The Fall of The Kings (Riverside) (10 page)

The boy spoke earnestly, leaning close enough for Basil to smell the brandy on his breath. In the candlelight, his eyes seemed huge, and green as forest leaves. He waited for a response, and when none was forthcoming, sat back on the bench with a complacent smile. “I knew you’d agree, once I’d demonstrated it to you,” he said.

Basil recoiled. “Agree? Master Campion, the only thing you’ve demonstrated is your ability to spin theories out of thin air. There’s not a single fact in that whole farrago of nonsense—not one.”

Unrepentant, Campion said, “But we know so few facts about those days, and those few we know are so unreliable. Are you suggesting—
you,
Doctor St Cloud—that I . . . let me see now . . .
set about inventing colorful details?
”

Basil gritted his teeth. “I am suggesting that you trouble to inform yourself before you start formulating theories.”

“I know as much as most of your students do. I’ve read Tortua and Hollis, and one of the others—Delgardie, that’s the one. What else is there?”

A student reeled past them, or nearly—at the last moment he did a drunken bounce off the table and into Campion’s lap. “Bugger off, Hemmynge.” Campion dumped him on the ground. Hemmynge wandered off in the other direction, with people shouting after him.

“What else?” Campion persisted. “If I want facts.”

“I provide those at my lectures, young man. For a fee.”

Campion groaned. “There are a lot of things I’m better at than getting up in the morning. And you won’t let me buy you a drink. Tell me now.”

“We can’t talk here,” Basil said. “It’s too noisy.”

“Out on the street, then?”

“Too cold.”

“I don’t suppose your rooms are nearby . . . ?”

BASIL ST CLOUD’S ROOMS WERE UP FOUR FLIGHTS OF stairs in an old stone building that had originally been part of the royal dependencies. Some time after the fall of the kings, it had been cut up into a warren of more or less cramped apartments. Basil’s was a largish room, furnished with a wooden bedstead, a table and a chair, and scores of books and papers piled and drifted on the floor, against the walls, in the corners, and spread out on the mattress like an eager lover.

“The scholar’s mistress,” observed Campion, folding his body down onto the bed. He laid his hand on one closely written sheet. “Is this your new book?”

On the way from the Ink Pot, Basil had had time to regret his impulsiveness. “No,” he said coldly.

“
Do
you have a mistress?”

Basil, who was poking up the fire, jerked upright, his lips compressed. The young man returned his look gravely, like a curious child. He’d loosed his shirt at the neck, laying open the fine linen to bare the hollow of his throat, which was also fine, and very pale. Firelight polished the fold of hair over his shoulder and touched the high curves of his brow and his aquiline nose with a warm light, lending them the look of alabaster or carved ivory. His eyes, shadowed, were blank.

Basil’s world spun once and realigned itself around a figure descended from the marble frieze above the Great Hall, now sitting on his bed: the living image of an ancient king.

Theron Campion moved two books onto the floor, clearing a larger space on the bed. The movement broke the illusion, but not the enchantment. Basil took one step toward the bed, and then another, his hand held out in unconscious supplication. Theron grasped it and pulled him down into a long kiss that ended with his lying back on the bed amid the papers.

“Watch out,” Theron murmured against Basil’s mouth. “She has nails!”

“What?”

“Your mistress. She’s scratching my back. And this can’t be doing her any good. Let’s get rid of her.”

Basil propped himself up on his elbow and leaned over Theron to scoop papers and books off the end of the bed, lifting him to get at the papers he was lying on, pressing against his belly, working his hands under the gown, the jacket, the tight waistcoat, the shirt, to the strong, smooth back beneath. The young man’s flesh was warm and supple under Basil’s hands; his mouth was sweet and firm under Basil’s lips. Theron rolled him away, laughing, and helped him disentangle himself from his scholar’s robe and the suit of clothes beneath it.

Then Theron pulled his own shirt over his head. His skin was a little flushed, and winding up his chest to his throat was a tracery of leaves so beautifully etched that it might almost have grown there of itself, like ivy on a stone wall. The ivy leaves were intertwined with oak. Basil lifted his hand to touch the decoration and hesitated, overcome.

Theron glanced down at himself, his expression closed. “It won’t smudge,” he said.

“I’d like to see the rest of it,” said Basil unsteadily.

The leaves coiled around Theron’s waist to end under one high, round buttock. Basil stroked it, half-expecting to feel leaves rustling under his fingers. Theron gasped and burrowed his hand into the dark hair of Basil’s chest. His fingers were cold. “I’ve always wanted a fur coverlet,” he said. “Come and warm me.”

And Basil did warm him, until they threw the blankets on the floor, until they flared and leapt and burned themselves out to lie at last in a smoldering glow of satisfaction.

“I’m curious about something,” Basil said sleepily. “Have you been following me? Lately, I seem to see you everywhere.”

The young man settled himself more comfortably against his shoulder. “I thought you’d never notice.”

“I noticed you at once!”

Basil felt the smile against his skin. “No, you didn’t. I attended lectures; I saw you in the Nest surrounded by your students, your particular followers—”

Basil chuckled.

“What?”

“The way you say that. Par-
tic
-u-lar. You sound as though you’re picking up something tiny with silver tweezers. Never mind. Go on.”

The student shifted. “Well . . . I studied you until I knew you, or at least the public parts of you: your learning, your passion, the way your voice slows when you answer a question. I studied your hands, and wondered how they’d touch me; your hair, and how it would smell. I wondered about all that, and about the rest of you I could not see. I wanted to know you. And I wanted you to know me. I wanted you to see me.”

“Have you gotten what you wanted?”

Theron trailed his hand down Basil’s breastbone to his belly. “Yes,” he said. “I have.”

AFTER THERON HAD LEFT HIM, BASIL BANKED THE FIRE, threw his gown over the bed, and crawled between icy sheets that had so recently been more than warm enough. He had no idea how late it was—he wouldn’t have heard the University Clock bell tonight if it had rung directly in his ear. But as they lay together, half-dozing, Theron had suddenly said, “I have to go home tonight, you know. Sophia worries when I don’t come home at all.”

A small serpent of jealousy stirred in Basil’s breast. “Sophia?”

“Lady Sophia Campion. My mother.”

Campion, Campion . . . An old family, but fairly minor in the great scheme of things. Basil knew plenty of dead ones. There was a Bertram Campion who had seen King Tybald slain at Pommerey; a Raymond Campion who had written a monograph on ancient campaign maps. But what the Campions had done lately, he had no idea. He’d have to ask someone, discreetly.

The serpent stilled, Basil had helped the young man disentangle his shirt and breeches from the bedclothes, watched him dress, and kissed him in parting. “Tomorrow,” Theron murmured against his mouth. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Basil blew out his candle and smiled into the darkness. They hadn’t talked about history after all, or much else, for that matter. Tomorrow, Theron had said. There would be time to talk about many things tomorrow. And perhaps for day upon day after that.

chapter
VI

LONG BEFORE THE KINGS RODE SOUTH, EVEN BEFORE the Southern lords had claimed their noble titles— before, in fact, the city was anything but a collection of huts and fishing boats, its inhabitants were concentrated on a tiny island in the midst of the river. When they expanded to the eastern bank, they built a cathedral, and a fort to defend the river, and a school that would grow into a University, and a Hall of Princes and a palace and all the outbuildings that government demands.

The Hall of Princes became the nobles’ Council Chamber, the Fort a prison for important people, and the University burst its walls to take over the government buildings; but people went on living on the little island, known as Riverside. Of course, as the rest of the city grew, Riverside came down in the world. Steep-roofed old townhouses still lined its narrow streets, but bits of their elaborate stonework had given way to the elements and bits had been stolen to replace other bits. When Theron’s father first lived there, Riverside was the haunt of thieves and swordsmen and worse. In these latter days they had not altogether abandoned the district, but now the pimps and pickpockets shared the crumbling buildings with poets and musicians and artists waiting to be discovered where the rent was cheap.

Lying between two banks of the river, Riverside was still an in-between sort of place, too full of poor people to be grand, but too well-loved by its various inhabitants to be truly degraded. It boasted a sort of ramshackle palace built (by Theron’s father) of old houses strung together, which sheltered a number of dependents and an infirmary run by Theron’s mother. Things had a habit of changing quickly in Riverside: people’s fortunes, their lives, their expectations. And the buildings witnessed it all, unmoved. In Riverside the past slept, but it slept lightly.

BETWEEN WAKING AND SLEEPING, A YOUNG MAN LAY dreaming in his high, curtained bed. He dreamed that his hands and feet were bound, and that a dark figure was standing over him. He smelt wood smoke and musk, and thought, “I have dreamed all this many times. But this time, it is not a dream, and I will have to—” But he could not remember what was to happen next.

The dark figure came closer, choking him with its animal smell. “Think, Little King,” it said, and Theron drew a deep breath and choked and cried out and woke up.

He lay in the darkness of his curtained bed, soaked with sweat, his heart pounding. It was the King Dream again, returned to plague him. It had been years: not since he was a child, and had run crying to his mother night after night, wailing, “The King Man! The King Man, Mama!” Sophia had tucked him in, and sung him songs from her native land, about a goat and a little boy on a bright hillside. . . . Well, he could hardly run to her now. But he could untangle himself from the knot of sheets, and pull back the curtains and see if it were day yet, or still night. And if it were day, he could ring for his valet to bring him something for the headache he realized he had, something to take away the metallic ghost of brandy haunting the back of his throat. There was no help for dreams, but Terence knew all about curing hangovers.

Theron struggled upright and tugged the curtains aside, letting in a cheerful glow from a newly made-up fire. His conscience clear, he rang the bell.

Theron’s bedchamber was in the oldest of the ancient mansions his father had cobbled together to make Riverside House. None of the doors fit properly, the floors slanted, and the windows filtered the light through thick, green glass that transformed the brightest sunshine into an underwater murk. Theron loved it. His room boasted such charms as carved paneling and little steps up to the deep, shuttered windows. Best of all, the room was at the top of a stair that led to an outside door, so that no one need be bothered by late-night comings and goings.

A soft knock at the door heralded Terence, carrying a covered cup on a tray. He shook his head when he saw his master, but said nothing except, “We’re nearly out of this particular tisane, sir. And you asked me to remind you that you’re to dine on the Hill tonight. The blue velvet is clean and brushed, but if you’d prefer the russet, tell me now so I can sponge the stain.”

Theron sipped the tisane, fragrant with licorice and chamomile, and sighed as its warmth soothed away his headache and the last of the dream. “The blue will do just fine, Terence, thank you. Is my mother in?”

“As to that, sir, I cannot say for certain.” Terence picked Theron’s breeches from the floor and smoothed them over his arm. “Cook was making an omelet when I went for the tisane, sir,” he admitted; “I’d venture to say that Lady Sophia is at breakfast.”

Theron flung back the rumpled bedclothes and slid from the bed, shrugging himself into his dressing-gown. “Never mind my hair, Terence, just give me a ribbon. I don’t want to find the breakfast-room occupied only by dirty plates.”