The Architecture of Desire

by Mary Gentle

Genres: Fantasy; Dark Fantasy; Historical Fantasy

Synopsis

Mercenaries in lace and steel roam the countryside and the heads of criminals are impaled on London Bridge. The characters' relationships are played out in the shadow of the hangman's rope. Sequel to Rats and Gargoyles.

Release date: July 25, 2013

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 249

Sample

‘But I don’t understand why the servants have to form a collective,’ the Lord-Architect said plaintively.

His huge bulk shifted as he leaned back, swivel-chair creaking, and prodded a fat finger into the air.

‘And I don’t see why they have to eat at the same table that we do!’

Winter light shone through the tall windows, slotting down from the glass cupola onto his tilted drawing-table. A smell of heat and sea-coal filled the immense room. A draught chilled his stockinged calves. Morning whiteness illuminated high ceilings, plaster-mouldings, walls covered in plans, drawings, charts of tensile strength; and the T-square and tracing-board hung up over the Adam fireplace.

‘In addition to which,’ he added, with dignity, ‘I have more important matters to consider.’

‘Oh, listen to him!’

A plan scrolled up, rattling, as he took his bolster-heavy elbow off it. He scowled. ‘Rot it!’

The White Crow grinned. She added: ‘I can think of at least one good reason why they should. Hazelrigg and the rest have been indentured here for the past forty years; the last time I saw the place I was hardly older than Jared; and I know as much about farming and estate-management as you do about – about, for example, music!’

The Lord-Architect appeared hurt. ‘I can sing.’

‘Mmm. One could say you have a way with music. One could say King Herod had a way with children.’

The White Crow sprawled back in the deep armchair. In her right hand, awkwardly, she held a blackletter pamphlet. Six or seven other pamphlets rested across her lap. Her studded brown leather doublet and lace-linen shirt unbuttoned, she cradled a baby in the crook of her left arm while it suckled at her bare breast. She divided her time between reading and beaming aimlessly into the middle-distance.

‘It’s bloody Elias Ashmole again!’ One-handed, she brandished a sheaf of papers. ‘Here’s Lilly in The Starry Messenger, and Ashmole in The White King at Liberty, and damned if they haven’t dragged that fool Aubrey in. The next thing, we’ll have John Evelyn and the whole Astrologers’ Observatory putting out this rubbish! This war’s gone on for years, thank you very much, and it isn’t going to stop for the prophecies of a couple of fifth-rate astrologers. I’m going to have to get up to London and collect the next lot of pamphlets.’

‘I’ve got it!’ Oblivious of her, the Lord-Architect Casaubon dipped his index finger into the inkwell, and began to smudge in shadows on the full frontage drawing. The furred hem of his wide sleeve trailed through the standish.

‘What did I tell you!’ His fat finger stabbed the columns of figures on papers that slid rustling to the carpet. ‘A direct correlation – the fewer floors on any tenement, the fewer snatch-purses working the building. The fewer corners for nips and foists to hide and spy out victims. If the number of walkways is cut, then down goes the number of Abraham-men and silver-priggers. Design it with no more than one entrance to a courtyard, there’s but one way out past the Watch – then your thief goes a-looking for some other ken.’

He rubbed his wide forehead absently with his finger, smearing ink across copper-red brows.

‘Let me rebuild the St Sophia Rookeries and I’ll have their thievery and thuggery down by ninetenths in a year. It’s perfect!’

‘Now all you have to do is persuade the Protector to let you do it.’ She paused, her sardonic gaze vague.

‘It would drastically lower the crime-rate … Little one?’

‘Every faction has to have its astrologers,’ the White Crow finished morosely, ‘and they’re going to catch up with me sooner or later.’

‘Sooner,’ the Lord-Architect hazarded.

‘Thank you, Casaubon.’

She absently dropped a kiss on her child’s hair. Bright enough red to be orange, the hair curled in tiny, damp sweat-rings. The smell of milk and baby clung to her fingers along with the printer’s ink.

‘Regarding the collective – I say what I said at thirteen.’ The White Crow shifted the baby in her arm. Her index finger stroked the child’s lip and her own breast. ‘If I wanted to run a hotel-sized kitchen, or enough staff to keep a city parish in order, or be landlord to four farms, then I’d have asked to do so.’

The light barred her face, calling out fire from her dark red brows, and citrine light from her irises.

‘To which I add now: why shouldn’t the whole lot belong to the people who work it? I don’t. God he knows my family never did.’

The Lord-Architect raised a brow at her, appalled. ‘Mad. Completely mad.’

He witnessed her expression of disquiet, as if panelled walls and high, bright ceiling and the blazing fire rebuked her. She rallied:

‘And, if we don’t eat at the same table, you won’t get to hear gossip about Hazelrigg’s mistress. Or how the work’s going, down at the excavations. Or what Rowland’s sister wrote to him about news in town. Nor will you be able to collapse young Denzil with what I, for one, regard as fairly feeble wit. True?’

In tones of injured dignity, Casaubon protested, ‘That is hardly the point!’

She let the pamphlets slide to the floor, sitting up to put the child in the bassinet. The open hearth-fire roared hollowly at her back. The White Crow hitched up her belt and leather breeches and walked across to the windows. Her boots, soundless on rugs, scraped the scrubbed pine boards. She leaned both hands against the window. Her breath fogged the cold glass.

‘It isn’t as bitter as yesterday. Told you it was going to snow.’

A yellow light emanated from the cloud-cover, the sky lighter than the east wing’s roofs and the forest beyond the grounds. Black specks showed against it. Below, white clots of snow feathered down the air to skein the earth.

Baltazar Casaubon, Lord-Architect, tugged his fingerless gloves on more securely. He scratched at his short, copper-red hair; flicking scurf from under his nails. He picked up his goblet of mulled wine and cupped it with both large hands for warmth.

‘When I ruled my own city, servants knew their place!’

‘Firstly, it wasn’t your city; secondly, it’s a republic these days, and no great wonder; thirdly—’

The Lord-Architect interrupted: ‘Why aren’t you wearing your sword?’

The woman swore.

Her voice echoed the length of the long room, sharp in the cold air. She turned from the window and marched to his table.

Casaubon sat back, startled. Standing at the back of the tilted drawing-table, she was tall enough to rest her arms on it. She settled her chin on her arms, and gazed at him. Faint lines contracted round her narrowed eyes. Studs glinted in her brown leather doublet; lace fell crisp from collar and cuffs.

‘I apologize,’ she said sweetly, ‘for mention of the word Republic.’

The Lord-Architect slammed down his goblet of mulled wine. Rivulets spilled down onto the sleeves of his velvet robe; trickled down the scrolled paper, the table, and onto the furred hem of his gown.

He wiped his mouth. ‘What sort of a Scholar-Soldier can you call yourself, and not wear a sword?’

He tugged the voluminous green velvet gown more tightly over the shirt and breeches that strained to encompass his stomach, and climbed massively down from the chair. Rolls of flesh shifted. From his full height of six feet five inches, he looked down at her over the swell of chins, chest, and belly; reaching a sticky finger to her cheek.

‘Little one …’

Cold made her skin pale, lucid under dark red hair drawn up in the Scholar-Soldiers’ six braids. He touched softness. At each of her temples, and no larger than his thumb-print, a patch of white down-feathers grew: sleek, soft, merging into the white streaks of her hair.

She caught his fingers, pressing the padded, dirty flesh to her cheek. ‘You weren’t born to understanding servants. True enough. Yes. I should remember. No, really, you’re doing very well.’

The Lord-Architect stamped one stockinged foot. ‘Death and furies! I will not be condescended to in my own house.’

‘Whose own house?’

Deadpan, and with quick calculation, he reprised. ‘I will not be condescended to in your own house!’

He almost had her: her mouth twitched.

One of the room’s double doors clicked open. A stocky fair-haired boy, perhaps eight years old, entered and reached up to the ornate handle, pushing the door closed behind him. He pulled at the turned-back cuffs of his diminutive frock-coat.

‘Mama, Hazelrigg says you had better come to the yard-gate.’

‘In this weather?’ Casaubon remarked. Through the glass, on the terrace, snow whitened the flagstones to invisibility.

The White Crow began absently to button up her shirt and doublet. ‘Why does he want me, Jared?’

‘Mama, he says there’s a troop of mercenary soldiers just riding onto the estate.’

*

The White Crow clattered down steps into a stone-floored kitchen, ducking her head to avoid hanging hams and pheasants. Fumbling, fingers paralysed with cold, she slid sideways between the grain-bins and barrels and through into the outhouse.

Hazelrigg reported, ‘Abiathar and Kyril are round the back, ma’am. Young Denzil can ride to the next farm?’

‘He’ll never make fifteen miles in this.’

Hazelrigg, a stocky, dark man, bundled in a frieze coat, pushed the brim of his hat up and spat into the settling snow. ‘Destructive bastards, soldiers.’

She slung the cloak over her right shoulder, leaving left hand and sword-side unencumbered. ‘The Lord-Architect has the children safe.’

She stomped across the yard, boot-heels skidding on the film of white. Warm only by contrast with yesterday’s bitter cold, the raw air bit into her. Snow stuck to her eyelashes as she glanced up, looking to see Achitophel’s bell-mouthed musket projecting from under the eaves. Cold air seared her bare jaw and ears.

Hooves clattered, muffled on the driveway.

Men on horses loomed through the now-driving snow, huddled in cloaks and hats; the sharp lines of musket barrels jutting up from their silhouettes.

The White Crow narrowed her eyes. Grey bulks emerged against the pale clouds. A horse and rider; another; two more. One. Two. And three more horses, each with two riders tandem on the back.

‘Yeah.’ Cynicism in her tone, that Hazelrigg clearly heard, and a prepared knowledge. ‘So where’s the rest of them … ’

She brushed her wrist across her eyes, clearing wet flakes. Automatically, despite the absence of belt and blade, she tucked her sword-hand up into the opposite armpit, flexing fingers for warmth and readiness.

‘Madam!’

The leading rider attempted to rein in a big dapple mare. The beast dropped her head between her shoulders as soon as the grip on the rein slackened.

Horse-breath huffed, clouding the raw air. The White Crow stepped forward and touched a hand to the horse’s foam-rimmed nostrils.

‘Are you their captain? You’re killing this animal!’

A boot passed within inches of her face as the man swung down from the horse. Snow chalked his felt coat and tricorne hat.

‘Madam, I apologize. We gambled with the weather and lost. The beasts suffer as we do.’

He took off his hat. Oddly brilliant eyes gazed down from a lined face. Snow settled into the glossy brown curls of his full-bottomed periwig. A man perhaps forty: riding some eighteen stone, and well over six feet tall.

‘I have the honour to command this free company of gentlemen-mercenaries.’ Hat in one hand, the mare’s reins in the other, he contrived to sweep a passable low bow.

Her gaze went over his bent back. The other riders sat slumped in the driving cold particles of ice. One gelding whickered.

‘Are you the lady of the house, madam?’

Under the coat, faded lace showed at his throat. A scabbarded sword clinked. Snow crusted on scuffed boots. His strong, large-featured face contrasted sharply with the curled wig and lace.

The White Crow stood bareheaded, ignoring the snow soaking through her hair and cold on her scalp. ‘I’ll show you the road to the next estate.’

‘Madam, earlier this morning I had the honour to give your residence – distantly visible as it was before this confounded snow – as a rendezvous for the remainder of my company. They will arrive here soon.’

‘How many is the remainder?’

The big man turned his head, calculating horses and riders present. ‘Enough, madam.’

‘We’ll send them on after you.’

One deep-cuffed hand moved to rest on his hip. He squinted up at the house eaves through the snow. ‘I’ll wager not. You can hardly muster more than ten men, I think; and not so many expert with arms. Madam, it pains me to be impolite. I swear it does. You have food and shelter, my company stand in need, and I have business here.’

She met his brightly dangerous eyes, hearing equally compounded bluster and humour.

The White Crow lifted her head, looking round at the circle of riders: hard and weary faces visible under the brims of plumed hats. She shook the cloak back from her shoulder. Cold cut through her body.

‘It isn’t as if I haven’t stood in your shoes, captain. But no.’

Without shivering, without faltering, she raised her warmed hand and sketched a complex sign on the air.

A rose-and-gold luminescence tinged her fingers, brilliant against the falling snow. Where her hand passed, air coalesced and tingled: shone the colour of the absent sun. Ground thrummed underfoot.

Snow like a handful of thrown gravel stung her jaw. The temperature plummeted. Air contracted: blasting icily across the riders, ripping at hats and cloaks, numbing hands. A musket clattered to the cobbles. Men swore.

A watery light emanated from no clear point, unless it was the hands of the White Crow. The little dappled shadows of the snow flocked to her feet. Blue shadows on white snow.

The whiteness rose and flowed about her ankles, warm as fur. She cast the colour of bone and ivory, dipping her hands to skim and touch the wind-devils of snowflakes. Wind-devils that whirled out, hardened, began to become solid …

The shapes of great snow leopards prowled across the yard. Blue patterns their pelts, shimmers over muscle and ligament, shadows their great jaws, and sits in their eyes of flowers. The colour of bone is cold in their mouths.

One brown gelding screamed. Its head jerked up and pulled the reins from a dismounted mercenary’s hand, and its forefeet rose, hung pawing; and the bugling scream ripped out as it backed, jostled, and half-reared again. The other horses began to back and fret.

The White Crow paused with one hand halfway to her dagger. She drew no confirming blood.

‘Madam!’

Still holding the mercenary captain’s gaze, his face blue-white in the sudden freeze, she all but completed the air-drawn hieroglyph, then dropped her hand to the dapple mare’s neck.

Potential predators faded into greyness. The exhausted horse whickered and raised her head.

Snow ran into water around the White Crow’s boots. Yard-cobbles gleamed. Sudden warmth breathed into their faces.

‘Magia!’ The captain swore.

A horse clattered back. One sword among the group snicked back into its scabbard. She heard startled whispers.

‘My name is White Crow. Master-Physician Valentine White Crow, of the Invisible College. Now. If we don’t have muskets, I suspect you don’t have magia. Probably we could discuss this in a civilized manner.’

The man’s gaze went past her. The White Crow took two steps back before she glanced over her shoulder.

‘Excuse me.’ Three skidding steps took her across the wet stone. She grabbed the Lord-Architect’s fat arm as he walked into the yard. ‘Casaubon! What in damnation do you think you’re—’

‘CALMADY!’

The White Crow fingered her cold ear, a pained expression on her face. ‘“Calmady”?’

The Lord-Architect, beaming, lumbered between horses and riders to enfold the mercenary captain in an ursine embrace. ‘Rot it! Pollexfen Calmady!’

Captain Pollexfen Calmady studied the hole in the heel of his stocking. He eased down in the wing-armed kitchen chair, one boot still on, sinking his chin into the yards of lace swathing his throat. ‘That’s luck. Death and damnation, but it is!’

The heat of the oven fireplace beat against him.

‘Post sentries, Captain?’

‘Post lookouts for Bevil, death take him.’ Calmady shut his eyes. The gentlemen-mercenary’s footsteps departed.

‘Messire Captain.’

Without moving anything else, he opened his eyes. Half a dozen mercenaries, in various states of disarray, lounged in the great fireplace. A pale snowlight shone on the kitchen’s whitewashed vaults. He smelled salt bacon, herbs, and sawdust.

A red-headed woman of perhaps thirty sat with one hip up on the scrubbed table. She watched him with tawny-red eyes.

‘Messire Captain, I want some answers.’

‘Apply to your husband for them, madam. I confess myself so exhausted, I couldn’t plead my case, were I before the Lord Chief Justice herself.’

‘Try.’

Slowly, he finished unbuttoning his frieze coat, letting it fall open. Melting snow crusted his scarlet silk breeches and the embroidered hem of his scarlet waistcoat. He sighed.

‘Calmady of Calmady,’ he rumbled. ‘That is my lord Gadsbury; that is Lord Rule; over there you’ll. . .