The Fall of The Kings (Riverside) (66 page)

Marianne tugged at her lover’s sleeve. “Justy?”

“Hmm?”

“Why should scholars argue over the meaning of something that’s as plain as the nose on your face?”

Justis, familiar, by this time, with all the arguments Crabbe was citing, drew breath to explain about obscure texts, about interpretation and documentation, and stopped short. He considered what St Cloud had said, what Crabbe was saying, all the books he himself had read over the winter and the disputes he’d had over their contents, and then he said, “I’m not sure, sweetheart.”

“I thought it might be to hear themselves talk, but there must be a better reason than that,” she insisted.

“There must be,” he agreed. “I’ll have to think about it.” And think about it he did, while Crabbe went on with his scholarly digression. When he started listening again, the little magister had returned to David and the wizards.

“Duke David was clever enough to know that the other nobles would never rebel without some assurance that the wizards wouldn’t interfere. So he built the famous Spring Pavilion, and invited the wizards to a banquet to consecrate it. When they were all inside, he locked them up, very thoroughly indeed, and set fire to the place. Then he met his fellow conspirators in the Great Court, where you are all standing, and led them into the Great Hall, where they killed the king as I have related. There was nothing more mystical to it than that.

“As for the strength and power of Gerard’s wizards, well, that is as much a fairy tale as the legends of talking beasts and living waters Doctor St Cloud was entertaining us with earlier.” Crabbe went on to cite the case of the wizard Noris, thrown from the clock tower early in the reign of Gerard Last King, and the wizard Durant, stabbed to death in an alley two years later. “And Doctor St Cloud asks us to believe that men like these, who had proved incompetent even to save their own lives, were masters of a power that could uncover the thoughts of men’s hearts and cause grain to sprout in barren land. Before you know it, Doctor St Cloud will be asking us to believe that the wizards meant well, and then, that the kings weren’t so bad after all. And if that is so, why were they ever deposed? This line of argument, followed to its logical conclusion, must bring us, and Doctor St Cloud, inevitably to treason.”

Pandemonium. Justis found himself shouting, “No! No! Down with Crabbe!” with all the considerable force of his lungs, while behind him a group of men chanted “Crabbe! Crabbe! Crabbe!” in a frenzy of enthusiasm. Marianne was laughing wildly and clapping to the rhythmic roaring around her.

The Master Governor called once more for order, which was even longer in coming than it had been before. Trumpets sounded, people shouted. Crabbe stood unmoved in the middle of it all, smiling very lightly with his head tipped to one side, the picture of smug triumph.

“There is no question, naturally, of calling Doctor St Cloud a traitor,” he said when he’d a hope of being heard. “His colleagues are all aware of his unworldly and unpolitical nature. I do not doubt that he is searching, in his own way, for truth; I only wish to point out that his search has led him into dark and dangerous places. Our esteemed Governors”— he turned to his right and nodded—“have, in their infinite wisdom, decreed what courses of study students shall follow to hone their minds and train them in the skills of scholarship. They have also decreed what texts shall be set, and how they should be studied. My greatest quarrel with Doctor St Cloud in this affair is not that he should impugn my learning and methods, but that in so doing, he should impugn the methods of study laid down by tradition and experience as the best—the only—way of getting at the truth, and to offer in their place old wives’ tales and ballads.”

“Well, isn’t he pleased with himself?” Marianne exclaimed as the little magister stepped down and St Cloud took his place. “Condemning poor Doctor St Cloud with every word he says, all the while swearing he don’t mean a thing by it. If he told me I was pretty, I’d watch my purse.”

Justis smiled at her gratefully, but his smile was worried. It was going to be difficult for St Cloud to find a defense to Crabbe’s words that would cut any ice with the Governors.

FROM HIS VANTAGE POINT RIGHT NEXT TO THOSE Governors, Nicholas Galing was thinking much the same thing. During Crabbe’s speech, he’d heard many approving murmurs. Crabbe was telling them what they wanted to hear, making them feel comfortable and justified and pleased with themselves. St Cloud had set them off-balance, questioned the foundations on which their decisions and their University were built, and they resented him for it. The man might as well forfeit his challenge right here and now and slink off into the ignoble exile that was his only possible future.

It was a bit of a surprise to see St Cloud stepping onto the platform looking as calm and assured as if Crabbe had not just knocked his entire argument into flinders.

“I had hoped,” he said, “to be able to make my case by reference to my own period of study alone, without presuming so much on my colleague’s territory as to teach him his own subject. I could not believe that he would so fail in his duty as a scholar and a teacher as to present Vespas as his ultimate authority for the events leading up to the Purging of the Wizards and the death of the Tyrant. Vespas did not personally witness those events, but derived his account, at the Council’s behest, from a document written by the Crescent Chancellor, the ancestor of the current Lord Condell, who did not witness them either.”

Crabbe stood up. “This is ridiculous,” he shouted. “Condell interviewed Tremontaine, Perry, and Wellingbrook, all of whom were indisputably there. I hope you’re not trying to say that Condell falsified his facts, or that the Liberators were lying to him?”

Basil turned to him with restrained dignity. “Doctor Crabbe. You may challenge me all you like on my facts, my scholarship, and my reasoning—that is, after all, the purpose of this debate—but please wait your turn, as I did mine.”

Nicholas, who had a tolerably clear view of Crabbe, saw his second pull insistently on his sleeve. The little magister glared down at his friend with narrowed eyes, then flung up his hands and sat down with an air of utter disgust.

“Thank you,” said St Cloud tranquilly. “Doctor Crabbe is correct. Lord Condell’s account of the death of Gerard was indeed compiled with the help of the king’s surviving executioners. However, I am in a position to prove that document does not represent the most authentic account of those events. In the Archives of this very University, there exists a letter from Duke David himself, addressed to the University Librarian, one Carrington.” Calmly, he pulled a yellowed paper from a small portfolio, and handed it to Leonard Rugg. “Perhaps the esteemed Governers would care to examine it to ascertain its authenticity?” Rugg opened it, and stared; without comment he handed it to the row behind him. “I will describe the contents, for those who can’t see it,” Basil went on. “In it, the Liberator thanks Carrington for searching out the
Spell for Binding a Renegado,
and for discovering the circumstances under which it might be executed.”

St Cloud paused to let the implications of this sink in. When the murmuring started, he spoke over it, quoting the salient points of Duke David’s letter, including a paragraph in which the duke warned his friend that he would find the official version of the Purging of the Wizards a little different from what he might expect. “
The Northern magics proving a
wild and unchancy force,
” the duke wrote, “
we have determined
to purge them as well as their unhappy acolytes from this our fair
land, so that no wizard may rise to practice upon us again
.”

Crabbe was on his feet before the end of the sentence. “Doctor St Cloud, what kind of mockery are you trying to make of this debate?”

St Cloud turned to face his rival. “Why, Doctor Crabbe, I am but putting forth evidence and authority, as you wished.”

“Evidence?” Crabbe shrilled. “Authority? I’ll need a lot more proof, Doctor St Cloud, before I accept the authority of such a convenient and unconvincing document. Furthermore, I do not see that this letter, even if it is indeed what you say it is, changes the facts of the case in any way. There is nothing in Duke David’s words to support the interpretation you have put on them.”

St Cloud made as if to answer, but Crabbe shouted him down. “This debate was your challenge, St Cloud, not mine—but I challenge you anew: I call you a liar, with no more respect for history than a penny balladeer!”

“Do you say so?” St Cloud answered quietly.

“You know you are,” Crabbe hissed. “Everything you’ve laid out before us is so much rubbish dug from the refuse heap of the past, a rotting pile of used papers and moldy documents you wish to dignify with the title of History. Perhaps you also want everyone to study the Condell laundry lists from the last hundred years? Or letters from some king to his whore? You claim, because these things exist, are even in some way
true,
you dare to claim that such trivia, such garbage, makes up our sacred History! A very pretty magic, indeed, St Cloud, to turn the dross of a disturbed mind into the gold of true scholarship.”

St Cloud had been listening to this diatribe with his hands tucked into the long green sleeves of his gown. From the crowd, he probably looked as serene as he had throughout the debate, but Nicholas could see the tremors shaking the heavy folds that fell from his shoulders. The Master Governor was on his feet, sputtering that Crabbe was out of order, that decorum must be maintained, but no one was paying him any attention. For a moment, the two men stood confronted, Crabbe panting and slit-eyed with passion, St Cloud furiously restrained. And then St Cloud drew forth from his sleeve a small, fat, dark book. He opened it, turned over two or three pages, ran his finger down the text, found his place, and raised his voice once more.

“If it is history you demand, Roger Crabbe, then I will give you history, pure and unmediated by commentary or the passage of years. This book is the Book of the King’s Wizard. And I will show you true magic now:
A Spelle to call upp the
Beeste in a Man, Eche According to Hys Nature
. Listen, Crabbe, and learn.”

He’s mad,
Nicholas thought reflexively, and then, with a rush of elation:
I knew it!
And then he thought nothing at all, pinned in place by the strange words, ponderous and loud as thunder, that rolled from St Cloud’s lips. Like a rising tide, they flowed on and outward, gathering force and substance, pouring over Crabbe and his second, over the Doctors and Governors and over Nicholas himself, out over the crowd, the Northerners, the Scholars, the Fellows, and all the tradesmen and servants whose world was the University.

Crabbe began to growl and snarl. The voice rolled on; Crabbe crouched down and launched himself at St Cloud. Contemptuously, St Cloud kicked him aside, and he yipped and retreated to a safe distance, from where he barked defiance. The Master Governor swung his head heavily from side to side and let forth a long, unhappy bellow.

Nicholas stood bewildered by the scents that suddenly assailed his nose: the scent of prey—of poultry, of dogs and horses and small, frightened rabbits and mice and somewhere, far off and coming closer, a royal stag. Water sprang to his mouth, but the presence of other predators constrained and confused him. Their stench was rank in his nostrils: hawks and hunting cats and swift-footed foxes. A brown mare stood behind him, watching him gravely from wise, dark eyes. And then he knew that the brown mare was Katherine, Duchess Tremontaine, and that he was not a wolf at all, but Lord Nicholas Galing, who, whatever else he might be, had a wolf’s heart and a wolf’s hunger.

OUT IN THE COURT, JUSTIS PLANTED HIMSELF STURDILY at his mate’s side and growled low in his throat. It was puzzling that his mate should smell like a robin, but she was his to guard, and guard her he would until his last breath. The weasel near him recoiled, then turned into a Fellow with yellow bands on his sleeves and blank fear on his face. Justis shook his head, half-expecting to feel the pull and swing of dewlaps against a sturdy muzzle, then rubbed his face.

Small, trembling fingers plucked at his sleeve. “Justy?” piped a little voice, “What was that, Justy?”

He put his arms around her, his little robin, his sweet girl, and felt her shudder with the force of her heartbeats. “I’m not sure, love,” he said. “But it may very well have been magic.”

HENRY FREMONT SHUDDERED CONVULSIVELY FROM HEAD to toe and examined his hands. Had they indeed been hooves only a moment ago, and had he really been ready to kick in the brains of the high-bred hunting dog shivering and whining beside him? He worked his fingers and snuck a look at Godwin, who whimpered as if the fit were still upon him.

Vandeleur’s voice sounded in his ear, shaky and hoarse. “I thought . . . Never mind what I thought. Are you well, Fremont?”

“No,” said Henry frankly. “But I’m better than Godwin here.”

“See to him, will you?” said Vandeleur. “You’re closest. Land, I miss Justis.”

JESSICA CAMPION SHIVERED WITH THE NOTION THAT SHE could fly, fly with a hawk’s grace and sureness out over the square below her, riding on the currents of the peoples’ awe and fury as they eddied up to her. Her knuckles gripped the railing. She had been within an inch of casting herself from the gallery of the Great Hall. But from there with her hawk’s eyes, she saw what no one else could see: a single man entering the plaza, a man naked to the waist, his chest bound with oak and ivy, his hair flowing free around him. She did not jump, but hastened down the conventional way.