The Fatal Child (54 page)

‘But he
isn’t
yours!’ Melissa cried again. ‘He’s not! He’s the King’s, if he’s anyone’s—’

The King!

On her knees, Melissa turned to him, arms outstretched. ‘Your Majesty!’

‘That’s enough!’ barked the knight. ‘Get her out of here!’

‘Your Majesty … Once you said you’d do something if I asked …’

The King was still watching her. And as she clutched at his armoured feet and looked up at him, she thought she saw him straining to hear, and that his head even bent towards her a little.

‘Please!’
she shrieked as the men seized her by the arms. ‘Please – let him go!’

She was being dragged, wrestling and thrashing, across the floor. Something hit her on the side of her head. Everything went red-dark for an instant and sparkled with tiny stars. She heard the King cry aloud. When her sight cleared she saw him again.

He had hauled himself forward in his seat, gripping the arms of his chair as if in spasm. Now he was looking at Lackmere. His mouth was open. The room stilled.

Painfully the King lifted his arm. His finger trembled as he held it up. His mouth worked but no sound came.

No one moved. They were holding their breath, all of them, listening to the air that gasped in the King’s throat.

‘One …’ he said to the Knight of Lackmere.

And again: ‘One.’

At last Lackmere bowed. ‘As you command.’

He straightened, and repeated: ‘As Your Majesty commands. The boy may go.’

The wind moaned in the trees. It was as if the whole world had breathed out together at the King’s word.

They carried the fainting man away. Guards clattered out into the night, calling for the surgeon. Others gathered around the Lady of Develin and talked
urgently about councils and parliaments. The Knight of Lackmere was speaking of ladders again. Melissa looked up and found Atti standing over her. Her face looked suddenly older, as if the great pain inside her were speaking at last through her eyes.

‘It was you,’ she whispered.

‘Yes,’ said Melissa dully. ‘It was.’

Atti’s mouth was a black slit. She stared at Melissa a moment more and then, as if she could no longer bear to look at her, she turned away.

‘I knew it would be someone,’ she said. ‘It had to be. I never thought it would be you.’

Melissa did not answer.

‘Why?’ asked Atti.

(Why? thought Melissa.)

‘For the King,’ she said.

‘But
why
?’

‘Don’t you understand?’ cried Melissa. ‘I loved him! Look at me, Atti. Look at me! I
loved
him! Can’t you see that?’

Atti stood there for a moment, silent, with her back turned. Then she said, ‘I don’t know what you mean.’ And she pushed the rough door-curtain to one side and stepped out into the night. In the glare of the brazier Melissa watched her slowly crossing the courtyard. Men cried aloud. Startled guards tumbled after her, clattering with iron as they hurried to prevent her walking clean away. The last Melissa saw of her was the side of her face, looking over her shoulder as they surrounded her and steered her towards the confines of an animal shed. And the first drops of rain were
beginning at last, flashing in the torchlight as they fell singly and hissed in the brazier like arrows shot from the sky.

Melissa crouched by the doorpost, alone and hugging her elbows. No one was paying attention to her. The armoured men had gathered around the Lady of Develin by the hearth. Runners were being sent out with orders – for the storming parties, for ladders to be made, and yes, that a certain hill boy was to be found among the footmen of Lackmere and brought to Manor Gowden before dawn. No one talked yet of what would be done when there was no king in the land.

But as she listened Melissa began to realize that something had changed. They did not sound quite so tired now. It was as if a weight had been lifted from them. As if they could feel at last the glow of the fire on their skin, which had been cold for too long.

‘… No, my lord,’ the lady was saying. ‘You have your tryst with Gueronius in the morning. Be content with that. But the Queen has done no bloody act herself. Surrender her to me, and I shall see that she is held in a convent in my lands where she may do no harm.’

The Knight of Lackmere was frowning. Watching, Melissa sensed again the struggle that had flickered in his eyes as she had pleaded with him for Puck. But his demons had lost their force now.

‘As you wish,’ he said tersely. ‘Who am I to condemn her, after all?’

‘And the Outlanders?’ asked someone else.

‘They shall have their lives, too,’ he said. ‘We will have need of what they know, I think.’

‘Very well.’

The council was breaking up. Men left the room. The Lady of Develin remained in her chair, conferring in low voices with the Knight of Lackmere and Lord Herryce. At the fireside two other men had begun to play a game of chess. Melissa did not know their names. She had not seen them before.

Phaedra emerged from the inner room where Ambrose lay. Her face was tired and drawn, as if she had lost all hope of anything being good again. She came and leaned on the doorpost beside Melissa, looking out into the night and rain. Padry the chancellor saw her. He crossed the room to stand at her elbow.

‘My lady …’ he said in a low voice.

Oh, leave her alone, thought Melissa wearily. Can’t you see how she’s hurting?

‘My lady, there is something I must ask you.’

Phaedra sighed. She looked down at her hands. ‘What is it, Thomas?’

‘You brought him the Tears, when we were at Bay.’

She seemed to think for a moment. Then she whispered, ‘I did.’

‘Why, my lady? For no sooner had you gone than he roused the camp! He had always been for peace. Yet he roused us and led us to a fight that we now know was useless. Why did you bring them to him? Forgive me but … I must ask.’

She looked at him wearily. ‘You accuse me, Thomas? Of the deaths of thousands, and of my son?’

‘Forgive me. But is it not so?’

‘I brought him the Tears so that he might
live
, Thomas. I was on my knees to him. You heard me. He would have lived as I live, and as the princes have lived – it is a sort of life, and no sickness, no ageing … Yes, in his last fever I would have poured them down his throat. I would have done it whatever the price!

‘But…’ She drew a long, shaky breath. ‘But he would not drink. Instead he chose this. He led us all to his death, when he knew that the goddess would hear him. Because he guessed that here, in the great eating of sons, there would be the chance to say what he has said. And now the hill boy has been saved by the last command of the King – by the last of the line of Wulfram, who killed the hill prince hostage at the beginning of his reign. She will depart. She is departing now. Don’t you feel it? Already they have begun to spare lives they would have taken without thinking. Because he spoke the word she was waiting for.

‘And her tears will dry. They will dry in the hearts into which they have fallen. Their power is going. They cannot save him any more. Even the princes will grow old and die as men. And only I will remain – because I must take her place.’

‘I see,’ said Padry softly. ‘I see.’

He cleared his throat. ‘I must beg your pardon, my lady. I am – more sorry than I can say.’

‘Yes, be sorry for me,’ she muttered. ‘Be sorry for every mother whose son has died today, or will
tomorrow! What
right
have they to do this to us? But Thomas, Ambrose was no hapless victim. He knew what he did. And I knew that he would. In my heart I think I have known it all his life. Yes, I shall weep. But my tears will not be poison to the world.’

‘Is there anything I can do?’

‘Do?
’ she exclaimed. ‘There is nothing you can do!’

She was silent for a moment. Then in a slightly steadier voice she said, ‘Find me someone who can cut stone, if you can.’

‘Stone? Yes. Yes, I – I will try.’

Neither of them said anything more. After a moment the man bowed and stepped out into the rain. Phaedra remained where she was.

By the hearth the chess pieces clicked and the counsellors murmured. Melissa watched them. But neither game had ever made sense to her. And now they never would. None of the things they were thinking about over there were to do with her any more.

‘You going home, my lady?’ she asked suddenly.

Phaedra looked down at her. ‘In a little, Melissa. After this. Yes, I – I think I shall go home.’ Her voice was hoarse and her cheek glistened in the firelight.

‘Can I come with you? I don’t think I want to stay here.’

Phaedra looked at her with hollow eyes.

‘And – and Puck can sail us in a boat if you need him to,’ Melissa said. ‘He’s told me so.’

‘Yes,’ Phaedra said at last. ‘Yes, you will be welcome, Melissa. You and your hill boy, too. You will be a comfort to me. I see such ages of weeping in a dark
place …’ She sighed, and her voice strengthened a little. ‘And yes, maybe we should go by boat, as far as we can. It will be easier for us to travel together that way, for you will not want to walk in my places. It will be safer, too, if there are soldiers on the roads.’

She looked out at the night again.

‘I knew something of boat-sailing once,’ she murmured. ‘I wonder how much I will remember.’

e died the next morning, while the battle raged on the walls.

Afterwards they carried him up to the castle where men were still counting the bodies and stripping the slain. In the chapel of Trant they lit the flame on the altar and laid his body on a trestle. The nobility of the land, limping and pale-faced, came at noon to hear the prayers for his soul. A priest spoke in words that echoed flatly around the stone. The lords bowed their heads and afterwards they departed. Guards stood about the corpse. Phaedra waited, with Melissa at her side, until the chapel was clear. Then she approached him.

He lay like a carved figure, motionless in his armour. His hands were folded across his chest. His face had lost its fever and his eyes were closed as if in sleep. Around him the guards stood silently and the sun from the windows glinted on their stained armour. The two women looked down on the man. Melissa wanted to say something but her throat was burning and she could not.

Phaedra reached forward to open her son’s fist. There, clutched in his stiff fingers, was the white pebble.

‘Give Mama,’ she murmured. She prised it from him.

And she took it, and gripped it hard.

The light tock of a hammer sounded from an aisle as they made their way back to the chapel door. There was a man, crouching by one wall with tools in his hand. He was cutting something into the stone. Melissa could see where he had already traced the lines he was going to carve. But of course she could not read them.

‘What’s it say, my lady?’ Melissa asked.

‘Ambrose Umbriel, King,’ Phaedra said, choking.

There were other names cut there – a whole line of them, done years ago. Melissa did not ask any more.

The sun was low, glinting on the far fringe of mountains and flaring along the lake. The olive groves above the shore were alive with the calls and clanks of soldiers settling to camp. The scent of cooking fires was beginning to creep through the trees. The wavelets lapped at the stony fringe of the lake where Padry paced, waiting.

Drawn up on the shingle was a small lake-boat. He had found it during the day at a little jetty by a hamlet Phaedra had directed him to. He had found and paid a crew to man it.
(He was
not going to trust the lives of its passengers to one inexperienced hill boy!) There had been no news of the owner. Perhaps the man had
been one of the luckless settler-garrison of Trant, who now lay dead within the castle and whose bones had been buried beneath those of his killers, and of his killers’ killers, as the last act of the King’s reign was fought out within those walls.

The little wavelets glittered in the last of the day. The surface of the lake was lit with it. And Padry remembered another shore, with the sun setting on the waves of Velis and an arm pointing eagerly out to sea as a king surveyed his new toys. But Gueronius, too, had died that morning, caught between iron and the castle stones. He had fought to the last like a cornered beast. He would not have remembered or asked himself what it meant. He had never been one to ask for meanings.

All that was over. The house of Tuscolo was broken. The house of Baldwin had been broken long ago. And in Ambrose the last drop of Wulfram’s blood had been spent. That great dynasty was ended. What was left? Not very much. Some good things: a few laws and charters, a new school, a bundle of good intentions for others to copy and improve upon.
We must leave them now
, Ambrose had said,
for those who come after us
.

Padry turned.

He had ordered the boat to be brought here from the jetty because this stretch of shore was deserted. Phaedra wanted no fuss about her departure. Now he was annoyed to see that he was no longer alone. A number of figures were picking their way towards him along the water’s edge. He went to meet them, intending to send them quickly about their business.