The Fatal Child (13 page)

‘I promise you the justice that is in my power – and yours – to find.’

The girl raised her voice and spoke to the whole ring. ‘I seek justice,’ she said, ‘against the house of Gueronius, for the deaths of my father and his brother, the robbery of my lands and the murder of my people.’

There was a moment’s silence on the hilltop.

‘Is that all?’ exclaimed the knight at the King’s side.
‘You want us to cross the lake, march on Tuscolo, seize the throne and put you on it?’

The girl looked only at the King. ‘I ask for justice,’ she repeated.

‘Angels’ Knees!’ cried the knight. ‘What justice? Your father and uncle were rebels against his house. Your uncle put
his
uncle’s head on a spike when he took the throne! Damn me, I was there! Do you think we want the same to happen to us?’

‘One moment, Aun,’ said the King quietly. He was prodding at the ground before him with a finger. He seemed to be thinking. After a little he looked up.

‘I did not know you would ask this,’ he told the girl.

The girl watched him. She was daring him to refuse her.

‘I’m sorry,’ said the King. ‘I am not Gueronius’s overlord, and I can’t judge him if he does not come to me for judgement. Which he won’t, of course.’

Silence.

‘But I want to help you if I can,’ said the King. ‘Is there not something else besides Gueronius that is troubling you?’

The girl’s eyes went down to her hands, and then back to the King. She said: ‘I have asked for what I want. And you say you won’t give it to me.’

‘Sometimes,’ said the King, ‘when we say we want something, it is because we want something else that we cannot name. I think you do. Can you tell me?’

She turned her head. For the first time she looked around her, at the ring of people all looking back at
her. Melissa thought she wanted to turn and walk away without answering. But their eyes held her in her place. She seemed very small in the middle of all those people.

‘I ask for your confidence,’ said the King.

Her cheeks were colouring. Coldly she lifted her chin. ‘You want me to tell you something you can give me?’

‘Yes.’

‘Can you give me justice against
your
house, then? The house of Tarceny?’

Somebody swore under their breath.

‘My grandfather and his eldest son both died at Tarceny’s hands,’ the princess said. ‘I am the last of their line. For their sakes you should grant me justice against yourself!’

The King looked hard at her. Then he turned to the knight at his side. He was angry now. Both men were angry. Melissa could tell from the way they looked and the hiss of their whispers.

‘… wants a good spanking,’ she heard the knight say. ‘That, or duck her in the lake!’

‘No,’ said the King.

‘You cannot pay blood-money to every old enemy of your house! Damn me, if you did,
I
could have a claim on you!’

‘Again, no,’ said the King.

He turned back to the girl who stood before him, waiting.

‘This is not what I was thinking of either,’ he said shortly. ‘We are getting further from the matter and
not nearer to it. But since you say this here, I will tell you that my father, who was guilty of these things, is dead, and that I have long ago disowned what he did.

‘Nevertheless,’ he went on, ‘I think you may have a claim on me because of him. I shall have to decide whether you are right, and if so what there is that I may offer you.’

The girl nodded slightly. Her expression did not change.

‘But I have a question for you now,’ the King said, leaning forward. ‘It is this: I think you did not come here alone. Where is the one who helped you?’

‘I did come alone – unless you mean my servant.’

‘That is who I meant. Where is she?’

‘She is sick. She lies in the inn.’

‘Did she fall sick on the way?’

‘She was ill to begin with, but she has become worse.’

Melissa wondered why she did not say that the woman might die.

‘How long has she been your servant?’

‘As long as I can remember.’

‘Was it her choice that she should come with you, or yours?’

The girl looked puzzled by the question. ‘I was coming to find you. Of course she came with me.’

‘Remember that I did not ask you to come. And I did not ask you to bring one who was sick and might suffer on the journey.’

The girl said nothing.

‘Who is caring for her now?’

Again the girl did not answer.

‘I believe,’ said the King, ‘that your servant has given many years for you. I fear she may now be giving her life. You should give what care you can to her in return. Shouldn’t you?’

The princess looked at him coldly. ‘Is this your judgement?’ she asked.

‘Not yet. Later, when we know what becomes of her, I will judge both you and me.’

She did not bow or grovel as the red knight had done. She turned and walked back to her place in the circle. She looked small and alone, but also, Melissa thought, very, very fine. She had not been frightened at all. And she had spoken so beautifully – all the time! She had even stopped the King, who seemed to know everything, and had made him think. How wonderful, to be able to speak like that!

Melissa’s eyes followed the princess in the dark-grey hood. Even as she admired her, she felt sorry for her. Because the King had been right. She was very calm and strong on the outside but still there was something wrong. Melissa knew that. She remembered the way the princess had sat in the long room with the wails of her servant filling the air around her. She hadn’t been lifting a finger to help. She had just been sitting there, as if she were fixed by some great, quiet pain and were as feeble as the woman on the bed. Maybe it was just knowing that the woman was dying. Maybe it was something even worse. Melissa could not guess.

She wanted to go after the princess, to comfort her
if she could and to tell her that she would help look after the hillwoman at the inn. But her legs were weak. She did not know if she would be allowed to get up from where she had been made to sit. And the princess had not stopped when she had reached the edge of the circle. She was still walking away, followed by two men from the inn. Melissa knew she would never be able to catch her without help.

She watched the small, hooded head and shoulders disappear below the brow of the hill.

ay I speak to you,’ said Padry, ‘as a master to a former pupil?’

‘Certainly,’ said Ambrose of Tarceny.

They were at supper together outside the big stone lodge that stood on one side of the bay at Aclete. Lex was there. So was the Baron Lackmere, who had brought Ambrose’s invitation just as Lex and Padry had been contemplating another meal of root broth in their mean lodgings. Now there was pale wine in the bowls before them, and on the table were olives, fresh bread and spitted lake-fish that gave off a delicious scent of seared oils. The wind had dropped (thank the Angels!). Only the lightest airs stirred the vine-leaves above their table. A little warmth had stolen into the evening. The great hillside across the bay was alight with the sunset.

‘Well,’ said Padry, ‘as a master, praise first. I have seen many a lord hold his court and I could have wished that some of them had been with me in yours today. Too many lords judge as if justice were an instrument of their lordship. Others treat all
judgement as a waste of their time and a demand on brains that they do not like to use. You, however, judge as if justice were truth, and it is your task to find it. This is good.’

‘If you flatter me, Master Padry, I shall flatter you back. Develin taught me. I try to follow as I was taught.’

Padry nodded. Even now, supping with this young witch-king, he could feel the little glow of a teacher who sees evidence of his own work in the man before him.

‘I have two more points,’ he said carefully. ‘Will you listen to them?’

‘I will.’

‘My first is the Lady Astria diBaldwin.’

‘Yes,’ said Ambrose wryly. ‘I did not think to be put so firmly in my place by a twelve-year-old.’

‘She is fourteen, although she looks younger. She is of great interest to the King.’

‘Really?’ said the Baron Lackmere. ‘I thought that pup was interested in nothing this side of his harbour wall.’

‘The King,’ Padry said rather grimly, ‘is interested in everything that he should be interested in. To some extent this is the duty of his advisers.’ And he wondered just how widely in the Kingdom Gueronius’s hair-brained dreams of exploration were known.

‘I see,’ said Ambrose.

‘My advice – my very firm advice – is that you have nothing to do with her suit and that you return her at once to Tuscolo. My colleague and I can escort
her, at least until I can command better protection. If you choose to send messages of loyalty to the King at the same time, I suspect it is possible that the King will in return confirm you in your ancestral holding of the March of Tarceny, and perhaps even your mother’s manors around the fortress of Trant.’

‘This is the sort of gift that costs a king nothing but paper and ink,’ growled Lackmere. ‘The March, such as it is, is beyond his reach. And Trant is waste, and the fortress a ruin. If we were to part with the heir to one of the seven houses, particularly
that
house, it would not be for less than’ – the baron knitted his brows – ‘fifty thousand crowns.’

‘Out of the question,’ said Padry promptly.

‘Why?’

‘Because it would cost the King less to come and fetch her – and hang any who stood in his way. Of course’ – Padry shrugged elaborately – ‘it is not impossible that the King might agree to defray any costs of the child’s keep that a loyal subject had incurred, but—’

‘We can’t send her back,’ said Ambrose.

‘Why not?’ said the baron.

Indeed, why not? thought Padry, carefully putting down his wine bowl. He had been prepared for a ransom demand (although how he might slip fifty thousand, or even five thousand, out of Gueronius’s starving treasury was another question!). He had also weighed the risk that his hosts might imagine he himself would be worth a ransom.

But he did not at all like the finality with which the young lord of Tarceny had spoken. She must come back. One way or another, she
must
.

‘She appealed to me for justice against Gueronius,’ said Ambrose. ‘Before witnesses from many places. Gueronius will consider that treason. The penalty for treason is—’

‘But these were the words of a child!’ Padry protested. ‘A child well-schooled in speech, to be sure, but she knows nothing of politics. And Gueronius does not execute children.’

‘Children can be made to die without ever climbing a scaffold,’ said Ambrose.

‘True,’ said Lackmere. ‘Although at fourteen a child is old enough to marry or stand trial as may be. And
I
would say that one who calls for justice against a crowned king must accept what follows, be they child or no.’

Padry gritted his teeth. The baron was right. Atti would have known exactly what she was doing. After the fate of her family, after seeing the storming of the castle at Velis herself, she knew that death came swiftly to those who meddled in politics. It was dreadful to think that she valued her present life so little that she was willing to risk it on a wild adventure.

Atti!
Wilful
child!

‘She will not be harmed if she returns,’ he said. ‘You have my word on it.’

‘And what is your word worth?’ asked Lackmere.

‘In this case, my life,’ said Padry.

They looked at him curiously.

‘I myself rescued her from the sack of the citadel at Velis,’ he said. ‘In a sense I adopted her. I arranged for her to be placed in the convent at Tuscolo. She was not happy there. I was thinking that perhaps I should take her directly into my own care, but…’

Their faces hardened. And of course there were difficulties. He knew it as well as they did. He had not the time. And a clerk, however exalted, could hardly be given charge of the raising of a young aristocrat – well, except as a very temporary measure, perhaps. (How stupid the world was!)

‘She knows me as “Uncle Thomas”,’ he said.

‘I see,’ said Ambrose carefully.

They did not trust him. He could read it in their eyes.

‘I think … Despite what you say, Master Padry, I do not think she should return to Tuscolo. I am sorry.’

‘May I at least see her and speak with her?’ Padry pleaded. ‘It may be that of her own free will—’

‘No.’

Padry sat back slowly and looked out over the water. The sun was down and the bay was in shadow. But the top of the broad knoll opposite still glowed that bright yellow gold that earlier had touched his heart. No longer. He remembered the name of the hill. Talifer’s Knoll: named, presumably, after that same gaunt, deformed Talifer who had led him through the witch-world to this place.

All that misery, all that trial, for nothing!

‘I swear,’ he said, aware that his voice was trembling. ‘If she returns with me, she will come to
no harm.’

‘It is in my mind to ask you, Master Chancellor,’ said the baron, ‘if she returns with you, what you think might and might not count as “harm”.’