Ten Little Wizards: A Lord Darcy Novel Page 2

  The Chevalier cursed fluently and imaginatively for so young a man, and spurred his horse on through the foot-deep water that covered the road.

  Castle Cristobel, which spread its vast acreage over a high hill in the otherwise flat Norman coastal valley, was one of the oldest of the royal palaces of the Plantagenet kings. Built by the first Arthur—not the mythical King Arthur, but the flesh-and-blood nephew and heir of the first Richard—as the principal redoubt and keep in his Normandy dominion, it had been the strongest of a web of strong points during the contentious battling of that boisterous and undecided age.

  It was yet, as it had been, a fortress, a seat of law and government, a royal residence, the Main Depository of the Royal Archives, and the principal headquarters (in a small monastery within the castle grounds) of the Stephainites, a monastic order of healers founded by the legendary St. Stephain d’Aviss in the thirteenth century.

  Though the principal site of government, and the chief residence of the Plantagenet kings, had long since moved to London, there was still one ceremony that was, as it had been for six hundred years, performed only at Castle Cristobel.

  Gwiliam Richard Arthur Plantagenet, Baron Ambrey, Duke of Lancaster, the twenty-seven-year-old younger son of King John IV, was about to be raised to the title and station of Prince of Gaul. His great-uncle, Prince Charles, having held the title for sixty-three years, had died the year before, and Gwiliam was the logical and traditional successor. And, as his older brother John, Prince of Britain, was of a monastic and scholarly turn of mind, there was every chance that the to-be-annointed Prince of Gaul would someday be elected the next King of England and France and Emperor of the Angevin Empire.

  But John IV was still young for a Plantagenet, who are of a notoriously long-lived stock; so Prince Gwiliam could look forward to many years of letting his father worry about the reins of government before he would have to gather them in to himself.

  It was eleven-thirty when the hooves of the Chevalier d’Espergnan’s mount clattered over the wooden bridge leading to the Knight’s Gate to Castle Cristobel. The rain had commenced again, and the sky was a leaden gray. An armsman in a red rain cape stopped him at the portcullis.

  “From London on the King’s business,” d’Espergnan told the armsman. He pulled back the rubberized canvas hood of his rain cape and leaned over in his saddle to display the silver greyhound device that was the insignia of the Imperial Courier Service. “Let me pass!”

  The armsman regarded the tall, slender young nobleman who sat rapier-straight in his saddle. Young men on the King’s business were always in a hurry. But that, the armsman supposed, was why the King picked them for his business.

  Pass,” he said, stepping aside. “But leave your mount in the stableyard in the Great Cristobel outer bailey. They will see to it there. No horses allowed past that point for the next few weeks.”

  D’Espergnan nodded. “Thank you, armsman,” he said. Gentlemen on the King’s business were always polite, when time permitted. Anything less would be an abuse of power. He wheeled his mount and clattered and splashed his way through into the outer bailey. The stable and stableyard were up against the inner wall, across several hundred yards of open ground decorated with a smattering of tents, booths, and less-identifiable structures. The outer bailey of Great Cristobel, the newest and outermost keep of the Castle Cristobel complex, was the largest cleared area within the castle walls. It held a year-round open market, and twice a year an entire traveling circus pitched its tents along the wall. Showing admirable self-restraint, d’Espergnan crossed the field at something less than an outright trot.

  Ten minutes later, after pausing only to remove his rain garment and towel his face and hair, the young courier was handing his leather dispatch case over to the holder of the golden greyhound: Lord Peter Whiss, a short, slender man with receding blond hair, who was the personal Secretary of Marquis Sherrinford, the King’s Equerry. The silver greyhound couriers were bound by oath to give up their dispatches only to holders of the golden greyhound, or to the person of the King or a Royal Duke directly.

  “Thank you, Sir Raoul,” the secretary said from behind the antique walnut desk in his office as he took the bulging brown case and hefted it in his well-scrubbed hands. “And only twenty-seven hours late. We consider that, given the state of the roads, you have done very well.”

  “Thank you, my lord,” Raoul said, breathing a sigh of relief that Lord Peter had considered the weather.

  “But see that it never happens again,” Lord Peter added, smiling.

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “Were there any private messages?”

  “None, my lord,” d’Espergnan said.

  “I’m glad of that,” Lord Peter said. A private message was not, in this context, a love note from a lady in London, or any other nonofficial mail. Rather it was the one exception to the oath of delivery: a message from a highly placed source which was so confidential that it could only be delivered to the one to whom it was addressed. As such, it was usually not good news. Its existence, although not its contents, had to be divulged to Lord Peter.

  “Have the seneschal assign you to a room,” Lord Peter told the young man. “Dry off, eat something, and get some sleep. From now on report to me once a day, in the morning, and see whether I have any instructions for you. Aside from that, stay out of the way of the coronation preparations and have a good time.”

  “Thank you, Lord Peter,” d’Espergnan said. He saluted, and then retreated rapidly from the secretary’s presence. D’Espergnan, had you asked him, would have expressed the opinion that, although His Dread Majesty John IV reigned over the Angevin Empire with a kind but firm hand, the person who ruled over the Empire was Lord Peter Whiss, private secretary to the Marquis Sherrinford.

  Lord Peter held a slightly different view of the true state of affairs, Although it was a fact that among his duties were some of much more moment to the Empire than that of Royal Postmaster, still he regarded himself as but a cog in the complex and far-reaching mechanism of the King’s Government. An important cog, perhaps, but a cog nonetheless. He turned the dispatch case over and examined the seal. It had not been disturbed. On completing his examination, Lord Peter knew that the case had not been opened since the seal was affixed. He didn’t merely think so, he knew. It was part of his one talent. Other holders of the gold greyhound, who were not themselves sorcerers, would use a government sorcerer to assure that the privacy spell on the packet had not been violated; but Lord Peter had no need of that. The dispatch case could have been sealed without using a privacy spell, and he still would have known if it had been opened, no matter how carefully it was done. Of course, the spells were still used; there was no point in being foolhardy.

  The other part of his talent, which King John made good use of, was, so far as was known, unique. Lord Peter knew when someone was lying. He couldn’t tell what the other was lying about—just the fact that some part of what the other said was not true.

  Lord Peter opened the dispatch case and dumped the envelopes within onto the desk. Then he ran his hand around the inside to make sure none had somehow got caught in the stitching. He was not by nature a careful man, but he had trained himself well over the years. Eternal vigilance and a nervous stomach were the costs of his job.

  He sorted the forty-two envelopes into three different stacks, routinely checking the seals on each as he did so. The first stack he tied with a red ribbon for delivery to the Lord Chamberlain; the second he tied with a blue ribbon for delivery to the Foreign Minister; and the third he slit open with an ivory letter opener and read, one by one. He uncapped his fountain pen and initialed each as he read it, sometimes with a comment and sometimes not. At the next-to-last one he paused thoughtfully, then reread each of its three pages as though to be sure he had understood it the first time. Then he folded it and put it in an inside pocket of his russet-and-gold jacket. He quickly read the last letter, then bundled the stack of opened mail together and tie
d it with a green ribbon.

  He put all three bundles into his own gold-stitched leather shoulder bag for delivery. He could have assigned this part of the job to another, but it was not in his conception of his duties to do so. The shorter the chain, the less chance for a broken link. He left his office, carefully locking the door behind him.

  The throne room, Lord Peter’s eventual goal, was down a long hallway called the Gallery of Kings, off of which most of the royal and imperial offices had their temporary homes. The seat of government moved with the King, so when he had come last week to prepare for his son’s coronation, the critical government offices had come with him. But a heavy communication between the two places was a necessity; the decisions made in Castle Cristobel still had to be implemented from London.

  Lord Peter walked slowly down the Gallery of Kings; one week’s residence was not long enough for him to have become inured to its symbolism. Here along the right-hand wall were the official portraits of the Plantagenet kings, from Geoffrey of Anjou, who was called “Plantagenet” for the sprig of “genet” broom plant he wore in his cap, to John IV, who was the direct descendant of a royal line called “Plantagenet” for most of the last millennium.

  Here was Henry II, Geoffrey’s son, who already held the title of Duke of Normandy when his father died in 1151 and he took over the throne of England. He looked slightly cross-eyed and very somber in the portrait, but Lord Peter decided that the first was probably the artist’s attempt at perspective, and the second due to the fact that the painting probably hadn’t been cleaned in the past three hundred years.

  Lord Peter stopped at the next door, delivered the red-beribboned bundle to the Chamberlain’s secretary-in-chief, and then went on.

  Here, next, was Henry’s son, Richard the Lion-Hearted, glaring paternally down in his old age. On the wall across from Richard’s portrait was the famous nineteenth century Jan Etyacht painting of the Siege of Chaluz, reproduced in every school history book. Twenty feet wide by ten feet high, it showed the full field of battle before the walls of Chaluz. In the right-hand corner was the crossbowman on the battlement who had just fired his bolt. Slightly to the left of center Richard was sinking to his knees as the crossbow bolt penetrated his shoulder.

  The luckiest wound in the history of the Angevin Empire, Lord Peter thought. Had Richard not had the time for reflection provided by his long bout with the infection and fever caused by the wound, and perhaps its intimations of mortality, then he might have remained the good but profligate king who spent his time and energy on foreign crusades instead of wisely ruling his kingdom and his people. Had Richard instead died of the wound in 1199, then his younger brother John Lackland would have ascended the throne, and probably would have proved as stupid and evil a king as he had been a prince.

  But Richard had lived and ruled wisely and well until his death in 1219, when the scepter passed to his nephew Arthur. Lord Peter stared up at the portrait of Arthur I, “Good King Arthur,” whose history was mixed in the popular mind with the legends of the mythical King Arthur of the Round Table. How would history have been changed if Arthur had not reigned? What would John Lackland’s stewardship have done to the kingdom and to the Plantagenet line? Lord Peter shook his head as he continued down the line of portraits. That was the sort of speculation best left to the writers of phantasmagorical fiction.

  Here they were in order: the Geoffreys, Johns, Gwiliams, Richards, and Arthurs; rulers who had kept together their British and Norman holdings and, for the most part, ruled them wisely and well. At the foot of each painting, set into the frame, were the personal arms of the King, which changed slightly with each reign, but which, in every case, joined inexorably the lions of England and the lilies of France.

  Each of the Plantagenets had expanded these holdings slowly, carefully; by marriage, diplomacy, and the sword, until the Anglo-French Empire now ruled over more land than the Roman Empire at its height, and had lasted more than twice as long. And showed no signs of lessening now; with an intelligent and vigorous king at the head of a loyal and vigorous people, administered by a well-schooled, capable, and absolutely faithful civil service. If God willed, there was no reason why there should not be a Plantagenet on the throne of the Angevin Empire for another thousand years. With that thought, Lord Peter crossed himself, and reminded himself that the way to keep the will of God was to continue to do God’s will on Earth to the best of one’s ability.

  As Lord Peter reached the throne room, he resolved to leave by the opposite door, so that he could walk down the Gallery of Queens on the far side. Portraits of the Plantagenet queens, from Eleanor of Aquitaine to the present Marie of Roumania, graced those walls. The queens consort showed the eye for beauty of the Plantagenet men, and the strength and intelligence that was, generation after generation, infused into the Plantagenet bloodline. And the five queens regnant: Anne, Mary I, Edith, Stephanie, and Mary II, had proved during their reigns that the Plantagenet skills ran as deeply in the female line as in the male.

  Lord Peter nodded to the two guards flanking the doors, and entered the throne room. The King was not present; the two hours of public audience did not begin until two o’clock. But Marquis Sherrinford, resplendant in his forest-green and silver court costume, was already at his small desk to the side of the ancient oak throne, sorting dockets, perusing files, listening to urgent pleas, deciding who would get to see His Majesty today and who would not. Harbleury, the gnomelike ancient who was his personal assistant and was privy to more of the secrets of state than many a duke, stood behind him.

  Lord Peter looked with concern at his master as he approached. Marquis Sherrinford suffered from headaches. For the past year they had been growing more frequent and stronger, and had proved beyond the reach of the healer’s arts. He refused to consider easing up on his duties, and indeed, the headaches did not seem to be affecting his judgment; but at times these days he was difficult to work with. Besides, above everything else, he was Lord Peter’s good friend, and being impotently unable to help a friend in pain is not a good feeling.

  “Ah, good day, Lord Peter,” His Lordship said, taking his spectacles off and looking up as his private secretary approached. He rubbed at his temples briefly with his thumbs, then replaced the wire-rim spectacles. “You bring the day’s post from London, I presume. Anything of note?”

  Lord Peter removed the blue-tied bundle from his shoulder bag. “For His Lordship, the Duke of Clarence,” he said. Then, removing the remaining green-tied bundle: “For Your Lordship.”

  “I shall pass this on to His Lordship of Clarence immediately,” Marquis Sherrinford said. “Harbleury, see to it. Now, is there anything in our pile that demands our immediate attention?”

  Lord Peter took the letter from his inside pocket and passed it over to the King’s Equerry. “I fancy Your Lordship will agree that this merits such,” he said.

  Marquis Sherrinford took his spectacles off, wiped them with a bit of white linen, carefully hooked them back behind his ears, and then unfolded the three sheets of stiff paper. “Ha,” he said. “Hmm.”

  Lord Peter looked up at Harbleury, who had passed the blue-tied bundle of documents on to an aide and was once again standing at his master’s back. He raised an eyebrow slightly, and Harbleury shook his head. The nonverbal exchange of information was complete. Is His Lordship suffering from one of his attacks? Not at the moment, as far as Harbleury could tell. Lord Peter nodded his thanks to the old man.

  Marquis Sherrinford stared at each page of the letter long enough to have read it several times, and then gathered them together and laid the letter on the table, neatly and precisely. A frown formed across his brow. “What do you think, Peter?” he asked without looking up.

  “I think we must treat it as though it is true,” Lord Peter said. “Although I will at once, of course, try to check through my own sources.”

  “Yes,” the Marquis said impatiently, “but what do you think? Is it true?”

  I can only sa
y that I’ll investigate,” Lord Peter repeated. “I have heard nothing of it. It is very hard to establish a negative, so if it is not true, we may be some time in proving it. in the meantime, we must proceed as though it were fact.”

  Marquis Sherrinford tapped the end of his pen impatiently on the desk top. “Why have none of your sources picked it up?”

  Lord Peter shrugged. “Perhaps because it isn’t true. Perhaps because it is well hidden. Perhaps because I am incompetent, Your Lordship.”

  The Marquis glanced up sharply, looking over his wire-rim spectacles. “Take this seriously, Lord Peter, but not personally. Somewhere in this kingdom there must be a man more competent and more loyal than yourself, and more able at his job, but l have not met him.” He picked up the stiff sheets of paper and shook them, making them rattle. “We must act. Go find His Grace the Archbishop of Paris, Richard of Normandy, Sir Darryl Longuert, and Lord Darcy, and ask them to do me the honor of meeting with me in the Map Room at four o’clock, Do it personally; we want as few ears and mouths privy to this as possible. And return yourself, of course.”

  “Of course, my lord,” Lord Peter said. He bowed and turned away, his footsteps ringing hollowly on the tile floor as he strode toward the ceremonial doors of state, the fastest way to the private quarters where he would probably find His Grace the Archbishop. His perusal of the Queen’s Corridor would have to wait.

  “Now,” Marquis Sherrinford said, sticking the offending letter in in the inner pocket of his dress tunic and turning back to the other papers on his table. “I have an appointment with that Italian healer fellow at one o’clock. Probably can’t help me, but I’d better go. Which gives us twenty more minutes to devote to this, Harbleury; let’s get to it.”