Fletcher Pratt The Blue Star

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for the shoe-laces. In spite of his solemnity, this would be Florestan, the
Laughing Chancellor; he was known to favor cats.
In a moment he looked around and signed to Tuol�n the head butler, who rapped
a little silver bell on the table. All the men from various corners of the
room gathered. Three of them were episcopals in their violet robes with
flowers of office. Florestan quietly waited till all were at rest, his visage
in calm lines (but Rodvard could see just enough of his eyes to catch an
intimation that this might be a grim business). He tapped the bell once more.
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"My lords, if you were ignorant of this convocation's purpose, you had not
been summoned; therefore, let us leave all preliminaries and turn straight to
the matter of Her Majesty's finance."
Pause. The apple-faced man said; "What's there to say of it?"
"That it is a very dangerous thing to have the court in poverty when we are
threatened with this question of the succession."
The faces along the table watched him attentively, all set in varying degrees
of stubbornness, and as the kitten scratched at the leg of his chair, he
reached down to pet it. "My lords, this has now grown so grave that we can
dissolve our troubles only by measures never taken before; all the old means
eaten up. Yet we still want money to pay Her Majesty's army, which is not
only a disgraceful thing but also a perilous. Those who should protect us may
become our persecutors."
The little round man's smile was jolly as before, his voice not; "Your
Grace, a bug close to the eye may look as big as a lion. Is there proof of
true disaffection?"
A man with silver-streaked hair and the breast-star of a general on his silk
nodded gloomily. "I bear such proof. This brawl among the Red Archers of
Veierelden has been given a light appearance; but my men have looked into it,
and it runs deeper than you think. Namely, they were shouting for the
restoration of Pavinius to the succession. We hanged one of his emissaries, a
Mayern man."
"Pah," said the round man. "Since he was exiled every ruction has been a
shout for his return. They do not mean it."
"Dossola will never bear a king who is himself the leader of a sect opposed to
true religion," observed one of the episcopals. "Even his one-time followers
of the Amorosian faith have rejected him."
Florestan held up his hand. "My lords, you wander. I summoned you here on
this matter of finance to say that it is within the powers granted to me as
minister by the Queen's Majesty to establish by decree the new form of
tax-payment proposed by our good friend, the Count Cleudi. Yet as some of you
have been good enough to let me know this plan will never succeed, I now ask
what other you propose."
"It is a plan to steal from the nobles of the land, and it will surely not be
borne," said a long-faced man with great force.
Said one of the episcopals; "The estates of the Church must of course be
exempt from this plan; for it would be an affront to the most high God to make
his spiritual ministers into tax-gatherers for the lesser, or civil estate."
Chancellor Florestan threw back his head with a burst of laughter so heartily
sustained that it was not hard to see how he had won his calling-name. "The
same spiritual ministers," he said, "have little trouble with their
consciences when it is a question of collecting taxes to their own benefit.
No, I do not contemplate that the lords episcopal shall be exempt,
however ill that sits, and I tell you plainly that I will enforce this plan
with every strength there is. Come, my lords, you waste my time, which
belongs to the Queen; and so dissipate her resources. I ask again; who has a
sharper scheme than Cleudi's?"
Now they burst in on him with a flood of words like so many dogs barking,
which he hardly seemed to hear as he leaned down to pet the kitten. Rodvard,
watching the calm indifferent face, could not catch a clear vision of the eyes
in the candlelight and flow of movement. He saw Tuol�n advance to pick up one
of the glasses, with his eyes fixed on the horse faced lord who had been so
vehement (and it came to him that Florestan must know there was another Blue
Star in the room, and be concealing his thought from reading). The Chancellor
reached over to tap his bell once more.
"We will hear the Baron Brunivar," he said.
The lord he mentioned turned a stately head, (but though he was squarely in
face, Rodvard could only make out a thought troubled and urgent; nothing
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definite.) "Your Grace," he said, "when I first learned of this plan, I
thought it was put forward merely to provoke a better. Now I see that it is
not, and though I have no plan for raising more money, only for spending less,
I ask you to think what will happen if you persist in it. More taxes cannot
be borne by the commonalty; they'll rise, and you'll have Prince Pavinius over
the border with a Mayern army at his back."
The Laughing Chancellor turned his head and said to his own writer at the side
table; "Be it noted that Baron Brunivar spoke of treason and wars in the west,
where his seignory lies."
White eyebrows flashed up and down over Brunivar's orbits. "You shall not
make me a traitor so, Your Grace. I have stood in the battlefield against
this Pavinius when he was Prophet of Mancherei, with all Tritulacca to aid
him; and there were some who fled." He looked along the table. "It is not [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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