Rats and Gargoyles (13 page)

‘
Time was when everyone recognized the golden
bee.
’ From
Summum Bonum
, Part IV, Robert Fludd, 1629. The inscription
translates: ‘The rose gives honey to the bees.’

* * *

Lucas swung around as the carriage rattled under
the arch, into the palace courtyard. He slid back on to his seat. The Rats in
guard uniform took as little notice of him as they had when he had walked past
them the day before, filthy with disguise.

He looked up at the white walls, the windows and
the blue-tiled turrets and spires, an odd smile appearing on his face.

"So this is their idea of a palace . . . You’re a
stubborn man, Lucas." Casaubon rested his bolster-arms across the back of the
facing seat, turning his face up to the white sunlight.

His pink frock-coat fell open across his immense
chest. Yellow sweat-rings marked his unlaced linen shirt, under the arms; and he
scratched at the fine copper hairs on his chest with pudgy fingers. He leaned
forward as the carriages halted in the courtyard, resting a forearm on his
spreading thigh.

"Have you ever heard of the Invisible College?"

Lucas shook his head. "Nothing to do with the
University of Crime?"

"Oh, hardly, hardly."

At the far side of the yard, another archway opened
through to two successive courtyards, each surrounded by four- or five-story
blocks. The afternoon sun blazed back from white walls. Lithe black Rats in blue
uniform jackets and plumes stood by every door opening into the yard, some
carrying pikes and some rapiers. Heads turned as Casaubon’s carriage drew up in
a spray of gravel, followed by three loaded-down baggage-carts.

"I must go. I’m wasting your time and mine," Lucas
observed. "I’ll go back to the airfield. I might be missing the person I
am
meant to meet."

The copper-haired man’s head came down, chin
resting in rolls of fat. His bright blue eyes met Lucas’s. Lucas judged him
somewhere in his late thirties or early forties.

"Time was when everyone recognized the golden bee,"
Casaubon said, "which, I suppose, is why they stopped using it."

He reached out an imperious palm. Lucas reluctantly dropped the metal bee onto it. Gold sparked in the
sun, almost lost in the folds of Casaubon’s hand.

The big man closed his palm. His eyes squeezed shut
in immense concentration, vanishing into palely freckled cheeks. Lucas leaned
forward anxiously, pointing at the approaching guards.

"They—"

"There!"

Casaubon opened his hand. A live bee, wings
translucent and body black-and-brown-furred, flicked into the air and flew
drunkenly off across the crowded yard.

"How did you . . . ? Then, you
are
—?"

"Can I help you, messire?" a uniformed black Rat
inquired, strolling to stand beside the open carriage. Her hand was not far from
her rapier-hilt.

"Yes. Find me whoever’s in charge."

The big man reached across with one ham-hand to
push open the carriage door. He eased one thigh forward, then the other, and
dropped to the ground with a grunt. The carriage rocked on its springs. Casaubon
picked thoughtfully at his nose, gazing up at the windows.

"What the hell am I supposed to do now?" Lucas slid
down to stand on the gravel beside him. "I was in a dungeon here yesterday!"

"You do lead an eventful life, young Lucas."

Casaubon
hitched up his white silk breeches, fumbling to do up the top two buttons and
abandoning the unequal struggle.

"But—"

A black Rat emerged from an arched stone doorway
close by, slitting his eyes against the sunlight. His clawed hind feet scraped
the stone steps as he strode down into the courtyard.

"Are you the architect?" he called.

He stood a head taller than Lucas: lean,
heavy-shouldered and scarred. A blue sleeveless doublet came down to his
haunches, so that it looked as though he wore black breeches; and a blue plume
jutted from his headband. A basket-hilted rapier swung at his side.

"Are
all
these carriages yours?"

The copper-haired man felt inside his satin coat,
dipping into voluminous pockets. A waft of garlic and dirty linen hit Lucas.
Casaubon frowned, and turned down one of his great embroidered cuffs. He beamed,
taking out a heavy black wax seal on a ribbon; and grunted with effort as he put
it around his neck.

"Casaubon," he announced, as the black Rat’s tail
began to twitch. "Baltazar Casaubon, Lord-Architect, Knight of the Rose Castle,
Archemaster, Garden-Surveyor—"

"You
are
the architect," the black Rat
interrupted. "Good. My name is Desaguliers. Come with me. I’ll show you what you
have to do. How soon can you start work?"

Casaubon frowned, and looked as though he might be
about to recite further titles in spite of the interruption. Instead he broke
into a smile, clapped Lucas firmly on the back, and added: "Master Desaguliers,
this is Lucas–my page."

The courtyard was crowded despite the heat, Rats
and some humans passing through on business; and two or three of the guards
stopped to exchange a word with Desaguliers. The black Rat turned back to
Casaubon, and said briefly: "Follow me."

Lucas, rubbing his bruised shoulder, fell in behind
the immense expanse of pink satin that was Casaubon’s back. He glared at it as
they walked into a cool white entrance- hall, neatly stacked on either side with
firewood, and continued to fume as they followed the Rat into the spiral stone
staircase jutting up through the center of the building.

The big man slowed on the stairs, stomping up step
by step, pausing to peer through the slot-windows cut in either wall. One side
looked out into rooms; the other on to the other side of the stone
double-spiral. Lucas dropped back a pace.

"I’m not your page!"

Casaubon said tranquilly: "I know that."

"Tell me how you did that, with the bee."

"Tell me who gave it to you."

The lean black Rat waited for them on the third
floor. He strode across the tiles, between gilded-plaster walls, to where leaded
casements blurred the afternoon sunlight. Reaching to swing one window fully
open, he said: "His Majesty wishes you to design him a garden. Here."

Casaubon
paused at the exit from the stairs. His cheeks and neck glowed pink, and he
pulled out a filthy brown square of cloth and wiped sweat from his face and
neck.

"I trust there is some challenge involved."

Lucas followed him across to the window. It
overlooked the eastern side of the palace. Black shadows of roofs, gables, oriel
windows and tiled turrets fell on acres of rubble. Broken masonry, splintered
glass and white dust ran out as far as the curtain-wall, two hundred yards
distant.

"A wing of the palace has been demolished for the
purpose," Desaguliers observed.

The Lord-Architect said weakly: "What
sort
of a garden does his Majesty want, exactly?"

The black Rat leaned up against the window-frame,
arms folded. Sardonic, he said: "Does it matter? You’ll be paid."

"It does matter! For one thing, I must know the
intended function. Is it a Memory Garden, or merely illustrative of certain
mythological and philosophical devices? Should it invigorate or relax? Does his
Majesty wish to be entertained or spiritually instructed?"

Casaubon rested plump hands on the window-sill.
Lucas, behind him, noted how one scuff-shoed foot scratched at his opposite
calf, leaving marks on the silk stocking.

"I must know," the Lord-Architect persisted.

Smoothly
diplomatic, Lucas ventured to say: "That can be discussed at the proper time,
surely . . . my lord?"

Desaguliers spoke over him. "You’re familiar with
garden machinery, Lord-Architect? Automata, water-organs, mechanical dials? His
Majesty especially requires facility with machines."

"Of course." The big man sounded hurt. "I think I
should speak to the King, Master Desaguliers."

He turned away from the window, resting his hand on
Lucas’s shoulder. "My boy here will find me lodgings in the city. I prefer not
to live where I work. Lucas, see to the unloading of the carts. Any box or chest
marked with red chalk stays here; anything marked with blue chalk goes to my
lodgings; anything unmarked you may return to the airfield, on the grounds that
it isn’t mine. Pay the men off."

The black Rat seemed to notice Lucas for the first
time. As he strode off, beckoning Casaubon to follow, he remarked: "Boy, you do
know
where to find his Majesty’s guest lodgings?"

"Yes, messire."

Lucas looked up at the big man, meeting shrewd blue
eyes. The Lord-Architect’s mouth twitched, and a smile creased its way across
his features.

"I do know where there’s a room to let," Lucas said
hurriedly. "I wish I didn’t know why. The girl who lives there won’t be coming
back. I’ll speak to Mistress Evelian and return here. There’s one thing you
ought to know."

Casaubon, complicit in the necessity of their
further meeting, raised a copper-colored eyebrow. "And that is?"

"I’ve heard of Desaguliers. Most people here have.
He’s a strange person to have developed a taste for gardening. Desaguliers is
Captain of the King’s Guard."

A boat wallowed under vaulting brick roofs.

One oil-lantern, tied at the stern, shed
illumination on a seated black Rat. His ringed right hand grasped the tiller.
The other lay at rest on his stained scarlet jacket. Beside him, curled up with
her spine against the warm fur of his flank, a young woman slept.

The other lantern, in the prow, reflected light
back from oily water. A brown Rat drove a pole into the pitch blackness,
strongly thrusting the boat forward; matched by the pale-haired man in black,
poling on the boat’s other side.

Zar-bettu-zekigal stretched, eyes still shut. Her
pale nostrils flared. She opened her eyes, sat up, and leaned over the side of
the boat to spit.

"Pah! The
stink
!"

"It fails to improve," the black Rat observed
gravely.

Zari grinned. One hand and dappled tail extended
for balance, she stood up in the boat. She scratched at her disheveled hair. "Is
it tomorrow yet, messire?"

Falke, as the sweep of the pole brought him round
to face her, said: "Your friend Charnay thinks it’s night outside. I say it must
be day again."

Zari leaned over the stern, peering down into
clotted liquid. "We can eat fish. If we can catch them. If there are any."

"If we have no objection to poisoning ourselves."
Plessiez called towards the prow: "Are we still following the lamps? Is there
any other sign of occupation?"

Charnay wiped a hand over her translucent ears, and
straightened up from the pole. "You mean there are people down here?"

"I see no reason why there shouldn’t be." Plessiez
leaned over, searching for some trace of the salty current. He sat back,
remarking: "After all, as our great poet once said, ‘there be land thieves and
sea thieves, that is, land Rats and Py-Rats’ . . ."

Charnay looked blank.

"Py-rates," Plessiez enunciated clearly. "Pirates.
Pi . . . Charnay, education is wasted on you."

"You’re probably right, messire," she said humbly.
"I think it’s getting lighter up ahead, messire."

"Where?"

"Ei! It
is!"
Zari scrambled over the planks,
dipping a hand to catch the wildly rocking side of the boat, and flung herself
down on her knees in the prow. Leaning out over the stinking water, she stared
ahead.

"Falke–come
here\
Is that light? There?"

The black-clad man squatted down, following her
gaze; shading his dilated eyes from the oil-lamps. He stood up. Charnay took her
wooden pole and drove it into the mud simultaneously with his. The boat began to
wallow forward.

Zari stuffed one sleeve of her greatcoat across her
mouth and nose. She knelt up in the prow, intense gaze fixed on reflections in
black water.

"Ei, shit!"

Light blazed. Zari fell back against Charnay. The
brown Rat cursed. Eyes watering in an actinic glare, she took in one image of a
vast brick cavern, quays on three sides ahead, tunnel-entrances; all weltering
in sludge and niter, and people: crowds of men and women.

With a noise like hail on corrugated iron, a
metal-mesh net winched up out of the canal behind the boat. It rose rapidly,
blocking the only exit.

"Shit!" Zar-bettu-zekigal pitched forward as the
boat rammed, head-first over the side on to the quay.

Feet rushed towards her. A hand thrust her down.
The torn-silk sound of a rapier drawn from its scabbard sounded above her. She
sat up. Falke leaped for the dock. He swung the iron-tipped boathook up
two-handed in a broadsword grip.

Tatterdemalion men and women ran down the quay,
yelling. She saw ragged banners, raised sticks, swords; a woman screaming, a man
leaping to avoid fallen rubble, and the white blaze of light began to fade.
Yellow torchlight leaped.

"Stop—"

Zari ignored the voice, pushing herself upright,
brick cobbles hard first under her knees and then under her bare feet.

"Guard yourself, messire!"

Charnay thrust coolly, sending her rapier into the
shoulder of a man in ragged blue. Her brown fur shone in the torchlight.
Bright-eyed, showing yellow teeth in a grin, she vaulted the quay steps and
drove a group of men down the dock.

"Stop
—"

Falke’s iron-hooked staff cracked down on the
cobbles. Zari swung round. The boat drifted, empty, three paces out into filthy
water. The boathook darted out, struck: a woman’s face twisted in pain and a
sword hit the ground.

"Messire?"

Zari fell forward. Something splashed into the
canal behind her. A tall man in green met her eyes, grinned, swung up an axe
into a two-handed grip. She crouched, snapping her left hand and tail, circling
left, watching his stubbled face for distraction; scooped up a stone righthanded
and skimmed it.