Shalles bowed low and departed.
King Casmir stood brooding into the fire. The parcel from Tamurello rested on the table. King Casmir summoned his a aide of all purposes Oldebor.
"Sir, your wishes?"
"You will recall Shalles."
"Distinctly, sir."
"He has returned from a brief stint in South Ulfland with exaggerated expectations and perhaps a too intimate knowledge of my affairs. Does your experience suggest a manner of dealing with Shalles?"
"Yes, sir."
"See to it. He is on his way to Poinxter in County Gray wold. He carries a document signed by me which I would wish returned." King Casmir turned back to the fire and Oldebor departed the sitting room. King Casmir at last opened the parcel to discover a stuffed blackbird mounted on a stand. A sheet of parchment, folded and tucked between the bird's legs, read:
To hold converse with. Tamurelo, pluck a feather from the belly of the Bird and place in the flame of a candle.
Casmir examined the stuffed bird, taking critical note of drooping wings, molting feathers and a half-open beak.
The look of the bird might or might not convey an overtone of sardonic meaning. Dignity, however, prompted Casmir to ignore all but the explicit purport of bird and message. He departed the chamber, descended curving stone steps, passed through an arched portal into the Long Gallery. He walked with a ponderous tread, looking neither right nor left, and footmen at their posts along the gallery jerked quickly erect, aware that the apparently abstracted gaze of the round blue eyes in fact apprehended every detail.
King Casmir entered the Hall of Honours, a vast high-ceilinged chamber reserved for the most solemn of state occasions, to which King Casmir had vowed to restore the throne Evandig and the table Cairbra an Meadhan. The Hall of Honours was now furnished with his own ceremonial throne, a long central table and, around the walls, fifty-four massive chairs, representing the fifty-four noble houses of Lyonesse.
To Casmir's annoyance, he discovered the princess Madouc playing alone among the chairs, jumping from seat to seat, balancing on the arms, squirming through the underbraces.
For a moment Casmir stood watching. A curious child, he thought, self-willed to the point of intractability. She never cried, except sometimes in small furious gasps of vexation when someone dared to thwart her. How different yet how alike were Madouc and her mother Suldrun (such was Casmir's understanding of the case), whose dreamy docility had masked an obduracy as hard as his own.
Madouc, at last aware of Casmir's cold stare, paused in her antics.' She turned to watch Casmir with a gaze of mild curiosity mingled with displeasure at this unsuitable and blundering invasion of her privacy. Like Princess Suldrun before, Madouc regarded this chamber as her personal domain.
Casmir came slowly into the room, never relaxing his cold blue stare, in order that the saucy little minx might be overawed. Madouc's gaze dropped to the stuffed bird which Casmir was carrying. While she neither giggled nor even smiled. Casmir knew that she was amused at the picture he made.
Madouc, becoming bored with both bird and Casmir, resumed her play. She jumped from the arm of one chair to the arm of the next, then glanced around to see if Casmir were still in the room.
Casmir halted by the table. He spoke in an even voice, which, echoing against the stone walls, seemed to become grating and harsh. "Princess, what do you do here?"
Madouc supplied Casmir with the information he seemed to require. "I am playing on the chairs."
"This is not the place for your game. Go and play somewhere else."
Madouc jumped down from the chair and ran hopping and skipping from the room. Without a backward glance she was gone.
Casmir took the bird around the Great Throne of Haidion to the back wall and through the hangings into a store-room. Here he manipulated the lock of a secret door. It swung wide and Casmir was allowed access into that chamber where he kept his magical trinkets and artifacts. The most valuable of his belongings, Persilian the Magic Mirror, had been lost some five years before, and to this day Casmir was uncertain as to how the mirror had been sequestered and who was responsible. To his knowledge, no one knew of the secret chamber save himself. He would have been dumbfounded to learn the truth: that the culprits were Princess Suldrun and her lover Aillas, then Prince of Troicinet, who had taken Persilian at the behest of Persilian himself.
Casmir glanced suspiciously around the room, to assure himself that none of his other properties had disappeared. All seemed in order. A globe of swirling green and purple flame illuminated the chamber. An imp in a bottle glowered at him and tapped fingernails against the glass, hoping to engage his attention. On a table rested an object of astronomical significance, presented to one of Casmir's ancestors by Queen Dido of Carthage; and as always Casmir bent to examine the instrument, which exhibited an amazing complexity. The base was a circular ebony platter, marked around the rim with signs of the zodiac. The golden ball at the center, so Casmir had been told, represented the sun. Nine silver balls of various size rolled in circular troughs around the center, but for what purpose was a secret known only to the ancients. The third ball from the center was accompanied by a smaller ball and made its circuit in exactly one year, which only perplexed Casmir the more: if the object were a chronometer designed to measure yearly intervals, then why the other balls, some of which moved almost imperceptibly? Casmir no longer speculated in regard to the object and now gave it only a cursory survey. He placed the stuffed bird on a shelf and considered it a moment. At last he turned away. Before initiating a conversation with Tamurello, he must decide carefully what he wished to discuss.
Departing the secret chamber, Casmir passed through the Hall of Honours and stepped out into the gallery. Here, as luck would have it, he encountered Queen Sollace and Father Umphred. They had been out together in the royal carriage, inspecting sites for a cathedral.
Queen Sollace told Casmir: "The optimum site is clear; we have seen it and measured it: that area just to the north of the harbour entrance!"
Father Umphred spoke in enthusiasm: "Already a sweet sanctity surrounds your remarkable spouse! I would like to see, flanking the grand front entrance, two statues worked in imperishable bronze: on one hand the noble King Casmir and on the other the saintly Queen Sollace!"
"Have I not declared the project impractical?" demanded King Casmir. "Who will pay for such nonsense?"
Father Umphred sighed and raised his gaze to the ceiling. "The Lord will provide."
"Indeed?" asked King Casmir. "How, and in what style?"
" ‘Take no other gods before me!' So spoke the Lord on Mount Sinai! Each new Christian may properly atone for his years of sin by dedicating his wealth and his labor to the construction of a great temple; thus will be eased his way into Paradise."
Casmir shrugged. "If fools so want to spend their money, why should I complain?"
Queen Sollace gave a glad cry. "Then we have your permission to proceed?"
"So long as you faithfully adhere to each and every provision of royal law."
"Ah, your Majesty, that is glorious news!" cried Father Umphred. "Still, to which provisions of the law are we susceptible? I assume that ordinary custom will here prevail?"
"I am unacquainted with these ‘ordinary customs,'" said King Casmir. "The laws are simple enough. First, under no circumstances, may moneys or other articles of value, be exported from Lyonesse to Rome."
Father Umphred winced and blinked. "From time to time—"
King Casmir spoke on. "All moneys collected must be declared to the Chancellor of the Royal Exchequer, who will levy the appropriate tax, which will be deducted in advance of all else. He will also fix the annual rent upon the land."