Chapter Forty-Two The Maiden and the Minstrel #3
The court says all he touches turns to gold, Marius had written in one of his letters home.
Caracalla could see that happening now, the kiss far more expert than Merel’s had been.
It was the difference between seeing someone fumble with a key in a lock, and the oiled precision of the master key sliding in.
Under the Cobra’s touch the minstrel’s body seemed suffused with brightness even in the low light, iron-hard tension melting into shimmering, liquid ease.
Caracalla gripped the rail tight with her free hand, fingers still sealed over her lips, and gazed with disbelieving eyes upon the unfolding scene.
The two men’s mouths locked hard, then parted wet, to let out ragged breaths.
In some ways, it seemed like a sparring session: the Cobra in control, teaching and playing, letting his sparring partner lead because that was how you learned.
Merel’s skilful musician’s fingers turned clumsy in their eagerness, parting the Cobra’s shot-silk, ash-stained waistcoat to run his fingertips all over the Cobra’s sleek, dark skin.
He pushed the bronze silk past one shoulder where the material slid down, until the silk caught on the bracelet around the Cobra’s bicep.
The Cobra laughed, stood, shrugged off the waistcoat and dropped it to the floor. Merel backed him into the table and the Cobra slid on, stretching luxuriously as if the rough board of the table was a silken bed.
The musician’s fingers turned clumsy again on the laces of the Cobra’s trousers. The laces were elaborately tied, but not to that extent.
After a moment, the Cobra pushed Merel gently back, propping himself up on his elbows.
“You haven’t done this before.”
“No.” Merel hung his head, dyed hair in his eyes, sounding wretchedly embarrassed. “I couldn’t before. I want to now.”
“Are you sure?”
Merel promised: “Yes.”
The Cobra gave his easy, golden laugh and climbed off the table, bending to scoop up his silken waistcoat. He offered Merel his hand. “Then show me this famous bed. I hear there’s only one, and we have to share.”
As soon as the door closed behind them, Caracalla dashed from her place by the railing and down the steps, out the front door of the inn and around the back until she found the stables.
Ink was nodding over an elaborately bound book by lamplight, brown hair far lighter than Caracalla’s own tumbling free from the cap onto the beautifully and strangely illustrated pages.
She squinted up at Caracalla, bleary-eyed.
Caracalla announced her news. “The Cobra and the minstrel are being intimate in the tavern as we speak!”
Ink’s eyes widened. “I knew he was scandalous,” she breathed. “I don’t know why I’m still so scandalized!”
Pleased by the impact of her news, Caracalla came closer. “Did you know two men can be swains? Can two women—”
Ink sat bolt upright on her straw pallet. “I’m very flattered, but!”
Caracalla flopped down on the pallet. “By the door and the light, I wasn’t propositioning you. I only just learned about this business five minutes ago. I rushed to tell you as you’re my best friend, and I thought perhaps you didn’t know!”
Ink said, “I did know. Most people know.”
Both peasants and merchants were raised less sheltered than noblewomen, Caracalla supposed. Being sheltered sounded nice in theory, but unless you came out from under your shelter, you never knew if it was raining or not.
Caracalla wanted to understand the world.
She remembered Merel speaking about collecting pieces of news.
If you had enough information, you could fit the pieces together and see the world in a whole new shape.
You could see what you hadn’t seen before.
You could see what had been under your nose all along.
She ventured, “What do you think about the Cobra and… and my brother?”
“I think that’s a filthy rumour!” snapped Ink.
So it was a rumour.
Ink leaned forward. “Listen, my lady. I know all the gossip. The court says Lord Marius is infatuated with the most beautiful woman in the world, Lia Felice.”
Caracalla didn’t know much, but she knew her brother. He’d mentioned Lady Lia a couple of times in his letters, then ceased to mention her entirely.
Ink clearly noticed the doubt that must have been written across Caracalla’s face.
“Even if Lia let him down or foolishly chose a much less worthy man, so many wish to heal Lord Marius’s noble wounded heart.
The Golden Cobra may not be as terrible as the rumours paint him, but he is not worthy of your trust. He is certainly not worthy of your brother. Believe me, he is a villain.”
She sounded very certain and very knowledgeable. Caracalla seldom felt that way herself.
Caracalla had read the Cobra’s fine play, Romeo and Juliet Take Over the Government, then read other plays to learn about the theatre.
Ink’s tone made her think of the cast of characters laid out at the beginning of a play, lists of names in black and white, firmly placed in the “Hero” or the “Villain” category, with no possibility of moving.
The Cobra was always in motion. She remembered him leaping, like a golden bird in flight, to protect her. She thought of him dancing with her at the tavern tonight.
Whether he was a villain or no, if he had an understanding with her brother Caracalla believed the Cobra wouldn’t be tumbling minstrels at random taverns.
“I suppose you must be right. They’re not swains.”
The rush of discovery was fading for Caracalla, and with excitement ebbing away, exhaustion rushed back in. She lay down on the pallet, Ink hastily whisking the book away to make room for her.
“Can I sleep here?”
It was a tight fit, but they made it work, curled up like puppies and clasping hands. Rest seemed achievable in company, holding hands a reassurance Caracalla wouldn’t lose anyone else as she slumbered.
So quietly that Caracalla wasn’t sure if Ink didn’t want to disturb her if she was sleeping, or Ink didn’t mean her to hear at all, Ink said, “You’re my best friend too.”
They woke to men cursing and heavy footfalls above their heads.
“’S drunks,” mumbled Ink. “G’back to sleep.”
Except Ink wasn’t Valerius. She couldn’t hear what Caracalla could, the sharpness of the consonants and clear enunciation. These men weren’t drunk.
She heard the demand: “Where is she?”
From the room upstairs. The chamber above the stables, where Caracalla should be sleeping alone.
Quickly, Caracalla reached out and shook Ink’s shoulder hard.
When Ink startled Caracalla put her hand over Ink’s mouth and held her fast. “Don’t panic,” Caracalla whispered in Ink’s ear.
“Men have come to kill or take me. The innkeep must have told them where I slept, but I don’t hear his voice now, and by the weight of these men’s steps they are heavily armed.
The innkeep is likely dead. I intend to sneak into the tavern and try to get the Cobra, then we must away. Understand?”
There was a silence.
“Nod, you must nod,” Caracalla added hastily.
Ink nodded. When Caracalla lifted her hand, Ink whispered through lips pale with fear, “I’ll come with you.”
So they crept through the inn’s front door, still holding hands. In her free hand Caracalla carried a sword, half hidden in her skirts, as the sight of it made Ink seem nervous. Imagine being scared by a mere blade. Perhaps Ink was as sheltered in her own way as Caracalla.
Or perhaps it was the sight of a blade in a Valerius hand that unnerved Ink. If so, Caracalla couldn’t blame her.
She remembered which door Merel had led the Cobra through, but she never reached it.
The men who had been in her bedchamber came marching downstairs, and she saw they wore thick clothing, to keep you warm upon the sacred balconies.
Before her father could no longer walk and the god’s men went away, when Caracalla was a child, her father made her watch the ritual.
The god’s men would bring a condemned criminal to the duke, the Great God’s chosen warrior.
With his sword Starving for Blood, the duke would cut the criminal’s throat.
Blood would flow along the balcony, steaming in the cold air of early morning.
They would all lift their hands as if warming them over the great fires of the abyss, and proclaim that through justice they were one step closer to the gods.
These men bore on their chests a symbol Caracalla knew well. The insignia of an axe, limned in red. The axe that spilled the God-Child’s blood, and created Eyam.
These were the Great God’s men, who Lord Lucius had promised her brother would lead to glory. This was the Divine Order.
Ink screamed. At the sound, the Cobra and Merel tumbled out of the door of Merel’s bedchamber, Merel putting on his cloak, the Cobra not remembering a single upper garment in his haste.
“Kill the men,” shouted the leader of the god’s men. “Take the girls.”
Take the girls? What purpose did the Divine Order have for girls?
The god’s men rushed down the stairs in a scurrying pack like rats, and it was as though all the smoke of the lost manor swirled before Caracalla’s eyes, blinding her with something worse than tears.
She shoved Ink towards the doors, intending to cover Ink’s retreat, and felt the heavy metal hilt of a sword – a broadsword by the weight, her brother’s remembered lessons echoed in her dimming mind – slam into the back of her skull.
Her fingers tightened on her own sword hilt as her knees buckled.
Everything fell into smoky, scarlet-stained darkness.
Caracalla woke for the second time, finding the straw upon the inn floor stained past reckoning, red and matted with gore.
When she turned her head, a dead stranger stared unseeing back at her; it seemed he had three eyes, two milky and one metal, until she realized he had been killed by a dagger placed dead centre between the eyes.
Caracalla struggled to lift herself up among the heaped corpses, clumsy with terror, recalling the moment her hand found the sword hilt.
Blood was splashed across one wall like a flag. Even the door handle looked dipped in red. A corpse lay in a crumpled heap at the foot of the door like an abandoned petticoat.
Her enemies were dead, the danger to her over. That much was clear. But a Valerius in a killing rage would cut down friends as well as foes. Her father always said a Valerius had no friends. Not truly. A Valerius was the divine blade. The rest of the world was meat to be carved.
Caracalla’s friend had not reached those doors before the darkness.
“Ink?” She called the name as an abandoned child would, begging not to be left alone. Her plea hung in the shadows like an outstretched hand.
A man’s voice said, “Caracalla.”
She almost sobbed with relief when she saw the Cobra in the corner, Ink cradled protectively in his arms. Despite Ink’s reservations about his character and the Cobra’s current lack of upper garments, she was crying into his shoulder. Caracalla had scared her that much.
Merel the minstrel loomed over Caracalla, offered her his hand. She grasped it and rose. “If you’re awake, come. We must go quickly.”
They collected their belongings, and the Cobra his waistcoat, and fled the inn.
As their group left the little town behind, and Ancilley Manor farther back than that, Caracalla’s spirits began tentatively to rise.
Marius also killed wicked people threatening what he loved.
It wasn’t being a berserker. That was being a protector. It was almost like being a knight.
Merel’s hood whipped back in a wild Eyam wind, and showed tiny silver earrings in the shell of his ear.
She was reminded of the fact he was foreign.
Anyone from Eyam knew it was unlawful for men to wear jewellery.
The Cobra certainly did, he just insisted on doing shiny crimes.
Poor man, Merel didn’t know the ways of their land yet, and had certainly never met a Valerius before.
Last night, as the music played, he had worn a dreamer’s air.
In this cold morning, he looked colder than the air on the mountain.
No doubt Merel was unused to violence. Artists were sensitive.
Caracalla patted his musician’s hand. “You were doubtless startled when I slaughtered everybody in an orgy of bloodlust back there. You see, my family has a curse of divine rage, and we kill people.”
Merel blinked at her several times in bewildered succession.
She thought she must have explained it wrong, until eventually he replied, “Bears kill people. Falling trees kill people. People kill people all the time. Your family is not special.”
“What I mean is, I’m terribly sorry if I terrified you with my berserker fury.”
Merel said, “That’s quite all right.”
He walked in step beside her as they climbed, though his hand where she had touched him was stained with blood. Her hand swung by his, just as red. When Caracalla looked over her shoulder, Ink and the Cobra were following them, even if Ink’s step was slow and her expression wary.
There was more than one reason for Ink’s step to be slow.
The Cobra was extremely physically fit, through enchantment he had told Caracalla was called “jazzercise”, though even he was shivering hard in his impractical clothing.
Merel must have tremendous lung capacity from playing instruments, as climbing a mountain did not seem to even wind him.
And Caracalla, of course, was Valerius. Ink was the only one with capabilities not above the ordinary.
She gave the Cobra a filthy look whenever he tried to help her.
The Mountains of Truth loomed before them, peaks in jagged strange shapes, the sun their crown.
The Oracle waited there, the voice of the Great Goddess who Caracalla’s mother and brother had always loved.
Caracalla felt her heart jump with painful hope, and wondered if this was what people meant by a leap of faith.
Perhaps you only really believed in gods when you needed them. Caracalla needed the Great Goddess now, to fulfil her mother’s last wish: to save the city her brother was bound to protect. Each of them would get only one question. Caracalla knew what hers must be.
The four companions climbed from early-morning sunlight into the deep shadow of the great mountain, to see the Oracle, and learn the truth of the world.