgin may be the early Church’s attempt to harness the worship of Tara the Huntress?’
‘You only say that because we’re deep beneath the earth where the lightning can’t hit you,’ said Mary. Her voice was light, but she was clearly mortified.
‘Tar,’ said the Queen.
The other two women were silent. They had come to a great oak door with iron hinges and all three women stopped.
‘They call her Tar,’ the Queen said, in a dreamy voice. ‘She became later Tara, but her name is Tar.’
‘My lady?’ asked Mary.
The Queen looked at her strangely. ‘Yes?’ she snapped.
Almspend kicked Mary with one slippered foot and Mary squealed and stepped away from the Queen. ‘Ouch, what was that for?.’ Her eyes met Almspend’s.
‘What just happened?’ asked the Queen.
‘You touched one of the Green Man stones and went all funny,’ said Almspend in her matter-of-fact voice.
The Queen shrugged. ‘And now I remember. Well. Here we are.’ She produced a key, and the three women took turns working it in the lock with sweet oil until it turned.
The Queen put a strong hermetical light over the door, and the three women gaped. There were piles of scrolls spilling onto the floor, and heavy tomes piled on heavy slab tables. A large rat stood in the middle of the central table, chewing parchment with malevolent, spiky teeth.
The rat met the Queen’s eye.
The Queen raised a hand and the rat turned to ash.
‘Oh – very good!’ said Lady Almspend. ‘Well hit!’
The Queen allowed herself a smile. ‘I have been practising. That animal was under someone’s control – I can see the web of its hermetical owner.’
‘Who would want to read these old—’ Lady Mary stepped back and gave a shriek. She leaned against the door frame, a hand to her bosom. ‘By the Blessed Virgin. Saints protect me.’
‘By all that’s holy – or unholy!’ said Almspend. ‘I see why this room is protected! These are Plangere’s papers! In with the King’s! Sweet Jesu, my lady – this is raw power for the taking! Did Harmodius know?’
‘I’ll guess he did not. But his own papers need to be protected as well – you wouldn’t believe what I’ve found in his rooms. That man was far deeper than we ever realised.’
‘They all are,’ muttered Almspend, rifling through an enormous grimoire. ‘Oooh! This stinks of Archaic necromancy.’ She literally held her nose. ‘My lady, what are we looking for?’
The Queen looked back and forth between her two most trusted friends. ‘Do you two know what old wives whisper about my husband? That he is impotent, and cursed?’
There was a pause. Hermetical light is very white, and unflattering and the two women looked at their Queen under its glare, each struggling to hide something.
Almspend bowed her head. ‘I have heard this, yes. And worse.’
Lady Mary nodded. ‘Although the Galles all say it is you, my lady. That you are barren.’ Even in the cold white light, she flushed.
Almspend nodded. ‘The Galles are the most vicious gossips I’ve ever heard, for men. I thought only women were so poisonous. Once or twice I’ve wished I wore a sword and could use it, so I could cut the comb of a braggart who needed it.’
The Queen put a hand to her belly. ‘I’m pregnant,’ she said. ‘By the King, if that needs to be said.’ She sighed.
In some ways, she was the most human that Lady Mary had ever seen her.
‘My husband has a secret,’ the Queen went on. ‘It concerns the Red Knight. Beyond that, I know the older women say the King had an affair, and she is the woman that cursed him with impotence.’
Mary smiled. ‘Well, if that was the case, you seem to have cured him.’
The Queen smiled. ‘I have powers,’ she said, her voice low. ‘And after the battle – that woman, Amicia? She healed us. I think her power and mine combined sufficed to break the curse.’
To Mary, who had no access to power whatsoever, this was too much information; like hearing about another person’s toilet habits. But Almspend leaned forward. ‘Really!’ she said. ‘Fascinating!’
‘I want to know who cast the curse and why,’ said the Queen. ‘So that I can fight it.’ She shrugged. ‘Among other things, it occurs to me that whoever cursed him in the first place might want to harm my baby.’
The two ladies-in-waiting nodded slowly, but Mary smiled. ‘Perhaps you were just slow to kindle?’ she asked.
The Queen laughed. ‘I have lain with the King upwards of three times a day since we were wed,’ she said with a low chuckle. ‘More, when the fancy took us.’ She met her maid’s eye. ‘I know by my powers that I am fecund. Absurdly so. Need I say more?’
Mary blushed so hotly that she fanned herself.
Almspend took a deep breath. ‘Your Grace?’ she asked quietly. As the women hardly ever addressed the Queen by title, she bowed her assent to let her secretary go on.
‘Your Grace must understa
nd that the study of history is littered with unpleasant truths,’ she said.
The Queen nodded. ‘Go on.’
‘That’s all,’ Almspend said. ‘You may well learn something you do not wish to know. Or need to know.’
‘I intend to save my baby,’ said the Queen.
Harndon – Ser Gerald Random
Random was comfortably and pleasurably abed with his wife when the wings began to beat at the window. His first reaction was annoyance, and then fear – the wings were immense and, to a veteran of combat in the Wild, portended something worse than a messenger pigeon. He rose, naked, and drew his sword from its place over his bed, knelt because hopping on one foot is not the best way to face a monster, and pushed his wife’s naked flank to hurry her from the room.
Thump thump thump
Thump thump thump
Once, when he had been a boy, great luna moths had come to the horn windows of his father’s house in South Harndon. His mother, a seamstress, had purchased beeswax candles to allow her to work late – a special commission – and the moths had been drawn by the light. They had been as big as his head or bigger; creatures of the deep Wild. And the thump of their alien, insectile bodies against the mullioned horn and glass windows of his parents’ house had been terrifying and yet fascinating. And very young Thomas Random had watched their shadows flit and nudge and, greatly daring, he had stepped out into a summer night to watch them. The largest moth had fluttered about in its clumsy flight and come to hover just a few inches from the tip of his nose and he’d missed it at first in the dark, and then felt the breeze of its wings, each as big as his hand. He’d felt no urge to kill it. In fact, he’d wondered what it saw when it looked at him.
He’d always been curious about the Wild. He’d ignored his father’s instructions, cashed out his apprenticeship and marched with the Royal Army as a young man – just to see the Wild.
And now, he used the tip of his sword to throw the catch on his bedroom window. The windows opened outward, so he pushed.
The sheer size of the thing outside took his breath away, and then he saw the colour and laughed.
The gigantic raptor was half black and half white – and every child knew what an Imperial messenger looked like. Random had never seen one before, but he knew it, even soaked with rain and desperate with fatigue, and he threw the windows wide so the poor bedraggled thing cartwheeled in and fell in a sodden mass on his bed.
By the time his wife, now decently arrayed, dared return to her bed chamber, Random had the message. He was sitting on the bed, shaking his head.
‘These sheets are ruined,’ Lady Alice said. ‘Six weeks sewing wasted. Couldn’t you have let the damned bird into the stables, or something?’
Random grinned at her.
She stepped back. ‘This isn’t some damned adventure— Oh, no! You are directing the Queen’s tournament.’ She leaned forward. ‘So you can’t leave.’
He caught her and kissed her. ‘It’s a different kind of adventure,’ he said. ‘All I have to do is raise a hundred thousand Etruscan ducats.’
Harndon – Edmund the Journeyman
The first corpse in the square shocked every man and woman in the neighbourhood.
The body was that of a young man – a handsome young man. His murderer meant him to be found – he was spiked to the stump of the maypole with a pair of daggers. He’d been killed with a sword. He was expensively dressed in red and yellow wool and silk.
Edmund saw the crowd around the corpse and waited his turn to see the thing itself. He’d seen enough corpses to know the look – white as milk, a slackness about him that threatened any man’s belief in an afterlife. Dead was dead.
Friars came and took the man down and by late afternoon, when he and his apprentices were taking turns boring the latest barrel, a shop boy told them that the body was one of the Queen’s squires.
‘It was them Galles,’ said Sam.
Tom and Duke kept working.
‘Well, it stands to reason. Jack Drake tried to take our square, and he’s the king of them Galle lovers. One of the Queen’s squires dead? The Galles kilt him.’ He shrugged. ‘Or Jack Drake did. To warn us off.’ Sam looked at his acting master, who shook his head.
‘What a lot of foolery,’ Edmund said. ‘The Galles are knights. They don’t go around killing other gentles—’
‘But they do!’ said Duke. ‘Christ on the cross, Ed! Where’ve you been? Their top knight, Vrailly, kilt the Earl of Towbray’s nephew in cold blood! Just hacked him down.’
Tom shook his head. ‘Kilt him in a duel, fair as fair. That’s the way I hear it.’ He went back to turning his drill, and then paused. ‘Mind you, Vrailly is as big as a house and the other was just a boy – but a fight’s fair if both parties agree to fight – eh? Ain’t it?’
‘Galle lover,’ Duke spat.
‘Nope,’ said Tom. ‘I just like to have my facts straight.’
‘Could have been Drake, though,’ Sam said.
Edmund nodded. ‘That’s enough. Let’s get this job done.’
Duke grunted, angry. The boy was often angry, these days. The city air was poisoned with the new factions – the Galles, the Jarsays, and the Northerners. Galles dressed in bright colours, wore their cotes and gowns very short, and walked about looking for trouble.
Naturally, all three of these things had appeal for young men.
The Jarsays were predominantly men and boys from the Southern farmlands. The city was full of Jarsayans after harvest, and there were more than ever this year – some with tales of brutal attacks by Royal troops. The sign of the Jarsayans was a farmer’s smock.
The outer wards of the city had received an influx of Northern refugees in the late spring. Most of them were going back to their homes now, but the remnant were angry and dispossessed and very prickly.
The guilds had responded by holding an increased number of drills for all the trained bands within the city. The armourers prided themselves on being one of the best military guilds, and they drilled so often that Edmund was tired and hungry all the time. But he had become aware that the guild masters were using the trained bands to overawe the factions.
‘We’re armourers,’ he said firmly. ‘We’re above faction concerns.’
‘That’s crap,’ said Duke. ‘The Galles is foreign, and they’re out to get the Queen. Calling her a whore. Saying she’s barren. They say she’s—’
Master Pye appeared at the door, and Duke flushed.
Master Pye looked at them grimly, but he didn’t say a word.
‘I don’t believe any of those things!’ Duke said.
Master Pye nodded and beckoned to Edmund.
Edmund felt like his feet were made of lead. But he followed Master Pye across the yard to the master’s office, a room as full of vellum and parchment as the royal secretary’s office at the palace.
He felt like the best defence might be a good offence, so as soon as the master was seated, he bowed and said, ‘Master Pye, I am sorry. The body found this morning disturbed everyone.’
Pye nodded. ‘I’m glad you accept responsibility, young Edmund. What your men say reflects on you. What my men say reflects on me.’ For a moment, his mild eyes, framed by his enormous Etruscan spectacles, magnified and enhanced, met the journeyman’s, and Edmund felt a jolt of pure fear. He had only seen the master really angry once. ‘I spend too much time at the palace. I need you, Edmund. How is the project?’
Edmund shook his head. ‘There’s no end to it, Master. But I’m making three barrels with one-inch bores. I think – think – they’ll answer some of the specifications on Mr Smyth’s contract. And the strange bell with the holes for bolts.’
Master Pye steepled his hands. ‘Good. Get it done. You know something about both casting and making punches.’
Edmund bowed. ‘Yes, Master.’
‘I will need you to take charge of a number of projects here, Edmund. These iron barrels have done a good job of training you to run a project ?
?? you are well inside your budget and your work nears completion. I will need you to direct ever more of the work here, which is why I need you to be better at controlling the apprentices.’ The master raised his hand. ‘I understand that these are difficult times and, make no mistake, I understand that you used to be one of them and therefore lack that quality of awe that might give you an air of command. In the old days I’d send you to another shop.’ Master Pye shook his head. ‘I hate to say this, but I think I have more orders than I can possibly fill without engaging another dozen apprentices and two more journeymen – yet I lack the time to train and oversee them in a way which would make them good masters in their turn.’ He looked up. ‘Do you understand what I am saying?’ he asked.
Edmund coughed. ‘No. Yes. I’ll do what I can.’
‘The most important commission in the shop is the King’s armour for the tournament. Yet I have done almost no work on it since we completed the hardening process, because I am cutting the dies by hand.’ He looked at Edmund. ‘And I need hundreds of coin blanks cast and cut.’
‘I can do that,’ Edmund nodded.
‘No, boy, I don’t need you to do it. I need you to develop a process to allow apprentices to do it, so I can cut dies and you can embellish the King’s armour.’ Master Pye’s eye met his again.
‘Tom could run it,’ Edmund said. ‘He’s very good.’
Pye took a deep breath. ‘Really?’ he said. ‘Young Tom is a street boy. You know that, eh?’
Guilds took on a proportion of foundlings, but they seldom amounted to anything because, even inside a guild, success required both nepotism and ready silver.
Edmund knew that. Tom tried not to be resentful of it, but sometimes his superior skills so obviously overshadowed Edmund’s that he was acerbic about it.
Edmund leaned forward. ‘He’d be loyal – for ever – if we give him this opportunity.’
Pye rubbed his unshaven cheeks. ‘Good call. I knew my confidence in you was not misplaced. I’ve been too long out of the shop. Send for him this instant.’