“It takes nearly a year to get there. The journey is somewhat quicker coming back, they say.” He shrugged. “The winds.”
“That’s a long way to send somebody,” I said, wondering.
“I know,” Jollisce said. He sucked on his pipe. “My man assumed it was some trade thing. You know, people are always expecting to make their fortunes from spices or potions or new fruits or something, if they can get stuff past the Sea Companies and avoid the storms, but, well, my master came by some information that indicated Walen’s fellow was looking for just one person.”
“Oh.”
“Hmm.” Jollisce stood and faced the Xamis-set, his face made ruddy by the glow of flame-coloured cloud in the west. “Good sunset,” he said, drawing deep on his pipe.
“Very,” I agreed, not really looking.
“Best ones were just around the time the Empire fell, of course. Didn’t you think?”
“Hmm? Oh yes, naturally.”
“Providence’s recompense for the sky falling in on us,” Jollisce mused, frowning into the bowl of his pipe.
“Hmm. Yes.” Who to tell? I thought. Who to tell…
Master, the Doctor attended the King in his tent each day during the Circuition from Haspide to Yvenir because our monarch was afflicted with an aching back.
The Doctor sat on the side of the bed King Quience lay upon. “If it’s really that sore, sir, you should rest it,” she told him.
“Rest?” the King said, turning over on to his front. “How can I rest? This is the Circuition, you idiot. If I rest so does everybody else, and then by the time we get to the Summer Palace it’ll be time to come back again.”
“Well,” the Doctor said, pulling the King’s shift up out of his riding breeches to expose his broad, muscled back. “You might lie on your back in a carriage, sir.”
“That would hurt too,” he said into his pillow.
“It might hurt a little, sir, but it would quickly become better. Sitting on a mount will only make it worse.”
“Those carts, they sway all over the place and the wheels bang down into holes and ruts. These roads are much worse than they were last year, I’m sure. Wiester?”
“Sir?” the fat chamberlain said, quickly stepping out of the shadows to the King’s side.
“Have somebody find out whose responsibility this bit of road is. Are the appropriate taxes being collected? If they are, are they being spent on it and if not where are they going?”
“At once, sir.” Wiester bustled off, leaving the tent.
“You can’t trust Dukes to levy taxes properly, Vosill,” the King sighed. “At any rate, you can’t trust their tax collectors. They have too damn much authority. Far too many tax collectors have bought themselves baronies for my liking.”
“Indeed, Sir,” the Doctor said.
“Yes. I’ve been thinking I might set up some sort of more… town- or city-sized, umm…”
“Authority, Sir?”
“Yes. Yes, authority. A council of responsible citizens. Perhaps just to oversee the roads and city walls and so on, at first. Things they might care about more than Dukes, who only bother about their own houses and how much game is in their parks.”
“I’m sure that’s a very good idea, sir.”
“Yes, I’m sure it is too.” The King looked round at the Doctor. “You have them, don’t you?”
“Councils, Sir?”
“Yes. I’m sure you’ve mentioned them. Probably comparing our own backward arrangements unfavourably, I don’t doubt.”
“Would I do that, sir?”
“Oh, I think you would, Vosill.”
“Our arrangements do seem to produce comfortable roads, I would certainly claim that.”
“But then,” the King said glumly, “if I take power from the barons, they’ll get upset.”
“Well, make them all arch-Dukes, sir, or give them some other awards.”
The King thought about this. “What other awards?”
“I don’t know, sir. You might invent some.”
“Yes, I might,” the King said. “But then, if I go giving power to the peasants or the tradespeople and so on, they’ll only want more.”
The Doctor continued to massage the King’s back. “We do say that prevention is better than cure, sir,” she told him. “The time to look after the body is before there is anything wrong with it. The time to rest is before you feel too tired to do anything else, and the time to eat is before hunger consumes you.”
The King frowned as the Doctor’s hands moved over his body. “How I wish it was all so easy.” he said with a sigh. “I think the body must be a simple thing in comparison to a state if it can be maintained on the basis of such platitudes.”
The Doctor, I thought, looked a little hurt by this. “Then I am glad that my concern is for the health of your body, sir, not that of your country.”
“I am my country,” the King said sternly, though with an expression which belied his tone.
“Then be glad, sir, that your kingdom is in a better state than its king, who will not lie in a carriage like a sensible monarch would.”
“Don’t treat me like a child, Vosill!” the King said loudly, twisting round towards her. “Ow!” he said, grimacing, and collapsed back again. “What you don’t realise, Vosill,” he said, through gritted teeth, “being a woman, I suppose, is that in a carriage you have less room for manoeuvre. They take up the whole road, you see? A man on a mount, why, he can negotiate his way around all the irregularities on the road surface.”
“I see, sir. Nevertheless, it is a fact that you are spending the whole day in the saddle, bouncing up and down and compressing the small pads between your vertebrae and forcing them into the nerve. That’s what is making your spine hurt. Lying in a carriage, almost no matter how much it shakes and bounces, will certainly be better for you.”
“Look, Vosill,” the King said in an exasperated tone, levering himself up on one elbow and looking round at the Doctor. “How do you think it would look if the King took to a pleasuring couch and laid amongst the perfumed pillows of a ladies’ carriage like some porcelain-arsed concubine? What sort of monarch could do that? Eh? Don’t be ridiculous.” He laid carefully back on his front again.
“I take it your father never did such a thing, sir.”
“No, he…” the King began, then looked suspiciously back at the Doctor before continuing. “No, he didn’t. Of course not. He rode. And I will ride. I shall ride and make my back sore because that’s what’s expected of me. You shall make my back better because that’s what’s expected of you. Now, do your job, Doctor, and stop this damned prattling. Providence preserve me from the wittering of women! Aow! Will you be careful!”
“I have to find out where it hurts, sir.”
“Well, you’ve found it! Now do what you’re supposed to do, which is make it stop hurting. Wiester? Wiester!”
Another servant came forward. “He’s just stepped out, sir.”
“Music,” the King said. “I want music. Fetch the musicians.”
“Sir.” The servant turned to go.
The King snapped his fingers, bringing the servant back.
“Sir?”
“And wine.”
“Sir.”
“What a beautiful sunset, don’t you think, Oelph?”
“Yes, mistress. Providence’s recompense for the sky falling in upon us,” I said, recalling Jollisce’s phrase (I was sure it was one he’d heard from somebody else anyway).
“I suppose it’s something,” the Doctor agreed.
We were sitting on the broad front bench of the covered wagon which had become our home. I had been counting. I had slept in the carriage for eleven of the last sixteen days (the other five I had been billeted with the other senior pages and apprentices in buildings in one of the towns we had camped within) and I would probably sleep in it again for another seven days out of the next ten, until we reached the city of Lep-Skatacheis, where we would stop for half a moon. Thereafter the wagon would be my home for eighteen days out of twenty-one until we reached Yvenage. Perhaps nineteen out of twenty-two if we encountered difficulties on the hill roads and were delayed.