The Fall of The Kings (Riverside) (36 page)

Lindley gave a barking laugh that turned into violent coughing. His skin felt hot and dry under Blake’s hand, and he was shivering. Blake thought uncomfortably of prison fever and how it must be close to two, and where was Vandeleur with those candles? Then the door opened and there was Vandeleur, a blanket thrown over his arm, followed by a buxom young woman in a feathered hat and a man’s greatcoat, carrying a basket.

“It’s almost time,” he said without preamble. “I’ve brought candles and some food and Odette. She’s promised to sit with Tony until I come back. If we run, we’ll just make it. Come
on!
”

WHILE HIS STUDENTS WERE TENDING TO LINDLEY, DOCTOR Basil St Cloud was sitting alone in his rooms, surrounded by the books and papers, staring at the Book of the King’s Wizard and finding it easy, for once, not to think about Theron. By nightfall, he would have challenged Crabbe to a duel of knowledge.

There was nothing to worry about, he told himself. In fact, it should be almost childishly easy. Roger Crabbe was an ass. His books and lectures were as full of false facts as a hive is full of bees. Crabbe wasn’t interested in actual truth. He was interested only in catering to popular prejudice, of proving into infinity the viciousness of every king back to the dawn of time. Rugg was right. There was no obvious need for Basil to bring up the wizards.

Yet how could he not, when the assumption that they were monsters was what held together Crabbe’s whole net of falsehoods? If the wizards had indeed been manipulative charlatans, then it followed that all the kings might well be corrupt tyrants at worst, at best gullible fools and madmen. But if the wizards were true . . . then the early kings, too, could be seen at last for what they truly were: dedicated rulers serving the land hand in hand with those who knew it best.

Furthermore he, Basil St Cloud, had the proof incontrovertible that they served true magic in their time. He had the Book of the King’s Wizard.

But the Book, inscrutable and indecipherable, was a two-edged sword.

It lay before him, open to
A Spelle to Un-Cover Hidden
Trothes
. That wouldn’t help, Basil thought, even if he could read it. Irritably, he flipped to
A Workyng of Confusion
. Below it,
For if Ye wold Turn the Tong to Fyre
caught his eye. That one, now . . .

Basil slapped the book shut, folded it into its wrappings, laid it in the box, closed it, and slid the whole under the bed. The greatest scholarly discovery of the age, and as useless to him as so much rotting fruit. Fury choked his breath like cold water. He slammed his fist into his papers, tearing the topmost sheets and toppling a stack of old books onto the floor. The noise brought him to himself: he picked up the books, smoothed the papers, and rubbed his smarting hand.

It wasn’t as if he didn’t have at least a dozen other sources that contradicted Crabbe’s received “wisdom”—Karleigh’s diaries and the Montague notes were the least of what he’d found. Let Crabbe say almost anything about the reigns of Alcuin’s heirs, and Basil had him.

Basil got up and examined himself in the hand-sized mirror he used for shaving, knotted a clean neckcloth at his throat and tucked the ends into the bosom of his coat. No muffler—it looked sloppy. He wished he had a brooch for his hat, something ornamental—a deer’s head, perhaps, or a leaf like those some of the students were wearing. He brushed the felted wool against his sleeve, set it on his head, and left the room, locking the door behind him.

HIS STUDENTS WERE WAITING FOR HIM OUTSIDE THE Nest, looking very young and solemn. Finn and Lindley were still missing. Never mind: four was enough. St Cloud took cold air deep into his lungs and said, “We’re going to Farraday. I’m challenging Doctor Crabbe to a formal debate.”

Henry Fremont gave a long, impressed whistle; the rest of them pricked up their ears like horses itching for a gallop. “I don’t want any trouble, now,” St Cloud added hastily.

“No, sir,” said Vandeleur, grinning. “Of course not.”

“It would create a disturbance,” Godwin agreed.

“We won’t lift a finger,” Blake assured him. “Unless they lift one first.”

“Not even then,” said St Cloud, equally warmed and alarmed by his students’ enthusiasm. “Doctor Rugg will be there as my witness, to see that it’s all done in form. You are here because he suggested that I bring you.”

What Rugg had said was, “Crabbe’s the kind of man to be impressed by an entourage—just your nearest and dearest, and no one who can’t keep his head.” On reflection, it was just as well that Finn and Lindley weren’t there. Flushed and determined, they all set off for Crabbe’s hall, united in the feeling that they were no longer just studying history, but making it. St Cloud’s challenge might not shake the land or even the city, but it would certainly have an effect on how every subject was taught at University. Each one of them knew that this wasn’t just Basil St Cloud against Roger Crabbe, but Research against Theory, Observation against Authority. As he pushed through the winding streets, Justis Blake was suddenly aware of the irony of an ancient historian raising the banner of a new and progressive methodology: the Past in service to the Future in opposition to the Present. It made him almost as happy as the prospect of the ruckus St Cloud’s challenge was undoubtedly going to raise.

Doctor Crabbe’s lecture having begun at two, the street outside Farraday was empty when St Cloud and his guard arrived, save for Doctor Leonard Rugg, his ample form wrapped in fur under his gown, looking as bright and eager as First Day morning. “The hall’s pretty full,” he said. “You’ll have a good audience. Do you remember the formula?”

Basil, who was wishing himself back on his father’s farm, closed his eyes, searched his memory for an endless moment, and said, “I challenge you, Roger Crabbe, on your facts, your reasoning, and your conclusions. The matter shall be debated between us at the Festival of Sowing, as the Governors shall witness.”

“You need to say what you’re challenging him on! And that last part is Crabbe’s,” Rugg said. “Blake, you’re trustworthy. Tread on his foot or something if he looks like answering his own challenge. Get him out of there as fast as you can, and take him to—oh, the Four-Cornered Hat, and I’ll meet you when I’ve done my part. Ready?”

St Cloud was already at the door, which, like many doors at University, was carved with oak and holly leaves entwined. Wizards once touched this latch, he thought as he put his hand to the worn bronze deer’s head.

The door opened miraculously—one of his students had ducked in before him, he realized. He edged past the intent bodies of Crabbe’s students, who glanced at him curiously. Crabbe was talking about the fall of the kings. His voice was clipped and slightly nasal—as ugly as the falsehoods he was feeding his students. It would be a joy, Basil thought, to blast that lying tongue with a cleansing fire.

“King Gerard put great trust in his wizards,” Crabbe was saying. “That trust was his greatest, some would say his only weakness, he and his cronies being otherwise so very adept at terrorizing his subjects. Only the nobles dared to oppose his despicable practices, but Gerard instructed his wizards to keep the nobles busy, and he believed them when they told him that the plague that broke out in the Horn and Montague lands was their doing. Gerard also trusted the wizards’ fabled knowledge of men’s hearts to warn him of any plots or disaffection, and he seems to have been so credulous as to have trusted in their magic to protect him from any actual attack. How shocked he must have been when the Liberator, Duke Tremontaine, walked jauntily past them all and stabbed him through the heart.”

That was wrong. Basil knew it—everyone knew it, it was even in Vespas; Crabbe was just being flip and arrogant, because he thought details didn’t matter. True, Gerard’s wizards had been weak—but the nobles had not “walked past them.” The last king’s court wizards had all been carefully invited to a great feast, and then locked into the banqueting hall, its doors bound “in thrice-three locks of iron, gold, and lead,” as one old ballad put it. After the death of their king, none had left that hall alive; they were burned there, with their books of magic—all except for the one Basil had in his keeping. Which did, indeed, contain notes “On the Bynding of a Renegado, with Thrice Times Three About Him.” Crabbe was being flippant, of course, but his prating was intolerable, and Basil raised up his voice in the hall to say so:

“I challenge you, Roger Crabbe, Doctor of this University, on your facts, your reasoning, and your conclusions.” The words poured strong and clear over his tongue. “The wizards were true wizards, and their power was true magic.”

Gasps and shouts, silenced by Crabbe’s lifted hand. He scanned the hall, his eyes narrowed, his tight mouth lipless with rage.

Leonard Rugg’s rich tones rolled out across the room. “Should you care to accept the challenge, Doctor Crabbe, you must say, ‘The matter of the wizards shall be debated between us at the Festival of Sowing, as the Governors shall witness.’ Then you appoint a second, and he and I will present the whole thing formally to the Governors. My advice,” he went on in a more confidential tone, “is to say it and get it over with before there’s a riot.”

Belatedly, St Cloud realized that the hall was buzzing like a hive of wasps working themselves up to an attack. The pulse thudded in his throat.

“Very well,” said Crabbe, his voice tight with rage. “The matter of the wizards shall be debated between us, at the Festival of Sowing. And the University Governors will judge between us, who is the traitor and who the true scholar.” He turned to Rugg with furious courtesy. “Will that do, Doctor Rugg?”

Rugg glared at the little history Doctor. “I’m willing to stretch a point,” he answered, “for the sake of expedience. And your second?”

“You must excuse me, Doctor Rugg, if I hesitate to embroil any of my colleagues in this nonsense without warning or permission. I will furnish you with a name tomorrow, or perhaps the next day.”

Justis Blake’s voice rumbled in Basil’s ear. “It’s time to go.”

Basil nodded absently, his whole mind concentrated on the compact, truculent figure of his rival. He was as single-minded as a terrier after rats. He’d be a vicious fighter, too, full of tricks and dodges.

Blake’s large hand gripped his arm and tugged at it urgently. “Come, Doctor St Cloud! Please!”

Reluctantly, St Cloud allowed Blake and Vandeleur to guide him through a gauntlet of jeers and shoves. The other students went before and behind, protecting him from the worst of it, shoving back a bit, but on the whole, behaving themselves. When they reached the street, St Cloud wanted to wait for Rugg, but the students, more shaken than they would admit, hustled him directly to the Four-Cornered Hat. It wasn’t familiar territory, but it was where Doctor Rugg had said to go, so in they went, and found an empty table, and sat down and called for ale for themselves and brandy for Doctor St Cloud and Doctor Rugg.

Silence fell, awkward and unaccustomed among such a garrulous lot. St Cloud glanced from face to shocked face. “I would have warned you,” he said frankly, “had I known. But it was the inspiration of the moment. Like Sebastian Fire-Blood, I seized my enemy’s weapon by the blade and turned it against him.”

Henry Fremont snorted. “That’s bitter comfort, seeing as Sebastian Fire-Blood lost his hand.”

“He won the battle,” said St Cloud. “That was what signified. And that’s what signifies here.”

Justis exchanged a look with Benedict Vandeleur, who shrugged—he wasn’t about to make a fool of himself stating the obvious. But Justis didn’t believe, seeing St Cloud’s dazed and exalted face, that the young magister had any real notion of what he’d just done or what it meant in the real world. Scholars weren’t much given to practical concerns, after all. So he wet his throat with a gulp of ale and said, “A battle isn’t an academic debate, sir, nor the other way around. Academic debates draw no blood. On the other hand, there’s a law against talking about magic. People will take notice. And spring is a long way away.”

“I mean them to take notice,” St Cloud said stoutly. “The truth about the wizards and their magic must emerge eventually. Truth can’t be stifled forever. It’s better brought out in an academic debate than in some more violent manner.”

Peter Godwin raised anxious hazel eyes from his tankard. “Do you really think so, sir? Won’t it upset things?”

“Of course it will upset things,” said Rugg from behind him. “Bastard. Little tick.”

“I beg your pardon,” said Basil stiffly.

Rugg sat down in front of the brandy and took a gulp. “Crabbe,” he explained. “I was a whisker from challenging him myself. ‘Will that do,
Doctor
Rugg?’ And you should have heard what he said once you left. Tick.”

Henry Fremont snorted and then yelped as Vandeleur’s boot connected with his shin. St Cloud smiled. “You’ve hit on it exactly, Rugg. Crabbe is a tick, sucking ideas from other men and claiming them for his own. I must be careful not to ignore his head, lest it fester in the wound.”

“And just what do you think you mean by that figure?” inquired Rugg testily. “You’re a wonder, St Cloud. Do you realize that you’ve just committed yourself to proving a fact the nobles have been moving the earth to disprove these two hundred years? And I’m your second. We’re both likely to be clapped into the Chop for treason. Or laughed out of University, which would be worse. I thought I had your word you wouldn’t do this.”

Basil looked the irascible metaphysician in the eye. “You had my word I’d try. I’m sorry, Leonard. He left me no choice. I know what I’m doing.”