The Privilege of the Sword (48 page)

“Well, it’s not as if I can cry challenge on tradesmen, more’s the pity.”

“You damnable hypocrite, don’t you dare.”

The duke paced his study once, twice. His back to her, he stopped and said, “Flavia. I’m the Duke of Riverside. I build things here and pretty much keep the peace, and discourage certain behaviors. If you think all that has been achieved through entirely civil and lawful means, you’ve had your head in a bucket.”

“I’ve enjoyed having my head in a bucket. It’s a very nice bucket. I’ve enjoyed the books and the fire and food and conversation. But you’re right to call me on it. You’re right.” She picked up a couple of books, examined the spines. “These are mine, aren’t they? You really did give them to me?”

“Put those down,” he said. “Don’t be an idiot. Our theories stand. We both see clearly; we know what’s right. Even if it’s not always possible to act on it, don’t you think it matters to be able to call things by their true names?”

“It’s not your fault,” she said. “I’m not a total idiot. I know you do your best. I was just stupid to think you could—I could—” She shrugged and swiped at her nose with one wrist, her hands being full of books. “I thought I would be safe here.”

“You are.” For the first time, he touched her, touched her hand. “Safe from everything but paper and ink. Please. Put those down.”

“Paper and ink.” She clutched the books to her ample chest. “They’re not nothing, Alec. They’re pretty much everything to me: the embodiment of ideas, of thought—of free and open thought. Of inquiry and supposition. All of it.”

“I know,” he said. “But—”

“You’ve got all your other things—your poetry, your drugs, your pretty men and fancy clothes. You don’t need just this. I do.”

He said with unusual patience, “Do you think, if you leave my house, everything will suddenly slip back into place?” And when she didn’t answer right away, he said more heatedly, “And you’re going back where? To an unheated room at University and one cooked meal a week, tutoring students too stupid and lazy to attend lectures given by masters with half your brains? You’d leave my house for that?”

“Your patronage,” the Ugly Girl said. “I’m leaving your patronage. Don’t you understand? I don’t like being looked at. I don’t like being talked about. I don’t really like compromise.”

He said, “And I don’t like you letting them chase you away. It seems, well, cowardly.”

“It is. I have my limits. Clever of them to find them. Who are ‘they,’ by the way?”

“I don’t know,” the duke said. “I wonder who I’ve offended lately?”

“Everyone. You offend everyone.”

“Don’t leave,” he said. “It will give them so much pleasure.”

“Almost, for that,” she conceded, “but no. I’d better.”

“Come to dinner next week,” he urged. “Ridley and his gang are going to argue about circulation. Maybe he’ll demonstrate on a roast chicken again.”

“No,” she said. “I’m going to disappear for a while—as much as I can, anyway; nobody really cares about the University. And I never liked those dinners. Didn’t you notice? It was always best when you told me about them after.”

“Breakfast next morning, then?”

“Don’t wait up,” she said.

She left the crumpled broadsheets on the floor. And she left an enormous space in the duke’s library, in his study, in his days and nights.

But in the end he got back at her, even if he never got her back. Before the year was out, the stuffy old University at the heart of the City boasted the first ever Women’s Fellowship in Mathematics, which was taken by the only suitable available candidate, a large and ugly woman of indeterminate age who always wore a voluminous black scholar’s robe over her shapeless gowns and lectured with a combination of rigor and dry wit that made her classes, in time, immensely popular.

A
RTEMISIA
F
ITZ
-L
EVI WITNESSED
L
ORD
F
ERRIS’S
second strike against the duke herself.

She witnessed it from a box at the theatre in the company of her mother, her brother, and her cousin Lucius. Lucius Perry had not yet declared himself a formal suitor, despite his parents’ indication that they would view the match with favor, but Lady Fitz-Levi still wanted him seen with her daughter, and Artemisia was simply grateful for his company.

The truth was, it took courage for her to go out in public. Despite her friends’ assurances that it was nothing, she knew people were still talking about her ruptured betrothal and its possible causes. Although no one who knew them well could seriously entertain the notion that the Fitz-Levi family had hired Tremontaine’s wild niece, the proximity of the challenge to Lord Ferris’s break with Artemisia was hard to ignore. There was talk of a romance between the two girls, though no one had ever seen them together. Those who believed the challenge lay between Ferris and the Mad Duke were still free to wonder what had caused the Crescent to release Lady Artemisia from her betrothal. If she had not been the wronged party, then perhaps something else about her had put Lord Ferris off, and her deficiencies were lovingly enumerated, even by her friends.

Thus the Fitz-Levi party arrived early at the theatre, so as to be settled in their box before the crowds started in. Artemisia sat towards the back of the box where she would not easily be seen, wishing she didn’t have to. All thought of her own situation vanished, though, when the play began. Candles were lit, and there was Stella’s bedroom, with its tall window and canopied bed, exactly as in the book. In walked a beautiful woman—a little old for girlish Stella to Artemisia’s critical eye, but she carried herself well. “No, thank you,” the actress said, her head turned a little offstage. “I will put myself to bed.”

“Let the duke do it!”

A man’s voice, crude, from the cheap back seats. There was general
shushing,
and the scene went on. The Black Rose won Artemisia over with her portrayal of Stella’s gentle innocence. When Fabian appeared in her chamber, armed and ready to kill her as he was sworn to do, Artemisia clutched her fan so hard she nearly broke it. Stella did not plead for her life; she let her youth and beauty of spirit plead for her. And the swordsman succumbed, as he must. “Lady Stella,” he said, “your girlhood ends tonight. Whether by my sword or in my arms, I leave the choice to you.”

“It is no choice,” she said, trembling. “Either way, my will is forced.”

“Is it?” Though the length of his sword was still between them, he looked deep into her eyes. “Know this, then: that you choose for us both. For in taking your life tonight, I end mine as well. The sun cannot rise on the face of a man who has destroyed such a jewel.”

“What is your name?”

“If you will it, it is Death. Death for us both.”

“And if I will otherwise?”

“Then I will give you joy.” He fell on his knees before her, his sword at his side, the distance still between them. “And I am your servant, now, until the moment I draw my final breath.”

Artemisia found that she was weeping—not the slow pleasant tears that theatre usually called forth, but wrenching sobs she felt her body could barely contain. She tried to stifle them, to hear what came next, although she knew the words by heart:

“Then rise,” bright Stella said. “I choose freely, and I choose you.” She held out her hand.

“Save it for Tremontaine!” A different voice, from a different corner of the theatre.

“Shut your face!” a woman shouted back, and others chorused agreement. This was Stella’s moment, and no man would take it from them. The theatre was silent as the Black Rose parted the curtains of the huge bed, and silent as the couple embraced within them.

Silent, too, as Viola appeared on the stage above, jacketed and breeched as Tyrian, wondering what had happened to keep Fabian so late.

The two friends met (while the bedroom was made to disappear), and Fabian explained his desperate case and even more desperate remedy. To save Stella’s life he must betray a patron, and in so doing betray his honor, a swordsman’s most cherished possession, and next to his sword, his most valuable. But one bright, fated woman had turned the world inside out, changed honor to disgrace and death to life. He would leave the city now and send word to his patron that he had found the mark too easy, that his blade rebelled and sought a worthier foe.

“Think you,” said Tyrian, “they’ll let it go at that? Dream on, my friend. I will watch your beauty, and if she be not worthy of your love, I’ll challenge her myself.”

Mangrove appeared next. In the book this happened later, but Artemisia could see that it was time to present the villain, who was Stella’s evil cousin’s swordsman and second in command. Mangrove waited for Stella in a temple, where he knew she was coming to pray, which was not in the book but allowed them to drop some impressive columns from the flies above. He leaned arrogantly against one and said, “Here comes the lady now.”

The Black Rose entered, veiled head to toe in midnight blue.

“Is it raining?” Lady Fitz-Levi inquired. It wasn’t rain: all around the theatre, people were hissing. The sounds of
shh!
mixed with the hissing, making it worse. The Black Rose said something, but no one could hear her. She stood very still, and so did Mangrove, frozen in his sneer.

Someone began a rhythmic clapping, making it impossible for the actors to be heard. People in the audience started shouting, and the language wasn’t pretty.

At last the noise subsided. Stella lifted a hand to her veil, and Mangrove stepped forward. “Gentle lady,” he said, a terrible mockery of Fabian’s opening lines, “allow me.”

But she kept her hands on her veil. “Sir, you are not known to me. My face—” The rest of the speech was lost in a volley of hisses. Every time the Black Rose opened her mouth, it was the same.

“Let’s go,” said Lucius Perry. “They’ll never get through the play.”

Her mother was outraged. “Can’t they make them stop?”

“You can’t control such an audience, Aunt.”

“But what’s wrong?” Artemisia asked. “I think she’s very good.”

“Goose,” her brother said fondly. “It’s a setup. Someone’s paid to have her booed. A rival, perhaps—for the part, or for her affections…”

“Well, whoever did it, I’d like to slap them,” his sister said. “Oh, look, Robert, people are throwing flowers! Quick, rush out and buy me some, I want to throw them, too.”

The stage was slowly carpeted in blossoms. When they grew deep enough, the Black Rose scooped up a great armful, and swept offstage.

W
ORD REACHED
R
IVERSIDE QUICKLY.
T
HE DUKE
Tremontaine sent his carriage for her, and it carried the Black Rose unimpeded to the Bridge, where a closed chair waited to bring her to him.

“They
booed
me.” Her eyes flashed regally, and she would not sit down, although she accepted a goblet of brandy. “I have never been hissed in a theatre before. Never.”

He said, “How lucky for you. Whom have you managed to offend?”

She stopped her pacing long enough to fix him with her startling eyes. She was not a small woman, and the duke was sitting down, teasing at a flower that had fallen from her hair. “Don’t you know?” she said. “I heard it clearly, and so did everyone else, I’ll be bound. Your name, dear, not mine. I am very popular. You, it seems, are not.”

“What a surprise.” He dropped petals on the floor. “And what a good thing I don’t care.”

“How nice for you that you don’t have to.”

“Meaning,” he drawled, “that you do.”

“Just so.” She leaned down and kissed him long and hard, ’til she felt his breath quicken and his hands grow restless, then she pulled away and said complacently, “It’s a good thing you’re not stuck on screwing actresses, dearie, or you’d have a very dry time ahead of you.”

The duke straightened his jacket. “You weren’t by any chance brought up in Riverside, were you?”

She knelt before him in a rustle of skirts, so that her eyes were level with his. “You don’t remember me, do you?” He looked dubious. “Well, why should you? I was just a scrawny girl, wiping down the tables and clearing away the beer mugs at Rosalie’s.”