The Fatal Child (33 page)

Lifting her gown, Phaedra climbed up the steps to take her place by the throne. The herald came to stand beside her. She signed to him that he would not be necessary. She spoke down the hall.

‘There was a woman, and she had a son.’

Her voice was softer than a herald’s bellow, but still clear. Melissa could see all the faces of the court turned to her, the people at the back of the crowd with
their chins high and probably on tiptoe as they strained to listen.

‘Her husband made alliances that were not good. His allies brought him victory, but the price for that victory was to be the life of the son.’

There was absolute silence – an utter stillness. They were watching her. Melissa wondered if she were the only person in the room who did not know what Phaedra meant by
allies
.

‘What should the woman do?’ said Phaedra calmly. ‘Her husband did not wish to lose their son, but he could not forgo his alliances. So every day that passed brought the child peril. At last the woman went to her husband’s enemy, who was the King, and said to him: “I will let you into my husband’s castle so that you may capture him. Only promise me that neither you nor your followers will harm my son.”

‘The King agreed.

‘Moreover, for he knew that others might one day try to use the child against him, he said: “And when I am King in this land, and if your son is brought to me for treason, I shall pardon him. Once. After that I may not help him.” That is a hard thing for a king to promise, Your Majesty, as you will know. But he did, and the woman remembered it.

‘And for that promise she betrayed her husband.

‘And although her husband is long dead, and that King is dead, and her own son now sits upon the throne, she still remembers it. The name of the King who made this promise was Septimus, of the house of Tuscolo.’

She looked around the room, while the watchers understood. Then her eyes fell on the man before the throne.

‘For his sake I ask you to pardon the heir of Tuscolo who kneels before you.’

‘But…’ said Ambrose, frowning. He was leaning forward on his throne, trying to think his way through to a judgement. And Atti was leaning forward, too, hanging on his words. They all were. And the nails of the Queen were digging so hard into Melissa’s wrist that she could have cried out with it.

‘Oh, very
well
!’ said Ambrose. He sighed heavily. ‘Yes, I suppose you are right. I will—’

He got no further. With an exclamation the Queen rose from her seat and stalked out of the hall by way of the door behind the thrones. The courtiers parted for her left and right as she drove through them, and all her ladies hurried after her. Melissa was left by the throne, cradling her wrist in which the marks of the Queen’s fingers were printed in angry red.

‘… I will think on this!’ shouted the King. But he was too late. The room was dissolving into uproar. He rose from his throne and glowered around him. ‘Take him away!’ he yelled, pointing to Gueronius. And he swung on his mother, and cried: ‘Damn it, did you have to
do
that?’

‘Yes, I did,’ said Phaedra.

‘That story has nothing to do with this!’

‘Yes it has. Although perhaps it should have been for you to ask
his
pardon. You did take his throne after all.’

‘I didn’t want it!’

‘That did not stop you. And you are treading too close in your father’s footsteps for any of us to be comfortable. He, too, used the princes to eliminate a rival – Gueronius’s grandfather, in fact. Had you forgotten?’

‘That’s not fair! I’m not like him!’

‘Are you not? Would Gueronius have lived if I had not come? Will he yet?’

‘I said I would think about it! But I’m not like my father! And Atti’s not like you!’

Phaedra looked at him for a moment. Then, deliberately, she said: ‘How did you woo your bride then?’

When the King did not answer, she went on, ‘In her dreams, when she was a child. Did you think I did not know? We prise each prince from Beyah’s grip, one after another. And you use them to repeat your father’s sins! Including his sin against me! What do you think I feel?’

‘I don’t
care
what you feel,’ Ambrose screamed. ‘Leave Atti alone! Leave
me
alone! Go back to your damned pool, and next time come when
I
send for you!’

‘Very well,’ she said coldly, and left him there.

o, I will not undress,’ said the Queen to her ladies that evening. ‘You may all go. Melissa will stay and put me to bed in due time.’

The ladies shot dubious glances at one another.

‘Your Majesty—’

‘I said that you may go.’

They left, one after another through the door. ‘Bring me a shawl, Melissa,’ said the Queen. ‘And make ready a lamp. We are going out again.’

Moving stiffly, Melissa searched for a square of warm cloth and arranged it around Atti’s shoulders. Then she went to the Queen’s reading desk. The lamp there was full. One of the other maids must have seen to it earlier. Melissa was grateful that she was not going to have to do any more rummaging in cupboards than was necessary.

Atti watched as she returned. Melissa came slowly, trying to make her step look as easy as possible, but she could not do it.

‘Did they punish you, Melissa?’ said the Queen.

‘Yes, Your Majesty.’

‘For coming into the hall today?’

‘They said I had a straw on my dress, Your Majesty.’

‘They are jealous. Which ladies did it?’

Melissa hesitated.

‘Which of them did it, Melissa?’

‘The Lady Caterine and the Lady Hermione, Your Majesty.’ She had never thought that women brought up to be ladies would know how to hurt so much.

‘I shall dismiss them in the morning.’

Melissa opened her mouth to say that dismissing two ladies for beating a maid would not cure anyone of jealousy. It would make it worse, not better. But she could not tell Atti she was wrong.

‘From now on,’ said Atti, no longer looking at her, ‘you will be my personal maid. You will sleep in my room. You will always go where I go.’

(Why? thought Melissa. Why do you see me now, when you didn’t before? Because I am a hurt thing, like you?)

‘Did you hear me, Melissa?’

‘Yes – thank you, Your Majesty.’

And she wondered how she could possibly get to see Puck after this.

‘Come,’ said the Queen. ‘We are going to the cells. You must lead the way’

They passed down stone corridors, making their way by the light of the lamp in Melissa’s hand. Many of the household were already in bed, but the castle of Tuscolo never truly slept. There were guards at some of the doors, late walkers in the corridors, clerks
in a copying room working in the glow of lit rushes. A pair of councillors, debating something in a passageway, stopped and bowed as they passed. Atti ignored them.

They left the main buildings and walked along a battlemented wall. The wind was strong that night. It moaned in the draining holes and drove thin clouds over the moon. The wall-walk ended in a low door set in a squat, square tower in the angle of the upper courtyard. Atti nodded at it. Melissa reached for the door ring. The iron felt very cold.

Clack!
Loud enough to make her jump. The door opened inwards. There was a small, firelit chamber and two armoured men who looked up at them with startled eyes.

‘I wish to speak to the prisoner,’ said Atti.

There was the slightest shake in her voice.

They bowed and led the way down two flights of steps. At the bottom was another door. They drew the bolts and opened it for her. There was a sudden movement inside, like the flitting of a beast in a cage.

What are we doing here?
thought Melissa.

Atti had stopped before the dark doorway. She put out one hand to support herself against the stone. She looked down, as if she were concentrating. (No, not concentrating. That trembling of her shoulder was not concentration. It was …)

Atti drew breath once, twice. Then she lifted her head. ‘Remain where we can call you,’ she said.

The men bowed again and left.

It was Melissa who went in first. The lamp showed her a small chamber cut out of the ground. There was no furniture in it. The floor was of beaten earth. It stank of a man’s filth.

The man – the wild-eyed man who had knelt before the King that morning – was sitting up on a rough pallet on the floor. There was a blanket around his knees. He was still in the same nightshift that he had been wearing before. He stared at the girls. They looked down on him.

‘The King considers your case, Gueronius,’ said Atti.

The wild man did not answer.

‘He has not yet pardoned you, although his mother has asked that he should. He will listen to me as he has promised. What should I say to him?’

‘What should you say?’ repeated the man. His voice was thick. He must have been asleep until the moment the bolts were drawn. He might even have thought they were the hangman come to carry him out to his end. But he looked up at them and the candlelight glinted in his eye.

‘Say what you like, only tell me – tell me in what way I am supposed to have wronged you.’

‘On your knees,’ said the Queen calmly.

Slowly the man levered himself from his pallet onto his knees, watching her all the while.

‘In what way have you wronged me, Gueronius?’ whispered the Queen. ‘You and your house have hurt me more deeply than you can possibly imagine. You have hurt me in my mind, Gueronius. You carried fire and sword into places I loved. You killed the faces I
remember. All those wounds are in my head still. Shall I wash them in your blood?’

‘I would never have hurt you,’ said the man simply, ‘if I had known you.’

‘What do you mean?’

He gave a helpless gesture. ‘How could I hurt something so beautiful? I tell you, lady, in Outland I have seen great wonders. I have sung for my supper in courts whose wealth surpasses anything our highest kings ever knew. I have seen gardens filled with birds of fantastic plumes, learned secrets of a power that would lay low our highest defences. Yet
never did
I see anything so wonderful as when I looked up in my own throne hall and saw you there, ready to pronounce my death!’

‘Do not weary me!’ said Atti. She bent down to look into his eyes. ‘How many times a day do you think I hear such things?’ she went on. ‘Men surround me like moths. Each of them swears they would die for me and they speak the truth. They look at me and see beauty. They dream dreams of beauty and want to live in them. Yet all they have seen is beautiful skin.
I
am not beautiful, not within.
I
know that. And my dreams are terrible, because you have made them so! Pronounce your death? Why should I not?’

‘Why did you not?’

‘I was not given the chance.’

‘You were.
He
gave it to you, that tight-arsed priestling who has made you his mate. And yes, my lady, you wanted to speak on me. But you did not know what to say. So you had them let in the King’s
mother instead. Maybe you did want to punish me, yes, for things I did not know I had done. But something stopped you. And something has brought you here now. If you wanted to kill me you would do it in another room, with a word, and never look to see what you did. I know this. What is it that stops you? Maybe it is pity. Maybe. Maybe it is something else—’

‘Don’t deceive yourself!’ Atti hissed. ‘Why did I hesitate? Just for this, perhaps. That in you – base, mad, filthy, loud-mouthed – I saw something of myself that no one else will ever see. There. Will you stake your neck on that now?’

‘
I
do not stake my neck, my lady,’ he said levelly. ‘I cannot, because it is not mine to stake. It is yours.’

And as she watched him, he went on, ‘Let me tell you, lady. I do not fear death. I have lived cheek by jowl with death these past four years. Once I lay in fever for days from the bite of a snake. Fever burns, lady. The bite burns until you scream. Shall I tell you of my snake? It was brightly coloured, beautiful. But it crawled on its belly and bit whatever came near to it, because it knew only fear. I do not fear. I do not fear what your word can do to me, for already I burn as I look at you!’

‘Snake
, is it?’ cried Atti. ‘And which of us is the snake? Down on your belly!’

‘As you wish,’ said the man calmly, and dropped forward on his front.

‘Crawl!’

‘Not from fear but for you!’ he said, and began to wriggle clumsily, propelling himself with his elbows
across the filthy floor. In the lamplight Atti’s eyes were wide as she watched him. ‘Crawl!’ she shouted again.

The man writhed and suddenly he was closer. Alarmed, Melissa backed away. The wall stopped her. She looked at the door, wondering if she should call the guards. Atti gave a cry of disgust as he reached for her ankle and backed away, too. The space was narrow. There was no room.

‘Do not fear me!’ he pleaded. ‘I could not harm you.’ And deftly he caught Atti’s foot and pulled it from the floor, so that she was forced to lean back against the wall for balance. She kicked, but he held her.