'Could the balance still have been preserved, even at this late hour? Perhaps, if Moroway had held firm to his former pledges to the Marche Cities. Or if the old Hierarch of Dodessa, contemplating at last the necessity of an accommodation with Hosstratter, had not chosen that inappropriate moment to die, and thus to give power to the epileptic Murvey of Hunfutmouth. Or if Red Hand Ericmouth, chief of the West Monogoths, had not chosen that moment to banish Propeia, sister of the stern Archduke of Puls, known as the "Hammer against Heretics" (by which he meant all who did not subscribe to his own narrowly orthodox Delongianism).

'But the hand of Fate intervened to stay the inevitable moment; for Baron Darkmouth's galleons were caught in the Great Storm of '03, and driven to take refuge at Tihurrue, which they sacked, thus dissolving Romrugo's alliance before it was fairly underway, and causing revolt among the unpaid Vaskians of his army, who deserted by regiments and joined Hosstratter, whose lands lay closest to their line of march.

'Thus Hosstratter, third and most reluctant of the royal petitioners, who had become resigned to his loss, found himself back in the contest; and Moroway, whose star had glittered high, discovered that the Echilides Mountains were no protection when the eastern passes were held by a determined enemy.

'The man most affected by all of this, of course, was Romrugo. His position was unenviable: deserted by his troops, forsworn by his ally Baron Darkmouth (who had his hands full trying to hold Tihurrue against a determined attack by the pirates of the Rullish coast), and menaced even in his fiefdom of Vars by the long and deadly arm of Mortjoy's conspiracy, while the Marche Cities looked hungrily on. As capstone to his pillar of ill fortune, his mare Orsilla chose that moment to desert him.

'Yet even in the depths of adversity, the self-confident Romrugo did not falter. His mare's desertion was hailed by the frightened Owensain clergy, who granted their dubious champion a Divorce in Absolute, and then learned to their horror that the cynical Romrugo intended to use his freedom to wed Propeia and thus align himself with the grateful Archduke of Puls …

'These were the factors that exercised men's passions in that fateful year. The continent stood poised upon the brink of catastrophe. Peasants buried their crops underground and sharpened their scythes. Armies stood to attention and prepared to move in any direction. The turbulent mass of the West Monogoths, pressed from behind by the still more turbulent mass of hard-riding cannibal Allahuts, massed threateningly on the borders of the Old Empire.

'Darkmouth hastened to re-equip his galleys, and Hosstratter paid the Vaskian troopers and trained them for a new kind of war. Romrugo cemented his new alliance with Puls, achieved a détente with Ericmouth, and took account of the new rivalry between Mortjoy and the epileptic but dourly able Murvey. And Moroway of Theme, unconscious ally of the Rullish pirates, unwilling champion of the Suessian heresy, and unwitting accomplice of Red Hand Ericmouth, looked to the grim eastern slopes of the Echilides and waited in trepidation.

'It was at this moment of supreme and universal tension that Milord d'Augustin all unwittingly chose to announce the imminent completion of his work of philosophy …'

Inglenook's voice faded slowly away, and for a time there was no sound but the heavy thrum of horse's hooves. Then Marvin said quietly, 'I understand now.'

'I knew you would,' Inglenook answered warmly. 'And in light of this, you can understand our plan, which is to assemble at Castelgatt and then strike immediately.'

Marvin nodded. 'Under the circumstances there could be no other way.'

'But first,' Inglenook said, 'we must rid ourselves of these pursuing dragoons.'

'As to that,' Marvin said, 'I have a plan …'

Chapter 28

By a clever ruse, Marvin and his compatriots were able to elude the pursuing dragoons and to come unscathed into the great moated tiltyard of Castelgatt. There, upon the sounding of the twelfth hour, the conspirators were to assemble, make final dispositions, and move out that very night for the audacious attempt to rescue d'Augustin from the formidable grasp of Blackamoor.

Marvin retired to his chambers in the high east wing, and there shocked his page by insisting upon a basin of water in which to wash his hands. It was considered a strange affectation on his part in that age in which even the greatest court ladies were accustomed to hide smudges of dirt under perfumed gauze bandages. But Marvin had picked up the custom during his stay among the gay and pagan Tescos of the southern Remoueve, whose soapy fountains and spongy sculpture were wonders of wonders to the complacent and grimy northern nobility. And in spite of the laughter of his peers and the frowns of the clergy, Marvin stubbornly insisted that an occasional scrub of the hands did no damage, so long as the water touched no other part.

His ablutions completed, and clad only in black satin half-knickers, white lace shirt, cavalry boots and shoulder-length gloves of Eretzian chamois, and wearing only his sword Coueur de Stabbat, which had been handed down in his family father-to-son for five hundred years, Marvin heard a half-noise behind him and whirled, hand to hilt.

'La, sir, wouldst run me through with thy terrible great sword?' mocked the Lady Catarina – for it was she – standing just inside the panelled doorway to the inner chamber.

'Faith, your ladyship startled me,' Marvin said. 'But as for running thee through, that indeed I wouldst do right merrily, though not with sword but with a trustier weapon which it happens I do possess.'

'Fie, sir,' the Lady Catarina said mockingly. 'Offerest violence to a lady?'

'Merely the violence of pleasure,' Marvin replied gallantly.

'Your words are too glib by half,' said the Lady Catarina. 'I believe it has been noted that the longest and wiliest tongues conceal the shortest and least adequate of Weapons.'

'Your ladyship does me injustice,' Marvin said. 'For I dare say my Weapon is eminently capable of the uses it may encounter, sharp enough to penetrate the best defence in the world, and durable enough for repeated stabbings. And, quite apart from such utilitarian uses, it has learned from me certain infallible tricks, the which it would be my respectful pleasure to show your ladyship.'

'Nay, keep your Weapon in its scabbard,' the lady quoth, indignantly, but with sparkling eyes. 'Me likes not the sound of 't; for braggart's steel is ever pliable tin, shiny to the eye yet damnably malleable to the touch.'

'I beg of thee but to touch the edge and point,' Marvin said, 'and thus submit thy raillery to th' test of Usage.'

She shook her pretty head. 'Know, sir, that such Pragmatics are for greybeard philosophers with rheumy eyes; a lady relies upon her intuition.'

'Lady, I worship thy intuition,' Marvin responded.

'Why, sir, what wouldst Thou, the Prepossessor of a dubious Weapon of indetermined length and uncertain temper, know of a woman's intuition?'

'Lady, my heart tells me that it is exquisite and ineffable, and possessed of a pleasing shape and delicate fragrance, and that-'

'Enough, sir!' the Lady Catarina cried, blushing hotly and fanning herself furiously with a Japanese fan whose corrugated surface portrayed the Investiture of the Iichi.

Both fell silent. They had been conversing in the old Language of Courtly Love, in which symbolic apostrophe played so important a part. In those days it was deemed no breach of the etiquette for even the best-bred and most demure of young ladies to thus converse; theirs was not a frightened age.

But now a shadow of seriousness had fallen over the two participants. Marvin glowered, fingering the grey steel buttons of his white lace shirt. And the Lady Catarina looked troubled. She wore a panelled gown of dove tulip with slashings of chrome red; and, as was the custom, the neckline was cut fashionably low to reveal the firm rosy swelling of her little abdomen. Upon her feet were sandal-pumps of ivory-coloured damask; and her hair, piled high upon a jade ratouelle, was adorned with a garland of spring snippinies. Never in his life had Marvin seen so beautiful a sight.