A sudden sharp rise in the noise level made both of them turn quickly to see a burly knight in full chain mail hoisting himself onto the buffet table, kicking a chair over behind him as he did so. He gripped a slopping flagon in one hand and was beginning his speech or his song—it was difficult to be sure—with one booted foot in the frumenty. Even through the redoubled cheering and stamping, Farrell could hear the Lady Janet’s squall of outrage as she charged the buffet, reverting instantly to Draja the Tartar. The knight saw her coming, dropped his flagon, and started to climb down.
Farrell drifted on, looking for Julie and trying not to step on Sir Mordred, who kept exploding out of shadows to launch ruthless kamikaze attacks on Farrell’s ankles and vanish instantly behind a mounted suit of armor or a half-painted shield leaning in a corner. One of the assaults was providential, diverting the attention of the Lady Vivienne d’Audela, who was just settling in for a good teary chat about her hopeless crush on Hamid ibn Shanfara. Another effectively broke up an impromptu Basilisk rendition of “When I’m Sixty-Four,” performed as a serenade to Sir Tybalt and the Lady Alisoun, caught necking in an alcove. Farrell had a serious talk with the kitten at that point, and Sir Mordred promised faithfully to be good, but he lied.
The Lady Criseyde, involved in hasty repairs to the gravysplashed ruff of King Bohemond, paused to say that the Lady Murasaki had gone out but now into the courtyard, complaining of the noise and stuffiness. A branle was forming in the hallway like a fifteenth-century conga line, accompanied only by Felix Arabia on shawm, resembling a Bosch demon in a genial moment. He caught sight of Farrell and called to him, beckoning over the dozen cowls, plumed berets, and steepled hennins jigging between them. Farrell smiled, waved back, and ducked swiftly across the hall into a room he had not seen before. It was smaller than the others, less well-lighted, with a smell of old neglect about it, as if every celebration since the housewarming had passed it by. Yet there were fresh rushes scattered here, too—where do you go to get real castle rushes in Avicenna, California?—and a few tapestries and small rugs taking a bit of the chill from the walls; and by the far wall, directly under the one stone slash of a window, Nicholas Bonner crouched on the floor with a boy who could not have been older than four. They were building a castle of their own together out of red and yellow bricks.
Farrell never knew how long he stood watching them. The room was rarely deserted; he was distantly but continually aware of people, wandering in and out, and of voices joking in the League talk about the perfect concentration of the two children. Neither one ever looked up. Farrell recognized the boy as the Lady Alisoun’s nephew and solemn-eyed ringbearer. Nicholas was teaching him the words for the different parts of the castle as they took shape in clicking red and yellow. “There we are, Joshua, that’s the barbican all done. Can you say that, barbican?” Joshua giggled and said it correctly. “Oh, very good. Okay, now we have to make a proper postern gate in our curtain wall—postern, Joshua, I’ll do that one, and you put a few more guard towers on the wall, okay? You do good towers.”
He was dressed with casual richness in red and black trunk-hose, puffed like pumpkins at the hips, a short darkred doublet over a plain white shirt, suede half-boots, and a high-crowned black hat that looked exactly like a soft upside-down flower pot. The angle of the narrow brim hid his eyes. Joshua still wore his ice-cream-white wedding suit, along with the space helmet that had apparently been the price of his performance. He lasted through the remodeling of the curtain wall, but fell asleep while the moat and causeway were being added. Nicholas Bonner laughed gently, almost without a trace of the greedy, prowling sweetness that Farrell remembered, and picked him up so carefully that the boy never stirred. Farrell stepped back instinctively as the golden face turned toward him, but Nicholas was looking down at Joshua and his eyes were still in shadow. Someone across the room was telling someone else how and when to buy silver. Nicholas Bonner began to hum very softly.
A muscular little tail whipped once against Farrell’s foot and he whirled, Sir Mordred’s ambushes having left him more than a trifle gun-shy. But the Siamese was after wilder game, ignoring Farrell as he stalked past him to move in boldly and openly on Nicholas Bonner’s long, graceful legs in their tempting trunk-hose. Far from erupting all over them, clinging like Greek fire for a moment, then leaping away to safety, Sir Mordred sized up his prey in the leisurely manner of a much older cat, taking all the time necessary to unsheathe his claws, blow on them, adjust for windage and elevation, and finally reach out to draw them daintily down Nicholas’ left leg from calf to ankle, like a bear marking a tree. And he looked upon his work, saw that it was good—four neat slits in the red hose, and scratched skin showing through—and he sat back, deeply content, and said, “Rao.”
Nicholas Bonner never stopped humming. He neither flinched nor turned, but continued to cradle the sleeping Joshua. When he raised his head at last—oh, dear Jesus, what could a little kid ever make of those eyes?—the champagne stare fixed itself on a point beyond Farrell’s right shoulder. Farrell heard a snuffling snicker and knew that Aiffe was there.
She was wearing the blue houppelande that she had worn at the Revels and a sort of gauzy wimple, bulging like a mail sack with her hair. The last time Farrell had seen her close for more than a moment, she had been slumped in Nicholas’ arms, as vulnerable as Joshua and far more helpless. Now she was bouncing on her toes, grinning and shivering urgently, the toneless skin truly radiant with something better than health. “Oh, let me,” she said like a lover. Nicholas made no response, but Farrell felt a freezing permission pass between them, grazing his cheek like a flung stone. Aiffe pointed at Sir Mordred, now placidly grooming himself, and crooned, “Bad kitty, you bad kitty,” in a voice as soft as Nicholas Bonner’s lullaby. Farrell heard them both in his sleep from that night on.
Sir Mordred looked up in blue-eyed complacency from the technical challenge of washing the back of his neck. Apparently dismissing Aiffe as easily as Farrell, he rolled over and started in on his white-butter stomach. Abruptly his jaws snapped in the damp fur, and he uttered a tiny cry of astonishment and hurt. He licked the place rapidly for a moment; then—with a stilted, uncatlike movement, as though his face were being forced into a bowl of milk—he bit his belly again and again, each time yowling more loudly.
The silver expert said sympathetically, “Ah, poor Puss, poor wretch, truly I’ve not seen a year the like of this one for vermin. Anyway, you always buy when it falls below that price.”
Joshua mumbled, “Postern,” burrowing against Nicholas Bonner’s shoulder.
She can’t be making him, they can’t be. Sir Mordred was biting and scratching himself frantically now, his cries muffled by his own flesh. Aiffe came to kneel beside him, stroking him and murmuring so gently that her lips barely moved, and Farrell could not hear her at all. But he knew what she was saying; he could feel the words in fire almost as surely and terribly as Sir Mordred, bad kitty bad kitty bad kitty. The Siamese fell onto his side, writhing in a circle. Aiffe said aloud, “I guess it’s fleas. I don’t know what’s wrong with him.”
Farrell started forward, but Nicholas Bonner looked straight at him for the first time, and it seemed very clear to Farrell that to take another step was to fall off the edge of everything forever, never dying, just falling. Is this the way Ben feels?