The Widow and the King

by John Dickinson

  ‘Oh, there's no one for me,’ said Dapea, cheerfully. ‘And I'd have none as would stoop so low as to want me.’

  ‘No? Not with all these handsome officers and sergeants that we feed here? Or what about …’ Sophia put her head on one side, pretending to think. ‘What about these scholars – merchants’ sons and the like coming to the school from all over the Kingdom? One of them might take you to a fine place.’

  ‘Same answer again, mam. And they're too young.’

  ‘Some are, some are not. Have you looked at the older men? There's that fellow Tadle, for one …’

  ‘Oh no, mam! He's a drunk!’

  ‘That's hardly fair. But if you don't like him there's …’ Again she pretended to think. ‘What's-his-name – the one you said told stories. Chawlin.’

  She tossed his name into the room as lightly as she would toss a cloth into the trunk that Dapea was packing for her. But she thought that Dapea looked at her, and she glanced hurriedly away.

  ‘Pleasant enough,’ said Dapea. ‘But he's never amounted to much, has he?’

  ‘That's hardly fair, either,’ said Sophia, cursing herself silently. ‘Well, what about – what about Jehan the gatesergeant? Is he manly enough for you?’

  ‘Oh, mam – he's ancient! Spare me!’

  ‘You're very cruel to them all, Dapea.’

  Had she given herself away? Perhaps not, this time – but only by a hair's-breadth. If she mentioned his name again in Dapea's hearing, her maid would be instantly suspicious. And if she uttered it to anyone in a tone that was the slightest bit wrong, they would know. So Sophia clamped her jaw shut and kept Dapea furiously busy for the rest of the morning, to make sure that the girl did not have time to wonder.

  It was one thing to have a secret fantasy about a man. It was quite another to find herself thinking more and more about him, and to spend hours wondering what he thought of her. For it did seem that she was seeing him more often – even if it was just that she was noticing him now when before she had not. She would turn round, and there he would be – in a passageway, or sitting with a group of other scholars, or helping in some household task. Perhaps he would avoid her glance, and she would pass on, fuming inwardly at the impossible gulf of custom and station between them. But sometimes he might look up, and their eyes would meet for an instant, across a courtyard or a crowded room; and she would be sure – sure – that he was pleased that she was there, and would have spoken to her if only they could have been alone. Then they would both turn away, as if other matters drove them.

  And what was he? Why didn't people like Dapea see him as she did? Was she deluding herself about him? Surely not. But if he had the quality she saw, why would he be hiding it? Could he be a secret enemy? A spy?

  Or what if … what if he was the kind of man who would catch the affections of the Widow's daughter deliberately, and then kidnap her for ransom or worse?

  Oh, don't be silly, she said to herself. If he had wanted that, he would never have had a better chance than the day they met on the roadside. Yes, it was risky. But it was not that sort of risk. She could manage it. And after their rescue of the boy-scholar they shared something that no one else knew about. He had become a part of her secret self. Surely he must know that. Maybe knowing it would change him.

  And so the thoughts went on, around and around in her head. And the less she could speak with him, the wilder they became.

  Sometimes her feeling was so strong that she thought all the world would see it. And they must not. For Hestie and the Widow and all her counsellors would banish him at once if anyone guessed what she felt. No one, no one at all in the house, could be allowed to know. So she made rules with herself. She tried not to see him every day. If she managed somehow to pass close to him, she would let at least one day go by before setting out to see him again. And only once a week – well, maybe once every two or three days – would she look for a chance to talk with him alone.

  Then she found that he would be among the scholars on the winter progress.

  Her first instinct was to shout and turn cartwheels down the corridors. He'd be there – in the same party as she, for the length of six weeks. They could see each other every waking hour! She could find any number of chances to speak with him!

  Her next thought was that the Widow would also be in the party, and even though Hestie would not be going, there would be plenty of officers and counsellors and other busybodies. How could Sophia pass six weeks under their noses without anyone suspecting?

  What was he thinking of, putting himself forward like this?

  At last she saw him in a corridor, managed to distract her escort with an errand, and caught up with him in time to ask. But all he did was laugh. He said (unconvincingly, she thought) that he had wanted to keep an eye on Luke, and also to see the manor of Ferroux, because it had once been one of the most ancient houses of the Kingdom.

  ‘Now I'm going to have to sit through every manor court we hold on the tour,’ Sophia complained, ‘to show everyone that I'm being good.’

  ‘You've no reason to behave any way other than you would,’ he said solemnly. ‘But all the manors will come to you one day; or to your husband. You will learn more in the courts than if you sit listening with us, perhaps.’

  ‘Don't talk to me about husbands!’

  He laughed again, and she was angry with him. Surely he knew she wanted him to talk about his feelings for her; and yet he had not.

  Travel meant discomfort. Luxuries had to be left behind. Boots and clothes became caked with mud. Bodies ached after long days on the road. Nights were cold or crowded. Even the Widow's greater keeps and castles struggled to find space for a full third of the house of Develin when it came. Some places, like the keep at Gisbore, endured the cavalcade for a week; others, the small manors and the villages, for no more than a day or two. Sophia resented those little two-roomed houses, where the Widow would sleep in one and she in the other, with Dapea lying on the narrow floor, armed men pacing at her window, and everyone else scattered under village roofs or canvas within two stones' throw of where she lay. Then the darkness seemed close, and the snorts and snores of sleepers were loud, and she felt that she could not stir or even sigh in her bed, because the Widow would hear her from the next room, and guess what thoughts were passing through her daughter's head.

  Still, Develin and its encircling walls could wait for her return. There were fresh sights for her eyes every day – hills, woods, villages, the people in and around them, the dogs that barked and frisked as the riders came in. She saw Chawlin, walking in the cavalcade, sitting with other scholars around some master or, in some out-of-the-way moment, showing the boy Luke how to use a quarterstaff. He was alive, and close, and she was alive, too. And each morning brought new things, and new sights to see.

  In the mild air of a December afternoon she approached the circle of scholars where they sat in a meadow, under a broad tree. She was in a good mood because the manor-hearing had ended early, and she was not going to have to spend any more of her day in that packed, reeking barn while the Widow dealt with millrights and water-rights and harvest-dues, and all the people crowded around to see their lady and hear what she had to say.

  She could see Chawlin, sitting cross-legged among the scholars with his back to her. Of course she could not do what she most wanted to do, which was to go and sit next to him. But with Dapea at her shoulder she picked her way around the circle until she could settle on a great root almost opposite, so that she could look across at him (and he at her, if he liked) as if it were the most natural thing in the world. There, with her back to the trunk, she faced out over the river-meadows and the low buildings of the manor at which they were staying as if she were a queen in a small court of her own.

  Father Grismonde stood in the middle of the circle. He had broken off from something he was saying about the Angels while he waited for her to sit down. He seemed to think she had taken rather long about it.

  ‘My lady honours u
s with her presence,’ he grumbled. ‘We were grieved to be without it this morning.’

  ‘I was at the manor court, master,’ she answered, remaining seated.

  ‘Indeed. And it is of justice that we are speaking now.’

  Father Grismonde, it seemed, was not in a good mood at all.

  ‘And whom,’ he asked, still grumbling, ‘whom did the Widow's justice serve today?’

  Sophia blinked. That was an improper question, surely – even when it came in debate, and from one of the Widow's masters.

  ‘Why – those who received it, sir.’

  ‘Did it? Did it indeed? Tell us then, of those who received it.’

  Sophia frowned. The truth was that she had paid no more attention to the details of the hearings than she did to Father Grismonde's sermons. For most of the time she had been counting warts and missing teeth among the villagers.

  ‘There were two families that won redress against the manor mill for short shrift. Then there was a complaint among the villagers about who had the right to fish which part of the stream. And …' She hesitated, trying to remember. ‘The rest were fines, mostly.’

  ‘Of course. And who received them?’

  ‘The manor lord, sir.’ And the Widow would have a share. They would all know that.

  ‘So – some small good done, and profits to the judges. And perhaps my lady can tell us of the case at Thale, two days since.’

  Angels! Why this inquisition? They would all know about Thale, anyway. Unlike most cases, that one had been interesting.

  ‘The manor of Thale is in dispute, master. The former lord's cousin claims it as inheritance-right. But a knight from Gisbore asserts that his father was wrongly dispossessed of it.’

  ‘And the Widow's ruling?’

  ‘That it is vacant, sir, and for her to dispose of at her pleasure.’ It seemed perfectly fair to Sophia. The more vacant manors in Develin, the better. She was already keeping a list of them in her head. Land was what made a knight. She had begun to have ideas about who that knight might be.

  The urge to look across to where Chawlin sat was very strong.

  ‘So!’ snapped the priest. ‘Do we learn from this that neither claimant had a right to the manor?’

  What under Heaven was biting him? Was he still smarting at her from the Council last month?

  ‘So my mother has ruled, master.’

  ‘And why should she have ruled thus?’

  ‘In her wisdom, sir,’ she said carefully.

  You could think what you liked about the Widow's justice. (Sophia had seen the poor court-clerks knitting their brows and shaking their heads just slightly each time the Widow went against their advice). But no one, not even old Grismonde, would dare fault a judgement once it had been given, surely. It was time for him to shut up.

  ‘Of course I do not mean that better earthly justice exists,’ the priest muttered. ‘I know no other lord that judges so fairly …’

  Hypocrite, snarled Sophia in her mind.

  ‘But indeed!’ Grismonde went on, speaking now to the whole circle. ‘If this justice we see is the best there is, then we may learn from it what justice itself truly is as men practise it!

  ‘I asked – whom does this justice serve? To the judge go the fines. To the judge goes the manor – no doubt in time to be restored to whichever claimant promises most in arms or dues.

  ‘More, to the judge go the eyes of all who are judged. We know that a lord who does not travel and give justice in his lands risks losing them – whether to his own tenants, to a powerful neighbour, or to a simple adventurer who arrives of a morning with a sword and a loud voice to make the landsmen listen.

  ‘So justice serves the earthly lord more than any of the people who are judged.

  ‘Look around at these barns and fields. What do we see? They are the Widow's, because she judges them. Is this the justice of the Angels?’

  What's this? thought Sophia. He can't – he can't be preaching rebellion against the Widow! What is he doing?

  Around her she felt the stillness of the other scholars. They were staring at Grismonde, fascinated by the sight of a master suddenly abandoning all discretion.

  What was he going to say next? What was he going to do?

  ‘Look!’ said Grismonde.

  He's provoking us, Sophia assured herself. He wants a debate. He wants someone to answer him. But it wasn't going to be her. She had said enough already. And besides …

  Besides, what if he was right?

  The thought slipped as easily into her mind as if a voice had spoken it in her ear.

  What if he were right? And in a way, he was right. He was just saying the things they all knew without saying. And everyone talked so much about justice. And everyone talked so much about Kingship.

  And what if it was all lies?

  And so much of it was lies. Justice fed itself.

  Grismonde's finger shook as he pointed towards the buildings like the wing of a soaring hawk. His face was red. His voice trembled.

  ‘Look. What do you see?’

  Around her scholars shifted. Some were staring at the barns. Some were hanging their heads. No one wanted to catch Grismonde's eye.

  Link by link, the thoughts in her head supplied the words that Grismonde had not spoken.

  If this is justice, then what is truth? What is Heaven? What is the King? What can we hope for, if justice is a lie?

  Link by link, like chains lifting a trapdoor down to a dark pit. If justice was a lie, thought Sophia, then the truth would destroy everything.

  ‘Master …’

  She looked up.

  It was the scholar Luke, of all people. He was on his feet.

  Grismonde had swung upon the boy, beard bristling. Sophia saw Luke swallow, and (as if by afterthought) touch his heart.

  ‘Master – I see that the Widow's barns have roofs on them.’

  Grismonde's face was like thunder.

  ‘What?’ he barked. ‘If a barn has no roof then it is not a barn, surely?’

  Luke wavered, but kept to his feet.

  ‘Then … where there is no justice given, there are no barns?’

  Images shot into Sophia's mind: of fields – these fields – blackened and destroyed by raiders. It had happened so many times: baron raiding baron – even village the next village. It had not happened here.

  That was what Luke meant. It had not happened here; because here there was still the Widow to judge over them.

  ‘Ho!’ cried Chawlin suddenly, and clapped his hands in applause. So did someone else. Some of the scholars were grinning ruefully. It was simple, their faces said. It was really very simple, the moment you looked at it the right way.

  ‘And – and where a lord pardons,’ Luke went on, ‘he's not taking anything, is he?’

  Slowly, the anger faded from Grismonde's face.

  ‘No indeed …’ he said. ‘No, he does not.’ He drew his sleeve across his brow.

  ‘No. Fair answers, boy, as far as they go. Good.’

  He cleared his throat.

  ‘And we have digressed. Let me return to the justice of the Angels.’

  He drew breath, and fell back into the steady cant of a master who lectures a sleepy class.

  ‘It is told that Umbriel keeps a great book, and his pen is witness to all we do. Suppose, now, that we could peer over the Angel's shoulder, and see his page before us. Every thought, everything seen and unseen that weighs on the least of our deeds. How should we read a book in which all things are written … ?’

  Long after the ring had dispersed, Ambrose remained sitting beneath the tree. In the distance he could see people moving among the village buildings and by the big wooden lodge where the Widow was staying. But he would not go down to them. Not now.

  He did not dare.

  The sun was low and the colours were beginning to fade. Grey plumes of smoke drifted from the huts. A chill had crept into the air. Around him lay the leaves that winter had stripped from the bra
nches. They were brown and dead; but their shapes recalled the memory of the oak they had been. Among them his ring of five white stones nestled like travellers that had found good camping for the night. And he was going to stay within it for as long as he could.

  Still he could feel the forces that had beaten against him in the moment he had stood to speak. Fool! they had said, from every eye in the class. What can you say? Why interfere? Sit down. You are nothing!

  His fingers were trembling.

  I knew he was here, he thought. The Heron Man. And he was.

  I didn't see him, but I heard him. Justice and lies – that's what he was saying to Grismonde. He was saying it to all of them.

  And I stopped him.

  ‘Is he right in his head, do you think?’ Sophia asked.

  She was sitting beside Chawlin in the shadow of one of the wagons, sheltered from view by the great wheel and by the coming obscurity of night. From the manor house behind them rose the clatter and smell of supper preparing for the Widow and her closest counsellors. Sophia knew that she would soon have to get ready to appear at table. She would have to start looking for Dapea, before Dapea came to find her.

  Chawlin stirred. ‘Luke? I don't know. Am I right in mine? Are any of us?’

  ‘It was a serious question.’

  ‘I know.’ He rasped his finger across his stubbly chin. ‘He's certainly less closed up than he was. Did you know it was his birthday while we were in Thale? Some of us went and begged honey cakes so we could have a celebration. At the end he stood up and thanked us like a gentle-born. So he is thirteen now – not far from being a man. And there's always been a lot to him that we don't see. He walked out of the mountains by himself, for one thing. I know that country. That would have tested anyone …’

  ‘But is he?’

  ‘As I said, I don't know. Either he does not want to speak or he has been told to keep his mouth shut. He's lost his family. Then something bad happened to him after he came out of the hills. If you get that far, and think you are safe, and then it goes wrong … Yes, it may have unhinged him. He has that way of looking at you as if there might be someone standing beside you. Ugh! I don't like that. But … well. You saw today. Of all of us, who was it that answered? And it was a good thing for Grismonde that he did.’