Oria gaped about the shambled laboratory, blinking most prettily and simultaneously pretending not to notice the admiring glances of the workmen. It was an act of great social dexterity, one that not just every girl could have managed. “Who was your friend?” Oria asked, and then, “Why did he leave so suddenly?”
Ma gestured helpfully toward the door. “He go that way,” he said eagerly. “Down street.” Misunderstanding, as usual, the question.
“Friend?” Vergil asked blankly.
“The Black Man. Who was he?”
Thus far, then: the Empress. Every day for a break-the-fast she had a specially baked white bread with honey, until her twenty-fifth year she had never even tasted white bread. Everyday for a nonetide muncheon they brought her a fresh-made sausage of kid’s flesh and veal with an abundance of onions, leeks, and garlic; she eat it boiled, with a sauce of must of yellow wine and sharp yellow spice-seed ground fine: fennel often as well. And for her supper every night they gave her a fine dish of pullets and capons and cockles also boiled, with the broth: more onions, more garlic, and carrots and parsley and weed of dill. Petronella was greatly fond of this broth and drank it loudly with frequent eructations. The fowls she pulled apart and fed bits of to her preternaturally old crone Mother and gave out larger hunks and chunks to her kin—Eat this fine wingy, Auntie Ara. Ah, what a tender pi’ce it be, a grace upon thy pudenda, niecey mine! A num a num! That’s what it’s here for… let me pull thee off this bump of arse, so, ope thy gob—Also His Imperial Majesty by Verteu of the Coinage Right each month had her sent five vast leathern baggs a-full of specially minted stiverkins with her own picture on one side for those who couldnae read the motto Petronella Empratrix. These she scattered day by day, grinning and chuckling: for this had she humped her hucklebones to many a grizzled decurion before the Festus had come to take her in marriage, for this had she brakked the ice on a muckle mountain pools and washed the Legions’ filthy clothes. For this she had marched with cracked and bleeding toes many marches on far frontiers, weaving counter-spells against the frightful fearful witcheries of the Petch-enegs and the Galicians and the Piets, the Sassenags and Scotes; rolled along the great wrought-iron kettle when the very ass-of-burden had perished with the cold in Northern Dace a-nigh the savage Geats, and therein had she cooked the Soldiery their stolen grain and stewed their plundered porks.
Her present life as Empress of a rude valley full of ruder peasant-kin? She loved it. She a-grudged The Festus nought. The Roman King, the Roman Roy, the King over all the Kings, His Splendor the Selected Emperor of all the Roman World? Nought. She begrudged him nought.
The Black Man. Just who the devil—and what—was he?
Everybody tried to talk at once. Luckily, they all had the same story to telclass="underline"
The Black Man had walked all morning in Vergil’s shadow unseen. Unseen by Vergil himself, that is. Everybody else had seen him just fine, thank you, and had assumed that Vergil was equally aware of his presence, and was eager to describe this negative-apparition:
He was tall, to begin with, taller than Vergil himself, who was not a short man, by a head at least. Nay, two heads. Naw yourself, but one. Didn’t blink. Had a harsh and scornful look. A look of command. Command—who’d obey such as he? Run’s more like it. African in origin, no doubt about that, consider his features, and yet like no African anyone had ever seen. Was black too.
Blacker than an Aethiope.
Blacker than an alembic’s bottom.
Black.
What did he in Vergil’s shadow? Well, he gestured thus and so. Arms wide. Fingers a-wiggle. Most particularly had he gestured thus when Vergil cast his ill-fated cantrip. The gestures that were made—but perhaps they were not accurately reproduced; “to lie like an eye-witness” being a phrase of most ancient lineage—were like nothing Vergil had ever encountered. He had made his gestures and then retreated to the doorway, to watch their results. Had left shortly after Ma poured salt on the flames. Was now gone. Where, no man knew.
“Emericho Count Mar.”
“Roy over all the Roys, I hear but to obey.”
They were in the Great Red Room in the New Palace. A sage-femme had once said that red was good again the measles. None had changed it syne. “The Archiver, ah, the Great Archiver, he tells me that at least five generations of your line, that Line of Mar, descended so he says from the gens of th’Emperor Marius, at least five have served this Imperial Court and Seat. Saith well? Saith well. All know that none but the House of Mar knows best the Ceremonies and the Manners. We wish Count Mar to understand quite well that there is a certain Lady very close to the Imperial Heart whom We should wish to see at Court. She be of good sound yeoman stock, you know, Count Mar, a widow-woman, her late vir was a captain of tens in the Sylvan Legion that fought valiantly in the Second War of…”
It was a work of vanity for the Roman Roy to tell Count Mar what War the Sylvan Legion had fought in valiantly, Count Mar already knew; Count Mar knew all such things. All such things of import. And Count Mar knew well exactly what his Sire and Ser imported, the Emperor imported now that he would that a someone of rank should marry this a-said Lady so very close to the Imperial Heart, and by so doing give title and status to her, in fait the Roy’s chief concubine. For, without someone of such rank did so, she might no more appear at Court than the laundress, be the laundress never so close to said Imperial Heart. Certes that no young man might do, for a young man might easily allow his veins to carry him away with a notion that literally he was a husband to the Lady, and to attempt and insist upon the fact. And this would not do, it would not do. And for sure that no one of recent creation of nobility would serve, for such had so very odd notions of their stature, the very newness of their station being such as to make them sensitive about it.
But someone of Emericho Mar’s age and Emericho Mar’s antiquity of title? Such a one would ken full well that ’twas an honor to be the Crown Lady and, hence, in mere title the husband and the vir de jure of the Crown Lady: an honor. Others? Let others prate that Antiquity means decadence, and Let no baron be a bawd to the Bed Royale. Mar was indifferent to such things. What held Rome together? The Roman Roy, held it. The Emperor was the sole fount of honor to the Empery, and therefor so—And the Emperor Festus, that same Festus, spoke very keenly to the Count Mar’s ear when he murmured, “There are certain folk at Court descended from creations of the last three reigns who might look upon this with scorn…”
“…canaille…” muttered Count Mar. Rabble, what had they to be scornful about: contractors grown rich selling musty meats and rotten grain to the Governance-at-War, parvenus from Over-the-Seas whose origins might be (and therefore were) unspeakably low; the get of rich lawyers, sons of successful engineers (by definition: common as tufa), painted pimps, and tax-farmers; foreigners using tainted fortunes (foreign? by meaning: tainted) to buy their titles: Count Mar regarded the New Nobility as he might the throng about a bawdy house. “…canaille…” What did they have to be scornful about? Furthermore did he knew for a fact that some of them had got their feet in the stirrups of the Order of Knights by charms and cantrips and by witchery and guile unspeakably vile, their women being poisoners and abortionists and contrivers at assignation. Scarcely did such so-called nobility know how to adjust a toga. Eh? The Emperor? Clean a different thing, the Emperor was selected by seven kings (some said: seventeen: sage folk split no hairs), and by the process of Selection became Roy, became Royal. Numinous.