The Children of the King (16 page)

Jeremy said, “Children have no power, that’s why.”

“Children are almost always powerless, you’re correct. And children aren’t something that powerful people often take into consideration. But
this
child was the King’s son. This child was
to be
king. The Duke had him isolated and imprisoned, helpless; yet the child shadowed every moment of the man’s life. And not just this child, either. There was another of whom we’ve hardly spoken, but who likewise preyed on the Duke’s mind. The Prince had a brother, remember? A brother younger by several years, second in line to the throne. His name was Richard. The Prince was like a fly bundled up in the Duke’s web: but as long as Richard existed, likely at any moment to step forward and claim his birthright, the Duke’s stake on the crown would never be secure.

“This little boy Richard, nine years old, was living with his mother in sanctuary, where the Duke’s claws couldn’t reach. The Duke had tried to wheedle out the child, saying the lad must attend the coronation, saying the Prince needed a playmate, saying the child should not be a prisoner of sanctuary. His mother had refused to let the boy go. The Duke was her enemy, and thus the enemy of her children. So the Duke did what had always worked for him before. He sent the Queen a message
insisting
that she send the child out for the coronation. Looking beyond the window, the Queen saw hundreds of soldiers encircling the Abbey, a hint of what the Duke’s response to yet another refusal would be.”

“Might is right,” said Jeremy.

“What a lesson to be teaching, Peregrine . . .”

Jeremy looked at his mother with scorn. “Uncle Peregrine isn’t teaching it. We already know it. We only have to open a newspaper to see the proof of it. Isn’t Germany doing exactly what the Duke did, hammering away at us with threats and bombs — and the Queen doing exactly as we are, hunkering down, refusing to be afraid?”

“Well, I think your father could explain the difference —”

“It’s the same thing.” Jeremy turned away dismissively.

Peregrine shook a cigarette from the pack and lit it, making no comment on the rift between mother and son. He said, “The Queen, seeing those soldiers, saw she had no choice. The child was handed over, and some say he wept and hated to leave his mama, and some say he was overjoyed to escape the confines of the Abbey and be united with his brother.”

“Probably a bit of both,” said Cecily.

A small voice spoke up: it belonged to May Bright. “Did they know each other, those brothers? The Prince had always lived in his castle in the south. His brother had always lived with his mother in the palace. Weren’t they strangers?”

“An interesting point,” admitted Peregrine. “I suppose that, even if they didn’t know each other well, they knew they could be friends.”

“Like you and me, May ! We were strangers, now we’re friends. Children like being with other children.”

“I wonder,” mused Jeremy. “I wonder if the Prince was really happy to see him.”

“Of course he was! Why wouldn’t he have been?
I
would have been happy to see
you,
Jem —”

“But
I
wouldn’t have been happy to see
you,
Cecily — don’t you get it? The Prince was smart. He knew he was in a dangerous place. Now his brother was in that place too.”

Cecily rolled her eyes. “I
do
get it,” she said. “But even though the Prince was smart, he was still a boy. He would have been glad to see someone his own age. Someone to talk to. Someone to play with. Wouldn’t you have been
sort-of
glad to see me?”

“No,” said Jeremy.

Cecily stuck out her tongue and turned her back to him. “Keep telling the story, Uncle Peregrine.”

Peregrine’s gaze had fallen; the last few days had been harrowing, and he was exhausted. “They did play,” he said. “Some people claim to have seen the brothers playing together in the gardens in the days after Richard joined his brother. By now the Duke was also living in the Tower. He’d taken the Prince’s grand chamber as his own, and moved the boys deeper into the building, into the Keep. The rooms of the Keep were very fine, but they were also impossible to escape. They had been used to hold important prisoners in the past; now, they did so again. The walls of the Keep were thicker than a man is tall; and no one could see into the windows, and no one could see out. Soon sightings of the princes in the gardens grew sparse, and petered out; and soon the two children were never seen outside, in the sunshine, again.”

Newspapers: always newspapers, with their dirty inky smell and their vague dustiness, taking up too much of the breakfast table and catching her uncle’s eye as if he were a sailor and they that singing mermaid on the rock. Jeremy was different: he could lose himself in the pages all day for all Cecily cared, although anyone could see that reading about bombs and aeroplanes wasn’t doing him any good. Her uncle, however, was another matter. Cecily felt physical pain to have Peregrine so near, and yet to be ignored. She glared across the table, psychically willing him to lower the paper and talk. The newspaper shielded him like a jealous girl obscuring the stare of a rival. “Uncle Peregrine!” she finally squawked.

“Mmm?”

Immediately Cecily realised she had nothing specific to say. “What’s . . . what’s happening?” she asked, though she could see for herself. LONDON HIT HARD OVERNIGHT read the headlines. It chilled her to know they were talking about her own city, where her home was, where her father was.

“What’s happening is an outrage,” muttered Peregrine, and shook straight the sagging paper.

Cecily glanced at May, who sat with her back to the windows. The morning sun came through the glass and spangled around the edges of the evacuee. The sky behind her was a watercolour blue. “It’s going to be a nice day,” Cecily observed.

“We can play outside,” said May.

“After lessons.” Cecily looked at her brother. “What will we learn today, Jem?”

He frowned, proving he’d heard something, but his attention stayed on the newspaper. “I’m not sure. Maybe later.”

May smiled; Cecily felt glum. She heaped raspberry jam on a slice of toast, so much that it plastered her nose with redness as it passed underneath. It took time to consume this monster, during which Jeremy made several comments on the air raids but failed to notice his sister’s indelicacy. “Uncle,” said Cecily, when she’d unstuck her teeth and could speak again, “those two princes in the Tower. Why have they disappeared?”

It was something which had troubled her as she’d readied herself for bed the previous night, that Peregrine had ended the second instalment of the Duke’s story at the point of the brothers’ vanishing from view. It was not a settled place to park the telling, and had left her feeling frustrated. “What’s happened to them? Are they dead?”

A victory: Peregrine actually glanced past the newspaper. “The story is more than four hundred and fifty years old. Everyone in it is dead.”

“You know what I mean! Tell us what’s happened.”

“Not now.”

“Aww! Please? You might have to go away again, and not come back for days . . .”

“Well, a story that’s waited nearly five centuries can easily wait a few days.”

Cecily slumped. Jeremy turned a page, and Cecily’s disappointed eye fell on a photograph in a corner of the newspaper. A woman and a child stood beside a mountain of hideous rubble. From the way they were standing, the way they were staring, one could tell the rubble had been their house. Craning closer, she read the caption.
Alex, aged 7, sobs and says, “I can’t find my cat!”

“Oh!” Cecily’s eyes went swimmy. “Don’t worry little boy, you’ll find your cat! He’s got nine lives, remember?”

After breakfast the girls did the skipping, hopping and press-ups which would keep their minds healthy and their bodies ready for action. Then they tumbled out into the day, which was not as warm as it looked, and made their daily rounds of the outbuildings. May said they might find a tramp asleep in the barn; Cecily wasn’t sure she wanted to. She was ready to run as May poked about in the hay with a pitchfork. A moth flew up, but no pronged tramp screamed. Finally, “You might as well stop,” Cecily said. “There’s nobody here.”

“Hmm,” said May.

Cecily changed the subject. “I’m worried about Daddy. Those horrible bombs. Are you worried about your mum?”

May didn’t dignify the question with an answer, only hung the fork on the wall. A pigeon had come to the door of the barn and was sunning itself in a square of light. May waggled her fingers at it, and it looked back with a scarlet stare. Idly she said, “If your daddy is so important, he’ll be safe. They won’t let bombs fall on important people’s heads.”

“Won’t they?”

“No. It’s like what my mum says about France: all the fancy generals stay far away, only the ordinary soldiers get shot. Only ordinary people will get squished by bombs. All the important people will be safe.”

Cecily thought on this, reasoned it was probably true. It was necessary to keep the important people safe, because otherwise important things would no longer get done. The pigeon had waddled off, flecks of hay were floating through the sunshine. “What shall we do now?” she asked.

“Let’s play sanctuary,” said May.

“Yeah! How do we play that?”

“We’ll go to Snow Castle, and that can be sanctuary, and I’ll be the Duke and you can be the Queen, and you can hide, and I’ll try to make you come out.”

“OK!” Cecily went for the door — then caught herself, turning back with a bashful face. “Do we have to play in Snow Castle? Can’t we play here? I’m a bit scared of Snow Castle,” she admitted.

May the Fearless replied, “It’s only an old ruin. It just makes funny echoes. It can’t hurt you.”

“What about those boys?”

“Those boys weren’t there last time. They’ve probably gone home. It’s been days and days.”

“Uh,” said Cecily, convinced, yet unconvinced. “Shall we bring Byron?”

“Yes! Then when I’m the Duke, he can be my army.”

So they located and chivvied the Newfoundland from his place at his master’s feet, changed their shoes for wellingtons and ran out into the field, May speeding about like a fighter plane, Cecily lumbering like a bomber. “Get away from me, get away from me!” she shrilled at the evacuee, getting into character as the Queen; in reply May laughed connivingly, and tossed her glossy head. In the woods she found a good stick which would serve as a sword; naturally Cecily also required a prop, so May yanked a length of weed from around an elm’s trunk and fashioned it into a crown.

They romped into the morning, two girls who easily forgot that the world was tearing apart at the seams. They slogged across the far field with the usual sense of being the last people alive, crossed the river with the typical dunking of feet, climbed the bank with the required muddying of knees. Snow Castle stood, devastated as ever, beautiful in the cream light. Sunlight shafted between gaps in the stone, twinkled on chips of white marble. May and Cecily stopped and stared. “It’s lovely, isn’t it?” Cecily couldn’t fathom how something so festery and broken could be so spectacular.

“It’s strange. Most of the castle has gone, but — it
feels
like it’s here, doesn’t it?”

Cecily believed she knew what May meant. Although most of Snow Castle’s walls and all of its roof were missing, their very absence told of things that had been. It was impossible to look at the ruin and not envisage the turrets, the countless rooms, the sweeping stairways, the massive arched doors. And all these seemed
here
rather more than they
weren’t here
. . . . It was odd. It was as if the destructions and disappearances of time had caused the castle no real inconvenience at all.

With a wave of her hand May gestured that the Queen should seek the safety of sanctuary. “Go in where I can’t reach you.”

Cecily took four or five steps forward, and stalled. Even this short distance into the depths of the ruin made her feel enveloped by stone, and alone. She looked back. “Is this far enough?”

“That’s good, just stand there. Now you are the Queen in sanctuary. Come out, you hag!”

May yelled these last words, startling Cecily. Then, grinning, the Queen howled back, “Never, you beast! I don’t trust you as far as I can spit! A pox on you, wicked Duke!”

May danced about. “A pox?”

“That’s what I said, a pox!”

“What’s a pox?”

“I don’t know! It’s a kind of cage —”

“That’s a box!”

“Oh, I don’t care, a pox
and
a box!”

“Listen to me, Queeny!” May shook her sword. “You have to come out. You’re embarrassing me. You’re making me look bad.”

“You
are
bad! It serves you right if you’re embarrassed. I’m never coming out. I like it here in sanctuary. It’s very snug.”

“I can make it
not
snug . . .”

“No you can’t, you can’t touch me, not while I’m in sanctuary!” The Queen actually thumbed her nose, an act unbecoming of royalty. “You’re a sneaky man, and you’ve kidnapped my son. If my husband the King were here, he’d wring your neck!”

“But the King’s not here!” shouted the Duke, who felt the Queen was running off with the show. “He’s as dead as a dodo —”