[FICATHON] Gimmors and Devices, part 2/4
Part I
II. Rhisiart
Bushy, Bagot and their complices, the caterpillars of the commonwealth. -- Richard II, Act II, Scene 3.
Rhisiart had been at the palace for three days before he met his human twin. And that was purely by accident.
He was studying alone in an alcove in the library, trying to puzzle out the history and agendas behind various treaties and trade agreements--a tedious job, in his opinion, but then he had been constructed to think like the king, so his reaction was hardly surprising---when the door opened. Rhisiart looked up from a chronicle about recent French history to see his double, a laughing young man with blond curls, stumble into the room. Fortunately, Rhisiart was out of view of the door, so his double hadn't spotted him yet...but the three men outside the door sounded both drunk and eager for fun, be that wrestling in a library or sporting in one of the palace's bedchambers. While he could evade one man, he wasn't certain he could avoid four.
And there was neither time to panic nor to hide, for the king was already shoving the door shut against his amused fellows.
"No, no," he was chuckling. " Jack, Will, leave me for a moment or two--and let me check that poem you quoted, Henry Green, else we shall be arguing about the words all night. And I will not thus waste joyful hours."
"We could help," retorted one of them--though whether the speaker was Green, Bushy or Bagot, Rhisiart had no idea. He had never heard any of them speak ere this, but the descriptions of the three that Maman had imprinted within his silica-and-clockwork brain had been distinctly unflattering. This man sounded as if he actually enjoyed the king's company.
"Thou wouldst not be of much help to me, Green," the king replied gently, even affectionately. "A distraction, rather, and one I can ill afford in the midst of an argument. Go now, and I shall see you again when it is time to dine."
This did not suit the king's friends well--Rhisiart could tell by the grumbling, which he could hear perfectly--but they went. The king then bolted the door, turned about to scan the shelves...and almost immediately espied Rhisiart standing in the alcove looking at him with considerable curiosity.
He did not expect the king to stare at him, cross himself and then ask, "Are you the Devil?"
Rhisiart shook his head. "No. The Duchess of Gloucester sent me here three days ago."
"The Duchess of--she succeeded?"
Rhisiart didn't think that was worthy of a reply. He was standing right in front of his human counterpart, wasn't he?
"I never thought she would succeed," the king murmured. "Not after so long. Even Henry said it was impossible to craft a machine that looked so...alive. That this could never be done, save in troubadour's songs and grandmothers' tales. The most Bacon e'er did was cause a head made of brass to speak."
"He designed a brass head that could speak," Rhisiart replied, correcting him automatically. Nevertheless, he saw almost as soon as he said it that correcting the king had been a mistake. Richard said nothing--but barely stifled displeasure suffused his face. Clearly he was one of those who had no love for machines that could think...especially those whose knowledge exceeded that of certain humans. He wanted a mechanical placeholder, no more.
In an attempt to gain a clue as to what the king wished him to do first, Rhisiart reviewed his last few statements and almost immediately found something worrisome. "What Henry said that building a gimmor like me was impossible? Bolingbroke?"
It would be logical. After all, Bolingbroke had piloted the balloon the day the king had commanded that he be built. He already knew what the king wanted.
But the king was shaking his head. "Oh, no! I haven't spoken to Bolingbroke about that request for years. No, I...may have mentioned to Sir Henry Green once or twice that possessing a device such as you--"
Gimmor, Rhisiart thought. I'm no unthinking invention, though you may wish I were.
"--would be helpful, even convenient. He's tried to craft a twin of mine for years, but never has he even approached anything like you. I cannot wait to tell him!" The king beamed at Rhisiart for a moment before remembering that he was smiling at a machine.
"You might not wish to do so," Rhisiart said, picking through his words as if the ground of the conversation was filled with pit traps bristling with pointed stakes. "Yes, I'm sure Henry Green can be trusted...but can you trust anyone who might overhear you telling him? Can you trust them to only think of using me the way that you would?"
The king frowned, and when he spoke, he sounded fretful, as if Rhisiart was spoiling all his fun. "I don't like not telling my friends the truth. It's dishonorable."
"I don't like not keeping secrets," Rhisiart retorted. "Especially when keeping the secret could prevent you or the Duchess of Gloucester from suffering harm."
Which still might happen to Her Grace. Her father had suffered from Edward III's displeasure in the last years of his life--some said that he'd poisoned Thomas Beauchamp, the Earl of Warwick, though it was far likelier that Warwick, who had been on the battlefield before falling ill, had caught a fatal dose of camp fever--and had died rather suddenly after making a will for no good reason. Gossip said that Edward III had had him hanged secretly for murder and treason; it would be all too easy for Edward III's grandson, or those around him, to decide that de Bohun's daughter had built Rhisiart for treacherous reasons. Rhisiart knew that he had no free will as humans understood it...but standing by and letting the king endanger himself or Rhisiart's creator ran counter to the instructions imprinted in his brain.
The king was looking distinctly unhappy. Rhisiart would have sighed if he'd been designed to draw breath. Richard didn't want an opponent--or an ally, for that matter. He wanted a useful tool who would replace him when a replacement was desired and fade into the background when the king wished for nothing of the sort.
All right. He would adapt. He was designed to do so, after all.
"What do you wish of me, Your Majesty?" he said in so humble and obedient a tone that Richard looked at him with sharp suspicion, as if such submission was--had to be--a vile trick.
The order, once given, was unexpected. "I wish for you to open yourself up. Show me that you're a man of clockwork and not of flesh or of hellfire. For never have I seen any clockwork man who looks so human as you. It is easier to believe you to be a secret twin, an illusion spawned of night air, or a sorcerer's demon sent to tempt me than it is to credit that you are mere machinery."
Removing his doublet and his shirt, Rhisiart stripped to the waist and lightly touched the hidden buttons on his chest that only he and Maman could unlock.
The doors in his torso sprang open, revealing an intricate interweaving of gleaming gears, cams, cogs, springs, nuts and silica.
"Such as I am made of, " he said quietly, "such I am. Are you satisfied, Your Majesty?"
The king blinked at his tone, and a moment later Rhisiart realized why. Though he'd spoken in a low and courteous voice, though he'd used the correct title...he had still spoken to Richard as one prince to another.
There was little he could do about this, however. He was, after all, designed to be the king when the king wasn't around.
So he did not apologize to Richard, or excuse himself, or explain. Richard knew what he'd asked for, after all.
And after an infinitesimal pause so small that a human wouldn't have noticed it, the king said, "Yes. I'm satisfied." He gestured at Rhisiart's torso. "Close yourself. Please." A shudder, not quite suppressed.
Rhisiart privately thanked his Creator that he was a brasshead and therefore couldn't be hurt by such a reaction. "Will there be anything else?"
"Yes. Stop behaving like a mirror of me." The king glared at him in a manner that Rhisiart thought was intended to be intimidating. "It is like seeing my own ghost moving and talking. It's...disturbing."
Rhisiart could have protested that he was as he had been created to be, but that seemed pointless. And, in any case, he was adaptable. He could change enough to calm the fears of the king and still blend in seamlessly.
"Yes, Your Majesty. I believe I can do that."
***
Ultimately, trying to adapt wasn't what betrayed him. Trying to be too much like the king did.
As the months passed, Rhisiart took the king's place at council meetings about half the time and socialized with his friends the other half--chiefly because it would look odd if he did not. And, reluctantly, he had to admit that he could see why Richard liked Bushy, Bagot and Green. The king was bookish but not shrewd, and he was surrounded by uncles who were very bright even for Plantagenets and who had more than a century of political experience between them. They were extremely capable men who had been helping to run the country for decades...and they had no idea that their very competence terrified their nephew who, when he was around them, felt he was eleven going on ten.
It might have been better if Gloucester, York and Gaunt had been kindly but incompetent, Rhisiart thought. Oh, it would have been bad for the country, certainly. But the king would have summoned his own strength to guide his people, and he would still have a loving if impractical family to rely on. Instead, Richard's uncles were good, decent, skillful politicians who had kept the country running smoothly for nigh on ten years...with very little help from Richard.
They made Richard feel unnecessary. And Rhisiart knew that his twin hated them for that.
Henry Green, John Bushy and William Bagot were anything but skillful politicians and they certainly weren't good. They were selfish, greedy, and ambitious beyond the dreams of fallen angels. And they possessed all the compassion of a pack of jackals.
And that, Rhisiart had to admit, was part of what made them fascinating. They were, simply and unabashedly, themselves, which lent them a peculiar charm. Moreover, they genuinely seemed to like the king--not that this stopped any of them from trying to acquire as much land and wealth and power as they could.
The king didn't appear to mind that. In fact, he seemed to approve of their honesty. This puzzled Rhisiart for a time until he deduced that the king believed that everyone was seeking to gouge wealth and power from him...no matter how virtuous they appeared. Then it began to make sense. If you believed that every man and all but one woman were trying to use you, you might actually appreciate who made no bones about doing so. And you would know that they weren't hypocrites or liars.
It was a very odd way of thinking, and--as nearly as Rhisiart could define the word--unpleasant. Trying to think this way gave him the sensation of two ungreased gears rubbing together.
It also put him in a difficult position. For even though the king was the one who had commanded him into existence, the fact that the wife of the Duke of Gloucester had created a perfect double who could take the king's place at any time made the king sorely uneasy.
"Why did she make you?" Richard had asked him over and over again "Did the duke command it?"
"No," Rhisiart had replied on a hundred different occasions. "You did, my liege. Don't you remember?"
"Yes, of course I did!" Richard snapped. "But--"
But I wasn't supposed to be this good, Rhisiart thought. I was a sort of fantasy you had--a lovely dream about how wonderful it would be to have someone or something taking care of the reigning while you had fun. Having something take your place in your life and on your throne and not being a pin different from you in looks or behavior isn't what you had in mind. I think that you'd much rather that I tried to be like you and failed miserably. I'd only be a joke then. You wouldn't have to look at a face exactly like your own and wonder when I would take your place permanently.
He'd suggested--more than once--that the king send him home to Pleshey--or even to another of the king's castles. In vain. The king had merely muttered something about keeping his friends close and his enemies closer.
A wise decision, my liege. Now if only you could tell who your enemies truly are.
It was through Anne of Bohemia, his--well, sister-in-law seemed to be the best term--that he learned of the king's extreme distrust of Gloucester. On the king's orders, he had shunned Anne as best he could, but when he met her by chance in a hallway near a door leading to the gardens, he realized immediately that this was one situation in which he could not obey the king unless he hurt the person that the king loved best.
Not knowing what else to do, he had asked Anne out into the garden. From the way her face lit up, this was obviously a good choice.
They had spoken lightly of things of no importance--at least, she had, and he'd tried to answer plausibly. Oddly, the more serious he became, the more she laughed. He was fairly certain that this was not how it normally went with humans.
But then, as he was puzzling over this, Anne turned to him. "Richard, I received an invitation to Pleshey today."
This was a surprise, as Rhisiart knew that the Duke of Gloucester would be in London for some time. "From the Duke?" he asked uncertainly.
A frown at this. "No. From your Aunt Nell."
Not my aunt. My mother.
He did not, of course, say that out loud. Instead, he asked, "Do you want to go?"
Anne nodded. "Very much. Though...I know you are not pleased with Thomas of Woodstock at the moment."
Rhisiart, feeling as if his brain were seizing up from overheating, rubbed his temples. He had heard something about this from Richard's friends, though he didn't understand it and didn't pretend to. Much of it had to do with Thomas being too plain-spoken, too practical and too austere to be real. He was the least flattering of Richard's uncles, and the one most likely to call him to account when he made poor decisions, but this was hardly proof of unreality. Human logic, Rhisiart decided, is very strange.
He did know that Richard would not be pleased by his granting Anne permission to visit with the wife of the man Richard trusted least in the world. For that matter, Richard wouldn't be pleased that Rhisiart had spoken to Anne at all. Refusing permission would be the most rational thing to do, and the most likely to please the king.
Rhisiart opened his mouth to do just that...and suffered a glitch in his programming. Or perhaps it was his programming, since he had noted in the past that Richard, who found stubbornness fairly easy, melted in the presence of his brown-haired, brown-eyed queen.
"Of course you must go," he said gently. "I would not wish to separate you from a close friend. Friends are important. But...the palace will be darker for your not being here. You will be missed."
"You could come and visit as well."
Rhisiart tried to formulate a plan that would allow him to slip away from the palace and end up in Pleshey as if by accident. He couldn't do it. "I don't think that will be possible," he said with very real regret. "But...I might send a letter to the Duchess with you. It has been a long time since we have spoken"--since the day I was born, in fact. "I would not wish us to be strangers. As you say, she is my aunt. My troubles with my uncles have naught to do with her."
He did not expect Anne to kiss him soundly for this, or to break away from him with a merry but bewildered expression. "Why, you kiss as if you'd never kissed anyone before!"
He hadn't. But there was no way to tell her this without making the king sound like an idiot, a liar or both. "Perhaps," he said in a slightly hesitant voice, "I simply need more practice."
He didn't expect to end up in bed.
He didn't expect friction--which was rather bad, at least for brassheads--to cause a human such pleasure.
And he certainly didn't expect Anne to be quite so...inventive.
He was convinced that the king would order him taken apart and melted down into slag after that. But seemingly the king never heard about that particular night, for the only thing that he complained of was Anne going off to Woodstock.
"I told you to stay away from her, and instead you give her permission to go to the house of mine enemies? What manner of monster are you?"
"She took me for you," Rhisiart retorted. "Should I have shunned her and treated her like the dust beneath my feet, mayhap?"
"No! Of course not!"
"Then," Rhisiart said, his eyes of crystal and mirrors meeting the king's organic ones, "why are you angry, when all I did was speak her fair and try to make her happy?"
The king had scowled, but he'd dropped the subject. And Rhisiart had tried to convince himself that there was nothing to be concerned about. After all, he'd behaved as he was designed to. As the king would behave.
He'd managed to send off a letter, at any rate, and had received a missive back that had sounded poorly written, absymally dull and in no way like a code. Typical of his creator to craft a code that wasn't so much fiendishly challenging (which would have attracted the attention of any efficient intelligencer) as it was ordinary and unnoticeable.
So now he had a way of communicating with the world outside the royal court. And everyone at the court-except for Richard, of course-had accepted him in his role of king. And, despite Richard's distrust of brassheads that could play the part of humans convincingly, all seemed to be going smoothly.
Then the king began to be absent for longer and longer periods. Rhisiart thought little of this; it was hardly the first time that the king had played the truant. Perhaps he had found a pastime or a mistress that was distracting him from court life. If it also proved to be a distraction from distrust and suspicion, so much the better.
One warm night in June, two and a half years after his own creation and six months after the king had begun sporting elsewhere, Rhisiart learned how wrong he was.
***
He was in bed that night with Henry Green, chiefly because Green seemed to expect it and the true king wouldn't refuse. Bagot and Bushy were infrequent visitors to the king's (and therefore to Rhisiart's) bed; Green, however, was a regular. Rhisiart did his best to accommodate the three, singly and in groups, though it did seem like a lot of sucking, rubbing and prodding for an extraordinarily messy result.
Green, who was murmuring unintelligible syllables, was pressed against him naked and, according to the receptors in Rhisiart's skin, damp and sweaty. His hands were everywhere-stroking, pinching and caressing.
Rhisiart responded enthusiastically...while mentally calculating that it would take approximately 6.174 minutes before Green came and 31.025 minutes before Green rolled over and went to sleep. He knew Green by now. Green was as predictable as Rhisiart's own clockwork.
So he was not expecting it when Green's hands stilled on his chest for a moment, then covered Rhisiart's hands with his own and swiftly guided them over certain points, pausing only to press one finger against each point before moving on.
Before Rhisiart could shout, "Stop!," his chest sprang open.
Green gazed at the clockwork and silica with the smile of a madman who was dreaming. "Ohhhhh. Beautiful. You truly are a work of art...even if you can't appreciate my touch as a human would."
Rhisiart was in no mood for bletherings. "What are you going to do with me?" he asked, proud that he'd said "with" and not "to." And then a second question. "And how did you know how to open me up?"
Green gave Rhisiart his best and most enthusiastic smile. "Oh, it's amazing what people can remember when they need to and they're given sufficient encouragement."
"Richard," Rhisiart said, feeling as disoriented as if he'd tried to calculate the square root of negative one.
If possible, the smile grew a little broader. "Of course."
"You killed the king?"
Green tut-tutted over this. "I thought that machine logic was supposed to be better than this. I wouldn't dream of spilling royal blood. There's a curse on such a thing, and I have no desire to lead an accursed life. No, he's very much alive...though he wishes with all his heart that he wasn't. He finds where he's staying to be a bit onerous. I have, of course, explained to him that I really cannot do without his company for one minute, even though I know that the food served where he is staying is not truly to his taste--"
"You're starving him."
Green narrowed his eyes. "You were made too like him. You belabor the obvious. How disappointing."
"I presume," Rhisiart said, as a malfunctioning phonogram in his speech box caused his voice to tremble, "that you're going to erase my programming."
"Of course not!" Green said, horrified. "Destroying a masterpiece like yourself would be criminal. The very angels would weep over such an offense."
"And yet you do not think that the angels will weep over the king?"
Green shrugged, indifferent, then-reluctantly--closed Rhisiart's torso. "I doubt it. There are plenty of humans in the world. They are expendable and easily replaced. You, on the other hand, are unique."
It was probably a stupid question, but Rhisiart couldn't refrain asking it. "How long have you known?"
"Not long," Green replied, scrutinizing his face. "Oh, I knew that Richard had a double from the first moment that you and I bedded. You lack his enthusiasm for sex, despite being willing enough, in your indifferent way. And you don't smell like him. But that you were a brasshead...no, that's quite recent information. Richard was most reluctant to part with that secret." He smiled, or at least bared his teeth. "A limbeck of siren's tears persuaded him."
"There are no sirens--"
"Such literalism does not become you. Next you will tell me the plant called Old Man's Trousers is not made of linen and wooden buttons."
"There is no such plant as siren's tears, either."
Green sighed. "Siren's tears is a mixture of distillations from various blossoms, herbs, lichen and roots-and I hope you won't expect me to burble the recipe into your auditory receptors. I recalled a legend that said that that the song of sirens could drive a man to madness, but the touch of one of their tears could dissolve his will. Once I heard that story, I had to see if it was possible."
Yes. Rhisiart was sure that was the case. Baconians and revivifiers alike were exemplified by the motto "Run and find out," and being told that something was impossible merely spurred them on. "So the king is...unavailable."
"Not at all," Green replied easily. "Richard of Bordeaux is unavailable until further notice, yes. But I'm in bed with the king."
Realization crashed in on Rhisiart then, and he wondered how he'd missed it. "No!"
"I don't see how you can avoid it," Green murmured. "After all, you've been the king-off and on-for nigh on three years. And you can hardly tell anyone that you aren't. Most would assume that you were a tool in a plot by the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester to take over the country. They would certainly be executed for treason. There might even be a civil war. And I believe brassheads are constructed to be unable to kill humans."
Rhisiart began mentally chanting the chemical formula for rust-his version of swearing. For Green was right. After a few early accidents with brassheads, Baconians had decided that the wisest solution was simply to build their brains in such a way to make voluntarily killing a human impossible. For Rhisiart, built by a woman who knew the importance of court etiquette, even harming humans emotionally was difficult. The notion of being the cause of wholesale destruction was odious.
And yet the alternative was helping Green cover up the imprisonment and probable murder of Richard. Which would also lead to harming humans. Fewer humans, perhaps, but humans would still suffer. He could not choose between harming many humans and harming few humans; neither was an adequate solution.
"I can't," he said, straining to break free of Green's hold without causing damage to the man. "It is. Not. Possible."
Green sighed, looking regretful. "Truly? I was hoping that you would be able to choose between the two-after all, one does cause less damage than the other-but if you can't, you can't. I suppose I'll have to try something else." He studied Rhisiart for a moment. "I think that you should stop struggling , incidentally. You might cause me harm."
"I'm trying not to."
"But that doesn't matter," Green retorted. "It doesn't matter to your kind if you cause accidental harm or deliberate-you find causing an injury at all to be untenable. And you're heavier, and stronger than I am-not to mention having metal bones. You could hurt me easily." He smiled, looking rather like a snake hunting a baby bird. "And the magnitude of the harm doesn't matter, does it? It's all unbearable for brassheads. Now, I wonder how you'd react if I was to suffer some kind of damage, hmmm?" And with that, he struck Rhisiart full in the face hard enough to momentarily jar his jaw out of kilter.
"Look at that," Green said, holding up his bruised knuckles before Rhisiart's eyes. "You've injured me. You've injured me just by existing."
Of course Rhisiart knew it was nonsense-Green had injured himself quite deliberately-but his construction and his programming were too strong. For a fatal fraction of a second, his complex brain, confronted with disobedience to the most fundamental of programs, froze.
And in that instant, Green used Rhisiart's hands once more to open his torso, reached under the table beside the bed, and retrieved a snap-on circuit interrupter. A standard tool for any Baconian-it was necessarily to interrupt the flow of controlled lightning sometimes, even in brassheads-but Rhisiart had never imagined that something like could be used for anything but repair or routine maintenance.
Before Rhisiart could cry out, Green had clipped the circuit interrupter onto a small power generator in his chest.
"This will turn you off in twenty-five seconds," he said calmly. "I would prefer not to have to do this, but since you are so hampered by your programming, I must modify it. I imagine you'll be quite different when I turn you on again. The good thing is that you won't know it. And I'll see if I can do something about your reluctance to bed people while I'm at it. Won't that be nice?"
Rhisiart struggled to speak. Protest. Scream. Anything.
But before he could unlock the padlocks on his lips, his generator stopped.
And back where Rhisiart had been, Henry Green, humming happily, got off the bed, fetched his tool box from a dark corner of the room, and began making a few delicate adjustments to the clockwork in Rhisiart's brain.
***
III. Green
Good things of day begin to droop and drowse;
While night's black agents to their preys do rouse. -- Macbeth, Act III, Scene 2.
"You're certain that now it's under your control, and not the Duchess's?" William Bagot asked several days later in the private room of a pub neither cheap enough nor close enough to the palace to attract the attention of the royal guards. His thin face-that of a worried ape--was a mask of unease. "You're certain, Henry?"
"Have you no confidence in my abilities, Will?" Green replied, taking a large swig of barely adequate ale. "I'm no hapless wench who was taught by a renegade monk. I was trained for this. I've learned from the prognosticators and the revivifiers since I was old enough to toddle. My father had hopes of my gaining a mitre at the very least."
"That 'hapless wench' created a work of genius," Jack Bushy retorted. His face and voice were both forgettable, as if Nature had shrouded him with invisibility since birth. Perhaps to make up for this, he observed others with accuracy as sharp and deadly as a stiletto. "She crafted a brasshead capable of making decisions without hourly-or even daily-guidance from her. And it operated on its own for nigh unto three years. There are humans who haven't so much free will. Some on the Council that would say that such a machine was perilously close to being alive."
"Some of the king's council do already know of it," Green said calmly, running square-tipped fingers through his dark hair. "The fable that the brasshead told about being built by the Duchess is surely a lie. Oh, I don't say that a woman couldn't craft a brasshead; there have been some scholar-nuns with skills in that direction. But something like this built by a lass of nineteen? I can't credit that. I think it much likelier that the Duke hired a Baconian-or mayhap a team of them-who built the thing and programmed it to believe that it had been built by the Duchess. What answers could she give, if questioned? None. So they would be safe. Not to mention that there are a fair number of men who'd not believe that such a thing could be treason if a fair maid did it."
"I doubt that she's a maid, however fair," said Bushy. "Four children-and another on the way-don't argue virginity."
"I thought 'twas three," Bagot said, frowning.
"She had a fourth last March. A girl. Isabelle." Bushy shrugged at their startled expressions. "I think it best to be aware of what goes on at Pleshey. Even if the answer is 'Nothing much.'"
"And has anyone ever seen her crafting anything, Jack?" Green asked in a deceptively gentle tone. "Oh, I don't doubt that she took lessons from the Baconians her husband hired. But I suspect that she learned naught of Baconian science and everything about biology."
"And mayhap something about aphrodisiacs," snickered Bagot.
"In any case," Green continued smoothly, just as if Bagot hadn't spoken, "a mother of four--and soon to be five-children, not to mention a woman noted for her needlework and her charity, surely has enough to occupy herself without playing at science."
Bushy still looked dubious, but he dropped the argument. "So you've arranged for the king to be more amenable to our wishes," he said. "Well, that's helpful. But if the Duke of Gloucester knows about the brasshead--"
"No 'if' about it."
"Then he'll catch on quickly. He's not a stupid man by any means, and he'll not wink at this. You know his reputation. He can't be bribed. And that'll cause trouble."
Green flapped a dismissive hand at this. "His brothers are more contentious by far."
"Granted," Bushy said grimly, "But it's Gloucester that Lancaster and York listen to. York's a storm at sea in one person, and John of Gaunt...well, he's grown sterner and more bitter since his house was burned to the ground during Wat Tyler's Rising. Gloucester's the one who advises them. He's their peacemaker when they quarrel. And the commons trust him as if he was one of their own. There's not a hope in Hell that anyone would believe him to be an embezzler or a traitorous rebel. And how else could we get rid of him?"
Green smiled. "That is easy. Follow me."
After paying the innkeeper enough silver to buy his silence but not enough to guarantee that he'd boast of his , good luck, Green rode with his friends to a small manor some distance away. Dawn was approaching when they arrived.
Bushy frowned. "What sort of secret can you be keeping here? And how is it that the servants don't know?"
"You'll see," Green said, unable to keep a fraction of smugness from his voice. "On both accounts."
Once they'd stabled, rubbed down and fed their mounts-for no stableboys were around, and no decent horseman would simply abandon his steed to suffer overheat, hunger, thirst and resultant illness-Green led them to a side door nearly the laundry and unlocked it.
"A lovely manor," Bagot sniped at him. "Is there some reason we're entering by the same route that your washerwomen would use?"
"It's closer to our ultimate destination," Green said, removing from his belt a large, hand-held torch that ran on canned lightning. Pushing a button, he activated it.
"I thought that it might have something to do with attracting less attention from the servants," Bushy suggested.
"The servants notice nothing unless I command them to. And there's rarely reason for me to give such a command." Green motioned to the others. "Let me show you."
He led them from the laundry area down several halls to the doorway of the kitchen, where a handful of servants were preparing a very small meal-a meal for one person--in absolute silence. The air was redolent with the smell of wild duck, spiced and roasting on a spit, onion soup simmering, pike boiling in diluted ale, a sauce of white wine, cinnamon, pepper and onion cooking slowly over the fire, and wheaten pandemain baking in one of the ovens. The scent could have tempted a saint away from his prayers.
But Bagot and Bushy took no notice, though the smell was making their mouths water. They had eyes only for the servants-tall spindly sexless creatures with skeletal arms and legs of bronze, copper and brass, long, skull-like faces, three eyes (two in front and one in back) and no mouths.
"Gramercy," muttered Bagot. "Where did you get those monsters?"
"I built them," Green said with some asperity. "I grant you that they are not as artistic as Gloucester's creation, but they are, I fancy, more original."
"I see that you need not worry about the servants talking," Bushy said, staring very hard at the brassheads. "Yet even deaf beggars do find ways of making their wants known. Are you sure that these have not found such a way?'
Green sighed. "They have no minds, only instructions to perform certain tasks. You might as well ask if a table has begun walking of its own will, or if a chair has begun to pray."
Bagot was shivering. "They look...wrong. Like moving corpses made of metal."
Green gazed at him in puzzlement. "They look fine to me."
"Who are they cooking for?" Bushy asked, crossing his arms over his doublet. "Whoever it is, he eats well."
"Yes." Green gave him a thin smile. "They've been instructed about that. Would you like to see him? Just see him, mind, not talk to him."
Bushy nodded immediately. Bagot hesitated, then did so as well.
Green led them away from the kitchen to a door halfway up a tower. This led to an anteroom with one entire wall made of glass, showing a windowless cell with one flickering lamp of canned lightning set in the ceiling. There was one pallet with a psalter lying on it, a privy hole, a cross engraved into the wall and very little else. The walls had been painted a bright yellow, while the flagstones were a brilliant orange.
"A colorful dungeon," commented Bagot. "I can honestly say I've never seen the like of that."
"The colors catch the light," Green explained. "And they unnerve him--I know not why, but they do. You'll notice that he's staring directly at the one thing in the room that isn't bright and shiny." And he pointed to the naked young man-clearly a monk, for his head was tonsured--kneeling before the cross, apparently rapt in prayer.
"Why is he naked?" Bushy asked. "It isn't cold, so it can't be a form of torture."
"It embarrasses him," Green explained. "It's harder for him to be well-fed and kept naked than it would be to be starved and kept in rags. In the latter case, he could consider himself a martyr. In the former, he can only wonder why I want him in this state...which, believe me, torments him more than I ever could.
"I need to go talk to him. Stay here behind the mirror and watch. You may find it...entertaining." And, leaving his friends, Green unlocked and then entered the cell.
The monk did not even turn around.
"Leave off praying, Mafeo," Green said gently. "You can speak to Jesus at your leisure. I haven't spoken to you for several days and I'm quite longing to hear your voice again."
"Fra Mafeo."
"Now, now. We've been through that. Here in this place you're simply Mafeo of Venice. And you know what I want."
The young monk remained on his knees but half-turned away from the cross, so that he was gazing up at Green. His dark brown eyes were brilliant with fear. "I've told you. I can't. It's a sin."
"Then do penance for it," Green said with a shrug. "I'll even provide you with a confessor once it's done. I'm not an unreasonable man. But you are a gifted Baconian. You have certain skills in crafting alchemic potions , as well as unmatched knowledge of vegetable alkaloids. And I mean to have both abilities at my disposal."
"You are asking me," Mafeo said, clenching his fists and nearly shattering the wooden rosary in his left hand, "to poison half the nobles of the land and to kill the king's three uncles. To murder innocent people."
"No," said Green, leaning against the yellow stone wall and smiling down on Mafeo benevolently. "I am asking you to choose between murder and suicide. Since one is an unforgivable sin and would surely condemn your soul to everlasting damnation, I would think that the choice would be easy. "
Mafeo stood up and raised his fist. "I will never kill myself, no matter what you do to me!"
Green shook his head reprovingly. "Now I've told you not to do that." He opened the purse hanging from his belt, retrieved a red box and turned something on it.
Mafeo shrieked, convulsed and fell to the floor, shaking and clawing at his eyes.
Green sighed, put the box back in his purse and waited for Mafeo's convulsions to be over. When at last they ended, he spoke in the same patient, reasonable tone as before. "I've told you not to threaten me. I really don't like hurting you, you know."
"You do it often enough." The words were whispered and barely intelligible, for Mafeo's face was still pressed against the floor. "You will kill me that way eventually."
"How?" Green asked in bewilderment. "I've not made you ill. I've not broken any of your bones. I'm simply tricking your brain into thinking you're in agony....thanks to a small device implanted in your scalp. No harm's being done."
Mafeo looked up then, his expression one of utter disbelief. "This is not harm?"
"Of course not."
"And if I die of it, then you will consider that suicide?"
"You can't die of it," Green said impatiently. "Don't you think I tested the device before implanting it in you? When I speak of suicide, I speak of something you'd have to choose. Or rather, not choose. I'm afraid you're hurtling headlong toward that by refusing to do what I ask. Because if you don't agree...well. I'll have to implant the drive to do just that."
He gazed sadly at the young man. "And that would be...unpleasant for you. Tampering with the mind generally involves tampering with the memory. Memories are where humans live. Implanting the desire, even the need, to poison those men would be easy enough. Of course, I'd have to erase your faith, your ethics, your emotions, your belief that other people are human, even your awareness of your own existence." A pause. "Your soul, if you will."
Mafeo's eyes widened. "You could not-"
"Of course I could!" Green said, insulted. "I have."
"You've done this?"
"Oh, yes. Several times. That's how I know how it works." He studied the boy for a few minutes. "You'd effectively be a brasshead, though one with a human body. You'd keep your knowledge of potions and poisons-that's useful-but you wouldn't be aware that you knew such things. You would not be aware that you existed. You would function solely to obey my orders...whatever I required." His eyes raked the young man's body appreciatively before he spoke once more. "And if I ordered you to curse God, blaspheme against the Holy Ghost and kill yourself by setting yourself on fire, you would do it. With a smile, if I demanded it."
Mafeo curled in on himself-as if he were a hedgehog being threatened by a predator, Green thought. "Are you the Devil?"
"Only to my enemies. I'm a seraph to my friends. And I am, after all, giving you a choice. Sin, and redeem your soul afterward. Or lose your soul entirely. " He spread his hands wide. "It is, after all, your choice.
"And I'm afraid," he added as he rubbed his chin, "that I really must insist on a decision right now. I've enjoyed your company for some time. I've enjoyed trying to persuade you gently. But time runs ever through the hourglass, and I fear that our time together is at an end.
"Which will it be, Mafeo? Obedience...or erasure?" He favored the young monk with a tender, understanding smile. "Choose fast."
***
"Captured?" The brasshead glared at Green-seated near the window in the palace library--with extreme displeasure. "Who captured Fra Mafeo?"
"Your uncles," Green replied, fighting the impulse to say, 'The king's uncles.' The brasshead wouldn't understand why he was making the distinction; since the operation, it had been convinced that it was Richard of Bordeaux, second of his name, right-born ruler of England. And far more passionate in bed now, which Green could only count as an improvement, since he made the most use of it. Of course, it still behaved as if it were besotted with Anne of Bohemia-Richard had been, and still was, so mad about the woman that there had been no hope of having the brasshead grow indifferent to her over a matter of months or even years-but Green flattered himself that at least he'd ensured that it listened to him, Bagot and Bushy almost exclusively, and listened to Richard's uncles not at all.
"How?" The brasshead was angry-or, Green corrected himself, the brasshead believed that it should behave as if it were angry. "I know that none of your servants talked, Green."
"I don't know." And God's blood, how that galled! "I think that one of them-York, perhaps--was expecting trouble and sent some spies abroad in the land to find out what was wrong. I doubt if York thought to find a poisoner hired by the king for a royal feast, but..." He shrugged.
The brasshead scowled. "It would have worked, too."
"Yes," said Bushy, "but it didn't. Can we focus on what to do now that we are all well and truly in the soup?"
"We aren't," Bagot pointed out. "Not even you, Green. It's the king who gave the command to hire Brother Mafeo. Nobles have rebelled for less."
"Not his uncles, Will. Not those men, full of pride and probity."
"More righteous men than they have rebelled in the past," Bagot said, sounding even more fretful than usual. "And some the commons still do deem both heroes and holy men. Simon de Montfort is still regarded as a saint
in Evesham, an you remember."
"It does not matter." That was Robert Tresilian, the Lord Chief Justice, a clever chap with, in Green's opinion, the face of a very wise sheep. No great friend of theirs nor yet of the supposed king's, but useful in that he knew what side his bread was buttered on. "Those who undermine the state, be they princes, peers or paupers, commit capital treason."
"Then attaint them, arrest them, and condemn them," said the brasshead. "See that it is done, Tresilian, and right swiftly."
"That would be impolitic," said Tresilian quietly. "We must have better cause, or their supporters will arise in open mutiny. And as Bagot just said, the commons do love them well."
"Yes," said the brasshead, sounding as petulant as Richard himself ever had. "They do champion our cunning uncle of Lancaster, and the falsely compassionate York, and peevish Uncle Gloucester far above our royal self. 'Tis not just!"
"'Tis not so strange that the commons favor the land's ruler above all, Majesty," said Bushy, going over to one of the bookcases, studying all of the books for a moment and then retrieving a single one from the shelf. "You do wear the crown, but your uncles do bear the kingship."
"Ever since I was ten." The brasshead's voice was heavy with dislike. "What is that book you find of such moment during this our meeting?"
"English Chronicles , detailing deeds of your predecessors." He flipped a few pages. "Hmm. It seems that your royal grandfather hanged Roger Mortimer at Tyburn for his treachery in taking the queen as lover and imprisoning and slaying Edward's father-king and his uncle, the Earl of Kent. And he was not yet king when he did this."
"If he could do that, why can't I?" said the brasshead fretfully.
Bushy didn't answer. "Next comes a tale of the Battle of Poitiers, which your father won against great odds."
"Would that I could win against such odds! And what comes after that?"
Bushy squinted at the page. "The day and time that you were born, my king."
For the first time since the operation, the brasshead looked uncertain. "I have a birthday? When is it? I've asked my uncles, but they will not tell me."
"It says here that upon the third of April...er, 1365...was born Lord Richard, son of the Black Prince, at Bordeaux."
"But that's not right!" Bagot whispered to Green. "The king was born two years later-he's a year younger than the Duchess of Gloucester. And he wasn't born in April-he was christened then. He was born in January, on the Feast of the Epiphany. There were jests about his father getting an heir as a gift for Twelfth Night!"
"Will. You. Be. Silent?" Green hissed through gritted teeth. "I want to hear this!"
The brasshead, meanwhile seemed to be struggling with its numbers. "1365? Green...what year is it?"
"'Tis the year of Our Lord, thirteen hundred and eighty-seven."
"But...that means that I am twenty-one. Twenty-two, as of next year!"
"No, it doesn't," Bagot muttered. "'Tis October of 1387 already, and your birthday, which has a different date, has long since passed!"
The brasshead wasn't even listening. "And a man of twenty-two is in no need of Lord Protectors to guide him, is he? I shall reclaim my kingship this very day--"
It was, perhaps, fortuitous that a servant entered at that moment, telling the brasshead that his uncle, York, wished to speak to him.
The timing was too perfect. Green could not have asked for better.
"Yes," said the brasshead. "Send him in."
York entered, knelt and made his plea: that the king attend the Parliament in Westminster called by the Lord Protector and the peers of England.
"Strange that they called a Parliament without my knowledge or wish," the brasshead said. "But no matter. I shall be there straightaway. My friends, attend me!" And with that, the brasshead swept from the room with a grand flourish, followed by Tresilian and Bagot, with Green and Bushy bringing up the rear.
And thus, thought Green as he exited with the others, we do capture this realm without knights or navies, horses or hot-air balloons, men at arms or marks in the treasury. What need have we for such fripperies when we hold the true king's body and the false king's mind?
concluded here
II. Rhisiart
Bushy, Bagot and their complices, the caterpillars of the commonwealth. -- Richard II, Act II, Scene 3.
Rhisiart had been at the palace for three days before he met his human twin. And that was purely by accident.
He was studying alone in an alcove in the library, trying to puzzle out the history and agendas behind various treaties and trade agreements--a tedious job, in his opinion, but then he had been constructed to think like the king, so his reaction was hardly surprising---when the door opened. Rhisiart looked up from a chronicle about recent French history to see his double, a laughing young man with blond curls, stumble into the room. Fortunately, Rhisiart was out of view of the door, so his double hadn't spotted him yet...but the three men outside the door sounded both drunk and eager for fun, be that wrestling in a library or sporting in one of the palace's bedchambers. While he could evade one man, he wasn't certain he could avoid four.
And there was neither time to panic nor to hide, for the king was already shoving the door shut against his amused fellows.
"No, no," he was chuckling. " Jack, Will, leave me for a moment or two--and let me check that poem you quoted, Henry Green, else we shall be arguing about the words all night. And I will not thus waste joyful hours."
"We could help," retorted one of them--though whether the speaker was Green, Bushy or Bagot, Rhisiart had no idea. He had never heard any of them speak ere this, but the descriptions of the three that Maman had imprinted within his silica-and-clockwork brain had been distinctly unflattering. This man sounded as if he actually enjoyed the king's company.
"Thou wouldst not be of much help to me, Green," the king replied gently, even affectionately. "A distraction, rather, and one I can ill afford in the midst of an argument. Go now, and I shall see you again when it is time to dine."
This did not suit the king's friends well--Rhisiart could tell by the grumbling, which he could hear perfectly--but they went. The king then bolted the door, turned about to scan the shelves...and almost immediately espied Rhisiart standing in the alcove looking at him with considerable curiosity.
He did not expect the king to stare at him, cross himself and then ask, "Are you the Devil?"
Rhisiart shook his head. "No. The Duchess of Gloucester sent me here three days ago."
"The Duchess of--she succeeded?"
Rhisiart didn't think that was worthy of a reply. He was standing right in front of his human counterpart, wasn't he?
"I never thought she would succeed," the king murmured. "Not after so long. Even Henry said it was impossible to craft a machine that looked so...alive. That this could never be done, save in troubadour's songs and grandmothers' tales. The most Bacon e'er did was cause a head made of brass to speak."
"He designed a brass head that could speak," Rhisiart replied, correcting him automatically. Nevertheless, he saw almost as soon as he said it that correcting the king had been a mistake. Richard said nothing--but barely stifled displeasure suffused his face. Clearly he was one of those who had no love for machines that could think...especially those whose knowledge exceeded that of certain humans. He wanted a mechanical placeholder, no more.
In an attempt to gain a clue as to what the king wished him to do first, Rhisiart reviewed his last few statements and almost immediately found something worrisome. "What Henry said that building a gimmor like me was impossible? Bolingbroke?"
It would be logical. After all, Bolingbroke had piloted the balloon the day the king had commanded that he be built. He already knew what the king wanted.
But the king was shaking his head. "Oh, no! I haven't spoken to Bolingbroke about that request for years. No, I...may have mentioned to Sir Henry Green once or twice that possessing a device such as you--"
Gimmor, Rhisiart thought. I'm no unthinking invention, though you may wish I were.
"--would be helpful, even convenient. He's tried to craft a twin of mine for years, but never has he even approached anything like you. I cannot wait to tell him!" The king beamed at Rhisiart for a moment before remembering that he was smiling at a machine.
"You might not wish to do so," Rhisiart said, picking through his words as if the ground of the conversation was filled with pit traps bristling with pointed stakes. "Yes, I'm sure Henry Green can be trusted...but can you trust anyone who might overhear you telling him? Can you trust them to only think of using me the way that you would?"
The king frowned, and when he spoke, he sounded fretful, as if Rhisiart was spoiling all his fun. "I don't like not telling my friends the truth. It's dishonorable."
"I don't like not keeping secrets," Rhisiart retorted. "Especially when keeping the secret could prevent you or the Duchess of Gloucester from suffering harm."
Which still might happen to Her Grace. Her father had suffered from Edward III's displeasure in the last years of his life--some said that he'd poisoned Thomas Beauchamp, the Earl of Warwick, though it was far likelier that Warwick, who had been on the battlefield before falling ill, had caught a fatal dose of camp fever--and had died rather suddenly after making a will for no good reason. Gossip said that Edward III had had him hanged secretly for murder and treason; it would be all too easy for Edward III's grandson, or those around him, to decide that de Bohun's daughter had built Rhisiart for treacherous reasons. Rhisiart knew that he had no free will as humans understood it...but standing by and letting the king endanger himself or Rhisiart's creator ran counter to the instructions imprinted in his brain.
The king was looking distinctly unhappy. Rhisiart would have sighed if he'd been designed to draw breath. Richard didn't want an opponent--or an ally, for that matter. He wanted a useful tool who would replace him when a replacement was desired and fade into the background when the king wished for nothing of the sort.
All right. He would adapt. He was designed to do so, after all.
"What do you wish of me, Your Majesty?" he said in so humble and obedient a tone that Richard looked at him with sharp suspicion, as if such submission was--had to be--a vile trick.
The order, once given, was unexpected. "I wish for you to open yourself up. Show me that you're a man of clockwork and not of flesh or of hellfire. For never have I seen any clockwork man who looks so human as you. It is easier to believe you to be a secret twin, an illusion spawned of night air, or a sorcerer's demon sent to tempt me than it is to credit that you are mere machinery."
Removing his doublet and his shirt, Rhisiart stripped to the waist and lightly touched the hidden buttons on his chest that only he and Maman could unlock.
The doors in his torso sprang open, revealing an intricate interweaving of gleaming gears, cams, cogs, springs, nuts and silica.
"Such as I am made of, " he said quietly, "such I am. Are you satisfied, Your Majesty?"
The king blinked at his tone, and a moment later Rhisiart realized why. Though he'd spoken in a low and courteous voice, though he'd used the correct title...he had still spoken to Richard as one prince to another.
There was little he could do about this, however. He was, after all, designed to be the king when the king wasn't around.
So he did not apologize to Richard, or excuse himself, or explain. Richard knew what he'd asked for, after all.
And after an infinitesimal pause so small that a human wouldn't have noticed it, the king said, "Yes. I'm satisfied." He gestured at Rhisiart's torso. "Close yourself. Please." A shudder, not quite suppressed.
Rhisiart privately thanked his Creator that he was a brasshead and therefore couldn't be hurt by such a reaction. "Will there be anything else?"
"Yes. Stop behaving like a mirror of me." The king glared at him in a manner that Rhisiart thought was intended to be intimidating. "It is like seeing my own ghost moving and talking. It's...disturbing."
Rhisiart could have protested that he was as he had been created to be, but that seemed pointless. And, in any case, he was adaptable. He could change enough to calm the fears of the king and still blend in seamlessly.
"Yes, Your Majesty. I believe I can do that."
***
Ultimately, trying to adapt wasn't what betrayed him. Trying to be too much like the king did.
As the months passed, Rhisiart took the king's place at council meetings about half the time and socialized with his friends the other half--chiefly because it would look odd if he did not. And, reluctantly, he had to admit that he could see why Richard liked Bushy, Bagot and Green. The king was bookish but not shrewd, and he was surrounded by uncles who were very bright even for Plantagenets and who had more than a century of political experience between them. They were extremely capable men who had been helping to run the country for decades...and they had no idea that their very competence terrified their nephew who, when he was around them, felt he was eleven going on ten.
It might have been better if Gloucester, York and Gaunt had been kindly but incompetent, Rhisiart thought. Oh, it would have been bad for the country, certainly. But the king would have summoned his own strength to guide his people, and he would still have a loving if impractical family to rely on. Instead, Richard's uncles were good, decent, skillful politicians who had kept the country running smoothly for nigh on ten years...with very little help from Richard.
They made Richard feel unnecessary. And Rhisiart knew that his twin hated them for that.
Henry Green, John Bushy and William Bagot were anything but skillful politicians and they certainly weren't good. They were selfish, greedy, and ambitious beyond the dreams of fallen angels. And they possessed all the compassion of a pack of jackals.
And that, Rhisiart had to admit, was part of what made them fascinating. They were, simply and unabashedly, themselves, which lent them a peculiar charm. Moreover, they genuinely seemed to like the king--not that this stopped any of them from trying to acquire as much land and wealth and power as they could.
The king didn't appear to mind that. In fact, he seemed to approve of their honesty. This puzzled Rhisiart for a time until he deduced that the king believed that everyone was seeking to gouge wealth and power from him...no matter how virtuous they appeared. Then it began to make sense. If you believed that every man and all but one woman were trying to use you, you might actually appreciate who made no bones about doing so. And you would know that they weren't hypocrites or liars.
It was a very odd way of thinking, and--as nearly as Rhisiart could define the word--unpleasant. Trying to think this way gave him the sensation of two ungreased gears rubbing together.
It also put him in a difficult position. For even though the king was the one who had commanded him into existence, the fact that the wife of the Duke of Gloucester had created a perfect double who could take the king's place at any time made the king sorely uneasy.
"Why did she make you?" Richard had asked him over and over again "Did the duke command it?"
"No," Rhisiart had replied on a hundred different occasions. "You did, my liege. Don't you remember?"
"Yes, of course I did!" Richard snapped. "But--"
But I wasn't supposed to be this good, Rhisiart thought. I was a sort of fantasy you had--a lovely dream about how wonderful it would be to have someone or something taking care of the reigning while you had fun. Having something take your place in your life and on your throne and not being a pin different from you in looks or behavior isn't what you had in mind. I think that you'd much rather that I tried to be like you and failed miserably. I'd only be a joke then. You wouldn't have to look at a face exactly like your own and wonder when I would take your place permanently.
He'd suggested--more than once--that the king send him home to Pleshey--or even to another of the king's castles. In vain. The king had merely muttered something about keeping his friends close and his enemies closer.
A wise decision, my liege. Now if only you could tell who your enemies truly are.
It was through Anne of Bohemia, his--well, sister-in-law seemed to be the best term--that he learned of the king's extreme distrust of Gloucester. On the king's orders, he had shunned Anne as best he could, but when he met her by chance in a hallway near a door leading to the gardens, he realized immediately that this was one situation in which he could not obey the king unless he hurt the person that the king loved best.
Not knowing what else to do, he had asked Anne out into the garden. From the way her face lit up, this was obviously a good choice.
They had spoken lightly of things of no importance--at least, she had, and he'd tried to answer plausibly. Oddly, the more serious he became, the more she laughed. He was fairly certain that this was not how it normally went with humans.
But then, as he was puzzling over this, Anne turned to him. "Richard, I received an invitation to Pleshey today."
This was a surprise, as Rhisiart knew that the Duke of Gloucester would be in London for some time. "From the Duke?" he asked uncertainly.
A frown at this. "No. From your Aunt Nell."
Not my aunt. My mother.
He did not, of course, say that out loud. Instead, he asked, "Do you want to go?"
Anne nodded. "Very much. Though...I know you are not pleased with Thomas of Woodstock at the moment."
Rhisiart, feeling as if his brain were seizing up from overheating, rubbed his temples. He had heard something about this from Richard's friends, though he didn't understand it and didn't pretend to. Much of it had to do with Thomas being too plain-spoken, too practical and too austere to be real. He was the least flattering of Richard's uncles, and the one most likely to call him to account when he made poor decisions, but this was hardly proof of unreality. Human logic, Rhisiart decided, is very strange.
He did know that Richard would not be pleased by his granting Anne permission to visit with the wife of the man Richard trusted least in the world. For that matter, Richard wouldn't be pleased that Rhisiart had spoken to Anne at all. Refusing permission would be the most rational thing to do, and the most likely to please the king.
Rhisiart opened his mouth to do just that...and suffered a glitch in his programming. Or perhaps it was his programming, since he had noted in the past that Richard, who found stubbornness fairly easy, melted in the presence of his brown-haired, brown-eyed queen.
"Of course you must go," he said gently. "I would not wish to separate you from a close friend. Friends are important. But...the palace will be darker for your not being here. You will be missed."
"You could come and visit as well."
Rhisiart tried to formulate a plan that would allow him to slip away from the palace and end up in Pleshey as if by accident. He couldn't do it. "I don't think that will be possible," he said with very real regret. "But...I might send a letter to the Duchess with you. It has been a long time since we have spoken"--since the day I was born, in fact. "I would not wish us to be strangers. As you say, she is my aunt. My troubles with my uncles have naught to do with her."
He did not expect Anne to kiss him soundly for this, or to break away from him with a merry but bewildered expression. "Why, you kiss as if you'd never kissed anyone before!"
He hadn't. But there was no way to tell her this without making the king sound like an idiot, a liar or both. "Perhaps," he said in a slightly hesitant voice, "I simply need more practice."
He didn't expect to end up in bed.
He didn't expect friction--which was rather bad, at least for brassheads--to cause a human such pleasure.
And he certainly didn't expect Anne to be quite so...inventive.
He was convinced that the king would order him taken apart and melted down into slag after that. But seemingly the king never heard about that particular night, for the only thing that he complained of was Anne going off to Woodstock.
"I told you to stay away from her, and instead you give her permission to go to the house of mine enemies? What manner of monster are you?"
"She took me for you," Rhisiart retorted. "Should I have shunned her and treated her like the dust beneath my feet, mayhap?"
"No! Of course not!"
"Then," Rhisiart said, his eyes of crystal and mirrors meeting the king's organic ones, "why are you angry, when all I did was speak her fair and try to make her happy?"
The king had scowled, but he'd dropped the subject. And Rhisiart had tried to convince himself that there was nothing to be concerned about. After all, he'd behaved as he was designed to. As the king would behave.
He'd managed to send off a letter, at any rate, and had received a missive back that had sounded poorly written, absymally dull and in no way like a code. Typical of his creator to craft a code that wasn't so much fiendishly challenging (which would have attracted the attention of any efficient intelligencer) as it was ordinary and unnoticeable.
So now he had a way of communicating with the world outside the royal court. And everyone at the court-except for Richard, of course-had accepted him in his role of king. And, despite Richard's distrust of brassheads that could play the part of humans convincingly, all seemed to be going smoothly.
Then the king began to be absent for longer and longer periods. Rhisiart thought little of this; it was hardly the first time that the king had played the truant. Perhaps he had found a pastime or a mistress that was distracting him from court life. If it also proved to be a distraction from distrust and suspicion, so much the better.
One warm night in June, two and a half years after his own creation and six months after the king had begun sporting elsewhere, Rhisiart learned how wrong he was.
***
He was in bed that night with Henry Green, chiefly because Green seemed to expect it and the true king wouldn't refuse. Bagot and Bushy were infrequent visitors to the king's (and therefore to Rhisiart's) bed; Green, however, was a regular. Rhisiart did his best to accommodate the three, singly and in groups, though it did seem like a lot of sucking, rubbing and prodding for an extraordinarily messy result.
Green, who was murmuring unintelligible syllables, was pressed against him naked and, according to the receptors in Rhisiart's skin, damp and sweaty. His hands were everywhere-stroking, pinching and caressing.
Rhisiart responded enthusiastically...while mentally calculating that it would take approximately 6.174 minutes before Green came and 31.025 minutes before Green rolled over and went to sleep. He knew Green by now. Green was as predictable as Rhisiart's own clockwork.
So he was not expecting it when Green's hands stilled on his chest for a moment, then covered Rhisiart's hands with his own and swiftly guided them over certain points, pausing only to press one finger against each point before moving on.
Before Rhisiart could shout, "Stop!," his chest sprang open.
Green gazed at the clockwork and silica with the smile of a madman who was dreaming. "Ohhhhh. Beautiful. You truly are a work of art...even if you can't appreciate my touch as a human would."
Rhisiart was in no mood for bletherings. "What are you going to do with me?" he asked, proud that he'd said "with" and not "to." And then a second question. "And how did you know how to open me up?"
Green gave Rhisiart his best and most enthusiastic smile. "Oh, it's amazing what people can remember when they need to and they're given sufficient encouragement."
"Richard," Rhisiart said, feeling as disoriented as if he'd tried to calculate the square root of negative one.
If possible, the smile grew a little broader. "Of course."
"You killed the king?"
Green tut-tutted over this. "I thought that machine logic was supposed to be better than this. I wouldn't dream of spilling royal blood. There's a curse on such a thing, and I have no desire to lead an accursed life. No, he's very much alive...though he wishes with all his heart that he wasn't. He finds where he's staying to be a bit onerous. I have, of course, explained to him that I really cannot do without his company for one minute, even though I know that the food served where he is staying is not truly to his taste--"
"You're starving him."
Green narrowed his eyes. "You were made too like him. You belabor the obvious. How disappointing."
"I presume," Rhisiart said, as a malfunctioning phonogram in his speech box caused his voice to tremble, "that you're going to erase my programming."
"Of course not!" Green said, horrified. "Destroying a masterpiece like yourself would be criminal. The very angels would weep over such an offense."
"And yet you do not think that the angels will weep over the king?"
Green shrugged, indifferent, then-reluctantly--closed Rhisiart's torso. "I doubt it. There are plenty of humans in the world. They are expendable and easily replaced. You, on the other hand, are unique."
It was probably a stupid question, but Rhisiart couldn't refrain asking it. "How long have you known?"
"Not long," Green replied, scrutinizing his face. "Oh, I knew that Richard had a double from the first moment that you and I bedded. You lack his enthusiasm for sex, despite being willing enough, in your indifferent way. And you don't smell like him. But that you were a brasshead...no, that's quite recent information. Richard was most reluctant to part with that secret." He smiled, or at least bared his teeth. "A limbeck of siren's tears persuaded him."
"There are no sirens--"
"Such literalism does not become you. Next you will tell me the plant called Old Man's Trousers is not made of linen and wooden buttons."
"There is no such plant as siren's tears, either."
Green sighed. "Siren's tears is a mixture of distillations from various blossoms, herbs, lichen and roots-and I hope you won't expect me to burble the recipe into your auditory receptors. I recalled a legend that said that that the song of sirens could drive a man to madness, but the touch of one of their tears could dissolve his will. Once I heard that story, I had to see if it was possible."
Yes. Rhisiart was sure that was the case. Baconians and revivifiers alike were exemplified by the motto "Run and find out," and being told that something was impossible merely spurred them on. "So the king is...unavailable."
"Not at all," Green replied easily. "Richard of Bordeaux is unavailable until further notice, yes. But I'm in bed with the king."
Realization crashed in on Rhisiart then, and he wondered how he'd missed it. "No!"
"I don't see how you can avoid it," Green murmured. "After all, you've been the king-off and on-for nigh on three years. And you can hardly tell anyone that you aren't. Most would assume that you were a tool in a plot by the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester to take over the country. They would certainly be executed for treason. There might even be a civil war. And I believe brassheads are constructed to be unable to kill humans."
Rhisiart began mentally chanting the chemical formula for rust-his version of swearing. For Green was right. After a few early accidents with brassheads, Baconians had decided that the wisest solution was simply to build their brains in such a way to make voluntarily killing a human impossible. For Rhisiart, built by a woman who knew the importance of court etiquette, even harming humans emotionally was difficult. The notion of being the cause of wholesale destruction was odious.
And yet the alternative was helping Green cover up the imprisonment and probable murder of Richard. Which would also lead to harming humans. Fewer humans, perhaps, but humans would still suffer. He could not choose between harming many humans and harming few humans; neither was an adequate solution.
"I can't," he said, straining to break free of Green's hold without causing damage to the man. "It is. Not. Possible."
Green sighed, looking regretful. "Truly? I was hoping that you would be able to choose between the two-after all, one does cause less damage than the other-but if you can't, you can't. I suppose I'll have to try something else." He studied Rhisiart for a moment. "I think that you should stop struggling , incidentally. You might cause me harm."
"I'm trying not to."
"But that doesn't matter," Green retorted. "It doesn't matter to your kind if you cause accidental harm or deliberate-you find causing an injury at all to be untenable. And you're heavier, and stronger than I am-not to mention having metal bones. You could hurt me easily." He smiled, looking rather like a snake hunting a baby bird. "And the magnitude of the harm doesn't matter, does it? It's all unbearable for brassheads. Now, I wonder how you'd react if I was to suffer some kind of damage, hmmm?" And with that, he struck Rhisiart full in the face hard enough to momentarily jar his jaw out of kilter.
"Look at that," Green said, holding up his bruised knuckles before Rhisiart's eyes. "You've injured me. You've injured me just by existing."
Of course Rhisiart knew it was nonsense-Green had injured himself quite deliberately-but his construction and his programming were too strong. For a fatal fraction of a second, his complex brain, confronted with disobedience to the most fundamental of programs, froze.
And in that instant, Green used Rhisiart's hands once more to open his torso, reached under the table beside the bed, and retrieved a snap-on circuit interrupter. A standard tool for any Baconian-it was necessarily to interrupt the flow of controlled lightning sometimes, even in brassheads-but Rhisiart had never imagined that something like could be used for anything but repair or routine maintenance.
Before Rhisiart could cry out, Green had clipped the circuit interrupter onto a small power generator in his chest.
"This will turn you off in twenty-five seconds," he said calmly. "I would prefer not to have to do this, but since you are so hampered by your programming, I must modify it. I imagine you'll be quite different when I turn you on again. The good thing is that you won't know it. And I'll see if I can do something about your reluctance to bed people while I'm at it. Won't that be nice?"
Rhisiart struggled to speak. Protest. Scream. Anything.
But before he could unlock the padlocks on his lips, his generator stopped.
And back where Rhisiart had been, Henry Green, humming happily, got off the bed, fetched his tool box from a dark corner of the room, and began making a few delicate adjustments to the clockwork in Rhisiart's brain.
***
III. Green
Good things of day begin to droop and drowse;
While night's black agents to their preys do rouse. -- Macbeth, Act III, Scene 2.
"You're certain that now it's under your control, and not the Duchess's?" William Bagot asked several days later in the private room of a pub neither cheap enough nor close enough to the palace to attract the attention of the royal guards. His thin face-that of a worried ape--was a mask of unease. "You're certain, Henry?"
"Have you no confidence in my abilities, Will?" Green replied, taking a large swig of barely adequate ale. "I'm no hapless wench who was taught by a renegade monk. I was trained for this. I've learned from the prognosticators and the revivifiers since I was old enough to toddle. My father had hopes of my gaining a mitre at the very least."
"That 'hapless wench' created a work of genius," Jack Bushy retorted. His face and voice were both forgettable, as if Nature had shrouded him with invisibility since birth. Perhaps to make up for this, he observed others with accuracy as sharp and deadly as a stiletto. "She crafted a brasshead capable of making decisions without hourly-or even daily-guidance from her. And it operated on its own for nigh unto three years. There are humans who haven't so much free will. Some on the Council that would say that such a machine was perilously close to being alive."
"Some of the king's council do already know of it," Green said calmly, running square-tipped fingers through his dark hair. "The fable that the brasshead told about being built by the Duchess is surely a lie. Oh, I don't say that a woman couldn't craft a brasshead; there have been some scholar-nuns with skills in that direction. But something like this built by a lass of nineteen? I can't credit that. I think it much likelier that the Duke hired a Baconian-or mayhap a team of them-who built the thing and programmed it to believe that it had been built by the Duchess. What answers could she give, if questioned? None. So they would be safe. Not to mention that there are a fair number of men who'd not believe that such a thing could be treason if a fair maid did it."
"I doubt that she's a maid, however fair," said Bushy. "Four children-and another on the way-don't argue virginity."
"I thought 'twas three," Bagot said, frowning.
"She had a fourth last March. A girl. Isabelle." Bushy shrugged at their startled expressions. "I think it best to be aware of what goes on at Pleshey. Even if the answer is 'Nothing much.'"
"And has anyone ever seen her crafting anything, Jack?" Green asked in a deceptively gentle tone. "Oh, I don't doubt that she took lessons from the Baconians her husband hired. But I suspect that she learned naught of Baconian science and everything about biology."
"And mayhap something about aphrodisiacs," snickered Bagot.
"In any case," Green continued smoothly, just as if Bagot hadn't spoken, "a mother of four--and soon to be five-children, not to mention a woman noted for her needlework and her charity, surely has enough to occupy herself without playing at science."
Bushy still looked dubious, but he dropped the argument. "So you've arranged for the king to be more amenable to our wishes," he said. "Well, that's helpful. But if the Duke of Gloucester knows about the brasshead--"
"No 'if' about it."
"Then he'll catch on quickly. He's not a stupid man by any means, and he'll not wink at this. You know his reputation. He can't be bribed. And that'll cause trouble."
Green flapped a dismissive hand at this. "His brothers are more contentious by far."
"Granted," Bushy said grimly, "But it's Gloucester that Lancaster and York listen to. York's a storm at sea in one person, and John of Gaunt...well, he's grown sterner and more bitter since his house was burned to the ground during Wat Tyler's Rising. Gloucester's the one who advises them. He's their peacemaker when they quarrel. And the commons trust him as if he was one of their own. There's not a hope in Hell that anyone would believe him to be an embezzler or a traitorous rebel. And how else could we get rid of him?"
Green smiled. "That is easy. Follow me."
After paying the innkeeper enough silver to buy his silence but not enough to guarantee that he'd boast of his , good luck, Green rode with his friends to a small manor some distance away. Dawn was approaching when they arrived.
Bushy frowned. "What sort of secret can you be keeping here? And how is it that the servants don't know?"
"You'll see," Green said, unable to keep a fraction of smugness from his voice. "On both accounts."
Once they'd stabled, rubbed down and fed their mounts-for no stableboys were around, and no decent horseman would simply abandon his steed to suffer overheat, hunger, thirst and resultant illness-Green led them to a side door nearly the laundry and unlocked it.
"A lovely manor," Bagot sniped at him. "Is there some reason we're entering by the same route that your washerwomen would use?"
"It's closer to our ultimate destination," Green said, removing from his belt a large, hand-held torch that ran on canned lightning. Pushing a button, he activated it.
"I thought that it might have something to do with attracting less attention from the servants," Bushy suggested.
"The servants notice nothing unless I command them to. And there's rarely reason for me to give such a command." Green motioned to the others. "Let me show you."
He led them from the laundry area down several halls to the doorway of the kitchen, where a handful of servants were preparing a very small meal-a meal for one person--in absolute silence. The air was redolent with the smell of wild duck, spiced and roasting on a spit, onion soup simmering, pike boiling in diluted ale, a sauce of white wine, cinnamon, pepper and onion cooking slowly over the fire, and wheaten pandemain baking in one of the ovens. The scent could have tempted a saint away from his prayers.
But Bagot and Bushy took no notice, though the smell was making their mouths water. They had eyes only for the servants-tall spindly sexless creatures with skeletal arms and legs of bronze, copper and brass, long, skull-like faces, three eyes (two in front and one in back) and no mouths.
"Gramercy," muttered Bagot. "Where did you get those monsters?"
"I built them," Green said with some asperity. "I grant you that they are not as artistic as Gloucester's creation, but they are, I fancy, more original."
"I see that you need not worry about the servants talking," Bushy said, staring very hard at the brassheads. "Yet even deaf beggars do find ways of making their wants known. Are you sure that these have not found such a way?'
Green sighed. "They have no minds, only instructions to perform certain tasks. You might as well ask if a table has begun walking of its own will, or if a chair has begun to pray."
Bagot was shivering. "They look...wrong. Like moving corpses made of metal."
Green gazed at him in puzzlement. "They look fine to me."
"Who are they cooking for?" Bushy asked, crossing his arms over his doublet. "Whoever it is, he eats well."
"Yes." Green gave him a thin smile. "They've been instructed about that. Would you like to see him? Just see him, mind, not talk to him."
Bushy nodded immediately. Bagot hesitated, then did so as well.
Green led them away from the kitchen to a door halfway up a tower. This led to an anteroom with one entire wall made of glass, showing a windowless cell with one flickering lamp of canned lightning set in the ceiling. There was one pallet with a psalter lying on it, a privy hole, a cross engraved into the wall and very little else. The walls had been painted a bright yellow, while the flagstones were a brilliant orange.
"A colorful dungeon," commented Bagot. "I can honestly say I've never seen the like of that."
"The colors catch the light," Green explained. "And they unnerve him--I know not why, but they do. You'll notice that he's staring directly at the one thing in the room that isn't bright and shiny." And he pointed to the naked young man-clearly a monk, for his head was tonsured--kneeling before the cross, apparently rapt in prayer.
"Why is he naked?" Bushy asked. "It isn't cold, so it can't be a form of torture."
"It embarrasses him," Green explained. "It's harder for him to be well-fed and kept naked than it would be to be starved and kept in rags. In the latter case, he could consider himself a martyr. In the former, he can only wonder why I want him in this state...which, believe me, torments him more than I ever could.
"I need to go talk to him. Stay here behind the mirror and watch. You may find it...entertaining." And, leaving his friends, Green unlocked and then entered the cell.
The monk did not even turn around.
"Leave off praying, Mafeo," Green said gently. "You can speak to Jesus at your leisure. I haven't spoken to you for several days and I'm quite longing to hear your voice again."
"Fra Mafeo."
"Now, now. We've been through that. Here in this place you're simply Mafeo of Venice. And you know what I want."
The young monk remained on his knees but half-turned away from the cross, so that he was gazing up at Green. His dark brown eyes were brilliant with fear. "I've told you. I can't. It's a sin."
"Then do penance for it," Green said with a shrug. "I'll even provide you with a confessor once it's done. I'm not an unreasonable man. But you are a gifted Baconian. You have certain skills in crafting alchemic potions , as well as unmatched knowledge of vegetable alkaloids. And I mean to have both abilities at my disposal."
"You are asking me," Mafeo said, clenching his fists and nearly shattering the wooden rosary in his left hand, "to poison half the nobles of the land and to kill the king's three uncles. To murder innocent people."
"No," said Green, leaning against the yellow stone wall and smiling down on Mafeo benevolently. "I am asking you to choose between murder and suicide. Since one is an unforgivable sin and would surely condemn your soul to everlasting damnation, I would think that the choice would be easy. "
Mafeo stood up and raised his fist. "I will never kill myself, no matter what you do to me!"
Green shook his head reprovingly. "Now I've told you not to do that." He opened the purse hanging from his belt, retrieved a red box and turned something on it.
Mafeo shrieked, convulsed and fell to the floor, shaking and clawing at his eyes.
Green sighed, put the box back in his purse and waited for Mafeo's convulsions to be over. When at last they ended, he spoke in the same patient, reasonable tone as before. "I've told you not to threaten me. I really don't like hurting you, you know."
"You do it often enough." The words were whispered and barely intelligible, for Mafeo's face was still pressed against the floor. "You will kill me that way eventually."
"How?" Green asked in bewilderment. "I've not made you ill. I've not broken any of your bones. I'm simply tricking your brain into thinking you're in agony....thanks to a small device implanted in your scalp. No harm's being done."
Mafeo looked up then, his expression one of utter disbelief. "This is not harm?"
"Of course not."
"And if I die of it, then you will consider that suicide?"
"You can't die of it," Green said impatiently. "Don't you think I tested the device before implanting it in you? When I speak of suicide, I speak of something you'd have to choose. Or rather, not choose. I'm afraid you're hurtling headlong toward that by refusing to do what I ask. Because if you don't agree...well. I'll have to implant the drive to do just that."
He gazed sadly at the young man. "And that would be...unpleasant for you. Tampering with the mind generally involves tampering with the memory. Memories are where humans live. Implanting the desire, even the need, to poison those men would be easy enough. Of course, I'd have to erase your faith, your ethics, your emotions, your belief that other people are human, even your awareness of your own existence." A pause. "Your soul, if you will."
Mafeo's eyes widened. "You could not-"
"Of course I could!" Green said, insulted. "I have."
"You've done this?"
"Oh, yes. Several times. That's how I know how it works." He studied the boy for a few minutes. "You'd effectively be a brasshead, though one with a human body. You'd keep your knowledge of potions and poisons-that's useful-but you wouldn't be aware that you knew such things. You would not be aware that you existed. You would function solely to obey my orders...whatever I required." His eyes raked the young man's body appreciatively before he spoke once more. "And if I ordered you to curse God, blaspheme against the Holy Ghost and kill yourself by setting yourself on fire, you would do it. With a smile, if I demanded it."
Mafeo curled in on himself-as if he were a hedgehog being threatened by a predator, Green thought. "Are you the Devil?"
"Only to my enemies. I'm a seraph to my friends. And I am, after all, giving you a choice. Sin, and redeem your soul afterward. Or lose your soul entirely. " He spread his hands wide. "It is, after all, your choice.
"And I'm afraid," he added as he rubbed his chin, "that I really must insist on a decision right now. I've enjoyed your company for some time. I've enjoyed trying to persuade you gently. But time runs ever through the hourglass, and I fear that our time together is at an end.
"Which will it be, Mafeo? Obedience...or erasure?" He favored the young monk with a tender, understanding smile. "Choose fast."
***
"Captured?" The brasshead glared at Green-seated near the window in the palace library--with extreme displeasure. "Who captured Fra Mafeo?"
"Your uncles," Green replied, fighting the impulse to say, 'The king's uncles.' The brasshead wouldn't understand why he was making the distinction; since the operation, it had been convinced that it was Richard of Bordeaux, second of his name, right-born ruler of England. And far more passionate in bed now, which Green could only count as an improvement, since he made the most use of it. Of course, it still behaved as if it were besotted with Anne of Bohemia-Richard had been, and still was, so mad about the woman that there had been no hope of having the brasshead grow indifferent to her over a matter of months or even years-but Green flattered himself that at least he'd ensured that it listened to him, Bagot and Bushy almost exclusively, and listened to Richard's uncles not at all.
"How?" The brasshead was angry-or, Green corrected himself, the brasshead believed that it should behave as if it were angry. "I know that none of your servants talked, Green."
"I don't know." And God's blood, how that galled! "I think that one of them-York, perhaps--was expecting trouble and sent some spies abroad in the land to find out what was wrong. I doubt if York thought to find a poisoner hired by the king for a royal feast, but..." He shrugged.
The brasshead scowled. "It would have worked, too."
"Yes," said Bushy, "but it didn't. Can we focus on what to do now that we are all well and truly in the soup?"
"We aren't," Bagot pointed out. "Not even you, Green. It's the king who gave the command to hire Brother Mafeo. Nobles have rebelled for less."
"Not his uncles, Will. Not those men, full of pride and probity."
"More righteous men than they have rebelled in the past," Bagot said, sounding even more fretful than usual. "And some the commons still do deem both heroes and holy men. Simon de Montfort is still regarded as a saint
in Evesham, an you remember."
"It does not matter." That was Robert Tresilian, the Lord Chief Justice, a clever chap with, in Green's opinion, the face of a very wise sheep. No great friend of theirs nor yet of the supposed king's, but useful in that he knew what side his bread was buttered on. "Those who undermine the state, be they princes, peers or paupers, commit capital treason."
"Then attaint them, arrest them, and condemn them," said the brasshead. "See that it is done, Tresilian, and right swiftly."
"That would be impolitic," said Tresilian quietly. "We must have better cause, or their supporters will arise in open mutiny. And as Bagot just said, the commons do love them well."
"Yes," said the brasshead, sounding as petulant as Richard himself ever had. "They do champion our cunning uncle of Lancaster, and the falsely compassionate York, and peevish Uncle Gloucester far above our royal self. 'Tis not just!"
"'Tis not so strange that the commons favor the land's ruler above all, Majesty," said Bushy, going over to one of the bookcases, studying all of the books for a moment and then retrieving a single one from the shelf. "You do wear the crown, but your uncles do bear the kingship."
"Ever since I was ten." The brasshead's voice was heavy with dislike. "What is that book you find of such moment during this our meeting?"
"English Chronicles , detailing deeds of your predecessors." He flipped a few pages. "Hmm. It seems that your royal grandfather hanged Roger Mortimer at Tyburn for his treachery in taking the queen as lover and imprisoning and slaying Edward's father-king and his uncle, the Earl of Kent. And he was not yet king when he did this."
"If he could do that, why can't I?" said the brasshead fretfully.
Bushy didn't answer. "Next comes a tale of the Battle of Poitiers, which your father won against great odds."
"Would that I could win against such odds! And what comes after that?"
Bushy squinted at the page. "The day and time that you were born, my king."
For the first time since the operation, the brasshead looked uncertain. "I have a birthday? When is it? I've asked my uncles, but they will not tell me."
"It says here that upon the third of April...er, 1365...was born Lord Richard, son of the Black Prince, at Bordeaux."
"But that's not right!" Bagot whispered to Green. "The king was born two years later-he's a year younger than the Duchess of Gloucester. And he wasn't born in April-he was christened then. He was born in January, on the Feast of the Epiphany. There were jests about his father getting an heir as a gift for Twelfth Night!"
"Will. You. Be. Silent?" Green hissed through gritted teeth. "I want to hear this!"
The brasshead, meanwhile seemed to be struggling with its numbers. "1365? Green...what year is it?"
"'Tis the year of Our Lord, thirteen hundred and eighty-seven."
"But...that means that I am twenty-one. Twenty-two, as of next year!"
"No, it doesn't," Bagot muttered. "'Tis October of 1387 already, and your birthday, which has a different date, has long since passed!"
The brasshead wasn't even listening. "And a man of twenty-two is in no need of Lord Protectors to guide him, is he? I shall reclaim my kingship this very day--"
It was, perhaps, fortuitous that a servant entered at that moment, telling the brasshead that his uncle, York, wished to speak to him.
The timing was too perfect. Green could not have asked for better.
"Yes," said the brasshead. "Send him in."
York entered, knelt and made his plea: that the king attend the Parliament in Westminster called by the Lord Protector and the peers of England.
"Strange that they called a Parliament without my knowledge or wish," the brasshead said. "But no matter. I shall be there straightaway. My friends, attend me!" And with that, the brasshead swept from the room with a grand flourish, followed by Tresilian and Bagot, with Green and Bushy bringing up the rear.
And thus, thought Green as he exited with the others, we do capture this realm without knights or navies, horses or hot-air balloons, men at arms or marks in the treasury. What need have we for such fripperies when we hold the true king's body and the false king's mind?
concluded here