The Queen's Necklace (5 page)

When Allora arrived with the things she had asked for, Lili lit a candle and placed it on a stand by the bed. She reached down into her basket and pulled out a six-inch globe of clear glass, filled with a pale, viscous fluid. This she placed on a silver tripod in front of the candle to reflect and diffuse the light. Only then did she turn toward her patient.

Lili began her examination by carefully studying the old gentleman's hands. The nails were a dull leaden color, which she knew for
a very bad sign. When she took his wrist between her fingers and thumb, his pulse was slight and irregular.

“Sir, have you been—I'm afraid I don't know your name.”

“He is Sir Bastian Josslyn-Mather, my old friend,” Allora offered, over Lili's shoulder.

“Sir Bastian, then. Have you been out of the country?” She unfastened the nickel-plated buttons of his waistcoat, ran a practiced hand over his upper abdomen.

“I was in Château-Rouge three weeks ago.”

“In Château-Rouge, and so recently! I've heard the Black Bile Fever runs epidemic in the seaside towns there.” As she had feared, the area just below his ribs was hard and swollen. “However, I know very well how the Fever is treated. I promise you, sir, I will do all I can.”

“I am aware the disease is often fatal—and highly contagious,” he whispered hoarsely. “You must not take this risk on my account. I implore you to send for a doctor, and leave before you contract the Fever yourselves. This is no place for gentlewomen under the best of circumstances.”

Lili and her aunt exchanged a glance. They both knew that to stay at his side for even an hour was to court a lingering death.

But Lili stiffened her spine. “The Specularii have not secretly educated me these many years only so that I might turn coward and run away at the first sign of danger!”

“Nor were you taught to sacrifice yourself without good cause. You are far more valuable than I—or you will be, when your education is complete. Miss Brakeburn—I beg you to reason with your niece. This is no time for sentiment.”

Allora smiled faintly. “My niece can be exceedingly stubborn. And she knows her duty as a healer-physician.”

“Her duty to all Mankind is even greater.” Sir Bastian continued to protest, though the breath rattled in his throat and it became
more and more difficult for him to speak. “Eternal vigilance against the return of the Maglore—”

“My duty to Mankind begins here, or wherever I am needed.” Lili searched through the basket Allora had brought in with her, extracted a smooth black stone from an indigo leather bag. “The Maglore may not reappear during our time. I certainly don't intend to spend the rest of my life sitting uselessly by, waiting for them to do so.”

She lifted his shirt and placed the glassy stone on his swollen abdomen. “The principal cause of your disease is an excess of the melancholic humor, which has gathered here in the cavity just below your ribs. This stone is obsidian, and as like attracts like it will draw off some of the black bile. Is there someone trustworthy in this house? Someone we can send to an apothecary for medicine? I fear our borrowed coachman is as unfamiliar with these streets as we are.”

“The woman in the room next door appears—amiable,” Sir Bastian answered with a low moan. “And it is not likely she will be—engaged at her business at this early hour.”

While Allora left the room to knock on the door of the adjacent chamber, Lili made use of pen, ink, and paper.
Rx. Senna, 2 oz.;
she wrote.
Polypody of oak, 6 oz.; Bay Berries (hulled), 4 oz.; Ash Keys, Rhubarb, Ginger, Sassafras Weed, and Clove, 1 oz. each. Bruise all but Senna, which must be kept whole, and steep in 1 pint Ale
. As she had no sand to set the ink, she blew softly on the paper in order to dry it.

By this time, Allora had returned with the woman from the next room: a flaunting, tawdry, ruined-looking creature in a shabby silk gown. Her ribbons and laces hung limp and dirty, the silver beads on her shoes were tarnished almost black, and she smelled strongly of gin. It was easy to guess what Sir Bastian had meant by “engaged at her business.”

Lili handed over the paper, asking the woman to deliver her instructions, then wait while the apothecary prepared the medicine.
“Because it is vitally important that we physick him as soon as possible.”

The prostitute nodded dully. Under a thick coating of rouge and white lead powder, her skin sagged, and her eyes were heavy and unutterably weary. But when the old gentleman addressed Lili and her aunt from the bed, she gave a sudden start and a spark of recognition came into her clouded eyes.

“Mrs. Blackheart—Miss Brakeburn,” gasped Sir Bastian. “There is a purse in an inner pocket of my coat. You are not to go to any expense on my behalf.”

The purse was found and two silver florins passed on to the harlot, who left the room with a sweep of her ragged petticoats.

“It's beyond endurance,” Allora hissed in Lili's ear. “You saw how that low creature recognized your name. Even in a place such as this, you're continually reminded of his infidelities!”

“She is probably just someone Will knew when he was a student at the university, and even wilder than he is now.” Lili spoke under her breath; she was painfully aware of Sir Bastian's presence. “His more recent—friendships—seem always to be with ladies of the court. And really, Aunt, it's hard on poor Will to hold him to account for his youthful follies, especially when he can hardly be blamed for this extraordinary meeting.”

Aunt Allora sniffed loudly. “You always defend him.”

Lili gathered up the rags the tavern-keeper had provided and began to soak them in the basin of water. Whatever pain Will had caused her over the years, she preferred to keep it to herself. “Will and I have a comfortable understanding. Though we can't love each other, we try to treat each other with—with unfailing kindness and toleration.”

“It seems to me,” snapped Allora, “the comfort is entirely on Wilrowan's side, the toleration all on yours. How any decent woman can condone such vicious habits—!”

Lili stopped with a wet cloth in her hand. “I don't condone anything. But what I can't forget, even if you do, is that Will was tricked into marrying me when he was barely seventeen—though to be sure, I was younger still, and as much a victim of Papa's machinations as he was. We agreed, then, to always be friends and never impose on each other more than necessary. If six years later the consequences of that promise seem burdensome to me, they probably seem much the same to Will.

“Besides,” she added, wringing water out of the rag with a deft twist of her wrists, “I doubt you'd be better pleased if Will were more attentive, if he insisted I dangle after him in town! It has always suited you to keep us apart as much as possible.”

“Because I knew his wayward nature. Because I saw how dangerous it would be to share your secrets with him.”

“I suppose the queen trusts him with
her
secrets, or she would never have appointed him captain of her guards.” Lili moved toward the bed with the wet cloths in her hand.

Aunt Allora gave another loud sniff. “Queen Dionee is a spoiled, mischievous child. Which is hardly surprising, since she and Wilrowan were raised in the same household and are more like brother and sister than cousins.”

“Cousins
and
half-cousins—which practically is brother and sister,” Lili remarked absently. Sir Bastian had lapsed into a restless doze and did not wake when she arranged the soaking strips of cloth over his forehead, hands, and feet. “And, if anything, Will seems to exert a steadying influence, as unlikely as that sounds.”

“A spoiled, mischievous child,” the old woman repeated as she moved around the bed. “And that was another unfortunate marriage. What a sensible man like King Rodaric was thinking when he chose Dionee, I don't know.”

“He fell in love, I suppose,” Lili responded sharply. Her headache was worse, and she did wish her great-aunt would find something to
talk about besides Will and Dionee's all-too-numerous transgressions. It always put her on the defensive, somehow forced her to argue Will's side—a cause for which, in truth, she had small sympathy and no enthusiasm. “And so we see that love matches can be disappointing, too, and that civility and friendship may be the best way after all.”

Aunt Allora shook her head, pounded her stick against the floor. “Do you honestly believe that?”

“What use is there believing anything else? What purpose could it possibly serve if I enacted great tragedies over his infidelities?

“If you will lift Sir Bastian's head,” Lili added briskly, “I will arrange the pillows to make his breathing easier.”

Still shaking her head, Allora moved to the other side of the bed and did as her great-niece instructed. In his new position, their patient seemed more comfortable. But as Lili bent to study his face, his skin took on a grey tinge and his lips turned almost black.

“What is it?” Allora asked, seeing her frown.

“I don't know.” Lili took his pulse again, put an ear to his chest. “That is, I'm not certain but I fear the worst. You know, of course, there are vapors and essences within the body—what philosophers have named the vital and the animal spirits. In Sir Bastian, these appear to be failing so rapidly, he may die before the medicine even arrives.”

Then, with a sudden grim determination: “There is only one way to keep him alive: to rapidly expel all the morbid humors out of his body.”

Allora raised her eyebrows. “Without the aid of physick? But to do that—”

“To do that,” said Lili, rummaging through her basket again, producing a small flask of purest olive oil scented with myrrh, cinnamon, and galingale, and proceeding to anoint the old gentleman at his temples and wrists, “I will have to risk a laying-on-of-hands.”

The old woman frowned. “I don't mean to tell you your own business, but considering how tired you are, do you dare to attempt so delicate a procedure? If your mind should wander, if your concentration fails for even an instant—”

“Then he will die. But he is dying now, and there is no other way I know to save him.” Lili placed both palms flat on Sir Bastian's narrow chest. “And as the result of any distractions may well prove fatal, the more reason for you to keep silent, Aunt Allora, and to make certain that nobody else disturbs me for the next half hour.”

She fastened her eyes on the glass globe. In that dim room, it shone like a planet hanging in the void. She must focus her mind on that and on her task—on those things alone—for once she opened herself to the cosmic forces, there was always the danger that the fierce Centrifugal Winds of manifold time and space would sweep her away.

Taking a deep, long breath, Lili entered the healing trance.
Subtle vapors rose in her brain. Drawing magnetism up out of the earth, she sent it pulsing through her body
. A pure ray of astral light hit the shining globe and was deflected, piercing Sir Bastian's chest and penetrating to the very core of his being. He and Lili cried out in the same instant—then there was only darkness.

F
rom without, it was as ugly, grim, and formidable as any great prison, in any great city, anywhere in the world; But within the mighty walls of Whitcomb Gaol there was a huddle of sordid little buildings, all connected by locks, gates, bars, grates, and dark passages, opening every now and again on some dismal yard where the prisoners took the air.

On the day following Wilrowan's duel and its unfortunate conclusion, an elegant gentleman appeared at the lodge by the outer gate and presented his credentials to the burly individual who answered his knock. The gaoler subjected him to a careful scrutiny, taking in the coat of flea's-blood satin lined with sable, the white silk stockings and immaculate small-clothes, the silver-hilted sword and point-lace ruffles, the fair hair perfumed and pomaded, the red-heeled shoes and the little jeweled eyeglass worn on a black velvet ribbon. Deciding that this was no man to be trifled with, the turnkey unlocked the gate and ushered him inside.

The visitor was relieved of his sword and escorted to a stifling small room, where he was presented, along with the documents he carried in one perfectly manicured hand, to the Governor of Whitcomb
Gaol: a dried little husk of a man in a fox-colored wig, who sat hunched behind his desk like a Goblin.

“Blaise Crowsmeare-Trefallon.” The visitor made a prodigiously elegant bow. “I have a warrant and a letter from the king, authorizing the release of one Wilrowan Krogan-Blackheart.”

The governor hitched his chair an inch or two closer to the desk. He held out a clawlike hand to receive the papers, which he read through silently before replying. “These seem to be in order. But you must understand, there are certain procedures that must be followed—which may take as much as a day or two.”

Trefallon bowed again. “As you must understand that the king and queen are impatient to see Captain Blackheart return to his duties at the Volary.”

The governor scrutinized the letter. “It does not
say
immediate release. Nor anything about duties at the palace. His Majesty knows how these things are done, so in the absence of any clear instructions to the contrary—” Yet there was something in the visitor's cool, unwavering stare that made him add: “I see no reason to deny access to the prisoner in the meantime, if that is what you wish.”

“I do,” said Blaise, and followed the turnkey out of the room and through a series of chilly stone corridors, rotting gates, tunnels, yards, and more gates, until they came to a double iron grating facing on one of the wards.

A dozen or so prisoners stood or lounged in different parts of an icy yard, some of them hobbled with iron fetters, all of them rough, sullen, and dangerous looking. In that company it was easy to spot Wilrowan: a boyish figure in a long red coat embellished with a quantity of tarnished gold galloon. The familiar hat with the battered turkey feathers was drawn low over his eyes, and he was crouched on one knee close to the ground, apparently absorbed in a pair of black ravens scratching through a pile of frozen garbage at the edge of the yard.