The Widow and the King

by John Dickinson

  Anything was better than sitting helpless inside the diminishing ring of stones. Only five now: too few, certainly, to wall the Heron Man back into his pool, supposing he could ever get there. Could five be enough to protect him, even? Perhaps they could, if he slept curled up. But that wasn't what he wanted. He wanted to hit back. Learning how would be a purpose of sorts.

  Chawlin was still frowning.

  ‘Well, first we must see you past this matter of the knife. If we can put that behind us … I could show you a little war-skill, perhaps. Not during lessons, or we'd both lose our places. And not in the house either. It would be better if we could meet down by the riverbank. There's a shelter there I use. The Widow may forbid it, if she hears of it. But she may not hear of it and she may not forbid it if she does. Have you used a sword before?’

  ‘Once. It was too heavy.’

  ‘Only once? When was that?’

  He was trying to find out about Ambrose again. Ambrose just shrugged.

  ‘It was on the way here.’

  Chawlin was about to ask something else, but the sound of voices in the little courtyard interrupted him. He crossed to the inner parapet, peered down, and sighed.

  ‘I thought so. They have come to look for you. And since they are here, we had better go down.’

  He heaved the trapdoor open and led the way down the turret stair.

  In the courtyard stood Father Grismonde, a stocky priest with a white beard whose normal duties were the teaching of Grammar and Dogma, and leading the Widow's house in prayer. There were two men-at-arms with him. Ambrose could tell by the stony way Father Grismonde looked at him that he had heard about the fight.

  Chawlin's hand was on his shoulder.

  ‘It'll be all right,’ he murmured. ‘At least, it should not be too bad. No one was hurt.’

  Father Grismonde said nothing as they came up. One of the men-at-arms took Ambrose by the elbow and led him towards the arch out of the courtyard. The other walked at his side. Behind, Chawlin fell in step with the white-bearded priest, speaking softly. Ambrose could not hear what was said. Chawlin was not being rebuked for missing lessons, anyway. He was asking a question. Father Grismonde answered him shortly.

  ‘Good luck, Luke.’ said Chawlin. ‘I'll come to see you at sundown, if they let me.’

  Ambrose turned to reply. He meant to thank Chawlin for staying with him.

  But beyond Chawlin, for a moment in a doorway, there was someone else.

  Who was that? A man in a robe?

  Someone else had been in the courtyard! Who?

  The man-at-arms was moving him on. Chawlin had smiled and turned away. Father Grismonde was frowning.

  Who had it been? Padry?

  Padry was away from the castle. He knew that.

  Denke, the Law-master? Or one of the masters that Ambrose did not yet know?

  Of course not, he thought wearily. Of course not.

  He had been there, all the time. And Ambrose hadn't seen him.

  The archway threw its shadow around him. The short tunnel echoed with the scraping of the men's feet upon stone. Ambrose's hand stole to the pebbles in his pouch.

  He had only five of them now.

  Sophia sat at her mother's feet, in the council chamber of Develin. Her dress weighed on her. Her hair was pulled tightly into place and heavy with jewels. She had made Dapea take special care over it that morning. She thought that all the counsellors were eyeing her secretly, wondering why she was there.

  Yes, why? Why am I doing this?

  Her throat was tight with nerves.

  The room was full. Most of the officers of the house were present. So were Father Grismonde, Pantethon the Master of Histories, and Denke the Master of Law. Only Sophia and the Widow were seated. The Widow's chair had no footstool, so they had dragged out the low wooden chest that normally rested against the wall to act as one. Sophia had tried the lid before she had sat down on it, because she had been afraid of pinching herself. It was locked. It always was. She knew the key lay in the hidden drawer in her mother's writing desk. She felt awkward, to be sitting there in the middle of the room, perched upon the secrets of Develin.

  Why was she doing this?

  On most council days she found something else to occupy her, just in case the Widow thought it time that she learned more about the business of the house. But that morning she had gone to her mother and asked permission to attend, saying (with some truth) that she was interested in the winter progress around the manors, which she had heard was to be discussed today.

  ‘Come and be welcome,’ the Widow had said shortly. ‘Speak if you have something to say. Otherwise listen, and learn what you can.’

  Sophia listened, and learned little. There was an hour of gloomy talk about the war between King Septimus and Velis. Everyone thought the news was very bad. Looking around, she guessed that quite a number of the counsellors still wanted the Widow to take sides against Velis, but none of them dared say so. Others seemed to think it was already too late.

  Then there was an interminable discussion about the progress: which of her manors the Widow and her followers would visit; the numbers of horses and guards that should come with them; and above all, which of the party would be able to sleep under a roof, and when – for no house in the Widow's lands but Develin itself could shelter all the cavalcade. The men talked round and round on very little things and never seemed to finish. Sophia wondered why her mother did not simply decide matters one way or the other, as she did at other times. But the Widow seemed listless today. She did not force herself upon the debate.

  Then someone re-opened the question of who would be in the party. From there, they began to discuss the scholars. Then someone else mentioned Luke.

  The direction of the talk changed at once, and the mood of the Council with it.

  ‘My lady, I regret it, but he is not fit to be at the school.’

  Sophia could feel her mouth going dry. They were coming to the moment.

  ‘How is he not fit?’ asked the Widow.

  She will not want to turn him out of the house, I think, Chawlin had said. She will look for a reason to keep him. If you can give her one, she may take it.

  ‘His attention is fitful,’ sighed Pantethon. ‘And it is plain that he likes not his masters …’

  ‘So different from my other scholars,’ the Widow murmured.

  ‘But it is Father Grismonde whom you must hear on this, my lady. There is a matter …’

  ‘Grismonde?’

  ‘My lady,’ said the white-bearded priest. ‘I own to being disappointed. When I first saw the boy, I thought he had an air of the unearthly, and indeed I wondered if we might have the seeds of one who would in time talk with Angels …’

  ‘Do you recruit still, sir? I thought our monasteries already over-full.’

  ‘However, my lady, it is now plain that his uncommonness is a plain corruption of the mind, and that it brings dangers to those near him.’

  ‘What! Then you should exorcize him, my friend.’

  ‘My lady jests. I have seen too many cases of madness in men to suppose that they are all the work of ill spirits …’

  Father Grismonde stood in the middle of the floor, with his white beard jutting and eye fixed on his mistress's eye. He knew that the Widow was trying to put him off. And plainly he was not going to let it happen … Not the sharpest wit, Chawlin had said. But a stickler for what he thinks is the truth … I doubt he will let it drop.

  Sophia's heart sank. She would have to say something for Luke.

  And what could she say?

  She looked helplessly around the room. She saw Hervan the chamberlain. He was watching Grismonde closely, as though the old priest was going to say something dangerous without realizing it.

  Hervan knew something about Luke that the others did not.

  If Hervan knew it, so must the Widow. What was it?

  ‘It is for Padry to approach me if he thinks a scholar has passed beyond remedy,’
said the Widow. ‘So far, I have heard nothing that might not be improved with a cane.’ ‘My lady will recall that she has sent Padry to Tuscolo in the hope of buying books before the war closes its gates. In the meantime, a serious matter has arisen, for which I have placed the boy in custody.’

  ‘Very well,’ said the Widow. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Some scholars took from him a pouch of pebbles, and threw it among them in sport. It should have been a harmless game, but he drew a knife …’

  ‘His?’

  ‘I do not know, my lady.’

  ‘If it is, it should be taken from him,’ said the Widow. ‘Knives may trim pens, but I will not have a scholar carry one if he thinks to use it on a fellow. And certainly he should be beaten for this. Now …’

  ‘Padry has already had him beaten, and he is no better,’ grumbled Father Grismonde.

  ‘My lady, if I may?’ said Hervan, the chamberlain.

  ‘Please, Hervan.’

  ‘It is of course for the masters to advise on good order in the school,’ said Hervan smoothly. ‘However, if this matter had arisen among the household, I should have asked first if any had been injured, and whether there had been intent to cause injury.’

  ‘By good fortune, there was no injury,’ said Grismonde. ‘As for intent …’

  ‘Then,’ said Hervan, overriding him, ‘perhaps the matter is not as grave as it first appeared.’

  ‘Indeed, Hervan,’ said the Widow. ‘Thank you.’

  Sophia relaxed slightly on her makeshift stool. The masters were losing. With luck she would not have to speak in front of the Council after all. She was a little sorry, now, that she would not be able to boast to Chawlin about how clever she had been. But mostly what she felt was relief.

  Father Grismonde was looking nonplussed.

  ‘My lady, I do not know how—’

  ‘Enough, Grismonde. You may beat the boy, but let it be.’

  ‘And if the trouble stems from the pebbles the boy carries, the pebbles should be taken from him as well.’

  Sophia looked up. Which counsellor had said that? She could not tell. But whoever it was had slipped their point in just as the matter was closing …

  ‘So be it. But I will not have him turned off. Enough.’

  And now it was closed. The Widow had not spoken so firmly all morning.

  Sophia's voice almost died in her throat. But not quite.

  ‘M-madam.’

  She craned backwards to look into the Widow's frown.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘May I speak on this?’

  The Widow did not let people argue when she had made a decision. But this was the first time Sophia had ever raised her voice in Council.

  The Widow sighed. ‘Quickly then.’

  Sophia paused. The thought of Chawlin's face, his feeling for this bewildered boy, surprised her with its strength.

  ‘First, I beg that you do not take these stones from him, madam. I believe that they are all he has left from his family, for whom he is grieving.’

  There was an intense silence. She could not see the faces of the counsellors; but there was an air in the room like – like ice. Fury, outrage, surprise: the Council – or someone at least – was staring at the back of her neck. (Why this? Why you? She could almost smell it.) The oil lamps hissed and spat thickly. She kept her eyes fixed on her mother.

  The Widow shrugged.

  ‘Very well. Aught else?’

  ‘It is said – it is said he mislikes his masters,’ said Sophia, astounded at herself. ‘I think it may be because he has not been served justly.’

  ‘How not?’

  ‘He was beaten for studying something he had not been set to study. But Padry was mistaken. It was not Luke who was looking at the text, but I.’

  There were murmurs around her. Strangely, the worst moment seemed to have passed.

  ‘Padry is not here to answer you,’ said the Widow. ‘But I had not heard that studying more than one had been set to study was a crime in my house, so long as the texts are not sullied or torn by the careless. What work was this?’

  ‘The lists of heraldry, madam.’

  ‘And what did you learn?’

  (Boldness, now, because if she lied they would know she was hiding something.)

  ‘The name of the company of horsemen who came to your gate a month since.’

  She saw her mother's face change. And Hervan's beside her.

  The Widow, and Hervan. What did they know?

  ‘They were from Tarceny,’ Sophia said clearly. ‘And, madam, I have a question that I wish to ask you.’

  Was she truly going to do this here? In front of all the Council?

  ‘Ask.’

  ‘Why you did not have them slain, and so avenge my father?’

  There was a moment of silence. Then the Widow sighed again. Perhaps she had been expecting – or fearing – something else. She looked to her counsellors.

  ‘Grismonde, perhaps?’ she said.

  Father Grismonde cleared his throat. For a moment Sophia hoped that the priest would still be cross enough to snub his mistress.

  ‘My lady, you know that in the school we allow three remedies for evil done. They are Faithfulness, Forgiveness, and Force …’

  The Widow nodded. Sophia groaned inwardly. The two of them were going to pretend to be friends again. And it was she who had given them the chance!

  ‘As with any remedy in medicine, each may apply in its own place,’ said Father Grismonde.

  ‘And each may be fatal if employed at the wrong time or in the wrong case. Among your masters there is dispute over which is greatest. Some will argue that it is Forgiveness, or Pardon, that should have primacy. I prefer the order in which I have given them …’

  This isn't about evil, Sophia thought angrily. This is about Father!

  ‘Yet there is no disagreement among us that Force is the least of the three,’ rumbled the old priest. ‘The most over-used, and the most like to add harm to harm. Each slaying leads to another slaying. If Man never forgave nor forgot, but pursued his enemies and the sons of his enemies and the servants of his enemies, the slaying would not cease until the last of us were slain. Every year, now, it seems to me that more die at the hands of men than are born from mothers’ wombs.’

  ‘Truth,’ said the Widow. ‘And still it continues. We have heard that Septimus fares at last to meet Velis, to what end we may all guess. And an innocent boy has been beaten in my house … Indeed,’ she went on, with a weariness in her voice that Sophia would only remember long afterwards, ‘I think sometimes that it were better we did nothing at all, for it seems no good comes of anything we do.

  ‘Well, enough of this. At least I may make amends to the boy Luke. We have agreed that there should be scholars among us when we make our winter progress. Let him be in their number. He is young for it, but if he is grieving still, a change may help him, and also help him to learn more care for his fellows.’

  ‘… And you were right,’ whispered Sophia, when she met Chawlin afterwards in the darkness of the keep stair. ‘You were right about everything! Even about him coming on the winter progress.’

  ‘Ah. I thought your mother might want an excuse to keep an eye on him.’

  ‘So who is he?’

  ‘I don't know. I have a guess. But as long as it is no more than a guess, it is maybe better not to talk about it. Anyway, you seem to have done well. In fact, you did very well.’

  That wasn't flattery. That was honest respect, and she loved him for it.

  ‘Training,’ she said, trying to sound dismissive.

  ‘More than training. It's a hard thing to re-open a matter in a debate like that, even when you know they have ended in the wrong place. I don't think another beating would have done him anything but harm.’

  ‘I even saved his pebbles for him,’ she giggled.

  ‘More to the point, you held your own in Council. Your mother will be pleased with you when she thinks of it.’

>   His praise, and the knowledge that they must part in an instant, lifted her. She stood on tiptoe on the step below his, and put her hands around the back of his neck.

  ‘I had good help,’ she said.

  ‘You …’

  ‘No, I'm going to.’ And she reached up to kiss him. She felt the scratch of tiny stubble-hairs on her lips.

  And he did not protest. He did not stammer or back away. She felt the sudden tension in him ease as she released him. He shook his head, unbelieving in the dimness of the stair.

  ‘So where did you come from?' he asked, almost of himself.

  Then there were feet on the stair below them. They parted abruptly, Sophia climbing, Chawlin going on down to meet, delay, and talk gaily with whoever it was that was coming up towards them.

  Sophia crossed her arms as she climbed, holding her elbows where his hands had caught her for a moment. She could almost feel his fingers still, through the heavy cloth of her council-dress. Something had happened: something new, different, unexpected. It had happened to both of them. They couldn't pretend it hadn't.

  And all the blood in her body seemed to be singing.

  XIII

  Winter Progress

  nd the day you're married, mam,’ Dapea chattered, as she folded another of Sophia's travelling gowns for the trunk, ‘we'll be packing like this and we'll never come back!’

  Sunlight filled Sophia's chamber, flooding in from the broad window. The pale walls and plain wood of the bed and wardrobe shone with it. The subtle golds and reds of her wall-hangings retreated in the uniform glow, as if they were embarrassed by the light.

  The house was humming. From the courtyard below rose the sounds of people calling, organizing, ordering wagons and bundles for the long winter tour of the Widow's estates. And all through the rooms around them other people were packing too: shouting, quarrelling, excited at the long-expected change of routine.

  ‘I shall not be married yet a while,’ said Sophia cheerfully. ‘Half the houses they might have matched me with have been broken. And half the rest are beyond forgiving.’

  ‘The time will come, nonetheless.’

  ‘I can wait,’ said Sophia. She chose three combs for the trunk, but left her best behind, because the chances of losing or damaging it during six weeks of travelling around the Widow's manors were too high for comfort. ‘Indeed,’ she said with some malice (because she knew Dapea loved the thought of new places), ‘you may be married yourself by then, and tied to a farm and a row of babies in Develin.’