The Fatal Child (45 page)

Let them think the blood on his point is mine.

Men were shouting. They were climbing up into the cart. Still the point of the sword hovered before his eyes. He saw the fresh red stain on it. And his raw hand screamed with the pain.

‘What is happening down there?’

A woman’s voice.
Her
voice, from above them. He looked up. They all did. She was watching from the battlements of the gatehouse with the banner of Gueronius flying over her head. There were others up there with her – bowmen, Padry thought. The gatehouse had been her prison. Now they had taken it and made it her stronghold until the castle was secure.

‘We have a rat by the tail, Your Majesty,’ said the tall young man, standing by the mule’s head. ‘It is squeaking a little.’

Padry looked up into her eyes. He looked for her loathing. He looked for her contempt. He saw them.

Oh, she was beautiful there, framed by the blunt teeth of the battlements. She was a cold angel, casting her eyes down from Heaven upon the corrupt and unworthy world beneath. And everything he had done was wrong. All his best and most noble efforts had been vile. He had betrayed her. He had betrayed her every day of his life since he had taken her by the hand in the garden. That was what he saw in her eyes. Death must look like that, he thought. Like the beauty and thrill of steel plunged into warm flesh.

And he thought, too, that she knew what he was doing, blustering here at the gate. She knew who it was who lay in the cart beneath his feet.

‘Let him go,’ she said coldly.

‘But Your Majesty—’

‘He is of no account. Have you found the King yet?’

‘No, Your Majesty. But—’

‘Send to my Lord Gueronius to search the chapel. He will try to seek sanctuary. And until it has been searched, do you set a watch upon it yourselves, to be sure that none can leave it.’

‘Yes, Your Majesty—’

‘Now
, sir.’

They climbed off the cart. They stood aside in silence while he took up the reins and urged the stupid, damned mule down the gate-tunnel and into the outer bailey of the courtyard. And all the while she looked down on them to be sure that it was done. And as he drove across the wide space beyond the middle gate, the wheels of the cart echoed the words she had spoken, again and again in his ears.

Let him go.

Let him go.

Let him go.

And he would never, never know whom she had meant by
him
.

He made for the River Gate, which led out not into the city but to the meadows beyond the walls. The gate was open. The guard were men of the castle, still with the tabards of the Moon and the Oak Leaf, quartered with the Eagle of Baldwin. The gate sergeant was a man he knew slightly.

‘Are you for the King?’ Padry asked them.

The gate-sergeant eyed him warily. ‘Which King would that be?’ he asked in reply.

Padry cursed him and drove out of the castle.

At last, in the cover of some willows, he was able to halt the wagon. He climbed once more into the back and raked through the flimsy piles of paper. Here was the rug. He did not stop to see whether it was pierced, or whether it was soaked with blood. He tore it aside to reveal the man underneath.

Ambrose’s eyes were closed. His face was drawn with pain. His leggings were bloody. There was a wound in his upper thigh where the sword had ripped through the hanging. Padry peered at it. It was not big, not deep. Blood was still coming, but not fast. It must be cleaned and dressed. There would be threads of fabric driven into the flesh. They would have to be picked out. He could do none of that himself. Not one-handed. And he could do none of it here. At any moment riders might issue from the castle to pursue him. It was a miracle that he had been allowed to pass through the gate. A miracle, too, that Ambrose had not cried out, and that any movement he had made had been covered by the scuffle in the cart.

Ambrose’s hand was thrust inside his tunic. Fearing another wound, Padry drew it out. But there was no more blood. Instead he found the King’s fingers curled around a small leather purse that was slung from his neck. Inside the purse was not money but a small white stone, covered with curved lines cut into its surface.

Ambrose convulsed. He clutched at the stone and held it. His eyes opened, burning with pain. But the stupor was broken. The man was back. The wound had woken him at last.

His voice was a fierce whisper. ‘Where?’

‘We are away, Your Majesty.’

‘Help,’ hissed the King. ‘Get help!’

‘As soon as we can find it, Your Majesty.’

Ambrose closed his eyes again.

There was nothing to do but drive. And so Padry drove. At a crossroads near Parter’s Bridge they came upon loyal riders, who were part of a column returning from the fruitless hunt for Gueronius.

‘My lord,’ whispered Melissa. ‘My lord!’

Beside her Puck crouched at the bedside, looking grimmer than she had ever seen him.

‘My lord – we have paper and pen.’

The baron’s eye flickered. At first Melissa thought that he must no longer be able to speak. But then his lips moved.

‘It’s dark,’ he complained. ‘Can you see to write, boy?’

It was bright day outside. Warm beams shot into the King’s chamber and fell upon the baron’s legs. Melissa was surprised that he couldn’t feel them. He lay as she had left him, with one hand still pressed to his stomach and all the bedclothes soaked in blood. The surgeon had not come. Or if he had come, he had only looked at the fallen man and then had stolen away again. And that foul smell had thickened in the air.

‘I can write, sir,’ said Puck solemnly. The pen, long, white-feathered and silver-nibbed, rested in his hand. An ink bottle of beautiful glass was on the floor beside
him. On his knee were documents he had lifted from a chest in the Privy council chamber, closely written with words that Melissa could not read but must mean many important things about land, wealth, property and the Kingdom. Puck had folded the top one so that only the blank space at the bottom of the document showed.

‘Write – what I say.’

Puck nodded and waited. Somewhere close, armed footsteps hurried down a flight of stairs. Melissa glanced at the door, afraid that they might be discovered. But Puck ignored them. His bright, capable eyes never left the man on the bed.

‘To my Lady Develin, in Develin. Greetings,’ whispered the baron.

Scratch-scratch went the pen in the warm air. Melissa watched the lines forming on the blank paper and wondered that Puck –
her
Puck – could do something so marvellous, and do it so calmly while men hunted through the castle with iron in their hands.

‘The King is betrayed,’ muttered the baron. ‘Haste you to him. Or the years will bite their tail.’

Scratch, scratch-scratch. Puck looked up.

‘Sign that it is dictated by me,’ said the baron.

Puck lifted an eyebrow as he wrote. He was surprised that the letter was so short.

‘Damn her,’ groaned the baron. ‘Queen? Adulterous, treacherous bitch of a—’ His voice broke into a hiss of pain. ‘Another!’ he muttered. ‘Quickly!’

Puck shuffled his paper until he found another blank space.

‘Is the pen sharp, boy?’ said the baron. ‘Will it write for me?’

‘It will write, my lord.’

‘Write, then. To my – my worthy and well-beloved son Raymonde. Raymonde diLackmere, in Lackmere. Greeting.’

Melissa gasped. The baron hated his son. Everyone knew that.

‘Raymonde,’ whispered the baron. ‘I would that you know you are the heir of my body, my lands and my spirit. There is no other. I hold you worthy of it. All the things that should be forgotten, I have forgotten. All that was wrongly done I – I forgive.’

He lay, face half sunk in the bedclothes, eye fixed upon nothing. Only his mouth moved. His words seemed to come from far away.

‘Is it sharp, boy?’ he whispered again. ‘Is it sharp?’

‘Yes, my lord.’

‘Write then. Write that he has my blessing.’

As the pen moved, Melissa stared at the dying, angry man, and wondered if his words were true.

‘There is more, boy.’

‘I am ready, sir.’

‘Raymonde, know you that I am this day foully and by treachery stricken. I am but an hour, I judge, from my meeting with the Angels. Therefore I bid you come find such tomb as they may lay me in, and there have flames lit and prayers said for my soul, for I know that I have been over-sparing of prayer in my life …’

His voice had sunk to a mutter. He paused.

‘Is it sharp?’

‘Yes, my lord.’

The baron’s free hand curled into a fist upon the sheets. Hoarsely he continued, ‘Yet first and above all I lay this on you. That you make no delay, but come with all the force that you can. For our lord the King is betrayed. Bring to him, therefore, every … every horse and spear and man in the lands of Lackmere. And if by ill chance you should come … too late to save him, then I lay this on you also. That you shall make war … unceasing against his enemies. That you spare none who had a hand in the making of this day. So I charge you, as … as you are a vassal, and a knight … and as you are my son.

‘I have finished, boy,’ he gasped. ‘Write that he has my blessing.’

‘I have written it already, my lord, as you said.’

‘So. Then … give it.’

Puck laid the paper on the bed, a few inches from the baron’s eyes. Slowly the baron drew his bloodied hand from his stomach. The forefinger, dark and sticky, hovered over it for a second. It pressed upon the page. When it withdrew, a red-brown fingermark was left below the words that Puck had written.

‘Now go, boy. Ride … into the south. Bring me my revenge.’

Puck nodded. ‘I will go,’ he said simply.

‘Puck!’ cried Melissa.

She stared at him. Into the south?
Where
into the south? Where were these places? Puck could have no more idea than she had. How would he get there?
‘Ride’, the baron had said. Where was Puck to get a horse? He’d not get one of the King’s out of the stables!

He smiled at her wryly.
‘Puka halalah,’
he said.

‘Puck!’
she wailed. ‘Don’t be stupid!’

The stupid, simple, childish … Why did he think he could do this?

‘Do not worry,’ he said. ‘I am a small one. They do not look for small ones. Only the big. I wait a bit – go when gates open. It will be fine.’

When she did not answer, he touched her arm. ‘We do a good thing now.’

He pulled his scholar’s habit off over his head and lifted his long undershirt. She saw the lean ripple of his ribs under his brown skin. There was a thoughtful expression on his face as he tucked his two papers into the back of his loincloth and dropped his shirt again. Then he pulled his habit back on and twisted round to see.

‘Nothing shows?’ he said.

And there he stood, the clever, funny boy who had come all the way from the hills because of her; whom she had kissed in the stables and who had been so put down when she hadn’t wanted to do it again; who had carried food up and down the mountain valley for her in another life, years ago. He was as lithe and as quick and as brown as her own father had been. And now he was going to go away, by roads he did not know, with bloody-handed armed men all over the place who would kill him at once if they knew what he carried!

And she could not stop him. He was of the King’s party. So was she.

‘You’ll need money,’ she said grimly. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve got any, have you?’

He shrugged, helpless. (He hadn’t even thought of it! How like him! How –
simple!)

She looked around the ransacked room. ‘I don’t suppose I have either any more,’ she said.

But the searchers had been looking for a man, not loot. They had opened her closet, spilled and poked among her things, but they had not got down and rummaged with their hands. Her purse was still there. So was the carved kid.

She took the purse and put it in his hand.

‘Buy yourself a horse,’ she said. ‘Or a mule, or whatever you can get. I’d come with you, but it won’t stretch to two. And I can’t ride, anyway.’

‘How!’ he said, weighing the purse. ‘You are rich!’

‘Not any more.’

‘When I come back, I give it again to you. Marry you, too, maybe.’

‘Anything you say,’ she said shortly.

She hugged him once, and he was gone.

The baron lay, still as a dead thing, on the King’s bed. His face was white and his right hand was white on the bedclothes, and his left was black with old blood. He breathed in gasps so faint she could barely hear them, and with each breath a fresh trickle of red blood oozed between his fingers. His eyes were open but they did not follow her when she moved.

‘Damn her,’ he muttered. ‘She’s sunk us. The lying …’

His head moved a little. He was trying to lift it. He could not.

‘Dark,’ he whispered.

Melissa sat in the sunlight and looked at the gleaming window.

‘There’s a storm coming, my lord,’ she said.

She had never liked him. She had not liked him the first day she had seen him, on the knoll above Aclete, standing with the King. And he had not liked her. Now she thought that she should hate him. She should hate him because he had sent Puck away. She should hate him because he had made her help him do it. She should hate him, above all, because she must sit with him when there was nothing she could do.

It was too much effort. So much had happened in the last few hours that she did not think she could feel anything any more.
When I come back, I give it again to you. Marry you, too, maybe
. But Puck would not come back. He had gone where the baron was going. And he had gone with a smile.

‘Is it sharp?’ murmured the baron. ‘Is it sharp?’

‘The letter is written, my lord. It has gone.’

‘Spare none,’ the man whispered. ‘As you are my son.’

After a little she took his right hand and held it. It was lifeless. Maybe he could not even feel her touch at all any more. Still she held it as time slipped past, and men moved and called in the building, and no one
came near. She held it as she had held the hand of the dying hillwoman, years ago in Aclete.
Look after her
. That was what it had been then. Now it was
Spare none
. Why did the dying cast such loads on the living? Wasn’t being alive hard enough already?