Page 47 of The Court of Venus

Eleven

Venusborn can mend torn fabric, chipped pottery, cuts and pockmarks and pimples and age lines, returning all to its most beautiful, aesthetic state. A Venusborn cannot, however, heal fatal wounds. Nor can they take away pain.

—PROSPERO THE ALL-KNOWING, THE CELESTIAL BODIES

Roland recovered for three days. Each time I tried to visit him, I was barred at the doors of his bedchamber. I slipped in as mouse, as a moth, and finally jumped from head to head as a flea, but half the court was bowed over him, or else the curtains were drawn. I paced my rooms, nearly tearing my hair out with worry.

Without Roland, the magicians’ tournament was postponed, but the preparations for Cecily’s coronation continued. Servants dashed across the courtyard, unloading crates of food from carts, freewheeling flies hovering around the burlap. Cecily processed in an elaborate train of nobles through the city. I could hear the frantic cheering of the crowds as the parade wound through the streets.

I studied Eleanor’s book at all hours, ripping out the page with the blood seal, watching it curl up in the fire, spit up ink. I tried to scribble Prospero’s hidden ciphers onto a fresh sheet of parchment, but they slipped away too quickly. The glyphs meant nothing to me; only a Mercury could possibly understand them. Plots threaded into more plots, an entire tapestry we were only beginning to unravel.

And at night, I was grateful I didn’t need sleep. I knew if I closed my eyes for too long, there would be a display of all my losses. Their faces. Their voices. Hal dead in the meadow, Prospero dead on the scaffold. If I allowed them to whisper to me, they’d tell me all the ways I’d failed to save them.

On the fourth day of Roland’s bed rest, Bess arrived in my room with honey, bread, and fruit. I was curled up as a cat, flexing my toes in the warmth of the fireplace. I shifted into my human form, naked, hair loose around my shoulders. Bess didn’t glance at my body, just began to dress me and plait my hair back.

“For you.” She tossed the note to me bitterly.

I broke the wax seal while licking honey off my fingers. In Roland’s elegant, looping hand: I’m awake.

The sun set late the evening of the second round. When it was all over, I wished there hadn’t been so much light.

Banquet tables were laid out in the gardens, with hundreds of cakes and pies and bowls of glistening, jewel-toned fruit. Chairs groaned when the queen entered, followed by her ladies-in-waiting, Joan, Agnes, and Kitty, then the tittering maids of honor, but there was no sign of the king or Roland. We could only touch the food when the king arrived, so we waited, swirling our goblets. To my left, Jasper, the Jupiter sworn to Fulke Roet, was up to familiar tricks, raising the level of wine in his neighbor’s goblet whenever he looked away, making him increasingly drunk. To my right was Oliver.

He tried to catch my eye several times. “I presume the lord chancellor will be joining us tonight for the contest?” he said from the corner of his mouth.

“All thanks to you,” I whispered back.

“Tell me.” He bent close. Then, glancing to the left and right, stole a berry and popped it in his mouth. “How did you get your hands on a blood seal? Was it an assassination attempt?”

I could curtail his curiosity, but I felt he deserved to know. He’d saved our lives. “No,” I said, reaching for my wine. “At least, not a recent one. We stumbled upon it by accident, searching through old books.”

“Old books.” A silver brow shot up. He didn’t believe me, but he knew it wasn’t the time to press. Not with all these pricked ears around. Even now, I felt someone’s curiosity from across the garden.

It was Kitty Seton. I recognized the smooth, cold texture of her mind.

“Have you ever seen a cipher that rose and fell, as if it were breathing?” I asked Oliver under my breath. “And each time it rose, the sequence scrambled?”

Oliver shrugged, swirling his wine around in a lazy gesture that reminded me of Roland. “No, but most of my kind enjoy a signature—a unique thumbprint, of sorts. For example, most of my codes are musical compositions. A C minor for example, corresponding to some word. The arrangement is played in public, my client will hear the intended message, while everyone else will just hear a melody.” He nodded toward the musicians. “There could be a correspondence in the air, even now.”

“You know, Fulke Roet was playing his lute when Ambrose died.”

“Was he?” He frowned into his plate. “Do you recall the tune?”

Kitty’s curiosity had crept toward us again. But when I tried to catch her, her eyes leapt away. She appeared fascinated by the centerpiece of the table, a swan with an apple in its beak.

She was very good at pretending to look at things.

The court stirred again, chairs scraping the lawn as they were pushed back. Oliver and I broke apart. The king was finally escorted into the gardens by none other than Roland himself. We raised our cups to them both. A page boy tested the king’s food, sampling each dish before we were allowed to touch our plates.

“Thank the Planets,” muttered Oliver as he finally tore into his bread. The court musicians plucked their instruments as food was raked into mouths, renewed laughter ringing through the garden.

At the head of the table, Queen Cecily beamed. Courtier after courtier lined up to kiss her hand and pay their obeisance. All the Guildfords, in fact, were glowing. Tom recited a verse to his sister that he’d written in honor of her coronation, leaping onto the banquet table and knocking over silver platters in his fervor. Oliver and I exchanged a grimace as Tom kicked another plate to the floor in the direction of a servant, who bent down to clean it up. “As the Moon receives the Sun, so am I reflected upon!”

“You’re aware of the implications, I presume?” called Wyatt Francis.

Tom crouched and took hold of Wyatt’s jaw, kissing his cheek with a loud smack. “I shall admire my sister’s beauty, as it deserves to be admired.”

“What he truly means to say is,” Oliver whispered, “I detest my sister, I find her so foolish and grating, that I did not bother writing a good poem for her.”