“Lady Antonia introduced me to the chevalier at my court debut.” My cheeks heated as I recalled the occasion. “I do believe she had ideas of matchmaking.”
Eugenie turned around so fast I thought she might topple from her chair, her hand flown to her face, masking uncontrollable laughter. “Oh, my dear girl!” she said, when the smothered fit had passed. “You must have been wholly shocked!”
I could not deny it. “I’ve since learned how kind he is.”
“Indeed he owns the kindest, most loving and loyal heart in this world, and the Creator has endowed him with an innocence that reminds me every day of the world’s goodness. He is dearer to me than I could express in a thousand years of trying, but I’ll not deny that he can appear so . . . outrageously . . . foolish. And marriage? All these years, he has never once expressed an interest. I’ve sometimes thought his urgencies leaned in other direct—Well, I cannot imagine what Dama Antonia was thinking. No girl could ask for a better person, but for an educated woman like you, who must yearn for wit to match her own . . .”
I laid aside her jewels and sleeves to put away later. “Yearnings cannot matter. And yet—”
“No. They cannot.” Eugenie turned away before I could broach the subject of her foster mother’s latest attempt at matchmaking. “Tell me, Anne, had you a gentleman friend in the country, before you came here? ”
“No, my lady. My responsibilities have kept me much too busy these past few years.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“No need to be sorry. If I am to marry according to the king’s desire, as is only right and has ever been my expectation”—a small lie—“it seems better I have no ties of affection to leave behind.” I slipped the wine-colored gown from her shoulders and set to work on the numerous buttons of her bodice.
“Not better. No. I think an affection—a friendship—nurtured away from marriage, away from political considerations, away from court and counselors, goodfathers and parents, must be something pure and lovely, like clear glass, blown into the simplest, thinnest shape. It would ring with perfect clarity and catch only the truest colors of the light.”
She pulled away and sought out the angled sunbeams so quickly retreating from her south window. The light caressed the bared arms she crossed over her breast.
“Love is so very deep a thing, Anne, so complex, so sweet and yet so engulfing, that when it rises amid these other considerations, wrapped and punctured and bound, the heart’s yearnings become too complex, its shape twisted beyond sorting out. It saddens me you’ve had no chance to experience that rarity.”
Nor had she, of course, wed to King Soren as a child of eight years, and widowed and wed again at twelve. I couldn’t think of anything to say that wasn’t maudlin. Perhaps such pure affection was what she sought with her gentleman friend. But what did
he
seek? His face was so familiar, yet I’d never glimpsed him in the corridor or salons. Was he one of the conspirators as well?
Gentle, kind, damaged Eugenie was surely a pawn in this great struggle, only I could not see where she fit. Was this estrangement with my goodfather a true rupture, or did he stay away in some attempt to protect her from arrows aimed at him? Someone had certainly fed her falsehoods to soothe her fears for his safety. My father had told me that not even the royal herald rode into battle ahead of Philippe de Savin-Journia.
Dismissing her pain with a smile, Eugenie enfolded me with a warm embrace. “So, tell me, now, Anne, what games did you play at Montclaire ? I’ll confess to enjoying quiet distractions, silly things like cards and charades and sonnets whispered in moonlight. . . .”
As I laid a sheet and the featherlight coverlet over her, I told of guessing games, word squares, and card stacking, of mock debates and blind chase and mute plays. Memories of Montclaire would ever be fraught with sorrow, yet the pain of loss had already dulled. That life was gone, so remote in the face of my current preoccupations as to seem like a myth.
Once Eugenie had slipped into a peaceful slumber, I arranged the bed curtains, keeping a wary eye on the sorcerer’s ring in the floor. Could it be a device like the barbed bracelet, set to channel wickedness here? Yet it was so brazenly displayed. The bracelet had been hidden, though not
well
hidden, come to that. Perhaps that was part of the scheme. Who would expect a nasty charm in the bedchamber when a sorcerer’s ring was fixed in place so openly?
It was tenth hour of the evening watch by the time I had put everything away and bade a peaceful night to Arabella de Froux, the lady-in-waiting who sat in the retiring room through the night hours. Though I relished the thought of my own bed, once shed of gown and hairpins, I found myself too tight wound to sleep. The chamber in the Bastionne—spirits of night; Papa’s boots and dagger—and the encounters with Dante and Kajetan and Duplais churned in my head.
What a pleasure it would be to leave Castelle Escalon for a while, to spend an hour wholly engrossed in matters other than murder, grieving, and conspiracy. I’d last experienced such removal at Cecile’s journey feast, while talking with the quiet intruder. Astonishing to think that had been only yesterday.
The more I relived that strange interlude, the more I longed to revisit it. Quickly resolved, I shut down the lamp, reached into the dark, and invited the mindstorm.
Friend . . . are you there?
I formed the words, careful to speak only truth.
I can’t sleep and need . . . company.
Chaotic noise filled my head. With swelling disappointment, I began to shove the unruly emotions and clamoring voices behind my inner walls again. But a sharp jolt of confusion stayed my closing, as if I had collided with someone in a dark tunnel. A surge of astonishment was followed by a profound stillness in the heart of chaos. He was there. So much communicated without a word.
I’d like to get to know you better
, I said
. Is this all right?
When he did not respond immediately, I felt an idiot. The sun had long set over Merona. He might be asleep . . . or with friends . . . or a wife. . . . Or, if my suspicion was correct, he might be sitting in his east-wing office, laboring over the royal household accounts or trying to unravel Dante’s latest move. I quickly shut that image out of mind, lest it color my speech. Better we remain anonymous.
Never mind. You’re likely busy. I am so sorry. I didn’t think—
No, no, it’s well-done.
Truth. Every word. He
was
pleased. Quiet joy washed through my body like warmed wine on a cold night.
His
joy, so much deeper and more powerful than words, more a surging ocean than a rushing river.
You’re not afraid of me.
Shivering, I drew my shawl around me and gazed out at the lights of the city, winking beyond the dark palace gardens. This was so immense.
There are so many things in the world to be afraid of
, I said
. I thought, perhaps, we could talk of something wholly ordinary, as if our true lives did not exist. You weren’t asleep?
Ought to be. But I don’t sleep easily. I’d as soon work. Or read.
What kind of books?
My question followed so naturally it startled me. And it frightened me a little, too. Every word between us needed consideration. If I had asked what kind of work or why he did not sleep well, he might well ask the same of me. And if he were not Duplais, then he could be anyone . . . a gossip, a thief, an enemy. I didn’t want to know.
Tonight, a treatise on the heavens.
His answer felt constrained somehow, though it carried no hint of untruth.
A vast topic
, I said,
whether astronomically speaking, or religiously speaking . . .
. . .
or addressing the weather or the possibility of astral divination or a more philosophical tack—the nature of pleasure.
Interest and amusement surged as he completed my thought.
Divine Creator, how could I know that?
All fine aspects of the topic and worthy of exploration
, I offered
.
All of them the interests of an educated man. All far removed from Castelle Escalon and its sordid secrets. A certain hunger drove me onward, making me bold as I had never been with men.
Should we address them alphabetically or in order of importance?
Any. Certainly. I’ve never—
I’d surprised him again.
I suppose . . . I’d a thought to take a walk to study some night-blooming plants. I could be persuaded to look up instead.
It was a glorious night my friend walked—balmy, star-filled, scented with woodsmoke and autumn apples. That same night flowed through the open casement into me, around me, shared as we spoke of Gossorein, who had sketched the movements of the planets around the sun, using the language of mathematics as charcoal and paint. And I leaned on the sill and watched the same star-sprinkled sky he observed as we discussed Fleure’s impossible project, a catalog of the stars. In a rapid-fire exchange, we proposed schemes of naming, measuring, and distinguishing between them. Our repartee infected me with the fevered delight of a new-healed paralytic stretching long-dead muscles. With a finishing flourish I proposed hiring a sorcerer to snuff out the stars and relight them in more regular patterns.
Abruptly he fell silent, closed as absolutely as a book between its covers.
No sorcerer could do that
, he said after a moment,
not if the stars are truly suns like our own
.
It was only a jest
.
Silliness.
It had been Lianelle’s idea when she was five.
Ah.
Spoken as if I had referred to some odd custom he had heard of, but didn’t quite comprehend. Which told me much of him.
I fumbled at what to say next. I yearned to probe his knowledge of magic and its limits, but this was far too early for a topic fraught with risk. He assumed I was a practitioner. The idea did not repulse me as it once would have done—a surprise in itself—but my mother’s family had tested me as a child and found no predictors of magical talent. He must himself be one, though, an adept or mage or student . . . perhaps a member of the Camarilla . . . perhaps an illicit practitioner, which would explain his shyness at discussing himself. Or he could be a once-failed student who had come to his talent late and in secret. Dangerous ground.
Thus I diverted our talk to the constellations, and he marveled when I told how Hematians saw quite different things in the same arrangements of stars—sea creatures, ships, or anchors, where Sabrians might see plows or warriors or cups overflowing with grapes. He knew only the commonest Sabrian names.
You must have made a special study of constellations
, he said
. Are there so many books about them? My own studies have not explored folk tales.
My family would often sit outside at night
, I said. More treacherous ground. But yielding or withholding came easier with every word.
My parents would point out the Archer or the Dragonfly or the Creator’s Hammer and require one of us children to tell the story. When we traveled, they insisted we learn the local stories and tell those, too.
Another long pause.
It is not our talk of star patterns that leaves you melancholy.
He did not couch this as a question. Yet a sense of his puzzlement prompted a response.
I’m fostered
, I said. Truth. And many noble families sent their daughters to live near collegiae or mentors or marriageable suitors.
My guardian is generous, but I miss my family very much.
Ah
, he said again.
This time he diverted the conversation. We were both somewhat skeptical of astrologers who claimed to read the future in the stars, but he mentioned, with excitement, how a philosopher in Eldoris had recently proposed that planets obeyed the same physical principles as a stone dropped from a watchtower.
Germond de Vouger
, I said.
An astonishing thinker.
When I expressed my uncertainty that this new theory could ever be proved, my friend provided such a clear explanation, I felt as if I could draw de Vouger’s diagrams myself. Papa had given me de Vouger’s letters outlining his grand theory, and I had studied them for half a year, yet still I had floundered.
How can one person come up with such a grand idea?
My friend’s wonder was as clear as the stars.
Are insights born in our bodies like the language we speak or the ability to walk, ready to display themselves when we’ve reached a proper turning point? Or must one find a teacher who sculpts and hones the growing mind?
I told what I knew of my father’s correspondent. De Vouger’s father had been a sailor who lived by the stars and taught him young to watch the sky. His mother had been an acrobat who spent her life being tossed into the air until she broke her back in a fall and died of it, not a month after his father drowned in a storm. Another of the acrobats had taught the youth to juggle, and his juggling took him to Eldoris, where he entertained the students and scholars of the Collegia Astronomica . . . and met Gossorein himself, the astronomer and teacher who changed his life.