The Fatal Child (14 page)

‘I forgive you your vile insinuation,’ said Padry heavily. ‘Although I do not like to be lectured in morals by a man who feuds with his own son.’

Lackmere glared at him. ‘Blood of Angels! If you were a knight—’

‘Stop!’ cried Ambrose, slamming the table with the flat of his hand so that the crockery jumped. Padry jumped, too.

‘Master Padry,’ said Ambrose, looking hard at him, ‘there is peace between Aun and his son – peace, if perhaps no embrace. And you have strayed from the Path, I think. You should apologize.’

Apologize! Padry gasped. Apologize for reacting to that filthy, base,
shameful
charge! He would sooner—

Someone else was standing by the table.

It was a woman, dark-haired, in a plain dull robe that hung all the way to her feet. There was something immediately familiar about her – a likeness to the young Lord of Tarceny, who was looking up at her in surprise. Her face was more oval than his and less long. But the stamp of the eyes and nose was the same. An elder sister? A half-sister? Padry had not heard that there was one.

And he had not seen her approach. Suddenly she had just been there.

‘I beg your pardon,’ she said. ‘I am late.’

‘You come in your own time,’ said Ambrose as the
men all rose to their feet. ‘And I give thanks to Michael and Raphael that you have. Mother, may I introduce Thomas Padry, who is chancellor to King Gueronius, and his colleague Lex, who was once a student with me in Develin?’

‘Thanks to the Angels, sirs, that they have guarded you on your journey here.’

‘Amen,’ said Padry automatically as he rose from his bow to take her hands. He was thinking:
Mother!
So now this journey had brought him to meet not only a pair of ancient princes, but also Phaedra of Trant, once infamous in the Kingdom as the runaway bride of old Tarceny! Inwardly he was still fired with anger and outrage, but in her presence there was nothing he could do with it. It was embarrassing that such a woman, of such a name, should have appeared and caught him with his feelings running so far ahead of his wits, as if he were a schoolchild with a tantrum.

His second feeling was one of awe.

To meet her in the life was extraordinary – this solemn-eyed woman with a lightness to her touch that was … well, not frail, but less substantial than it should be, as if she were not altogether flesh and bone. He studied her curiously as she turned to greet Lex. She looked young – or untouched by age, at least. Certainly she seemed younger than she should be, to be the mother of a grown man.

They settled in silence around the table again. Ambrose did not call to the house for a place to be laid for his mother. He simply passed down the bread.
She took it, broke off a small piece and put it into her mouth, chewing slowly. She was watching them. She looked as if she knew exactly what was going on. Perhaps she did. She had made her appearance, pat, just as matters at the table had started to slide towards disaster. And her interruption had given Padry the chance to think again.

‘Sir,’ he said slowly to the baron, ‘I spoke in haste. I beg you to pardon it.’

The baron looked hard at him, and then nodded grimly.

Now he could begin once more. (Even though the wretched man had not offered a word of regret for the far, far worse things
he
had said! Really! But control yourself, Thomas Padry. A philosopher must not be slave to passion. You are here for a purpose.)

‘I understand,’ he said to Ambrose, ‘that you would refuse me.’

‘For her safety – yes.’

‘Well,’ said Padry, taking a deep breath, ‘I had three points. On this, my second, I think you are choosing to offend against the King. Will you hear my third?’

‘Of course.’

At the end of the table the woman broke off another small piece of bread and held it in her fingers. She looked at him as if she could hear his thoughts spoken aloud. Words jumped in Padry’s memory:
Such a one eats only because it helps to remember
. Her face was like a pool that hid secrets below its surface.

‘It concerns the practice of witchcraft,’ he said.

The men eyed him warily. He put both his hands on the table to show that he held no iron in them. Tonight, his weapon would be his tongue.

‘I need not remind you that witchcraft is abominated by the Church,’ he said coldly. ‘And that the Church has the ear of King and noble alike. Even in Develin – you may not have been aware of this – we were occasionally troubled by querulous bishops who felt that our studies had gone too far in certain directions. Your house, of course, has the reputation of having gone much further. The manner in which I was brought here confirms to me that this reputation is not unfounded. The manner and willingness with which that man Bavar came to put his head on your block says the same. I believe I heard him say you had commanded him in a dream.’

‘I did. Although I would not call it witchcraft.’

‘What would you call it, then?’

Ambrose shrugged. ‘If any speak of it in the March, they give it the name “under-craft”.’

‘A name that only conceals its nature,’ said Padry harshly.

The hands of the baron had slipped out of sight. Padry knew there could be a knife within inches of his belly. Still he did not care. There was just one thing that he was playing for. She must come home. He would risk everything – himself and Lex, too, if he must – for that.

‘The Lady Astria has seen you in dreams also,’ he said. ‘I know this.’

‘So now you are threatening me,’ said Ambrose.

‘I am saying that if you choose to make enemies, you give your enemies the chance to work a great alliance against you.’

At the end of the table the woman sat very still. But she was not looking at him any more. She was looking at her son.

‘Ambrose,’ she said, ‘is this true?’

He glanced at her, and shrugged again.

‘About Astria? Yes.’

‘Then – I agree with your guest. I think she should not stay with you.’

Ambrose frowned. Padry almost cheered.

‘Why not?’ said Ambrose. ‘You think she should go back to Tuscolo?’

She looked at Padry, and his heart sank once more.

‘No,’ she said.

No. Again!
Why
were they so set against him?

‘But she has no claim on you either, Ambrose,’ the woman said.

‘I think she may have.’

‘Why? You were right this morning. You were right to deny her suit and you were right about her. What thought had she given to her servant, who had come all this way with her? Does she grieve that the woman might die? No. But that she might lose the last thing she controls – yes, that gives her grief, it seems!’

‘I thought so, too,’ said the baron.

In a daze Padry wondered how they could be so unjust to Atti. Gadi was the girl’s last link to her old life. Now she might lose her. She would need him now more than ever, he thought. And they would not let
him go to her. They would not let him!

Ambrose was looking at his mother. A slight smile played around his lips. ‘The judgement – you saw all that?’

‘I did.’

‘Hah! And yet if I get Rolfe to show me things, you start to worry.’

‘It is different, Ambrose. You know that. And if you have approached her in a dream, then yes, I worry!’

‘Don’t. Or if you must worry, worry about something that needs worrying about. Astria has lived well, at least outwardly. But take that other girl they brought to me today. I remember her when she was six. She’d been helping her parents in their fields and in their hut since she could walk. She’s never known anything else. Of course, you say. That’s always been the way, and there are tens of thousands like her across the Kingdom. But it hasn’t always been the way! The priests used to run schools that even the poorest could go to. All that has been lost. Why? If I wore the crown in Tuscolo I could do something about it. Here, I can’t even begin. And now she’s an orphan, because of a stupid, petty act of brigandage that almost went unnoticed. What’s to be done about orphans? That friary we set up today—’

‘It isn’t the poor, Ambrose. It isn’t the children. It’s you.’

‘Me?’ said Ambrose cheerfully. ‘All right. Then maybe you should worry about this.’ He picked up his drinking bowl, turning it so that the pale liquid swirled around the rim. ‘Wine. This is the only place
in the March I can get it, and I can’t get enough. I’m sick of lying on wet ferns and drinking well-water that tastes of someone’s lavatory. Does Gueronius drink wine every day, Master Padry?’

‘Ambrose!’

‘
Yes
, Mummy?’

‘Amba, please listen – even if I am your parent! You must not think of going to Tuscolo, for Astria, or for any reason. You must not’

‘You would be hanged,’ said Lex, speaking for the first time.

‘Quite possibly,’ said Ambrose, still smiling, but more grimly now. ‘And no, I am not going to Tuscolo, Mother. I know my limits – or at least, I know what’s good for me. He told me what would happen, long before any of you.’

(‘He’? thought Padry. For the word had slipped in through the fog of his misery.)

‘He is dead,’ said Phaedra quietly.

‘His words live on,’ Ambrose tapped his head. ‘In here.
Go to Tuscolo, and you will die
. I don’t forget that. Although I often wonder what he meant by “die”.’

‘I know of only one meaning,’ said the baron.

‘You should not listen to him,’ said Phaedra. ‘Even in your memories. What you will hear are his lies.’

‘He lied expertly, by telling the truth,’ said Ambrose simply. ‘But no, I will not go to Tuscolo. I will curb my pities and bridle my thirst. And if it will make you happier, I will agree that Astria diBaldwin should neither stay in Aclete nor travel with me
round my various damp, filthy-watered hidey-holes. It might kill her anyway. We will have to think of something else.’

The woman gave him a long look, as if she wanted to believe him but was not sure that she could.

‘Thank you,’ she said.

‘Indeed. And you can reward me for my good behaviour by persuading Master Padry here that he should not after all raise the standard of holy war against us when he returns to Tuscolo.’

They all looked Padry’s way, then. Their faces were in shadow. The evening was deepening and the colours of the lakeside were fading into grey. The little lights on the tables seemed brighter now, flickering with the slightest movement of the air. Padry gathered his scattered wits. He felt sour, depressed and cheated. They had hardly listened to him. His plea had been rejected for reasons that seemed incomprehensible. Angels above! Did they think he could not handle Gueronius?

Or was it he himself that they did not trust? Must he defend himself even for liking to look at the child? For taking her hand when she needed comfort? They would not say. They would not tell him the truth. There was something hidden here. He could sense it. It was as if the Demon were with him again, walking unseen beside him on the Path. But he could not think what it might be.

‘Very well,’ said Phaedra. ‘Although I will begin by speaking to both of you. I will say to you, Ambrose, that your guest is right. Under-craft, witchcraft, call it
what you will, but it is indeed poisonous. It is poisonous because it is power. The more power you assume, the more you poison yourself. When you were a child you knew that. I wonder that you can have forgotten it…’

‘I haven’t,’ said Ambrose. ‘But there are many poisons. Need is a terrible poison, and power is the antidote. If I need to bring a petty warlord to heel, I must have power to do it. And a man like Bavar fears his dreams more than any drawn sword …’

‘Nevertheless, Ambrose, an antidote is also poison, to be used sparingly if at all. And when you speak of “need,” you must be sure that it
is
need, and not just something that makes things easier – or that gratifies you.’

‘The step you most want to take is the one that strays from the Path,’ said Padry.

‘Oh indeed, Master Padry,’ said Ambrose. ‘Indeed.’ And his look was so direct and grim that Padry felt a little uncomfortable. He wondered again whether he had missed something.

‘And now I must address you, sir,’ said Phaedra.

They were all looking at him – all of them, even Lex. Their heads and faces were becoming round grey shapes in the dusk. The lamplights rushed in a gust of wind.

‘Tell me, sir. Of all the things you have learned in the past days, which seemed to you the greatest?’

Padry frowned. He did not like to follow when he could not see where he was going. He sucked his cheeks warily. But there was a clear answer. An obvious
answer. He should not be afraid to give it.

‘I suppose …’ he said. ‘The weeping voice.’

(The voice! The voice of the weeping earth. The pity of it! How could he have forgotten it for an instant? How could any hear it and not be changed?)

‘I do not know if she is truly a goddess, or if she truly made the world,’ said Phaedra. ‘But she is the land that we live in. All the things you call “witchcraft” stem from the tears she weeps. You have seen Talifer and his brother Rolfe. Near to this place there is a miserable creature you would not recognize as a man. He is Prince Lomba – keen-eyed Lomba of our legends – the father of the house of Bay. Like his brothers he was held in a pool of Beyah’s tears for three centuries until my son was able to call him out. He has been learning speech with me. Tonight for the first time he will speak with his King, and one day he will be a man again.

‘The other sons of Wulfram – Dieter and Galen, Marc and Hergest – live on in the same pool. We will free them in time. But these are small victories. Still she goes on weeping. And while she weeps she poisons all our hearts. We hear her in our deepest dreams. She cries
“Let them eat their sons,”
and we will. Today’s truce is only a respite from tomorrow’s war. So long as she weeps we will turn the iron that we brought into this land against one another. Perhaps she will never stop. But I believe it possible that she will. She is waiting for something. We do not know what it is, but one day we will find it.’

‘Sometimes I think that it may be my death,’
said Ambrose ruefully. ‘I am after all the very last father-to-son descendant of Wulfram there is.’