The Godspeaker Trilogy

by Karen Miller

  And she was gone, long swift strides hampered only slightly by her dress. Dexterity watched her out of sight, his own grief for the dead princes rewoken.

  Poor girl. Such a burden she carries. People watching her wherever she goes. Whispering behind her. Whispering before she arrives. Dissecting her life even as she lives it.

  Of course, things would probably turn out all right. More than likely the ailing king would rally. Physicks could do amazing things these days. The king had to rally, Ethrea wasn’t ready to lose him yet. With the untimely losses of Ranald and Simon there was no prince waiting to take the throne. There was only Princess Rhian. Not yet at her majority and a girl to boot. Ethrea had never been ruled by a woman … and there were those who thought it never should.

  Prolate Marlan for one. His views on women are stringent, to say the least.

  Dread chilled him. Were King Eberg to die without a male heir only misery could follow. Ethrea’s past was a tapestry of betrayal and bloodshed, the desperate doings of six duchies wrestling for the right to rule the whole. In the end duchy Fyndle had emerged triumphant, was renamed Kingseat and became the traditional duchy of the king. Peace reigned sublime and for more than three hundred years the cobbled-together edges of the five lesser principalities had rubbed along tolerably well.

  But if Eberg should die what an unravelling there’ll be. All the nations with their interests invested here will swoop down on us like a murder of crows …

  Dexterity felt his heart thud. If the king recovered he could find himself another wife and sire a son to replace the two who’d died so untimely. Eberg wasn’t old, just three years senior to himself. It was barely middle-aged. The king had a score of sons left in him, surely. If the worst came to the worst and he died before this hypothetical son turned eighteen, well, there’d be a regency rulership but that could be survived. A king in nappies could be survived. But what kingdom could survive without any king at all?

  Stop scaring yourself, Jones. His Majesty will be fine.

  Lady Dester appeared in the open doorway. “ Mr Jones! What are you doing ? Must I remind you who I am ?”

  “No, Your Ladyship!” said Dexterity. “My sincere apologies. I’m coming right now!” And he fled his dire thoughts as though they pursued him with raised hackles and bared teeth.

  While the storm of Lady Dester’s displeasure raged about him he nodded and apologised and bowed and packed up her purchases, then the other court ladies’ choices. When he’d finished and was blessedly alone, he allowed himself a moment to sit and sigh and heft with pleasure his coin-filled purse.

  “Even with that outrageous discount not a bad day’s work, my love,” he remarked to the air. “I’ll stop in to see Javeson on the way home and order the new parlour curtains, shall I? Midnight blue, with perhaps a touch of silver. What do you think, Hettie? Do you think blue would suit best?”

  I think we’ve more to worry about than curtains, Dex.

  Dexterity froze. Looked from side to side. Over his shoulder. Behind the couch. Nothing. No-one. The room was empty.

  He cleared his throat. Feeling ridiculous, he said, “Ah … is anyone there?”

  No reply. He sat down again, pulled his kerchief from his pocket and wiped his brow.

  “You’re overworking, Jones. Time you put your feet up and relaxed with a pint of cold ale.”

  You can’t be drinking ale at a time like this, Dex.

  With a strangled shout he leapt to his feet, the kerchief fluttering abandoned to the floor. Beneath his best brown waistcoat and second-best yellow shirt his heart was beating a wild tattoo. It was impossible, but he asked the question anyway.

  “Hettie? Hettie? Is that you, Hettie?”

  The kingdom’s in trouble, Dex, and you have to save it.

  “God preserve me!” he muttered, even though he’d stopped believing in God twenty years ago. “I’m going mad!” He scrambled together his trunk and his knapsack, tied his purse to his belt, cast a last horrified look around the empty castle chamber and fled.

  Ursa was pruning a boil-free bush when he burst into her physicking workshop. Her narrow face was grave with concentration, her thin fingers sure and steady as she snipped, snipped, snipped at the boil-free’s spiky red leaves. Her shoulder-length salt-and-pepper hair was hidden beneath an unflattering old scarf; her short, spare body clothed, inevitably, in a stained baggy smock. Workbenches lined the low-ceilinged room, thicketed ropes of dried and drying herbs dangled from its rafters. Trapped sunshine warmed the air which was redolent of mint and rosemary and sweet julietta.

  For once the workshop’s rustic welcome failed to soothe him.

  “Ursa, I’m sick!” he panted, clutching at the corners of the nearest scarred bench. “Or losing my reason!”

  Still snipping, she swept him head to toe with her measured grey gaze. “You look fine to me, Jones.”

  “No,” he insisted. “I’m sick. Quick, you have to do something!”

  Sighing, Ursa set down her shears, folded her arms across her flat chest and regarded him in silence for a moment. Then she pulled out a rickety stool and pointed. “Sit.”

  He sat, carefully, and watched as she rummaged in a handy drawer, withdrew a wooden hammer and laid it on the bench.

  “Do you have nausea?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “No.”

  “Dizzy?”

  “No.”

  “Headache?”

  “Not really.”

  “Shooting pains? Pins and needles? Faintness?”

  “No, no, and no.”

  She glared at him. “You’ll be more than sick if I find out this is some kind of a joke, Jones. I’m a busy woman, I have no time for jokes.”

  He clasped his hands between his knees to stop them shaking. “Ursa, trust me. This is no joke, I promise.”

  Her expression was sour. “It better not be.” She crossed to the windowsill, where a neat line of potted plants drank the last of the sinking sun. With an impatient hmmph she plucked a leaf from a delicate purple vine, came back to him, spat on it and slapped it on his forehead.

  “Do you have to spit?” he complained. “It’s disgusting, Ursa.”

  She looked at him, unimpressed.

  “It is !”

  “Do I tell you how to string puppets, Jones?”

  “Yes. All the time.”

  “And if you paid more attention they’d last twice as long.”

  With Hettie gone, she was his closest friend. Which wasn’t to say she didn’t drive him to distraction. “Huh,” he muttered, under his breath. “Well, what’s happening?”

  “Hush up,” she said, frowning. “Fevertell takes a minute or two to react.”

  A minute passed in toe-tapping impatience.

  “No fever,” she declared, twitched the leaf from his forehead and tossed it in a compost bin. Then she struck him on the knee with the hammer.

  “Ow!” he said as his leg kicked out without him asking. “That hurt!” Anxiously, he looked at her. “Was it supposed to?”

  “I just hit you with a hammer, Jones, what do you think?”

  He swallowed. “I think … Ursa, I think I’m losing my wits!”

  That made her grin. “If you had any to lose, Jones, I’d be worried for you.”

  He pounded his fist on his knee. The memory of that loved, longed-for voice in the empty castle room still had the power to raise the hair on his head. “For God’s sake, Ursa, this is no laughing matter!”

  “And nor is blasphemy, Dexterity Jones. You bite your tongue before God bites it for you!”

  Irate, they glared at one another. He was the first to look away. Rubbing wet palms against his best velvet breeches he whispered, “Truly, Ursa, I’m afraid.”

  Her astringent voice gentled, and so did her face. “Yes, I can see that, Jones. Why? What’s happened, my friend, to scuttle you into my workshop like a frightened rabbit?”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Dexterity opened his mouth to reply, then close
d it again. Here, now, brought to the telling, he felt suddenly foolish. What would she think of him, sensible Ursa in her sensible workshop, if he babbled of his dead wife’s voice speaking to him in an empty room? No. He was just overtired … and it was spring. A difficult time of year. The ache in his heart, that constant companion, was magnified by memories and regrets.

  Ursa was waiting for him to speak, staring with the forthright gaze that turned braver men than him to water. “Dexterity?”

  He slid off the stool. “I’m sorry, Ursa. I shouldn’t have disturbed you. I—”

  “Sit down, Jones!”

  He sat again. “Oh dear.”

  “It’ll be more than ‘Oh dear’ if you don’t stop shillyshallying.” She drummed her short, grimy nails on the bench top. “Just tell me what happened. All of it. No prevaricating.”

  Oh dear, oh dear . He gave her a half-hearted smile. “You’ll think I’m a noddycock.”

  “I’ve thought that for twenty years, Jones. Spit it out.”

  “Well …” He rubbed his damp palms on his breeches again. “You see, it’s like this. I was up at the castle, it’s my day for selling to the ladies of the court. I saw the princess, too—” The sharp pity stirred. “I’m worried for Her Highness, she’s not looking well. She—”

  “Isn’t the point of this story, is she?” said Ursa impatiently. “Jones, you are the most distractable man!”

  No-one scolded like Ursa. He gave her a look. “Yes. Well, after the ladies departed I chatted to Hettie about the new curtains I’m planning for the parlour.”

  Ursa’s fingernails resumed tapping on the bench top. “You’re always chatting to Hettie. Do get to the point .”

  “The point?” he repeated, his voice caught in his throat. “The point, Ursa, is that this time Hettie chatted back.”

  Being Ursa, she didn’t shriek or throw her hands in the air or gasp, even a little. Being Ursa she blinked like a cat stretched out in the sunshine.

  “Hmm,” she said, after a considering pause. “That’s interesting. What did she say?”

  What did she say? The kingdom’s in trouble, Dex, and you have to save it .

  He couldn’t tell Ursa that. “I—I don’t know! I don’t remember! It didn’t occur to me to write it down, Ursa, please, you have to take this seriously. Hettie spoke to me! I must have a fever. Or else—or else—” He stared at her in horror. “Perhaps I’m losing my mind!”

  She laughed. “That’s ridiculous!”

  “Easy enough for you to say! You’re not the one hearing disembodied voices!”

  In one of her mercurial mood changes Ursa patted his shoulder, all solicitous sympathy. “Now, now. Just you take a nice deep breath and come down out of the branches, Jones. You’re no more losing your mind than I am.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “Because I’m a physick. It’s my job to be sure.”

  “But—but Ursa —”

  She rapped her knuckles on the top of his head. “Be quiet. You’re going to calm down, Jones, and drink some ginger root tea.”

  Comforted by her lack of alarm he watched as she set her battered kettle on the hob and poked up the embers with a fire iron. He’d never known anyone so comfortable inside her own skin as Ursa. She moved briskly, with as much concentration and purpose while spooning dried ginger root into the teapot as she showed stitching a wound or splinting a broken bone. Her faded old scarf was fixed in place by the tortoiseshell clasps he’d given her last Kingdom Day. It warmed him to see them.

  On the point of boiling, the kettle burped a wisp of steam. Ursa glanced at him, lips still quirked in her mocking smile. “It’s been a while since you and I sat down to gossip.”

  Yes. A while. And not only because he’d been busy working and she regularly disappeared into the countryside hunting for herbs.

  It’s this time of year. After so long we still find it awkward. Silly, really. We both know there’s no blame on either side. She did her best for Hettie and so did I. Some things just aren’t meant to be …

  He shrugged. “Ah, well. The days get away from you, don’t they, if you’re not careful.”

  Her mocking smile faded. “Yes,” she said softly. “Yes, they certainly do.”

  The kettle boiled properly. Ursa poured hot water into the teapot and a rich ginger aroma billowed forth.

  His stomach growled. “Don’t suppose you’ve any plum duff about, have you?” he asked hopefully. “I rushed off without my breakfast this morning and I’m always too busy to eat when I’m up at the castle.”

  Ursa gazed heavenwards in silent beseechment. “When are you going to get yourself organised, Jones?” she said, reaching into a cupboard and bringing out a dented cake tin and a knife.

  “I am organised! I just overslept. I had this wonderful idea last night for a new marionette, a shepherdess and her little flock, and I wanted to get her face started. But when I looked at the clock it was past midnight and I still hadn’t packed my goods for today.”

  Ursa cut two generous slices of moist plum duff and put them on plates pulled down from a shelf. “It’s always something with you,” she said, handing him one. “You’re a dyed-in-the-wool dreamer and no mistake.”

  Hettie used to say that, too, in the same amused and scolding voice. If she had lived he was sure she and Ursa would have become fast friends.

  If she had lived …

  To distract himself from that melancholy notion he took a big mouthful of plum duff. “Oh, this is wonderful!” he chumbled through Ursa’s delectable cooking.

  “I know,” she said, and poured the tea into two chipped mugs. Looking at him through the rising steam she added, “It’s one of Hettie’s recipes. She pressed it on me, asked me to make sure I kept on baking plummy duff for you, not long before …”

  She’d never told him that. He’d eaten her plum duff, oh, too many times to count, and she’d never told him where the recipe came from. Oh, Hettie. Hettie. I miss you, my darling. I miss you so much .

  Ursa handed him a mug. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have mentioned it.”

  “No, no, of course you should,” he said, staring at his tea. “It’s quite all right. No need to apologise.”

  “Hmm.” She pulled out another stool and sat. “All right, Jones. About this voice you think was Hettie …”

  Abruptly, perversely, he didn’t want to talk about it. All he wanted to do was sit here eating Hettie’s plum duff and drinking ginger root tea, pretending it wasn’t nearly the anniversary of his beloved wife’s death which was also, cruelly, the anniversary of their wedding.

  And Ursa wonders why I’ve no time for God.

  Around his last bite of cake he said, indistinctly, “I really am worried about Rhian, you know.”

  Ursa’s severely disciplined eyebrows rose. For a moment he thought she’d challenge his refusal to answer her question, but she didn’t. She just smiled at him and rolled her eyes.

  “Rhian, is it? Dear me, how very cosy. And did the princess kiss your cheek on seeing you, Jones, and beg you to advise her about matters of state?”

  Warm-faced beneath his unruly beard he washed down the last of his plum duff with a mouthful of tea then longingly eyed the closed cake tin. Seconds would be lovely but he knew better than to ask. Ursa, secure in her lean angularity, had caustic views on overindulgence.

  “That’s not fair,” he said, shifting on his stool so the cake tin wasn’t a direct temptation. “I’ve known the princess since she was a babe-in-arms. Why, I’m more than old enough to be her father! Can I help it if I think of her as Rhian? It’s always Your Highness to her face, you can be assured.”

  “I can be assured that if there’s trouble abroad you’ll be the first in line to buy a ticket.”

  “I resent that, Ursa!”

  She sniffed. “You’d resent the ground for slapping you if you tripped and fell down.”

  She was treating him like the fractious children who came to her with their cut knees and sore thro
ats and busy beestung fingers. Briefly, he was cross.

  “Ursa, I wish you’d take me seriously.”

  “Says the man hearing voices in an empty room,” she murmured.

  The kingdom’s in trouble, Dex, and you have to save it.

  He thrust the echo of Hettie’s voice to one side. “This is important, Ursa. Things aren’t going well with the king, I’m certain of it. I think—” He swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry. “I think his health is far worse than we’ve been led to believe.”

  Ursa inspected her half-eaten slice of cake. “Really? Going into physicking, are you?”

  “No, of course not! But—well—since you’re a physick I wondered—you know—”

  “Jones, I haven’t a clue,” she said, still eyeing her cake.

  He leaned forward, as though her plants might be eavesdropping. “I thought you might’ve heard something. Something other than the official news from the castle.”

  “I haven’t,” said Ursa, after a moment. “But I’m not the physick our loftiest nobles call upon for their hangnails, am I?”

  No, she wasn’t, more fools them. Ursa had never been fashionable. Her choice of patients was dictated by need, not the size of their purses. Oh, she had her small share of important clients … those rare men and women who judged her on results, not the names she could drop at a posh dinner party. But they were few and far between.

  “What have you heard of a Physick Ardell?” he said, sitting back. “He’s attending the king.”

  “I know,” she said. Typically, she needed no time to rummage through her memory. “Ardell’s twelve years younger and eight inches taller than me. Bad teeth—he’s far too fond of candied orange. Studied with Physick Runcette in duchy Meercheq. Darling of the nobility despite the fact he’s keen on purges, pistillations and leeching.”

  “But he’s a good physick?”

  “Why?” asked Ursa, and finally ate more cake. “Is the princess dissatisfied with his services?”

  Shadows cast by an uncertain future darkened the bright, whitewashed workshop. Dexterity sighed. “She didn’t say, exactly. But she does look sick with worry, Ursa. I tried to convince her to send for you, but—well, there are complications.”