by Stephen King
Flagg appeared to think deeply and gravely. "Yes . . . I suppose . . . if you made it very clear to Peyna . . . very clear indeed . . . that any move made against me would be looked upon with royal disfavor. Very great royal disfavor."
"Oh, I would!" Thomas said eagerly. "I would! So will you stay? Please? If you go, I really will kill myself! I don't know anything about being a King, and I really will!"
Flagg still stood with his head down, his face deep in shadow, apparently thinking solemnly. He was, in fact, smiling.
But when he raised his head, his face was grave.
"I have served the Kingdom of Delain almost all of my life," he said, "and I suppose that if you commanded me to stay . . . to stay and serve you to the best of my abilities . . ."
"I do so command you!" Thomas cried in a quivering, febrile voice.
Flagg sank to one knee. "My Lord!" he said.
Thomas, sobbing with relief, threw himself into Flagg's arms. Flagg caught him and held him.
"Don't cry, my little Lord King," he whispered. "All will be well. Yes, all will be very well for you and me and the Kingdom." His grin widened, showing very white, very strong teeth.
47
Thomas couldn't sleep a wink the night before he was to be crowned in the Plaza of the Needle, and in the early-morning hours of that dread day he was seized by a terrible fit of vomiting and diarrhea brought on by nervousness--it was stage fright. Stage fright sounds both silly and comic, but there was nothing either silly or comic about this. Thomas was still only a little boy, and what he felt in the night, when we are all most alone, was an extremity of fear so great that it would not be wrong to call it mortal terror. He rang for a servant and bade him fetch Flagg. The servant, alarmed by Thomas's pallor and the smell of vomit in the room, ran all the way and hardly waited to be given entry before bursting in and telling Flagg that the young prince was very ill indeed, might even be dying.
Flagg, who had an idea of what the trouble was, told the servant to go and tell his master he would be with him shortly, and to fear nothing. He was there in twenty minutes.
"I can't go through with it," Thomas moaned. He had vomited in his bed, and the sheets stank of it. "I can't be King, I can't, please, you have to stop it from happening, how can I go through with it when I may vomit in front of Peyna and all of them, vomit or . . . or . . .
"You'll be fine," Flagg said calmly. He had mixed a brew which would both soothe Thomas's stomach and temporarily cement his bowels shut. "Drink this."
Thomas drank it.
"I'm going to die," he said, putting the glass aside. "I won't have to kill myself. My heart will just burst from fear. My father said that sometimes rabbits die that way in snares, even if they aren't badly hurt. And that's what I am. A rabbit in a trap, dying of fear."
You're partly right, dear Tommy, Flagg thought. You're not dying of fear as you think, but you are indeed a rabbit in a trap.
"You will change your mind about that, I think," Flagg said. He had been mixing a second potion. It was cloudy pink--a restful color.
"What's that?"
"Something to calm your nerves and let you sleep."
Thomas drank it. Flagg sat by his bedside. Soon Thomas was sleeping deeply--so deeply that if the servant had seen him at that moment, he might have believed his prediction had come true and Thomas was dead. Flagg took the boy's sleeping hand in his own and patted it with something like love. In his own way he did love Thomas, but Sasha would have known Flagg's love for what it was: the love of a master for his pet dog.
He is so much like his father, Flagg thought, and the old man never knew it. Oh, Tommy, we will have wonderful times, you and I, and before I am done the Kingdom will run with royal blood. I'll be gone, but I won't go far, at least not at first. I'll come back in disguise just long enough to see your flyblown head on a spike . . . and to open your brother's chest with my dagger, and rip his heart from his chest, and eat it raw, as his father ate the heart of his precious dragon.
Smiling, Flagg left the room.
48
The coronation went off with no trouble or complications at all. Thomas's servants (he had no butler, being too young, but this would be provided for soon) dressed him for the occasion in fine clothes of black velvet which were strewn with jewels (All mine, Thomas thought with wonder--and with dawning greed--These are all mine now) and high black boots of finest kid leather. When Flagg appeared promptly at eleven-thirty and said, "It is time, my Lord King," Thomas was far less nervous than he had expected. The sedative the magician had given him the night before was still working in him.
"Take my arm then," he said, "in case I stumble."
Flagg took Thomas's arm. In the years to come, it was a posture the inhabitants of the court city would become very familiar with--Flagg appearing to bear the boy King up as if he were an old man instead of a healthy youngster.
They walked out together into bright wintry sunshine.
A cheer so great it was like the sound of surf breaking against the long, desolate strands of the Eastern Barony greeted their coming. Thomas looked around, amazed at the sound, and his first thought was: Where is Peter? Surely this must be for Peter! Then he remembered that Peter was in the Needle and realized the cheering was for him. He felt a dawning pleasure . . . and I must tell you that the pleasure was not just in knowing the cheers were for him. He knew that Peter, locked in his lonely tower rooms, must hear the cheering, too.
What does it matter now that you were always best in lessons? Thomas thought with a mean happiness that pricked him even as it warmed him. What does it matter now? You are locked in the Needle and I . . . I am to be King! What does it matter that you brought him a glass of wine every night and--
But this last thought caused a strange, greasy sweat to rise on his forehead, and he put it away from him.
The cheers rose again and again as he and Flagg walked first to the Plaza of the Needle and then under the arch formed by the upraised ceremonial swords of the Home Guard, dressed again in their fine red ceremonial uniforms and their tall Wolf-Jaw shakos. Thomas began to positively enjoy himself. He raised a hand in salute, and his subjects' cheers became a storm. Men threw their hats in the air. Women wept for joy. Cries of The King! The King! Behold the King! Thomas the Light-Bringer! Long live the King! rose in the air. Thomas, who was only a boy, thought they were for him. Flagg, who had perhaps never been a boy, knew better. The cheers were because the time of unease was past. They were cheering the fact that things could go on as they always had, that the shops could be reopened, that grim-eyed soldiers in tight leather hats would no longer stand watches around the castle in the night, that everyone could get drunk following this solemn ceremony and not worry about waking to the sounds of confused midnight revolt. No more than that, no less than that. Thomas could have been anyone, anyone at all. He was a figurehead.
But Flagg would see that Thomas never knew that.
Not, at any rate, until it was too late.
The ceremony itself was short. Anders Peyna, looking twenty years older than the week before, officiated. Thomas answered I will, I shall, and I swear in all the right places, as Flagg had coached him. At the end of the ceremonies, which were conducted in such solemn silence that even those at the farthest edges of the huge crowd could hear them clearly, the crown was placed on Thomas's head. Cheers rose again, louder than ever, and Thomas looked up--up and up the smooth, rounded stone side of the Needle, to the very top, where there was but one window. He couldn't see if Peter was looking down, but he hoped Peter was. He hoped Peter was looking down and biting his lips in frustration until the blood flowed down his chin, as Thomas had often bitten his own lips--bitten them until there was a fine white network of scars there.
Do you hear that, Peter? he shrilled in his mind. They're cheering for ME! They're cheering for ME! They're finally cheering for ME!
49
On his first night as King, Thomas the Light-Bringer awoke straight up and staring in bed, his face stark a
nd horrified, his hands crammed against his mouth as if to stifle a scream. He had just had a terrible nightmare, one even worse than those in which he relived the awful afternoon in the Eastern Tower.
This dream had been a kind of reliving, too. He was in the secret passage again, spying on his father. It was the night his father had been so drunk and furious, striding around the room and shrilling defiance at the heads on the walls. But when his father came to the head of Niner, the things he said were not the same.
Why do you stare at me? his father shrieked in the dream. He's killed me and I suppose you couldn't stop that, but how could you see your brother imprisoned for it? Answer me, damn you! I did the best I could, and look at me! Look at me!
His father began to burn. His face turned the dull red of a well-banked fire. Smoke burst from his eyes, his nose, his mouth. He doubled over in agony and Thomas saw that his father's hair was on fire. That was when he woke up.
The wine! he thought now, in horror. Flagg brought him a glass of wine that night! Everyone knew that Peter brought him wine every night, so everyone thought Peter poisoned the wine! But Flagg brought him wine that night, too, and he never did before! And the poison came from Flagg! He said it was stolen from him years ago, but . . .
He would not allow himself to think of such things. He would not. Because if he did think of such things--
"He would kill me," Thomas whispered, horrified.
You could go to Peyna. Peyna doesn't like him.
Yes, he could do that. But then all his old dislike and jealousy of Peter returned. If he told, Peter would be let out of the Needle and would take his place as King. Thomas would be no one again, just a bumbling prince who had been King for one day.
It had taken only one day for Thomas to discover he could like being King--he could like it very much, especially with Flagg to help him. Besides, he didn't really know anything, did he? He only had an idea. And his ideas had always been wrong.
He's killed me and I suppose you couldn't stop that, but how could you see your brother imprisoned for it?
Never mind, Thomas thought, it must be wrong, it has to be wrong, and even if it isn't, it serves him right. He turned over on his side, determined to go back to sleep. And after a long time, sleep came.
In the years ahead, that nightmare sometimes came again--his father accusing his hidden, spying son and then doubling over, smoking, his hair on fire. In those years, Thomas discovered two things: guilt and secrets, like murdered bones, never rest easy; but the knowledge of all three can be lived with.
50
If you had asked him, Flagg would have said with smiling contempt that Thomas could keep a secret from no one except a person who was mentally enfeebled, and perhaps not even from such a one as that. Certainly he could not keep a secret, Flagg would have said, from the man who had engineered his rise to the throne. But men like Flagg are full of pride and confidence in themselves, and although they may see much, they are sometimes strangely blind. Flagg never guessed that Thomas had been behind Niner that night, and that he had seen Flagg give Roland the glass of poisoned wine.
That was a secret Thomas kept.
51
Above the jubilee of the coronation, at the top of the Needle, Peter stood at a small window, looking down. As Thomas had hoped, he had seen and heard everything, from the first cheers when Thomas appeared on Flagg's arm to the last as he disappeared back into the palace itself, also on Flagg's arm.
He stood at the window for nearly three hours after the ceremony was over, watching the crowds. They were loath to break up and go home. There was much to discuss and much to relive. This-One had to tell That-One just where he had been when he heard the old King was dead, and then they both had to tell T'other-One. The women had a final good cry over Roland and exclaimed over how fine Thomas had looked, and how calm he had seemed. The children chased each other and pretended they were Kings and rolled hoops and fell down and skinned their knees and screamed and then laughed and chased each other again. The men clapped one another on the back and told each other that they guessed all would be well now--it had been a terrible week, but now all would be well. Yet through all of this there ran a dull yellow thread of unease, as if they realized that all was not well, that the things which had gone so wrong when the old King had been murdered were not right yet.
Peter, of course, could tell none of this from his high, lonely perch in the Needle, but he sensed something. Yes, something.
At three o'clock, three hours early, the meadhouses opened, supposedly in honor of the new King's coronation, but mostly because there was business to be had. People wanted to drink and celebrate. By seven that night, most of the population of the city was reeling through the streets, drinking the health of Thomas the Light-Bringer (or brawling with each other). It was nearly dark when the revelers finally began to disperse.
Peter left the window, went to the one chair in his "sitting room" (that name was a cruel joke), and simply sat there with his hands folded in his lap. He sat and watched the room darken. His dinner came--fatty meat, watery ale, and coarse bread so salty it would have stung his mouth if he had eaten any. But Peter did not eat the meat or bread, nor did he drink the ale.
Around nine o'clock, as the carousing in the streets began again (this time the crowds were much more boisterous . . . almost riotous), Peter went into his prison's second room, stripped to his singlet, washed with water from the basin, knelt by his bed, and prayed. Then he got into bed. There was only a single blanket, although the little bedroom was very cold. Peter pulled it to his chest, laced his hands together in back of his head, and looked up into the darkness.
From outside and below came screams and cheers and laughter. Now and then there was the sound of firecrackers, and once, near midnight, there was an explosive gunpowder flatulence as a drunken soldier set off a blank charge (the following day, the unfortunate soldier was sent as far east as the Kingdom of Detain stretched, for his drunken salute to the new King--gunpowder was rare in Delain, and jealously hoarded).
Sometime after one in the morning, Peter at last closed his eyes and slept.
The next morning, he was up at seven. He knelt, shivering in the cold, his breath puffing white from his mouth, goosebumps on his bare arms and legs, and prayed. When his prayers were done, he dressed. He went into the "sitting room" and stood by the window silently for nearly two hours, watching the city come to life below him. That coming alive was slower and crankier than usual; most of the adults in Delain woke with drink-swollen heads. They stumbled to their jobs slowly, and in a foul temper. Many of the men went to their tasks blistered by angry wives who had no sympathy with their aching heads (Thomas also had an aching head--he had drunk too much wine the night before--but at least he was spared the lecturing wife).
Peter's breakfast came, Beson, his Chief Warder (who had a hangover of his own), fetched him plain bran cereal with no sugar, watery milk that was rapidly souring, and more of the coarse, salty bread. This was a bitter contrast to the pleasant breakfasts Peter had enjoyed in his study, and he ate none of it.
At eleven, one of the Lesser Warders fetched it silently away.
"Young princeling means to starve, thinks I," he said to Beson.
"Good," Beson replied indifferently. "Spare us the trouble of keeping him."
"Maybe he fears poison," the Lesser Warder ventured, and in spite of his aching head, Beson laughed. The jest was a good one.
Peter spent most of his day in the "sitting-room" chair. In the later part of the afternoon, he stood at the window again. The window was not barred. Unless you were a bird there was nowhere to go but straight down. No one, not Peyna, not Flagg, not Aron Beson, worried that the prisoner might somehow climb down. The Needle's curving stone wall was utterly smooth. A fly might have done it, but not a man.
And if he grew depressed enough to jump, would anyone care? Not much. It would save the state the expense of feeding and housing a blue-blooded murderer.
As the
sun began to move across the floor and up the wall, Peter sat and watched it. His dinner--more fatty meat, watery ale, and salty bread--came. Peter did not touch it.
When the sun was gone, he sat in the dark until nine, and then went into the bedroom. He stripped to his singlet, knelt, and prayed with small white puffs coming from his mouth. He got into bed, laced his hands behind his head, and lay on his back, staring up into the darkness. He lay there thinking about what had become of him. Around one o'clock in the morning, he slept.
So he was on the second day.
And the third.
And the fourth.
For a full week Peter ate nothing, spoke nothing, and did nothing but stand at his sitting-room window or sit in his chair, watching the sun crawl across the floor and then up the wall to the ceiling. Beson was convinced that the boy was in an utter blackness of guilt and despair--he had seen such things before, especially among royalty. The boy would die, he thought, like a wild bird that was never meant to be caged. The boy would die, and good riddance to him.
But on the eighth day, Peter sent for Aron Beson and gave him certain instructions . . . and he did not give them like a prisoner.
He gave them like a King.
52
Peter did feel despair . . . but it was not as deep as Beson believed. He spent that first week in the Needle carefully thinking out his position, and trying to decide what he should do. He had fasted to clear his head. Eventually it did clear, but for a while he felt terribly lost, and the weight of his situation pressed down on his head like a blacksmith's anvil. Then he remembered one simple truth: he knew he hadn't killed his father, even if everyone else in the Kingdom thought he had.
During the first day or two, he grappled with useless feelings. The childish part of him kept crying out, Not fair! This is not fair! And of course it wasn't, but that sort of thinking got him no place. As he fasted, he began to regain control of himself. His empty belly peeled the childish part of him away. He began to feel cleaner, husked out, empty . . . like a glass waiting to be filled. After two or three days of eating nothing, the growlings in his stomach subsided, and he began to hear his real thoughts more dearly. He prayed, but part of him knew that he was doing more than praying; he was talking to himself, listening to himself, wondering if there was a way out of this prison in the sky where he had been so neatly put.