The Widow and the King

by John Dickinson

  Then the man's other hand came up, swinging the broken staff into the side of her head with sickening force.

  She fell.

  Unbelieving, Ambrose saw her tumbling in the air. Her body bounced once among the rocks, outwards, like any pebble that tumbled down a hillside. Then she hit the water in a white splash, and disappeared.

  Slowly the surface of the pool stilled. She did not reappear. On the skyline the man had bent to his work again, prodding and levering with the longer piece of his staff, as if nothing had happened.

  And from his hiding place in the thorns Ambrose stared and stared at the pool, waiting for her to rise and struggle to the shore. But she did not.

  Only when the first stone tumbled in a roar of rocks to the cliff-foot did he start, gather himself and run – run as though all the Things in the pit were already after him.

  His feet carried him, slipping and skidding, back around the end of the ridge, under the walls of the house that had been his home. The goats were already out, spreading down and along the hillside from the open gate. They scattered before him, and bleated at him as he passed. He ignored them. White pebbles jumped from the fold in his shirt as he stumbled, and rolled away down the hillside. He ignored them, too, and ran on.

  IV

  The Fight at the Falls

  hen Ambrose came down a looping track through pinewoods a fortnight later, he had just eight white pebbles in his hands.

  He was tired, hungry and exhausted.

  He could hear a waterfall, somewhere to his left among the trees. He remembered that from before, just as he remembered clearly this thick smell of pine trees in the sun. He was somewhere close to Uncle Adam's house now. He really was.

  He hadn't remembered how far it would be from the jetty where he had said goodbye to the man with the boat. The road had gone on and on by the lakeshore, between reed-beds and high hills. He had begun to wonder if he was going to find the house before nightfall. But there was still an hour or so of daylight left, and now he was close. Now he knew he would get there before darkness came.

  His feet hurt. They seemed to be hurting worse than they had before his long rest in the boat. Starting on them again had been agony. He hadn't bothered to put his shoes back on. They were no more than scraps of goatskin now, held together in places by twine. They flapped as he walked and were no help at all. Still, he was moving as quickly as he could, shuffle-shuffle down the path, because he knew that the journey was nearly over.

  Further down the slope voices began to mingle with the sounds of falling water. People were calling to each other, unworried, unhurried in the easy afternoon. He could see the sunlight through the bare trunks ahead of him. He could smell woodsmoke. The track was levelling. He hobbled on. He was approaching a clearing.

  He stopped in the shadow of the last tree.

  Was this the place?

  He was looking across a sunny, grassy space decked with fruit trees. On the far side was the roof of a long, wooden house, rising above a cluster of sheds and a stockade. There were people in the clearing, moving slowly with baskets. Chickens clucked and wandered among the closely-nibbled tussocks, unafraid.

  Was it? Surely it was. He wanted it so badly to be Chatterfall. And the sights prodded and ordered his memory until it agreed with what he saw. It had been like this the last time. After days of travelling through the mountains, down the river and across the lake, they had emerged suddenly from the pines into a clearing with fruit trees, and beyond them had been the house: Chatterfall – warmth and comfort and safety, waiting at the end of everything.

  Only she wasn't with him, this time.

  There were two women picking fruit in the clearing. The nearest was tall, dressed in working clothes, and her brown, grey-streaked hair was tied roughly back from her face. She was talking idly over her shoulder to the woman at the next tree. Ambrose watched her hands move among the low branches – twist and pick, twist and pick, placing the fruits carefully in her basket. He saw her stand on tiptoe to reach a high fruit. It was very ripe, and fell almost as her fingers closed on it. She lost it, and it dropped on the ground. It would be bruised now, and would spoil, Ambrose thought. Better eat it at once. He could almost taste the fruit from where he stood – warm, juicy and sweet with sun.

  The woman seemed to think so, too. She said something, laughed, and then stooped to pick the fallen fruit from the tussocks. She put it to her mouth.

  Then she saw him.

  Ambrose stepped, hesitantly, into the light, and began to make his way towards her. He was trying to decide if this was Aunt Evalia. She wasn't quite as he remembered from his last visit, years before. He didn't think her hair had had grey in it then. Her long nose looked pinched.

  She watched him as he hobbled towards her. She still had the fruit in her hand. She was frowning.

  ‘What do you want?’ she asked.

  She did not know who he was. For a moment he wondered if he had come to the right place after all.

  ‘Is – is this Chatterfall?’

  They were looking at him warily, as if he might have some disease.

  ‘What is it you want?’ the woman repeated.

  ‘If it's a meal, you can ask at the house and say I sent you …’

  It was her.

  ‘You're my Aunt Evalia,’ he said.

  She was not really his aunt. But there had been a time when she had told him he could call her that.

  ‘What? Who are you, boy?' Her eye fell on his hands.

  ‘What have you got there?’

  She came closer, and he opened his grip to show her the white stones. She picked one out, and turned it in her long fingers as though she could not believe what she was seeing.

  ‘Angels!’ she exclaimed softly, staring at him. ‘Is it – Ambrose?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘But – what's happened to you? You're a skeleton! Have you been ill? Where's your mother?’

  He juggled the stones into the crook of an arm, so that he could reach one shaking hand inside his shirt. He drew out the little roll of paper that she had given him in the last moments of leaving. Aunt Evalia broke the twine around it and read it. There were only two lines of writing. Ambrose saw her lips form an exclamation.

  ‘Is she coming after you?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ he said.

  He looked at the ground before his feet, and waited to be asked how he knew. He sensed her eyes on him, her mouth parting to press him further. He felt so weak that he thought questions would crumple him up altogether.

  Perhaps she saw that.

  ‘We must get you up to the house,’ she said. ‘When did you last eat?’

  ‘This morning,’ said Ambrose.

  That was true. The old man in the fishing hut had given him a drink of water and a half-loaf of bread before they got into the boat together. And there had been fruit and another loaf at the same hut the night before. There had also been cheese, but his stomach had been weak after days of eating only berries, and he had felt sick at the smell of it.

  ‘Look at his feet, mam,’ said the other woman. ‘He can't walk on those!’

  Aunt Evalia looked down, and frowned. ‘No. We must lift him. Help me, Vinney …’

  ‘I'm all right,’ he said, as they lifted him in arms that seemed so very strong.

  ‘Mercy of Angels,’ said the other woman. ‘You don't weigh a feather!’

  ‘Adam!’ called Aunt Evalia. ‘Adam! ’

  They carried him between them through the gate in the stockade. The little yard beyond it was all earthy, just as Ambrose remembered it, with straw spilling out of the low byres and scattering in wisps across the ground. The place reeked of animals that were not goats. An elderly man whom Ambrose did not know was brushing down a horse by the door of the main house. He looked up, astonished.

  ‘Where is Master Adam?’ Aunt Evalia called to him.

  ‘Gone down to the Creek Acre, my lady …’

  ‘Please find him and ask him to
come to the house as quickly as he can. You may take the horse. Thank you.’

  They carried him into the dimness of the long room of the house. Ambrose remembered the odours at once: the rushes that lay all over the floor; the hearth, which did not smell like the hearth at home because here they burned big logs cut from wood that did not grow in the mountains; and the hairy-wet reek of Raven, Uncle Adam's huge, black fighting hound, who lay in front of the hearth watching them with yellow eyes.

  Ambrose had always been afraid of Raven, because he was so big, and because he growled. He was growling now, a low, frightening sound, as the women carried Ambrose up to him. But Aunt Evalia spoke to him sharply, and the other woman poked at him with her foot, and Raven heaved himself shaggily from the hearth and stalked out of the room, as if he was not going to stay with any strangers that he wasn't allowed to bite.

  They put Ambrose down in one of the two big chairs by the hearth. The woman Vinney went off to find bread and water. Aunt Evalia knelt to peer at his feet.

  ‘You came the whole way on your own?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  After a moment he added: ‘I did get lost once. There was a bit I didn't remember.’

  There had been so many places he hadn't remembered. The mountain paths had risen to ridge after ridge, beyond which would lie bare, empty valleys, without any tree or crag that he could recognize from the time before. And beyond each valley there would be another ridge, which he might or might not reach before night came. And then there would be another night.

  ‘I didn't like the nights so much,’ he said.

  ‘My dear … you're here, and that is what matters. But you were lucky it was not winter.’ Her long, clean fingers probed at his scabbed and filthy soles, and at the swollen tendon in his heel.

  ‘Ow!’ he said, and jerked his foot away. He couldn't help it. It hurt.

  ‘How long is it since the pains started?’

  Ambrose shrugged. ‘I don't know. After the first day, I think.’

  He had not known, when he had set out, what would happen to his shoes, and then to the feet within them; just as he had not realized how hungry he was going to become, or how hard it was going to be to sleep in the cold nights, on rocky ground with no blanket but the unmeasurable darkness full of sounds.

  Aunt Evalia murmured to herself, and nodded. He could not remember her ever being angry or surprised before, but she seemed surprised now. Maybe she would be angry as well. Mother might have been angry, especially about the damage to his shoes. But he did not see what else he could have done. There had not been a donkey to ride this time. And he had had to keep going. He had kept going because he had known that he must find his way to Chatterfall.

  And he had known that he would find his way, because it was the only place there was to go to.

  ‘Vinney!’ Aunt Evalia called. ‘We will need more water, and bandages. And – yes,’ she said to Ambrose, as she rose to her feet. ‘I am afraid these must have salt. And salt!’ she called again.

  Vinney came back, bringing bread and fruit and water, and promised him broth when the pot should be ready. They washed his feet, and it smarted. Then Vinney took a palmful of salt from a small sack and Aunt Evalia put her hands around his ankles.

  ‘This will hurt,’ Aunt Evalia said. ‘But you must bear it.’

  It hurt more than anything Ambrose had ever known. He howled and tried to jerk his feet free. White stones fell from his lap and scattered over the floor as he reached down to snatch at her wrists, but she held him and spoke to him while Vinney rubbed the stuff mercilessly into his ragged soles. By the time they finished he was sobbing. Aunt Evalia lifted a bowl of dark liquid to his lips. It smelled strong, and sour.

  ‘What is it?’ he said, still wincing.

  ‘Wine. It will help the pain. Drink it.’

  He did not like the taste. And when he had finished his feet seemed to be stinging as badly as ever. But he could look around him at Uncle Adam's long hall, while Vinney began to load the pot with vegetables and herbs and – yes – bits of meat, to make his mouth water.

  ‘It will be a while before it's ready,’ Evalia said to him. ‘But there's bread and fruit on the tray.’

  ‘Thank you,’ he said.

  ‘We need Adam,’ said Aunt Evalia. ‘Where is he?’

  The bread and fruit were at Ambrose's elbow. But he did not reach for them straight away. He remembered that he was no longer moving, and what Mother had told him to do whenever he stopped to rest. He leaned forward, and began to place the white stones, which had scattered on the rushy floor, one after another in a circle around his chair.

  When he had finished, he looked up.

  Aunt Evalia was watching him. There was a new expression on her face, as if she had suddenly been told very bad news. He wondered if she knew what the stones were, and what it was they kept away. Then he remembered that it had been Aunt Evalia and Uncle Adam who had helped to hide him from his father, and that the room where the monster had appeared in his dream had been at Chatterfall.

  ‘What have you seen, Ambrose?’ she asked.

  He shook his head. ‘I haven't seen anything.’

  He hadn't seen anything. But he had heard things, on his journey out of the mountains: things that blundered in the nights around where he lay. He had listened with his limbs locked and his heart hammering, staring at the darkness for the shape that had moved in his nightmare; but nothing had come close enough for him to see. And nothing had stopped him getting to Chatterfall. So perhaps it had only been wild beasts after all.

  Anyway, he was here now.

  Aunt Evalia looked over her shoulder. The room behind her was empty. Vinney had gone out into the yard. She crouched down beside Ambrose and lowered her voice.

  ‘Ambrose, where is the Prince Under the Sky?’

  He looked away.

  ‘Ambrose,’ she said again. ‘I can see you are tired, and upset. You can tell me your story when you are ready. But I need to know this now. Where is he?’

  ‘I don't know,’ he mumbled. ‘He'll be out, but I don't know where.’

  When she said nothing, he added: ‘They can't get me. The stones keep them away.’

  She looked at the white stones he had laid around him. A frown gathered on her face.

  ‘There used to be more than this,’ she said gently.

  ‘I lost some,’ he said.

  He had spilled them several times, especially on that first day when he had had so many to carry, and had run and run without daring to stop and search for any he dropped. And then later he had been so tired, and hungry. It had been hard to count them all, and know how many he had.

  ‘It doesn't matter,’ he added again. ‘They keep him away.’

  He was trying to sound brave. He wanted to reassure her, and himself, that it would all be all right. He had been horribly afraid, but now he had got here. So it would be all right.

  He knew, of course, that eight stones were not very many at all – not enough to protect Aunt Evalia, or Uncle Adam, or Vinney, or anyone else but him if the Things came. But he didn't know what the answer to that was. He was exhausted, hurt, and hungry. It was difficult to think.

  All at once Aunt Evalia knelt and put her face within inches of his own. Her hands were on his shoulders.

  ‘Ambrose,’ she said.

  Her voice was level. But her fingers gripped him tightly.

  ‘These pebbles may help. They can keep his creatures away. We must pray that they will. But remember that he is very subtle. Murder is the least of what he does. If he is your enemy – and he is – then there are many ways he can attack you. And whatever else diverts him, he will not forget about you. You must not forget, either. You must watch for him, all the time. And remember that he is often very hard to see. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Watch all the time, Ambrose. It's important.’

  ‘Yes – I know – yes.’ He didn't want to think about it. He had watche
d, or tried to watch, all the long journey. He thought he had barely slept. Now he was here. He wanted to rest, and eat, and rest. And she wasn't letting him. He covered his face with his hands.

  Aunt Evalia put her arms around him and gave him a squeeze.

  ‘Maybe we should not say any more until you're stronger,’ she said. ‘You're here, and we can help you. Remember that. And we'll be having supper soon. See if you can sleep a little now.’

  He drew a long, shaky breath, and nodded. Then he bent down in his chair and began to rearrange the stones around him. He moved one a few inches to the left, adjusted another, looked at them, and put the first one back almost where it had been. So he went on around the ring. When he got back to the first one he started again. This time he did not finish. He shifted in the big wooden chair and pillowed his head on his arm. It was all so much more warm and comfortable than the rocks on which he had lain for a fortnight. The wine was stealing on his brain, and he was feeling sleepy.

  He slept all that night, and most of the next day, lying huddled among his stones on a makeshift pallet by the fire. They roused him to eat, and murmured to him, and he fed and lay down again without ever having woken properly. Someone came and bandaged his feet, which brought back the pain. He protested sleepily, and people murmured to him again. When they had finished they went away. The fire was warm, and his pillow soft, and he lay for hours, feeling as weak as a sack of bones, and did not stir.

  Once, when he lifted his head from his pillow, he saw Aunt Evalia standing on the far side of the room, before the wooden chest that the house used as an altar. On the wall above the chest was a hanging cloth, with four great faces embroidered in it, like people, but with flaming hair, halos and staring eyes that pierced into the room to see everything that happened in the house. They were the Angels: Michael the Warrior, Raphael and Gabriel, and Umbriel with the book in which all things were written. Aunt Evalia's hands were open as she stood before them. She seemed to be praying. Watching her reminded him of his mother, and the way she had prayed at home.