The Fall of The Kings (Riverside) (33 page)

It all really happened,
Henry Fremont wrote.
Theron
Campion was the Deer . . . they said Theron was the King . . .

And Galing had further intelligence, now, forwarded from the Chop. They had not wanted him in at the questioning, but at least Arlen had sent him this:

Question:
I know you hunted the deer on Last Night.
But why did you call him the king?
Prisoner:
I did not. I never did
.
Q: Your friends did. Why?
P: The deer is the king. The king of the year.
Q: The old year, or the new?
P: Neither, both; it’s kind of complicated, please don’t—
Q: Why is the deer the king?
P: It has always been so.

“Well, well,” said Galing. “He had some bizarre ideas, your noble subject.”

“Don’t talk nonsense,” the painter said. “It wasn’t his place to have ideas.”

“You mean you—oh, come, Madam Ysaud, really. You paint to sell, or so you’ve told me. Often. Your time is valuable, not to be wasted, I remember. Why create a dozen, two dozen canvases for nothing, for no one? Campion can afford them.” He paused, smiling maliciously. “Was that the cause of your split? Not a lovers’ quarrel, but a lover’s commission? Did he refuse to pay up? Didn’t he like the work?”

“You go too far,” she said, and turned away, leaving Galing and the painting in darkness. “I should not have shown you any of these.”

Galing’s ears pricked at her tone. She was uncomfortable, perhaps frightened. He needed to know why. “You still haven’t told me,” he reminded her. “Where do these come from?”

“From him, from Theron.”

This was promising. “Then he
did
suggest these—these bizarre images. How? What did he say?”

He’d followed her to the center of the room, where she stood islanded in light. She cocked her head insolently at him. “He didn’t
say
anything, Lord Nicholas.”

“Books, then; did he show you books?”

“Oh, honestly. What would I want with books? He showed me his body. It spoke to me, and this is what it said. I used to watch him when he was asleep—and other times. The pictures grew up around him.”

She was lying, he thought; or she was a little mad. Or the whole thing was an absurd coincidence. Which didn’t seem likely.

“So what did he think of these pictures he ‘gave’ you?”

“He hated the whole thing. But he was in love with me. He complained nonstop about posing, but he’d do anything I asked him to. Here, look at this.”

A young man lay spread-eagled on his back, at the heart of an oak grove. The pure white of his skin was streaked with scratches, as though he’d been running naked through the wood. His head was tilted back, his throat exposed as though waiting for a lover’s kiss—or for a knife.

“He enjoyed that one,” she chuckled; “a little too much: I had a hellish time getting the shadows right, just there . . .” She pointed to where a scattering of oak leaves and shadows hid his private parts. “Shall I show you why?”

Without waiting for an answer she delved into another portfolio and offered up a drawing in reddish chalk: the same man, but his pose was held by ropes binding his wrists and ankles to posts—probably bedposts, Nicholas thought. In the sketch, there was no mistaking the face of the young nobleman, though in the painting it had been obscured. The figure’s eyes were still shut, his head tilted back, but his member was fully erect. A painted vine embraced his chest and hip as if it loved him.

“Distracting,” murmured Nicholas.

“Not to me. Here’s another.”

Campion again, unbound this time: asleep, or maybe only sated, in the middle of a rumple of sheets, one arm flung luxuriously away from himself.

“Did Lord Theron understand,” Nicholas breathed, “just what you were doing?”

Ysaud smiled affectionately at the sketch. “About half the time, he did. He couldn’t stop me drawing, could he? But the paintings never show his face, except in one or two decent, historical ones. Those I could sell, actually. They couldn’t possibly offend anyone: in fact, some nobles think it’s an honor to pose for those. You, Lord Nicholas, you’d make a very nice Duke Tremontaine—the historical one, I mean, the King Killer—a man in his prime, in command of his power . . . much better than poor Theron, despite his lineage. Though if we go back far enough, you’re all interbred, I suppose. I see it all the time in the old portraits: a modern Karleigh nose on an ancient Lord Horn, and so forth.”

“I would be honored to be the King Killer—some day. With young Campion as King Gerard?”

“Tremontaine would never forgive me. You don’t paint a family that important as one of the great villains of history.” She glanced up at him with bright malice. “Really, Galing, do you know nothing of politics?” Galing smiled and shrugged. “You know, he came to me at first for a sitting,” she went on. “His cousin, the duchess, admires my work. She owns a couple already—a
Rosamund’s Bower
, I think, and a swordsman genre piece. The duchess wanted a portrait of her heir apparent. One thing led to another.”

“I’m sure it did. But how did he like you doing
these?
” Galing shook the handful of drawings.

“Oh, those. Those are for you.”

“For—me?”

“Yes, don’t you like them?”

Galing felt the blood pounding in his veins. She knew perfectly well just what he liked. “You are remarkably generous, Madam Ysaud.”

“Not at all.” She pulled another few sketches, rolling them up before he could see what they were. “A compliment to a friend. Here, I’ll wrap them up for you myself.”

chapter
IV

THERE WERE NO CLASSES DURING THE WHITE DAYS. But Basil warned Theron that he intended to spend most of them working on something important.

“Don’t you want me?” Theron asked, hurt.

Basil smiled. “Do I look as if I don’t want you?” He took Theron’s face in his hands. “Understand, my dear; this is my one time free of lectures, free of students—time to get some real work done.”

The truth was, he found it easier to resist poring over the book of spells when Theron did not visit. He didn’t tell him that; nor did he tell him that he was looking for proof of something he could use to call Roger Crabbe a liar—something that didn’t involve wizards and magic. He still hadn’t told Theron about the academic challenge. Sometimes he hardly believed himself that he’d earnestly committed to it with three of his closest friends, and that, come the new year, they would be expecting him to have something to debate, something fresh and exciting, something tied in to his latest work on the Northern kings and their successors. Seduced by the wizards’ book and his noble lover, he had fallen behind on his true work, the slow steady plumbing of source texts and notes for the book he was going to write. He should be strict with himself, for once. “Besides,” Basil said, “I thought your days would be full of parties. Family. That sort of thing.”

“They are,” Theron said glumly. “Well, they don’t have to be—I can get out of the worst of them—but as you’re so busy . . .”

“Not every day.” Basil kissed him, nearly poking his eye out with the quill he’d stuck behind his ear. “I’m not busy every day. But if we spent the White Days all in bed—what could we hope for in the new year?”

Theron scowled. “We are meant to spend the White Days in self-improvement, conducting ourselves as we mean to go on in the coming year. So you will be working hard, and I will attend more parties. Charming.”

“Think rather,” Basil traced his cheek, “that we are storing up virtue. Getting it out of the way, if you like.”

Theron tried to think of it that way. He also remembered Katherine’s warning and even, to his annoyance, his cousin Talbert’s humiliating lecture at the Godwin party. Very well, he would be the model heir, escort his mother to all conceivable gatherings on the Hill, and leave no one to wonder where he was spending the rest of his time. It was one thing to be notorious with Ysaud. He had no desire to let the Hill crowd know about his scholarly lover.

THAT EVENING, THERON CAMPION STOOD IN HIS WARM room in Riverside House while Terence dressed him. Fine linen against his skin, followed by layers of more linen, stiff with embroidery, then brocaded silk, rounded with collar and cuffs of lace. His long hair was brushed and oiled and clipped in a golden buckle, a heavy gold chain laid around his neck. It weighed him down, but it had been a gift from the duchess, and he thought it would be expedient to wear it. He had eaten nothing for hours; come rushing home from Basil’s after his mother had already dined, with barely enough time to bathe and change for the Montague ball. His consequent pallor and his hair gave him an antique air his lover would have approved of.

The ball was already crowded when Theron and Sophia arrived. He left her with a group of noble ladies presided over by her old friend Lady Godwin, then swam and bowed his way through the brightly dressed throng toward the refreshments. A hand at his elbow stopped his progress: “Young Campion! Pried you away from your books, have we?”

He was in a knot of men he’d known since he was a child, men he’d played at swordsmen with, men he’d ridden with, men he’d gone drinking with, even men he’d kissed. Now they wanted to talk about politics and the latest gossip. He wondered what they’d make of Basil, or Basil of them. Contempt and incomprehension all around, he suspected; it was hard even to think of them in the same breath.

Everyone was laughing—someone must have made a witty remark. Theron smiled mechanically and took a glass of wine from a passing tray. He began to feel much better after he’d downed it.

A fragile-looking girl with dark hair came into view just past the swirl of pattern in the padded shoulders around him. Her hair was severely upswept, exposing delicate ears. The shadowy tendrils that escaped onto her neck served to enhance its frailty.

Ralph Perry followed Theron’s look. “Ah!” he said archly. “The true purpose for our sojourn in these parts: the flowers in the garden of maidenhood, ripe for the plucking.”

“Perry!” Clarence Randall expostulated. “I hope you don’t mean my sister!”

“Plucking,” explained Perry smoothly, “is a very considerable enterprise, involving ladders of contracts, baskets of jewels, and books of vows.”

“
Is
it your sister?” Theron asked Randall.

“
It’s
not the cat, you rogue!”

But in the end, he achieved his introduction to the young beauty. Lady Genevieve Randall smiled shyly; she was fresh from the schoolroom, and had been told that it was better to play up her freshness and innocence than to pretend to a sophistication she lacked. Her skin was fine and flawless, with a ripe-peach glow; Theron had to stop himself from reaching out to touch it just to feel it under his fingers. Even her shoulders, bare in their calyx of lace, were round and shone faintly golden in the flattering candlelight.

But he might take her hand if he asked her to dance, and so he did. They trod the measures of a slow
pas,
and he was careful to exert no pressure of the fingers that might alarm her. He could not help looking, though, at the wisps of dark hair at the base of her neck as the two of them moved back and forth, gravely dipping and bobbing. A sheen of moisture appeared on her upper lip; he wished he might bend down and lick it off.

Her mother met them as they came off the dance floor. Lady Randall knew all about him; it was a mother’s business to know what there was to know about men of marriageable age. She inquired first after his mother’s health and then after his studies and his cousin the duchess, to let him know that she understood both his own priorities and his standing in the world’s eyes. Theron took pains not to say anything particularly original, so as not to alarm her. His efforts were rewarded by a motherly smile and the information that the Randall ladies received in the mornings, should he care to call.

COMING DOWN THE STAIRS FROM THE CARD ROOM, Lord Nicholas Galing stopped and stared at a young man with clubbed hair bowing to a majestic lady in purple and feathers. There was something about the tilt of the young man’s head, the slope of his nose, the set of his shoulders that tugged at Galing’s memory. The young man straightened and turned toward a group of young bloods in their first season.

“Dammit, Galing,” said the Duke of Karleigh at his shoulder. “Warn a man when you’re stopping, won’t you? Damn near sent me arse over teakettle.”