Shroud of Shadow (21 page)

“I see,” he said, “that we are also comrades.”

“Yes . . . of course.”

“Do you like my poetry?” He leaned forward earnestly. Ever the pining lover looking for something to love! “I wrote it for you. You have . . .” He sighed. “. . . inspired me . . .”

“Yes . . . of course.”

He fingered his lute. “I have a song.”

She suffered it. She could not but suffer it. It made little difference in any case, though, because she hardly heard it. Nothing save Natil's harp could banish her affliction, and though Josef strummed and plucked and twanged his lute, his voice, a thin, reedy tenor, intoning his lurching verses in a nasal monotone, what Omelda heard was chant. Plainchant. The Office for terce, of the Wednesday of the forth week after Easter.

Josef sang, and then, after taking her cracked and soapy hand in his own, gazed searchingly into her face. “Adieu,” he said softly. “O dear woman.”

Omelda nodded. “Yes . . . of course.”

“I will come again.”

“Yes . . . of course.”

He left her with her soap and her water and her plainchant and—she guessed fuzzily among the intrusive voices—went off to write more poetry and more songs, to commission another crate of an instrument from Jahn Witczen, to pore over volumes of humanist and classical philosophy that he did not understand.

Omelda went back to her washing. And when she was done, the Office was over, and so was the chant. For the present. But the present was good enough for Omelda, and as she packed up her bucket and her brush and sluiced the dirty water into the gutter, the clean floor seemed to her an echo of her clean mind, for both were scrubbed and scraped and free of past stains . . . for now. The floor, to be sure, would be filthy again shortly—Martha and the cooks were already tromping in to prepare the midday meal—and her mind would be cluttered again sooner than that, but for now they were both clean.

Silence: silence and privacy and clear thought. Omelda relished these times, so much so that today she even gave up food, for the room in which the servants ate would be full of talk and noise and useless conversation, and she was unwilling to squander her inner quiet with such distractions. She made her way, therefore, to her room, there to sit, just sit, to stare out the window at the stables and the street, to enjoy the quiet of a free mind.

She closed the door, sat down. The stables smelled, the street smelled, but her thoughts were her own. She could think about the stables and the street, and about Natil's eventual return. She could even dream that someday she might return to her convent, take her place once more among her sisters, find in that quiet abbey an outward sign of an inner peace in which chant was just chant and no more, from out of which worship proceeded, worship and a love as natural and free flowing as song.

She did not hear the panel in the wall slip to the side on well-tallowed grooves, for it had been designed to be silent. But she did hear movement, and she suddenly felt hands on her.

“We want you, Omelda,” Edvard was whispering. Norman's tongue was prodding at her already, slipping in and out of her ear, leaving a trail of wetness wherever it went, and Edvard joined him from the other side, their hands gripping her hair to hold her steady, slipping down to cup a breast, prodding at her groin, lifting her skirts and insinuating fingers into her vulva. “My, you're a clean little one, aren't you?”

She fought for her mind, fought for her privacy. Her body . . . they could have her body. It was dung, and they could have it. But her mind . . .

Clinging to her thoughts as desperately as she was, she did not protest as they stripped her with practiced male hands and carried her to her bed; and they expressed to one another—they hardly talked to Omelda at all—their surprise that they did not have to tie her up and gag her as was usually the case with a new girl. Omelda, they exclaimed back and forth with giggles and boyish enthusiasm, was surprisingly compliant, even eager.

But she was not compliant, and she was not eager. She was hardly paying any attention. As they prodded her with penises and fingers, as they squeezed sperm into her mouth and her rectum, as they licked her and bit her and scratched her and moved her about like a doll, Omelda was elsewhere, wrapped in the privacy of her inner world. She thought of Natil, of harpstrings, of the stables and the street. She dreamed, with all the clarity of a focused mind, of returning to the only home she had ever known.

They could abuse her body, but her mind was beyond their grasp. And when they finally left her—soiled, bruised, and bleeding—she was staring at the ceiling, her inward thoughts gripped with a mental steel that made the iron prods with which they had violated her seem but wax.

Privacy. They could not take her privacy away.

“We'll be back,” said Norman.

“You'll have to meet Dinah,” said Edvard. “She's a . . .” He giggled. “. . . a friend of ours. Just like you. But she's a little minx . . . and you're a bit of a cow. I can hardly wait to see you together.” And then the panel in the wall slid closed.

Omelda stared. Thinking.

***

The dining table in David a'Freux's mansion was a lengthy affair: well over sixty feet of carved and inlaid rosewood that stretched all the way from the elaborate pointed arches and tiered steps of the entryway of the hall to the tall, grisaille windows at the far end. The food was rich, varied, and demonstrated its provider's appetite for superfluity. In much the same way, it was also tasteless.

Jacob was unimpressed, but with Francis at his side and Natil harping quietly in the corner—he had grown rather fond of the musician and now kept her at hand as a matter of course—he ate, made conversation with David, even found ways of actually being polite to this paunchy ox of a man who obviously thought himself quite as worthy of flattery as, perhaps, under the circumstances, he was. David was the present baron of Furze, and as such he had a say in any bargain that might be struck with the wool cooperative.

So Jacob and Francis ate and listened to David speak in magnificent terms of his lands (small and poor) and his battles (few and insignificant) and his ambitions (great indeed). There was no one else in the room save for an occasional servant. The sixty-foot table held David, Jacob, and Francis; the corner held Natil . . . and that was all.

“This is an age of nations,” David was saying. “Louis pulled France together, and Ferdinand did the same for Spain.”

Jacob could have sworn that Isabella had something to do with Spain. The pope, after all, had named two Catholic Kings. David, though, was a man who donned the harness of his chosen subject and pulled it along with the indefatigable determination of a plow-ox: he was not one to be distracted by facts. “And Henry did the same over in England. The Empire's still wallowing, of course . . .”

“Of course,” said Francis. He was about to continue with some observations of his own—possibly about Isabella and the tobacco ventures he had in Spain—when Jacob quietly kicked him into silence.

David plodded. “. . . but everywhere else . . .”

Except
, thought Jacob,
for Italy, the Netherlands
. . .

“. . . men, great men . . .”

. . .
Poland
. . .

“. . . are pulling their states together . . .”

. . .
Austria, Hungary
. . .

“. . . and making them something to reckon with. Now I ask you . . .”

. . .
Serbia, and, to be sure
. . .

“. . . what about . . .”

. . .
Adria
.

“. . . Adria?”

Jacob had been half expecting it. Here was David and his ambitions, and here was Jacob Aldernacht and his money. It was depressingly inevitable.

With an inward sigh, he picked up his wine cup, held it out. A servant with a decanter sprinted out of the doorway to the kitchen, refilled it, and then sprinted away.

“We have to be realists, now,” David continued, still straining against the yoke, his eye on the end of the furrow. “This is an age for realists. This is an age for men with foresight, men with plans . . .”

“Men with money?” Jacob prompted.

“Men like Louis XI of France.” David continued with the furrow, straight across the field. “Men like—” He turned his profile to Jacob. “I'm related to Louis, did you know? Can't you see the family resemblance?”

Years ago, Jacob had lent money to Louis: an instant loan on the king's good word when that Burgundian affair had finally come to a head. He had rather enjoyed the king's penchant for plain clothes and manners and had, at a royal wink, played along with the joke when the Venetian ambassador had mistaken the monarch for a gardener.

But Louis had also lived within his means and paid his debts on time. David was nothing like Louis, either in appearance or, Jacob knew, in finance.

“Ah,” said David, “but there's the question of money.”

Francis was looking uncomfortable again, and Jacob guessed that his son's feelings had nothing whatsoever to do with the condition of his shins.

“That's the thing,” David continued. “Money. It takes money to pull a kingdom together.”

Jacob's eye fell on his harper. Natil had never asked him for anything, had, in fact, appeared startled and almost unwilling when he had raised her salary. She seemed content with a plate of food, a place to sleep, and her harp; and Jacob even suspected at times that had the woman been left destitute save for her instrument, she would have had no complaint. Perhaps that was why he liked her.

“You want money, don't you?” he said to David.

The ox fetched up against a stone wall, stopped, eyed the impediment. “Well, as a matter of fact . . .”

Francis sat up suddenly, opened his mouth. Jacob kicked him again.

“Tell me about your plans, baron,” Jacob said amiably.

It rapidly became obvious both that David's plans were many and that his planning was as wretched and meandering as one of Josef's sonnets. With Aldernacht money in his treasury, David intended to equip an army. With the army, he intended to slowly bring all of Adria under his control.

It had obviously not occurred to him that the train of burned and wasted cities he would leave behind in the course of executing his plans would be incapable of providing him with the financial base he would need for the continuation of those same plans. But this was nothing new for the a'Freux family: David's ancestors had demonstrated the same execrable judgment when they had lost the Free Towns.

David finished, looking expectant. Francis looked despairing.

“Loans.” Jacob leaned back in his chair, steepled his fingers, pursed his lips. “Loans are . . . difficult things.”

David's eyebrows lifted. “Difficult?”

Inwardly, Jacob snorted. No, loans were not particularly difficult for noblemen. They borrowed, and then, unlike good old Louis, forgot to repay. Or, if they did repay, it was the people of their estates who actually came up with the money.

“Loans,” he said, “have a way of coming due.”

David flushed. “Are you insinuating that I could not repay a loan?”

Jacob
knew
that David could not repay a loan. In fact, he suspected that David, despite his airs and flourishes—or maybe because of them—was living a hand-to-mouth existence. “Not at all,” he lied. “I simply think that there are better ways for you to get what you want.”

David leaned forward.

“I'm prepared to discuss them.”

“Do.”

Francis, Jacob thought, was looking a little too pleased. But: “Furze,” said the old man, “is not a wealthy town.”

“Not at all,” David admitted with reluctance.

“Your revenues from it can't amount to very much.”

David's mouth clamped down as though he had found a burr in his cud, but Jacob knew what he was doing. This man who enveloped a seat on the other side of the table was no craven burgher whom he could shout and bully into acquiescence. This was a nobleman. Worse, this was a nobleman with delusions. Very well, Jacob would make the delusions work for him.

He glanced at Francis, who, suddenly anticipating Jacob's plans, had turned sullen, glowering. Furze was going to get the money. Furze was going to get
his
money.

“What I mean, baron,” he said, “is this: if your revenues from Furze increased, you might have the money you want without a loan.”

David sat back, considering. “Raise the taxes? I suppose I could do that.”

Jacob stifled an urge to shout. Raise taxes. Of course. The people are starving, so you raise their taxes. Why not burn the city down, too? Stupid oaf! “No, no: there are other ways.”

David looked interested. Francis looked despairing.

“Suppose,” Jacob said, dropping his voice, “I guarantee that in a year, your income from Furze will double. And that it will double again in another year after that. And that it will possibly double again in another two. What would you say?”

David looked more than interested. Someone had just offered a ripe apple to the ox. “I'd say . . . very good.”

“What would that do for your plans?”

“Everything.”

“And if it then doubled again . . . as it well could?”

“More than everything.”

Jacob eyed the baron, felt nothing but contempt. And old Louis's successor had dangled a patent of nobility before him as an inducement for that Italian loan. Pah! Rat shit and bird farts! “You're a very fortunate man, Baron David.”

“Me?”

“You. You've got some good men in this city. Men like Paul Drego and the others in the wool cooperative.”

At the mention of the cooperative, Francis winced.

Jacob continued. “I want to help them. I want to give them money so that they can make money. And when they make money, then . . .”

David stared, not quite comprehending.

Jacob prompted. “Then you . . .”

David still stared.

Patiently now. “Then you make mon—”

David finally understood. “Then I make money, too!”

Jacob nodded, sat back. He had Furze in his pocket. Paul and his boys would have their loan, with David's blessing. Not that it would really do David any good in the long run, for if the wool cooperative succeeded—and Jacob was determined that it would—Furze would soon have enough money in its treasury to buy outright a charter and independence. The luxury loving baron would be perfectly willing to sell his birthright and future for something that was a little more than a mess of pottage, but no more lasting.