The Charnel Prince - J. Gregory Keyes [42]
“The lustspell? Auy, but it’s a thing for the street, you understand. The common folk like it. The aristocracy pretends it doesn’t exist—save when it goes too far in mocking them. Then the players might have a more tragic end to their play.”
He glanced back at the singers. “We’d best move on.”
Leoff nodded thoughtfully as Artwair spoke to the driver and the wagon creaked back to life, climbing through steadily wealthier neighborhoods.
“The people seem to have scant faith in their leaders,” Leoff remarked, reflecting on the content of the tale.
“Times are hard,” Artwair answered. “William was only a middling good king, but the kingdom was prosperous and at peace, and everyone liked him. Now he’s dead, along with Elseny and Lesbeth, who were truly beloved. The new king, Charles—well, the portrayal you just saw of him was not unfair. He’s a nice enough lad, but saint-touched.
“Our allies, even Lier, have turned against us, and Hansa threatens war. Demons come from the woodwork, refugees crowd the streets, and the marshwitches all foretell doom. People need a strong leader in times like this, and they don’t have one.” He sighed. “Would that unflattering portrayals of the court were the worst of it, but the guilds are up in arms, and I fear bread riots are not far away. Half the crops withered in the field the night of the purple moon, and the sea catch has been bad.”
“What of the queen? You said she was strong.”
“Auy. Strong and beautiful and as distant from her people as the stars. And she’s Lierish, of course. In these times, with Liery making renegade noise, some don’t trust her.”
Leoff absorbed that. “The news from Broogh won’t make things any better, will it?”
“Not a bit. But better than if Newland had been drowned.” He clapped Leoff on the shoulder. “Worry not. After what you’ve done, we’ll find you a stipend of some sort.”
“Oh,” Leoff said. He hadn’t been thinking about his own worries.
The eyes of Broogh would not let him.
CHAPTER NINE
PROPOSALS
THE VIEW FROM THE throne was a long one, a vista of knifepoints and poison.
The buttresses of the greater hall rose like the massive, spreading trunks of trees into a pale haze of cold light coming from the high window slits. Above that smoky atmosphere lay another, deeper vault of darkness. Pigeons cooed and fluttered there, for they were impossible to keep out of the vast space, as were the cats that prowled behind the curtains and tapestries in search of them.
Muriele often wondered how such an immense space could feel so heavy. It was as if—in entering the great bronze valves that were its entrance—one were transported so far beneath the earth that the very air itself became a sort of stone. At the same time, she felt perilously high, as if in stepping through one of the windows, she might find herself falling from a mountaintop.
It seemed like all the worst of Heaven and Hell were present in the symmetries of the place.
Her husband—the late King William—had seldom used the great hall, preferring the lesser court for his audiences. It was easier to heat, for one thing, and today the great hall was freezing.
Let them freeze, Muriele thought of the assembled faces. Let their teeth chatter. Let pigeon shit fall upon their brocades and velvets. Let this place crush them down.
Examining the people who had gathered before the throne, she hated them all. Someone—probably someone who was out there staring up at her now—had arranged or helped to arrange the murder of her children. Someone out there had killed her husband. Someone out there had left her with this, a life of fear and grief, and as far as she was concerned, it might as well have been all of them.
Knifepoints and poison. Five hundred people, all wanting something from her, some wanting her very life.
A few of the latter were easy to spot. There was the pale face of Ambria Gramme, the black lace of mourning on her head, as if she had been the queen and not merely the king’s mistress. There was Ambria’s eldest bastard,