The Fatal Child (42 page)

‘Oh, but you should, Melissa! And he’ll be good and honest to you and you will have a lovely life together. You should have told me! I would have ordered him to marry you. And I’d have given him a farm, in Baldwin, where the soil is good, and he would look after you and see that you do not starve. Maybe you should ask it of the King. He did say that he owed you a favour. Maybe you should. But perhaps it should not be in Baldwin after all. You should
go far away, back to the hills, where none of us can trouble you.’

‘And gut fish, day in, day out?’ said Melissa dryly. ‘I can’t wait.’

Atti laughed again. ‘I hated that – even though they were dead. And I remember you were so good at it. And the corn – I could not understand how you made it come so quickly. I tried and I tried!’ And she looked down at her hands as if she expected to see there the same calluses that they had both had from scraping their living in that house in the hills.

She looked at her long white fingers, pale in the darkening room. And Melissa saw her face change. She saw Atti remember, as she seemed to have forgotten, that the hills were far away in time as well as distance. And time had wiped the marks of them from her hands, just as it had twisted the paths of her life to lead her to her palace, and to her prison. And for all she knew there would soon be a court, and a sentence to an early, horrible death, or to a life spent lingering behind lock and bar.

Atti’s face composed itself, deliberately, with a quiet effort of will. Suddenly Melissa knew that for Atti waiting here and not knowing what would happen must be the most terrible thing of all. It must mean all her nightmares were with her now, in the waking world. The curtain was drawn, the destroyer was in the room. On an impulse Melissa put her arms around her and hugged her, as sometimes she had hugged her under their blankets in the nights of the hills. ‘You poor thing,’ she said.

She felt Atti’s surprise at her touch – the sudden hardness of the shoulders within her arms. And then she felt them unlock, as if at an unaccustomed jolt from Atti’s brain. She felt Atti pat her clumsily on the shoulder, accepting the embrace. Neither of them spoke.

Then the guard thumped upon the door and told Melissa it was time to leave.

Slowly she walked back along the wall with the image of Atti’s face before her. In her mind she wailed:
But what could I do? I tried to stop her, really I did!
And her thoughts answered:
You did not try hard enough
.

Did you stand in her way? Did you block her door? Did you run out and cry ‘Rape!’ when they were together? You wanted her to betray the King, didn’t you?

No, no! Why would I want a thing like that?

You know why
.

In a kind of dream she reached the inner courtyard and the living quarters, bustling with the lights and music of evening. She made her way along the passages, meaning to climb the stairs to the Queen’s empty chamber and hide herself there. There was a stir in the corridor ahead. A voice was calling, ‘Way there!’ People were pressing themselves against the wall. And as she watched she saw the furthest ones sink into bows and curtseys.

The King was coming.

He came, with a torchbearer ahead of him and the Baron Lackmere at his shoulder. He was dressed in a tunic of green, rich with gold. His hair was long and
his beard trimmed and both were oiled and curled. He was frowning.

‘Way there! Way for the King!’

So much she saw, before it was her turn to sink into a curtsey. She lowered her eyes and watched his feet pass on the flagstones. And then she felt him hesitate.

When she straightened, he was looking back at her over his shoulder. Their eyes met. She saw that he knew where she had just been. And he wanted to talk with her. He wanted to hear how it was with the woman down in the gatehouse. Only Melissa could tell him.

She remembered him as he had been in the mountains, laughing and waving his thorn branch over the heads of the goats in the sun.
‘Ho, knights, to the Dark Tower
. …’ Or crossing the muddy court at Tarceny with firewood in his arms. There had never been a shadow in his eye, then.

The Baron Lackmere checked his stride. He looked back and saw her. He looked at the King. Then he muttered something. The King hung his head and walked on. The wave of people bowing and curtseying swallowed them, and they were gone. And the murmur of voices, ordinary voices gossiping and complaining, the scrapes of shoe-leather, the sound of a door banging, filled the corridor again. Melissa made her way upstairs to the Queen’s chambers. It was dark, and she had no light because maids did not get candles or rushes. She felt her way to the bedchamber and then across to the forbidden door.

She drew back the bolt softly. The door would open.

Without a light, she undressed and put on her nightshift. She went to the little closet where she kept her things. In the darkness her fingers found her two treasures: the wooden goat and the pale stone. She took the stone from where it lay. Then she wrapped a blanket around herself and sat with her back to the post of the King’s door, holding the pebble in her hand.

She waited for hours. Slowly the noises of the house around her died away.

Of course it was never completely quiet, even in the middle of the night. There were guards on the roofs, and on some of the doors, and somewhere men might be drinking in a watchroom or working late on some writing for the lord chancellor. And by the time they stumbled to their beds the monks might be rising for the midnight prayers, and soon after that the first scullions might be crawling wearily from their blankets to rekindle the oven fires so that there would be fresh bread on the King’s table in the morning. She sat and listened to the different noises, to the clink of an armoured watchman pacing away the night, to the laugh of a drunk in the courtyard, and waited for the footsteps beyond the door at her back.

Atti had always slept with ladies in her room. The King slept alone.

The King slept alone so that Atti, if she ever chose, might come to him in the night without having to trip over an inconvenient body on the floor of the room.
Now she was held in a prison and the King slept alone still.

Melissa heard them – the King and his torchbearer, coming along the corridor. She heard the King speak to the guard at his door. (He always had a word for guards and servants when he was allowed.) She heard his body-servants in the outer chamber rising to their feet to attend him. She listened to the short night ritual as they removed his fine clothes and dressed him in his bed robe. Then the goodnights, the lights being doused, the door closing.

And wait, and wait, and wait. At least one servant would be bedding down in the outer chamber. If he had had a hard day he might be asleep quickly. There was also the guard in the corridor, but two doors stood between him and where the King lay. If there was little noise he might hear nothing at all.

The King might sleep, too, of course. But from the way he had looked in the corridor Melissa did not think that he would.

Everything was quiet – as quiet as it ever was. Softly Melissa got to her feet. She clutched the pebble in one hand. She put her other hand on the door-ring. Her heart was beating hard. Her blood was tingling in her throat. She had never, never thought of doing this before. It had never been possible. And now it was so easy.

The handle clacked loudly in her hand, sending a jolt through her whole body. She stood in the open doorway. The room beyond was black as pitch.

‘Who’s there?’ said his voice hoarsely.

‘It’s Melissa, Your Majesty.’ Hesitantly, in the utter dark, she took a step towards the bed. She did not know this room nearly as well as the Queen’s.

She heard him roll in his blankets.

‘Melissa?’

‘I’ve got something for you, Your Majesty.’

I’ve got something for you
. But it was not a flower this time. Her left hand, fumbling, found the unseen bedpost.

‘For me? From the Queen?’

Of course he would think that.

‘Something you lost a long time ago. Rolfe saw it. He said it was important.’ She was thinking:
Don’t send me away. Please don’t. Just because it’s from me, and not from her…

‘Rolfe? But he’s dead.’

She had not known that.

‘He saw you lose it. He told me it was important. I’ve been keeping it. Now I thought you might want it again.’

‘What is it?’ She heard the edge in his voice. She understood it. Here was someone approaching him in the darkness – someone whom he thought he trusted, but who was also one of the Queen’s people. What if she had a knife?

Who knew what Melissa, harmless little Melissa, was really thinking behind those eyes of hers?

Who indeed?

He was about to call the guard.

‘It’s – he said it was a dragon’s tooth.’

‘The dragon!’

She heard him sit up. The noise guided her. She reached, and found his shoulder. She fumbled for his wrist, held it and placed the stone in his hand. Still holding his wrist (oh, for as long, for as long as she could!), she felt him turn it in his fingers. She heard him sigh.

‘I thought it was gone,’ he said. ‘It was the last one, and I had kept it for so long. I never dared tell Mother that I no longer had it. But I suppose she knew. Where did I lose it?’

‘In the fountain court at Tarceny, when …’

‘Yes. I remember.’

He said nothing. Melissa stood before him and neither could see the other.

‘How is …?’ he began. Then he stopped himself. ‘Aun says I must not ask about her,’ he said. ‘No one wants me to ask about her.’

No, we don’t, thought Melissa. And still you are asking. And I’m not going to tell you about her. That’s not why I came.

After a moment she opened her mouth and said, ‘Is there anything else, Your Majesty?’

On the tongue of a servant there is just the slightest difference between ‘Is there anything else?’ meaning,
Please dismiss me now
, and ‘Is there anything else?’ meaning,
There is something else, and I would like to do it for you
.

It is slight, and it is unmistakable.

‘I think …’ said the King in the darkness.

And then he said: ‘Yes, Melissa. Please stay.’

She sat down on the bed beside him, and slipped
an arm around his waist to claim him for hers. With her other hand she reached across for his, still wrapped around the stone. She could feel the warm press of his thigh against hers, the hardness of his arm and elbow, pinned against her ribs. She could feel her breath catching in her throat and her heart going
thump, thump, thump
inside her. She was aching for him and she wanted him to know it. She knew that he was still hesitating. His brain was fighting a losing battle with his body. She wanted to say to him:
Why? What for? No one knows. Here in the darkness no one sees. You are not the King. I’m not a maid. There’s no past and no future. We’re just two bodies that mustn’t be alone any more
.

And anyway, she thought as she lowered her head onto his shoulder and began to rock him gently to and fro as they sat together. Anyway, don’t lords take maids to their beds? I bet they do. I bet they all do. And who complains? Who cares? I don’t care. I don’t care even – even if you’re thinking of
her
as you put your arms round me. I’ll make you think of me soon enough. I will. Feel my heart,
thump, thump, thump
under this breast. Put your hand up to feel it. Here. Please. Or cover my face with kisses, or run your fingers like spiders up my thigh. It’s only a nightshift, see. I’ve thought of everything …

‘Melissa,’ he breathed, turning towards her. And his breath was warm on her brow.

And then he stopped.

For a moment she clung to him, willing him on. Then she heard it, too. Faint in the night, borne by a
low wind from the gatehouse, the sound of a woman screaming.

Oh, no, thought Melissa wearily.

And:
Oh, you bitch! You don’t even love him!

The King loosed hold of her shoulders. He pulled himself from her slackening arms. She heard him feel his way to the window. She heard the shutters rattle. She saw the pale square of the night sky as he pulled them open, and the darkness of his shape, his hair shaggy around his head as he stood there and listened.

Another scream. And another. And then a pause. And then yet another.

A longer pause.

And more screams.

They were like cold fingers, those faint sounds. They chilled her. They chased the blood away. They were like the noise of a mosquito in the room, which she could never see or catch but would not let her be. Even after the noise was gone, she was still listening for it. They both were.

At last the King straightened and turned to face her. He was a flat black shadow against the window. But perhaps he could see her peering back at him.

‘Melissa …’

‘We should
never
have come here!’ Tears were already starting in her eyes.

‘No,’ he said. ‘We shouldn’t.’

‘Wouldn’t have made any difference,’ she choked. ‘Wouldn’t have made any difference. You’d still have chosen
her
!’

No answer. No answer meant yes, he would have done.

‘I’ll go,’ she said.

‘Melissa …’ he said. ‘Thank you. Thank you twice, and many times.’

Perhaps he could see her, perhaps not. But he must know, surely, as she rose and felt her way from the room, that she was weeping tears of rage.

‘Is there anything else, Your Majesty?’ asked Melissa in the gatehouse.

She had made the fire. She had made the bed. She had cleared the stinking chamberpot and replaced the jug of water. She had not helped Atti to dress, because Atti had already dressed herself even before Melissa had entered. And all the while that Melissa had worked about the room Atti had sat wordless, looking out of the window at the middle bailey: at the first comings and goings there in the greyness of dawn.

She sat pale and still like a statue. Her night must have been torment but there was no sign of it now. She had even done her own hair, plaiting and pinning the long tresses as carefully into place as any of her servants could have done. Her small, straight figure despised the world around it. Looking at her, Melissa could have believed that the Queen knew exactly what her maid had been doing last night when her cries had torn the air.