Una lifted her shoulders back. “You seek to frighten us, Master Tallow?”
“No, gentlemen. I receive no relish from alarming others. I speak of it as a curiosity, that’s all.” He reached up and stroked his cat. “It’s cold here.”
“Aye,” came Gloriana’s small voice.
“I’ll take you to the warmer parts,” Tallow said. “Come. You can meet a few of your fellow exiles-those who have no objection to being met, that is. Most of the folk who dwell here are inclined to be reclusive. It is why they choose to live between the walls.”
“How many?” Gloriana whispered.
“I’ve never counted ’em, sir. A hundred or two, maybe. We live, most of us, by scavenging. And there’s superstitious servants to rely upon, too. Those who think us devils or faeries and put out tidbits for us. But they misjudge our size. A strapping fellow like you, sir, needs meat every day to maintain such a huge frame. You have an unusual figure, sir.” Tallow spoke casually as he led them on. “There’s only one other I know who possesses such size.”
“We’d best return,” said Una urgently. She stopped in her tracks, taking Gloriana by the arm. “No time for further exploration now.”
But Gloriana had shaken her off and advanced. Una was forced to follow.
The passage widened, opening upon a very large hall, like a covered market. Flickering torches illuminated the place and an unruly fire burned in a grate at one end, while around the walls, in changing flame-cast shadows, as nomads might camp, small tents or groups of tents: tiny territories marked out by means of ropes, or rubble, or pieces of half-rotten furniture, or blocks of stone torn from the very foundations of the hall. And white faces stared from shawls and hoods and hollows: thin faces, for the most part, with large eyes, as if already these people adapted to the glooms: another race.
Gloriana stopped dead when she saw the scene and was bumped against by Una, who, lost in her own rapid thoughts, noticed it a few seconds later.
“Who are these?” the Queen whispered.
A great figure had risen from beside the fire and stood in silhouette, pausing as if to confront the newcomers. Then it had dashed into deeper darkness and was gone.
Una, full of dread, gripped the Queen’s arm. “No,” she implored. “We must return.”
Tallow was amused. “She is shy, the mad woman. Of all of us. But you shouldn’t fear her.”
There was no curiosity in the faces of this lost gathering, and Tallow greeted none of them. It seemed that he did not regard himself as part of the tribe. He displayed it with a distant, proprietorial air, in his self-chosen role as their guide. “There are gentlemen here, like yourselves. And well-born ladies. Most, of course, claim to be a little nobler than they actually were. But why should they not? Here they create themselves and their surroundings afresh. It is all they have.”
But Gloriana had at last broken free from the fascination and, in obedience to Una’s terror, was in retreat.
Tallow called out from behind them. They ignored him. They ran through the passages, back to where they had first encountered the little man. They climbed and scrambled up passages and flights of steps, half afraid that they were lost, though the way was familiar: through the carven gallery, which now seemed to threaten, and along the narrow corridors to Una’s rooms, to squeeze through the panel, and slam it shut.
Gloriana was paler than the nomads of the walls. She leaned, in dusty gallant’s guise, panting against the wall. She attempted to speak, but failed. Una said to her: “It must be forgotten. Oh, Your Majesty, I have been so foolish! It must be forgotten.”
Queen Gloriana stood upright. She recalled the great silhouette in the hall and her head filled with terror again. Her face was without expression. Tears ran from her eyes. “Yes,” she said. “It must be forgotten.”
THE FIFTEENTH CHAPTER
Lord Montfallcon lay alone in his substantial bed while his wives in the next chamber rubbed ointments into one another’s wounds, whispering and gasping. He was miserable, unreconciled, self-loathing that morning, for Gloriana’s voice had sounded through the night, pathetic and full of grief, and he had awakened his wives so that their cries would drown the Queen’s. Montfallcon moved his strong old body in the bed and rebuked himself for his lack of vigour, and wondered if, at this time of delicate crisis, his brain, which had held so much, controlled so much, was at last about to fail. The Queen was recently more melancholy than ever, and he could not name the cause. She had cleverly avoided the question of marriage when he had raised it. Lord Montfallcon had also received news of Tom Ffynne’s capture in the Middle Sea. The old pirate, growing short-sighted, had mistaken an Arabian barquentine for an Iberian barque, and now Arabia complained loudly and at length, ritualisti-cally, though the mistake was obvious. Then in the middle of all this, Sir Christopher Martin had died, poisoned, apparently by his own hand, as if he felt dishonoured. This was a bad omen to nobles and to commons. There were rumours of a quarrel between King Casimir and the Grand Caliph; other rumours of a pact between them. There were rumours out of Tatary, rumours from the German and Flemish States, from Iberia and the High Countries, from Africa and from Asia; and Quire, his eye, his hand, his weapon in the world, was missing.
Whether Quire, offended by Montfallcon’s undiplomatic response during their last encounter, played doxy-on-a-high-horse to further his own ends, whether his pride was genuinely wounded, whether he had taken a notion to visit foreign lands or even seek foreign employ, or whether he had paid a price, at last, for his crimes, Montfallcon did not know. And of all things, Lord Montfallcon hated ignorance. It was his impulse, his necessity, to be omniscient. Now not only was his main well of knowledge run dry, but the very location of that well was lost. Frustrated, having no news on which he could base further actions, Montfallcon knew a kind of terror, as a warrior in the heat of battle might feel to receive a hint of imminent paralysis and blindness. It seemed to Montfallcon that unseen enemies were creeping closer and that all he could sense of them was their unspecific malice.
He had failed to understand his tool, Quire, with sufficient complexity; he had imposed a view of the man’s strange character upon the truth; he had broken a rule of his own, which was never to assume, always to interpret. And, because of one lazy failure to interpret Quire, he might have lost his control over the man. Quire worked for the love of his art, as Montfallcon worked for the love of his Ideal, represented in Gloriana. Their partnership, Montfallcon realised, had depended upon that understanding. But he had resented Quire’s suggestion that they were equal, that they collaborated as poets collaborate upon a play In the past Montfallcon had trained himself to deny any expression of pride which might be false or which might threaten his goal, but, in his last interview with Quire, he had let his anger, his arrogance, dominate him and so clash with Quire’s own pride. He understood now that if Quire had attacked him on like grounds-accusing him, say, of base motives in his work for Albion-he might have felt the same fury. And yet Montfallcon respected Quire’s intelligence. It did not seem typical of the man that he should sulk this long. A day or so, certainly. Even a week. It had been a month. It occurred to Montfallcon that Quire might be planning some form of vengeance against him, but Quire’s particular nature was not of the sort to turn to petty revenge. More likely Quire proved himself, performing some complicated espionage, the results of which he would present to Montfallcon by way of a challenge.
Montfallcon, however, could be sure of none of this. Because he had misjudged once, he had lost some of his faith in his own judgement: he could misjudge again.