The Fatal Child

by John Dickinson

  ‘I did not suppose that Wulfram was born on a wavetop. Nor that the silks I have had from Velis in happier times were woven here.’

  ‘And yet you never thought to ask where these lands might be, or what manner of men lived there! It is vile and heinous that such things should be hidden for the sake of profit! Now the secrets of Velis will be ours. We shall meet with these merchants. Maybe we shall even travel to their lands, far beyond the water. My lord, when you look over this bay, you see a city. But I see the world!’

  Again he pointed out over the glimmering wave-tops, into the far distance where the sea and sky blended into one.

  ‘I see what a man can hold,’ said Orcrim. ‘No man can hold the world.’

  ‘Hold it? I dare say not. But to know it – to go and go, to push the skyline back with each step and open new sights to the eye! Did Wulfram himself do less, when he set out in his three ships? So Wulfram came from the sea! Did not his sons, when they took the Kingdom for their own? Hah, Dieter!’ he cried, throwing up his arms in a kind of ecstasy. ‘Hah, keen-eyed Lomba!’

  ‘Your Majesty speaks the truth, as the stories tell us. In their youth, so they did. And (permit me to say it) Your Majesty is a young man also. Young men long to push skylines, even to seize kingdoms, if they are able. But a man who will have something to keep must learn how to hold it – a king most of all. Now I have not had the use of my feet for nine months, but—’

  ‘Oh aye! To see you riding in your litter to the breach this morning – it was the bravest sight in the world! I shall have new verses written in The Tale of Kings. And by Heaven, sir, one will be for you!’

  ‘Your Majesty does me honour. But fighting men must know where their captain is. I did not mean to let mine—’

  ‘That is right!’ said the King quickly. ‘They must know where their captain is – by the standard, in command. I did not forget it, sir. Not in the very thick did I forget it!’

  ‘I am certain of it, Sire,’ said the marshal impassively. ‘Although in truth I was so tossed about in the press that I had no eyes but for my bearers and barely a word but to bid them hold me steady. It is not good to go without legs into a fight. May Heaven allow that this will be my last.’

  ‘The last and the greatest,’ said the King. ‘This morning, when the stewards refused our summons to surrender, I tell you I all but wept for joy. Was there ever such a fight, Orcrim? I killed all who came against me! Tell me truly, of all the fights you have seen, was this not your greatest?’

  Orcrim frowned over his wine. ‘Greatest? Four years back, when I restored my Lady Develin to her house and lands, we struck barely a blow. Yet with speed of horse and a mob of peasants we chased her enemies from Develin in a month. Was this not all that a fighting man could hope for?’

  ‘A feat indeed, but hardly a fight. I mean your fiercest, or most desperate.’

  ‘Whenever I face a man with iron, it is desperate. But…’ Orcrim looked into his cup again, as though he might see something there. ‘But I stood in an affray a little before the taking of Develin. That was the worst, I think.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘It was a small matter,’ said Orcrim reluctantly. ‘I had but twelve knights with me, and two women and a boy.’

  ‘And how many men had your enemy?’

  ‘Men? Two, only.’

  ‘By the Angels, sir! You mock me!’

  ‘Your Majesty asked how many men. There were others that were not men. And by the Angels you name, Sire, I would face any number of pikes sooner than look into those eyes again!’

  The King gave him a long, hard stare. ‘What do you mean? Witchcraft?’

  ‘So some might call it.’

  At length the King shrugged. ‘If all I have heard is true, a man who once served Tarceny must have expected to meet such things.’

  ‘So I believe it is said, Your Majesty. At all events I no longer serve Tarceny but my Lady of Develin. And through her fealty to you, I serve yourself.’ Orcrim looked up. ‘Now here is another servant who has changed houses, I believe. Only this one is the teacher who quit Develin for yours.’

  A small party of men were picking their way up the strand towards the tent. At their head was Thomas Padry.

  When a teacher falls among lords and killers of men, what is he to do?

  Why, teach, where he can – where they have children they will set before him. And when those children grow and take power themselves, then teach them again – only this time call it not ‘teaching’ but ‘counsel’.

  Teach them, all the time, that there is a Path they must follow. The Path is not easy and not always clear, but every living moment brings a choice between following it and straying from it. And once the soul has strayed it is harder than ever to return to the right way.

  Teach? Beg, plead, wheedle, cajole … When they listen, then beg some more. And if they share a little of their power – if, say, they make you their chancellor because you were once their teacher and seemed wise – then use the power you are given. Write the laws, give judgement, seek agreement and then once again beg your man of power to endorse it. And when all else fails, then yes, even put on armour and follow him through the breaches to stay his hand from slaughter where you can. Every moment is another step along the Path.

  Thomas Padry, trudging bone-weary across the soft beach-sand, supposed that it might indeed have been through the act of some Angel that he had become first tutor and then counsellor to the young Gueronius diTuscolo, who would now be undisputed King. He had not thought the Angels had such a wicked sense of humour.

  ‘Ho, Lord Chancellor,’ cried the King gaily. ‘It has been a good day. For you I trust also?’

  ‘Your Majesty,’ said Padry, bowing.

  ‘The marshal and I were debating,’ said the King. ‘But the old man and the young do not agree. Now you stand between us in years. What do you say is the greatest prize we have won today?’

  Padry frowned. ‘Why, Your Majesty,’ he said carefully, ‘I suppose … I suppose it must be our blisters.’

  ‘Our blisters? How?’

  ‘Your Majesty, I do not think we dream of blisters. Nor do I think there can be blisters in Heaven. Therefore, since we most certainly have blisters, we may know that we are neither dead nor dreaming but are alive at the end of this day. And that is a prize worthy of thanks.’

  ‘Amen,’ said the King. ‘I had not thought to give thanks for my blisters.’

  ‘Well … It may be that I have accrued more than Your Majesty. For I swear I have them on every limb and part of me. Even so I am grateful, since by this I may know that all my parts are still joined to me and that I am not in any sense diminished. Indeed,’ he went on, theatrically wiping his brow, ‘since they swell according to their nature, I may even claim to have increased a little.’

  ‘You are still joined to your tongue, it seems,’ growled Orcrim, with a face like a severe old abbess in whose presence the conversation has turned to sex.

  ‘Nor will he let it rest, until he breathes his last,’ said the King.

  Padry would have added that it was surely bliss ter be alive. But he glanced once more at the marshal and stifled his pun with regret.

  ‘Your Majesty,’ he said, ‘I have the terms of the city’s surrender for your consideration.’

  ‘They have agreed to unseal all their charts and records of sailings, and to put their mariners and shipwrights at our disposal?’

  ‘Among other things, Your Majesty. The fine—’

  ‘Enough. I will consent. Tell me of your morning, Chancellor. What success had you?’

  Dear Heaven! thought Padry. Enough! I will consent…

  It was possible to be fond of Gueronius. In fact it was not difficult at all. He had the charm of a young bear. He had no use for subtlety, but the warmth and loyalty he showed to those around him was real. And he was willing to do what men thought right when his attention could be brought to it.

  But – was it too much to ask for just a few sec
onds of his ear?

  While others were resting after the fight Padry had gone to meet with the aldermen of Velis. Still sweating and clinking in his mail, he had spent hours in a stifling room haggling with a pack of frightened, stubborn, miserly old men who had twisted and turned and wormed every way they could before granting anything that might conceivably satisfy the morning’s victors. Were all his demands and compromises, the drafting and re-drafting of words worth thousands of crowns, now to be granted with the wave of a hand? But Gueronius must know what it was he was consenting to, or he would surely find some fault with it later on.

  ‘If Your Majesty pleases, perhaps we should consider—’

  ‘We shall consider that which is most important. For a fight brings many things, yet I never heard of stranger deeds than yours. Tell me of your morning. I command it.’

  ‘Aye, sir clerk,’ said the old marshal, rolling his eyes. ‘Tell us. Did you talk the King’s foes to death when you met them?’

  No, thought Padry crossly. But now I must talk away the King’s battle-madness, so that he may be better pleased with himself.

  ‘You do him injustice,’ said the King (and Padry heard something uneasy in his chuckle). ‘My “clerk,” as you call him, was on his knees to me before dawn, begging that he and his priestly friends should don mail and follow us into the breach. Not to strike a blow for Our Person, no. But to bring Our Clemency to all whom they could, once the defence was broken, and so make Our day’s work pleasing in the eyes of the Angels.’

  The marshal stared. Padry set his teeth.

  ‘I have seen sack, my lord,’ he said softly.

  ‘And so have I!’ said the marshal. ‘And it is better to walk among wounded lions than to go crying peace among armed men with the blood-lust on them. What was this for?’

  ‘Before you came to Develin I was a master at the school there. I was in the house the day the soldiers of Velis took it by treachery.’

  ‘And someone spared you?’

  (Spared me, sir? One of your kind, spare me? I would laugh if I could, but I cannot!)

  ‘My lord, I hid in a chimney. So did one other below me. When they came to search it they poked my companion with pikes and he fell down among them. They cut him to pieces. I heard …’

  Padry looked down at the sand between his feet, groping for words to describe how the screams of the man, an honest house-servant, had echoed in the stonework around him those five years ago. He wanted words that would protest to the marshal and to the King against all sack, all blood-letting everywhere, including the murder they had done that morning. He wanted to jar them to the core of their iron-blinkered souls!

  But the words would not come. And other instincts rushed to haul him back, reminding him that he was tired, and that he must not – must not – appear to criticize Gueronius before a witness without being very, very sure of what he was doing.

  ‘They – they busied themselves with him. But they never looked further up the chimney to see me there. So I lived and owe my life to the Angels. And so’ – he shrugged, and finished as quickly as he could – ‘so I do what I can, my lord.’

  ‘Aye,’ said the King, whose eyes had wandered out to sea. ‘And for two years as my tutor he dinned it into me also. Do what you can. Hide not from the world, for it will find you out and betray you. So do. And today we have done, have we not?’

  ‘Indeed, Your Majesty,’ said Padry woodenly.

  ‘An honest thought, but foolish,’ said Orcrim. ‘You were lucky to come away with no more than blisters. And in all that rout I think you will not have saved more than a handful – six at most. Am I right?’

  ‘In truth it was almost a score, my lord. Mostly of low rank, it is true. I do not count those that men may have taken for ransom—’

  Orcrim’s eyes narrowed. ‘Mostly of low rank?’

  (A pox on all bloody men with more brains than they had a right to!) Padry had not wanted it to come out like this.

  ‘Um … Indeed, my lord.’ He coughed. ‘Your Majesty will wish to know—’

  Gueronius turned back hastily. ‘Aye, it is well done. Padry, I am to have new verses sung in The Tale of Kings. And for this day’s work you, too, shall have one.’

  ‘But I want to hear—’ said the marshal.

  ‘Your Majesty is gracious,’ said Padry hurriedly. ‘But you would wish to know that among those spared – through your clemency – we have found the child Astria, daughter of Tancrem of Baldwin whom your uncle King Septimus slew in Tarceny.’

  ‘Very good,’ said the King, nodding.

  ‘No, Your Majesty!’ said the marshal, raising his hand. ‘It is very good. I was wondering what had become of her. And now I think your clerk may after all have done you greater service than any fighting man who climbed through the breach this morning. If you will permit it, I shall give you some advice.’

  Padry gritted his teeth. He could guess what was coming.

  ‘Gladly,’ said the King.

  The marshal heaved his huge frame upright among his cushions. ‘Your Majesty asked what prize we have won today. It is plain. The child Astria is the heir to Baldwin and to Velis. So, if you would have your victory last, you will bring her to Tuscolo, have her cared for, and when she is of age you will wed her. Then no power in the Kingdom will be strong enough to challenge you. We shall see such a peace as we have not known in thirty, maybe three hundred years. We may rebuild what we have destroyed. We will till the earth, year in, year out, and never lift a weapon against one another. This is the greatest prize.’

  The King frowned at the old warrior. ‘I had not given thought to marriage, Marshal,’ he said.

  ‘Then it is time that you did. Again, it is a matter of holding what you have. And let me tell you that the holding is often harder than the gaining …’

  Padry’s fingers clenched and unclenched themselves around his staff. He looked down at his feet, trying to harry his wits into order. His head was singing with exhaustion. He could see the individual grains of sand speckling upon his toes. And deliberately, in his mind, he pictured himself reaching out to take hold of his anger. Anger did not lead along the Path. Above all, he must not be angry because the marshal had advised the King before he himself could! In one way the advice was not bad at all. She lives and we have her. Let us use her so, like a pawn at chess, and our position is strengthened. If he had not seen her he might have counselled the same thing.

  But she was not a chess piece. She was a soul, as he had said to Lex. In his mind he saw again how she had walked across the garden with the spent arrows dropping out of the air, and how she had looked at him through the barred door to the fountain court (those delicate, wary eyes, which already seemed to know how much evil there was in the world!). Her house had been torched and the people she knew slaughtered. Yet she had drawn the bars at his word and put her hand in his. This morning he had saved an innocent from the fire. If there was one thing among all others in all his life that he could hold up to the Angels, it would surely be this!

  He gripped his staff, pushing the butt end sharply into the sand. He knew better than to blurt out his feelings in council. The King was reluctant in any case. There were subtler ways of doing it.

  ‘With your leave, Your Majesty …?’ he murmured.

  ‘On the same?’ sighed the King. ‘If you must’

  ‘The marshal speaks well of peace,’ Padry said. ‘A lasting peace is the prize. With peace there may be law. In older days the High Kings made such law that a man who carried a purse of gold might go from one end of the Kingdom to another without fear—’

  ‘Aye, this I will do also!’ said Gueronius.

  ‘Only for that reason, Your Majesty, the matter of marriage must be carefully weighed. Your hand may only be given once. And there may be more than one possibility. The Lady of Develin herself might be considered. Baldwin may or may not rise again. But as things stand Develin is second in strength only to the royal house itself.’

  The marshal eye
d him coldly. ‘Is this a considered proposal, Sir Clerk? For when my lady gave me the charge of her soldiers she let me have no word on what I might say to this.’

  ‘It is the first I have heard of either idea,’ said the King.

  ‘Well then, Your Majesty,’ said Orcrim, ‘I do not think your chancellor’s other former pupil would thank him for this thought. It is well known that she mourns one she has lost and that she will take no man until her mourning is past.’

  ‘Not even if I commanded it?’ said the King sharply.

  The marshal looked into his wine. ‘If it lay between marriage and war,’ he said slowly, ‘I suppose she would choose marriage. She has said as much to me. If it were to save the Kingdom when another had imperilled it…’ He shrugged elaborately and affected a glance at the chessboard. ‘Why, Sire,’ he exclaimed in a tone of surprise, ‘I believe it must be your move.’

  The King ignored him. ‘Is it the command that imperils the Kingdom then?’ he insisted. ‘Or is it the answer? Tell me, Marshal. Whom does Develin truly serve?’

  Orcrim met his look. ‘She had put her hands between yours. Her dead lie with yours in this morning’s breaches. Is it necessary to have her body as well, before you are sure of her? Whereas Baldwin—’

  ‘That is no matter. Marriage I shall consider at a time and place of my choosing. Now I speak of loyalty. You tell me that hers is to me. Indeed. But one cannot serve two kings. What of this hedge-king we hear of, who holds no land and yet will give judgement on all? Is her loyalty not to him?’

  ‘That one? I have heard of him, I suppose. But surely Your Majesty jests—’

  ‘Do I? Why has she not sent him to me in chains, then?’

  The marshal eased himself back into his cushions. He looked less comfortable now, thought Padry with some satisfaction. This would pay the old brute for making the child into a pawn – and for calling an honest chancellor ‘clerk’ to his face!

  But Padry was also curious. He, too, had heard of the so-called ‘Hidden King’, or ‘Prince Under the Sky’ (Prince Under the Sky? Strange name! Did it mean that the fellow was so poor he had no roof over his head? Or so rich that all the lands under the sky were his?). At all events he seemed to be a figure of some authority, in a land where all authority must be united in the King. And Padry guessed that Develin knew more about this person than the marshal was admitting.