The Fatal Child (44 page)

And from the far corner of the King’s cloisters it was possible to enter the Eagle Tower, to gain the townside wall of the middle courtyard, and so come to the school building without passing through the upper gatehouse, now watched by armed men under the banner of Gueronius.

Padry tried the door that led into the upper floors of the school. It was open. Thank the Angels!

‘In here,’ he hissed. ‘Follow me.’

He took Ambrose by the arm and dragged him into the building.

They were in the long schoolroom that occupied the whole of the upper floor. Rows of empty benches faced them. Windows gave onto the courtyard on their right. Above them were bare rafters and the flat roof. Something scuttled up there – a rat or mouse. Padry could hear no other sound but his own gasping and that of Ambrose beside him.

His lungs heaved and his throat was sore. They had been running since the moment that Lackmere had caught them both in the council chamber.
‘It’s treachery! Get him out of here – Get him out!
’ They had run like animals. Sometimes they had run bent double. Padry’s limbs were shaking.

Still nothing moved inside the building. The school seemed to be empty. Most masters and all the scholars must still be in their quarters in the town – held perhaps by allies of Gueronius, who had taken their robes to aid their attack on the castle. Cautiously Padry made his way to a window into the long middle courtyard.

There were not many people in view. The castle folk would be hiding. Most of the attackers would be in the upper courtyard, subduing what was left of the resistance. But there were men on both gatehouses.
Both
gatehouses. And now, above both gates, flew the sun on the blue field.

There was movement on the other side of the middle bailey. Armed men had begun to search
the stable and the other buildings there. In half an hour, an hour at most, they would have worked their way round to the school.

Get out!
rang the voice of the baron in his ears.
Get OUT!

Padry cursed softly.

Both gatehouses taken, and probably the living quarters and the keep, too, by now.

How had it been
possible?

He knew how it had been possible. He could see now how the risks they had taken, which had seemed such little risks at the time, had been disastrous. Of course the court had been riven by the arrest of the Queen. No one who was so much adored would lack for allies. They had known that. They had known, too, that it would be said that the King had used witchcraft to find her out. So they had banished the knights of her party. And when they had begun the search for Gueronius they had sent their trusted men and kept those they were not sure of behind. Of course they had.

And among those they had been unsure of, there had been some willing to betray them. Of course there had been.

And Gueronius – for all his faults, he was a fighting man. He knew how to elude a blow and how to strike for the open throat. They had left themselves open. And he had struck.

The sun of the house of Tuscolo flew over the gatehouses and over the keep, too. Angels alone knew what had happened in the lower courtyard. And at his
back was the castle wall and a hundred-foot drop to the roofs of the town. Rope? There wasn’t much he could make rope from in the school. There wasn’t the time to make it. And the thought of swinging himself out over that horrible drop, trusting to whatever blankets and cords he had managed to fashion together, made him shiver. He knew how
that
would end.

‘Your Majesty?’ he said softly.

There was no answer. Padry looked round.

Ambrose was sitting slumped against the wall with his head in his hands. Padry bent over him, and shook him lightly by the arm.

‘Your Majesty – you must call the princes.’

There was no response.

‘Your Majesty,’ said Padry, shaking harder.

Ambrose looked up. His eyes were dazed. Shock, of course. One moment you are King, the next you are on the run. The young man could hardly understand what was happening.

‘You must call the princes. We need them to get us out. It is the only way.’

Ambrose stared at him.

‘They are searching for us, Your Majesty. They will find us here.’

Ambrose shook his head, and hid his face in his knees.

‘Your Majesty!’

‘I broke it,’ said Ambrose, and sobbed.

Padry drew breath to urge him again. Then he let it out. Slowly he straightened.

Look at him, Thomas Padry. Look at your King.

Do you remember the boy you found, with the lantern in his hand?
That
had been a king indeed. And you took him, and transplanted him here. Now see what has become of him! Look what you have done. Majesty? Where was the Majesty in this dazed, sighing creature, betrayed by his wife and by his guards?

How long would it take to shake him from his stupor? How long after that to call the princes? There might not be time. There would not be time. Damn it!

The castle was lost. The world was turned upside down. It was stupefying. He felt the shock of it himself, clogging his mind and distracting him with irrelevant thoughts. Lackmere had not felt it. Lackmere had looked from the council-chamber window and seen at once what was happening.
Get him out!

How?

Think, Thomas Padry. Think. You’ve been here before – in a house in sack. You got out then. Why not now? And this was not a sack. The enemy was being slower about his search – slower but more deliberate. Hiding was no good. They needed help. And if there was no help …

He peered out of the window again, searching for some way of escape.

Outside the school was a cart. A mule still stood in its traces, waiting patiently for whoever had brought it here to show it what it was to do next. The cart was half full of straw. Piles of straw lay all around it as if some demented stable hand had taken a fork and started to unload it in all directions.

That was no way to treat one’s load, thought a habit-driven corner of Padry’s brain. Even straw cost money.

But of course the load had not been straw. Not this morning. This morning it must have been armed men. The straw had only been there to hide them from view.

He looked at the cart and decided that it was hopeless. But he couldn’t think of anything else. And there was something sweet, some little revenge, in using the enemy’s device against him.

If it could be made to work a second time …

The stables were busy. There were guards outside it – Gueronius’s men. Melissa approached warily. As she came up she saw the stable hands emerging, one after another, leading the horses out into the open. Some led two horses. Some led three. They were emptying the stables. Among them was Puck.

He was there! Praise everything, he was there, and unhurt! He must have spent the night in the stables and had somehow been out of the way when the fighting started. Now he was holding the halter of a big brown horse that looked about twenty times his size. She sidled up to him through the crowd. He jumped when she touched his arm. Then he grinned. The sight of his smile was like a warm beam of sun in that terrible morning.

‘Good to see you safe,’ he said. ‘Hurt at all?’

‘Not me,’ she said. ‘What’s going on?’

He shrugged. ‘They search stables. They want
horses out so they can do that.’ He pulled a face. ‘No school anyway this morning, so I help.’

Melissa glanced at the stable door. Yes, there were men in there. She glimpsed one poking through a pile of hay with a long pole-arm. She knew who they were looking for.

There was an armed man standing only ten feet away from them.

‘I need you to come with me,’ she murmured.

Puck looked at her, surprised.

‘Puka halalah,’
she said.

Puka halalah
. For the King.

He lifted an eyebrow and said nothing. But he tapped another stable hand on the shoulder and gave him the halter of the beast he was holding. Then he followed her, back towards the gate to the upper courtyard.

There were armed men everywhere, watching them. She felt surrounded by a cloud of eyes and steel. Firmly she took his hand in hers as she walked. Let them think she had called him away for a cuddle while all the fine folk were distracted. She needed the comfort, anyway. She’d have liked nothing better just then than to sneak off with him to some quiet corner where they would both be safe and hold him, hold him, hold him until all these awful things were over.

But she was of the King’s party. So was Puck. Puck could use a pen. There would be pen and ink in the council chamber. And paper. Stacks of it.

* * *

From the corner of the school to the middle gateway was a little over a hundred yards. It was the most horrible journey of Padry’s life. The mule did not seem to understand what he wanted. The cart bumped and jolted, and with each bump and jolt it shook the piles of books and papers, chests, hangings and other things that Padry had loaded it with, and he thought that the piles must subside and reveal the secret he carried towards the gate. He did not dare to look behind him.

I’m a schoolmaster, he thought. That’s all. A frightened scholar, making for safety with as much of the King’s library as he thinks he can get away with. Gueronius and his cut-throats had no time for books or scholars. They would only sneer and let him through. Believe it, Thomas Padry. If you believe it you can act it. If you don’t, you are for the scaffold and so is he.

Bump. Bump. Shake. He was obsessed with the thought that the guards were watching him as he rode high in his cart, and with the fear that any jolt might disturb the precarious piles of books and scrolls that he had built to conceal the cart’s passenger. He wanted to have these last moments, to drag them out, because as soon as he reached the gate he would be the plaything of death. The seconds seemed to stretch hugely as he looked and looked at the distant gatehouse, listened for the shouts, tensed for some flying arrow. The mule’s hooves plodded across the packed earth of the middle courtyard and its head nodded up and down as it walked, and the gatehouse seemed no nearer.

And then suddenly it was very near. His moments were pouring away like water from a jug. The guards were busy with something. They were bending over something on the ground to one side of the gateway – yes, a dead man. They were removing his armour – stripping him of anything of value as crows strip the flesh from carrion in the fields. Nearer, nearer. This was madness. They would never let him through. Of course they would check the cart. Why in the name of the Angels hadn’t carts been checked that morning? But the men who should have checked them were dead now. They had not been suspicious. It had been just another day for them. A day on which they had died. And on which Padry, too, would die, trying valiantly, stupidly … It was too late to go back and hide.

They had not looked up. One of them was laughing. Oh, they had stripped the groin. Of course they had. And the coarse, sick jokes that pillaging soldiers always make …

You keep at it, my children. You cut up his manhood with your little knives if that’s what pleases you. He won’t mind. And meanwhile I will just drive quietly through.

‘Halt.’

Padry had not even seen the man in the shadow of the gate-tunnel.

Man? Men – several of them. Again, with maddening irrelevance, his mind dithered off to wonder whether those long pole-arms could possibly have been smuggled into the castle that morning, or
whether they had been taken from the hands of the dead. The men around the corpse had paused and were looking his way.

‘So where do you think you’re off to?’ said a lazy voice in the gate-tunnel.

‘Pemini,’ said Padry, and his voice was a whisper. He cleared his throat. ‘Pemini,’ he tried again. ‘It’s my home,’ he added.

‘Pemini, is it? Well,
Pemini
, no one’s going anywhere from the castle this morning. What have you got there?’

‘Books,’ said Padry. ‘They’re mine. I brought them here.’

Men were walking round the cart – armed men. They wore padded jackets. Their helmets would not have been their own.

‘I have to go this morning,’ he said. ‘It’s urgent.’

‘Books,’ repeated the voice. Padry could see the speaker now. It was a tall, grinning young man, bareheaded, leaning lazily against the wall by the gatehouse door. ‘Books, is it?’

‘A heap of them,’ said one of the guards, peering in over the cart tail.

‘A heap. Why does a man go travelling with a heap of books, do you think?’

‘Soon see,’ said the guard. And he clambered up into the cart.

Padry watched, frozen. He saw the hairs on the man’s hand as it clutched the cart rail. He saw the dark stains on his knuckles, the little frown of effort on his face as he hauled his big body up onto the boards – the
lips, the fat cheeks, the beard. This is a man, Padry thought. A man like me. I could like him. I could joke or drink with him. And he’s going to poke with that sword – that short, bloody sword – among the scrolls and papers. He’s going to find the King. And then …

His body took command. His knees straightened. He stood up on the cart seat and faced the searcher.

‘They’re valuable!’ he said, choking. ‘You must not damage them!’

‘Soon see,’ said the man grimly. And he jabbed his sword hard into a pile of scrolls.

‘No!’ cried Padry.

Jab, jab! Padry stepped into the back of the cart. He stood up to his ankles in scrolls, astride the spot where Ambrose lay under a rug he had taken from a master’s sleeping room.

‘No!’ he screamed. The soldier ignored him. The point struck a book, piercing the cover and pulling it open as the man freed it. He lunged again, straight into the pile between Padry’s legs.

‘No!’ Padry screamed, and pushed the man with both hands.

The man stumbled. But he did not fall. He crouched, eyes blazing, and lifted his blade. It hovered before Padry’s throat. Instinctively Padry snatched at the point with his bare hand and howled as it twisted in his grip. He stepped back. Blood was flowing from his palm. He held his hands up.

Let them see it, he thought wildly. Let them see that I’m bleeding.