The Kingdom on the Edge of Reality (24 page)

"My liege, I have no intention of hurling my few worthy servitors against your barefoot hordes."

"Gordon, call the guard," said Albert, and Gordon hurried out. The duke planted his feet, crossed his arms, and drew his chin to his chest. It was hard not to be impressed with his audacity. When Gordon returned with a half dozen men-at-arms, the king said, "Escort the duke to the gate."

"Don't touch me!" snapped the duke as one of the soldiers reached out to grasp his arm. The man pulled his hand back as if he'd been scorched. Ignoring the soldiers, the duke began to walk so briskly that his escort had to run to catch up to him.

A cry went up from the army when we came through the door, and then the chanting began: Albert! Albert! Albert! The duke planted himself in the center of the gate and shouted to Albert over the sound of the chanting. "Sire, I have done nothing to deserve this treatment, and I say to you in all seriousness that if you put me into that dungeon, we can never be friends again."

Albert held up his hand and the chanting subsided. "Choose for yourself, my lord duke," said Albert, raising his voice for all to hear. "There are a few things I'd like you to do for me, and the first is to disarm your soldiers. From now on they will dress in leather and carry a staff and a dirk as mine do. Do you concur or would you prefer to visit the dungeon?"

"Throw him in the dungeon! Into the dungeon with him!" came a chorus of voices from the army, and Albert had to raise his hand again for quiet.

After a moment, the duke said, "Very well, I concur."

"Secondly," said the king, "there will be no more crossbows in my kingdom. Destroy the ones you have and make no more. Is this clear?"

"Very well, your majesty," said the duke, but he seemed distracted, as if he was thinking about something else entirely.

"Third, your soldiers must change their attitude completely. No one is to be unreasonably detained by them. No one is to be annoyed by them without an extremely good cause. Those who cannot change their ways immediately will immediately cease to be soldiers. Do you agree?"

"Yes, my liege," said the duke, and that brought a great roar of approval from the army.

Albert drew his sword and held it up by the blade in his gloved fist like a cross in front of the duke. "Swear on your holy oath," said the king.

"My king," said the duke, making the sign of the cross on his breast and touching his fingers to his lips, "I swear on my holy oath to uphold your edicts and to honor your sovereignty as long as you live." Then he turned to the army, and with a wave of his hand, he cried out, "Long live the king!"

"Long live the king!" cried the whole army.

"Long live the king!" cried Leo, and the great shout echoed between the mountains. The people were shouting and whistling and stamping and throwing their hats in the air. The duke, without asking permission, turned on his heel, strode back through the gate, up the path, into his house, and slammed the door. While the cheering and stamping continued outside, Lord Hawke's manor seemed wrapped in its own brooding silence.

"And that was the end of it," I said to Jenna. We were both still naked after making love on the shore of a small secluded lake. "We gathered up the army and marched away." Days had passed since our bloodless victory over Guy Hawke, but this was the first time I had managed to get some time alone with Jenna.

"Albert said he made a speech."

"Yes, he did. As soon as we came to a field big enough to gather his army around him, he made a speech from his horse. It was the airiest speech I ever heard. It was worse than the ones the presidents in the U.S. used to make."

"Used to make?"

"I almost forgot that the U.S. still exists. It's easy to forget, isn't it?"

"I'm only teasing you, Jack. I know exactly what you mean. As far as we're concerned it simply doesn't matter whether it ever existed or not. What did he say in his speech?"

"He thanked everyone for their loyalty and courage. He promised them peace and prosperity. He invited them all to your coronation. It had nothing to do with Lord Hawke."

"Yet everyone felt that the confrontation was a great success."

"That's true. Everyone was glad they came. That's the most important thing in case Albert has to turn them all out again. And the people who weren't there seemed to know all the details of what had gone on by the time we got back to the castle. The stablemen, and the kitchen help, and everybody else was talking about it when we arrived."

"Yes, the river valley grapevine is quite uncanny."

"I suppose everyone knows all about us, then."

She turned to look at me with just the hint of a pout, and I was sorry I'd mentioned it. "No, dear," she said. "No one knows a thing."

We began to get dressed. "I'm wondering whether Albert missed an opportunity," Jenna said.

"When was that?"

"When you were inside the duke's hall, did you by any chance see a hideous carved chair like a coffin with armrests?"

"Yes, I saw that. What about it?"

"Well, it wasn't made here, you see, and it's strictly against the rules to bring in anything from the outside. But the duke had it smuggled in somehow and there it sits in his hall. When Charlsey Dugdale heard about it she had a fit! The duke refused to part with it despite the scandal it created. It's like a symbol of his unwillingness to truly acknowledge Albert."

"That chair wasn't part of the terms."

"Well, it should have been. I'm very sorry Albert didn't think of it. The duke was compliant enough about all the other decrees. He destroyed the crossbows publicly. He disarmed his soldiers right away. He seems to be changing his whole attitude, although I suppose it's too early to say that. All in all, I think it's going to make for a very joyful coronation day."

Back in the stables, I helped Jenna down from her horse. In public, I was always very attentive to her in a friendly, brotherly way to blur other people's suspicions; with Albert it seemed to work fine. He often expressed his gratitude that I paid attention to her, since he was often busy and worried she was lonely.

His trust made me feel all the more guilty, of course. I had known Albert a long time and we had many shared experiences. In some ways I loved Albert more than I loved Jenna. But Jenna was a drug to me. She made the universe seem ineffably sweet and exciting, and I could not resist her. That I would some day have to pay for my treachery, I was certain. But it made no difference in how I behaved in the present. As for Jenna herself, she was loyal to Albert in her way, attentive to his moods and his needs. They seemed to be a happy couple and suited to one another.

"Thank you, Sir Jack," said Jenna. "That was a delightful outing. I'm going to bathe now; perhaps you will join us for dinner?"

"I would be very happy to, my lady." I watched her out of sight, and when I turned, there was Sir Rudy Strapp standing behind me.

"Hello, Rudy. I didn't see you come up." I had made it a personal policy to be more careful about what was going on behind me; obviously I wasn't being careful enough.

He gave me a hint of a smile, about as friendly as he ever got. "People never see me unless I want them to."

I thought immediately of a certain secluded lake, but I suppose it was just my guilt. "What's on your mind?"

"We need to talk about the coronation."

"What about it?"

"It's going to be very noisy and crowded. It's a perfect time for him to make a try for the king."

For a few moments I stared at him blankly until it dawned on me what he was talking about. "You think Hawke is going to try to hurt Albert?"

"Sure, don't you?"

"Well, I hadn't really thought about it."

"Well, maybe you oughta think about it."

The last few days since Albert had settled with Guy Hawke had been the most idyllic of my life. My chest had been sore again when we came home from the confrontation, so I spent the first day lying around in my robe, eating often and enjoying my popularity. The second day I went hawking with Albert and Jenna and some of the knights, and though we didn't catch anything we had a delightful time singing rounds and passing the wineskin. There seemed to be nothing to worry about under the sun, no excuse for not being perfectly happy. The little bag of gold I had been given would easily last forever, and everyone I met wanted to give me something to eat or drink, or pay me a compliment.

I wanted to believe that the problem with the duke had been laid to rest, at least for the time being, and I wanted a vacation. But as soon as I decided to think about it, it was easy to see that the duke's compliance had been nothing more than a mask. It was easy enough to remember the look in his eyes, the tone of his voice, and the ambiguity of his words.

"Maybe you oughta think about what's gonna happen to you without King Albert. Have you thought about that?"

"But do you honestly think he would try to murder the king?"

"Okay, listen. The king used to go away from time to time, right? Sometimes he was gone a month or even more. If anything serious came up, the duke was always in charge. He was like acting king. And even when Albert was here, he always did what he wanted to do. If he wanted to make crossbows, he made crossbows. Now Albert is going to stay home for good, and he's trying to take over the power he used to share with the duke. He wants the duke to be like Dugdale or Griswold now."

"And you don't think he's going to back down that far."

"Put it this way: he's not going to back down at all."

"Let's go talk to Sir Leo."

We found Sir Leo at the first place we looked, which was the archery butt. He was just beginning an archery lesson for some of the knights and soldiers, so Rudy and I took the class along with them. Afterwards we told him what we were thinking about the coronation, and he caught on right away.

"I have been very blind about this," he said. "Of course I didn't think it was the end of the story with the duke. But I thought—or I wanted to think—that we were going to have a rest from that problem for awhile. I am not suspicious enough by nature for the responsibility I have here."

"Maybe the next person we need to talk to is King Albert."

"Nenny," said Rudy. Leo shook his head.

"Why not?"

"Let's go get ourselves something to eat, and we can talk it over," said Leo.

Pretty soon we were sitting around the table by the hearth in the empty dining room, eating a meal that Hélène had put up for us. "I don't see any possibility of an attack in force," said Leo. "Everyone would rally to the king, and the attack would fail. The duke would be dead or in the dungeon, and he would never get a second chance."

"That's my opinion too, for what it's worth," I said. "If the attack comes at all, it will have to be some kind of treachery like a fatal accident, or poison, or an arrow out of nowhere. Maybe a stabbing. I don't know what we can do except stick to the king like glue."

"That's not going to be easy," said Rudy. "The king likes to mingle. He has his private business. If he excuses himself to go off with somebody, all you can do is excuse him."

"I think we need to talk to him about this," I said.

"He's not gonna listen," said Rudy.

"I'm afraid that's true," said Leo. "We've all talked to him about security at one time or another. Beyond a very minimal amount, he finds it oppressive."

"But if he holds the monarchy together, it is irresponsible of him to take chances," I said. "I will talk to him."

"Good luck," said Rudy.

"The king is philosophical about that," said Leo. "He will tell you that too many precautions invite the trouble they are meant to forestall. And having lived in the U.S., who is to say that he is wrong about that? You can talk to him if you like, but I think it will actually be harder for us to look after him if he knows what we're doing."

"We need a dozen men to watch him without him noticing it," said Rudy. "We can pass him from team to team so he won't catch on. Even if he excuses himself, we can police the vicinity."

"I am inclined toward that plan," said Leo.

"What about poison?" I said.

We all exchanged glances. Leo laughed. "Who wants to be the taster?"

"Poison control requires a certain amount of cooperation from the person you don't want poisoned," I said.

"How would you want him to cooperate?"

"How about only eating what Hélène prepares? That would be pretty foolproof."

"He'd never agree to that," said Rudy. "The coronation is going to be a huge party. People are going to be bringing all kinds of stuff to eat and drink, and the king loves to eat."

"Most of the wedding gifts are going to be flowers and food," said Leo. "What else do people have to give? It would be an insult if the king didn't eat it."

"Poison is a hard way to make work right," said Rudy, "especially in a crowd. I'm thinking more about a knifing, or possibly an arrow."

"But if the knifer gets caught, it leads right back to the source," I said.

"Right," said Rudy. "There has to be a good opportunity to do it and get away. Or else it won't be tried. So we have to make sure the opportunity isn't there."

"All right," said Leo, "let's pick our teams and start practicing."

"I want to talk to the mage about this before we get started," I said. "I've known her a long time, and she doesn't miss much."

"By all means," said Leo. "It was certainly very good advice to bring you here."

"Thank you, Leo. I hope so, I really do."

It didn't take me long to find Marya, since she was looking for me. "Jack," she said, "I'm worried. The last few days, while everybody has been celebrating, I've had this very uncomfortable feeling. I can't sit still, I'm not sleeping well, and I have this impulse all the time to glance over my shoulder as if someone was stalking me."

"What's it all about?"

"I wish I knew for sure. That's the trouble with being what people call psychic. You're always trying to sort out what might be real from what you might be making up."

"Okay, I get that, but if something is coming in on the old teletype, I'm very interested, Marya."