Quillifer

CHAPTER ELEVEN

came into the great hall on its creaking herringbone floors, and found that the duke’s great company had dispersed but for a few clustered about the head of the table. This group was composed of the duke, his duchess, an engineer named Ransome, a playwright and actor called Blackwell, and an Abbot Ambrosius, a serene, white-bearded figure dressed in the robes of the finest, softest unbleached wool, and who was introduced as the late King’s Philosopher Transterrene. His tonsure, which shaved away all the hair on the front of his brow, made his head look like an egg. This small band formed the sort of heterogeneous company that was more usually to be found at the duke’s than the huge gathering that had arrived for the coronation.

The duke’s orchestra, in the loge above the hall, played pleasantly. The great hall featured pillars of some green stone and gilded acanthus capitals holding up a barrel-ceiling painted with mythological scenes, pink-skinned gods and goddesses roistering among the clouds. Between the pillars were statues of maidens bearing platters of fruit or skins of wine, the floor was different-colored hardwoods laid in a herringbone pattern, and above was a clerestory to let in the light. Below the clerestory was a frieze in which the coins of Roundsilver were interlinked with scenes of fantastic fish and animals, all romping along like a parade of demons holding a circle dance, and below the frieze were brilliant tapestries showing mythological scenes or Roundsilver ancestors either commanding armies or dying picturesquely in battle—it appears that war had claimed a surprising number of the duke’s forefathers.

A few days in the Roundsilver palace had made it possible for me to go several minutes without staring at some wonder or other. I was doing my best not to appear an awestruck rustic—though if I were, the others were too polite to tell me.

“I have found an apartment, your grace,” I told the duke as I sat. “With your leave, I’ll move tomorrow, and no longer be a burden to your steward.”

“You must let him know where you lodge,” said Roundsilver. “For you are the man who must bear witness to the court about Ethlebight’s tragedy—in fact you must testify tomorrow, for I have gained an interview with the Lord Chancellor, so perhaps you should not shift your lodgings till the day after.”

I had no objection to enjoying the duke’s hospitality for another day, and was pleased to say so.

“You should see Hulme while he remains Lord Chancellor,” Ambrosius advised. “Her majesty may yet choose to replace him.” He gave a deep, languid sigh. “For Hulme has made many enemies in exercising his office, as have so many of his late majesty’s loyal supporters.” Another sigh. “As had I, though I did not know it.”

By this I guessed that Queen Berlauda had appointed a philosopher more to her liking, and send Ambrosius off with his pension.

“Sir,” I said to him, “I am unfamiliar with your—your former office. Is there also a Philosopher Mundane?”

The abbot smiled, and nodded at Ransome. “I believe,” he said, “they are called engineers.”

Ransome laughed and brushed his mustaches with the back of his hand. They were well tended, along with his glossy shoulder-length hair and his immaculate white linen. He was tall and a little plump, and offered to the company a perfect air of self-satisfaction. He was so pleased with himself, and pleased so pleasantly, that it was difficult not to be pleased along with him.

“There is only one true philosophy, lord abbot,” he said. “The science that permits us to move from a state imperfect, diseased, and transient to one perfect, healthy, and everlasting. And that science exists on the earth, in metals, extracts, distillations, and essences, not in the sky, floating in your transterrene aethers.”

“I shall look forward to seeing you made perfect, healthy, and everlasting,” said the actor Blackwell. “But until then, I will retain a grain or two of doubt regarding the claims of your science. And to you, sir”—he bowed to the abbot—“I confess myself bewildered between the hominem and the homonym, your fortiori and your ficos, your priori and your priory. In either case, when you speak either of the Nurse of Caelum or the nature of Being, I find myself suspicious that the primary purpose of employing such grand language is not to better describe Nature, but to conceal ignorance.”

“And yet,” said Ambrosius, “you use such elevated language in your poetry.”

Blackwell smiled. “I have never made the claim that my poetry is anything but itself. It describes a moment in time—time imperfect and transient, if you will—but that moment exists only in my own mind. I do not assert that I describe reality, let alone Being, whatever that is.”

I was inclined to applaud Blackwell for this claim. He was about thirty and blade-thin, with blond hair and beard and eyes of startling deep ultramarine, and he wore a russet-colored suit along with a gold earring. His voice was a clear tenor.

Blackwell turned those deep blue eyes to me. “Like this man’s music. Music may be texture, melody, emotion, rhythm. But to claim that music describes the world is to debase music.”

I realized that he thought I was one of Roundsilver’s musicians. Which was not surprising, as I wore the uniform.

“Quillifer isn’t one of our orchestra,” the duchess clarified.

“His grace was kind enough to lend me this costume when I was in distress,” I said. “I am not a musician but an apprentice lawyer, and as such I possess a lexis more rarified and useless than all of yours put together.”

This amused them. If I had learned anything in my legal career, it was that everyone hated lawyers, or at least pretended to, and were inclined to applaud when I feigned to share their prejudice.

“To which Moot do you belong?” Ambrosius asked.

“No Moot at present,” I said. “I’ve just arrived in the city.”

“Goodman Quillifer has come from Ethlebight,” Roundsilver said. “The only member of the deputation to survive both pirates and the bandits that haunt the Toppings.”

The monk gazed at me with sober interest. “Ethlebight?” he said. “There is a monastery in that city.”

“All taken,” I said.

“I shall try to organize a ransom for our brothers,” he said.

Because, I thought, what Ethlebight most needs now is more monks. Still, I suppose Ambrosius’s actions will save the city money that may be used to ransom others.

“I see now how you became distressed and in need of his grace’s aid,” Blackwell said. “But his grace spoke of bandits as well as the pirates?”

“Sir Basil of the Heugh and his band,” I said. “Who one day I hope to see hanged, along with the rogue who betrayed Ethlebight.”

The duchess was surprised at this last. “Who was that last?” she asked. “I had not heard there was a traitor.”

I explained how the reivers had attacked with foreknowledge of the channel, the city’s defenses, and its chief inhabitants.

“There has to have been a renegade among the pirates,” I said. “A dog I hope to send to a new kennel in hell.”

Blackwell frowned at his plate. “You don’t know who that person would be?”

“I do not,” I admitted. “Though I think that it would not be hard for a someone in the reivers’ home port to find out. He would be richly rewarded, I’m sure, and that sort of money would attract attention.”

The duke frowned at me. “Is it your intention to seek this traitor yourself?”

“I know not,” I said. “The pirates have deprived me of all attachments and affections, and nothing holds me in Duisland. There is nothing to hinder me from crossing the seas on a mission of vengeance—nothing but the likelihood that I would fail. I’m a lawyer, not a soldier or assassin or spy.”

The abbot looked at me and stroked his white beard. “He who embarks on vengeance,” he said, “should first dig two graves, one for his intended victim, the other for himself.”

“Before I can dig a grave for myself,” I told him, “I have other duties. I must try to rally as much help to my city as I can. I must see my family properly buried. After all that, I can worry about what follows.”

“I should not like to see you throw your life away on some foolhardy adventure,” said the duchess.

I looked into her crystal-blue eyes. “I am touched by your grace’s concern.”

And I was touched, too, and a little puzzled at how to view the young duchess, and from what perspective. She was attractive, bright, lively, and kind, and married to a man much older than she. It was not entirely unknown for women in these circumstances to view me with a degree of tenderness.

Were I in Ethlebight, I would understand my position. But as she was a duchess, and I a nobody far from his home, I was at a loss as to how to proceed.

And besides, I rather liked her husband, who had furthermore been very kind to me. I did not wish to abuse hospitality, nor did I wish the duke an injury. So, I restrained my gallant instincts insofar as I could.

“I agree with you,” her husband said. “The identity of the renegade will come out in time.”

“The Chancellor tomorrow, then,” I said.

The duke nodded. “Indeed.”

And then the conversation shifted to other topics. The duke was giving to the Queen’s war a pair of giant bronze cannon, enormous weapons that fired stone cannonballs weighing sixty-eight pounds. Impractical on the battlefield—they would have to be drawn by trains of forty horses—these were intended for the sieges that were considered almost inevitable. Ransome had been engaged for the casting, and he discoursed at some length on the miraculous recipe for the metal. As I had guessed from the discussion of essences, distillations, and the Nurse of Caelum, Ransome held himself an expert in alchemy, and to his own private mixture of copper and tin added orpiment, philosopher’s wool, magnesia alba, and ground diamonds for strength, all in combinations held in close secret.

Abbot Ambrosius, for his part, would make his own contribution to the enterprise, and would send twenty-four of his monks to pray and chant over the metal for twenty-four days before, during, and after the casting, to infuse the weapons with strength, accuracy, and the power to smash walls to rubble.

“For exalted power such as this,” he said, “can only be summoned by those in a state of absolute purity, and I flatter myself that the discipline of the Path of the Pilgrim Monastery is second to none.”

The monks in Ethlebight, I reflected, made no magic that I know of, so perhaps their purity was not up to standard. Certainly, they did not perform sorcery upon artillery.

I wondered what the Pilgrim himself would say about such practice. I understood his philosophy to aim at personal perfection, not the ability to knock down city walls.

As for the actor Blackwell, he was a principal of the Roundsilver Company, one of the capital’s leading bands of players. The duke was sponsoring Blackwell’s performance of The Red Horse, or the History of King Emelin, which would be performed for her majesty.

While the discussion wandered from play-acting to alchemy, from poetry to siege artillery, dinner arrived in its many courses. Herbed tarts, pies stuffed with pork belly, rabbit simmered in its own heavily spiced blood, sirloin of beef basted with orange juice and rose water, a fine mess of eels, curlews with ginger, badgers with apricots, porpoise and salmon. Every dish was a beautiful display, surrounded by fruit or flowers in a dazzling design, the pork pies topped by pastry sculpture in the shape of a hog’s head, the sauces laid out in intricate patterns on the plate. Each course came with its own matched wine. Most of the dishes were highly seasoned with imported spices, a practice I find dubious. (As a display of wealth, it has much to recommend it; but a salmon hardly needs to be covered with shavings of nutmeg, or a beefsteak with sugar and cinnamon, in order to please the palate. But perhaps my tastes are hopelessly plebeian.)

The great culinary moment occurred with the Presentation of the Cockentrice—not the monstrous cockatrice such as that hung in the duke’s cabinet, but a chimera of a gastronomic kind: the front half of a piglet sewn to the rear half of a capon, then stuffed and roasted till its honey-brown skin crackled. This prodigy was wafted before our noses so that we might admire it, before being taken to the Master Carver to be sliced and served.

I watched my hosts carefully, all to learn proper behavior at this elite level of our commonwealth, to discover how to eat some of the novelties, and to find an example to follow amid all this extravagance: I imitated their graces and ate sparingly. Having been in their household for several days now, I knew that even the most intimate suppers featured this kind of lavish abundance, besides which the Queen’s roast swan dressed in its feathers seemed poor fare indeed.

And besides, I knew I’d have to go through all of this again for supper.

The thrift with which I had been raised protested against the waste and extravagance, but this was somewhat assuaged by my knowledge that the remains of the feast were given to the poor that daily lined the alley behind the palace. The duke’s leavings fed a multitude.

I wondered what the ragged, hungry poor thought of the marzipan castles, the pastry sculptures, and the fanciful chimerae like the Cockentrice. To a pauper these bestowings must have seemed as fantastical as if they descended from the banquet-tables of the gods.

I waited till the meal was ending, with a custard served on a dish made of sugar-plate, and eaten with a knife and fork also made of sugar. I turned to the abbot.

“Reverend sir, I begin to wonder at your erstwhile title. How is it that a servant of the Pilgrim can be a Philosopher Transterrene? Did not the Compassionate Pilgrim say that the proper study of man is man? And how is that man to be studied outside the bounds of the world?”

Ambrosius considered this question with the same serenity with which he had contemplated everything, except perhaps his dismissal as royal advisor. He frowned, then spoke.

“It is true that the Compassionate Pilgrim (upon whom be peace) advised that the search for truth should begin in this world. He chided philosophers whose concept of virtue and perfection was based on their claimed knowledge of worlds other than our own. But he did not forbid the study of the transterrene—he only wished such a study to be based on a firm earthly foundation, a complete understanding of humanity and the world in which humans live. An understanding which the Pilgrim Eidrich (blessed is he) bequeathed to us.”

“Did he not disparage the gods?”

“Rather famously he did, using a word that I will not repeat in the presence of a lady.” Gracefully he nodded at the duchess. “For when you consider the stories told of the gods, they are shown as tyrannical, capricious, wayward, and wanton, behaving in ways that would reflect no good on any person who followed their example. The Pilgrim advised paying no attention to the gods—forgoing sacrifice, for example, and festivals—and instead build human ethics upon human reality.”

The duchess spoke. “Did the Pilgrim not say that if the gods were just, they would reward human goodness whether you worship them or not; but if they were unjust, there was little point in offering worship (as there was no certainty of a just reward); whereas if the gods did not exist at all, there was no point in worship whatsoever?”

“Your grace maketh a good translation of the passage.”

The abbot, I thought, might not flatter the gods, but well he knew how to flatter his hostess.

“Many followers of the Pilgrim deny the existence of the gods,” I pointed out.

Ambrosius gave one of his serene nods. “In this they follow the dictates of their own reason. But the Pilgrim (may he remain a virtuous example to us all) offered no opinion as to the existence of the gods, but said only that there was no sense in building them temples or offering them worship.”

“And your own opinion?”

The abbot pressed his lips together. “You presseth rather the point,” he said.

I smiled. “You are a Philosopher Transterrene, are you not? Is this not your province?”

“Very well,” he said, with the merest hint of ill grace. “Since you insist upon an answer. I prefer to think not of tangible, material gods or goddesses, but rather a universal divine Essence, which may be perceived by those whose senses have been refined by the gifts of Nature, or by long study fixed upon the ultramundane. By which I mean certain poets, perhaps”—this with a nod at Blackwell—“as well as musicians, great spiritual leaders, and most especially by the Compassionate Pilgrim, Eidrich (rest he in peace). And I hold furthermore that those whose senses are not attuned to the Divine can do no better than to follow these figures, the Pilgrim especially.”

Which was no help at all. I had hoped to find some understanding of my encounter with Orlanda, but instead found nothing but blather of divine essences perceptible only by great spiritual leaders, among whom I had no doubt Ambrosius numbered himself.

I was still haunted by the memory of Orlanda, and the choice she offered me. In addition, I still gave a start every time I saw a red-haired woman, fearing the goddess had come for her vengeance.

“I know a man who has met a god,” I said. “Or if not a god, at least a being holding some aspect of divinity.”

“Many claim such things,” said the engineer Ransome. He caressed his mustaches. “Most are mad, the rest deluded.”

“The man was not mad,” said I. “Nor was he extraordinary in any way—a respectable burgess. He was found credent by all in the city.”

“Credent?” asked Ambrosius.

“It’s a new word. I made it up.”

“From credentus,” said the duke helpfully.

“Ah.” Ambrosius waved a hand. “Of course.”

I returned to the story of my mythical burgess. “He was held, as I say, in repute. And he said that on a journey in Bonille, when he was a young man, he encountered an old well—a holy well with a nymphaeum.”

“I believe I know the place,” said the abbot.

The old faker. I had invented this particular well in Bonille to disguise my own in Fornland.

“Very casually he paid his respects to the nymph of the well,” I said, “and was on his way when he met a woman riding along his road. A lovely, lively young woman, he said. They held conversation for an hour or so—I believe he offered gallantries, which she playfully declined—and then her path turned away, and he bade her farewell. Later, during a shower, he took shelter in an old stone stable, and the ancient wall collapsed. He was pinned beneath the rubble, very badly injured and like to die. If his injuries hadn’t killed him. he might have frozen to death before help arrived.

“Yet he was rescued, and the young woman he met on the road managed it. She removed the heavy stones, an extraordinary feat, and bound his wounds, and helped him to his horse. It was night and cold, and he knew not where to travel, but she led his horse out into the country. And as the night progressed, and as she kept up a stream of diverting conversation, he began to realize that his wounds were healed.

“She brought him to her home—an old ring-fort in the hills near Lake Gurlidan, the place blazing with light and revelry—and he realized that she was the nymph of the well. She offered to make him her lover—”

“And he accepted, and was gone for an hundred years.” Ransome waved a hand. “I believe we all know the story.”

This cavalier dismissal spurred my anger, but I chose to make a mild reply. “On the contrary,” I said, “the man bethought him of his own home and bed, and made as polite a leave-taking as he could. She was furious, but allowed him to depart. He has lived ever since in fear that the goddess might curse him for his rejection of her favors.”

I saw interest kindle in the eyes of Blackwell the playwright, but Ransome and Ambrosius both spoke at that point, and together came to the conclusion that either my invented burgess was a vainglorious liar, or that he was deranged by his injuries and that the entire incident was a fantasy concocted by an impaired mind.

“I cannot swear to the truth of the story,” I said, “but can only state that the man was not otherwise known as a liar, and showed no other evidence of delusion. But still”—I turned to the Abbot Ambrosius, and adopted my learnèd-advocate face—“if the gods do not inhabit this transterrene realm of yours, then what else exists there that is worthy of your attention? This divine Essence of yours may be studied here as well as in the aether, I suppose.”

Ambrosius was taken aback. Perhaps no one had ever asked this particular question before.

“Well,” he said weakly, “the proper study of philosophy includes that of matter, and in addition to its manifestations on our world, matter may be defined by its absence. And so far as we can tell, matter is a property entirely of the earth, and so—”

Ransome began to laugh. “You study matter by its absence? You might as well say that you can study life by looking at lumps of lead!”

“I suppose there are planets and stars and the crystal spheres,” offered the duchess.

“Yet it is men with telescopes who have enlarged our knowledge of these things,” said Ransome. “Not philosophers.”

“There is also the Comet Periodical,” said Blackwell. “Which turns all knowledge of the spheres to dust.” He viewed Ambrosius with his eyebrows lifted. “You do not hold, with some of your brethren, that the Comet is the refuge of the gods?”

Since the discovery of the Comet Periodical, which returns every seventy-seven years, some of the Pilgrim’s followers have claimed that the gods, having been rendered superfluous by the Pilgrim’s life and thought, had withdrawn to the Comet until they were needed again. Thus they returned at regular intervals to see if the Pilgrim’s doctrine was still being practiced, and then, discouraged, withdrew again.

“That is a charming myth,” Ambrosius said, “though no one of any sense credits it.”

“What of your transterrene philosophy is not a myth?” Ransome challenged. For though I in my pique had begun the questioning of Ambrosius’s transterrene pretensions, now Ransome scented blood, and was determined to finish off the quarry, all in the most pleasant, self-regarding way possible. But he was unable to continue, because at that moment a page entered, and told the duke and duchess that the dressmaker had arrived, and waited in one of the parlors.

They rose, we offered our thanks, and the party went their ways. I went in search of the steward, to give him my new address, and returning from that errand I passed by the archway leading to the parlor where their graces were meeting the dressmaker, a Master Fulke. Ransome stood partly concealed behind the arch, and on seeing me beckoned me to join him.

I stepped near the arch and was able to look into the parlor to see Fulke, with his assistants, showing their graces huge great bolts of rich fabric, embroidered silks and blazing satins, all to become new gowns for the duchess. Roundsilver spoke knowledgeably of fabrics and fashion, and his bride followed his words carefully, and looked up at him with worshipful eyes.

Ransome preened his mustaches. “His grace is playing with his new doll,” he said.

I almost said that she was a doll well worth playing with, but on consideration decided the reply too vulgar for this cultivated a setting. “It is a measure of his admiration for her,” I said instead.

He took my arm and drew me away. As we walked toward the front door, he inclined his head to me.

“You are not an old acquaintance of his grace?” he asked.

“We met on coronation day,” I said.

He adopted a confidential tone. “I advise you not to be associated too publicly with this duke.”

I cast him a glance. “May I inquire why?”

“Before the marriage,” Ransome said, “this house was infamous for the degree of vice and depravity practiced here. I cannot count the reputations that were destroyed within these walls.”

“I have seen no sign of dissipation,” said I. “Beyond the over-luxurious dinners, I mean.”

A superior smile floated across his plump, pleased features. “Her grace is still young. I have no doubt that he will corrupt her, and once again this place shall be notorious again for its wickedness. For look you.” He drew me closer. “His grace only married because of a promise he gave his mother on her deathbed. And once her grace delivers an heir, that promise is discharged, and he may return to his former way of life.”

I bridled at this advice, delivered as it was in a conceited, condescending tone, as from a superior to an inferior.

“His grace is the only man in the city who has been kind to me,” I said.

A knowing look came into his eyes. “He has marked you, then, for one of his minions. I urge you not to become one of his degenerate pack of acrobats, actors, and mincing boys.”

I found myself offended, not by the notion of the duke trying to corrupt me, but with Ransome’s confiding tone and self-congratulating manner. I stiffened.

“I believe I know how to preserve such virtue as remains to me,” I said.

“I offer a word to the wise,” said he.

“I thank you,” I said, “for the advice, insofar as it was kindly meant.” And insofar as it was a piece of malevolence, I thought, may you fly instantly into pieces.

He may have sensed this meaning, for he said nothing more. I bade farewell to Ransome at the door, and then decided, in view of wine and the great meal, that I may as well sleep till supper, when another great feast lay in store.

My path took me by one of the libraries—there were at least three, but this was the largest—and there I saw the playwright Blackwell, looking at a small volume and jotting in a notebook. I wandered in, and he glanced up without speaking. His quill continued its scribbling even though his ultramarine eyes were directed at me.

“I didn’t mean to interrupt,” said I.

“I’m merely performing a little exercise,” he said. His pen scratched on. “I’m translating this sonnet by Rinaldo into the tongue of the Aekoi. Pentameter into classical hexameters, and all this in a language known for its concision.”

“Not into our own language?”

“That has already been done, very well, by Sebastian.” He looked down at the paper, frowned, and finished the last lines. “That final couplet compares the beloved’s hair to russet, but the Aekoi did not have clothing made of russet.” He indicated his own russet doublet. “Russet appears to have been invented only a few centuries ago, here in Duisland. I could have invented a word, and called it russum or something, but I thought it more fair to find what an Aekoi would call such a color, so I thought of black chalcedony, which gives us calcedonius niger. Which as it happens, fits the meter rather well.”

“Russet and black are not the same,” I pointed out.

“That is why my translation is imperfect,” Blackwell said. “And some imperfection is allowable in art.” He smiled. “Perhaps even necessary.”

“Perhaps a dark shade of agate?”

“Achates densus?” He frowned down at his paper. “I think it would not serve.”

I was on the verge of suggesting zmaragdachates, but decided I’d heard quite enough of smaragds. “Achates purpureus?” I offered.

“I do not think it is quite the poet’s intention to suggest purple hair, even in so extraordinary a lady.” He put down his pen. “Well. Enough.” He looked up at me with his deep blue eyes. “Your tale of the traveler and his nymph was intriguing. I am thinking of making it a play.”

My first response was to ask, You can do that?, but an instant’s reflection told me that of course he could. Any story could be a play, or a poem, or a song, though I very much doubted whether Orlanda would care to be any of these things.

“It is but an episode,” I said.

“Your episode would make a fine first act. I should then have to invent further encounters between the traveler and the angry goddess, and fill the scenes with characters and clowns and a scattering of sub-stories. But the main question is whether the story is comedy or tragedy.”

“Need it be one or the other?” I asked. “Can it not simply be a story?”

“People don’t come to the theater for simple stories. Simple stories they can have from their grandmothers.” Blackwell looked down at his ink-stained hands. “If tragedy,” he enlarged, “the vengeful nymph would pursue the traveler, destroying his hopes and killing all he loves, until the traveler dies in a final blizzard of pentameter. Whereas in a comedy, she would be the cause of misunderstandings that would delay the joyful ending until the last act.”

“Let it be a comedy, then,” I said hopefully. In truth, I was hoping Blackwell would forget about the entire project.

I drew up a chair and sat across from the actor. “Goodman Ransome just warned me that the duke intended to debauch me.”

He was amused. “Not without your permission, I’m sure.”

“Has he such a wicked reputation?”

“Instead of going to war, looting cities, and scheming for high office, he stands as patron to poets and painters. That makes him unnatural.”

“It would make him a poor patron,” I mused, “if office were what I pursued.”

“Is it?”

“This last month I have seen little beyond men grasping for office, honors, or money. It makes office seem less desirable, somehow, that it can be held in such company.”

He smiled. “Instead, you can be debauched by the duke. I’m sure it would be exquisite and very likely musical.”

“I wouldn’t care to disappoint the duchess by taking her husband away from her.”

“Well”—he waved a hand—“if conscience is an issue, surely we will all hang ourselves. Yet indeed they are a beautiful couple.” He looked down at his notes, then cleaned his pen and stacked his papers. “I’m supposed to be writing a play, not amusing myself with translations.”

“I wish you and your hexameters every success.”

I rose as he put his papers in a portfolio and walked toward the door. He stopped, and turned to me with a thoughtful manner. “It seems to me that my projected play is itself an argument against the existence of the gods,” he said. “Were the gods real, would they not object to the way they are treated in our entertainments? Would I not be bringing upon myself some kind of damnation by treating your friend’s nymph lightly?”

“I would not chance it,” I said, perhaps a bit too firmly.

His brows rose. “I thank you for your advice,” he said. “And I will also reconsider the matter of the lady with her purple hair.”