The Book of Kings Read online

  “What do you mean, made no sense at the time?”

  Max took a large swallow of his sharply flavored drink and told the King the story, as it had come to him and as they had figured it out, including the long first weeks of waiting, until Grammie had seen the photograph in the newspaper, then the odd response he’d received in answer to his schoolgirl’s letter to Andesia, and finally how he’d decoded his father’s messages. The King listened carefully, not once interrupting.

  “They need help,” Max concluded.

  “I see that,” the King answered. “Yes,” he said, in the inattentive way someone speaks whose mind is busily at work. “You know I can’t send in an army,” he said, apologizing. “Getting an army across an ocean is bad enough, and it’s not as if Andesia has attacked one of our towns, or even one of our merchant ships. It wouldn’t be legal, or right. I don’t see how to do it.”

  “I have an idea,” Max said.

  “Somehow, I’m not surprised,” the King remarked as he poured them each more lemonade. “When I sent someone to have a quiet look at your parents’ house, there was a sign, I was told. Quite a professional sign, I heard…So,” he concluded, with a smile, “I have a suspicion about you. Just a hunch”—he raised his hand to silence Max, who was about to deny everything, deny it all—“which I’d never voice to anyone.”

  Max subsided. He looked with interest at this King.

  “What’s your idea?” King Teodor asked, with equal interest.

  Max explained the plan to send a diplomatic embassy to Andesia, which would include himself as secretary to the Envoy and Grammie as housekeeper. He admitted that he had no idea how to actually manage a rescue but argued that he would be able to think of something, once he was on the spot and knew what the actual situation was. He told the King about the uprising in Andesia, almost a year ago now, and the invasion of armies from neighboring countries, which was probably motivated by the silver and copper mines. He talked about how General Balcor had been given control and had stayed on in Andesia, how the deposed former royal family—“who were cruel, greedy, tyrannical, yes, but still…”—had been slaughtered by robbers in what was supposed to be a safe fortress. He described what he and Grammie had read about the poverty of the people of Andesia—excepting, of course, those who owned the mines. He explained why he had settled on this particular rescue plan.

  King Teodor nodded and nodded and said, “I see,” and “Yes,” until the question of who the Envoy would be was raised, by the King, and answered, by Max. When he heard Ari’s name, the King pushed himself up from his chair and his face turned to stone. He was angry. “I have no dealings with that family,” he announced.

  Max admitted, “That’s what he said, that’s exactly what he said you’d say.”

  “Who?”

  “Ari. Yes, he’s the next Baron, the Baroness’s heir, but he’s also my math tutor, and tenant, and friend, and he said you wouldn’t have anything to do with him and he didn’t blame you. Because how could you know he isn’t the same kind of Barthold as the rest of them. After all, the Baroness is like that, too, even if she has a couple of good points.”

  “I didn’t know the Baroness had an heir. I thought that family was finally going to die out, poisoned off by its own evil character.” The King, however, was now listening again.

  “Actually, Ari would prefer not to be the Baron Barthold, but you can’t help the family you were born into. And he’ll be a good one, I know—but how would you know that?”

  “In fact, I know the opposite. They’re lawless, they always have been. They’re pirates and thieves. Bad masters and worse subjects.”

  “The Cellini Spoon,” Max said, to show that he understood the King’s point of view.

  “What do you know about the Cellini Spoon?” King Teodor asked, adding, “Mysteriously stolen from that old woman. Or so I was told,” he concluded in a tone of voice that said he was pretty sure he hadn’t been told the truth.

  “It’s been found,” Max said. He did his best to damp down the pride in his own voice, but his eyes must have shone with it, because the King sat again.

  “Found? Was it really lost?”

  Max nodded.

  “And I think you might have found it.”

  Max hoped he was keeping his face expressionless as he nodded again.

  “You are your parents’ child, through and through,” the King murmured, talking to himself more than to Max. “So now it’s back in the hands of that terrible old woman—”

  “That’s what Ari says about her, too,” Max said.

  The King looked at him thoughtfully.

  “You could meet with him, if you were willing to. Just meet him, nobody has to know,” Max said. “Ari could surprise you. It might be time for things to change.”

  The King stared a minute more and then said, “I’m willing to wager that you have an idea about how such a meeting might be contrived, in absolute secrecy.”

  Max nodded yet again, remembering the front deck of The Water Rat, available for just such occasions under the discreet eye of Captain Francis, but he didn’t explain. He sat silent and let the King come to the decision in his own way, in his own time.

  Finally, King Teodor picked up his glass, and took a long drink. “If a king can make a peace within his own country, or at least consider that possibility, it has to be a good thing. For everyone concerned. All right, then, Max Starling, you can have it your way. I’ll talk to your Barthold. But I think you had better agree to give the Princess Marielle those drawing lessons she longs for, so that I can keep you informed about this…this rescue plot.”

  “But I don’t—I don’t know how to—”

  “I expect you’ll think of something. Shall we say at ten in the morning? The day after tomorrow? This business is in my hands now,” King Teodor announced as he stood up again. “Don’t forget your beret,” he told Max, with a smile. “Or your dog,” and he left the room.

  In which the King acts, while Max adjusts, accommodates, and adapts

  Then began a strange period in Max’s life. He was the spider at the center of the web, but he wasn’t the weaver. His long arms spun out the threads, but those threads were being arranged as if they had nothing to do with him. He was powerful and helpless, both at the same time; he knew what he was doing and he had no idea what was going on, both at the same time. He was the Solutioneer and at the same time he was just one part of the solution.

  What mostly kept Max occupied during those long days was the matter of teaching drawing to the Princess Marielle. When Max asked for his help in giving drawing lessons, “You’re neither an artist nor a teacher!” Joachim exclaimed. “What are you thinking?”

  Sunny went to examine something under a bush at the farthest end of the garden.

  “Even the dog knows better!” Joachim expostulated, waving his arm in the air so violently that paint spattered on the grass. “I don’t know what’s happened to you, Max. First you drag that woman into my life and now you want to set yourself up as a drawing teacher. Who is it that needs you for a drawing teacher?”

  “Princess Marielle,” Max admitted.

  “Shouldn’t a princess have a real drawing teacher?” Joachim argued.

  “The King told me to do it,” Max explained, adding, “I’m supposed to bring Sunny, too, for Marguerite to play with. She doesn’t have a dog of her own.”

  This seemed to satisfy Joachim, who remarked, “So you found your way to the King. And you already have tickets, thanks to your grandmother.”

  “She’s getting worked up now about how to get from Caracas to Apapa, which is the capital of Andesia. It’s way up in the mountains, isolated.”

  “An enterprising woman, your grandmother,” Joachim observed.

  Max certainly agreed. Grammie was enterprising, and more. She got things done, and done right. He couldn’t resist the temptation to boast. “She has us all learning Spanish.”

  “You wouldn’t think it, to see her,” Joachim r
emarked. “Are three people enough to rescue your parents?”

  “How would we know? We don’t even know what kind of plans we can make. We don’t know what we’ll find when we get there,” Max admitted.

  Something had decided Joachim. He announced, “You should start with perspective. Perspective’s easy to explain and I know a couple of exercises even a little girl can do.”

  It was a good thing Pia wasn’t around to hear that, Max thought, but didn’t say. In fact, in general, it was a good thing Pia wasn’t around at all these days. He decided that it had been brilliant of him to give her the R Zilla job, to keep her out of his hair.

  —

  After about fifteen minutes of being an art teacher, Max understood how much easier it is to do something yourself than to try to show somebody else how to do it and put your hand in your pocket while her hand did it wrong, then explain yet again, then watch again to see if you had explained it in a useful way. He said, “Good. Now try again, and hold the ruler steady.” He’d only said Good because Joachim never did, and especially when he had first started lessons it was a word he would have liked to hear. Another fifteen minutes went by, slowly. Through the open French doors, Max watched Marguerite and Sunny playing throw-the-stick out on the lawn. Excited barkings mingled with excited laughter. Marielle concentrated on the assignment he’d given her, which was to draw a room using one-point perspective. In fact, he now saw that she had successfully created the back wall. “Good,” he said, and this time he meant it. “Now can you put in a near corner?” He forced his hand to stay in his pocket and not point out the very spot on her paper where she should put the ruler to begin the next straight line.

  At the end of the lesson, Pierre told Max that the King wanted a word with him and that Will would take him to the King, and then wait to bring him back so he could collect his dog. What the King wanted to see Max about was the name of the ship Grammie had booked them on, and the date on which she was due to depart. “Estrella,” Max answered, and “the seventeenth of August.”

  The King nodded. “Thank you. On your advice, I’m taking a sunset ride around the lake on the ferry,” he said.

  Max nodded. He’d already heard about this from Ari.

  —

  Teodor, wearing no uniform more than the light linen suit and panama hat of a wealthy gentleman, stood at the prow of The Water Rat and enjoyed the solitude, and the way the moist early-evening air on the lake brushed his face. He watched the houses of Graffon Landing come closer and determined that on the next fine afternoon, he would take his three youngest children on this journey. It was time those three had their father’s full attention for an entire afternoon—and time their father got to spend an entire afternoon with just those three. The little Princesses and Horatio would love the ferry ride, and the waterfall, and the attention from whoever happened to find themselves unexpectedly sharing the ferry with the royal family. Teodor smiled to himself in anticipation.

  How this evening’s meeting might turn out depended on whether the Starlings’ boy was a sound judge of character. Historically, the Barons Barthold had been grasping men, with little respect for the law and no concern for the well-being of their women, servants, soldiers, and serfs. Teodor had little hope for this Baron-to-be, but he would meet him, and listen to his appeal.

  It was a young man who approached the King under the watchful eye of Captain Francis, a slender, handsome young man, with the Barthold red hair. He, too, wore a light linen suit for the occasion. Teodor waited.

  The young man had either the wits or the arrogance not to bow, which kept the King’s identity concealed from the other passengers, but he knew how to greet his monarch appropriately—“Your Majesty”—and this show of diplomatic good sense did not go unnoticed. Then the young man looked directly at the King and said, without preamble or apology, “The Cellini Spoon belongs, by rights, to you. Whatever comes of this meeting, I promise you I will put it back into your hands. Exactly when this will happen, however, depends on the present Baroness, to whom it is a comfort and a source of much pride.”

  Having announced this, he fell silent, and waited for the King’s response.

  If he had promised to deliver the spoon within a week, or on condition that the King agree to name him Envoy to Andesia, Teodor would have ended the interview right then. But he had not, had instead made the promise with the only condition a concern for an unlovable old woman, and with a full acknowledgment of the royal rights in the matter. This might be a new breed of Barthold indeed, and Teodor did not hesitate. “I thank you. Now, tell me about this proposed embassy of yours.”

  The young man smiled. “It’s Max’s embassy. Not that I’m unwilling. On the contrary, I owe Max a…a great debt. Which it’s a pleasure to be in the position to repay, if you decide I am worthy of your trust.”

  Teodor had already decided. This only confirmed his opinion.

  —

  Max had thought that he would teach Marielle one-point perspective the first day, two-point the second, and maybe on the third day three-point. But it turned out that she needed at least another day, and maybe even another after that, to master one-point perspective. It turned out that when you were teaching, you had to be patient not only for the length of the lesson but also day after day, while your student progressed from learning to knowing. Max amused himself trying—and failing—to sketch Sunny. Sunny seemed entirely happy with her new best friend, and Marguerite was obviously delighted. It made Max wonder why the girl didn’t have a dog of her own. Was there a law that the royal family couldn’t have pets?

  If there was, it would have been just something else to wonder about. Max was wondering if the King would give official status to the embassy, wondering if he was teaching Marielle anything useful, wondering if he was finished being the Solutioneer, wondering why Pia didn’t come to his house to pester for help or boast about success. This wondering but not doing was uncomfortable for Max. Also, it struck him as he received a second summons to the King, there was the wondering what Teodor was up to, wondering if the King’s interference would actually help his parents.

  Their second meeting was brief. “I should be paying you for these lessons,” the King said, and passed him a small cloth purse with coins in it. “I will make only one major change in your plan,” he announced. “The others are minor.”

  Max wanted to know what these changes were, but before he could work up the courage to ask, the King said, “You may leave me now,” and Will stepped forward to show him the way back to the terrace, and Sunny, and the road to Summer. It wasn’t until the ferry was making its approach to Graffon Landing that Max realized what he had been told:

  Teodor had agreed to send a royal embassy to Andesia.

  —

  As arranged, King Teodor arrived almost half an hour early, and alone, for the royal family’s dinner reservation at B’s, Queensbridge’s newest fashionable restaurant, yet another success for Hamish Bendiff. Teodor ignored the bowing, overawed maître d’ and strode into the dining room, leaving his guards at the street entrance. As if in royal displeasure or royal fussiness, “I’d like to see the room you’ve given us,” the King said to the man who stepped forward to welcome him, Bendiff himself.

  With the gesture of an arm—respectful, but not subservient; the gesture of a man with a vote, who also knew better than to introduce himself to the King—a doorway was indicated. Through it Teodor saw a round table, as private as he could wish, set with bright white linen, gleaming silver, and small bowls filled with flowers. The windows were open to the fresh evening air, which carried into the room the soft music of the rushing river.

  Teodor walked around the table, nodding so that anyone could see his satisfaction. He crossed to the window, where whatever he said would not be overheard but also where, because he could be seen to be only talking quietly—about seating arrangements? the menu? the wine?—nobody would be concerned for his safety. “You’re Bendiff’s Jams and Jellies,” he told his host. �
�Bendiff’s Cheese and Crackers. Bendiff’s Beers and Ales.”

  “I am,” the man said, wasting no words. He wondered what a King might want with him. Not, he was sure, to invite Hamish Bendiff and his wife to dine at the summer palace, for which (he made a mental apology to his wife: “Sorry, Grete”) he was grateful.

  The King said, “I’ve heard of you, your successes, your way of doing business. Your employees are contented. Your products give good value.” He waited a few seconds here, then added, “I’ve also heard that you came from nothing.”

  “Not nothing, Sire. A dairy farm in the hills on the western lakeshore and my parents knew the value of hard work, and careful husbandry. I was lucky enough to have the right wife at my side. I came from a great deal, I’d say.”

  As if the man hadn’t spoken, “And now this,” the King said, indicating with a gesture the restaurant behind them.

  “We are all hoping that you will enjoy your meal here,” the man said. “But I’m thinking that you want something from me? I mean, something particular, to ask for a private conversation.”

  King Teodor, who was accustomed to the worldly sophistications of courtiers and the politically circumspect conversations of foreign ambassadors, not to mention the irritatingly ornate good manners of an old aristocracy, smiled happily at this frankness.

  “I think you are a man who welcomes a challenge,” he observed, just as frankly. “And I wonder: Would you be willing to step away from your current businesses?”

  Mr. Bendiff considered the question, and its implications. Eventually, he said, “I have an excellent head accountant, although no one ready to maintain my current endeavors.” There was a time, he did not tell the King, when his wife had been such a person; but now she seemed to care only for her hats and her social position, even though that pursuit just made her unhappy. “Why would this concern you?”

  Teodor smiled again. “I have a use for your skills and gifts. And your time, too, perhaps even months of your time.” He went on to explain about the embassy to Andesia under the leadership of the young Barthold, who would be accompanied by a private secretary. “The present King, and his Queen, too, were until recently residing in Queensbridge,” he said, to explain why Andesia. “There is wealth in the country, mining industries—although the people themselves are poor farmers, uneducated, as you can imagine, and all the wealth is in the hands of the one family that owns the mines. At this point, I believe it is governed by the army of occupation that put down a peasant uprising.” There were many things he wasn’t saying.