The Fatal Child (15 page)

‘Do not say it, Amba – please!’

‘The heathen appease their gods by sacrifice, don’t they? What other sacrifice, now, would appease Beyah? If she can be appeased at all.’ He shrugged. ‘All right. We don’t know. But we are where we are. Will you have more wine, Master Padry?’

He did not wait for an answer but poured the sweet liquid into Padry’s bowl.

‘The point is,’ he said as he served first the baron and then Lex, ‘that if you have ever wondered why our people are so prone to war against each other, it is because we are driven to it. So my mother and I are looking, all the time, for the thing that might make the World-Mother cease from weeping. In the meantime I make it my task to bring peace wherever I can, and protect and help whomever I can. And I honour those who do the same. Sadly there are not many among the mighty of the land. Sophia at Develin is one.’

Padry looked up sharply. There was something in the way he had said her name that implied he had not simply picked her as an example.

‘She is not the only one,’ Ambrose went on. ‘I would also name Raymonde diLackmere if his father would allow it. And until today I would have named you.’

The jug finished its round with a light thump as Ambrose set it on the table. He looked at Padry levelly. Night was almost on them. The boy’s face was a
shadow but his eyes glinted in the lights.

Padry cleared his throat. ‘You have heard from Develin?’

‘Today, concerning you.’

Develin was almost a week’s journey away. The only way a message concerning him could have reached here was by the same way he had come – by witchcraft. And the Lady of Develin would know that he had deceived her. This might be awkward. Very awkward. Padry shifted in his seat. He felt tricked, trapped …

‘I agree with Sophia,’ said Ambrose, gently but firmly. ‘You should not be here. You should be with Gueronius. You should go to him now. One way or another, you must persuade him not to cross the ocean.’

‘I shall say this to him when I see him, and so will his other advisers.’

Ambrose shook his head. ‘But you have not yet understood what I am telling you.
Why
must he leave off this adventure? It is not only to preserve his authority and keep the Kingdom at peace. He must do those things if he can, yes. But there is more. When Wulfram came from over the sea he brought great evil with him – iron, and the love of iron – all the things that make the World-Mother weep. It is for their share in it that his sons have suffered such torment. It is because of our share that she calls for us to eat our sons in turn. Now Gueronius will go over the sea, and what will come of it? Yes, I am afraid that he may go and be lost. But I am more afraid that he will go
and come back
. He will bring an evil as great as Wulfram did
when we first came to this land.’

His eyes were like dragon-light. His forefinger pointed straight at Padry’s heart.

‘You have heard her. You know what the first crossing brought. You must go to Gueronius at once.
That ship must not sail
.’

hat can we do?’ asked the princess.

‘Not much now,’ said Melissa. ‘Only wait.’

They sat together in Melissa’s bedroom at the inn, by the pallet on which they had laid the hillwoman. The window was shuttered against the night. A single rush burned low at the bedside. In its sickly light the face of the servant already looked like a skull.

Melissa had watched both her own little sisters die. She had not seen such sickness in a grown woman before. She did not know if the end would be the same. She had done everything that she could think of. She had held the woman’s hand, removed her blankets and wiped her with wet cloth when her skin burned, and wrapped her in them again when she started to shiver. She had talked to her, although there was never any answer. She had done all that through the long hours of the evening. But there was nothing she could do to stop the coughing. There was nothing to do but wait.

The princess sat with her at the bedside until
darkness. What did she feel, watching her servant die? Grief? Guilt? Anger, at the trouble of it? Melissa had felt all those things at her sisters’ deaths. But the face of the princess was so very hard to read. And it grew harder still as the light failed. When she rose with a murmur and went to lie down on her pallet against the other wall, Melissa only thought, Good for her. There was no point in both of them staying awake all night. It might end before dawn, or it might not.

She sat in the darkness, holding the hillwoman’s hand, listening to the uneven breaths for any sign of a change. As the inn around them fell silent she heard the breathing of the princess too. She heard it deepen into sleep. She began to doze herself.

In her doze she thought of her sisters, who were gone, and her mother and father and the hut, all gone. And she thought of the red knight who had brought her here, and he was gone, too. They had all left her. They had left her in this place where she had no place. The King had promised her something, but she did not know what it was yet, and neither did he.

She had nowhere to go. She did not want to go back to the clearing. She couldn’t anyway, if they were going to put a priest there. In her mind she wandered and wandered in the darkness, just as she had wandered and become lost after her parents had died. She did not know what to do.

A hand gripped her own. She jerked awake.

Had she slept? How long? The light had gone out.
For a moment she could not think where she was. Her legs, curled on the floor, were numb from their position. Someone was gripping her hand, hard. Who …?

A rustle of straw beside her. It was the hillwoman. It was her. She was awake.

She was awake but she said nothing. From the sounds in the darkness she was trying to lift her head. She was not even breathing. She was holding her breath.

She was listening.

Melissa listened, too. And now she thought that someone had been speaking in the moments before she had woken. There had been words, mumbled and indistinct. They had woken the hillwoman. What had they said? Melissa could not remember.

Then the words came again. It was the princess, loud but indistinct. ‘Keep him away.’

She’s asleep, Melissa thought. Asleep and dreaming. Is it…?

‘Keep him away,’ begged the princess.

And ‘… following me.’

She’s talking to the King, Melissa thought. She’s talking to him in a dream, like I did.

‘He’s following me!’ the princess repeated.

If the King answered, his words never entered the room. And still Melissa held hands with the hillwoman in the darkness. She heard a sigh from the pallet.

‘Atti – Atti,’ a hoarse voice said.

‘She’s asleep,’ she whispered back. ‘She was just dreaming. You should sleep, too.’

The hand gripped hers harder than ever. It was pulling her closer. She bent to listen.

‘Look – after her,’ the sick voice gasped in her ear. ‘You must look after her.’

‘I will,’ she said.

‘She is – so …’

A slow, hoarse breath. And another. And then: ‘Look – after …’

‘Yes,’ said Melissa. ‘I promise.’

She remembered to add, ‘Till you’re better, anyway.’

The gasping breaths resumed. One after another they struggled on into the night, like weary, lost footsteps that no longer knew where they were going. Melissa shifted her position. She went on holding the hand.

When she woke it was sunrise. Bleary and aching, she got to her knees. She was exhausted from the long watch and her days of eating nothing. She bent over the hillwoman to see if she was awake, and saw that she would never wake again.

The princess was sitting upright against the other wall, looking at the bright sky beyond the window. Melissa turned to tell her, then realized that she already knew.

‘You must dress me,’ the princess said, without taking her eyes from the light.

Dress her? thought Melissa. Was she too upset to dress herself?

‘I’ll try,’ she said. ‘Do you want to dress here?’

(Here – with the dead woman in the room?)

‘Yes.’

Melissa dragged herself over and began to rummage for the princess’s other gown.

‘You stink,’ said the princess dully.

‘I’ll wash when I’ve done you,’ said Melissa.

Padry was dictating letters in the mean lodging hut when Lex put down his pen.

‘I must say this,’ he said. ‘This is not good.’

Padry stared at him in astonishment. ‘On the contrary,’ he said when he had found his voice. ‘We must tell Gueronius we have had an audience with Tarceny, or he will hear it from some other source and assume that I have begun to plot against him—’

‘I don’t mean
this,’
exclaimed Lex, jabbing his finger at the half-written page. ‘I mean that we should not be writing letters at all! We should be going ourselves. We should be in Tuscolo. We should be in Velis. That’s where we are needed. Not here!’

‘We have not finished here.’

‘We have done as much as we can, surely. We can’t bring the child back but we know where she is. And we know she’s safe.’

‘Do we?’ said Padry.

‘He has said so, and for my money he’s honest in this. In any case, the danger isn’t in Tarceny. The danger is what’s happening to our precious King’s rule while our backs are turned.’

‘I am not so sure.’

‘Everyone else seems to be. You said it would take no more than a week, remember? We are right at the end of that now.’

‘If you are keen to return to Tuscolo, do not worry. You will carry these letters, since I have no one else to send.’

‘I’m nothing. It’s
you
they need. You were his tutor. You must go and tell him that he cannot leave!’

Padry paused in the doorway. Their hut was right against the landward stockade of Aclete. All the little township lay between him and the big house at the waterside where Atti had her lodgings. He might have walked through the alleys and been with her in three minutes. But he could not do it. There were men guarding the house now. Ambrose of Tarceny had put them there to prevent him from approaching her. As if he would have dreamed of abduction! Really it was an insult: a rank injustice, and one he would be slow to forgive!

(Atti, Atti. What are you doing now?)

‘Enough of this,’ he said, turning back into the room. ‘Please resume: “Wherefore, Your Majesty, if you see fit to accept my humble advice, you will forthwith have copied for your seal a letter to the March-count requiring …” ’

Lex had not picked up his pen. He was holding his head in his hands, and breathing heavily. ‘I walked through a bad dream to get here,’ he said. ‘Now it’s a nightmare.’

He lifted his head to look Padry in the face.

‘I thought it was a matter of state. I thought you knew she was going to appeal for help against the King.’

‘I had no idea she would do that.’

‘No. You didn’t. It’s never been about politics, has it? It’s about
her.’
He drew breath. ‘I’m sorry. I’ve been pleased to follow you. I’ve even come to admire you. But there was a question you did not answer when they put it to you last night. I’ve got to ask it again.
What is this child to you?
’

‘What do you mean?’

‘This … infatuation with her!’

‘I am not infatuated with her.’

‘Your mouth denies it. But what you do reveals it! Everything must wait. Everything – King, Kingdom, Justice, all so that you can have her back! Do you think we don’t see? Didn’t you ever see how your clerks smirked when you went out for your “walk in the cloisters”? And I’d say to them, “No, you don’t understand. He sees himself as her guardian, that’s all.” And you’d come back with a light in your eye and a spring in your step and I’d say to them, “He just needed to clear his head.” Master, please, for your own sake – what is it you think of, when you think of her?’

His eyes held Padry’s. Neither spoke. Then Lex burst out: ‘You are a good man! Why are you letting this happen to you?’

‘ENOUGH!’ roared Padry.

In utter silence they glared at one another.

‘You are mistaken,’ said Padry coldly. ‘No philosopher could trammel himself with such an attachment – as you should know. Now please resume: “Wherefore, Your Majesty, if you see fit…” ’

Wordlessly, Lex picked up his pen and began to write. He said nothing more while the letters were
finished. He packed them into his satchel and his other belongings into his bag. He lifted them onto his shoulder.

‘I’m going to sell the horses,’ he said grimly. ‘Then I will go down to the harbour. If I can get a boat today, I will take it.’

‘I may only be a day or two behind you,’ Padry called after him. ‘I must hear how he judges her, that’s all.’

Lex did not look back.

The next morning the two girls stood again before the King on the hilltop.

‘Astria,’ he said, ‘I am sorry to learn that your servant is dead.’

‘I have a new servant,’ said the princess, with a slight nod towards Melissa.

All around them stood the circle of people. Some faces Melissa remembered from two days before – especially the hard-faced knight at the King’s right hand. Others seemed to be new. The air was warm. Most of the watchers had thrown back their hoods and cloaks. Again Melissa felt awkward to be standing before all of them, even though it wasn’t really her they were looking at but the princess. They had called the princess out first today. Perhaps the King did not want another argument about the order in which he listened to people.