• • •
Edmund and I walked together in front of the palace. The terrace was more than a hundred feet long and half as broad, made of blocks of pink granite so polished and so cunningly put together as to seem a continuous stretch of stone. It was bounded by a balustrade of white marble. Behind us rose the palace, topped by its colored spires and onion-domes. In front was the river, which here broadened and tumbled down falls shaped something like a horseshoe. The palace had been built in this spot for no other reason except the view it would command. I had been told so by one of the nobles and repeated it to Edmund with contempt.
He said: “They put a high value on beauty.”
“But to site a palace for such reasons!”
Edmund smiled. “Your first thought, as mine, would be that it should be a stronghold. But then you would have walls around your city.”
“That also is lunacy. If their warriors were so powerful that they had no need of walls I might understand it, but when they ride in pointed boots. . . .”
“On ceremonial parade.”
“Even so! And would you fear them in battle?”
“Perhaps not. But things here are not as we are used to. What enemy do they have? There is no other city to challenge them. You have seen what the outlying savages are like. A rabble.”
“A rabble can turn dangerous under the prick of hunger. Or greed. This would be a fine place to plunder.”
“But for the same reason is a place to fear. And the city has its defenses. It lies snug in the fold of the hills. And has its crossbowmen.”
“Crossbowmen?”
“It is a sort of catapult for shooting arrows, sending them farther and faster and with more accuracy than a bowman could.”
“A machine?”
Edmund shrugged. “They do not ask such questions. But the approaches to the city are lined with hidden redoubts, armed with these weapons. I think the savages would have a warm time of it.”
It was the sort of thing that I should have been finding out. I said, more angry at this moment with myself than the Wilsh:
“It may be. I would still reckon that our army would cut through their defenses like a sickle through sun-dried corn. All this scent and finery and women drinking with men at table. . . . Have you listened to their Captains talk? Not of weapons or horses or tactics, but of whether the new fashion of wearing belt buckles at the side will last the summer!”
“They have a still newer fashion,” Edmund said, smiling. “They are much taken with Greene’s mustache and have begun to wax the ends of their own. Have you not noticed? They have such a passion for pointed things I am surprised they did not think of it before. But you are too quick to condemn them, Luke.”
I drew a deep breath. “At any rate it is good to be in the open air. That chatter and those perfumes. . . . I do not think I could stand another banquet.”
“Have you forgotten there is one this evening?”
“I will plead sickness.”
“That would be unwise. The King’s daughter is to be presented to you, remember.”
I groaned. “I had forgotten.”
She had been ill at our arrival with some fever that had kept her to her bed. Now she was recovered and was to join us in the evening.
Edmund looked over the balustrade at the sweep of river and the distant falls. Artificial islands had been set up in places and covered with plants that were hung with flowers. The plants were real but the flowers were made from cloth and servants rowed out each morning to see to them and change those that had grown shabby. He pointed past the islands to a building on the far bank built entirely of glass.
“Where they grow the King’s roses,” he said, “long before any rose should bloom. The glass increases the sun’s rays and they also have braziers to give warmth. They are capable in many things.”
I was not paying much attention. “Blodwen,” I said. “Imagine what she will be like, with such a name. Short and fat, dark and hairy.”
Edmund grinned. “Like Maud of Basingstoke, whom Jenny and I once picked for you to marry?”
A thought struck me. “If she is human at all! By the Great, she may be polymuf.”
• • •
The evening usually began in the King’s parlor, a large square room whose walls were painted with scenes of men and women, in scanty clothing or none, being chased by weird polymufs, creatures human above the waist but resembling goats below. Even for polymufs they seemed improbable and I asked Cymru in what part of his kingdom they were found. He told me none—they were merely fancies of the painter, based on some old legend. An unhealthy fancy, I thought but did not say, and one that I would not care to live with.
But this evening instead we met in the throne room. It was much bigger and higher, with bronze doors leading in from an antechamber and a marble staircase, twenty feet across, rising to the floor above. The walls were painted gold and the ceiling was bright blue with realistic eagles soaring in it. The throne, against one wall, would have sat three men together. It was of heavy oak, magnificent in structure and carving, but spoiled, I thought, by the usual mass of cushions. When King Cymru took his seat I thought he might sink from view in multicolored satin.
He called me to a stool close to the throne. The fancy he seemed to have taken to me showed no sign yet of waning: they probably had fashions in companions as well as clothes. I took breath before I joined him. I was growing more accustomed to the scent but was still a long way from enjoying it.
He asked me fresh questions about my city and especially about life at court. Did the Prince hunt, he asked, and if so, what? I told him boar mostly and, on his further questioning, described the chase. He said with evident surprise:
“You mean, your nobles—and your Prince—ride after them on horseback and kill them with spears? Are they so tame, then, your boar?”
“No, sire. They run well, but they also fight well when brought to bay.”
“But surely this involves unnecessary danger?”
“Danger. I do not think unnecessary. There is no sport where there is no risk.”
He smiled. “A quaint thought.”
I had meant to tell how I myself had once lain at the mercy of a charging polyboar, and been saved from death only by my brother’s alertness in my defense, but after that remark decided not to. He went on:
“We must arrange one of our hunts while you are here.”
“For boar? It is not the season.”
“The season?”
“At this time of year they are breeding.”
“We hunt when we choose,” King Cymru said. “I will have Snake see to it.” There seemed to be nothing, I thought with repugnance, in which the polymuf did not take a hand. “Tell me about your brother’s palace. What sort of pipes do they use to carry hot water?”
I shook my head. “We have no such things, sire.”
“Then how is the palace heated in the winter months?”
“By hearth fires.”
“But do they keep you warm enough?”
I thought of the Great Hall with a blizzard beating against the windows and drafts everywhere, and said with feeling:
“Not always.”
“And what of your baths? How is the water provided for them?”
There was a bath in the room I had been given here, a thing like a stone coffin in which a man could lie full length. At the end it had two brass mouths and when one turned the handles above them water gushed out, hot or cold according to the mouth. It was a far cry from our tubs at home in which one must crouch with bent knees. I said:
“The servants bring water to fill them.”
He smiled again, incredulously. “And you tell me that anyone born with deformity of shape must be a servant in your land?” I nodded. “Even in so small a thing as having an extra finger or toe?”