The Queen's Necklace (15 page)

He glanced across at Luke. Not for the first time, Lucius was struck by the depth and darkness of his eyes. The iris was as dark as the pupil; no ring of lighter color relieved the inky blackness. Yet there was a brilliance to those eyes, and something else, which Luke was inclined to identify as a restless intelligence.

“You, no doubt, were also raised on milder principles, and perhaps that suited you. Tell me, Mr. Guilian, are you entirely satisfied with the results?”

This, though perhaps not intended to be, was something of a poser. Luke gave a short false laugh. “I've never really thought about it. That is, I suppose I
am
tolerably pleased with the result, though others seem less so.”

“You ask too many questions. I beg your pardon; I do not mean to say that I, personally, am offended. Only that other men, less given to examining their own actions, might find your habit of asking so many questions disturbing.”

More often, as Luke knew very well, they were put off by his
habit of answering his own questions. Yet somehow, in this new friendship, positions had been reversed; it was the Leveller who explained things, and Luke had slipped easily into the rôle of avid listener.

He laughed again, this time more naturally. “Then my questions aren't an intolerable annoyance? I am glad to hear it. I don't mean to be rude—or unbearably inquisitive.”

Raith looked out across the Troit. The wind was ruffling the sea, and waves were hitting the ship with increasing force, sending up a wild white spray. “It is good to ask questions. The day may come, sooner than any of us think, when we are all required to explain ourselves to a Higher Power, to minutely and mercilessly examine our own hearts.”

There was another long silence between them.

“The Apocalypse,” Luke finally said, with a lift of his eyebrows. “So fondly described by all your preachers.”

“Yes, the Apocalypse,” replied Raith, apparently undisturbed by his sarcasm. “The earth will heave and the mountains slide; the sea will burn like wax. Kings and princes will topple from their thrones. An angry God will level all before him. It is coming soon, I think.”

Luke cleared his throat, unaccountably embarrassed. “It all sounds terribly unpleasant. And now that I think of it, my old tutor, Doctor Francis Purcell, would dismiss the idea as errant Vulcanist nonsense. But perhaps you're not familiar with that scientific theory, which states that the present world was built out of the ashes of an older world, destroyed eons past by erupting volcanoes?”

“I am,” Raith responded coolly, “and with the opposing theory, as well. Your Doctor Purcell, I take it, believes that all modern rock formations and sediments were laid down by ancient seas. I have studied the arguments on either side, but I fear I cannot call myself either a Vulcanist or a Sedimentarian, believing as I do that both the Fire and the Deluge are yet to come.”

At this, Luke was again thrown into some slight confusion. As much as he respected his companion's mental powers, he had not supposed him a highly educated man—perhaps because he was employed to instruct such very young children, perhaps because of his devotion to his religion. To Luke's way of thinking, the basis of all religious doctrine and practice was a profound ignorance of the natural world.

So now he could not help feeling ashamed of himself. The question had not been asked in any generous spirit. There was something perhaps a bit petty, perhaps a bit mean, in trying to trip up this man who had answered all of his questions so patiently, so courteously.

“I beg your pardon,” he said contritely. “I had no idea you were a scholar—and a natural philosopher at that.”

“I have been many things in my time,” said Raith, with his quiet smile. Though he did not expand, then or later, on that interesting statement.

In the evening, Luke invited Raith down to his cabin and presented him with a handful of dog-eared and blotted pages from his revisionist history. Having gained so high an opinion of the Leveller's perspicacity, he was naturally eager to share his theories. The Rijxlander read straight through the first fifty pages without so much as lifting an eyebrow. Luke watched him with growing impatience; he had expected some strong reaction, positive or negative, and was sharply disappointed at not having gained one.

“Your arguments are—original,” Raith said at last. “I am particularly struck by this idea of yours that much of the history of the last fifteen hundred years is a flimsy tissue of lies. May I ask how it was you arrived at this startling conclusion?”

Luke, who had seated himself on the lower bunk, so that his long-legged visitor might enjoy the benefit of the one rickety chair, searched through his mind for the proper words. “In Kjellmark
there is a great pile of stone: the remains of a fortress battered by cannon in a conflict that has—somehow—been overlooked in all of the history books. In Tölmarch, Lichtenwald, and Wölfenbrücke I have seen whole cemeteries filled with unmarked graves, whether of revolutionaries or plague victims no one could tell me. On Finghyll, I learned that it is a crime to carry the portrait of a certain early patriot, Carolus Vosdijk by name.

“I used to think,” Luke continued, “that other historians were merely mistaken. That all of the things that I knew to be true, yet were somehow omitted from official histories, were only the result of careless copying. But I have seen so much, I have learned so much since then, I believe I have uncovered evidence of something far more sinister.”

He reached into a pocket and drew out a curious old eight-sided coin. “Look here.” He held up the gold coin, the better to display its peculiarities. “I found this in Catwitsen when I was there, six—no, seven months ago. As you can see, it pretends to offer a portrait of Grand Duke Willem, one of their early rulers. But what an improbable picture it is. The face appears to have two left eyes, the mouth is crooked, and the head seems utterly detached from the neck and floats above the lace collar as though it had no relation to the body at all. At the very least, I believe we can safely say that no living man ever sat for this portrait!”

“But what then?” Raith accepted the coin into his hand, examined it minutely. “Surely this would not be the first time an official portrait failed to do its subject justice.”

“I believe that whoever designed this coin was trying to leave an encoded message for future generations, attempting to tell us the truth: no such person as Grand Duke Willem ever existed and every story associated with his name is a deliberate fabrication.”

“But what is the purpose of this great deception?”

“That,” Luke said darkly, as he took back the gold coin and
slipped it back into his pocket, “is exactly what I mean to find out in Luden.

“But I appear to amuse you,” he added, a shade resentfully. “Surely you, as a rational man, must admit that much of what we have heard about the earliest centuries of Man's Dominion sounds highly improbable.”

“As so might the events of our own era, a thousand years in the future. You understand that I don't dispute your conclusions,” Raith added carefully, “I merely wish to point out that the truth of our own times is considerably stranger than any fiction.”

“Well, yes,” Luke admitted, putting his chin in his hand. “We do live in bizarre times.” He glanced slyly across at his companion. “The tales one hears out of Rijxland, for instance. I have heard of debtors taking their wives and children into prison with them, in order to keep the family together, but that a devoted daughter should follow her father into a
madhouse
, and the entire court of Rijxland follow her example? It hardly seems possible!”

“It is not possible—or at any rate, it is not true,” the Leveller responded. “The Crown Princess and her children do occupy a house on the grounds of the hospital, but they do not mingle with the other inmates. Nor does the king precisely hold court at the asylum—although, visiting the hospital on certain days, one might easily suppose he did. The true situation is rather more complex than that.

“You must understand,” Raith went on, in what Lucius assumed was his best pedagogical style, “that while the king has been reduced to a figurehead and the real power in Rijxland now lies in the hands of the Parliament, King Izaiah still nominally rules. His foreign doctors entertain a very real and a very lively fear that someone will accuse them of undue influence. At the same time, they are regrettably eager to display their medical prowess to the world at large. For this reason, they have made an ongoing experiment of the king.”

Luke thought he detected some shade of emotion in the Leveller's last statement. “You have some quarrel with their methods?”

Raith cleared his throat, moved the flimsy chair a little closer to the table. “Some of their treatments appear—grotesque—and calculated to do more harm than good. Nor do I like the way they make a public entertainment of the king and the other inmates, by throwing open the doors of the madhouse and allowing great crowds to flock inside.”

Luke creased his brow. He had to admit the idea was faintly obscene. “I would think that so much attention would be rather trying, even distressing, to a sick old man.”

“So I think also. Unfortunately, those in a position to act on his behalf do not seem to agree.”

“And the Crown Princess?”

“The Princess Marjote is of much the same mind, but her influence at the moment is negligible. She is engaged in an ugly and extended power struggle with her cousin, Lord Flinx, and she appears to be losing.” Raith's large hands gripped the table for a moment, then relaxed. “As for Lord Flinx, he is a gifted orator, though a very bad man, and his party grows stronger with every passing day.”

Luke nodded thoughtfully, his dark eyebrows twitching together. Of the king's nephew, he had heard wildly conflicting accounts. “The stories they tell of Lord Flinx are gross and distasteful, yet one hears, too, that his behavior in Luden is generally impeccable.”

“He commits his worse excesses on visits to his country estate, or to the house he keeps over the border in Montcieux for that very purpose,” said Raith. “There he indulges his depraved appetites without any shame or disguise. Of course, all this is dismissed as malicious rumor by his supporters.”

“And the young woman—his protegée? His niece, or his natural daughter, or—”

“Tremeur Brouillard.” The name seemed to hang in the air, conjuring up any number of scandalous associations. Lucius seldom listened to bedroom gossip, but even he had heard stories about the enterprising and unscrupulous Mademoiselle Brouillard.

“Yes, Tremeur Brouillard. The adventuress Lord Flinx has reportedly insinuated, possibly incestuously, into the Mad King's bed. What is her influence?”

“I think you would find her somewhat different than you imagine her,” said the Leveller, his dark glance grown suddenly keen. “The king is certainly attached to her, and she seems to be a young woman of considerable wit as well as beauty. But she is still very much under the control of Lord Flinx, who is her legal guardian.

“Her entire situation is highly ambiguous. And, in my opinion at least, extremely uncomfortable.”

They were sailing along the coast of Rijxland when the wind rose and the waves grew choppy. Unable to sleep because of the rolling and pitching, Luke rose from his bunk early, shook Perys awake and demanded to be dressed, then stumbled up to the deck.

He found Raith already there before him, apparently glorying in the clash of the elements. He was standing by the rail with his long cloak floating around him and a look of ecstasy on his usually stern face.

“Is this your promised End of the World?” Lucius asked mockingly. A heavy sea was beating against the bows; the sails boomed overhead with a noise like thunder; on all sides, unintelligible orders were being shouted and carried out. Even as Luke spoke, a wave washed over the side of the ship, soaking them both to the knees.

“I have not said that the world will end. Only that it will be broken and remade. When the Day of Wrath arrives, it will be nothing like this. Though I admit that on days such as this—”

He might have said more, but just then the ship heeled over, and
seemed to stand on its side in the water. Raith held on to the rail and was nearly washed away, but Luke was thrown backward. As the ship righted herself, there was a shout from the rigging, something flashed through the air over their heads, and then there was a splash, and a cry of, “Man overboard!”

Scrambling to his feet, Luke rushed back to the railing. He caught a brief glimpse of a dark head bobbing in the waves, a pair of wildly thrashing arms receding in the distance. Knowing that very few sailors knew how to swim, being a strong swimmer himself, Luke acted almost without thinking. He kicked off his shoes, tore off his coat, climbed up on the rail. “Is this wise, Mr. Guilian?” he heard Raith say, just before he launched himself into the air.

Luke landed in the water with a mighty splash. The force of that impact and the icy coldness of the channel momentarily stunned him. For several seconds after he rose to the surface, he could neither see nor breathe. Then the air rushed back into his lungs, his head cleared, and he was making powerful strokes in what he hoped was the direction of the drowning sailor.

Before long, he caught sight of a thrashing figure on his left, appearing and disappearing under the waves. He adjusted his course and arrived just in time to catch the sailor by the hair as he was going under, perhaps for the last time.

Luke felt for another hold, and was able to pull the man up by the neck of his shirt so that his head appeared above the water. The sailor gasped for air, then nearly knocked the wind out of Lucius with the violence of his struggles to remain afloat.

“Be still, can't you? I am trying to save you, but if you keep on like this, you'll drown us both.”

Unfortunately, Luke's words fell on deaf ears. He was forced to gain the man's cooperation by the ruthless expedient of holding his head underwater until his struggles ceased. When Lucius brought him back up again, the sailor sputtered and coughed, but he remained quiet.