The Fatal Child (32 page)

And it was a good day. The stables were almost empty because the Baron Lackmere had ridden off before dawn with a lot of armed men and most of the horses in the castle. Half the stableboys had slipped off somewhere – to get themselves drunk, most likely. The rest seemed to be playing knucklebones in the tack room. She found Puck raking up some foul straw in one of the empty booths. He smiled at her broadly as she came in.

‘Are you the only one working?’ she demanded. ‘Why do you put up with it?’

‘Master Copley teaching me to ride horses. I work for him, he teach me.’

‘Does he? I bet he wouldn’t do that for everyone.’ But people liked Puck. It was the way he smiled, which always made you want to smile, too. Also, he was the only hillman most of them had ever seen. Hill folk were something to wonder at here, but not something to be afraid of. It was different in the March.

‘Fallen off much yet?’ she asked.

‘Oh no. I am good at learning.’

‘You’re good at saying how good you are. That’s for sure.’

‘No, it is true! On way here, I learn to sail boat. Learn in a day. Fisherman teach me.’ His arms hauled on some imaginary sail.

‘Don’t believe you.’

‘You are wrong. He let me sail myself, at finish.’

‘Oh well,’ said Melissa carelessly, as if she had been sailing all her life. ‘Here, I’ve got something for you. Come and sit down.’

She chose a pile of fresh straw, around the far side of a wooden stall. Puck threw a glance over his shoulder towards the tack room where the stableboys were roaring over their game, shrugged and followed her. They sat side by side in the thick-smelling air of the stables. She opened her little pouch. ‘Sweetmeats,’ she said.

‘Yum,’ he said, with wide eyes. ‘Queen give those to you?’

‘She didn’t want them.’

They were the last of the tray that Atti had sent away the day before. They were old and a bit stale now. Yesterday they had been fresh. The Queen’s maids had fallen on them like vultures when she had got the
tray up to the royal rooms. She knew just how good they had tasted then. But he didn’t.

‘Yum,’ he said again, and rolled his eyes. ‘Long live Queen, yes! Glorious and happy.’

‘I don’t think she’s ever been happy,’ said Melissa quietly.

‘No? Maybe she not starve enough.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You know. You starve a bit – not get sick, just hungry. Then eat. Then – ah!’ he put his hands on his belly and his head back, eyes closed. ‘No worries. None at all.’

‘I used to think like that.’

He looked at her, bird-like, clever. Afraid of what she had said, Melissa hurried on. ‘The man who destroyed her house is back. She’s frightened. She thinks he’ll do it again, you see.’

He frowned.

‘Maybe you don’t understand,’ said Melissa. ‘Up in the hills and all.’

‘Why not? You do that to us, too.’

‘Did we?’

‘Oh yes. You not love enough, your people.’

And while Melissa was puzzling over that, he added, ‘Maybe Queen not love enough, either.’

Melissa shook her head. ‘That’s … Do you remember that kid, in the hills? The one you brought up for our first spring, and we ate it together in the outer courtyard.’

‘She cry and run into house. Oof! I don’t forget that.’

‘She wept and wept for it. Days afterwards, when I thought she was over it, she would start weeping again. She said, “I loved it. It was so beautiful.” Even though she had barely laid eyes on the thing. But when we brought her a kid yesterday, just like that one, she wouldn’t even look at it!’

It still made her angry. It hurt that it had been her idea that the King had relied on. And it had let him down.

‘Maybe she loves the hurt thing, not the whole.’

‘Maybe,’ said Melissa.

Look after her
, pleaded voices in her memory.
Help her
. Help her. But how? They might as well have asked her to ‘help’ a mountain. Stop the snow falling on it, maybe.

‘Any more?’ said Puck, leaning over her shoulder and looking interestedly into her lap.

‘One. The best. I saved it for you.’

‘Thanks.’

And as he put it into his mouth, she said: ‘I saved this for you, too,’ and she leaned back and kissed his cheek.

She had planned to do it. She had planned it more or less just like that. She had been wondering for almost three years what it would have felt like if she had stayed in the outer courtyard and kissed the boy who had brought her the kid. And the moment she did it Atti and everything else was forgotten.

His cheek was harder than she had expected, and also smooth. Hillmen did not grow hair on their chins. Close up he was rather smelly. And she felt the sudden
rise of blood in herself, and he looked at her, startled. And there were crumbs all over his lips, and …

She laughed, and jumped to her feet.

‘Hey, wait!’ he said.

‘Not likely!’ she cried. And picking up her skirts, she ran, still laughing.

He was after her. She hadn’t planned this. She did not know what was going to happen. She did not know whether she was going to let him catch her, or what would happen if he did. Somewhere in the back of her mind was the thought
You’ve done it now
, and also another that she must not get her clothes all smelly from the stables, because the ladies would realize and she would be punished for it. But it was all washed away in the thrill of her blood at the young man hunting her around the booths and piles of straw.

She burst, laughing, into the light of the upper courtyard and stumbled to a halt before a woman in a dull gown who seemed to have come from nowhere, and who should have been hundreds of miles away.

‘Melissa,’ said Phaedra. ‘You must get me into the Grand Audience. At once!’

The guard shrugged. He thought the chamberlain had already entered. They’d have started now. There was no going in there for two hours at least.

‘But it’s the King’s mother!’ Melissa said. ‘She’s waiting outside the doors! And he doesn’t know, and the guards out there don’t know her to let her in!’

At once
, Phaedra had said. And Melissa knew that
at once
meant it was very, very important – more
important than any guard or even the lord chamberlain could understand.

‘More than I know either,’ said the guard. ‘I’ll let you by, miss, and you can see if the chamberlain’s there himself. But like I said, he’ll have gone in by now.’

She ducked past him and into the little maze of rooms and corridors behind the back of the throne. They were empty. She could hear the burble of the court gathered in the great throne hall. She heard a trumpet call for silence. She stood, heart beating, at the bottom of the stairs that ran up to the royal living quarters. Twenty minutes earlier she could have caught the King himself on this stair. But twenty minutes ago she had barely been free of her own duties and was on her way to the stable. Oh, why did this have to happen today?

If she went up to the living quarters …

But there would be no one there now. Everyone useful was already in the hall. And when they were all shut away together she could not talk to any of them, except by going in there herself. Her heart beat hard at the thought.

Footsteps. An elderly clerk came hurrying along the corridor, checking over a paper as he did so.

‘Please, sir,’ said Melissa desperately. ‘Have you seen the lord chamberlain?’

‘He’ll be in the hall with the chancellor and the King,’ said the clerk, barely looking at her as he hurried past. ‘I’ve got to get this to the chancellor now.’

‘Could you please say to the lord chamberlain …’

But the clerk hurried on, waving her away with his hand.

Grimly Melissa followed him. At the rear door to the hall the man spoke in urgent whispers to the guard, who stepped aside and opened the door softly. The clerk passed in. Muttering to the guard and pointing into the hall, Melissa pressed after him. She was through before the guard thought to stop her.

She was standing at the back of the throne platform. There were people all around her, pressed back against the walls. She could not see past them. From the open space before the throne a voice was speaking in a steady tone, pitched to carry the length of the hall:

‘That thou didst consort with Outlanders, and didst bring them unbidden into Our realm. That thou didst refuse Our peace, when it was offered unto thee. That thou didst conspire with several parties to raise rebellion in this Our realm, that thou didst plan violence against Our person and against any servant of Ours that we might send to you in pursuance of our will—’

‘This is no law!’ cried another voice. ‘You cannot judge me! I am the King by right…’

‘Silence, sir!’ bellowed a herald. ‘Until the charges are read!’

‘… That I brought Outlanders unbidden?’ continued the second voice. ‘How were they unbidden?
I
bid them come. What do you know of Outland, any of you?’

‘Gueronius, be silent,’ said the King. ‘You shall have
your chance to answer. But first you and all present must know why you are here.’

Melissa pushed her way forward among the court officials, still hoping for a glimpse of the lord chamberlain, or at least of someone who might know her and who might be able to interrupt the King with her message.

‘I am here because of witchcraft!
Your
witchcraft. Your devils snatched me and dragged me through a netherworld to bring me here! Have you no shame, you bastard of Tarceny, that you mock me like this?’

Melissa looked down the long hall. It was just as crowded as it had been on the day when she had been up in the gallery. Now she saw the packed masses of faces down both sides of the room, all turned in her direction. She saw the guards and the banners on the walls. She saw the knots of court officials around the throne. She saw the King, and beyond him the Queen on a slightly smaller throne, both looking down on the man before them.

The man knelt at the foot of the steps. He was dressed in, of all things, a nightshift. His hair was wild and his face was covered in several months worth of beard. His arms were held behind him and guards stood at his back.

‘Witch!’ he cried at the King. ‘Son of your father! May you be taken as he was, by the devils you sent for me!’

‘Gueronius,’ said the King again. ‘Plead, or waste your breath. But after this chance I can give you no other. You have heard the charges. Will you not speak to them?’

‘Charges? That I sought to take back what was mine? Guilty, by all the Angels! That I was denied by witchcraft? Guilty! That I am mocked, put on show, by a trickster and a consort of devils? Guilty, guilty, guilty!’

‘Very well,’ said the King coldly. ‘Then I have another charge to add to this.’ He turned to the Queen, watching pale upon her throne.

‘Your Majesty will remember,’ he said, pitching his voice for the hall to hear, ‘when you came to me in Tarceny, and sought justice against Gueronius and his house for the wrongs they had done to you. Then I was but Lord of Tarceny and could not judge. But fate has turned. Now under Heaven there is no one who can judge this case but me. What would you have me do?’

Melissa. What would you have me do?
The hilltop above the lake, and the cloaks blowing and the grass stems flattening in the wind. And the neck of the red knight as he bowed before the King, so that she could have cut his head off with a word.

Atti looked away from the King.

She looked away, and her eyes fell on Melissa, the serving maid, standing in the front rank of the King’s officials.

She had seen her! Now, Melissa!

An urgent, silent gesture of her hand. And with all the room waiting for the Queen to speak, the Queen was silent. One finger beckoned Melissa forward.

With her heart flapping in her chest, her throat tight, Melissa came to the finger’s command. She had
to walk right out in front of everyone, before a thousand eyes, past the throne of the King (turn, bob hurriedly, walk on), before the wild-eyed prisoner, to reach the Queen where she sat with her ladies around her. The eyes of the ladies were fierce with anger. The eyes of the Queen showed nothing at all. She bent her head. She put her hand on Melissa’s arm. Melissa whispered her message.

The Queen sat back and sighed as if she thought the world very stupid.

‘Your Majesty,’ she said at last. ‘I will speak on this. But first there is another who seeks admittance. It may be that what she would say will also bear on this case.’

The King frowned. ‘The Audience is begun. The charges in this case read and answered. May we not—?’

‘She has come a long way. It is your mother.’

The words carried down the hall. An echo of murmurs, wondering, wary, rose from the crowd. The King hesitated. Then he spoke to the herald. The herald called. A flurry broke out at the doors as the guards down there realized that they were being asked to do something. The doors opened. Armoured men hurried out through them. There was a pause, in which the sea of murmurs rose to a roar. And then a trumpet-call crashed through the noise. Melissa jumped. She realized that she was still standing out in front of everybody at the side of the Queen. But she could not move because the Queen was still holding her wrist, hard, as if she
was nervous. She did not seem to realize that it was Melissa, rather than the arm of her chair, that she was holding.

Melissa watched Phaedra walk up the hall between the lines of people. Dressed in a drab and shapeless gown, she moved before all those jewelled ladies and lords. Her feet were bare, her head high, she looked neither right nor left. And a stir spread along the crowd like a slow shiver, as if something dead, some unpleasant memory, had appeared again to walk among them. The grip on Melissa’s arm tightened. She winced.

‘Your Majesty,’ said Phaedra, bowing. ‘I ask leave to speak in this case.’

‘I will hear you,’ said Ambrose.

Phaedra looked down at Gueronius, who was staring at her open-mouthed.

‘I sue for pardon for this man.’

‘I thought you would. Why should I do this?’

‘I will tell you a story, if you will listen.’

The King hesitated. Then he said, ‘Very well,’ and gestured to his right where the heralds stood. ‘Tell it so all may hear.’