The Fatal Child (30 page)

‘And what did he promise them, to earn his passage back?’ said another.

‘Gueronius alone can answer that,’ said Ambrose. ‘So. How many men has he at this moment?’ He looked at the councillor.

‘A few only, we think,’ said the man. ‘Some were men of the Kingdom – survivors of his crew. But there were some Outlanders, too.’

‘That’s easy, then,’ said Aun. ‘Send to arrest him.’

‘What for?’ said the King.

‘What do you mean, “What for”? Anything you like. Treason. Or if you want to be squeamish about that, for bringing Outlanders into the Kingdom. There will be laws about that, for sure.’

‘I am not a tyrant,’ said Ambrose. ‘If he has no men, he is no threat. He’ll find no friends in Velis either – that’s Baldwin country. And he has a right to his lands and his liberty, according to laws that
I
have passed, Aun. If he surrenders his claim to the throne peacefully and comes to tell us what we need to know of Outland, then he may keep them. Lord Joyce can bear the message, since he was a Tuscolo man once.’

‘Joyce? He’s a rat. You trust too much.’

Padry winced. That, said in full council! Really …

‘And you never trust!’ exploded Ambrose. ‘And you
never
forgive!’

‘Forgive?’ said the baron, looking hard at him. ‘What has forgiving to do with it?’

‘You know!’

‘Do I? Tell me, then,’ said the baron grimly.

‘I’m talking about Raymonde, your son.’

‘I thought so. My son who killed his brother. My son who lent his witchcraft to Velis. My son with all the dead of Develin and Bay around his neck – whom
you
favoured with your forgiveness without my counsel—’

‘And you dispute my right to forgive?’

‘I don’t dispute your
right
. And I don’t dispute your
right
to favour him with all those awards and offices and powers, either. Nor your
right
to try and make love to Gueronius. All I want to know is how the
hell
are we to keep you on your throne?’

‘Aun, if I’m to be King, I must do it my way. Or I’ll be as bad as every other king – or cut-throat – this land has had!’

‘Cut-throat now, is it?’ growled the baron.

‘The Angels are watching, Aun.’

So are your councillors, thought Padry. He cleared his throat. ‘Your Majesty …’

‘… Watching, are they? A moment ago I thought you said they had gone off somewhere.’

‘That’s enough,’ said Ambrose. He said it coldly and simply, and it ended the argument. ‘My Lord Chancellor, you will please draft me a letter for Lord Joyce as we have discussed. Gentlemen, I thank you. You may all go. I shall now have breakfast with my Queen – if she will deign to join me.’ He sat and put his hand over his eyes.

The councillors walked down the corridor in a body. Padry dropped to the back, still musing on his own reaction to the news that Gueronius had returned. Which had been, quite simply, horror. Why? He had liked the man once.

It was the association with Outland – the sinister aura of the unknown. It was the shock that someone presumed dead, mourned and mentally laid to rest, should have sprung to life again like a japing ghost. And it was the fear that everything they had done since his departure might have been done in error, and would now have to be undone. That would be unbearable – and dangerous! There must be no question of Ambrose abdicating or whatever. Lackmere had been right to scotch that quickly. The land had a king, and it was not Gueronius.

Looking back, Padry could pinpoint exactly the moment when his own loyalty had shifted decisively to
the new King. It had been nothing to do with wealth or charters or good justice. Oh, all that mattered, yes. But this was a stronger reason still.
This
was why he would fight, bite, claw and spend all his wits to keep Ambrose in power.

It had been early on, before they had even got him crowned. It had been the day his mother had brought the wretched Prince Marc to him. That was when Padry had witnessed a man’s sins being lifted from him and had seen that his own might somehow be forgiven, too. (Even if right at this moment they looked like coming home to roost! Outland! What had Gueronius brought with him?) But there was hope, Thomas Padry. With this King there would always be hope. That was something he could cling to. Let him only serve faithfully …

A touch on his arm. It was the Baron Lackmere, beside him at the back of the group, signing for him to slow his pace. Surprised, Padry obeyed. They watched the others get further ahead.

‘You were right about the night, weren’t you?’ growled Lackmere from the corner of his mouth. ‘That’s what’s eating him, for sure.’

Padry frowned, puzzled. ‘You mean …?’

‘The Queen. Withholding herself, I suppose.’ He jerked his chin at the councillors ahead of him. ‘They’ll guess now. Or soon they will.’

The Queen. Padry stopped short.

In the Night we cannot help him
. A different, and far more earthy, meaning to the word ‘night’ than he had intended. The Queen. Maybe that was why
Ambrose was so jumpy these days. Maybe that was why the boy sat up over his wine when other things should have been calling him to his couch.

Maybe? Certainly. For sure. Thomas Padry, you think yourself a man of the world. And in some ways you are as unworldly as your own King! The baron had guessed it. Why hadn’t he? After all, he knew Atti better than almost anyone in Tuscolo. And yes, he could believe it of her. Yes, he could.

Well, if that was the truth, then there was indeed nothing they could do to help. Ambrose had made his bed, so to speak. Now he must lie on it. But it was awkward. Very awkward, at a time like this. Few things would eat a king’s authority faster than a rumour that he could not control his wife. This could make things much more difficult.

‘Hush it as long as we can,’ said the baron.

he King’s butler brought a kid into the fountain garden. It was less than a year old. Its coat was a beautiful, shining slate grey, its legs long and delicate, its eyes soft and fearful as it stared at the crowd of courtiers surrounding the Queen. The Queen’s pet lynx roused itself inquisitively from its cushion.

Immediately the kid skittered away to the far end of its leash, splaying its legs and pulling in vain against its collar and the strength of the butler’s arm.

‘His Majesty begs you will consider it,’ said the butler. ‘He asks me to say that he hopes it will remind you of kindness and of good things when the day wearies you.’

‘I do not understand,’ said the Queen, so that all her courtiers could hear. ‘Does His Majesty think that I am his goatherd?’

‘No, Your Majesty!’ said the butler earnestly. ‘He means it as a thing of beauty for you, a living jewel chosen from a thousand of its like!’

‘A jewel?’ said the Queen in cold surprise. ‘But it is a goat!’

The crowd of courtiers tittered. The Queen turned her head away so that the man might not speak with her again.

Her hair was braided and thick with gems. Her face was like a statue’s. There was powder on her skin – thick white powder to hide the marks of sleeplessness under her eyes. She sat listlessly by the fountain. The courtiers who normally jostled for her attention glanced nervously at one another. The young knight who was carefully losing to her at chess fixed his eyes on the board with a frown. No one wanted to put themselves first when she was in this mood.

The chief lady-in-waiting looked around. Her eye fell on Melissa, who had been standing holding her tray for a quarter of an hour. She signed her forward.

‘What is this?’ sighed Atti as Melissa held up the tray.

‘Sweetmeats, Your Majesty,’ said Melissa. ‘You sent for them.’

‘No one here is hungry,’ said Atti. ‘Take them away.’

Melissa lowered the tray. The sweetmeats, still warm from the oven, were arranged in an elaborate flower-pattern on the shining silver. The beautiful smells reached out to set the juices running in a score of noble mouths. Their eyes followed the tray as Melissa backed away from the Queen. But there was nothing they could do. She had said no one was hungry.

‘Take that away, too.’

The butler bowed low, dragged the kid over to him
and picked it up so that its legs dangled over his arm. He and Melissa left the circle around the Queen together, each bearing their rejected offering. The butler caught Melissa’s eye as they walked side by side. His brow lifted, questioning.

Melissa shrugged irritably. All right, so it hadn’t worked. She hadn’t promised anyone that it would, had she?

The King’s people had been at their wits’ end. (They must have been, to come to her, who was only a maid after all.) They had almost begged her to help them find something to please Atti. She had racked her brains and suggested the kid. But it hadn’t worked. And they would blame her now. They would tell the King she had misled them. She was angry with them, and angry with Atti, too. Atti had been moody for weeks. Now there was this news that someone or other had arrived in the land by ship, and Atti had reached her very worst.

Behind them Melissa heard her say: ‘It is a stupid game.’

‘Your Majesty plays with skill. See – I am forced to bring out my queen.’

‘It is a stupid game. No man lets a queen have such power …’

Atti’s words were swallowed by an eerie howl. The pet lynx was straining at its collar after the disappearing kid, mewing piteously at the sight of a new toy being taken away.

That night was worse than ever.

* * *

Padry was asleep. In his dreams someone had come to hammer at his door.

‘Lord Chancellor! Lord Chancellor!’

He rolled over in his bed, sat up and rubbed his eyes. It was dark. It must be deep night.

‘Lord Chancellor!’ And more knocking.

‘Yes!’ he groaned. ‘Come!’

Light. A lamp held by his servant, Ormond, who was himself in a nightshift.

‘The King has sent for you.’

‘What? Now? What time is it?’

‘Past midnight, sir.’

He had been deep, deep asleep. Was he going to have to get up and drag himself along the corridors of the palace?

‘What for?’ he croaked.

‘He wants to speak with you, sir, urgently.’

‘Well, I did not suppose he had sent to ask about my health, man!’

Padry glared at the fellow, who looked back at him helplessly. Obviously the message had not given a reason. So it might be anything, anything at all. It might even be that the King had got drunk enough to want to play word-games or chess or something. Ambrose had never yet dragged him from sleep on a whim, but the way things were going …

One thought rose through the others, like timber floating upwards from a wreck. It must be Outland. The evil that Ambrose had predicted, and that Padry had failed to prevent, had manifested itself. Whatever it was, it was here.

‘Very well!’ he groaned, and flung off his bedclothes. ‘No, I will dress myself. But leave me that light. I will need it.’

That ship – the Outland ship that had docked – it must have brought something with it. What? What was the worst thing that he could think of? A plague. A deadly sickness, sweeping the alleys of Velis and spreading upriver into the heart of the Kingdom! What could be done about that? Isolate, fumigate … Guards around infected villages … Of course it was impossible to plan before he knew what the danger was. The just man should wait, unperturbed, until he heard the news for himself. And then he should think clearly. Padry could do neither. Not at this hour. Not with the fear that he himself might be to blame for whatever had happened.

He left his chamber and made his way through the palace. His mind was busy with disaster, and as he approached the King’s chambers the air of disaster rose around him. The corridors were lit with torches. A woman was shrieking somewhere. Men were up, some dressed, some half dressed, talking excitedly in the doorways. The Baron Lackmere came striding along in the opposite direction, wearing his mail shirt and with armed esquires at his back. He was snarling instructions to his followers about horses, rations and crossbowmen. Padry found himself brushed against the wall as the men stamped past.

‘… And this is what you get for
trusting
,’ barked the baron to him, and diminished down the corridor in an angry clatter of steel.

The King was alone in the Privy Council chamber, sitting before a low fire with his head sunk onto one hand. Plainly he had not been to bed and plainly he had indeed been drinking. But that was not the trouble.

‘You can guess what’s happened,’ he said.

In his hand there was a letter. He waved it dejectedly. And Padry could guess now.

‘Is it Gueronius, Your Majesty?’

‘Yes. He has defied us. Lord Joyce says he has slipped past him and has gone to his own estates.’

‘Lord Joyce,’ said Padry with the coldness of broken sleep, ‘plays both sides, perhaps.’

As well he might. A former leader of the Tuscolo faction, with his own personal alliances among Tuscolo families: he would be careful what enemies he made at a time like this. They should have known that.

‘That’s what Aun thinks. He says we have to strike now, against Gueronius, before the Tuscolo faction can ask itself who it would rather have on the throne. He’s gone to put together a raiding force. If he leaves at dawn he could be in Gueronius’s estates by sundown the day after tomorrow.’