The Fatal Child (5 page)

And one day in the summer of her thirteenth year, when she was gathering yet more firewood under the trees, she heard noises down in the clearing. She picked up her bundle and hurried down the slope to see who had come. As she rounded the back of the hut she heard Mother call to her anxiously. But she ran on.

On the far bank of the stream were two men on horses.

Two knights!

They were not the King and his friend. Not even after all this time. They were two grown men, wearing red cloth over their armour. One of them had a big yellow beard.

Dadda was standing on this side of the stream. He had been cutting hay. Now he was holding his long hayfork in both hands, pointed towards the newcomers. They were talking to him and he was answering. Melissa could not hear what was said. She thought the bearded knight was trying to sound friendly, but it was not the sort of friendliness she liked. Dadda, when he answered, did not sound friendly at all.

One of the knights stirred his mount and rode it into the stream. Dadda shouted and pointed his fork at the animal. He looked as if he would stab it if it came within reach. The knight stopped, rested his arms on his horse’s neck and smiled. Dadda did not move. The points of his fork were sharp and bright. They wavered just slightly as he gripped the shaft, like twigs stirred in a light wind. The water frothed around the legs of the horse and whirled away downriver.

The bearded knight said something. The other knight turned his horse to climb back out of the stream. Together they rode away. Dadda watched them go, all the way to the cover of the trees. At the very edge of the wood one of the knights looked round and waved cheerfully at him.

‘Be back.’
The words carried faintly to Melissa’s ears.

Dadda was angry that night. He frowned and tore at his bread over supper, saying nothing. Mam, too, was tight-lipped. Melissa knew better than to ask who the knights had been or what they had wanted. Neither of her parents paid her any attention. At length Mam murmured something to Dadda. He snorted.

‘I don’t need ’em. I stand on my two feet.’

‘What if they do come back, then?’ Mam asked.

‘They won’t,’ he said. ‘I’ll have their hides if they do.’

But they did.

Two years after the fall of Velis, and on the most desperate mission of his life, Padry the chancellor returned at last to Develin.

It was a strange feeling, rather terrible indeed, to ride up the river road and see the long white line of the outer wall and the buildings around the upper courtyard, as if nothing had changed in all that time. In the old days he had made many homecomings like this, returning from Jent or Pemini or Tuscolo with new books for the Widow’s library or new scholars for her school. Now he came with the sun banner of Gueronius over his head, six men-at-arms at his back and the seal of the lord chancellor in his pouch. And before him was Develin, just as it had been, just as if his fellow masters – Pantethon, Grismonde, Denke and the rest of them – would be there to greet him as he rode into the courtyard, and the old Widow herself still waiting for him on her throne.

The red-and-white banners flew over the gates. The guards wore the same checked red-and-white tabards and they sounded the gate-horns in the same way. But the faces were different. Padry looked into the eyes of the gate-sergeants who asked him gruffly what his business was. They were strangers. The men he had known had perished in the sack seven years before. So had almost everyone else.

The Widow they had killed in this very courtyard, he thought as he dismounted at last in the upper bailey. Grismonde, white-bearded Grismonde, they had cut down at his altar in the chapel over there. Denke had thrown himself from his own window as they had broken down his door. Pantethon? He had a mental image of Pantethon lying somewhere, with his favourite peacock-blue-and-gold doublet all soaked in
his own blood. He could not remember where it had been. The scholars, the servants, the officers of the house, even the animals …

The courtyard was busy. There were scholars, servants, animals, all doing as they always had done in this place. They were not the ones he had known.

The keep and the hall towered over him. Their outlines were familiar, yet at once he was aware of changes that were both subtle and real. The old hall roof had sagged in two places. Now it did not. And the tiles, though weathered, were no longer the old dingy brown that he remembered. All that side of the upper courtyard had been burned in the sack. The roof had been replaced since. Presumably the floors of the living quarters had been, too.

The school was unchanged – a plain rectangular building, jutting into the courtyard. At his back rose the Wool Tower, also unchanged. There, in the big guardroom chimney, he had hung for hours with his eyes weeping from the faint fumes and his heart jumping every time someone entered the room below. His muscles and fingers had screamed to be released, until all his world had shrunk to the simple, agonizing battle between body and mind. Even now, looking up at the blunt circular shape of the tower, he imagined that he could still feel those pains: the torture of Develin, and the torture of Thomas Padry as he hung in the soot.

Sweating, he wiped his brow on his sleeve. His memories disturbed him. At the same time the thought of his mission gnawed at him. He was agitated, more than he should be.

‘Tell your mistress that the King’s lord chancellor begs for an audience as soon as may be,’ he huffed to the gate-guard.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Now
, man. At the run!’ He turned to his escort. ‘Go to the stables. Find us fresh horses. You may drink and unbuckle, but be ready to ride again as soon as I appear.’

‘How long, sir?’

‘Heaven knows. But not long, I hope.’

And that was all he could do. All, except to calm himself as far as he could, and wait.

He took himself to the old school building. Automatically his feet climbed the stair to the first floor where the library of Develin was housed. The library was the same: a long chamber with rows and rows of great open cupboards and a passageway down the middle. The scholars at the benches looked up as he entered. Their eyes held no recognition. He was a stranger here. Yet some of the best hours of his life had been spent in this very room. He paced fretfully up and down, peering at the books chained to their places. Some were new. Others were like old friends whom he was seeing again after years of exile, and yet with no time to renew their acquaintance. Some, indeed, were ones he himself had recovered from Tuscolo or Velis, where they had been taken by the men who had pillaged Develin. Yet others were still missing. There were many gaps in the shelves.

A woman’s voice sounded in the stairwell behind him. Footsteps were approaching – dozens of
footsteps, crossing the landing from the living quarters. They were entering the library in a great bustle. Students were rising from the benches, startled by the sudden invasion. He turned.

‘Well! Thomas Padry!’ cried the Lady of Develin as her councillors crowded in behind her. Padry bowed. She came to take his hand.

‘Now I give thanks to Michael that he has guarded you,’ she said formally. ‘And to Raphael, for he has guided your way. For you are safe come. Padry, I could hardly believe it when they told me you were here.’

‘Nevertheless, my lady, it is true. And I am grateful indeed that you are able to receive me.’

He straightened and looked at her.

She was the same. She might have been just that bright, fair, wilful sixteen-year-old who had driven him to exasperation twice a week seven years ago. The Lady Sophia Cataline diCoursi Develin. The same, except that like her mother before her she now wore black.

And … He looked more closely.

There was – perhaps – the slightest fullness to her face, the slightest strengthening of her features, that hinted at a much greater strength within. This was no longer a girl who was becoming a woman. This was a woman in full. There was steel in her now. (Perhaps there was too much. But how could it be otherwise?) And there was something else in the way she looked at him, pleased but wistful, which hinted at a quality he did not remember. He knew it at once. That was grief: grief for all of lost Develin, and also for a man who had died.

Grief, too, at the passing of the years.

‘You are older, Padry.’

‘Less fat, but more grey,’ he said, smiling ruefully. ‘And a martyr to my teeth, my lady.’

‘You are great in the Kingdom, too.’

‘Not that. I am suffered to use my skills for one who has them not, but who has become great in spite of it.’

‘Indeed. And is it for his sake that you are here? I presume so.’

Padry spread his hands disarmingly. ‘I cannot say so much, my lady. It is more on my own account. I have brought – a gift.’

‘A gift? Oh, Padry! Have you found another? Have you?’

Padry’s smile broadened a little. ‘Not just any other, my lady.’

He had carried it here himself because he would trust no other with it. Now he took it from his satchel reverently, and lifted it in both hands. The council of Develin – all men in rich doublets – clustered round to see. He saw their eyes and heard their indrawn breath. They knew at once that its value was immense. Its vellum pages were made from the hides of three hundred calves – a princely sum by itself. But the worth of the words written on them was far more.

‘It’s Croscan’s book!’ said someone.

‘It is the Arc of the Descent,’ breathed Padry.
‘The Path of Signs Illuminating the Arc of the Descent of the Spirit
. “The First Sign is Fire. Fire is bright, and yet it is formless, ever-changing. It gives light, and light is truth. Therefore …” ’

‘“Therefore Fire is a sign to us of Heaven, of the unknowable Godhead that lies beyond the world,”’ said the lady. ‘How you dinned it into me! And where did you find it, Padry? Where was it?’

‘It was in Velis, as we supposed. Forgive me that I have not returned it sooner. I have had copies made so that it is no longer the only one. Now it is my privilege to bring it home.’ And he passed it to her.

She took it, and turned it in her hands. ‘We are more grateful than we can say. But – the other volume, Padry? The Ascent?’

Padry shrugged. ‘Alas. Some other looter must have taken it. We must go on looking.’

‘They
separated
the two? How could they?’

‘Ignorance, my lady.’

Quite possibly the brute men who had squabbled over the loot of Develin had not been able to read at all. To them a book was a book, valuable, sellable, but no more. (I’ll have
this
one, you have
that
one, and you can have the pretty dress off the woman who we—) So one half of the great work of the sage Croscan, describing the descent of the sparks of Godhead from the very highest to the very lowest order of creation, had been found. But its companion volume, which told how each spark then yearned upwards, guiding the soul on its long path to reunion with Godhead, was still lost and might be lost for ever. And without it the book in the lady’s hands held only half of the truth. Less than half, for in its final chapter the Path reached the Abyss, the last place of all where the soul should leave it, for in the Abyss all hope
was lost and faithfulness was brought to nothing.

Padry had known the Abyss, here in Develin before the end. He had returned to it more than once in the grim years that followed. And now he was near to it again, treading on the very lip, refusing to look down only because he knew that it was there.

‘We must continue to hope, my lady. We
must,’
he said.

She looked at him. He realized that he had spoken with more emphasis even than the fate of the lost work might justify. To cover himself, he added, ‘If all else fails I could write it from memory – if I had the time.’

‘You may be the last man in the Kingdom who could. And yet… time is so precious, is it not? Especially for the King’s chancellor.’ She passed the book to a man who stood behind her. ‘Padry, you shall sit at my right hand at table tonight. We will talk of happy memories. And – of anything you wish.’

Ah, Sophia! No longer the pupil! He had dangled the great work of Croscan before her eyes and she had not been fooled. Chancellors did not come long distances just to return stolen goods. Any gift they brought would just be an excuse, or more likely a bribe.
We shall talk of anything you wish
. So, Thomas Padry, you want something. It shows in your face and your voice. What is it? Why are you really here?

He coughed. ‘There is, um …’

She waited for him.

‘… a matter on which I would speak in private. And as soon as may be.’

She raised an eyebrow. Then she looked around at
the staring scholars and at the councillors behind her.

‘Very well,’ she said.

She led them all out of the library, across the stairwell and down the passage to the keep and the living quarters. The corridor was busy. People crowded out of the lady’s way and stared at Padry as he passed. Guards saluted. An elderly, round man in a rich doublet waited at the antechamber door.

‘My lady—’

‘I am occupied, Hob. Is it Gisbore?’

‘It is the bailiff from Gisbore.’

She looked around at the expectant faces of the men who had followed her and gave a little exasperated sigh. ‘Beg him to wait yet a quarter-hour. The lord chancellor himself has come to see me.’

‘Very good. And the council?’

‘The council must wait also.’

‘Very good, my lady.’

They withdrew. The guard opened the door to the antechamber. A maid was in there, making up the fire.

‘Leave us,’ said the lady.

The maid went. At a jerk of the lady’s head the guard followed her. Padry looked around the room that had once been the centre of his world. The tapestries had changed but the new ones had the same red colours as their predecessors. There were the old silver candlesticks. The chair – not the old one, but one much like it – stood in just the right place by the window. Empty.

The Widow’s daughter settled herself into it.

‘So,’ she said, fixing him with a look. ‘Shall I guess?
When Orcrim returned from Velis two years ago he brought with him a story of something you had said. You had made a proposal about the King and myself. He was minded to advise me to accept. I must tell you that I was not pleased, either with him or with you.’