The Fatal Child (6 page)

Embarrassed, Padry looked at his feet.

‘I hope you have not come to revive the possibility, Thomas.’

He shook his head. ‘I have not, my lady.’ And, a little insistently, he added, ‘As I said, it is a private matter.’

‘What is it?’

He swallowed. His fists tightened at his sides.

‘Where may I find the Hidden King?’

‘Who is he, Uncle Thomas?’ Atti had asked him.

They had been sitting together in the cloister of the convent in Tuscolo. It had been a warm, late summer day. A pigeon had been cooing somewhere among the orange trees.

‘Truly, my dove,’ he said absently, ‘I do not know. Why do you ask?’

She sat like a little statue beside him, her back rigid. She was even paler than usual today. There were marks below her eyes. Nevertheless it was pleasing to see her: her face framed in her novice’s hood, with the fullness of her long black hair in the shadow within. He looked at the delicate curves of her cheeks and lashes and eyes and his mind played with thoughts such as:
O Powers that framed the Dome of Heaven/No greater work didst then or now/Than trap the
(something)
starlight’s glisten/And set it on a child’s brow!
(Well – some work needed perhaps, but in moments such as these he felt nearer to poetry than at any other time of his day.) It was a while before he realized that she had not answered him.

‘Why do you ask, my dove?’

‘He spoke to me,’ she said.

‘Oh? When?’

‘Last night, when I was asleep.’

‘I see. Do you want to tell me about it?’

‘No.’

No. She never did.

‘I’m sorry you still have nightmares,’ he said. ‘You must try to remember that you are safe. No one here will harm you.’

She said nothing. Her face was solemn, her thoughts secret. Brown eyes, pale skin, all in the dark surround of the hood – what did her young mind see when it turned in on itself so? Something was in there, some idea or plan forming in her brain. It might be a new way of avoiding the attentions of the convent mothers. It might be some revenge upon another girl, for something silly or spiteful that had been done. And one day soon it would become action. He knew her well enough to be sure of that. But she would not share it with him until it did.

Poor thing, he thought. She needed comforting, yet it was always difficult to comfort her. He said nothing but reached across to take her hand.

In the cloisters the hillwoman maid Gadi was coughing – a light, plaintive sound. They had told him
that Gadi was not well these days. She was often feverish and lay in bed. Nevertheless she seemed to have dragged herself from her pallet and put on her convent servant’s gown to come and watch over them. That was proper, he supposed.

It was quite unnecessary of course. He would never dream of harming Atti. But it was proper all the same.

He pointed upwards. ‘Look,’ he said.

Above them, hard against the blue of the sky, the walls and roofs of Tuscolo castle rose one above another to the keep, where the banners of Gueronius hung in the windless air.

‘Count along from the end of the big hall-building. One, two, three windows. That’s mine. That’s the room in which I work. I’m always there, looking over you.’

‘Yes, I know,’ she said.

‘So you are quite safe, you see.’

Her hand rested in his own like a thing with no life. ‘This one wasn’t a nightmare,’ she muttered.

‘That’s better then, isn’t it? No more screaming in the night, eh?’

He looked at her anxiously, wondering if the convent mothers were still beating her each time she woke the dormitories. By the Angels! If they were, after all he had had to say on the subject, he’d make them wish they had paid better attention! Convents were convents and rules were rules, but there were things a chancellor could do with his pen that made even bishops tremble.

‘No,’ she said.

‘That’s better, then. Even so …’ he mused. ‘Cloisters may cloy, orders be odious and nuns none. I have been wondering if this is the best place for you. I do not think you are happy here. I will look around for something better. There is never any space up at the castle but – well, maybe you could lodge with me for a while.’

She did not answer. Behind those beautiful cheeks and lashes her face showed nothing. Maybe her hand tensed a little and pulled slightly against his fingers, but that was only Atti being Atti. He held her wrist, leaned back and looked at the sky. Really, these visits to the convent were the only oasis in his waking hours. Up there in the castle, behind that impassive façade, all his time and energy was given to others. All the muttering and copying and scurrying – all the piles of paper heaving on his tables within! In a few minutes, just a few minutes, he must be back to it. Heigh-ho! One day, maybe, the King would appoint him Bishop of Tuscolo, or Jent, or one of the other great sees. He could take the vows, have a tonsure and become not only a priest but a prince overnight. It was something to know the worth of what you did, but it would be
nice
to have a reward for it, too.

‘Is he here, in the city?’ murmured the girl suddenly.

‘Who? The Prince Under the Sky? No. If he is real at all, he is on the other side of the lake. Or so I believe.’

‘Is it a long way?’

‘A very long way, my dove.’

Silence again, in the cooing air. They sat side by side until the bell chimed the hour. He felt her hand slip from his own.

‘You must go now,’ she said. ‘There is a service.’

She said it as though it were an instruction. But, alas, it was indeed time to go. The King’s business waited for no one.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Cheer up. I will come again tomorrow, and we will talk some more about where we might place you.’

And he had come, smuggling some forbidden sweetmeats in the folds of his robe. Rules were rules, but he had wanted to see her smile.

He had come, but she had not been there.

The Lady of Develin searched his face. ‘She
dreamed
of him?’

‘So it appears. We could find none among the sisters or servants who had spoken to her of him.’ Not though the convent mothers had plied their canes with a will.

‘And now she has run off in search of him.’ She frowned at the fire. Her fingers were drumming on an arm of the chair. ‘I find this disturbing. For more than one reason.’

Padry nodded. ‘You see the urgency of my mission.’

‘My reasons may not be yours. This dream – what did she see?’

‘I know only that she thought he spoke with her.’

‘And what does Gueronius know of this?’

‘The King? Nothing, my lady. He is in Velis.’

‘So I had heard – and this disturbs me also! The Kingdom is barely won. Two summers of peace do not make men forget war. Yet the King plays shipwright and dreams of adventure beyond the seas. Is it true he will captain this expedition he plans?’

‘Oh,’ said Padry (noting how firmly she had changed the subject), ‘we will persuade him from it, my lady. The Kingdom cannot afford his absence.’

‘It cannot. I hear he would make the lords Joyce and Seguin co-regents in his absence. We would have power struggles and blood spilled within six months of his going. Such …
folly
in a man for whom I have given the lives of my soldiers! The Kingdom cannot be his plaything, to be left on the shelf while he amuses himself with other toys! It tries me, Thomas. And it tries me that you do not see it so! You should be there, not here. You are the one man he has the wit to listen to for more than a minute at a time!’

‘I
will
go to him, my lady,’ he said soothingly. ‘As soon as I have finished—’

‘Thomas Padry!’ she cried.

Padry jumped.

‘Do you forget what men are? After what you have seen in this very house? And I have been giving thanks every evening that it is you who advises the King! But now I see you have dropped your pen and run off in a direction opposite to the one in which you are most needed – on a goose-chase here in the south after some brat of a dead lord! Men have not changed in two summers, Thomas. Feud breaks out like pox wherever I look. Faul’s men raided a village of mine
last month – under this King’s peace! Must I go to war with Faul because neither King nor chancellor can tear themselves from their fancies?’

‘All men know the value of peace, my lady—’

‘Do they? Yet they take up iron whenever there is dispute. We are cursed with it – cursed by Heaven, and blessed with too few who are willing to heal it!’

Padry was shocked by the blasphemy. ‘My lady,’ he said slowly. ‘If you ask me from my heart, I say that I do not believe we are cursed. Although I do believe that we must know evil as well as good, so that we may know the difference when we go to the Angels. It would be a terrible crime to return to Paradise as innocent as when we were sent from it.’

‘A dry answer, sir. I thought your heart had grown since you left this house.’

‘I hope that it has, my lady. But it still tells me the same. As for my request to you …’

He noted the flicker in her eyes as he returned to the subject she had avoided.

‘… I can only say that it is of
great
importance. I ask for your trust in this.’

‘A matter of state? Yet you have not spoken to the King of it.’

‘You will forgive me for my presumption, my lady. I had thought that I might more readily obtain your help if I came to you in secret. And also if I promised you that I would neither harm this “Hidden King” nor tell anyone else of his whereabouts, so long as I might safely return with the child.’

‘You have not lost all your wits, then,’ she said.

You have not lost all your wits
. That was her mother, indeed!

She was looking at him, thinking. He waited.

‘You realize that there is every chance she will die on her journey? Indeed that she may already be dead?’

Another diversion. He shrugged it off. ‘Perhaps not. There is some hope. Her maid accompanied her. They stole provisions from the convent kitchens and a mule from the stables.’

‘So. But her chance of finding the one she is looking for is that of finding a feather in straw.’

‘I think – it will depend on whether her dreams were more than mere dreams,’ he said carefully.

Silence.

‘Say what you mean, Thomas.’

‘
Witchcraft
, my lady.’

He should have guessed it. The moment Atti had spoken of a dream that had not been one of her nightmares, he should have been alert. He should have put the thought of this Hidden King, who might be somewhere in Tarceny, together with the memory that in past days Tarceny had dealt with black evil. Vexed by the hundred daily urgencies of the King’s court, he had not – until it was too late. The thought of that failure was like a goad. It had burned in him all the way here, to the one person he could think of who might tell him what he needed. And she had leaped at him, not when she had heard that he had a mission but when she had learned what that mission was. That confirmed his thought. The Lady of Develin
knew something that was dangerous to speak of.

What do you know, my lady, and how? And how far will you trust me, Thomas Padry, whom your mother would have trusted to the death?

Out in the passage he heard the murmur of voices, the shuffle of feet. Familiar sounds: councillors waiting to be admitted, swapping whispered guesses about what it was that had brought the lord chancellor so far to the south. Beyond them rose all the other noises of the castle: feet on boards overhead, horses in the courtyard, a harsh voice calling something to someone, the drone of the breeze in the open casement. Two hundred people had made their living under the old Widow’s roof. It did not seem to be less than that now. And he stood eye to eye with the Widow’s daughter, and the shadow of witchcraft was between them.

‘I think it possible that you are right,’ she said at last.

‘And this …’ She sighed. ‘This is what disturbs me most of all. Not for your sake or hers, but for his.’

‘Then you do know of him?’

‘Yes, I do. And yes, I suppose he may know where this child is.’

Her fingers tapped the arm of her chair, once, twice.

‘I have your promise that you mean him no harm?’

‘Absolutely, my lady. My life on it!’

‘Good, Thomas. But have you a man you can trust for this? Someone you can trust as much as I am trusting you? I should warn you that the road may be harder than you would think possible.’

He thought, and nodded. ‘I have. One, only. But yes.’

‘For you must
not
go, Thomas. That is my condition. You must return yourself to Gueronius.
He
is your duty. Each day that passes without you at his side is dangerous for all of us. Your conscience should tell you that, but if it does not prick you then let me be the other spur. This house has suffered enough from the whims of kings – as you know.’

‘My lady, I know. And I will go.’

‘As swiftly as you can, Thomas. I shall not sleep well until I know you are in Velis.’

‘Trust me, my lady,’ he said, and bowed.

His conscience did prick him then. It told him that if he were truly the just man he thought himself to be, the man who trod squarely in the centre of the Path, he would draw breath, risk all, and tell her plainly that although he would join Gueronius as soon as he could, he would not do so at once. Because the man he had spoken of, the one man whom he would trust to go to the Hidden King, was himself. There was no other.

He said nothing.

elissa dreamed a wonderful dream of food.