The Fatal Child (22 page)

‘Yes, sir …’ said Melissa.

They were kneeling side by side. It was now or never.

‘Um …’

He looked at her. She felt the blood rising to her face.

‘I’ve got something for you, sir,’ she said.

She held it out – the little four-pointed moon-rose flower, with its three white petals and one black, that she had picked from below the walls that morning.

He looked it at. Slowly the smile returned to his face.

‘Now there’s a thing,’ he said softly. He touched it with his fingertip. ‘Why did you bring me that?’

‘Because it’s like the moon on your flag,’ she said. ‘Black and white, see?’ She looked at him earnestly, wanting him to remember that first time they had seen each other – the firelight and the hut, and the needle that had fallen to the ground.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘But the moon had a piece missing. This says something different.’ He touched it again. ‘This isn’t a piece missing, is it? It’s just a petal that’s black, not white. What do you think that means?’

‘Sir?’ she said, still holding it out to him. (Oh, take it! Take it, please, for me …)

‘Here, the black is part of the whole thing. It says you can’t have the flower without it. And even the black leaf grows towards the light.’

‘Um …’ said Melissa. Her heart was going
flip-flip-flip
because he was so close to her. Her tongue was sticking to the roof of her mouth, because she had used up all the things she had thought of to say to him, and it was hard to think of any more. (Take it. Oh, please take it…)

‘You show me this,’ said Ambrose. ‘And thinking about Atti … Do you know who I mean by Beyah?’

‘The mountain, sir?’

‘The mountain near my mother’s house is called Beyah, yes. But it’s not just a mountain. It’s also a woman. A spirit. She’s been weeping since – well, for a long time, anyway.’

‘Um, yes. Your mother said.’

‘Did she? Did she show you the Cup?’

‘A cup? There were bowls—’

‘No. A stone cup. She keeps it for me up there. If you have the Cup, you can make Beyah’s tears appear in it. And then you can do various things. But of course they are tears – sad and cruel. They’re everywhere: in the Cup, in Rolfe and the other princes, in Mother. To some extent they are in all of us. And I
think that when Atti was very little Beyah must have wept a tear straight into her heart. It’s still there, colouring everything for her. I can almost smell it.

‘You see, Melissa, if I could find out what to do about that tear inside Atti, I might know what to do about Beyah and her tears wherever they fall. That’s very, very important. It’s the most important thing there is. But is it a piece missing? Or is it part of the whole? I don’t know. I need to think some more. Thank you, Melissa,’ he said, taking the flower from her hand at last. ‘Now I’d better get after those carpenters, or they’ll be down behind the woodpile with a bottle of that wretched ale and no use for anything for the rest of today …’

He was rising, turning, smiling, and leaving through the door. She saw him put the flower away in a pocket as he went.

And then he was gone. His footsteps clumped down the bare boards of the passage and clattered away down the stairs. The glory she had felt went with him, leaving her as dull and flat as a muddy river-bed after the spring flood had passed. There had been no meaning in his smile.

Sometime this evening, she thought, he would put his hands into his pocket again. He would find the flower there, wilted and forgotten. It had already been wilting when she gave it to him, because she had had to pick it hours before. He would see that. He would know that she had planned the whole thing, and that the firewood had just been a way to catch him. Perhaps he had known that the moment he had seen
her carrying it. And he had gone and helped her anyway, because, because …

She thought back over all they had said together, and saw that it had all been about Atti. Even while he’d been talking about carpenters he had been thinking about her, and that was why his talk had gone back to her when she had showed him the flower. And she remembered the way he had looked around as he had stepped into their rooms, expectantly, as if hoping that Atti would be there. She wondered if he had used the firewood as an excuse to visit their chambers, just as she had used it as an excuse to be in the outer courtyard when he came in through the gate.

With a sinking feeling she decided that he had.

Tonight he and Atti would play chess together again, moving all those knights and bishops and queens around on their chequered board in a way that Melissa could never understand. And barely a word would pass between them, but they would speak to each other with their eyes over the pieces. It took a different sort of mind to do that, thought Melissa. And their minds were the same.

Her hands had started to rearrange the firewood, not because it needed it, but because she needed something to do. It will help to keep you warm, he had said. She picked up a stick, and looked at it. She remembered another stick, years before, with the flame licking around its end.

How could it keep her warm, when the moon was out of reach?

he woke suddenly, in the darkness of the living-quarter chamber. She had heard something in her sleep. She knew that. She did not know what it was.

She listened.

She heard the wind in the trees beyond the walls – a watery sound, rising and falling.

And a low
chink-chink
sort of noise, like metal, coming from somewhere on the slopes below the window. What was that?

Was that what she had heard?

There were noises inside the castle, too. A man was speaking quickly in a low tone. Wood scraped, as if something heavy were being pushed against or away from a door. Footsteps were hurrying along the corridor from the keep.

She sat up, her heart beating hard, with the blanket wrapped around her. The knock came softly.

‘Up, both of you,’ whispered Ambrose urgently from the corridor. ‘Get dressed and come to the fighting platform. Don’t show any light.’

He was gone, like a breath of wind into the darkness. Atti was standing at the door to the inner chamber where she slept. Melissa could not see her face – only the black line of head and hair and shoulder against the paler dark from the window beyond. But she knew. They both knew.

Her home was destroyed, too, thought Melissa.

The two girls stared at one another.
Chink, chink, chink
came the sounds from beyond the window. And then the unmistakable noise of a horse, blowing within a hundred paces of the walls.

‘Quickly!’ hissed Atti.

They hurried into the inner chamber. Melissa groped for Atti’s gown and threw it on over her nightdress. She left the fastenings for Atti, who fumbled with them, muttering in the dark, while Melissa hunted for Atti’s cloak and shoes. Then Atti was moving for the door, saying urgently, ‘Come on!’ Melissa, still in her nightdress, her feet bare, felt her way back to her pallet and groped for her own clothes.
Don’t leave me!
she thought. But Atti was already gone. Melissa listened, heart beating hard, but she could hear nothing more from outside.

She left her gown, her shoes – all of it. She found her cloak and hauled it around her shoulders. Barefoot, she hurried through the corridors in the direction the others had gone.

The stairs led up, twisting, past the old war room to the fighting platform at the top of the bastion. She emerged breathless among the battlements of Tarceny. The great keep looked down on them, flat
and black against the sky. For a moment she thought she was alone.

‘Don’t show yourself!’ said Lackmere’s voice, low and urgent.

They were crouching against the parapet on the north side. Atti was there with them. The figure of a man – it must have been Ambrose – was peering round a battlement at the hillside beyond. The others were keeping down.

‘Among the trees, about level with us on the ridge,’ he said. ‘Horsemen, for sure. I think there are others down among the groves.’

‘Posted to watch the postern,’ growled Lackmere. ‘Whoever they are, they know this castle. And the main force will come in through the outer courtyard. Damn, but I knew we should have got those gates repaired!’

‘Who are they?’

‘Armed in the night? Enemy, of course.’

‘Rolfe’s not far away,’ said Ambrose. ‘If we had him with us we could just follow him through a wall and come back into the world wherever we liked.’

‘Call him then. But if he doesn’t hear you—’

A shout broke from the inner courtyard.

‘They’re in!’ exclaimed Ambrose.

A second shout:
‘Ho, Tarceny,’
followed by a horn-call.

Carefully the four of them peered over the inner battlements.

There were lights in the inner courtyard, held in the hands of armoured men. Around the yellow pools
they cast Melissa glimpsed horses, armoured limbs, the glint of steel. The place seemed to be crowded. She could hear more horsemen filing in through the gate from the outer courtyard – so many! The light fell on the buildings of the inner courtyard. It showed the faces of the settler families appearing in doorways and windows.

‘Keep back there,’ bellowed the voice in the courtyard. ‘Keep your heads in.’ And then again
‘Ho, Tarceny!
’

‘The postern,’ hissed Lackmere. ‘And as soon as we’re out, scatter!’

They hurried down the twisting stair, down past the war room, down past the chapel and the living-quarter corridor. Down …

Ahead of Melissa, Ambrose stopped abruptly. She almost bumped into his back. There were men in the postern corridor below. She could hear them hurrying along it, clinking in their mail. Ambrose turned on the stair.

‘Back!’ he hissed to them all. ‘The keep!’

‘They’re up there!’ cried a voice below them.

Melissa turned and bolted up the stair. The others were already running before her, stumbling up and along the living-quarter corridor. She ran after them. She heard armoured feet clattering up the stairs behind her. Her nerves were screaming with the memory of the red knight, the whisper of his arrows as she had dodged among the trees.
Don’t look back!
Ahead was the door to the keep. Lackmere had it open. Atti was through it next, looking back at her.
She reached it and threw herself into the tower chamber. She heard Ambrose slam it shut behind her, the feet pounding beyond it, the scrape of old bolts going home and something heavy slamming and rattling into the wood from the other side.

‘Bolt the other door!’ cried Lackmere, throwing his weight with Ambrose against the boards.

‘Rolfe!’ called Ambrose into the air. ‘Rolfe!’

‘The other door!’ yelled Lackmere again, glaring over his shoulder at Melissa.

The other door! The door down to the bottom chamber! She was closest. She picked herself up and scurried across to it. It stood open at the top of the steps that curled up inside the wall from below. She looked down it – into the eyes of the armoured man, climbing the steps towards her with a flaming torch in his hand!

She screamed and threw the door shut. Desperately she put her weight against it, wrestling one-handed with the bolts. They would not go. The lower was rusted into place. She fought it and it would not budge. She tried the upper. It moved – reluctantly, scraping … and then it jammed!

As if in a dream she saw it, lit by her enemy’s torch through the cracks in the door. The door timbers had warped. The bolt rested against the rim of the bolt-hole. The bolt-hole was a black crescent, tantalizing and useless as she slid the bolt against it again. It would not go. Her enemy’s foot scraped on the stair, inches away. And then the door slammed in against the side of her head, and everything was black.

Voices were shouting and her head was singing. She could not see. She was lying on her side in the chamber and a man was standing over her.

‘Put up your iron!’ he roared. ‘Put them up, or I’ll have this one in a heartbeat!’

Cold metal rested against her chin. Her vision was clouded, dark and sparkling after the blow. There were more footsteps coming up the stairs. Someone was beating on the other door.

‘Damn you, I’ll not put up on your say-so!’ That was the Baron Lackmere.

‘What about on mine?’ said a new voice above Melissa’s head.

‘Caw!’ she heard Ambrose exclaim.

‘Greeting to you from Develin, my lord,’ said the voice, clipped and hard, as if the words it spoke were pebbles dropping from its mouth. ‘I knew you would try to sneak out if we gave you the chance. But we’ve come a long way for you and I don’t mean to lose you now. All right!’ he bellowed suddenly. ‘You can stop that racket! We’ve got them.’

The pounding on the other door ceased. Bolts were drawn back. More people were entering the room.

‘Sophia sent you for me?’ said Ambrose.

‘My lady sent us, yes. But not only her. I believe you also know the lord chancellor here.’

‘My lord,’ said someone else.

‘Yes,’ said Ambrose, and his voice sounded colder than ever. ‘You’ve come for Astria, is that it?’

Melissa’s sight was clearing. She opened her eyes. There was torchlight in the room now. She could see
floorboards and the boots of many men. She tried to lift her head. As she did so she felt the touch of metal against her neck again. She froze.