The Kingdom on the Edge of Reality (40 page)

With one eye on the battlements, I got to my feet. The peasants who had fled were returning, moving into the field to search for their loved ones. All the many different ways that men, women, and children can cry in sorrow and horror and sympathy and relief, all that crying rose in the air over the field. Mora too was crying as she ran into my arms.

The soldiers who were still alive and whole were picking themselves up off the field and soon a squad of very grim looking men and women had gathered around me. Leo was wounded in the leg but insisted on going with us. "Never mind that," he said. "Tie me a strip around here, Gordon. Tie it tight. Give me a hand now. Do you think I'm going to miss this?" We moved warily across the drawbridge.

"Nobody knew he had any such a thing," said one of the duke's men who we met as we entered the courtyard.

"All right. Go in peace," I said.

"I feel ashamed now," said the man.

"Go help with the wounded. Where is the duke?"

The man pointed up a flight of stone stairs. Looking around I saw that the size of our squad had grown. "You people go around by the king's chamber," I said, splitting them up. "This group up the stairs by the stable. You all come with me. Be careful. Stay low."

We came upon the duke on the big balcony outside the royal suite with his back to the wall. He seemed to be talking to himself as he struggled to get the gun set up. There was no grip on the front of the gun except the hot barrel itself, and it burned him every time he touched it. Snatching at his cloak, he wrapped the cloth around his hand for a hotpad. Then I heard him say, "Go away, Albert."

Sir Leo was nocking an arrow, but I put out my hand and he paused. "Leave me alone!" cried the duke, yanking his shoulder away from nothing that I could see. "Get back in your grave."

The two other squads made their appearance, converging slowly on both sides of the balcony. I motioned them to take cover, and put my finger to my lips. "Let go! Let go of me, Albert!" cried the duke, jerking his body. "Can't you see I'm busy?"

More people were arriving; and taking the example from those who were already there, they crouched behind merlons and peered around corners and hid themselves in shadows, silently watching the duke. "No, no, I don't want to! Stop smiling! Get away from me!"

Suddenly the duke yanked the barrel of the gun around and the air was full of fire and smoke and whistling slugs in a thunderous blast aimed at something he seemed to be seeing in the empty air. Cartridge casings fell rattling to the stones and then it was over. The fury of that last volley dissolved into the silence of the valley and the smoke melted away.

The duke was looking down at his empty weapon. His face was contorted and colorless, and he said so quietly that I could just barely hear it, "Look what you made me do."

Everyone understood that the gun was empty now and began moving from cover. By the time the duke looked up, the inner edge of the balcony and the battlements on both sides and above him were thronged with people. "This is all your fault, Darcey," said the duke, throwing down the gun and pointing a trembling finger at me. "All this killing, all this chaos! We had a nice peaceful kingdom before you arrived."

"Archers, ready now!" said Leo, raising his arm, and forty men and a dozen women nocked arrows.

"You dare!" snarled the duke, throwing a glance over his shoulder. Behind him was the stone railing of the balcony, and beyond that was nothing but a long straight drop to the stones of the courtyard.

"Archers," said Leo, "remember the positioning of your feet. I want to see every one of you with a rock solid base."

"You have no right to do this!" screamed the duke, turning this way and that. "Rebels! Outlaws! You have no right!"

"My lord?" said Leo, grimacing from the pain of his wounded leg.

"Sir Leo," I said, "kindly execute this villain in whatever manner seems appropriate to you."

"Thank you, my lord," said Leo. "Archers, choose you marks. The mark is a magnet that reaches out for the steel of the arrowhead; a nest that beckons to the homecoming bird in flight."

"You're making a fatal mistake, Darcey. This kingdom will never hold together without me."

I was feeling as disembodied as Albert's ghost. I was Lord Jack, but I had no control over what was happening. The duke's death was wrapping itself around him like a glove on the hand of God. All I could do was to stand by and watch. I felt no joy and I felt no pity.

"Archers, draw your bows. Clear your minds. Feel the wind. See the path."

"In six months time you'll all be a gaggle of starving Picts with no farmers to steal from!"

"Inhale now, and hold your breath. Release at my signal."

"You'll be sorry!"

"Now!" cried Leo, and the duke was a changed man, with about as many arrows in him as his body could hold. For a few seconds he teetered, like a man up on roller skates for the first time, and then he crashed to the flagstones as dead, dead, dead as ever a man could be.

"Don, I want that devil weapon to disappear completely from the face of the earth. Cut it up, melt it down, mix it with other iron and give it to the blacksmiths to make spades and hoes and horseshoes."

"Yes, my lord," said the armorer.

"Here is the brass from the cartridges," I said, handing him a sack. "I'm not sure we've found them all, so there's a bounty of a quarter bit of gold for every one that's turned in from now on. After two weeks, raise the bounty. I want every cartridge casing in this kingdom to cease to exist."

"I understand, my lord," said the armorer.

"Spread the brass around and mix it up so that nothing remains that can be traced to that gun. As time goes by I want people to forget what that gun really was. I want legend to turn it into some evil magic that the duke conjured up."

"Leave it to me, my lord."

Outside the armory Marya gave me a pat on the back. "Good job, my lord."

"Stop calling me that, Marya. I don't want this job. I'm just tying up a few loose ends and then that's it."

"But what are you going to do?"

"I'm going to join the Picts."

"Oh? What's Mora going to do?"

"She'll go with me. She and the baby."

"She will because she's in love with you, but I doubt it's what she wants. She's a green thumb farmer from a green thumb line, and her heart is in that farm."

"If that's her heart's desire, I won't keep her from it."

We continued to walk in silence toward the hospital in the great hall of the castle. There Marya conferred with head nurse Hélène while I went to see Leo. He'd had a bullet cut out of his thigh, and he was weak and pale.

"They say I'm going to be limping for a while and I believe them," said Leo. "Still I am a very lucky man. They say Sir Bradley will never make it through the night."

"I'm sorry, Leo," Marya said. "Everyone loved Sir Bradley."

"What's to be done with that cowardly and disgraceful weapon?" Leo asked. I told him and he nodded. "Good! And what about that chair?"

"It's already ashes blowing around on the mountain."

"Well, now you'll be king, and we'll have peace and be human beings again."

"No, Leo. I'm going to join the Picts."

"Psss! Don't say such a stupid thing! This has been a terrible shock to all our souls, don't I know it? Get some rest, man. Then you'll feel better."

As soon as I saw Sir Bradley, I could see by his papery appearance that he was very close to death. In my drifty life, I had seen little of death; now I was becoming an expert. Since I had come to Albert's kingdom I had dealt out death and led men and women to their deaths and died a death of my own; now I seemed to be surrounded by death on every side.

Sir Bradley barely managed to raise his right arm, and when I extended my hand to him, he gripped me weakly on the forearm. He made an attempt at a smile and said, "My liege."

Gazing into his eyes, I also tried to smile. If his dying wish was to salute his king, it was all right with me. That I would never be king wouldn't make any difference to him, and indeed, a few moments later, his arm fell limply to the blanket, and Sir Bradley was gone.

Through a film of tears I watched Marya close his eyes. Finally I turned to leave, but as I passed by the other beds, the hands of the wounded reached out to touch me. "My liege," they said. "My liege." It sounded like a prayer. They wanted my blessing and a promise of strength and solidity, but what could I give them? I let them touch me and I gazed into their eyes trying to give them something I didn't have myself.

By the light of the torches outside the castle, Marya laid a hand on my arm. "My liege," she said.

"I won't do it, Marya."

"Oh, Jack, don't play hard to get. Even the stars in the sky want you to be king. Can't you feel it?"

"No, I can't feel it, and I'm not going to do it. I don't want thousands of people looking to me for wisdom and justice, and I don't give a damn whose cows belong to who. I am not the man for that job."

"Jack, it doesn't matter whether you think you want the job or not. Life is much smarter than you are. Reach out and take what life is giving you for your growth and embrace it graciously as the gift that it is."

"Marya, all these deaths—Albert, Jenna, Renny, Maynard, Bradley, all the others—that blood is on my hands."

"Oh, to be sure, you're responsible, Jack. You could have run the duke through that day on the bridge, and I know how that must plague you. But everything that happened is my fault too. I made you appear out of a deck of cards. And let's not forget that Albert himself made Guy Hawke a duke and then couldn't stand up to what he had made. The truth is that we're every one of us responsible for everything that happens, good and bad. If you want to try to hog all the blame, I can't talk you out of it, bubber, but it's just your foolish pride."

"I need to find Mora."

"Come on then, Jack. I'll help you look for her, and then I have to get back to my patients."

No one in the castle had seen Mora, so I took a horse and rode out to Mora's farm. There I found her sitting on that big stump in front of the ruins of her home.

I put my arms around her and she clung to me; in that moment I felt once again the majesty of the infinite, sparkling night sky above us and the awesome loneliness of the mountains and the wilderness that surrounded us. Together we watched the moon come up; and finally we burrowed into a pile of hay for shelter. Bundled together in our cloaks, and full of the warmth that we shared, we passed into a sleep that was deep and still and filled with the peace of centuries.

In the morning Mora collected her baby and we went to find the Picts. It was a breathless day with a stillness unusual even for the valley. Hand in hand we walked into the woods as unerringly as if we had been following a map.

They seemed to be expecting us. Jo Mama was wearing a garland around his brows and not much else, and his Picts were dressed in their elaborate masks of leaves and bark and flowers. There were some I recognized from my first encounter, and others who I hadn't seen before. There was even a family: momma, poppa and baby bat with their leafy wings folded around them.

They made a sound when we entered the clearing, and whether it was a greeting or a cheer or a growl or a ritual I could not tell. We continued toward Jo Mama as the semi­circle of Picts closed around us.

"We wish to join you," I said. There were other things I had planned to say, but the words seemed unnecessary now.

There was a long empty silence which did not seem encouraging. The god was gazing quietly at us, a trace of a smile flitting across his face. Finally he approached me and draped one arm over my shoulder. His eyes probed into mine, questioning me. He seemed to be waiting expectantly for my answer. But what was the question? What was the answer?

Finally the message came through. There were regrettably no positions open at this time. He was sure I would understand.

"But I don't understand, Jo Mama."

He smiled at me and waited. His eyes were clear and pleasant and he wasn't selling anything. He was just waiting for me to get it, and finally I did.

"I don't want to be king, Jo Mama."

He nodded. He understood. He felt that way sometimes himself. But it didn't matter. There were more important considerations than what you felt like doing or didn't feel like doing.

"But I guess I'm being called to it, eh?"

He shrugged. How would he know? Didn't I know? What did I expect him to tell me that I didn't already know?

I thought about the massacre, about the wounded and the dying. I thought about the harvest coming and so many people missing, of winter with its hardships and scarcities. I was the man who had been chosen according to the curious logic of circumstance, the man that people would welcome to the throne. With help from those I trusted, I could make decisions and learn the ropes. Someday I might get good at it. Maybe I would even grow to like it.

Others were entering the forest now. I felt them before I saw them, and when I turned around, there they were. Marya was there, and Gordon. Marsha Bennett was there with her oldest boy, and Griswold with his arm around some wench. Émile and Hélène and Rudy Strapp were close behind. They had come to collect me and make me their king. I knew I had to go.

When I turned to say goodbye to Jo Mama, he had vanished with his Picts, leaving his garland of vine leaves swinging from a branch. There wasn't a bent blade of grass to show where they had been.

"Well, sweetie," I said to Mora, "would you like to be queen?"

"I want to rebuild my farm," she said. "And you'll need someplace peaceful to come to when you're fed up with all the problems at court. I'll always be there for you when you need me, Jack."

I placed the god's garland around Mora's brow. Then, surrounded by my subjects and with my arm around my lady, feeling a little woozy but still hanging in there, I started back through the woods toward my castle.

And as I walked along, I became more and more aware that Albert was there among us, very much alive and well in that kingdom he had created with his spirit of moral courage and abiding decency that was his lasting legacy and which had ultimately defeated Guy Hawke. I felt certain that I could count on his help, and that gave me hope.