‘What is wrong with you, boy?’ he said. ‘Do you take offence because of your mother?’
‘Majesty,’ she said, ‘my Lord Razi is not himself. Please. I beg you. Let me explain?’
Jonathon glared and did not give his permission for her to speak. Still Wynter approached, and placed the folder on the table by his clenched fist. ‘Your Majesty, these are from your heir. The Royal Prince bid his brother take them to you. He bid him explain that his intention was never to usurp you as King. The Royal Prince’s only wish is to present to you his plans for the future.’
The King regarded the folio with a kind of numbness. His big hand slid a little on the surface of the table, as if he wished to touch the leather folder, but he did not. Wynter took a chance on leaning in a little and softening slightly the courtly tone of her voice: ‘Your Majesty,’ she said, ‘whatever your differences, the Royal Prince does not wish to grasp the throne. With respect, your Majesty, he wishes only to strengthen your kingdom.’
The King met her eye. ‘He has done a poor job of that,’ he said.
He was close enough for Wynter to smell the wine from his breath. She could smell camp fire from his clothes. ‘May I suggest that there were two of you involved in that particular misadventure, your Majesty?’
Rage flared again in the King’s face. ‘Do not mistake yourself for your father, girl. Lorcan was the one person in this life who ever talked thus to me. No one shall take his place, whether they carry his name or not.’
Despite the prickle of fear in her belly, Wynter held the King’s eye and whispered, ‘I cannot help but feel that had you allowed your heir to speak thus to you, much of this kingdom’s recent problems may have been forestalled. It seems that a little more talk and a little less rage may well have calmed this storm before it even began.’
‘My heir has stolen and broadcast that which I wished suppressed. He has machinated behind my back, twisting deals with my enemies. His actions have poisoned court against his brother and divided my men. What is it you would like me to do about that, girl? Shrug in defeat and hand him my crown?’
The stark truth of this twisted like a knife in Wynter’s heart, the enormity of Jonathon’s problem suddenly horribly clear. In the face of Alberon’s very public defiance, what choice did Jonathon really have? Either he was King or he was not. Either his heir bowed to his will or he did not. It was how kingdoms worked. It was the way of the world. Alberon wished the country run one way, Jonathon wished it run another. Their visions were irreconcilable, and one of them must bow or one of them must die. That was the black and white of it. Wynter drew back, lost for words, and Jonathon nodded.
‘So I am undone,’ he said.
‘But you will speak with your heir now?’ asked Razi.
‘Have I a choice?’ muttered the King. ‘Now that he has sniffed me out.’
Razi frowned across at Wynter. What could that mean?
The King tutted at him. ‘Stop hovering like a God-cursed chambermaid, boy.’ He gestured bitterly to the folder. ‘Come here and summarise your brother’s terms. I assume he’s only hours behind you, and I shan’t sit here reading this pap while his men advance upon me.’
‘But, your Majesty,’ said Wynter, ‘the Prince’s men do not advance. Alberon travels with only—’
‘Oh, enough, girl! Jesu Christi, you are like a crow cawing incessantly in my ear! I asked the boy, dammit! Razi, get over here and detail me your brother’s terms before I lose my patience entirely and greet him with your head on a pike.’
At Razi’s hesitation, the King glared up from under his brows. Razi swallowed hard at the warning in his face. ‘I . . . I cannot detail the documents, Majesty. I do not know what they contain.’
‘You pledged your support to your brother without discussing his aims?’ growled the King. ‘You?’ Razi flickered a glance at Wynter, and the King turned his head to stare at her in disbelief. ‘Once again, I am directed to you, Protector Lady?’
Wynter thought her lips might crack from fear when she opened them to speak. ‘My Lord Razi is unwell, your Majesty,’ she said. ‘We were attacked on our way here. His horse tumbled down a hill, taking him with her. He awoke with little memory of who he is, or what has passed between him and his brother.’
There was a stark, crackling silence.
‘I remember that I am a doctor,’ ventured Razi.
The King’s face so darkened that Wynter only barely restrained herself from stepping back.
‘This is the lowest of tricks,’ hissed the King. ‘The cheapest of manipulations! You hope to distil my hopes into one heir, do you? With this ridiculous fabrication, you hope to remove yourself from the picture? You think yourself so important, little man, that first you fake your own death and then you feign madness, all to fling me into Alberon’s arms? Are you such a coward, boy? Have you no spine?’ Jonathon slammed his fist into the table, tears in his eyes. ‘I would rather you came at me with a halberd,’ he cried. ‘I would rather you drew your God-cursed sword, than insult me with this!’
‘I do not recall you at all,’ cried Razi. ‘Certainly I cannot conceive of you being my father. I remember my father clearly! I loved him. I do not know you!’
‘Oh, Razi,’ breathed Wynter, ‘no.’
‘I am a doctor!’ cried Razi. ‘That is what my father made of me! I am a doctor! I do not know what it is I am expected to make of this.’ He gestured to the folder. ‘But I cannot help you with it! This is your poison! You take it!’
Wynter sank to a chair, weary to her bones of trying, and put her head in her hands. There was an abrupt scrape of the King’s chair, and the table thudded beneath her elbows as he jerked clumsily to his feet, but she did not bother looking up. All is lost, she thought. All is chaos. The surrender was almost blissful.
The ensuing silence made her glance up. Razi and Jonathon were gaping at her, and for a moment she did not know why. Then she realised she was slumped at the table, slouching like a beggar with a bowl in the very presence of the King. She blushed and went to rise, but Jonathon waved her down again and sank to his seat once more. It was perhaps this, more than anything else – the very uncourtliness of Wynter’s gesture, the complete and utter lack of art in her despair – that made him believe.
‘I swear to you,’ whispered Razi, ‘I recall nothing of which you speak. I am a doctor, your Majesty, I am a scientist. Everything else,’ he gestured to his head, ‘is gone.’
To Wynter’s amazement, the King huffed a laugh. ‘What a twisted joke . . . to give me what I always wanted, instead of what I find I need.’ He looked up to the heavens in bitter amusement. ‘You always claimed that God had a blackened sense of humour, Lorcan.’ He sighed. ‘We can but bloody laugh.’
‘Your Majesty,’ said Wynter, ‘whatever the future holds in store, Alberon does not come to you at arms. He comes with only the smallest entourage of men, his intentions nothing but peaceful.’
The King huffed again. ‘What needs he of arms, when the damage is done?’
‘Will you read the documents, your Majesty?’ asked Razi.
‘What for?’
Razi thought for a moment. ‘That you may know what is in store?’ The King regarded him closely. ‘That . . . that you may do more than simply lash out in the dark?’
At the King’s grimace, Razi stepped to the table, diffident and uncertain. ‘I have one other thing,’ he said. ‘I have never been certain if it is part of our journey, or if it is a personal possession of my own. I must confess, I have longed to open it, but the fear that it might be yours has swayed me to caution. Can you tell me . . . ?’ With a final hesitation, he reached into his coat and withdrew a small document, folded to a square and sealed with wax. Wynter recognised it at once.
‘Alberon gave that to you,’ she said, ‘just as we were leaving camp. I had assumed you would place it in the folder.’
Razi shook his head. ‘For some reason I did not.’ He offered the letter to his father. ‘Your Majesty? Do you
suppose he meant it for you?’
The King took the letter. He opened it. Alberon’s writing was firm and neat; it took up barely a page. The King read it twice, then placed it on the table. He turned it, obviously intending Razi to read. Wynter leaned discreetly forward, reading from a distance.
Father,
I am a dull, knot-headed boy – did my tutors not always tell you thus? I have no power over words, unless I speak with soldiers, who seem to understand me well enough. You have always wished it were not so. I have wished so myself. Next to my clever brother, I am a toad. But you and I found our common ground this last five years, did we not? In all that horror, you found a pride in me, and a use for my own peculiar strengths. Though I wish it had not been in such a manner as war, I was glad to be of service to you. That I could help protect your wonderful hopes for our people’s future.
I am doing this still. I wish I had the power to persuade you of it, to convince you and make you understand. I have waited and waited for Razi’s return, knowing he would be the one to put into words that which between us has only ended in screaming and blows.
If I could take all the curs who threaten this kingdom and pile their heads at your feet, I would do it. I wish only to be your guardian. I wish only to be your strong right hand. I believe in this kingdom and that which you wish to do with it. Listen to Razi. He will assure you of it.
Wynter tells me you may have destroyed my things. I hope you preserved her letters (they are in my red leather trunk). It is their influence that has me sitting now, cramping my fingers and my brain in this clumsy effort to speak. It was easier than I thought it would be – perhaps you and I should only ever have written notes? Certainly it may have prevented a few black eyes.
I will leave off now. I pray we meet on friendly ground.
Alberon
Father, one last thing, perhaps we could allow Wyn to keep her gypsy? He seems an unlikely fellow, but Razi is fond of him.
There was a long moment’s silence. Wynter reached forward without thinking and placed her fingers on the parchment. Oh, Albi.
The King immediately slid the letter out from beneath her fingertips. She did not look up at him, could not look up at him, and so she did not see where he put it. His voice was very quiet when he said, ‘Sit down, boy.’ Razi sat. ‘Child,’ Jonathon turned to Wynter, ‘get the captain to brew some coffee. Tell him to bring us something to eat.’
Wynter moved to the door, and as she ducked outside to get the King his food, Jonathon pulled Alberon’s folder to him and unlaced the ties.
DAY ELEVEN:
AN UNDERSTANDING
WYNTER SIPPED coffee and watched the King read. It was the first time she had ever seen the man working, and she was astonished at how quickly he processed the tightly packed manuscripts, how immersed he became in their contents. He had a very particular method, which interested and intrigued her. First he would scan the document at incredible speed, reading from beginning to end, his brows furrowed. Then he would straighten the pages, tap them into alignment and work his way through again, pausing at relevant passages. He would take notes on a separate sheet. Sometimes he marked the original papers in some way, underlining sentences, ticking words, ringing whole paragraphs of the text. When he was happy that he had squeezed every jot of information from one document, Jonathon would pass it to Razi, bidding him read it and its notes, and then he would move on to the next.
During the course of this intense period of concentration, the King drank two or more pots of tar-black coffee and demolished a manchet loaf with olive oil and cheese. Razi read in frowning silence. He seemed to be absorbing information afresh, seeing all the various angles as if for the very first time, but he couldn’t add much to Jonathon’s deliberations. Indeed, the King seemed to offer the documents more for his son’s benefit than for anything else.
Occasionally the men would ask Wynter to fetch ink or food. Occasionally they would ask for her recollections of Razi and Alberon’s conversations. But mostly they ignored her, and she sat in silence observing them work. She watched as the sun moved across the canvas, she listened to the peaceful rustle of papers, she drank coffee, and she thought.
If Alberon had accepted the King’s offer to parley – and the King seemed convinced that he had – then he would be here soon. He would arrive with only a small, non-threatening entourage, and he would find himself greeted by the same. Unless both parties resorted to daggers in the back or poisoned each other’s wine, it seemed likely that father and son were finally about to sit down and talk. It seemed likely that this damaged kingdom was on the verge of some sort of repair. For the very first time, Wynter might have an opportunity to think on what her future – her personal future – could hold.
She had to confess, all that she had previously expected from life seemed somehow inappropriate now, or unpalatable to her. Her time in Albi’s camp had, once again, brought home the stifling constrictions of court life. Her time on the trail with Christopher had made her long for more than an existence dedicated solely to her craft. She watched Razi work and she realised that, like him, she had been stripped of her past. All she had left was herself, the man she loved, and the skills that God and her father had given her.
What on earth was she to do with that? Where on earth could she go with it?
‘His communications with the North,’ said the King, his quill scratching away even as he spoke, ‘how were they effected?’
Wynter dragged herself from her thoughts. She put down her coffee. ‘These most recent messages were sent via the Merron, your Majesty.’
He paused in surprise. ‘That Hadrish thief?’
‘Christopher Garron is not a thief,’ said Razi mildly, his attention focused on a sheaf of Jonathon’s notes. ‘I have told you before.’
The King and Wynter exchanged a look. Wynter went to comment, but the King stopped her with a shake of his head. ‘The Merron?’ he prompted her.
‘Noblemen of a Northland tribe, your Majesty. One of their number has accompanied us, if you wish to question him. He waits outside with Freeman Garron. But the Merron seem to know little of the Royal Princess Shirken’s intentions, your Majesty. They work for her in the hope that their efforts will save their kind from destruction . . . a futile hope, I fear.’
The King raised an eyebrow. ‘Futile indeed,’ he said dryly. ‘I am intimately aware of Marguerite’s attitude to her non-Christian subjects.’ He shuffled the papers once again, lifted a particular page. ‘This proposed marriage,’ he murmured, ‘it astounds me.’
Wynter sighed. ‘It is madness,’ she said.
‘It is genius,’ he replied. Her shock seemed to tickle him, and he smiled at her, a warmly amused smile, very like his youngest son’s. ‘Should Marguerite succeed in pushing her father aside without causing revolt – and I suspect that if anyone can do it, she can – a marital alliance between these two kingdoms would be . . .’ Jonathon shook his head. ‘It would be immense,’ he said. ‘There would need to be an agreement regarding heirs, of course. That should be easy enough to hammer out . . . perhaps a division on grounds of sex or age? Yes. Age, I think. One heir North, one South, with provision for separate succession in case of death . . . Foreign education. Padua perhaps? Hmmm. Complete autonomy of rule, of course.’ He huffed in amazement. ‘It is an entirely new method. Who would have imagined the boy capable of its proposal?’ He lost himself in thought, murmuring away to himself, making notes. ‘He would not be able to handle her, of course, poor child. He has no idea of what those people are capable, but, perhaps . . .’
Razi met Wynter’s eyes as the King, deep in thought, shuffled papers and muttered his tangled calculations. ‘This foolishness with the Midland resistance,’ said the King eventually, ‘that cannot be allowed.’
Wynter’s heart sank for Jared and Mary and their desperate hopes for reform. ‘But the Midland envoys have already been sent home, your Majesty,’ she ventured. ‘They are of the belief that they have your Majesty’s s
upport. They greatly depend on it. The Royal Prince . . . the Royal Prince has given them copies of my father’s designs in the hope that my father’s machines will strengthen their position and help end the appalling conditions their people currently endure.’
Jonathon’s expression drew down into distress. He turned his face away, as if Wynter had attempted to show him some disgusting thing. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No, no. We shall smother that one.’ He carefully set two of the documents aside.
‘Mary,’ said Razi. The King and Wynter glanced expectantly at him. ‘Mary,’ he insisted. ‘The Lady Phillipe D’Arden and her child. They have sacrificed all for the Midland Reform. Are we to allow them to fail?’
Jonathon sat back. ‘Phillipe D’Arden, Razi? You have met him?’
‘I . . .’ said Razi, suddenly uncertain again. ‘I have met Mary,’ he said.
Jonathon looked to Wynter. His expression left little doubt that he thought Razi was wandering in his mind. Wynter smiled. ‘In fact, the Lady Mary was in Alberon’s camp, your Majesty. From what I understand, the Lord D’Arden fell victim to the Midland inquisition. The Lady Mary and a Presbyter named Jared came to negotiate in his place.’
‘Phillipe D’Arden is dead?’ breathed Jonathon. ‘Oh no. Oh, what a blow to mankind. Phillipe was an intelligent and wonderful man. I have many of his theses in my library. You should read them, Protector Lady, when you have the chance. An intelligent, wonderful man, much in sympathy with your father.’ Jonathon hung his head. ‘Jesu. Such waste. I will never fail to despair at the destruction so often wrought by those who purport to act for God. One wonders why He simply does not sicken of us. Why He does not simply wipe the earth clean of us, and leave it to the honesty of the lower beasts.’
‘The reformists need your help, Majesty. They need your strength.’
He shook his head. ‘No,’ he whispered. ‘No. I cannot. I simply . . . this must end. We must . . . it must be made to go away.’
Wynter leaned in. She placed her hand carefully on his arm. ‘Majesty,’ she said, ‘my father was a great man – a great man. Who, I have come to understand, struggled with a horribly troubled conscience.’
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