Page 65 of The Court of Venus

Marguerite has agreed to send me monthly reports of Roland’s progress in Lionesse. I am not optimistic.

—PROSPERO THE ALL-KNOWING, DIARIES, UNDATED

Four and a Half Years Ago

Hal watched from a window as Roland’s carriage rolled beneath the portcullis. He dragged his fingers down the glass in a silent farewell, then reached for the knife in his sheath, stabbing a notch in the wall. As he gouged out the wood, shavings floated to the ground and spun in the sunlight.

“He’ll write,” I assured him.

Hal jabbed the knife in again. A twist as he laughed. “No. He won’t.”

For several minutes more, we stared down into the courtyard. We were both thinking Prospero and the king would change their mind, that the horses might charge through the gates, and Roland would step down from the carriage, returned to us. Neither of us knew what to say to the other without him.

Hal wished he were the one leaving. His father dangled battlefields in front of him, but he was too precious to the king for any real combat. So Hal champed at the bit for any responsibility at all. He was skilled on horseback and with a sword. Skilled with a longbow and halberd. Those born under the archer Sagittarius, Prospero said, couldn’t just laze about with lovers and wine and wait for their fathers to die.

I was eighteen. He was twenty-one. He’d packed new muscle in his shoulders and back, grown a thin layer of stubble that Roland always insisted he shave. These past few years, he’d become ruggedly handsome. While the ladies of the court had once shown interest in him because of his birth, now they were interested in his face, too, and his figure when he and Roland swung at each other in the tiltyard.

“What would you and Roland be doing now?” I asked. “If he were here, I mean.”

He glanced at me over his shoulder. “I suppose we would ride out.” He squinted into the sun, using his hand to block the light. “Do you—” He hesitated. “Do you like to ride?”

“Oh. Um. I suppose I do. Where would we go?”

He frowned. “No matter. We don’t have to ride. What do you—like to do?”

“Is your falcon still injured?”

She’d been caught in a fox’s jaws a month ago, and Hal had been nursing her back to health. “Yes,” he said slowly, unsure where I was leading.

“Do you need a new one?”

I perched on his leather glove, and when he thrust me up into the cold mist that day I was changed. To be a falcon was to see the fog-draped field below in every gorgeous detail: a mouse scurrying beneath the snow, its heat stark against the frozen, hard ground, the hoarfrost coating every branch. I wheeled above as Hal whooped below, and I flew, I flew for hours, cresting above the tree line and carving up air that chilled my wings.

Hal said I blended into the clouds. He pinched his fingers together. “Only a speck. Could you see me down here?”

“A little,” I said. A woman again, I struggled into my gown behind a tree. “You could have been a mouse. I nearly dove for you.”

“You’re still the mouse, Mouse.”

I believed, in those days, that we were running from loneliness and simply found ourselves in each other’s company. And this suited us fine: We didn’t have to talk much if I was a bird and he a man. While I flew, he nocked arrows and shot at targets he’d set in the trees. Sometimes we’d ride together—it was easier for me once I’d practiced calming my horse’s moods. Sometimes we’d sit before the fire in his rooms and read or play cards.

“Listen here,” he said one night in the deep, long winter, holding up a rare letter from Roland. He raised his tone a decibel, though Roland’s voice was deeper than his. “Lionesse is more wonderful than you could imagine. Here they drink and fuck until dawn, and then rise late to do it all again. They do not guard coin like dragons—they spend it well. I have been asked to sit for a portrait and begun writing plays. Shall I send them to you? I hope court is not too dull, and I send my love to Prospero. His punishment has become a reward, and he doesn’t even suspect! Is the mouse still trailing—” He broke off and flushed a deep red. “I’m sorry.”

I turned toward the fire. “I don’t think I’d like to watch his plays.”

“Oh, me neither. Every part is surely designed for him. He’d run around reciting all the dialogue, telling the actors he could do it better. Like Wyatt Francis.” His head lolled to the side of his chair, and he noted my expression. “What is it?”

“Nothing.”

He rubbed his jaw. “You frighten him, you know. He was Prospero’s only apprentice, chosen above all others, and then you showed up. No master has two apprentices, just as no king has two heirs.”

“I didn’t ask Prospero to teach us both.”

“I know. And deep down, Roland knows that, too.” He hummed thoughtfully, throwing down the letter. “Should we go into the city? I’ve always thought we should take you along, and now he isn’t here to protest.”

“Did Prospero give his permission for you to go out?”

An eye roll. “I’m never given permission to do anything.” He held out his arm to show me a scab on his elbow. “He said to be very careful this week. Mars, of course. But see, I’ve already fallen! I won’t injure myself further, will I?”