The Fall of The Kings (Riverside) (43 page)

“No longer than a day or two, mind, and don’t go thinking to leave him here forever while you go about your business fancy-free. I don’t doubt Lord Godwin won’t like to hear how you left a man to rot in my woodshed without a backward glance.”

Henry thought of several clever things to say calculated to let the host of the Nag’s Head know just what kind of a blackmailing, boot-licking, ignorant blubber-head he was. But tweaking the host’s nose, though excellent sport in itself, would not get Godwin and Lindley home nor Finn buried. So Henry said they were all very much obliged and poked Godwin, who gave the host the contents of his purse and his solemn word as a Godwin that Finn would be out of the woodshed as soon as may be.

THAT NIGHT, ALONE IN HIS BED WITH A BOTTLE OF WINE, Henry Fremont thought over the events of a long and unpleasant day.

Lindley had remained steadfast in his refusal to tell the Companions of Finn’s death. “You made me swear by oak and holly that I’d tell no man of our meeting. That oath binds me still.”

Fremont and Godwin had plied him with every argument they could lay tongue to, but nothing could move him. Disgusted, they’d left him in the middle of the street and gone to consult with Blake and Vandeleur, pulling them out of the Nest to the neutral territory of the Bramble Bush. There they sat down with tankards of watered ale and talked over what was to be done.

There were two issues to be considered. The first, and most pressing, was how to get Finn’s body out of the Nag’s Head woodshed and decently interred. The second was to decide whether or not to tell Doctor St Cloud about what had happened.

“Not,” Vandeleur said. “He doesn’t even know Finn was in prison. It would be too much, what with the debate and all.”

“I don’t think we should tell him any of it, ever,” said Godwin. “It would upset him horribly.”

“Perhaps,” Blake said. “I think he’d rather know the truth, however upsetting. But I agree he doesn’t need to know it now.”

So that was one decision made. The question of Finn’s body was harder. Long into the afternoon, they considered ways and means with as much care as the Governors brought to a Fellowship appointment. Finally, Vandeleur said, “Look. All we know about his family is the name, and that they live in Finnhaven, which is about as far North as you can get. We’ve determined that a message couldn’t possibly reach them before the host at the Nag’s Head loses patience. We agree that we could just scrape enough together to get him buried ourselves, but that still leaves the question of his family. I really don’t know what’s best to do.”

“He might have kin among the Northerners,” Blake pointed out, not for the first time.

“Are you going to ask them?” Godwin inquired sarcastically. “We’ve already decided they’d rather cut off their braids than talk to us.”

Throughout the conversation, Henry had been struggling with complicated emotions. If Alaric Finn had been a traitor, he himself was another. He did not have to be a metaphysician to realize that the argument that he had sent Lord Nicholas little but his lecture notes and a few pieces of common gossip anyone might have heard in any tavern in University was pure sophistry. He had given Lord Nicholas Finn’s name, and Lindley’s, and now Finn was dead.

“I’ll ask them,” he’d heard himself saying. “If you three are frightened of a bunch of mop-head Northerners, I’m not.”

He blushed now to think how astonished his friends had been at his offer. But they’d accepted it quickly enough, and now he had to do it or face the fact that he was not only a dupe and a traitor, but a coward to boot.

Having gotten so far, Henry Fremont corked up the wine, got out of bed, and composed a short and careful note:

Alaric Finn, Historian of the School of Humane Sciences, has
died in the oak grove, by his own hand, of remorse. His body lies
in the woodshed of the Nag’s Head Inn, west of the oak grove.
Whatsoever his life, his death was all honor
.

He signed it,
A Friend,
folded it, put on his gown, and went out to find a boy to deliver it to the King’s Companions at the Green Man.

chapter V

KATHERINE, DUCHESS TREMONTAINE, DID NOT AVOID formality and ritual when they served a purpose. To receive her cousin and heir, she wore a gown of green and gold, the colors of her house, woven with its emblem, the swan on the waves. She had invited two other people—his mother, Lady Sophia, and her steward, Marcus Ffoliot—to attend the meeting, but she had not told them everything, and so she was the only one formally dressed. Marcus recognized the trappings of authority; Sophia merely complimented her on her lovely robes.

Theron stood before the duchess’s desk until she invited him to sit down. Then he sat on the edge of his chair. No use pretending this wasn’t going to be awful. He only hoped she would give him a chance to explain whatever crimes against the state he was supposed to have committed this time.

Her dress was formal, but her speech was not. She came straight to the point: “Theron,” the duchess said, “people are watching you.”

“I know.” He tried not to sound childish. “I wish that they would not. But I suppose it’s unavoidable. Even my cousin Talbert was warning me—”

“This does not concern Talbert and his gossips. I mean the Serpent and his people.”

“What!” Theron half-started out of his chair. “But I’ve done nothing! The Last Night chase was a student prank; they must have figured that out by now. What right do they have—why on earth would they—” But the part of him that knew the City, knew the reason. Basil, the dead kings, the debate . . . They must know about him and Basil; half the University did. Did the duchess?

Katherine said, “I know you too well to suspect you of any kind of scheming. But they do not. Everything you do takes on double meaning, Theron, and I don’t know where it will end. I think it is too much to ask you to suddenly overturn all your habits. You’ll have to settle down someday, but I can’t expect you to change overnight. And so I think it best that you leave the City for a while.”

Oh, God, he thought, half-wanting to laugh, not Highcombe! Not with Basil’s father there! He had no desire to go the country at all, but to be banished to Highcombe would be too much.

“I’ve pulled some strings,” she went on, “and gotten you an appointment to an embassage.” She smiled at Sophia. “To the Kyrillian Archipelago. I thought you might like to see where the other half of your family tree springs from.”

For a moment, he was seeing them all through a veil of gray ash. Sophia was out of her chair, her hand on his pulse. But he looked past her at Katherine.

“I cannot,” he said. “I cannot leave at present. I am going to be married.”

Katherine leaned back, the wind knocked out of her sails. “Re-eally? To whom?”

“To Lady Genevieve Randall.”

“Randall?” Sophia asked, bewildered. “The music people?”

“How nice. But, judging from her face, you don’t appear to have told your mother about this.”

“I was—I was going to. Today.”

“Well, that’s good, considering that you are underage. You will need the consent of your guardians.”

“I think that she is very suitable,” he bulled on. “The Randalls are an old family; they were created right after the Union. It’s Lady Genevieve’s first Season.”

“Not bad,” said Marcus. “Tell us about it.”

“I’ve been paying her court these last weeks,” Theron explained, “and I have reason to believe neither she nor her family would object to a formal offer. If you give your consent, I can propose very soon. She’s young, so I think they’ll want to wait on the wedding until the fall.” And by fall, he hoped to see Basil established in the Horn Chair, the challenge and debate behind him, once more ready for love. “I do want to see Kyros, of course—it was terribly kind of you to think of it—maybe we could go there for our bridal trip. But in the meantime, do you think it might please the Council if I were married instead of exiled?”

Katherine said, “Are you offering me a bargain?”

“No, cousin.” He was beginning to enjoy himself. “I intend to marry Lady Genevieve whatever happens. I grow tired of waiting to settle down, as if it were some sort of terrible weight that will eventually descend on me. I’d rather choose the time myself, and get it over with all at once.”

There was a heavy silence, and then his mother said plaintively, “Theron, you don’t know what you are saying.”

He ignored her, holding Katherine’s eyes, willing her to agree. He wished he knew what she was thinking. She’d recovered from her surprise and was looking particularly ducal. “Let me think about it,” she said. “It could do very well, and I’ll wish you every happiness. Marcus, will you look into the Randall family?”

THE CARRIAGE RIDE BACK TO RIVERSIDE WAS A QUIET but not a comfortable one. Sophia was thinking, Theron could tell that. He watched the high, blind walls of the Hill give way to the lighted windows and shuttered shop-fronts and chocolate houses of the Middle City, and prepared to take his medicine like a man.

He wasn’t surprised when his mother waved away the chairs waiting by the Bridge to carry them home and strode out through Riverside’s maze of streets with the linkboys trotting behind. If he was the Prince of Riverside, she was the Queen, at home here as she’d never be on the Hill, or even the University that she had bullied into accepting her. Voices called out to her as they walked: goodnights and greetings that she punctiliously returned. Once she stopped to reassure herself that a beggar’s sores were nothing more than mustard and gum before giving him a copper and directing him to the dormitory she maintained behind the infirmary. “It’s free,” she told him. “They’ll give you a blanket and soup, so go ahead and spend the coin any way you like. Just don’t sleep in the street tonight. And if you want to beg in Riverside, you’d better see Battered Bob in the morning for permission.”

The walk from the Bridge calmed them both to a degree, and it was more in sorrow than in anger that Sophia turned to her son and said, “What I do not understand is why you have not told me of all this earlier.”

They had just entered Sophia’s sitting-room, a comfortable apartment in the narrowest of the connected houses that made up Riverside House. It was dominated by a life-sized portrait of the late duke as a young man and a smaller one of Sophia, richly dressed and obviously pregnant.

Theron bit his lip. He’d deceived her, if only by omission; his sole recourse was complete honesty. “I was afraid you’d try to talk me out of it,” he said.

“You were correct.” Sophia sank into her favorite shabby chair and gazed up at him with dark, steady eyes. “I will still try to talk you out of it. If I succeed, I shall myself explain to Katherine that you have thought better of your plan.”

Theron dragged a puffy leather ottoman to her feet and settled himself on it. “It’s a very good plan,” he said earnestly. “I have thought it over carefully. I must marry sometime; we are all agreed on that.”

“Of course. But I had always hoped you would marry for love.”

He took her hand. “My perfect mama. But I cannot be like you in every way.”

She snatched her hand back. “This is not a jest,” she said hotly.

“I’m sorry. Your love for my father is legendary. But I must make my own legend some other way.”

Sophia was not mollified. “And the girl? Are her feelings to be considered?”

He shrugged. “Oh, I assume her feelings are that she will like being Duchess Tremontaine some day, and having beautiful houses to live in and parties to give. That is what the world knows being my wife entails.”

“You sound as though you despise her already,” Sophia said grimly.

He looked at her in surprise. “I don’t despise her. I quite like her. She is pretty and has a nice laugh.”

“Oh, dear.”

Theron got up to pace, reeling off his points as though he were in a classroom debate. “After all, what is a noble marriage? I grant you the obvious: we must find each other attractive. Which we do.” He blushed faintly. “But how much of our time will be spent alone in each other’s company? Awake? Precious little. Most of our days will be full of our individual work and occupations. I’ll have my seat in Council, which I do intend to take up, eventually. There will be meetings, dinners—which she will arrange. Highcombe, and the other estates. And, of course, my studies; I won’t let everything go. She will have her own amusements; doubtless her tastes are already formed, and I won’t interfere: cards, gowns, music, sewing, friends, whatever she likes.