The Widow and the King

by John Dickinson

  ‘Your lordship.’

  It was the grey-bearded townsman, standing at Ambrose's stirrup.

  ‘I'm sorry about this,’ Ambrose said glumly.

  ‘We'll live, sir, I dare say. But if you please, this town has a gift for you.’

  ‘A gift?’

  ‘To welcome you home, sir, and to thank you for what you have done for us.’

  They handed him a long pole, with a black cloth rolled and tied tightly at one end.

  ‘It used to stand outside the old barracks, sir. And we've another we can put up when you're gone.’

  Ambrose lifted it, puzzled. He was aware of all the people watching him, waiting for him to speak.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘But you did everything, not me. And …’ He looked at the pole and its roll of cloth. It was too long for a staff. It wasn't a lance. What was it?

  Still they were watching him, waiting.

  ‘You have to break the ties,’ said Aun at his shoulder.

  The ties were knotted around the cloth, with loops that came undone in a single pull.

  The big, black banner of the Doubting Moon dropped from the pole to his stirrup.

  Sophia watched the warm wind tease the folds of that flag, as it topped another rise at the head of the company. The air made it flap like a huge bird against the sky. They had given it to a man called Endor to carry, presumably because his horse would not shy under such a thing. Endor himself was a hairy, crazy-eyed man, and not one she would readily have thought could be trusted with a standard – let alone one of Develin's manors.

  She wondered whether her father was smiling now, at the grim joke that had cast her as an ally of the house of Tarceny.

  She was tired and depressed. The going was bad. The old lake-road into the north of the March was narrow and stony, and the landscape was growing more rugged. The small grey mare she had chosen was a stranger, although clearly better than either of the other horses that Orcrim's spies had left behind when they had taken to their boat at Aclete. She was riding less well than she knew she could. She was more out of practice than she had realized. Also, she was not dressed for it.

  The company crossed the ridge. From her saddle she looked back for a moment over wave after wave of hills cresting beside the bright lake-water, fading into blue in the distant south. Then the path dropped again, through pinewoods to another shallow stream. On the far bank there was a clearing. Ahead of her, up the line of horsemen, Sophia saw Orcrim splash through the water, overtaking the bannerman. On the other side of the stream he wheeled his big mount out into the clearing and began to wave the company past.

  ‘Keep on,’ he was calling. ‘Keep on.’

  They poured on under his urging, rider after rider through the ford and up the muddy path on the far side. Her horse checked at the edge of the stream and then found its way into the water after the others. Icy droplets kicked up and splashed on her bare legs. The mare waded steadily across in the wake of the bigger mounts ahead, then heaved itself up the bank. She saw there was a lonely hut under the eaves of the wood at the far side of the clearing.

  ‘Keep on, my lady,’ said Orcrim, waving her past as if she was just another rider. He had put himself between the path and the hut. Now that he had his supplies, he didn't want his men to stop there and waste time troubling the people in it. Perhaps there were some among them who might have done.

  The mare was following the leading horses up towards more trees when a shout sounded from behind her. There was a man in the clearing, dressed in goathide, running after them. He was carrying something in his hands. He ran past Orcrim, past Sophia, and on up the path. Ahead of her, Sophia saw Ambrose check his mule, hauling it clumsily half-around. The man ran straight up to his stirrup.

  ‘Well done, sir,’ the man said. ‘And good speed to you.’

  He held up a hunk of bread, broken from a loaf that he was carrying in his hands. Ambrose took it.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said in surprise.

  The man had turned and was coming back down the line of riders, sharing out his loaf as he came. He gave a piece to Sophia as he passed.

  ‘Angels with you, sirs all. Good speed,’ he was saying. Faces – a woman and children – showed in the doorway of the hut, watching.

  ‘Keep on, there,’ Orcrim called.

  Ambrose was coaxing his mule around and trying to head it up the path again. Sophia had time to look back at the clearing and the hut and family within it.

  ‘Why did he do that?’ she wondered aloud.

  The man Hob, his mouth half-full of fresh bread, was passing. ‘There's a story running ahead of us, I guess,’ he said. ‘The young Lord of Tarceny has returned. He has thrown down the cruel master of Aclete. He has set its people free. He is going to take his throne, and restore justice and peace to all the land.’

  ‘You did not say, “He has tamed the Fifteen,”’ said Orcrim from behind. ‘But that will be part of it. And it'll be on its way through the March, and maybe the Kingdom beyond.’

  ‘Hah.’

  Sophia looked at the bread that she was holding. A little warmth still lingered in it. Surely they had not baked it against Ambrose's coming. They had snatched their own meal from the oven as they had seen the Company pass. She sniffed it. It was moist and yeasty, and darker than the bread in Develin.

  She tasted it. It was good.

  ‘Why did you come to Develin, last season?’ she asked Orcrim.

  ‘Don't you know? I was chasing your young friend. Also that rascal from Lackmere, there.’

  ‘What's that?’ said Aun, looking round in his saddle.

  Lackmere? Yes, Chawlin had called him that, too. She knew there was a small keep and holding with that name some way south and east of Gisbore, although she had never been there. So that was who this man Aun was – a fellow southerner, if not quite a neighbour.

  ‘And your mother, of blessed memory, told me from her gate-tower – after much beating around the bush – that Lackmere had ridden by that morning. So off I went after him. I was most anxious to catch up with him then. So anxious, I forgot to ask the slippery-tongued woman whether he had ridden from her gates alone. Which, I guess, he had. Am I right?’

  Orcrim's words were addressed to the knight ahead of them.

  ‘You are,’ said Aun. ‘It seemed best, at the time. I was riding to join Septimus.’

  ‘May he rest – though I have known better kings. So why are you in this now?’

  ‘I told you.’

  ‘A friendship, yes. Is that all?’

  ‘That's all.’

  ‘If you say so. But your girth's loosening, there. Stop a moment …’

  Aun checked his horse. Sophia, guiding her mare past him, looked down. There was nothing wrong with his girth. Behind her, the two men muttered over each other's saddles. They let a space of several lengths open ahead of them before she heard them start again, talking in low voices all the while.

  She could guess what Orcrim wanted to talk about.

  The King is dead, the land in confusion. The boy has a claim to the throne. We have swords – not many, but how many are needed? And if Develin was restored, and friendly? And could Aun return to Lackmere, and from there provide spears?

  You make peace between them, she thought. And they use it to plan more war.

  She would have to watch this Orcrim. For all his affable talk he was subtle, and also ruthless, she guessed. She remembered some of the Widow's counsellors – more than servants, but always less than friends. If events really did carry her back to Develin he could be very useful. (Why back to Develin? Why was this happening?) But she could see at once how hard it would be to stop him from controlling her, if he were the only man she relied upon. Now it was obvious why her mother had had so many counsellors, and why she had never favoured any of them above the others for too long – not even Hervan.

  Her mother, her father, Chawlin – these thoughts were very strong this morning. A moment ago Orcrim had called the Widow ‘s
lippery-tongued’. That had jolted. That wasn't her mother at all. What she remembered most clearly about that extraordinary, black-clad, heavy-voiced woman, was the open chest in the council room, piled with letters from the man she had lost. Her mother had carried that weight of dead love for twelve years. Where had she found the strength? Because she had indeed been strong. Sophia had never understood how much, or in what way. Perhaps she was beginning to – now that she knew what loss was. She could find so little strength in herself.

  Chawlin! How am I going to get you back?

  Oh, she was angry with him. And at the same time fearful for him. He had not followed her into the safety of the band of men. Didn't he see how he risked being attacked, by dreadful things out of the night? She had woken in the dawn with a horrible vision of a torn body, lying somewhere on the hilltop. Yet the Fifteen had found nothing. So Chawlin was still alive; but he did not want to be found.

  At least he still had the cup. He should know where she was. When he saw that she was not a prisoner, but with friends, maybe he would come to them. That was the best hope. And then she would have to talk with him: about the cup; about the creatures; about returning to Develin.

  Was she truly going to go back to Develin, after all? The plan had seemed obvious and clear on the knoll. Now she was wondering if it had been madness. Last night she had been woken by a voice. She had had no idea who or what had been speaking, but she had done what the voice had said. And within minutes she had left her man in the darkness and hatched a plan with the men he feared. Madness? But – but something had followed her in the night. She had not imagined that. She had heard it, and felt it watching her. And so she had gone to Ambrose at the top of the hill.

  Her mount had slowed. She could hear Orcrim and Lackmere closing up behind her, their words becoming clearer. They had forgotten that they might be overheard.

  ‘It's not as if he was the most convincing of candidates …’ Orcrim was saying.

  Lackmere grunted.

  She urged her horse forward. She knew that she ought to try to hear what they were saying. But she did not want to listen to old men scheming this morning. She could see Ambrose ahead of her in the line. He had checked his mule and was looking back down the track towards her. Riders were passing him, one after another.

  Orcrim was right, of course. It was hard to think of this child as a king in Tuscolo. He had grown a little, even in the time she had known him. He had lost, or somehow dealt with, the fearfulness she remembered from Develin.

  But his body was still a boy's, and so were his voice and face. He could be taught, she supposed, to sit upright instead of slouching like that. He could be dressed in decent clothes. (He had not even a shirt to wear, and his bare arms showed under his leather jerkin.) He could be given a proper horse, and not that long-eared cross-breed. Yet none of that would make him truly a king. Sophia knew that if she were to step into her mother's place in Develin, she would find it hard to stay in control. Ambrose in Tuscolo would be a puppet.

  His eyes followed her as she approached on the little mare. He was waiting for her.

  ‘I want to talk to you,’ he said.

  ‘I want to talk to you, too.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, and hesitated. She guessed the reason.

  ‘You call me Sophia,’ she said. ‘I've spent years hating the name, but it's who I am.’

  ‘Yes, Sophia.’

  Whatever it was he wanted to talk about, he seemed in no hurry. They let their beasts amble side by side, while Sophia thought over the things she was going to say.

  She had imagined herself pleading, perhaps even on her knees, before a pair of eyes that saw deep into her soul. Now, in the steep and sunlit March, with this boy on his ridiculous mount beside her, it was not going to come like that.

  It made it more difficult, in fact.

  ‘You tried to warn me what was going to happen in Develin,’ she said. ‘I didn't listen. I wanted to say I'm sorry.’

  ‘It's all right,’ said the boy.

  That wasn't enough.

  ‘I knew what you were talking about,’ she said. ‘You meant they were looking for the cup.’

  ‘One of them was. The King thought your mother was a traitor, because of me.’

  She thought about it.

  ‘But it was the cup that mattered,’ she said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I could have listened. I could have come to you on the steps.’

  ‘You weren't supposed to.’

  Supposed to? Supposed by whom?

  No matter. Whether she was supposed or not supposed, she knew what she had done.

  ‘I didn't come,’ she said, ‘because I had chosen to hate you. That was wrong. I should have been hating your father, not you. Or …’ She thought again. ‘Or I shouldn't have been hating anyone.’

  ‘I never knew my father. I don't know whether you should hate him or not.’

  She shouldn't have mentioned his father. She, of all people, should have known better than that. Now she had complicated things, and they had been difficult enough already. I did not know who you are. How was she going to say that?

  ‘Sometimes I think he might have been like Aun,’ said Ambrose, dropping his voice and with a slight jerk of his head towards the riders behind them.

  Sophia resigned herself to hearing the boy's ideas about his father. After all, it was hardly surprising that he should be looking for images. Hadn't she done the same – with the childish memories of her father that she had clung to all her life?

  ‘That might not have been so bad,’ she said.

  Ambrose looked at her as though he thought she hadn't understood him.

  ‘Sometimes,’ he said, ‘I think he must have been more like Prince Paigan.’

  Sophia frowned. She knew nothing but evil of the boy's father. And yet dead or alive, evil or not, fathers had a claim on you. Ambrose should not be putting his enemy in the place of his father. She had a feeling that could be dangerous, for all of them.

  The path narrowed, forcing her to let him ride ahead. She followed him nose-to-tail.

  ‘Tell me about this enemy,’ she said. ‘This – Prince.’

  ‘The Prince Under the Sky. His name is Paigan.’

  ‘I don't know him.’

  ‘You've not seen him. But he's spoken with you. If you think, you may remember.’

  ‘No.’

  Ambrose turned in his saddle to explain. ‘It's part of what I wanted to talk to you about.’ He hesitated. ‘Aun …’

  ‘Yes?’ She had no idea where he was leading her.

  ‘He wants to kill his son.’

  ‘No! Why?’

  ‘His son – he is called Raymonde.’ Ambrose said the name carefully, as if he were not quite sure of it. ‘I told you about him. He's the counsellor who persuaded Velis to attack Develin. He's ahead of us somewhere now. I think he's going to meet Prince Paigan.

  ‘Raymonde stole my father's book, which had been given to Aun to keep. To do that, he had to fight his own brother, and he killed him. At that time the Heron … I mean, Prince Paigan, was still a prisoner. He could not have said anything to Raymonde. But there was enough of him in the book to make Raymonde do it. That's what he is like.’

  ‘Is he – this counsellor – a young man? He looks like …’

  He looked like Aun. Of course he did.

  The path was dark and muddy. The bright lake was lost from view.

  ‘He's on Paigan's side. He thinks he isn't, really. But everything he's done is what Paigan wanted. He persuaded Velis to sack Bay, and then Develin, because he thought that the cup would give him power so that he would not have to depend upon Paigan. But that was another trick. It's Paigan's cup. It's all the same water from the pool. He'd have been as much a slave of Paigan as he is now, if he got the cup. The only thing he hasn't done is to kill me. Paigan tried to make him do it. And he could have done. But he hasn't.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I think – it's his way of pro
ving that he isn't Paigan's slave – not wholly. He's done everything else – he's sorry about it afterwards, but that has never stopped him doing it. This is the last thing he can refuse to do. And now he's lost everything he gained by helping Paigan, because Paigan has killed Velis, his king.’

  So this Raymonde, this grinning monster of a man, was to blame for the deaths of Develin, more than anyone. Some day Sophia hoped she would come up with him. It might not be right for a father to kill his son, but that did not mean that the son deserved to live, any more than the king he had served. She would remember it.

  But the enemy …

  ‘Killing Velis,’ she said. ‘It doesn't make sense. Why did the Prince do it?’

  ‘Because his time is running out.’

  ‘Really? He knows he will be beaten?’

  ‘He's always known,’ said Ambrose. ‘He was told so.’

  Sophia looked at him closely, searching for his meaning.

  Oh yes, he was a boy all right. He looked like one and he spoke like one. He would let himself confuse his father and his enemy in his mind (and where might that lead, in a crisis?). And he was too embarrassed to hear her admit her faults properly. But for all that he saw things – things she did not. And when he spoke of them – of how she had not been ‘supposed’ to go to him on the steps, of the way the enemy worked, and of the enemy knowing he would be beaten – she felt something shift inside her; because she did not understand, and yet she knew it to be true.

  He knew what they were fighting as no one else could. That was why they were all following him.

  ‘Better a bad king than a good one,’ Ambrose said. ‘Better still, no king at all. Remember what Grismonde said – our blood would run and run. That's the way the enemy works. He wanted my father to kill me. Orcrim – he's not my father, but he was close to him. And yet Orcrim wanted to kill me, too. Raymonde told him lies to get him to hunt us. Raymonde killed his brother; Aun wants to kill Raymonde. Let them eat their sons. That's what he must make us do. Sons, brothers, friends. He's been doing it for three hundred years.’