The Prince in Waiting (10 page)

I did not say that as a question, although in my mind still it was a question. I could not believe that she had tried to kill me. She looked at me.

“Yes.”

“And you ask me to speak for Peter?”

“They are burning me tomorrow. Is that not enough? And Peter saved your life in the hunt.”

“To your regret.”

“No. I would not have him different from what he is.”

“But were ready to kill to make him heir.”

Weariness for a moment showed through her determination. She said:

“What he is and what I would do for him are different things. I will pay for my part, in the morning. Speak for him, Luke.”

•  •  •

I went to my father from the prison and asked him to release Peter. It was not because of my aunt's plea. (She had only made this to me as a last resort; she had asked to see my father but he had refused.) Except in her reminder that Peter had saved me from the polyboar. By speaking for him now I could cancel that debt and make us quits.

My father listened in silence then, but ordered Peter's release the next day, as soon as the burning was over. I did not go to see it. My father did, and sat, I was told, like stone.

It was not a long one; he had made sure of that. The people cheered, for his safety and the destruction of his enemy. The only trouble came from the Christians. They opposed the taking of life, even in battle or the execution of murderers, and always made a nuisance of themselves on such occasions. The people pelted them with filth and abused them. And one who called the Prince a murderer was taken by the guards. He was tried later but only condemned to the stocks for a day. The Christians, it was well known, were all mad, and no one took them seriously.

I
T WAS A WRETCHED WINTER.
the palace was a place of gloom, ruled by a man who did not smile but drank greatly in an endeavor to forget what would not be forgotten. The heaviness of the atmosphere, so strong a contrast with the lightness that my mother's presence had engendered, of itself kept her in mind. And the weather was in tune with all this. Day after day the blizzards raged, until it was impossible for the polymufs to clear the streets and snow packed higher and higher against the walls of the houses: people had to cut steps down to their doors. It was impossible to exercise the horses who grew vicious in their stables. We could not exercise ourselves either, and turned stale and sour from the lack. The Christmas Feast was held as usual and my father took his place at the head of the long table. But there was little enough cheer. It was said that Christmas had started as a Christian business, celebrating the birth of their god, and this year one could believe it; it was so dreary a time. The polymuf jugglers and clowns, the musicians, had no occupation. My father saw to it that they did not go hungry but they were unhappy, not being able to use their gifts and gain applause. In the new year, when the weather held clear for a week, many of them left the city for more promising courts.

Martin and Edmund and I quarreled often enough during this drab confining time, but we remained friends. I cannot speak for their feelings but I had great need of them, with my father withdrawn into a private misery, and my own thoughts wretched enough. Strangely, the impulse to go to the house in the River Road, an impulse which had disappeared in the summer and autumn, came back now at intervals, quite unexpectedly. Doing some ordinary thing, I would think of going there, hearing my aunt's sharp voice bidding me wipe my feet, sitting down to dinner at the little table in the poky room. Then I would remember that all this was past, and how it had ended, and would feel a pain like the twisting of a knife in my chest. The pain went quicker if the others were by.

And Edmund was more willing to come to the palace than he had been. It was as though what had happened dissolved his resentments. My father, as anyone could see by looking at him, had paid a heavy penalty for becoming Prince. I don't think Edmund took any joy in this. He had changed from a hatred of him, which could not be hidden even though unexpressed, to a different feeling, almost one of admiration.

He said one day, about Peter:

“Does he ever visit your father, Luke?”

I said truthfully: “My father receives few visitors.”

“But Peter?”

“No.”

He had not been to the palace since his release. I myself had seen him once or twice in the Citadel, going about his duties as Captain, but we had not spoken. Edmund said:

“He was fortunate.”

I had not spoken to them or anyone about my meeting with my aunt and my plea to my father for Peter. I doubted, in any case, whether my words had turned a scale. My father's circle of affection was small and he had lost two from it already; he would not have wished to forfeit a third unless it were forced on him.

I said: “He had no part in it.”

“There are some who think differently. He usually slept in the palace, but not that night.”

“Because he was on duty in the Citadel. My aunt knew that.”

“And I've heard it said he was against questioning the polymuf, insisting he was a madman who had acted on his own.”

“I was there,” I said. “It was a remark, no more. It meant nothing and there was no insisting.”

We were in the east wing of the palace, in a parlor on the first floor. It was a part that had been left empty and unpainted for many years. The walls were dingy and cracked: Strohan, the palace butler, had asked my father if he should set the polymufs to decorating them but had been told no. Edmund and I were playing chess. Martin, who in any case was too good for either of us, was reading a book. He looked up from it, and said:

“The city is full of rumors. Being penned in, people have nothing to do but talk.”

“And mostly nonsense,” I said.

“Yet it is worth listening to it,” Edmund said. “Even if it is nonsense, it is often useful to know what kind of nonsense men believe.”

I accepted that, surprised only that he should have said it. But he had changed in the past months, as we all had. He thought more, and more deeply. And although we were friends I knew I did not have all the secrets of his mind, any more than he had mine.

Martin said: “People even say he is turning Christian.”

I asked in surprise: “Peter?”

“He has been seen with them.”

“If he does,” Edmund said, “you are safe, Luke. Christians may not kill, and so he could not take revenge.”

“Revenge?” I asked. “For what?”

“For a mother burned in the market square. It is not something one forgets. They say your father is a fool to have spared him. I don't think so. I think he knows his own strength. He is like a dog I once saw come into a pack that were snarling and fighting. The pack made way for him and when he turned his back on them, though together they could have fallen on him and killed him, they dared not even show their teeth. But you may need to take more care.”

“I can look after myself.”

“Still, if he turns Christian it makes it easier. And he would have to give up his Captaincy.”

“That shows what moonshine it is! He would never surrender his sword.”

Martin, while we were talking, had left his book and strolled restlessly about the room. He stopped in front of a picture which hung on the wall. It was very old and showed animals in cages, but like no animals we had ever seen. There was one that was tawny in color, shaped something like a cat but with a mane behind its head; and judging by the size of a man in the picture at least a hundred times bigger than any cat could be. Another, roughly resembling a man, was hideously ugly with receding head and chin, hairy and tailed. And near the cages a second man walked what might have been a horse except that it was covered with black and white stripes.

Martin said: “This must be from before the Disaster. And yet they say that the polymufs, both beasts and men, only came after the Disaster, as a punishment for the wickedness of our Ancestors.”

“It may not be from before the Disaster,” Edmund said. “We don't know how old it is.”

“But there are polymuf beasts in it, full grown, and men with them, so in any case something is wrong.”

“They may be only the imaginings of a painter,” I suggested.

“They don't look like imaginings.”

Edmund said: “Take it to Ezzard and ask him.”

“He would destroy it probably. I should think it has only survived because no Seer has noticed it.”

“Take care when you speak of the Seer,” Edmund said, “or you will never be accepted as an Acolyte.”

The joke was long threadbare but we all laughed. We needed something to laugh at.

•  •  •

One day, during the period of easier weather, the time when the clowns and musicians and jugglers were leaving the city, the thought of the house in the River Road came on me again, a joy and a pain together. I was on my own in the lower part of the city, below the Buttercross. I had been meaning to go across the river to the Armory but on the impulse I changed my direction. I walked the familiar street where I had not been for so long. The polymufs had cleared the High Street of snow but here it still lay, packed in the center, at the sides drifted against the houses. I came to her house and stared at it. Steps had been cut before this door as before the rest, and smoke rose from the chimney. I wondered who lived there now, but I did not care. The journey had done me no good; I would have been better staying away.

I turned to go and found him almost on me: the snow had muffled his footsteps. We looked at each other, for the first time really since the fire, and I saw the deeper lines in his face, the marks of grief and long brooding. He said:

“Health, Luke. You have come to see me?”

I said stupidly: “To see you? Here? You live here?”

“Why not? It is my home.”

As we both knew, he had left it last summer to join my father in the palace, at the time when Aunt Mary refused the offer of a bigger house. I had assumed that from the palace he had gone to live in the Lines, with the other unmarried Captains.

I said: “You have no woman to tend you.”

“I have the maids.”

“Polymufs . . .”

He shrugged. “They see to things.”

It was unheard of for a man, except sometimes when bereaved and old, to live without human care and companionship, of wife, mother, sister—some womanly relation. It showed how badly he had taken things that he should do so; and made the notion of him turning Christian just a little less incredible. But even apart from the solitariness, how could he bear to go on living with such memories as the house must continually call to mind? I found it bad enough to have to look at the snow-topped ruins of the palace's north wing. To be in the house—listen to the ticking of the clock she wound each night, look at the plants in pots of which she had been so proud—was to seek pain which anyone in his right mind would shun.

While I hesitated, trying to think of something to say, he said:

“Are you coming in?”

“No. I have . . . someone to see.”

We looked at each other. I do not know what he thought—that I had come to gloat, perhaps—but I knew there was nothing I could say which would bridge the chasm between us. We called each other cousin, and in fact were half brothers. We had been friends. We could not become strangers. It left only one thing: we must be enemies.

•  •  •

Winter ended at last in a thaw accompanied by rain storms which made the river flood its banks; the waters rose at one point to lap against the block of stone in the High Street which still carried the broken legs of what had been a statue—of a great Prince of ancient times, it was said. But when the rains stopped and the west wind died away there was fitful sunlight and everywhere the trees began to bud, bursting into green as though to make up for time lost.

It was the Spring Fair again, and the Contest. Not a good one: the favorite was Mark Greene and he won without much difficulty and took the jeweled sword. I sat with the spectators, my own sword hanging from my belt, and heard people talk about how much better the Contest had been last year. They said flattering things and I made awkward replies. Later Edmund, who had sat with me, said:

“One would think you did not like praise, you receive it so awkwardly.”

“I like the thought of it,” I said, “but the reality makes me uneasy.”

He smiled. “You must learn to overcome that. Or at least not to show it.”

“Praise is worth having from a few. Those whose judgment one values.”

“And if I tell you it was a better Contest last year?”

We laughed. I said: “And would have been better still with a different ending?”

“True enough!” He paused. “If I had not underrated you as I did . . . I fought it over in my mind often enough afterward and knew I could have beaten you. I would have liked a second chance.”

“There are no second chances.”

“Not in the Contest, I agree.”

“Not in anything that matters.”

He shook his head. “I will not accept that, Luke. I will never accept it.”

It was at this time that my father roused himself from the torpor which had held him for so many months. Orders were given and obeyed. The ruins of the north wing were cleared away by polymufs, and after them came builder dwarfs and there was sawing of wood and hammering of nails all day. Others worked on the rest of the palace, mending and cleaning and painting.

Nor was that the end of the city's new activity. The dwarfs were also busy in the Armory and at harness-making. People had said that with the Prince sunk in melancholy there would be no fighting this year. Now they knew differently. He still did not smile but he seemed possessed by a fury that drove him toward action. He was up at daybreak and busy all day making preparations for the campaign. In the middle of April the army rode out to the southwest.