The Poison Throne (3 page)

Wynter had often watched the King and her father head out that way together, their fishing poles or bows slung across their shoulders, a little knot of companions in tow. She stood now, looking up the path and recalled how Razi, Alberon and herself used to loll about on the steps watching the men leave, sulking that they couldn’t go along. By the time The Great Changes had begun, Razi had already turned fourteen and she and Alberon were well accustomed to the sight of him disappearing up that path with the hunters. It was one of her most vivid memories: Razi, turning to look back at herself and Alberon, his affectionate smile meant to lift their spirits as he left them alone.

“I’ll bring you back a rabbit!” he’d call, and he always did, or a pheasant or a clutch of quail eggs. Always some little thing to alleviate the fact that he had abandoned them. That he’d left Alberon, who haunted Razi like a shadow and felt his absence keenly.

When you’re eleven
, that’s what they were told,
when you’re eleven you can join the hunt
. But by the time they had turned eleven, everything had changed. Razi had been sent to the Moroccos with his mother; Alberon had been prisoner to the throne, a constant presence at the King’s side; and Lorcan and Wynter had been dispatched North, to the cold and damp that had destroyed her father’s health.

A high modulated wail broke into her thoughts, making Wynter jump and then laugh as she realised what it was. She hadn’t heard that particular sound for years, and it had taken a moment for her to recognise it. The Musulman boys were kneeling in the shade of the trees, making undulating prayers to their God. Wynter rose onto her tiptoes and searched their bobbing ranks for Razi, but he wasn’t there. Perhaps he hadn’t been brought home at all? That thought sent such a sharp pang through her that she pushed it away. Razi had never been one for prayers, she reminded herself. He
was
here, just elsewhere in the complex.

The smell of roasting mutton intruded on her and her belly cramped in response. Good God, she was hungry. She dropped her recollections and turned away from them, her desire to be in the kitchen suddenly overwhelming.

At the head of the kitchen steps, the statue of the Cold Lady stood gazing wistfully up the woodland path. Despite the heat, her stone face was covered in frost and little icicles dripped from her delicately carved fingers. Wynter glanced up at her as she passed, marvelling, as always.

The maids and dairy-men had placed their pitchers of milk and cordial, pots of butter and bowls of cream all along the plinth at the hem of the Cold Lady’s dress. It reminded Wynter of the offerings that the Midlanders left to their Virgin. She caught the sharp tang of cheddar as she passed by and she was so hungry that her mouth filled instantly with spit. She almost ran down the dark stairs into the fragrant gloom of the kitchen, the Musulmen’s prayers rising musically into the sunlight behind her.

It took a moment for her eyes to adjust. A pot-boy pushed past her with a basket of onions, but no one paid her any attention and she was able to survey the organised chaos from her slightly elevated position at the foot of the stairs.

Oh yes. Here was what she had missed. Here was the true heart of home and the spirit of the kingdom she had longed for.

All the mixes of race and religion that summed up King Jonathon’s realm seemed focused in the palace kitchen. All the brown and white and cream and yellow faces, sweating and shouting and running about. A high continuous cacophony of multilingual patois and pigeon-talk, gestures and pantomime, combining into an efficient, if disorderly, unit. And at its steaming hub, Marni, huge, bear-like, her meaty arms, her enormous red hands and absurd bulbous face towering over everyone. She was the centre of the cyclone, the perpetual-motion Goddess of the kitchen.

Wynter lifted her head to look over the produce-laden chopping table and sought out the poultry-spit-boy. When she saw him she smiled and some small thing settled in her chest, calming her.

The poultry-spit-boy was the lowest of the low in any palace kitchen. The little lad who would be employed to turn the lighter chicken and poultry spits, while the older men turned the heavy meat spits. She had seen spit-boys of six or seven, naked because of the heat, matted in grease and soot, being screamed at by the basters for flinching when the scalding fat of the meat had burnt their hands. She remembered watching in horror as a Midlands castle cook had beaten one tiny child with a wooden ladle. It made it all the worse that the little child still kept turning the spit. Even as his eyes swelled up into black puffs, he kept the handle going for fear the meat would burn and his punishment would worsen.

To Wynter, the spit-boy was the ultimate indication of the soul of a palace; most of them were blackened, hollow-eyed things, forgotten and abused.

The spit-boy who sat in Marni’s kitchen was laughing while he turned the meat. His tiny hands were gloved and a big metal disc attached to the spit handle shielded him from the worst of the scalding splatter. He was sooty and shiny with grease and sweat, but he was clothed in a proper uniform and he was plump and jolly.

He was leaning forward, talking to someone who appeared to be crouched on the floor out of sight. As Wynter watched, the child took a piece of chalk from the unknown person and, still expertly turning the meat with one hand, he wrote something on the flagstones.

Wynter leant to the side to get a better view. A man was hunkered down beside the child, his dark head bent to look at the chalk marks on the floor. He was clad in the sky blue robes of a doctor, and, though his voice was too low for Wynter to hear the words, he said something to the child that brought a grin of pride to his greasy little face.

A pot-girl set a beaker of frothy milk down by the child and a plate of horse-bread and cheese. The little boy went to grab for it, but the doctor stayed him with one brown hand on his arm. Wynter saw his head tilt up to address the girl and her heart leapt as she recognised his profile. Razi.

“Did you boil the milk like I asked, Sarah?”

The girl nodded, her eyes wide.

“Boiled, not just warmed? Made to bubble, and then skimmed so that the evil humours dispersed?”

The girl nodded again and bobbed a curtsy as if that sealed the question. Razi, his back still turned to Wynter, released the child’s hand and stayed crouched for a while, watching him cram food into himself. Even while eating, the little fellow continued to turn the meat at the exact speed necessary to let it cook without burning. It was as natural a movement to him as breathing.

As her friend rose from his crouch and turned, Wynter realised that she was not the only one to have grown. She had expected to come home – in her fifteen-year-old body, with her new length of leg and her new height – and find herself the equal of the fourteen-year-old boy she’d left behind, his counterpart in riding and swimming and climbing.

But Razi too had changed and it was a nineteen-year-old man who now stood before her, rubbing chalk dust from his brown hands. He was much taller. His face more defined somehow, all cheekbones and nose, his dark eyes just as large, but hooded. He was clean-shaven, but his glossy curls were in need of a trim and he kept pushing them back from his forehead with an impatient sigh. His blue doctor’s robes suited him, and she felt an almost violent stab of pride in him, that he had finished his studies and graduated, despite the terrible times they’d just survived.

Alberon must be so proud of him
, she thought.

Razi pushed his hand through his curls and looked around him absently as if trying to remember what came next. His eyes met Wynter’s and she saw them pass her by, then snap back with sharp attention. She quirked an eyebrow at him, a challenging smile rising up in her face.
I dare you not to know me, Razi Kingsson. I dare you not to recognise my face.

“
WYNTER!” He
bellowed
it, his deep voice taking her by surprise and shocking the kitchen into stunned silence. The staff jerked and ducked as though a cannon had been fired. “WYNTER!” he shouted again, spreading his hands as if questioning her.

Wynter was so pleased to hear Razi say her name that she laughed out loud and tears sprang to her eyes.

She had sense enough to put the tools down before he waded through the crowd and snatched her from the bottom step. He swung her in a twirling arc that stole the breath from her and had the kitchen staff laughing and clutching for bits and pieces put in peril by his flying robes.

Good Lord, he’s strong!
she thought in surprise as he lifted her high. He was all deceptive grace, this new Razi, his powerful strength well hidden, his muscle so close to the bone as to make him look skinny.
You’ve been working with horses
, she thought, recognising the type of wiry power that the work gave to a body.

He flung her out and held her at arm’s length. She hung like a cat in his hands, suspended under the armpits, her feet dangling above the ground, laughing. He looked her in the face and then up and down as if marvelling at her. This close up, she could see the gold flecks in his dark eyes. She noticed that there were fine lines around his eyes and mouth. The harsh African sun and five years of uncertainty must have added them to his young face, and she was suddenly fighting a lump in her throat. Razi. It really was him. Razi. Here and now. Alive.

“Hello, big brother,” she said, her voice not quite steady, and he hugged her to him with a strangled laugh. He squeezed her so tightly that she had to knock him on the back to let him know she couldn’t breathe.

They parted, breathless and laughing, their eyes shiny, and Razi kept his hand on her shoulder as if to stop her from flying away.

“You’re in my way, you tinker’s whelps.” Marni’s gravelly voice boomed behind them and they turned to grin at her, her preposterous face, her cloud of frizzy orange hair. She scowled at them, couldn’t keep it up and beamed her gap-toothed smile on them instead, batting them with her huge hands so that they knocked into each other like nine-pins, giggling. “Your dad’s still determined to turn you into a man, is he?” she growled, eyeing Wynter’s uniform. “Ah well,” she said, not quite able to hide her pride in Lorcan’s unorthodox parenting. “’Tis a damn site better’n marryin’ you off to some musty Lord.”

Marni practically carried them, one under each arm, and deposited them in a corner out of the way. She laid the table with bread and cheese and cold chicken, a bowl of salt, a bowl of mustard paste, two knives and a fork. She met Razi’s inquiring eye as she set down two beakers of cold milk and rolled her eyes to heaven.

“It’s
been
boiled!” she exclaimed impatiently, “God forbid there should be
humours
in it,” and she lumbered off, wiping her hands on her apron and scowling at some under-chef who was slicing something too thin. Razi smiled to himself and took a piece of chicken onto his plate while Wynter began to pile bread and chicken and cheese onto her own.

Razi played with his meat, shredding it into a pile of neat strips, then shoving it around with his finger. He eyed the amount of food Wynter was packing away and a slow grin began to creep up his face, making his big dark eyes dance with suppressed laughter. Wynter’s mouth was too full to permit any kind of conversation, but their eyes kept meeting as she shovelled yet more food down her. It was just like the old days, when they could make each other dissolve into giggles simply by looking.

“Stop it!” she warned, spraying breadcrumbs from a too full mouth, “I’ll choke!”

He grinned wider and contrived an innocent expression that only made her worse. Razi’s grin, her full belly and all around them the kitchen doing its work – it was so wonderful, so
right
that Wynter thought she might start to cry if she wasn’t careful.

She took a deep breath, saw some similar emotion in Razi’s face and the two of them looked away from each other suddenly, taking great interest in the convoluted machinations of the kitchen. Marni glanced over at them, a moment of unguarded tenderness on her face, then she turned away, scolding some poor scuttling man who was in her way.

“Where is Alberon, Razi?” Wynter asked. She kept her voice low and only glanced sideways at him. They had had no contact for the last five years; had, until now, not even been sure if the other had survived. Now, questions, if asked at all, would have to be asked gently, obliquely, for fear of opening old wounds or uncovering secrets best left hidden.

Razi cleared his throat and shook his head. “I don’t know where Albi is, little sister. He is not here. Father says… Father says that he has sent him to the coast, to inspect the fleet.” Their eyes met briefly and Wynter looked away.

Razi’s face told her that he doubted the King’s story, and Wynter’s mind filled with questions and her chest tightened with fear.

Why would Alberon, legitimate son and sole heir to the throne, be sent so far from home after such a long and dangerous period of unrest? On the other hand, why would the King lie to Razi – his eldest boy and bastard son, much loved and trusted by the throne? Wynter had no answers, only fear, sly fear, skittering about in her heart like a secret disease.

She glanced around the kitchen, at the sweating, toiling faces, the familiar domestic scene, and sensed the cold waters of politics running beneath it all. Vast and dark and rushing, ready to sweep any of them away.
We must be careful
, she thought,
we must be careful
.

So much that she wanted to ask, but in court life there are things you cannot ask, not aloud, not in a crowded kitchen, not even of your oldest friend.

Razi was tense as a horse at a starting gate, his dark eyes roaming the room, his agitation almost audible. He rubbed his fingers anxiously against his palms and Wynter longed to lay her hand on his, to stop him betraying himself so obviously.

Behind Razi there was a tray of jam tarts cooling on the rack near the high window and, as Wynter watched, the Hungry Ghost lifted two of them to its invisible mouth and they disappeared into mid-air, a bite at a time. Wynter nudged Razi with a smile and stole a glance at Marni, waiting for her usual stormy response to the pesky spirit. Things would be thrown! Curses would be bellowed! Marni’s ongoing feud with the Hungry Ghost had always been good for a laugh.