The Widow and the King

by John Dickinson

  ‘I see,’ she said.

  Now the path was dipping downwards, twisting as it fell through the brown trunks all spiny with dead twigs and branches.

  ‘That's why I have to talk to you about Chawlin.’

  ‘What about him?’ Sophia said, sharply.

  ‘He's got to kill me.’

  Down to her left Sophia could hear the sound of a stream. The sun would be sparkling on the water, there. But the beams could not pierce the thick shroud of pineleaves above them. The forest slope lay in deep shadow, under the glare of midday. And for a moment she accepted what he had said. She knew why he had told her Raymonde's story.

  Then she was furious.

  ‘Don't be stupid!’

  ‘He's spoken with Prince Paigan. I was there. It was in Develin, when the King attacked. Chawlin was told he could save one life. He chose you. Later he'll have been told the price was me. Now he's got to kill me, or the enemy will say his bargain is not fulfilled. That's why his creatures were following you. It was a threat, to make Chawlin kill me.’

  Her hand, which had fallen slack upon her horse's neck as he spoke, slowly lifted the rein again.

  ‘He's your friend,’ she heard herself say. ‘He was the one person who was sorry for you when you came to Develin. When I thought you were dirt, he made me speak for you in council. He talked with you …’

  Her voice failed. Memories crowded in her mind. Two hundred sentences of death. Two hundred and one now. I've got to do something, and it will be all right. I need a bow.

  Chawlin!

  ‘Sorry,’ said the boy, clumsily.

  ‘I don't believe it.’

  ‘Yes, you do.’

  Chawlin!

  ‘I gave him the cup,’ she said. ‘I did it.’

  That dead look in his eyes, as he had drawn the blanket around himself on the slopes of the knoll yesterday evening: she had done that to him, to the man whom she called husband.

  I gave him the cup. He had been safe, and sheltered. And then I gave him the cup. And now he's got to kill this boy, for me.

  The path brought them down to the water, and to sun upon the broad mossy banks, and everything she had done was a ruin.

  ‘I'm sorry,’ said the boy again.

  ‘I don't want you to be sorry! I want …’

  There were no words for this – this smothering feeling in the sun of the March. No words could …

  ‘I want you to forgive me!’ she said.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Of course what?’

  ‘Of course I forgive you.’

  ‘Ho, Tarceny!’ called Orcrim behind them.

  Hot tears were lumping in her throat and clouding the edge of her sight. She had stopped the mare. Ambrose was looking at her.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he asked.

  ‘Tarceny!’ roared Orcrim.

  ‘He's speaking to you,’ she managed to say.

  Ambrose looked behind him. Up came Orcrim and Lackmere in a clatter of hooves. The rearguard followed.

  ‘What are we all about?’ cried Orcrim. ‘Is this a picnic? Our enemy's things can jump on us in an instant, and you two are idling along on your own like a pair of babes. From now on we stay closed up. And I'll be telling men off to mind you. Don't get out of their reach, you hear me?’

  ‘Yes,’ she heard Ambrose say, humbly.

  ‘Now let's catch up with the others.’

  And now there was no escape. They were close before and behind her, even riding alongside her when they could. She was surrounded by men when she most wanted to be alone.

  She fixed her eyes on her horse's neck and thought about Chawlin, and what she had done to him. She thought about Ambrose, the boy-seer who rode ahead of her: what she had done to him, too, and how he had forgiven what she had done.

  It did make a difference, she thought again and again as the mare footed the paths towards nightfall. It made a very little difference.

  She still had to forgive herself.

  The sun was low and the air was beginning to cool. The riders filed out of the forest track into another valley. This one was broad and level, with a great open space of knee-high grass in its bed. The riders picked up into an easy trot to take advantage of the space.

  Hoofbeats sounded from the back of the column, approaching quickly.

  ‘Orcrim! Orcrim!’

  It was the grey-haired knight with the hard face. He had been riding with the rear, and was now coming up at a canter to catch the leaders. Aun and Orcrim had halted their mounts and were waiting for him. Sophia saw Ambrose turn his mule back in a wide circle to hear what they had to say. Others of the Company were clustering around. She wheeled back to join them.

  ‘Caw – what is it?’

  ‘We are being followed,’ she heard the grey knight say.

  ‘Tell me what you saw.’

  ‘We saw nothing. Barey heard someone in the trees a way back. He made me listen, but there was nothing more, then. But we stopped again, as we were coming out of the wood, and heard it. A man running, on the path behind us.’

  ‘Are you sure it was a man?’ asked Sophia.

  ‘Why didn't you just snatch him?’ grunted Orcrim.

  ‘He was coming on carefully – fits and starts. He wasn't about to go falling into our laps.’

  Orcrim looked about the broad glade. The sun had dipped below the western ridge. The grass and trees were all in shadow. The fringes of the woods watched them, unmoving.

  ‘And now he'll have seen us close up and talk. If he's following us, he won't come running into the open, even if he sees us leave. He'll work round. But then he'll want to catch us up …

  ‘So we'll move on as though we are not expecting anything. When we are a half-mile out of the glade, Caw, you and Barey can find cover, with’ – he looked around – ‘with Oram and Guildehard to back you up. Bring him in, unharmed if you can.’

  ‘If he's sensible,’ said Caw.

  ‘If it's a man,’ said someone else.

  ‘Count on it being a man,’ said Aun. ‘And don't count on bringing him in.’

  ‘What's that?’ Orcrim glared at him.

  ‘He's using Tarceny's witchcraft. You think you know what that means. But you've never tried to fight it. I have.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Nothing goes right. You attack, they're waiting for you. You force-march, and they're ahead of you. You lie in ambush, and they do not come.’

  Orcrim scowled. ‘Did you find any answers?’

  ‘The one that worked ten years ago,’ said Aun, grinning, ‘was a brave woman.’

  Orcrim looked hard at Aun for a moment. Then, still scowling, he jerked his head at his men.

  ‘Enough of this,’ he said. ‘Let's go.’

  They moved off at a slow walk. Ambrose was alongside Sophia again.

  ‘It's Chawlin,’ he murmured to her.

  ‘I know,’ she said.

  ‘If they bring him in, perhaps you should talk to him,’ he said.

  ‘That would be best,’ she said, still looking ahead of her.

  Of course she would talk to Chawlin. She just had no idea what either of them would say.

  ‘Will they be able to disarm him?’ she heard the boy ask Aun, as the trees closed around them again.

  Aun shrugged. ‘Depends.’

  ‘What is he like, this man?’ said Orcrim from behind them.

  ‘Quick,’ said Ambrose.

  ‘Weak,’ said Aun.

  I don't know, thought Sophia. I don't know any more. The path wound among the trees and darkened with the dusk. The riders were forced down to single file. Ambrose fell behind Sophia. She heard Aun bring his mount up as close as he could to speak quietly with the boy.

  ‘Something you should know about that man Caw. You remember your grandsire's stone, in the chapel wall at Trant castle?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Ambrose.

  ‘It was Caw who killed him.’

  There was a short silence.

  ‘Do
es Mother know?’ she heard Ambrose ask.

  ‘She does.’

  A little while later someone further behind her said: ‘They've gone.’

  Sophia looked round. In the dimness the men were just a line of shapes, bobbing on their mounts among the trees. She could not count them. She had not heard anyone move off the path.

  There was something awful about the silence that was falling on the forest.

  They camped that evening in a dell under trees, a short way up a slope from the trackside. Orcrim would permit no fire. He stalked among the Company as they settled for the night, glaring at the shadows and cursing any man who made too much noise. Ambrose could feel his unease, and shared it. Sleep dragged heavily at him, after the nights of watching, but he did not want to close his eyes. He saw Aun roll himself in his blanket and settle at once. He saw Orcrim telling a tall man to come and be guard over himself and Sophia, and he saw the man make his way over and squat near them with a naked sword in his hands. He wondered what that sword had done at Chatterfall.

  How could you forgive?

  He rolled over, restless, and thought about something else. He thought about his rag-banner, which had become a blanket again, and about the device of Tarceny. He was still not sure what to do about the shape on the Moon. On the Aclete banner it was just the natural curve of the moon's shadow, at three-quarters full: neat, but not enough. He thought for a while about making it a hand holding a pearl. That had changed everything. He must remember to thank Sophia for what she had done. But there was still a piece missing.

  He could not remember the name of the tall guard. He did remember that the first thing Sophia had done, when she had stepped into the firelight, had been to ask Orcrim his name. He must try harder about names. You call me Sophia, she had said. It's who I am.

  He dozed, and in his dreams he walked into the library of Develin where she was reading from a scroll. He approached her confidently, because now he knew her name, and she would tell him where in the house he would find the Heron Man. But as he came up, it was no longer Sophia. It was a man playing on a hill-pipe a tune that brimmed with tears. The piper looked up and the music died away. My name is Chawlin, he said.

  Their swords wove between them. Chawlin was quick. He had always been too quick for Ambrose.

  The Angels never promised that you would live, Chawlin told him.

  His point was inside Ambrose's guard.

  Ambrose jerked awake. He was lying in the dark of the dell, with a dozen sleeping men around him and the tall guard still sitting bolt upright a yard away. Beyond him there were horses standing against the night sky, and the shapes of more men with them. He heard low voices. Caw had returned.

  ‘Did they catch him?’ he called softly to the standing shadows.

  ‘No,’ said Orcrim's voice.

  Shapes were moving in the darkness among the sleeping men – Caw's party trying to find places to lie down in the crowded camp. He could not see the sentries, although he knew they were there. The figure lying beside him was Sophia. He thought from the sound of her breathing that she was awake. She must have heard what Orcrim had said. He thought she was crying.

  He lay back again, and looked up at the black weave of the branches against the dull night sky. The moon was high above thin clouds. It was nearing the full.

  Nothing's going right, he thought. He's using Tarceny's under-craft.

  Under-craft prevails.

  XV

  The Voice of Heaven

  hey travelled for three days, and the early spring went before them. Bright sunshine chased the heavy clouds, and insects thickened under the trees. The Company rode north along the lakeshore, and then turned west and north again into the March. They passed one farm where the family brought out gifts of food for the young lord and his people. They also came upon a ruined mill and some abandoned huts. Other than that they saw no sign of any man, and none of any creature except for birds and the occasional swift rustle in the forest that might have been game. Still the air among the Company grew more tense as the days wore on, especially towards evening. They talked little, and when they did they kept their voices low. They listened for sounds and watched the undergrowth for movement. Ambrose saw men muffling their harness with strips of rag so that they might move more quietly. Memories of shadows crept into Ambrose's mind, and his hand stole to the hilt of his sword to stroke the little pouch that held the last white stone.

  In the far north of the March, where the rocky hills reared up like small mountains, they came to a shallow stream running in a bed of boulders and grey shingle. Snow-fishers grew in white masses on its banks, and low trees, bare and grey, stretched their bony fingers over the water. Orcrim turned the Company right, upstream, onto a narrow ribbon of track that ran along by the river. Ahead, the mountains rose silently in line after line of disappearing blue: bare slopes and deep valleys, and crowns of cloud gathering above each peak.

  Ambrose was looking around him as he rode.

  ‘I've been here,’ he called forward to Sophia. ‘Sophia, I've been here. I came this way last season, before I crossed the lake.’

  ‘Did you?’ She looked round and smiled at him.

  She did smile for him, now, although he knew she did not feel like smiling inside herself. And now that he could use her name, he liked doing so.

  ‘There's a ruin along here, Sophia. A small castle …’

  ‘That will be Hayley,’ said Hob from behind him. ‘We will see it from the next bend.’

  ‘Hayley?’ repeated Sophia.

  ‘Will we stop there?’ asked Ambrose, hopefully.

  Orcrim's pattern was to start early, halt the company for the heat of the day, and then press on long into the evening. The sun was now rising high and Ambrose would have welcomed a rest. But Hob shook his head.

  ‘Too soon. He's planning to pass the March-stone before nightfall. That's a long push from here. So he'll want to press on this morning and make the midday halt a short one.’

  So by tonight they would have left the Kingdom again. They would be in the real mountains, where he had lived his whole life. In a few days they would reach the pool, if nothing stopped them.

  And then? Where was the Heron Man now?

  The hillsides shifted as they passed. Among the grey outcrops a brown-stained rank of battlements shouldered into view. Hayley was a small, square keep, surrounded by a curtain wall, with no moat. Ambrose saw Sophia look up at it as they rode by. It must have seemed a poor place to her – no bigger than some of the lesser holds of Develin to which the Widow's court had travelled on its Midwinter passage. Still, he saw her watch the deserted shell closely as they sidled past it, and she looked back at it several times until the valley wound again and bore it out of view.

  The path took them another league up the stream in bright sunshine, and then dipped across it at a ford among tumbled boulders and bare, grey willows. The leading horsemen rose into view as they followed the path up the steep slope opposite. One of them laughed and pointed at something he saw on a rock at the stream's edge. The riders passed. The same joke was repeated, but Ambrose could not catch it. He saw Sophia reach the far bank and check her horse, looking down at something on the rock.

  ‘Sophia, what is it?’ he called.

  She looked back at him, but did not answer. Instead she set her mount at the slope in the wake of the others.

  Feet dripping, Ambrose's mule climbed out of the stream. Now he could see that on the flat, bare top of the rock lay a bunch of picked snow-fishers. Their leaves were wet despite the sun, and the flowers were still fresh. Among the horse-clatter behind him, he heard Hob chuckle.

  ‘What is it?’ Ambrose asked.

  ‘There are still some folk who live along the banks of this stream. Someone brought this posy down to their lover as the price of a cuddle, I guess. Then they hopped into the bushes when they heard us coming – or for some other reason.’ He grinned, knowingly.

  Ambrose looked about him. He had seen no sig
n of people, and there was nothing on the sunlit stream-banks to say that any were near now. The water rippled endlessly in its broad ribbon over the grey stones. The snow-fishers lay on their rock at his stirrup. If they bore any meaning at all, it was not for him.

  ‘Come on,’ said Hob. ‘We must keep up with the others.’

  The path wound upwards among tall bushes which quickly hid the stream from view. Then it broadened and climbed more easily up a cleft between two hillsides that were dark with thorns and low trees. Here, despite the high sun and stony ground, they kicked their horses into a trot to close the gap with the leaders. There was space to let the riders bunch up as they made their way between the hillsides. Ambrose could see Orcrim glancing to left and right. He hoped the old war-master was looking for a place with shade where they could halt, but he knew that it was unlikely. Orcrim was watching the thorns for another reason; and that could only be fear of ambush.

  It would be a good place for it, Ambrose thought, if there was anyone who wanted to attack them. The high slopes were thickly covered and close to the path on both sides. The ground was difficult for horses.

  ‘What's that?’ said someone sharply.

  Ahead of them, by a pile of boulders, a robed and hooded figure had risen to its feet. It seemed to be waiting for them.

  ‘Careful,’ called Orcrim to the Company as they approached. ‘Look about you.’

  Metal scraped in a scabbard. Ambrose glanced down at his own sword, but he needed both hands to manage his mule as it sidled on the stony ground, uncertain of what he wanted. Its movements carried him forward. The standing figure threw back its hood. He looked down into his mother's face.

  ‘Well met, Count of Tarceny,’ she said with mock gravity. ‘Beneath your Doubting Moon.’

  Ambrose was so startled that he could not say anything.

  She stepped past the mule's head.

  ‘A good morning to you, Orcrim,’ she said. ‘And thank you for bringing my son so far.’