The Princess and the Captain (44 page)

The daughter of Balmun pointed to a blade hanging from her saddle.

‘And blankets?' asked Malva. ‘You'll need them when you go over the snowbound passes on the borders of Gurkistan.'

‘We've thought of everything,' Hob reassured her. ‘The cook's even given us some jars of herrings with myrtle berries to take to Lei's parents.'

‘Excellent!' smiled the Coronador. ‘There's nothing better than herrings preserved in the Galnician style.'

The sun rose above the horizon. It was the sign for the travellers to leave. Hob raised one hand and signalled to Orpheus.

‘I shall take our bearings from the stars,' he told him, with a lump in his throat. ‘I shall always remember the night you and I spent together watching the stars on the deck of the
Fabula
.'

‘Peppe will be watching over you,' said Orpheus. ‘So don't do anything stupid!'

‘I never do anything stupid these days,' the boy told him.

Lei stifled laughter. Her pearl-like eyes passed over the faces of her friends, and lingered on Malva. She held out her hand.

‘Look after yourself,' Malva begged her, holding it tightly. ‘I don't want to lose any more of my friends.'

‘We take great care, I promise.'

Malva patted the horse's glossy coat. ‘You do realise that when you get home everything will have changed there? The time that's passed in Galnicia will have passed in Balmun too. Ten years, nearly eleven now.'

‘I get used to that idea. My parents perhaps dead, not my brothers and sisters. They grown up is all.'

‘If you'd like to come back here and visit now and then, you'll always be welcome.'

‘You too, Malva. If you want see kingdom where Lei live, you very welcome too. Always.'

‘I don't feel like going away again just now,' sighed Malva. ‘I need to rest, and …' She cast her father a brief glance. He was
coughing again. ‘And the Coronador isn't well, so I must stay with him.'

‘And Orpheus!' added Lei, winking.

Malva nodded. Then she put a hand under her jacket and brought out a scroll of paper, which she handed to Lei.

‘It's a message for Philomena. Give it to her if you meet her on the steppes.'

Lei took the letter and promised she would. Then Babilas and Orpheus went to say their own goodbyes to the two riders.

Now Hob and Lei turned their horses towards the road out of the Citadel, following the same path as the cart in which Malva and Philomena had escaped, hidden in barrels of Rioro wine. They waved one last time, and gradually moved away.

Malva and Orpheus, red-eyed, stood for some time outside the stables without moving or speaking. Then they climbed to the northern side of the ramparts of the Citadel. There was a wide view from up there, and they could watch the two chestnut mares on their way.

‘They're already far off,' sighed Malva.

At that moment she saw silhouettes moving along the same road, but in the opposite direction.

‘Who are they?'

Orpheus narrowed his eyes. It looked like a long procession of peasants on foot. They moved in a ribbon along the road, like a troop of ants.

‘Galnicians,' he murmured. ‘At least a hundred of them. It looks as if they're on their way home.'

From their observation post, Malva and Orpheus watched the progress of the column. Gradually they could make out women and children, soldiers carrying old carabins under their arms, beggars, merchants, sailors, noble Donias, even a Venerable
Monje and two or three Holy Diafrons, who could be recognised by their yellow caps worn at a slight angle.

‘We must welcome them,' decided Malva, shaking off her melancholy mood. ‘These people must have walked for days and days. Let's open the doors of the Hall of Delicacies to them!'

Orpheus followed her as she climbed downstairs. He helped her to put the Hall in order and prepare the registers listing inhabitants of Galnicia, and then went to ask the Coronador to join them for the event. It was the first time since the fall of the country that so many Galnicians had made for the Citadel at the same time.

A few hours later there was a great line of people waiting in the gardens. It stretched from the middle of the Hall of Delicacies to the first streets of the Lower Town. Everyone was shouting, talking, calling out, exchanging news, and making such a noise that the Coronador could hardly make himself heard. Babies were crying and dogs barking, old men sat down on the grass, groaning, to rest their sore feet, tradesmen dumped their handcarts anywhere they could find and tried to sell fruit now overripe after the journey, while soldiers uncorked bottles of Rioro found by some miracle in the cellars. Malva had ordered the wine to be distributed along with food. It was like a carnival.

However, when the people entered the Hall, they all suddenly fell silent and took off their hats. They made their way towards their Princess, eyes wide as if they couldn't believe what they were seeing. They had to touch Malva's hand before they were convinced that she was real. Not only was she alive, she looked almost the same as at the time when the portrait showing her youthful beauty was painted. Just a little thinner, perhaps, and
with a graver look, but her amber eyes still enchanted all who saw her.

She had taken her place on a chair hastily mended by Babilas; its seat was still rather unsteady. Beside her, on his faded throne, the Coronador felt a prickling in his nose, and sometimes started when he heard people speak to him. As for Orpheus, he stood back in the shadows, slightly removed from the others, watching the scene with growing emotion. He had always dreamed of seeing the Princess reunited with her people. And this time, he knew, it was for good.

‘We've missed you!' the women told her.

‘We thought you'd died among the barbarians,' said the men.

‘You can't think how we've suffered!' wailed the noble Donias. ‘Just imagine – we had to eat roots and wild pigs' tails!'

They all crowded around her, touching her, weeping, thanking her, and Malva accepted all these marks of affection serenely. In exchange, she distributed houses, workshops and responsibilities among them, and they all set off, reassured that a new life awaited them in either the Upper Town or the Lower Town, whichever they preferred.

The soldiers laid their rusty carabins and musketoons at the Princess's feet and swore to be faithful to her. The Holy Diafrons murmured blessings into her ears. The tradesmen promised her presents, and when Malva gave the peasants plots of land they shed tears of gratitude. At the back of the room, three menservants wrote down everything she had given in the official registers.

At last an old woman in a black cape, carrying a big bundle, knelt before Malva. ‘I came back in spite of my great age,' she said to her, ‘hoping you could give me news of someone who set out in search of you. A young man I brought up – he was on the first expedition, the one that set out ten years ago …'

Hearing her voice, Orpheus emerged from the shadow, his heart beating fast. ‘Berthilde?' he asked hesitantly.

The old woman looked up, recognised him and burst out sobbing. ‘He's alive! By Holy Tranquillity, he's alive!'

Since the old lady was clearly in shock, Malva had her taken to the antechamber. In passing, she cast an enquiring glance at Orpheus, who briefly explained who the old woman in black was before going to sit with her. Berthilde was in a state of great excitement, wringing her hands and repeating, ‘Thanks be, thanks be, thanks be!'

Berthilde had always seemed old to Orpheus, but now he saw her so worn out by age and suffering that he thought she might fall to dust before his eyes.

When she was over her first shock, Berthilde was able to sit up, and found the strength to tell Orpheus all that had happened to her: her lonely and interminable wait in Hannibal's icy house, her despair, the passing of the years, then war with the invading hordes from the north.

‘One morning I heard riders coming, shouting in the next road. I took fright, collected a few things together and left. I wasn't the only one. The Upper Town emptied all at once, and we found ourselves on the road like beggars.'

‘Going where?' asked Orpheus.

‘Far away to the frontiers. That's where I found shelter, in a village built by cave-dwellers and abandoned long ago.'

‘You … you lived in the caves?' asked Orpheus in amazement.

The old woman nodded. She had stayed there for over two years with other Galnician refugees. Yet cold, hunger and the fear of being discovered, attacked and killed could not overcome her determination.

‘I always looked after what was yours,' she told Orpheus proudly. ‘I wouldn't give up hope of seeing you again some day, and giving back what you left me when you went away.'

She bent down, opened the bundle she had brought with her, and took out some knick-knacks that Orpheus recognised: objects of no great value, but part of his childhood and youth. Then she opened a small casket. Orpheus went pale. It contained Hannibal's jewels and gold.

‘This is only a small part of your fortune,' said Berthilde apologetically. ‘I couldn't carry it all, and I suppose the rest was stolen. I am so sorry.'

Amazed, Orpheus was staring at the casket.

‘I know you didn't want to accept anything from your father,' Berthilde murmured. ‘But this gold is all that's left of him. Please take it.'

Feeling very awkward, Orpheus dared neither refuse nor accept it.

‘Hannibal loved you,' the old woman added. ‘I watched him with you over the years, and I know how much he thought of you. He loved you more than anything in the world.'

Orpheus looked into the depths of Berthilde's eyes, and thought of all that had happened to him since the two of them last saw each other.

‘I will take it,' he said.

Berthilde smiled.

‘And now you must rest,' added Orpheus. ‘We'll find you a room.'

The old woman shook her head. ‘It's kind of you, but no. If you will allow me,' she said, taking a bunch of keys from her pocket, ‘I'll sleep at home in the McBott house.'

She had kept the keys too! Orpheus couldn't get over it, but
he was quick to agree to her request. He called some servants and told them to take the old lady to the big white house at the foot of the Campanile.

‘And I'll come and see you tomorrow,' he promised, kissing Berthilde's lined forehead.

The procession through the Hall of Delicacies went on for a week. Galnicians came to the Citadel from everywhere, and the constant crowd tired the Coronador so much that after three days he said he wasn't going to leave his bed again; his daughter could cope with everything very well by herself.

The crowd came and went in a state of great excitement, thronging the streets and squares, the banks of the River Gdavir, and going all the way to the harbour, where ships from every point of the compass were loading and unloading cargoes.

One evening when Orpheus was out, Malva was about to rise from her chair and go back to her own room when a final visitor turned up. She heard one of the menservants sigh, and she almost sent the late-comer away, but she sat down when she saw the state of the man. He moved through the Hall of Delicacies with a crutch under each arm, back bent and breathless with the effort. His bare feet showed under the folds of a monje's robe, dirty and bleeding. He must have suffered a thousand torments
before reaching the Citadel, and although she was exhausted herself Malva didn't have the heart to turn him away.

‘Come here,' she said, ‘and tell me your name.'

The man dragged himself over to the chair where Malva was sitting. His face was hidden under the wide hood of his robe, and only some locks of grey hair escaped from it. This must be a very old monje.

‘My name,' said a trembling voice, ‘my name is Miguel. I have come from so far away to see you, Princess.'

‘I'm listening,' smiled Malva, leaning forward in an attempt to see the monje's face.

‘May I speak without fear in this place?' the voice asked again. ‘I have something to tell you in confidence, and …'

Malva assured him that the servants wouldn't hear anything.

‘I have come from so far away,' the man repeated.

‘From the frontier?' asked Malva.

‘Much further than that! I have crossed a sea, I have passed through unknown lands …'

‘What kind of lands?'

‘Lands from which no one ever returns,' replied the shaking voice.

Malva felt a shudder run down her back.

‘And it is of all that,' said the man from under his hood, ‘that I want to speak to you. I know you will understand. Your intelligence and wisdom are famous. But what about these servants?'

Malva turned to the three poor fellows half-asleep over the registers, and felt sorry for them. ‘That's all for today,' she told them. ‘You can leave us now.'

The three servants didn't wait to be asked twice. They put their quills down and left the Hall of Delicacies. Malva was alone with the monje.

‘There's no one else here now,' she said.

‘No one else here!' breathed the monje. ‘You and I, alone. How glad I am!'

‘So what lands did you want to tell me about?' asked Malva, her curiosity aroused.

The monje straightened up. He dropped his crutches, which made a dull sound as they fell to the polished floor. Malva was going to lean down and pick them up, but a sudden doubt stopped her. All at once she leaped to her feet. The monje flung back his hood to reveal his face.

In spite of his long hair, Malva recognised him at once. Those piercing eyes, as grey as metal, that triumphant smile …

‘The Archont!' she murmured, with a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach.

He immediately drew a sword that had been hidden under his robes. She screamed.