‘Yep. Says so here. Says the royal family’s goin’ on a tour. Foreign parts. The Queen and the Duke of Eyes.’
This was another thing that annoyed her. Foreign parts. Other places. Where? Why had she never thought of going? Why had she never met anyone who had gone? And who was the Duke of Eyes? His picture was not in any of the royal portraits she had hung in the office. Queen, King, the Jack of Japes, Lady Ten. No Duke at all.
The buzzer on the indigo washer went off with an ear-shattering shriek. Marianne shut it off hastily and opened the door. The two parrots emerged, damp and disheveled, to perch on the dryer door and complain to her. There seemed to be nothing left of the set of encyclopedias.
‘Thought that’d happen,’ the old man said, rising to help her get the trunk into the machine. ‘That’s the trouble with things in writin’. Sometimes you take one little word away and the whole thing falls apart. Ever notice that?’
Marianne thrust the trunk into the machine, set the dials, and turned purposefully toward the parrots. They, meantime, had flown up to one of the light fixtures and regarded her with disfavor from that lofty height.
‘Quite dry enough, thank you,’ one of them offered. ‘As is my friend.’
‘You’re dripping all over the floor,’ Marianne observed.
‘As would you,’ said the other parrot, regarding her warily, ’if you had been forcibly immersed in that monster. I want to say something but can’t remember what.’
‘That’s what the laundering was for,’ the first parrot reminded him. ‘Language.’
‘I’d forgotten,’ said the second. ‘Isn’t that astonishing. ’Well, though I seem to be unable to remember the proper words, whatever vile and insulting language best suits the occasion, Miss, consider it said.’ He began to preen himself with ostentatious fervor as Marianne and the old man watched, eyes wide.
‘Thought I’d walk over and see the palace,’ the old man observed, ‘while that washes.’
‘Feel free to do so,’ she remarked absently. ‘I’ll put it in the dryer for you.’ Silver had come into the room and appeared to be in silent conversation with the parrots, a colloquy of gesture, paw taps, wing shrugs, head twistings. As the old man left, the pet shop woman came to fetch her birds, a cage in either hand, and as she left a guardsman entered, his shiny little eyes peering into every corner of the room.
‘Name?’ he asked, flipping open a notebook.
‘The Clean Machine,’ she said, mouth open in astonishment. There had never been a guardsman in the laundry before.
‘No, lovey, your name.’
‘Marianne,’ she replied. ‘Just Marianne.’
‘Well, Just Marianne, this is a routine procedure. Each day we investigate all premises within three blocks of the palace. Lookin’ for anarchists and revolutionaries, so they tell us, not that we’ve ever found any. Found a nest of revisionists once, but nobody cared.’
‘What were they revising?’ she asked, truly curious.
‘Don’t know. Didn’t ask ’em. Now. This is a cleaning establishment, right? You the proprietor?’
‘No,’ she admitted. ‘I’m only the manager.’
‘Live on the premises?’
‘There’s an apartment upstairs.’
‘Married? Cohabiting? Children?’
‘No.’ She started to mention the dogs, but then was quite unaccountably silent.
‘Where were you yesterday?’
‘About six blocks away,’ she admitted. ‘I went to look at the palace after closing time.’
‘Quite a sight, isn’t it?’
No, she thought, even as her head nodded polite agreement. It wasn’t much of a sight, really. There hadn’t been that much to see. She didn’t say it. He wrote busily in his book for a moment, starting as the buzzer on the indigo machine went off.
‘What in hell!’
‘It’s just the machine,’ she explained. ‘Excuse me. I have to take the trunk out.’ But when she opened the machine, she could not take the trunk out. It had vanished, in that unaccountable way in which things intended for cleaning sometimes did vanish, as though they were held together by dirt, by a kind of ephemeral filth that could be dismissed by water and soap. Of course, things sometimes reappeared, as well. Reconstituted, one might say. She stared into the washer, waiting for the trunk to emerge. In its place were five velvet cushions, sodden and steaming, a gemmed crown on each, glittering like malignant octopus eyes from a water cave.
‘Aha,’ said the guardsman. ‘Got you.’
The cell in which they left her was not uncomfortable. There was a cot, a toilet, a basin, a glass for drinking water, even a screen so she could use the facilities without undue display to anyone peering in through the little grated window. The room was reasonably warm, and it was dry. On a table by the heavy door, barred with iron and studded with thick nails of gleaming bronze, the five crowns huddled like socialites in a drunk tank, making a fierce show of quality to cow whomever was responsible for the outrage.
Marianne was no longer looking at them. She had looked, for a time, trying to remember if she had indeed stolen any such thing, for this is what she was accused of. She had tried to explain to the guardsman that the crowns were not unlike the elephant harness or the double bed, having arrived in some similar and as unexplainable a fashion, but he had been unwilling to entertain any such possibility.
‘You were at the palace, you admit it,’ he said.
‘Only out by the fence. Along with hundreds of other people.’
‘But you were there. And five things disappeared, and now you have five things.’
What could she say to that? She did, indeed, have them. Even now she had them. ‘The broadcast didn’t say what things,’ she pleaded. ‘It didn’t say what things at all!’
He sneered, pointing. Could anyone doubt that crowns like these belonged in a palace? Could anyone doubt they had no business in the indigo washer at the Clean Machine?
Marianne sank onto the cot. She wondered if the old man had ever come back for his trunk. She wondered if crying would help. She wondered if screaming would help and decided it would not; the sound of screaming had echoed through the prison almost since she had entered it, sometimes softly and plaintively, sometimes with an excess of agony that made it quite unbearable to hear.
‘But I didn’t take them,’ she said again, aloud.
‘You’re not charged with taking them,’ said a voice. ‘You’re charged with receiving them.’
There was someone at the grated window, peering in at her. She could see one glassy eye. ‘I didn’t receive them,’ she said. ’The machine did. It does things like that.’
‘You’ll have a chance to explain that to the magistrates, tomorrow,’ said the voice. ‘I thought I’d warn you, in case you wanted to change your clothes and tidy up a bit.’
‘I only have these clothes,’ she shouted, suddenly angry. ’The ones I had on.’
‘Closet,’ said the voice. ‘There’s a closet.’
Of course there was a closet. It contained three pairs of overalls, a fireman’s helmet, and a ball gown at least five sizes too large. ‘I will appear before the magistrates as I am,’ she said aloud, attempting to sound dignified. ‘In my own clothes.’ She was wearing a simple shirtwaist dress, now somewhat rumpled, and a wool sweater, both in mud shades.
The grating across the window in the cell door slammed shut, as though in frustration.
The five puppies came out from beneath her cot and gathered around her feet.
‘This is ridiculous,’ she said. ‘How did I ever get into this mess? How did you get in here?’
CHAPTER NINE
The magistrates were informal in their treatment of those brought before them. There were seven chairs on the dais, and occasionally all seven of them were occupied, though usually only two or three of the magistrates were seated there at a time, often at least one of them asleep. The others wandered about the courtroom or left the room entirely and could occa
sionally be heard ordering someone around backstage, as it were. One magistrate played endless games of chess with himself. Another drew endless pictures of naked women without heads. Only the tall, dark woman at the left end of the row seemed to pay attention.
‘Window dressing,’ said the voice in Marianne’s mind. ’She’s the only real one. The others are merely window dressing.’ The dark woman peered at her out of fiery eyes, hot, eager eyes, belying her casual demeanor.
‘Just Marianne, charged with receiving stolen goods,’ the prosecutor intoned, tugging at the wig that seemed always about to slip off the back of his bald head. ‘Material of national importance, stolen from the palace.’
‘Trial by combat,’ the dark woman drawled in a bored though somehow elated voice. ‘Next case.’
CHAPTER TEN
‘You have until the holiday to obtain a champion,’ the voice said through the grate in the window. ‘I told you you should have cleaned yourself up. The Queen thought your disheveled state was disrespectful.’
‘The Queen?’
‘You should feel honored. She heard your case personally.’
‘Who did?’
‘The Queen.’
‘Not that I saw!’
‘Oh, you must have seen her. A dark woman, very slender. With fiery eyes.’
‘One of the magistrates was a dark woman.’
‘First magistrate of the realm, the Queen is.’
‘She didn’t hear my case! She didn’t hear anything but the charge! She didn’t even give me a chance to plead guilty or not guilty.’
‘Oh, she knew you were guilty. It’s just a case of deciding punishment, don’t you know.’
A tiny growl came from beneath the bunk. Marianne interpreted this as a warning and said nothing more about her innocence. ‘Where am I supposed to get a champion! I don’t know anyone.’
‘Then you’ll have to fight the Duke of Eyes yourself. Not, by the way, something I would choose to do on a holiday afternoon.’
‘I don’t even know who he is!’
‘The Queen’s champion, of course. Who else would he be?’ The grating slammed closed. This anonymous informant always slammed the grating to end conversation, as though the very act of conversing led to unbearable frustration or annoyance. Marianne reviewed what she had said – certainly nothing to offend. The behavior of the grating voice had no logic to it. It told her things she did not ask to hear and seemed to expect some response she could not give. She lay down on the cot, hearing the scrabble of puppy feet beneath it. They had found some way to enter and leave the cell – some way she could not find though she had searched for hours – but they always hid when anyone was at the door. ’I don’t know what’s happening,’ she whispered as a moist little tongue explored between her fingers. ‘I’m terrified, and I don’t know what’s happening.’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
‘I hope you know what you’re doing,’ Ellat said, picking up her teacup and pausing in the doorway as though wanting both to go and to stay. Behind her in the vaulted room, Makr Avehl frowned at her as he adjusted the sleeves of his ceremonial robe and sat down on the narrow bed.
‘Of course I don’t, Ellat. No more than I did last time. But I have at least as good a clue this time as I had then. She has the bracelet, and I can follow that. Also, this time there are momentary gods. They will certainly have trailed after her, and they will have left a track. Surely someone as skilled as I am reputed to be can sniff them out.’ He shrugged in self deprecation, giving her a boyish smile.
‘What makes you think…’ she began in a maternal voice, then made a fretful motion and said, ‘oh, never mind. It’s just all so… uncertain.’
‘You want to know what makes me think the woman washing clothes is the operative symbol? A hunch, Ellat. And your favorite at the Cave, the one with the scary eyes.’
‘Therat?’
‘Yes. That one. She agrees that the symbol is very potent. So, for all intents and purposes, I’m looking for a laundress. I shall put myself into the proper frame of mind. I shall burn the right incense,’ he gestured at the ceremonial brazier beside the bed, already wreathed in smoke. ‘I shall recite the correct words and send my spirit self looking for a laundress. A laundress, mind you, with five dogs of five colors. I’ll grant you there may be more than one set of beings meeting that description, but not many more than one.’
‘You’re not taking Aghrehond?’
‘I would if he were here, Ellat, but he’s either on his way home or still in New York. He may be here by morning. Perhaps he’ll come after me as he did last time. I’ll leave it to him. He certainly carried the brunt of the battle during our last foray against Madame. And he had all the best of it. He appeared more or less as himself while I – well, I was undoubtedly a monster.’
‘Good-hearted, however,’ Ellat interjected. ‘You must have been good-hearted.’
‘Some part of me may have been,’ he agreed somberly. ’She gave me that role last time, an equivocal one, because she did not know how she felt about me. This time I will choose what role to take. I shall go this time as something every maiden dreams of.’ He laughed, sardonically.
‘What’s that?’
‘Why, Ellat. You were a maiden once. Can’t you guess?’
‘You don’t mean…’
He waved to her, a small wave, dismissive as well as affectionate, as he lay down on the cot. ‘I do mean, love. Wish me luck.’
CHAPTER TWELVE
In the dungeon, Marianne huddled on the hard cot, her eyes shut, trying to dream of that other place, trying desperately to pretend she was somewhere else.
‘Hsss,’ a low whisper at her ear. ‘Hsss.’
She turned her head toward the wall, feeling the faintest breath against her cheek. Mortar had fallen from between two of the cyclopean stones of the dungeon wall, leaving a narrow slot through which the breath came, a fervent little wind, hot and smelling of grease and garlic.
‘Hsss, can you hear me?’
She put her lips within an inch of the wall. ‘Yes, I can hear you.’
‘What are you in for?’
‘Receiving stolen goods. Palace goods.’
‘Ah. They’ll probably hang you, then. Or feed you to the plants in the botanical garden. Queen Luby likes to do that. I’m in for sedition.’
‘How long have you been here?’
‘Haven’t any idea. Don’t even remember coming here. Just woke up here one day. Isn’t it that way with everyone?’
A chill began just above Marianne’s eyes, moving swiftly down her body to her toes, tingling along her arms. Within her mind something turned sluggishly, as though in drugged slumber, deeply somnolent and yet restless. The combination of cold and the vertiginous shifting within herself made her nauseated, and she gagged. What the voice said was true. She couldn’t remember where she had been before. She couldn’t remember coming to… to whatever town this was. Surely she couldn’t always have worked for the laundry. ‘What did you do before?’ she begged of the wall, seeking a clue to her own past. Surely she had a past!
‘Advertising,’ it answered promptly, perhaps with a touch of pride. ‘Something to do with advertising. Insurance, I think. Or perhaps toothpaste.’
‘They don’t seem similar.’
‘Identical,’ the voice hissed as though from some great distance. ‘Actually, they’re identical.’
She felt the source of the voice had withdrawn, though only temporarily, and this assumption was verified in a moment when it resumed. ‘Had to check the corridor. They spy, you know. They sneak the gratings open and stand there, listening. Always check the grating before you say anything.’
‘I don’t have anything bad to say,’ she objected.
‘Oh, they don’t care. Bad. Good. It doesn’t matter. They’ll use it against you anyhow. Where were we?’
‘They say I have to have a trial by combat,’ she blurted. ’With the Duke of Eyes. I don’t know what it means.’
&n
bsp; A long silence. A sound as of lips smacking, or it could be a tsking; malice or sympathy, impossible to tell which. ’Well, they won’t hang you or feed you to the plants, then, which is too bad.’
‘Bad? Not to be fed to the plants?’ she demanded.
‘Ever seen him?’ the voice asked. ‘The Duke?’
‘No.’
‘He’s sort of a machine, you know. Only a tiny part human. Like his body doesn’t… function. So he’s in this machine. And they keep changing it. One time he’ll have hooks for hands and the next time, kind of grabbers. Or clubs. And one time he’ll have legs, but the next time tracks, like some kind of big earth mover. He doesn’t talk. Just looks at you with his eyes. Wherever his eyes look, that’s where the machine goes. Whatever his mind thinks, that’s what the machine does. And it’s big, you know. About twelve feet high.’
‘What kind of a champion could fight that?’ she asked, holding her terror at arm’s length. ‘How could I fight that?’
‘Well, you can’t, of course. Best thing to do is lie down, put your head on your arms and let him kill you. Not many people can do that, of course. He plays. Whips. Pincers. Things like that. It hurts, and it’s hard not to run and leap and try to escape. That’s what people come for, of course. To see the opponent try to escape.’
‘In other words,’ she whispered, ‘a trial by combat with the Duke of Eyes is really just another way of saying someone is to be publicly tortured to death?’
‘Well…’ the voice faded away. There was a distant clanging, a sound of several voices raised, a long silence. Then the hissing once more, close, very close, ‘That’s what it amounts to, Marianne.’
She had not told the voice her name. She rolled away from the aperture, fighting her welling nausea, knowing it wasn’t a prisoner who spoke to her through that rent in the masonry. Or, if a prisoner, then one who had been put up to it by someone else. By the nameless voice that spoke through the grating. By the dark woman on the magistrate’s bench. By the Queen. By someone who wanted to be sure she knew what would happen. Someone who wanted to savor her terror.