The Fatal Child (28 page)

‘Meh … Meh …’ said Atti.

She was trying to say ‘Melissa’.

‘I’m here,’ said Melissa. And then she remembered to add: ‘Your Highness.’

‘It was him. It was him!’

‘Him? The King?’

Atti nodded.

‘Did you turn? Did you see him?’

‘No,’ she whispered.

‘Then it won’t have been him, will it? It was the dream, that’s all.’

When Atti did not reply, she added: ‘You’ll be seeing him again tomorrow. The real him. You love him, don’t you?’

It was the question she had wanted to ask for weeks and never could. And now it was easy – oh, so easy! It
had slipped out of her as if it were just another word of comfort. Why had she done it now?

A slight shifting of the shoulders told her that the question had announced itself in Atti’s brain. She had done it now. It was in there, in Atti’s mind, calling like a voice in a dark cave.
You love him, don’t you?
Atti opened her mouth but did not speak.

‘You do love him,’ Melissa said, rocking her again. ‘You love him.’

Atti beat at the bedclothes with clenched fists. ‘Why did I have to put my hands between his?
Why?’

And some stupid, stupid Lady Something said: ‘Because he’s the King, Your Highness. Everyone must submit to him.’

Atti’s shoulders shook and she was weeping again. The ladies murmured and glanced at one another.

‘Don’t be afraid. You mustn’t be afraid,’ said Melissa.

And of course that was a useless thing to say. Of this one thing Atti would always be afraid: that however high she was, there would be one who could come suddenly and destroy everything again. She would always fear anyone who could do that to her. Even if it were the best man in the world.

Because he was the King, and she had put her hands between his.

The scroll that Lex handed Padry the next morning read:

A copy of the account by Prince Marc, son of Wulfram, that was presented to His Majesty King Ambrose Umbriel by his mother
the Lady Phaedra of Trant and Tarceny, in the first year of King Ambrose’s reign.

In the third year after his landing, Wulfram seized a great city of the Artaxalings (who are now the people of the hills). He slew their warriors and their high priests and took their palace for his own. And from the city he took hostages, nine hundred in all, and held them in the outer courts of his palace lest the city should rise against him.

There came to him a woman of the Artaxalings, richly dressed with bands upon her arms. She begged to him that the hostages be released, for they were well loved in the city. In their place she offered him tribute in gold, and she stripped her bands from her arms to show that what she said was true.

Wulfram smiled upon her, and said, Tribute in gold will I take this year and every year hereafter. But I will not release the hostages, for I fear that the city will rise.

Then give me but half of them, said the woman, and our love for the rest will keep the city from rising.

Half will I not give, said Wulfram.

Then give me but ten, said the woman.

Not even ten will I give, said Wulfram. But if you ask it, I will give you one, he said.

And the woman named her own son, who stood among the hostages.

And Wulfram had her son brought to him, and he slit his throat with a knife, and gathered his life-blood in a cup. He gave the cup to her, saying, This is the hostage I have released because you asked it. Drink this cup and tell the city what you have seen.

And the woman drank it and went away weeping.

* * *

Lex tapped the last line with his finger. ‘I suppose she is weeping still,’ he said.

‘I think we heard her, didn’t we?’ said Padry sombrely.

‘How does a woman, be she princess or priestess, become a goddess?’

‘It is a mystery,’ agreed Padry. ‘And unlike anything the Church teaches of Heaven or Godhead or the Angels. But … Do you remember you said to me once that things so big that we cannot understand them may turn because someone takes pity on someone else?’

‘Yes.’

‘It may have happened in this case. Or, to be exact, it may have happened because he did not.’

Lex sucked in his cheeks, looking at the manuscript again.

‘What did our King say?’

‘Not much,’ said Padry. ‘I think he had guessed some of it. But he made our … visitor repeat himself three times at one point in the story. When Wulfram offered to release just one of the hostages. He seemed very struck with that. He said someone had said that to him, too, once.’

‘Coincidence?’

‘He seemed to think it was fate.’

n Atti’s wedding night they took the jewels from her hair. They removed her gown, her under-dress and the clothes she wore next to her skin. Over her naked body they dropped a long shirt of purest white silk. Two maids, one on either side of her, began to brush the dark tresses that fell from her head to her waist.

They prepared her in her antechamber and not in her bedchamber. Her bedchamber was separated from the King’s only by a wooden door. In the King’s room councillors were already gathering with lights and solemn faces. By long custom the wedding night of a king or prince had to be witnessed by trusted men, so that it could be sworn, if it came to it, that the marriage had been made complete and that any heir would therefore be royal. There was no help for that. But the women did not think it decent that the men should overhear the Queen’s preparations, or the things they said to her as they made her ready.

‘Oh, you look lovely, Your Majesty,’ said one. ‘He’ll swoon at the sight of you, to be sure.’

‘It’s hard waiting now,’ said another. ‘But once you’re in there and it’s started, you’ll be all right.’

‘We all envy you so, Your Majesty!’

Melissa, working one of the brushes, bent and whispered in her ear: ‘He loves you, remember?’

Atti’s head turned a little at her words. Now she stared at a different patch of wall from the one she had been staring at before. That was how Melissa was sure she had heard.

Brush, brush, brush. The hair slipped like silk under her fingers. She tried to make the strokes as gentle as possible. Long, gentle touches were calming. Calming mattered more now than brushing out any tangles.

Atti stood like a statue under their attentions. She did not speak to any of them. She did not look at any of them. Her hands were wrung together before her. If she had not held them so, they might have been shaking. The door to her bedchamber was open. On the far side of it was the door that would lead to the King. They could all hear the voices of the men as they murmured to one another, waiting.

‘He loves you,’ whispered Melissa through set teeth. ‘Nothing else matters, does it?’

Atti nodded, mute.

‘Your Majesty?’ said the chief lady-in-waiting.

‘I am ready,’ said Atti quietly.

A maid slipped through the bedchamber to scratch at the King’s door. It opened at once. They could see
heads, bearded faces, the gleam of gold chains. Eyes glinted in lamplight, looking their way.

Atti stepped forward, and stopped. Her shoulders were shaking. Her hand groped blindly and Melissa caught it. She was trembling.

But there was only one thing she could do. He was waiting for her. The men were waiting for her. The women were around her, willing her on. There was no possibility of hiding or turning away. This was the moment she had chosen. Slowly she lifted her head and squared her shoulders. She released Melissa’s hand. She walked forward across the short breadth of her bedchamber. The door of the King closed behind her and shut her from the women’s sight.

‘That was brave,’ said one. ‘When you think how scared she is.’

‘It’ll be easier for her next time,’ said another. ‘And there won’t be all those nosey old men to make it worse.’

‘If it doesn’t get easier,’ sighed the chief lady-in-waiting, ‘it’ll get harder. That’s the way of things.’

Melissa said nothing. It was not her place.

Success meant more business: more audiences, more petitions, councils and ceremonies. More business meant more preparation and less time in which to do it. By the second month of the reign Ambrose, Padry and Aun of Lackmere were meeting at sunrise in an attempt to master each day at a time before the torrent of affairs overtook them.

And the problem with meeting the King at sunrise,
thought Padry, was that you got all the ideas he’d had in the middle of the night.

‘… But Sophia sits in judgement, doesn’t she?’ said Ambrose.

‘Develin’s different,’ snapped Aun. ‘It’s been ruled by a woman for twenty years. Everyone knows that. We can’t have the Queen taking your place for however long. The barons won’t put up with it.’

‘Not even if I’m away on progress or something?’

‘Again, no. The court follows you. That’s why you go on progress – to take justice to the provinces. Put the Queen in your place and you’ll make yourself a laughing stock. Worse, you’ll make yourself enemies.’

Ambrose ran his hand through his hair, as he did when he was agitated. ‘I just think it would help her! If she could see that she was in control of
something
it wouldn’t be so bad.’

‘Maybe not. But she’d be so busy being in control that she’d turn everything upside down. She could do you more harm with a day in court than Seguin could in a year of plotting on his estates.’

‘You’re not being fair to her, Aun!’

‘Aren’t I? Ask someone else then. Ask anyone you like, except those besotted dandies who swarm round her with their lutes and caps and feathers! You’ll get the same advice.’

Ambrose looked to Padry for support but Padry had seen it coming. He mumbled something and fixed his eyes on his feet. Privately he sided with the baron. Not so much about women in general – he could think of several abbesses who were just as
much lords of their territories as the lady was at Develin. But yes, Atti, with her opaque thoughts, her scorn and her quick tongue – to set her up in court would be to risk disaster. When it came to judgement there was no tyranny worse than caprice. Couldn’t Ambrose see that?

He did not speak, one way or another. He had an absolute rule with himself that he must not speak on any matter to do with the Queen. No one would have forgotten his mad pursuit of the girl to the mountains. They would always think his words would be coloured by that. And they might well be right. Whatever the stakes, the baron must fight this one alone.

Fortunately he seemed to be winning. He was winning because in his heart the King knew he was right.

‘I know it would mean so much to her,’ Ambrose groaned.

‘You can’t do it,’ said the baron flatly. ‘Justice is too important.’

‘Nothing’s more important, Aun! Not to me. Don’t you understand that? If I can’t help her I can’t help the Kingdom either, and nothing I do will be any good. All right, I’ll try to think of another way. But there’s got to be something. Because she still thinks she’s powerless. That’s how she sees it. That’s why she’s not sleeping well. She’s still the victim.’

‘Well, that makes it worse, doesn’t it? Never put a victim in judgement. Never.’

‘Sometimes I will, you know,’ said Ambrose quietly. ‘When I’ve got the villain on their knees in front of
me, I turn to the victim standing there, ask what they would do.’

‘And every time you do it my heart’s in my mouth. Just remember this. Victims make the worst villains there are.’

‘You can love whom you like,’ he added when the King did not reply. ‘You can be sorry for whom you like. But only trust whom you can.’

Melissa had given up counting the people in the castle. There were too many.

There were courtiers and ladies and priests and servants. There were clerks and gold-chained officials. There were cooks and scullions and butlers and stable hands. There were heralds and minstrels, men-at-arms and armourers, blacksmiths and tanners, bowyers and jailers. There was a man whose only duty was to pluck and serve the royal swan, and a woman who could do the same for the peacock. There was a dressmaker, a milliner and a jeweller who worked only for the Queen. There was a special baker who made short, thin loaves of a particular shape that made the ladies giggle and whisper to each other that they would never guess, but Lady Somebody-or-other had actually
tried
it – yes, really! And there were people who seemed to do nothing at all, and yet were paid and fed for it all the same.

There were quite a lot of these – especially around the Queen, Melissa thought. Rebelliously she included in this all the Queen’s handsome young men, every last one of her ladies-in-waiting, and even
a number of the maids, who she thought spent far too much time shirking the job and chatting about men and bits of men and all the very improbable things that men and women could invent together in bed. She also included the men-at-arms, who at another time would obviously have been useful but who seemed to have nothing to do these days except stand in their armour and make eyes at poor busy maids as they passed.

Dadda wouldn’t have given a stick for the lot of them, she thought. Not one of them stood on their two feet. They all leaned on the King. But then so did the ten thousand people in the city, from the abbess in the convent to the ragged and deformed beggars in the streets. And so did the – how many? – thousands and thousands and thousands of others living around the Kingdom, even the ones who had never petitioned him or laid eyes on him in their life. They needed him to make laws and rules about weights and measures. They needed him to keep order among the barons. They needed him to go after the ones who cheated or stole or torched the homes of honest folk. And they needed him so that they could blame him (or at least his advisers) when they felt things were going wrong. Melissa saw all that.