The Kingdom on the Edge of Reality (29 page)

Something hit me behind the knee and I fell. Pain exploded in my elbow, searing my arm from my shoulder to my fingertips. And my sword! Where was my sword? Then a blow to the side of my head made me forget what I was looking for. There had simply been too many of them.

Now I knew that Death was coming for me too, and it wasn't all right and it didn't make sense and it sure as hell didn't make me want to forgive anybody. Twisting on the floor, lashing out in all directions with my boots and my bare hands, I fought to ward it off for just one more second if I could. I barely heard the voice that seemed to come from so far away that said, "Stop! Don't kill him. Bring him to me."

Hands were grabbing me roughly and hauling me to my feet. I managed to twist my body and jab one of the men in the stomach with my elbow. He went right to his knees, and then I was flailing and kicking at all his buddies who jumped on top of me and beat me into a worse mess than I was before.

"I said bring him here!" roared the duke, and now a half-dozen of his men carried me bodily across the floor and forced me to my knees in front of him.

"Look at me, Darcey," he said, and one of his men grabbed me by the hair and yanked my head back. I had to cough up some blood and spit out a couple of teeth. My clothes were torn and spattered, I was injured inside and out, and I knew there was no limit to the bad things that could happen to me now.

"I'm not going to have you killed," the duke said softly, just between him and me and soldiers who were holding me, "because that would be too easy."

"Let him go!" said Queen Jenna. I couldn't turn my head to look at her, but I could hear her voice shaking.

"Forgive me, your majesty," said the duke, "but this madman just tried to kill me." No one made a move to let me go.

"That is my prime minister, and I wish him here with me!" Dear Jenna! She was doing her best, but her power was just as imaginary as mine.

"The prime minister?" said the duke in mock surprise. "But your majesty, this isn't the prime minister."

"Let him go, I command it!" cried Jenna, and she stamped her foot. God love her, I would never forget it.

"Your majesty, I assure you there has been some mistake. This is merely the court fool dressed in someone else's clothes. Where did you get these clothes, churl?" he said to me, leaning down to bring his face closer to mine. His eyes were dancing with his triumph, and I guess he wanted me to appreciate it. "Well, it's no matter where you got the clothes. A fool's a fool. Strip him down. You there! Fetch me the mummer's trunk, and be quick about it!"

Before I knew it, they were stuffing me into a different suit of clothes that smelled as though it had been in that trunk for many months. This suit was all different colors and had a hat to match with little bells on it. Finally they thrust a stick into my hand topped with a padded jester's head that was wearing a little hat just like mine, bells and all. Why the soldiers thought it was so comical, I don't know. But by the time they were done changing me, they were all chuckling over what they had done, and now they pushed me out into the middle of the hall.

I wandered around in a circle wondering what to do, and the bells on my clothes jingled whenever I moved. One of the soldiers laughed, and when I turned to stare at him, that made someone else laugh. What was so funny? Looking around, I noticed that Lady Bennett had her hand up to her mouth as if she was trying
not
to laugh. The duke was laughing silently, his arms folded across his chest. The soldiers were nudging each other, and even some of the peasants were starting to laugh.

Finally, guided by my intuition, I reached behind, and I realized what the joke was. My jester clothes had a flap in the back like kids' pajamas. The flap was undone and I was exhibiting my white moons to the audience. I guess that was kind of funny, especially since I didn't realize it. A laugh is a good thing, and it was just what everybody needed. The sweetest king that ever lived had just been murdered, but now they had my bare ass to laugh at, so everything was all right again. In one little corner of my poor, tired brain I felt very discouraged with the human race. What was the use of trying to do anything for people anyway?

It took a few seconds to button myself up behind, and the laughter subsided, but they were all still staring at me. What I wanted was a magic mirror to show them all how
they
looked to
me
at that moment, but all I had was that jester's head. So I threw off my hat, yanked the fancy collar of my costume with all its pleats and bells up over my head, and drew my head down between my shoulders. Now the only head they could see was the one on that stick, and it must have been eerie-looking in the light of the torches, for suddenly it was very quiet in that hall. Peeping out with one eye through the neck-slit of my costume, and stepping silently around the perimeter of the open space that was my little stage, I turned the stick this way and that and took my time while the head on the stick looked them over slowly and carefully one by one. It was very gratifying to see people shrinking into themselves when the eyes of that floating head came to rest on them.

The hat with the bells had fallen off that stuffed head, and suddenly I noticed that the face looked more than a little like Albert. It had the same nose and the same brow; even the chin was similar. I grinned maliciously to myself, and in a voice that had long been familiar to me, and which was easy enough to imitate, I said to them all, "Oh, don't be so vulgar!"

Several people screamed and children started to cry. I believe everyone in that hall was as wiped out emotionally from the events of the day as I was myself. "Do you think that the dead can't see?" I put the question to them in Albert's voice, turning the head this way and that, taking them all in, and adding a little nodding gesture that was characteristic of Albert when he was being persuasive. "Do you think the dead can't talk? I can!"

I didn't have a clear objective in this miming. I felt so groggy and light-headed, I even had the fanciful notion that it was Albert himself speaking through that head on a stick.

"Do you think I don't know who killed me?" said Albert's head, floating in the smoke of the torches. "In life I was fooled, but the dead see clearly, Lord Hawke!"

The head turned suddenly to stare at the duke, who grimaced and turned pale. "It was a clever trick to dress your men as Picts, murderer," said Albert's head, "but now I
know!"

"Guards!" cried the duke, his face blanched white.

"And I am going to come and sit on your chest every night for the rest of your miserable and guilty life!"

"Guards!" screamed the duke, and I went down beneath them for the last time.

I became aware that I was back in the dungeon when I realized rats were crawling on me. It was all I could do to get to my feet and shake them off because my whole body felt broken and I was stiff with cold.

The last time I had been in the dungeon I had been healthy and warmly dressed in leather with a lined cloak and good boots. I had done nothing worse than talk back to Albert, and I knew he would be letting me out soon enough. From minute to minute I had been sure of that. But with all that in my favor, it had still been a very bad experience, like a kind of true hell.

This time I was dressed in one layer of patchwork with no cloak and no boots. I was a mess from the beatings I had received, and now my body was cold, as cold and damp as the stones I had been lying on.

My jaw hurt horribly where I had lost the teeth, and the pain made my whole head ache and throb. My right hand was swollen to twice its normal size, and so laced with pain I didn't dare move a finger. My body was screaming for help, but my brain knew that things were only going to get worse. If I couldn't get warm, I was going to get sick. If I didn't care for my injuries, I was going to be crippled. And if the whole situation didn't improve in a lot of ways, and pretty soon too—well, I would probably die. That was where the fear began, fear as I had never experienced it before: that the unendurable could continue without reprieve.

My mind searched madly for solutions. Maybe time would run backwards to that critical moment when I had sealed my fate. I would have a chance to reconsider, and I would know better than to attack the duke against all odds. Biding my time, I would get the opportunity I needed to slip a knife between his ribs.

Of course I knew second chances didn't exist; not in that way. What I needed was a miracle if I was going to survive. At this very moment Sir Leo might have the duke in his sights, a long, cross-courtyard shot taking a light breeze into consideration, the arrow entering at the back of the duke's neck and coming out his Adam's apple. Or Gordon might be splashing his brains across the hall with an awesome, skull-splattering blow with his iron-tipped stick. Perhaps Marya was slipping a quick-acting poison into his goblet. Or Jenna, having seduced him onto the battlements, was pointing to the moon to distract him before giving him a shove over the edge. This very second he was screaming with his last breath as the stones of the courtyard rushed up toward him to snuff out his life.

Someone would do something. I could never be left at the mercy of the rats and the cold and the pain. Surely in an hour, I assured myself, something will improve. My jaw will hurt less. Someone will bring me a blanket. For an hour I can endure all this suffering, and by then something will change, and it won't be quite as bad.

Of course I had no way to tell an hour. But after what seemed vaguely like an hour had passed, I began again to tell myself that in an hour, something would improve. It was a con game that I played against fear and despair.

The only change that occurred was the shifting of my attention. The cold would begin to plague me, and that would tie up my concentration for a time. I tried burrowing in the straw. I tried walking a measured number of steps in the pitch dark, turning, and walking back, to try to get my blood moving. But nothing I did made any difference. I was always cold, with a dangerous, unhealthy, fearful cold.

Then the pain would take over, especially the pain from my jaw. Periodically there would be a crescendo of pain that began in my mouth and then savaged my skull until there was nothing left in the world but that pain. I went down on my knees, wrapped my arms around my head, and hung on for dear life until the pain peaked and subsided, leaving me exhausted and shaken.

Sometimes I worried about my hand. Either it was numb or it ached, and there were sharp pains if I tried to flex my fingers. The quicker I could start taking care of it, the better chance it would have to heal properly. But there was nothing I could do for it now except to worry, and worrying about it was a kind of torture all by itself.

Where were my friends? Gordon had disappeared into the woods; Leo had gone searching for him and hadn't returned. I had not seen Rudy Strapp since the coronation, and there were eight other members of our security squad who I hadn't seen since they'd left to look for Marya. Was it possible that all twelve of us had been targeted in the duke's plot? Could they all now be prisoners or dead men? The answer was that anything was possible; and all I really knew was that I didn't know anything.

Marya could be counted on to do what she could. But what could she do? She was not very high on the duke's list. She had no power to sway him. How could she help me? And what about the Queen? The duke obviously didn't take her seriously.

I suspected that the rest of the nobles would do what most people mostly did: try to hang on to what they had. The easiest way to do that was to go right along with the duke and reject me as an interloper and a false knight, a pet of Albert's who had neither paid for his place in the pecking order with gold nor done anything else to earn it. The terrifying truth was that no one had any real power except the duke himself. Rudy Strapp had put it plainly enough:
What's gonna happen to you without King Albert?

What mercy could I expect from the duke? Would it bother him that I might be crippled or die? Of course not. Clearly I was less of a threat without a sword hand, and if I was dead—well, then I was no threat at all. There seemed to be no good reason to expect to come out of this predicament healthy or even alive.

Oddly enough the rats were no problem. When I was in the dungeon before they had annoyed me and bitten me and kept me feeling tense, and they were always on my mind. This time I just shooed them away, and their presense was nothing compared to the cold and the pain in my jaw and my injured hand and the overwhelming fear that had my mind whirling in hopeless circles.

Stop it!
I said to my mind. I was sure that if I didn't get control of it soon, I would go mad.

Stop, I mean it!
My mind was a terrified child. It wanted answers. It wanted comfort.

I am not going to die,
I said firmly.
I am in a bad spot, but I am not going to die, and I am not going to be crippled!

The cycle of pain in my jaw began, and I went to my knees and held my head in my arms while the universe filled up with red fire and burned until it burned itself out.
I am going to be all right. I am not in a good place, but I am going to make it through this.

Just then it occurred to me to stuff my clothes with straw. I could pack it tightly to make a defense against the cold. At last I had a plan and something to do.

It was the work of many hours; and while I was working, I could measure time against the various tasks: so long to find the driest straw and to gather it around my bench; so long to stuff the right side of my body; so long to unstuff it after I realized I would never be able to bend over enough to stuff the legs if I stuffed the upper body first. Maybe it sounds easy to stuff your clothes with straw, but only one of my hands was fit to work with. By trial and error, by doing and undoing and starting over, I learned to do what I needed to do.

I was comparatively happy while I was working because it stopped my mind from swirling and focused my thoughts on improving the situation. There was an unexpected dividend too: what padded me against the cold also protected me from the rats. I was grateful that the costume was very baggy; otherwise the idea would never have worked.