Chapter Nine #2
In the massive four-poster bed was a heaving, coughing figure. The king. Rolled over on his side, a pool of damp beneath him. The stench of the room, of his body within it, was foul.
I could hear the king’s whispers, never as quiet as he believed them to be.
A ghost was supposedly transparent, an echo of what they had been in life. I’d read descriptions comparing them to colored glass, all light passing through their frame. In this dim, musky bedchamber, I too was a morbid trick of light. The king wouldn’t know the difference.
“Dickon,” I said in Prospero’s voice. An affectionate nickname, one I knew the king used when he and Prospero were boys. They were tutored together, as Hal, Roland, and I were.
The king’s eyes widened, and he scrambled away from me on the bed with surprising dexterity. His hands shook. Roland played his part well, exhilarated by the theatrics of the moment. He unsheathed his sword and pointed it at the knot of my throat.
“How dare you,” I said.
His scowl nearly slipped. “Not one step closer, specter.”
“Roland, my boy. You know that blade can’t harm me.” Pushing past him, I knelt beside the bed and reached for the king’s hand.
He jerked away. “Is Balthasar in this castle?”
I shook my head calmly.
“How have you come here then?” The king reached out to brush the ring on my finger. Then, he grasped at his breast. “Am I dead?”
“No, Your Majesty.”
“Are you?”
When I nodded, the king rocked back and forth. Waves of sorrow and anger broke through him. He ran his tongue along his gums, and his eyes fled around the room, seeking the door, the window, any escape.
Roland stepped forward. “What do you ask of His Majesty?”
The king whipped his head around. “Shut up. Ask? Ask!” Laughter shook his body. “Prospero does not ask. Prospero knows all. Prospero has no questions, for he is master.” Suddenly, he blinked in confusion. “I am rid of you. I killed you.”
“Roland signed the order,” I corrected.
“Roland,” the king murmured, leaning close. “Yes. Do you suppose we ought to rid ourselves of darling Roland, too? Hal will tell us to spare him, but he’s too forgiving, I think. Too lenient.”
Time was compressing again for him. Who was dead in the king’s eyes—who was alive? Was everyone at court already dead and just didn’t know it?
The king reached for my ring again. “Don’t you think Roland has done me harm, Prospero?”
Behind him, Roland readjusted his grip on his sword, his jaw tight.
“Not in the least,” I said.
The king waved me off impatiently. Then suddenly, he pressed his hand to my windpipe, squeezing it with all his strength.
The sword clattered to the ground as Roland leapt forward, but I had already pushed into the king’s mind to calm him. He sat back against the bed, blinking rapidly, his eyes foggy, unfocused.
“Shhh.” I rubbed his arm. “All is well.”
The king chuckled. His smile spread eerily as he shook his head. “Liar. My son is dead. You said I would have another. You promised me, Prospero.”
A caress of my cheek, as fond as a lover, and then his fingers stabbed into my mouth.
When I tried to pull back, he grasped my chin tight.
I flailed. “Let us see your lying tongue, Prospero. Show it to me. Come on now, stick it out. That’s it.
” He raised his voice in pitch. “‘Marry her. So sweet and penitent. Her family has many sons. See how she looks up at you in such wonder? See her devotion?’”
Roland tore Richard’s hands away from me and pinned them behind his back, the king still chuckling to himself. When his hands were released, he clasped them together in mock prayer and raised his eyes to the ceiling.
There was only one wife he could be referring to. “Eleanor.”
The king wavered. “Speak her name, I care not. But plot together, whisper together—death. Come to me again, and Roland shall tear through your ghostly form, he’ll stab at smoke, he’ll behead even where there is no head. Then you’ll be twice dead. Now get out. Get out.”
“Eleanor Guildford—”
“Guildfords! Snakes, all of them. My little wife is a Guildford. Another serpent in my bed.”
“But what about Eleanor?”
“I thought Prospero knows all,” the king spat.
“That’s enough.” Roland swept me toward the door by the elbow. “Wait for me in the hall.”
I shook him off. “What did Eleanor and I do, Your Majesty?”
Richard’s eyes darkened with rage. “What did you fail to do?”
“We couldn’t give you the son you were promised. Is that right?”
He cackled. “Wrong!”
“Enough with the riddles, Richard. I’ve come to ask you why you sent me to the Tomb. Why, after our years of friendship. Why, after my love for you. After everything I gave in your service.”
The king’s face twisted as he struggled to respond. Perhaps there was no true answer. It was as Prospero had once said: little stabs. Moments where the king looked over his shoulder and saw Prospero clasp the wrong hand. The barren nursery. The broken promises.
There was some pattern on the ground I couldn’t yet see; I’d have to fly high above it as a bird to understand its true shape.
“What did I promise you?” I insisted. “Do you remember? Was it a son, or something else?”
The king hesitated, backing away from me on the bed, covering his face with his sheets.
“I am rid of you,” he repeated over and over.
Then he raised his voice again in mockery.
“‘Soon I will have it for you, Richard. Very soon. You’ll have it in no time at all. The kingdom will be safe. The kingdom will endure.’” He barked a laugh.
“So you are a liar and a fool. Now get out, get out! I’ve banished you from my court, and no one will dare say the name Prospero ever again.
” His pitch rose to a whine. “Roland, make him get out.”
Roland stroked circles on the king’s back to soothe him while I ran from the room, the king cursing and bellowing in my wake.
But I had what I wanted. The king had let it slip without realizing.
In the privy chamber, I leaned against the wall, breathing hard.
My head rested against a tapestry of King Armel, the first king of Alvion, dancing in full armor around a bonfire with fairies and nymphs, all seven planets shining above.
His magician, Oberon, did not partake. He watched over his king from the forest, protecting him—from what dangers, it wasn’t clear.
It was a long while before Roland emerged, his face glazed over with exhaustion. “Well, that was pointless,” he seethed.
“It wasn’t pointless at all. We learned something.”
“Oh, yes? What exactly did we learn?” He looked to the ceiling, pressing his lips together.
“Richard is last to know everything. He’s been manipulated since he took the throne.
I thought—I truly thought Prospero would have told him more.
But the king has been at ease his entire life.
We all move around him, informing him only when absolutely necessary.
Prospero probably never mentioned exaltation to him. ”
“Roland, he said ‘it.’ Did you catch that?”
“No,” said Roland dully.
“If he was referring to an heir, he would have said ‘he.’ But Prospero had a different plan, something else the king wanted.”
“The king wants a great many things.”
I worried my bottom lip with my teeth. Roland’s eyes fell to my mouth. “Eleanor Guildford must have been helping Prospero somehow.”
He pushed off from the wall. “Oh, yes? Well, in a useful turn of events, Eleanor is also dead.”
“All of Prospero’s work was confiscated, but Eleanor’s books, her things, would be with her family.”
“Why would Prospero entrust his plans to Eleanor?”
“Why wouldn’t he?” I argued. “They had the same aim. To keep the king happy. To remain in favor.”
“In other words, to stay alive.” He frowned then, deep in thought. Hope rekindled in him. “I suppose Prospero and Eleanor were close…”
“Were they?”
Venusborn sensed such intimate threads. The heat of two lovers burning across a room, the ties of passion that bound them.
He saw the world, he’d once told me, as if it were a dance, each partner grasping different hands as they spun, that one touch lingering forever.
Prospero and Eleanor must have brushed against each in some way.
“Somewhat,” he admitted. “You must remember how Eleanor was. She was humble and quiet, and she would have never invited anyone but the king to her bed. She suffered silently. During the last months of her marriage to the king, she was searching for companionship, however small. Prospero was that. I doubt she ever even told him she cared for him. He was certainly unaware.”
“I thought they despised each other.”
“She was wary of magicians, thought Prospero was not to be trusted. At first, she secretly worked to undermine him at court. But in their desperation to please the king, they may have formed some sort of…” His eyes roamed across my face as he searched for the word.
“Alliance. Perhaps you’re right. Perhaps Prospero told her about exaltation. ”
He tapped a knuckle against his chin. I’d hooked him. What if he could accomplish what they couldn’t, and finally satisfy the king?
“Tomorrow afternoon,” he said, “I’m listed in the jousts against Tom. If I were to lose, and he were to move on—”
I caught on quick. “His family would be watching from the stands. The palace would be free of Guildfords all afternoon.”
“And I adore palaces free of Guildfords.” A raised brow. “Don’t you, Mouse?”