The Widow and the King

by John Dickinson

  The child, who could only have been six years old, watched them through the smoke and never said a word. Perhaps she had never seen armoured knights before.

  Knight, he corrected himself. Aun was a knight. He wasn't. He did not know what he was.

  ‘What was the old lord like?’ Ambrose asked suddenly. ‘The last lord of Tarceny, before the stewards?’ He felt Aun glance sharply at him.

  ‘Fair, as I heard,’ said the man.

  ‘More than fair, sir,’ said his wife. ‘There was good law then, and no brigands in the March either.’

  ‘Better no law than a lord's law,’ said the man.

  ‘That's not so,’ said his wife. ‘When each time there's a horseman on our stream I think they'll put a rope round your neck – for me and the goat and a bucket of grain?’

  ‘That's foolish,’ said the man, and they both fell silent again in front of their knightly lodgers.

  Ambrose asked no more questions. He watched the fish blacken over the tiny flames and let his thoughts turn as slowly inside his head.

  After their meal he made a trade with the woman. He gave her his scholar's shirt in exchange for a thin, black blanket and a rag of pale cloth. Then he begged from her the use of a needle and thread. He settled himself by the fire. Gradually the household went to bed around him, sleeping in huddles against the walls. He took his time over what he was doing. He did not want Aun to ask him about it until he was done. Let him suppose that it was an excuse to the household to be awake, and watching.

  Aun went to sleep at once. The man and the woman lay still and made so little noise for so long that Ambrose was sure they were awake, distrustful of the strangers under their roof. He was sorry, because he did not want them to be afraid. But he knew that nothing he said would help them. His fingers worked slowly in the firelight, cutting the black cloth roughly into a broad rectangle with a knife that Aun had given him at the start of their journey. Then he took the pale rag and laboriously, cut by cut, ripped two rough circles from it, each as wide across as his spread hand. From each circle he cut a piece away, about the size of two of his thumbs together. At last he fumbled in the firelight for the needle and thread.

  Stitching, especially for ornament or show, was not man's work. But Ambrose had learned enough to mend clothes and blankets in his mountain home, where even his child's hands were a help to his mother, busy with a hundred household tasks. And a scholar's life at Develin had been punctuated by the need to darn or mend his few things with whatever he could beg or borrow. It would have been better if he had had more light to see by. But these threads would not have to strain against muscle or stand the drag of skin, day in, day out. All they needed to do was to hold one piece of cloth to another, for show.

  Gradually, carefully, he stitched one of his two circles into the centre of his black cloth, working obstinately on as the firelight dimmed and his eyes ached, and going over and over his stitches at the end to make sure that the line would hold. Then he found and placed two more logs on the fire, not for warmth but for light to finish his job.

  Aun was asleep. The man and the woman were asleep. Across the room the girl had raised her head, and was looking at him with eyes that flung back the firelight. The last time he had seen eyes gleam like that had been when the monsters crowded upon him at Ferroux. Now it was a child's face, small and calm, watching the world as if it were a puzzle that she would one day understand.

  He said nothing to her, but fumbled for his needle and thread again. It was not there. He had lost it in the dimness. He sighed, and began to feel around for it, spreading his hand flat on the earthy floor of the hut.

  ‘It's by your foot.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It's by your foot,’ the child whispered again.

  He found it and grunted his thanks.

  She went on watching him as he slowly stitched the second disc onto the reverse side of the black cloth. He would look up now and again and she was still awake, lying propped on one arm among her blankets with her head raised to follow what he was doing.

  It came to him that her home, although only one room and built of wood, was not so very different from the house in the mountains where he had lived with his mother, sharing all the chores as far as he was able to. It was far more like it than the busy world of Develin where each task had its own man, and learning itself was considered a task. He wondered what this child saw as she watched him crouched by the fire, and remembered how only a few months ago he had sat in the court at home watching a strange knight, who had travelled in so many places and seen so many things. That man had become the Wolf – one of the enemy. Why should this child suppose Ambrose to be a friend?

  He held up his cloth in both hands. It was now a small banneret, with the white disc stitched into the centre of either face. He would need to find a long pole or stick tomorrow to tie the corners to.

  ‘There's a piece missing,’ whispered the child with firelight in her eyes.

  He turned it in his hands and looked at the broken shapes of the discs on either side of his banner.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘There's supposed to be.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It's the moon. You are looking at the moon on a dark night. But there's something between you and it, so you can't see all of it. That's what that black bit means. I don't know what it is, yet, but I'll think about it. You should go to sleep now.’

  She must have wanted to know more than that. But she laid her head down obediently. In the shadow of her blankets he could no longer see if her eyes were open. She did not speak again.

  He wondered, for a moment, if this was another angel. Then he thought no, it was not. Or, she had as much of the Angels in her as there was in any human. He did not know her name – or the names of her parents either. He must remember about names. He could never speak with people properly if he did not use their names.

  And when he spoke with the enemy? With Paigan Wulframson?

  He sat, fingering the white stone his mother had given him. He did not think that the enemy had found him yet. He hoped it would not be here, hiding, with these people around him. When he met the enemy he wanted it to be because he had sought the Heron Man out face to face, as he had almost tried to do that afternoon.

  Mother would say that even to want that much was dangerous. But he still wanted it.

  He shivered. It was going to be colder, he realized, now that he had parted from his shirt. It would be some hours before he could wake Aun and take a rest himself. He picked up his new banner and drew it round his shoulders. Since he had sold his shirt for it, there was no reason why it could not be an extra blanket for him tonight. It was meant to bring him help, after all. It could start by helping him to keep warm.

  The man and woman watched blank-eyed in the morning as he tied his banner to a long stick and slung it from his shoulder. They must have known what it meant. He wondered if they would tell their child, and if so, what they would say. He thought it more likely that they would argue among themselves again about whether it was better to have a lord than take their chances day by day with whoever might come to their door.

  Aun looked darkly at the flag, but said nothing until they had set off and left the hut behind them in its clearing. Then he reined his war-horse over to tower above Ambrose.

  ‘That is not my banner.’

  Ambrose knew what he meant. If people saw a knight riding with a ragged boy who carried a standard, they would think that the standard was the knight's. And Aun must have hated Ambrose's father, like everyone else.

  But he was not going to be stared down this time.

  ‘No. It's mine.’

  He was expecting Aun to shout at him; instead, Aun seemed to take him seriously.

  ‘So. But in raising that standard you make two claims, not one,’ he said.

  ‘I'm telling people who I am.’

  ‘Who you are is the point; and more, who you could be. Your father was not just lord of this March. Nor was he the firs
t of his house to be crowned King. People might wonder if he will be the last.’

  King? It was a king who had done what had been done at Develin.

  ‘I am not going to be King.’

  ‘No? The land is still looking for one. No king who rules like Velis can be secure. If you do not wish to be King you will need to be sure that all men know it.’

  ‘I am not going to be King. I'm just tired of hiding. And if people are going to help me, they must know who I am.’

  Ambrose knew that Aun did not agree, and was relieved when he did not answer. But at their midday halt Aun astonished him by unbuckling his own short sword in its scabbard and fastening it to Ambrose's saddle. Then he drew it, and handed it hilt-first to Ambrose, who stared at the faded oak leaf cut upon its pommel.

  ‘I shall want this back in time,’ he said. ‘But it came from your mother's house, a long time ago. And of all my tools it is the most suited for you.’

  There and then Aun made Ambrose stand before a mountain yew and cut at it with the sword, so that he could learn how to manage its weight and deliver the strokes that could break a mail-suit at the neck or cripple an armoured knee.

  ‘Should we not fight with each other?’ Ambrose asked as the iron swirled in his grip and dented the roots of the yew. It seemed much less heavy than it had last season, when he had lifted it with his half-starved arm from Aun's saddle.

  ‘Better to wait until you have learned how to use that thing,’ Aun answered.

  ‘I want us to fight each other.’

  ‘All right,’ said Aun after a few moments.

  Aun put on his helmet and shield and unlaced from his saddle a short, cruel-looking mace. And fight they did. It was slower than the quick flash of staves with Chawlin, because the sword was still clumsy in Ambrose's grip, and because they both knew that even a training-hurt might be serious on this wilderness journey. But Ambrose was happy as he panted and staggered and hacked at Aun, and tried the tricks that Chawlin had taught him. He felt he was becoming more dangerous. He wanted to be dangerous, after running for so long.

  When they had finished, he cut a small strip of black off his banner and folded the last white stone into it. Then he tied it tightly to the sword, where the hilt and blade met. That way he could use it to guard himself from the creatures of his enemy, and then strike at them in a single movement. Chawlin had told him often that the trick was to move from guard to strike in the blink of an eye.

  And now he had the Oak, and the Moon, in one. Perhaps that was the piece that was missing, he thought. Perhaps the shadow on the disc should be the leaf of his mother's house. He could make it so, when he had time.

  They mounted again. The path, a thread of stones and beaten earth, unravelled towards the heart of Tarceny. The stick of his makeshift banner bounced lightly at his shoulder as his mule moved forward. He could hear Aun's great horse, old Stefan, picking up the pace. The skies were clouded, but broken with blue and with gleams of sun.

  He laughed, and rode north; and his ragged banner flew behind him.

  Terrible things happened, and then wonderful things happened.

  Not long ago Sophia would have called the dress that Chawlin bought for her terrible, because it was rough and stained and badly stitched. She had never worn anything like it before. But once it was on, she could look down at herself and imagine that she was some miller's daughter, living a completely different life. The truth of who she had been was hidden, like the pearls and the silk. It was locked away inside her secret self, until the time when she would choose to remember Develin, and how it had ended. Now she could be alive.

  And never in her life had she felt so alive. Every day they travelled to a place she had not seen before. They drifted downriver in the punt, stopping at villages to join companies of pilgrims and pedlars for a meal or a night's rest. She liked the dirty lodging houses, and she liked them all the more for being crowded with fish-wives and journey men and clerks and tricksters and the hundred other sorts that still moved upon the river and roads. She woke with flea-bites, and scratched them, and laughed. Even when her hands got sore from her turns at the puntpole she liked it, for Chawlin stroked her fingers and dressed the blisters, and she laughed again when he scolded her for not taking care. And one afternoon they rounded a bend in the river, and there before her was a broad estuary running out to the great lake of Derewater, that stretched the length of the western side of the Kingdom. She had never seen so much water all in one place before: a great, flat plain of wavelets, sparkling in the sun and so far across that the opposite shore was lost in haze.

  ‘We should have a story to get us across the lake,’ Chawlin said. ‘I think we should be a brother and sister from Tuscolo, and our father can be a merchant who wants us to try to find some of his old trading partners in the March … What's the matter?’

  Sophia had started to laugh again.

  ‘Who do you think will believe us?’ she said.

  ‘About trading with the March? It used to be …’

  ‘No. That we're brother and sister!’

  They both laughed, then. And Sophia laughed so much that she got the hiccups, and Chawlin put his arm around her shoulders and kissed her, because he said it was a good cure for hiccups, and …

  And this was love. When they lay together – under a bush or on a narrow pallet in a crowded boarding house, it didn't matter. All the meaning in the world found itself in the press of his body upon hers. And her head was pillowed upon his arm and his breath blew like a warm wind in her ear, and she knew that whatever else the world had done to her he was going to be there again and again and as much as she wanted, and she wanted him for ever.

  ‘You save me,’ she said, wrapping him in her arms.

  ‘We were lucky, that's all.’

  ‘No, I mean you save me now. Every day.’

  He laughed softly at her. But it was true. Whatever she had done, he was the answer. For all her misery and failure and betrayals at Develin he was the answer, because he loved her.

  So they played, for each other and for the world, that they were man and wife; although, as Chawlin said, few wives that he had seen went about finding their husbands little gifts of flowers, or brought him water that he had not asked for, unless they were still in the very first days of their marriage. And he had heard none – Sophia – that called their man ‘husband’, in the way that she so wished to do.

  She loved him. She loved him so much. She had never had feelings like these before.

  And he smiled, and teased her hair and let his breath linger on her skin. But he also spent much time thinking to himself, chin upon hand or with his fingers over his eyes, and he would not say what he was thinking.

  On the estuary they came to a small town, which even in these days saw numbers of pilgrims making their way down to the holy city of Jent. There Chawlin went up and down the waterside looking for a boat. Sophia stayed with the punt, waiting and talking with travellers and fishermen, trying this gambit and then that, until at last someone she had given up on an hour before came back unexpectedly to say that he would buy the punt at the lowest price that Chawlin had said they should sell it for. Then she bought some food and a little wine (for which she guessed she was over-charged) and found Chawlin at the last jetty before the lake, stowing sacks in an open boat that he had acquired. It seemed very small, for a journey on such a huge water, but Chawlin said it would be good enough if the weather held. They paid the quay-guard to watch the boat and she persuaded Chawlin to come onto the hillside above the town, to sip the wine while they watched the sun set.

  Chawlin sat in silence, looking at the gold light glaring upon the water and licking the under-bellies of the clouds with fire. She leaned against him, murmuring little thoughts now and again, but he answered only shortly and took mouthfuls from the flask. When he handed it to her she tasted it and decided that it was sourer than any wine she had known in Develin. But that was not the point. The point was that they had the freedom to drink
it together, here, and not worry about who saw them or what might be thought of what they were doing.

  And maybe – maybe they would stay out here together, if the night were warm enough, and love one another under the stars; and lie in each other's arms, and talk softly with the feel of skin against skin: the grass their pillow and all the world their bed.

  ‘So we leave the Kingdom tomorrow,’ she said.

  ‘The March is still part of the Kingdom. But yes, it will be beyond Velis's reach.’

  ‘How long before we can come to Hayley?’

  ‘A week, yet.’

  ‘Is it so far? I can see the mountains, I think.’

  Beyond the lake the horizon was black, and a little higher than it should be, as if the sun were falling into a low bank of thick cloud.

  ‘Yes. But Hayley is further north.’ He gestured with the bottle, looked at it, and took another sip. ‘The fastest way would be to sail straight up to the head of the lake before landing. But I'm no great sailor. So we'll take the shortest way across. I should be able to do that in a day. Then we'll follow the shore, at least as far as the harbour at Aclete. There are not many people there now, but it is the only place of any size over there.’

  She put her arm around him and kept her head on his shoulder. He was speaking fairly, but under his words she sensed a mood that had not been there before.

  ‘Is there something wrong?’ she asked.

  ‘It's – well, yes there is. I've had a shock, anyway. I met someone by the water. Or rather he – he came up to me.’

  The way he said came up made it sound as though there had been something very unpleasant about the way this stranger had appeared.