The Fatal Child (38 page)

‘Yes.’

‘What does he want this time?’

‘Your help.’

‘Does he ask or command?’

‘He commands.’

‘Very well.’ Slowly the man climbed to his feet. At his full height he came to Padry’s shoulder and his barrel of a body had a pronounced stoop. And still he seemed to be nothing other than a man now. ‘Is it kidnap again?’

‘No. It is a journey, to the mountains.’

‘For what purpose?’

‘You are to ask the mother of the King for the Cup
that she keeps. And you must ask it in the King’s name. Then you must return with it to Tuscolo.’

The prince frowned. ‘I would prefer even kidnap to this,’ he said.

‘Nevertheless you are to ask for it and to return with it.’

‘May I say for what purpose the King requires it?’

‘No.’

‘And you came to me because of all my brothers I am the closest to Tuscolo?’

‘Yes.’

‘My misfortune. But the King has also commanded me to serve. I serve the city of Pemini, and through them I serve Pemini’s poor. I may not leave my post here at a whim.’

‘It is no whim but a command, and it overrides the command you have been given. Direct me to the city officer responsible and I will secure your release.’

The officer in question could not be above the rank of alderman, after all. This would be the cheapest bribe Padry had paid in years.

The ancient prince nodded and wiped his nose on his sleeve. He looked around at the court. ‘She does not let me forget, you see,’ he said.

The court was newly built: a square of house-fronts constructed from good stone, whitewashed and capped with orange tiles. And yet something about it teased at Padry’s memory. It was not the houses themselves but the shape and scale to which the thing had been built, and the pool of water in the middle …

There should be columns, Padry thought suddenly.
The houses should have a colonnade along the front of them. He felt it very strongly, although it was surely unusual for separate house-fronts, even in an institution like this, to be united with a colonnade. And the pool … It should not be a pool, really. It should be a fountain, even though …

And then it would look exactly like the little fountain courts in Tuscolo, and in Velis, Tarceny, Ferroux – all the places where the first princes had made their strongholds.

He looked sharply at the man beside him.

Rolfe rubbed his face with his sleeve again.

‘When I came here, the building had already begun. The alderman thought the design was his own. He was pleased with it. I was able to persuade him that at least there should be no fountain, or he must pay for an ass and a man to watch it in order to drive the pump all day. But water there had to be, and instead of the Cup I must have the Pool. She does not forget, nor does she mean me to forget, until the day she or I depart’

‘I see,’ said Padry guardedly.
She
must mean the weeping goddess. Strange how easy it had been, with all the busy doings of his days, to put her out of his mind! And yet she would still be there, in that other world which was an echo of this one, weeping and weeping for a child who had been lost to a cruel hand. And because of her, and despite all the King did and all that Thomas Padry did to help him, men still dreamed dreams. They remembered, deep in themselves, what had been done. And they acted upon it.

He felt suddenly cold, as if a chilly wind had breathed upon his neck.

‘How is little Melissa?’ asked Rolfe suddenly. ‘Is she happy?’

‘As to that,’ said Padry, ‘I hardly see her—’

He got no further. Something whipped past his shoulder and struck the prince full in the face. Rolfe flailed and fell. There was a splash as he hit the water, and cries from the gateway behind him. The men around Padry yelled. Metal rasped from scabbards. They charged, still yelling, at the gate. There was no one there.

‘This way!’ cried one. ‘They went down the street. Follow me!’

He vanished through the arch, yelling,
‘Murder, Murder!
’ Others ran after him. Padry stood frozen to the spot. The pool at his feet was discoloured. Dark liquid was mingling with the water. Could it be blood? The body of Rolfe was moving feebly where it lay just below the surface.

No, it was not moving. It was the after-currents of his fall into the pool that made the arm wander so. Padry could see the eyes. They were open, staring up at the world from under the water. Under the water, where he had lived these three hundred years. And that dark thing attached to the side of the head, where the tendrils of blood wavered like smoke, was the butt of a bolt from a crossbow.

One foot protruded from the pool, caught by the heel of its sandal on the lip of the stone paving. The wrinkled flesh, tanned above, pale below;
the stitching in the leather; the way the sole was bent almost double against the stone by the weight of the limb dragging upon it: every detail of that foot wrote itself into Padry’s shocked brain.

‘I didn’t think they could die,’ he muttered aloud.

‘Plainly they do, though,’ said someone beside him.

It was Taxis, one of his men: a young squire from near Develin, hand-picked by Baron Lackmere for this mission. In the gateway loitered his brother, Tamian, peering out into the street from which the sounds of a crowd in pursuit came ever more faintly to the ear.

‘This is a mess, isn’t it?’ said Taxis, musing over the dead man in the pool.

A
mess?
How could he be so …? A moment ago Padry had been discharging his orders, giving his message, arming the King with the powers he needed. And now?

Now a man was dead. A man who had been more than a man, dead from the trivial little punch of an iron-tipped bolt and—

‘What do we do now?’ asked Taxis.

‘Do?’ repeated Padry. His lips were numb.

But slowly his shocked mind gathered itself. What now? A door had been slammed shut in their faces. The mountains were a week away. The nearest of the surviving princes was – well, Talifer was all the way in the south, near Lackmere. Of all of them he was the only one now whom Padry felt he could approach and reason with as though he were fully a man.

There was not time! Not if they were to be back in
Tuscolo, with the Cup, while the Queen was on pilgrimage!

Why
had this happened?

From the doorways and windows of the almshouse court, faces stared at him. The place was so quiet that the clink of Tamian’s armour sounded clearly as he strolled over to join them.

‘Who was it?’ asked Taxis.

‘Crossbowman,’ said Tamian. ‘Maybe more than one, although only one bolt was fired. I didn’t see them clearly. But Cravaine did. He was out and after them right away. The hue and cry’s up. Whoever it was won’t get far.’

Padry stared at the body in the pool, still wrestling with what had happened. The words of the squires persisted in his ears.

‘Cravaine saw them?’

‘What’s the matter?’

‘Just this. Why aren’t we all taking cover?’

Taking cover? thought Padry.

‘Because Cravaine got after them right away.’

‘Yes. But how did he know there weren’t others – on rooftops, behind windows …’

‘Maybe they followed us and didn’t have time—’

‘Yes, but how did he
know?’

‘Well, if they catch the fellow—’

‘If
they catch him.’

‘Why shouldn’t they?’ demanded Padry, rousing himself. ‘You said your friend was on his heels!’

‘Not my friend,’ said Taxis. ‘And that’s the point. This mission we are on – it’s about the Queen, isn’t it?’

‘What if it is?’ said Padry warily.

‘Just this. Cravaine’s a Queen’s man. Oh, he’s a southerner, right enough, like Tamian and me. He came to Tuscolo at the same time as we did. No doubt that’s why he was picked for this. But he became a Queen’s man within a month of arriving. Just one look she gave him and that was all it took. I saw it happen.’

Tamian was nodding in agreement.

‘And he was after them quick, wasn’t he? So quick, in fact, that he might have been expecting this. I don’t know who fired the bolt. But if it had been me, in a strange town and all, I’d have been a lot happier if I knew there was someone there to lead the pursuit in the wrong direction … Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe they’ll be back in a moment with whoever it was by the collar. But if they aren’t, then we have some thinking to do. And we’ll have to do it quickly.’

Padry opened his mouth and shut it. His world had turned inside out. He had thought himself safe, guarded, secret. It had never occurred to him that there might be any danger in this mission. Now suddenly he was blind. A hidden enemy had struck without warning. He might strike again. They knew where he was. Windows, doorways – any patch of shadow might hide a knife or a crossbow. Why hadn’t he taken cover? He had been standing here in the open, too stupefied even to think that there might be other attackers!

Someone had betrayed him.

Who?

He had no answer.

He looked down at Rolfe’s foot. That mute, obscene limb, at once so meaningless and so pitiful! Three hundred years the man had lived – almost as long as recorded history! He had been released from a hell on earth, found himself, was starting anew – Angels alone could understand what a journey had been travelled in the man’s mind! And now the mind had been smashed, the Path cut, the light denied –
for a woman’s smile
!

He stood at the poolside and shook with his own anger.

‘They’re taking their time, aren’t they?’ said Tamian.

‘Believe me now, do you?’ said Taxis.

Padry clenched his fists. ‘We’re going on,’ he hissed. ‘We’ll go the long way, under the sun.’

He would be late, probably too late. But he would get there. They would not stop him, the damned, treacherous, murdering … He would get the Cup, and bring it back. He would show them how
vain
and
wasteful
was the thing they had done here!

‘You think we can do it?’ asked Taxis.

‘I know the way. I’ve been there before.’

‘Then we had better start now.’

‘I want to bury him—’

‘Now
, master. Before they find we’ve given them the slip.’

Atti emerged from the throne hall into the sunlight of the fountain court, and Melissa carried her train. They walked slowly, because the way was crowded with
young men with brightly painted faces, in brightly coloured tunics and hose, bowing and smiling as they always did, and pushing each other with their shoulders to keep their places before the Queen even as they backed from her path.

‘Your Majesty,’ said one, waving a feathered blue-velvet cap before his knees, ‘I beg you – have you yet thought who might be your escort to Luckingham?’

‘Why, no,’ said Atti. ‘There is time yet, surely.’

‘It is but a fortnight away, Your Majesty.’

‘Time enough. Indeed I am not sure I shall go at all. Travel wearies me so.’

‘I beg you, Your Majesty! Have pity on those who wait to know if they are to have the joy and honour of guarding you—’

‘And reckon on those who have shown themselves most true,’ broke in a gallant in red, bowing and waving even more than the one in blue.

‘Why, sir,’ said the Queen, ‘how am I to know who is most true? Since you all say the same, act the same, dress the same, aye, and even sing the same – how am I to tell one of you from another?’

‘Your Majesty jests! You know me well enough, I think.’

‘What, sir,’ said the Queen lightly, ‘have we spoken before?’

‘Most recently – of a matter in Pemini, Your Majesty,’ insisted the young knight.

The Queen stopped and looked at him. Melissa could not see her face, but from her tone she thought that Atti might be frowning.

‘I may recall it,’ she said. ‘I believe I do, indeed. What of it?’

‘The matter is dealt with,’ said the young man in red proudly and bowed again.

‘Fully dealt with, sir?’

‘The main matter, yes. A rat or two has slipped beyond our reach for the moment, but I have friends who shall see to them as swiftly as may be.’

‘Let them see to it indeed. There must always be rats in our realm, I suppose. But I would that they troubled us as little as possible.’

She turned away. As she did so a pale silk handkerchief seemed to slip from her hand and flutter to the paving. Immediately three or four of the young men jumped for it. The red knight was the nearest and was the winner.

‘Your Majesty,’ he cried, presenting the handkerchief for her attention.

The Queen turned back, looked at it and sighed. ‘Truly, I believe the gardeners should be beaten for their laziness. See how filthy it has become! No, I do not want it, Sir Cravaine. Do with it as you will.’

With a broad grin of triumph, the red knight bowed again. As the Queen moved on, Melissa glimpsed him among the crowd, tying the square of silk to his sleeve.

By the fountain a chair had been set. A group of musicians waited there to play. They were ‘Lo-di-lay’ singers, a new fashion from Outland. They wore black hose and doublets, and great black cloths bound around their heads, with their faces painted white and
their lips painted black. They would play and sing their mournful ballads, interspersed with long choruses in which there were no words but a constant, meaningless lolling of the tongues that was now much admired. The Queen settled herself in the chair. Melissa began to arrange her train over one arm of it so that the end did not trail in the dust.

‘It is a beautiful day,’ said Atti, looking up at the sky.

Suddenly she smiled one of her rare smiles. ‘I believe I am a faintheart and a weakling. We shall go to Luckingham after all.’

Melissa’s heart sank. For a moment her hand paused as she tucked the silken folds around her mistress. She wanted to hiss at her:
Do you think that’s going to make it better? What’s the difference, him rather than the King? Don’t you end up hating anyone close to you?

She clenched her teeth and bit it all back. But she could not help muttering: ‘You be careful now.’

Nothing changed on the Queen’s face, although she must have heard. She clapped her hands for the music to begin.