The Fatal Child

by John Dickinson

  ‘Luke.’ Of course! And no wonder the young man had recognized him when he had lifted that lantern on the road!

  ‘Luke’: the name that the council of Develin had chosen for him, because it had been thought too dangerous for his real name to be known – Ambrose, the heir of Tarceny, one of the seven great houses of the Kingdom, and possible pretender to the throne. Padry remembered a haunted, hungry-looking thirteen-year-old, who had come on rather well in that winter while Develin had sickened around them, and whom he had thought dead with all the others in the sack.

  So here he was, the Lord of Tarceny, a man of twenty years, holding court in the wasted remains of his father’s lands. Above him was the standard of the Doubting Moon, white on the black cloth of his big banner, with the black break in its disc that might have been a shadow or might have been a thing, and you never knew which. In the circle around him stood the people who had come for his judgement. Everyone was wearing brown or grey hoods and wraps against the weather. He could see only noses and chins and the occasional eye, rarely the full face. They were like a tattered choir of monks waiting for the cantor to begin. Say about a hundred. The court of a minor baron might draw that many. But the baron’s people would all be local, come from the manor he was visiting. There would be some in the circle around this ‘prince’ who had come from much further afield. Atti for one, although he had not seen her yet. Himself and Lex. And others.

  Yes, come to that, just who else here was hiding in their hood under the pretext of the weather?

  Now this knight – this big, spade-bearded brigand of a fellow with makeshift red livery, just leading his horse into the ring – now he did not live within a stone’s throw of this place, for sure. Those saddlebags were enough to have sustained him for a good two to three days’ journey.

  On the back of the horse sat a gawky, half-starved peasant child; a dirty, waif-like creature with the big eyes of hunger and masses of filthy light-brown hair. Under a red cloak, which must have been the knight’s, she wore only colourless rags. Her feet were bare. What was she doing up there, riding above them all like some bride or trophy? Whatever this was, it did not look like a matter of water rights or short weight.

  The horse had halted. The knight dropped to his knees before his young lord. Padry edged a little closer. Witchcraft, politics, even Atti – those thoughts were all in his head, but they could wait. For the moment he was just curious to see how a former pupil would do.

  * * *

  ‘Bavar,’ said the King, ‘why did you come?’

  ‘You called me, my lord,’ said the red knight, without raising his eyes. ‘I came as quickly as I could.’

  From her perch on the broad back of the knight’s horse Melissa looked down on both of them. She hated sitting up above them all with everyone staring at her. She did not know what was going to happen. She did not know what all these other people were doing here.

  What she did know was that the red knight was afraid.

  It was the way he had sworn at the inn people that morning and cursed her for being clumsy when he had lifted her on the horse. She had felt his fear as he had reached past her for the reins. They had climbed the hill and she had seen so many others, all heading the same way, all going up to see their lord. And behind her she had felt the red knight growing more and more tense. She had realized that something big and terrible was going to happen. The red knight knew what it was. All those people trudging upwards ahead and behind them, they also knew what it was. She did not, but she had felt the fear of the man at her back. And although she hated him, she had begun to be afraid, too.

  ‘Tell your story, so that it may be heard,’ said the King. There was no expression on his face or in his voice.

  ‘Three – three nights ago you came to me in a dream, my lord,’ stammered the knight. ‘You told me where she lay. You said to find her and bring her to you.’

  ‘Have you seen this girl before?’

  The knight paused before replying. He was looking for a way to answer the question. But all he said was: ‘Yes, my lord.’

  ‘When?’

  Melissa’s heart sank as she understood what the King wanted the knight to say. It sank and went on sinking, into darkness, coldness …

  ‘Ten days back,’ said the knight, still looking at the ground. ‘My men burned a house. I – I was with them.’

  ‘I knew that house, Bavar. There was a man and a woman there. They showed me hospitality once. Where are they now?’

  ‘Lord … you know.’

  (You know, he knows, begged Melissa silently. That’s all. Please – don’t say any more!)

  ‘Tell it, so it may be heard.’

  ‘We hanged the man from the tree.’

  ‘The woman?’

  Melissa’s shoulders were hunched and her head turned away. She wanted to put her hands over her ears. She wanted to shout aloud, Stop it! Stop asking him! Asking him was making it happen again. She could see it again. Shut places in her head were breaking open. Voices were beginning to scream. It wasn’t like that! He’s not telling it all! They laughed! They laughed when they pulled Dadda up into the tree! She could see again how Dadda had kicked and kicked at the air as the rope had dragged him upwards. She could see the knot of red-clad men around Mam, and Mam wrestling and screaming among them. She saw the red knight look round, grinning, and how his grin had widened as his eye fell on her, staring from among the trees. And he had put an arrow to the string of his bow, and lifted it…

  ‘The woman, Bavar?’

  The horse beneath her would not move. She wanted it to carry her away but it was staying where it was, held in its place because it could see its master the knight kneeling in front of it. And the knight was held by the eyes of the King. He was looking at the grass a yard from his own nose.

  ‘What did you do, Bavar?’

  At last the knight’s right shoulder seemed to shrug. ‘As men do, my lord,’ he said hoarsely.

  There was silence.

  Melissa found she was shaking – shaking with rage and tears. She thought that that night, when the red knight was asleep, she would creep into his room. And then she would squeeze his eyes out! She would do it if he killed her for it!

  The King said, ‘Why did you do these things?’

  The knight drew breath. ‘The cotter was a stubborn one—’ he began. But he stopped, seeming to think better of what he was going to say.

  After a moment he tried again. ‘I did not know that you knew them—’

  Again he checked himself. He shook his head, and bowed it.

  The King looked around. At his right hand stood an old man in armour, wearing over it a white-and-blue shirt with the mask of a wolf embroidered onto it. Melissa remembered him. He was the sour-faced knight who had come with the King to her door all those years ago.

  ‘What would he say, Aun?’ asked the King.

  ‘If a man would be a lord, he must pay and feed his soldiers,’ said the wolf-knight. ‘Pay and food must come from the land. If a landsman yields what is demanded, the lord’s soldiers will protect him. But if he does not, they must do the other, or no man will give to them.’

  With tears on her cheeks Melissa looked at the wolf-knight. How could he speak like that? He saw her looking, but his face was hard.

  ‘I think he does better to hold his tongue,’ said the King.

  ‘I ask for pardon, lord,’ mumbled the red knight.

  ‘Pardon,’ repeated the King. ‘Why should I take your crime on my shoulders? It shrieks to the Angels. Do you fear the Angels, Bavar?’

  ‘Yes, lord.’

  Yes, thought Melissa bitterly. Now he does.

  ‘If I saw what you did, Bavar, how do you think that the Angels did not? Why should I take your crime in their sight? Why should I not avenge it?’

  The knight said nothing.

  Melissa looked down at him and then at the King. She found the King was looking at her.

  ‘I remember you,’ he said. ‘But I never
knew your name.’

  ‘M-Melissa, sir.’

  ‘Melissa. What would you have me do?’

  Do? thought Melissa. What did he mean, ‘Do’?

  What could anyone do? They were dead. Home was gone. There was nothing left. How could anything she said change that? She had thought that he would know. He had been the only thing she could turn to. Now she was here before him – above him, even – and he was asking her what to do!

  ‘Pardon, or vengeance?’ the King prompted.

  Squeeze his eyes out, said the voices in her mind. But they were weak now.

  She shook her head. The only thing she knew was that she wanted never to see the red knight again. She wanted never to be hungry again, never to be sad again. She did not see how anything she might say could give her any of those things.

  The King sighed. He opened his hand to look at something he held in his palm. From her seat on the horse’s back Melissa could see that it was a small white stone. His fingers closed over it again.

  ‘Bavar,’ he said.

  ‘My lord,’ said the knight hoarsely.

  ‘Take her down from your horse. Then take yourself and your horse away from me. In the place where your crime was committed, build a house of good stone. There you will install a priest, whose tasks shall be to pray to the Angels that they forgive what you did, and to care for all travellers, no matter how poor, who pass that way. Take no profit from the place, whether in tithe or tolls, but give all over to the keep of priest and travellers and the poor. I will come within a year to see that it has been done. If it is done and done well, then I shall pardon you.’

  Wordlessly the red knight climbed to his feet. He lifted Melissa down from her place. Melissa saw that his face was pale and that there was sweat upon it. He climbed into his saddle, bowed to the King, and wheeled the horse away. The crowd parted to let him go.

  Melissa faced the King. His eyes had shown her nothing while he dealt with the knight. Now she looked into them and saw that they were sorry – sorry for her, she thought. Maybe it wasn’t going to be so hard now. And at least they had stopped talking about it. She tried to square her shoulders.

  ‘Do you have anyone you might go to?’ he asked her.

  ‘No, my lord.’

  ‘Nowhere that might become a home for you?’

  ‘No, my lord.’

  ‘What will you do?’

  Do? Everything had been smashed and taken away. Now even the red knight was gone. She had been put down into a different world.

  ‘I cannot give back to you what you have lost,’ he said at last. ‘But for the moment we will see you sheltered and fed in Aclete. After that, if there is anything that you would ask me for, and it is in my power to give it to you, I shall.’

  Melissa looked at the ground. ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  Thank you, I suppose, she thought.

  * * *

  Fascinating, thought Padry. And sinister.

  The boy sat with no trappings of power. There were no trumpeters, no banners, no rituals. There was just one weather-stained knight in his following. He was clothed as roughly as the poorest of the people who waited around him. From the lean look of his face he fed no better than they did either. Yet they came to be judged by him with every appearance of intending to abide by what he said. And although he had imposed a fine, he had taken no profit for himself. He seemed to embody a philosophical ideal: a wisdom that walked in a tattered robe.

  And yet there was power there. No doubt of it. There had to be power before there could be law. Part of it might be founded on the consent of those who came to him. But that was not all. It was not the threat of some village rabble that had brought that red-coated cut-throat crawling here on his belly. He had come at a word, bundling from his nest, picking up that peasant child as evidence of his own doings, and had thrown himself on the mercy of a ragged and distant overlord. By the Angels, the fellow had not even brought an armed following with him!

  It had been fear – fear of the boy himself and of what he might do. Witchcraft! Tarceny had a long and evil reputation. This boy had appeared in a dream, the knight had said. He had spoken of crimes the knight had thought hidden; threatened him with – with what? What else could he do? Padry did not know. But not knowing only made it the more fearful. He remembered the sudden and unexplained deaths of two recent kings – found torn with an unspeakable savagery as if they had been set upon by beasts. The shadows of his journey still hung in his brain. He swallowed, and his palms had begun to tingle. Atti had had a dream, too.

  Atti, my child. What are we coming into?

  And now they were calling her name.

  ‘The Lady Astria diBaldwin.’

  Melissa was sitting among the group of men around the King. Someone had thrown a heavy cloak over her shoulders. It was still warm from the wearer’s body. The red knight was gone. She had nothing to do but wait and listen. She wondered who would approach the King next.

  ‘The Lady Astria diBaldwin.’

  They were calling, but no one was answering. People in the ring were looking around. No one stepped forward.

  They called again. Again no one answered. Melissa heard the King murmur to a man beside him: ‘Well, move on to the next one. We can find her later.’ She wondered if whoever it was had slipped away rather than face the King.

  Then, just as the man beside the King was looking down at his scroll again, someone in the crowd threw back their hood and walked into the ring. It was the girl who had been sitting in the long room. She walked without hurrying, all the way across the middle of that space, and stood before the King. And she looked at him as if there was no one there but the King and herself.

  ‘Forgive me,’ she said. Her voice was light but firm and very clear. ‘I had thought you must be calling someone else. I am the Princess Astria Anthea Aeris diPare diBaldwin.’

  She said the word Princess so that it stood out just a little.

  ‘I am not certain of the rank of the knight in your last case,’ she said. ‘If he was your father in disguise, or perhaps some royalty of whom I have not heard, you will of course have done right to call him before me.’

  ‘I hear people in the order that they come to me,’ the King said. ‘Bavar and Melissa reached Aclete the day before you did. That is all.’

  Melissa saw the princess look at him, and the way the King looked back. She thought, They know each other. They’ve met before.

  ‘Did you come just to teach me protocol, or was there something else?’ said the King.

  ‘I came for the justice you promise,’ she answered.

  ‘I promise you the justice that is in my power – and yours – to find.’

  The girl raised her voice and spoke to the whole ring. ‘I seek justice,’ she said, ‘against the house of Gueronius, for the deaths of my father and his brother, the robbery of my lands and the murder of my people.’

  There was a moment’s silence on the hilltop.

  ‘Is that all?’ exclaimed the knight at the King’s side. ‘You want us to cross the lake, march on Tuscolo, seize the throne and put you on it?’

  The girl looked only at the King. ‘I ask for justice,’ she repeated.

  ‘Angels’ Knees!’ cried the knight. ‘What justice? Your father and uncle were rebels against his house. Your uncle put his uncle’s head on a spike when he took the throne! Damn me, I was there! Do you think we want the same to happen to us?’

  ‘One moment, Aun,’ said the King quietly. He was prodding at the ground before him with a finger. He seemed to be thinking. After a little he looked up.

  ‘I did not know you would ask this,’ he told the girl.

  The girl watched him. She was daring him to refuse her.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said the King. ‘I am not Gueronius’s overlord, and I can’t judge him if he does not come to me for judgement. Which he won’t, of course.’

  Silence.

  ‘But I want to help you if I can,’ said the King. ‘Is there not
something else besides Gueronius that is troubling you?’

  The girl’s eyes went down to her hands, and then back to the King. She said: ‘I have asked for what I want. And you say you won’t give it to me.’

  ‘Sometimes,’ said the King, ‘when we say we want something, it is because we want something else that we cannot name. I think you do. Can you tell me?’

  She turned her head. For the first time she looked around her, at the ring of people all looking back at her. Melissa thought she wanted to turn and walk away without answering. But their eyes held her in her place. She seemed very small in the middle of all those people.

  ‘I ask for your confidence,’ said the King.

  Her cheeks were colouring. Coldly she lifted her chin. ‘You want me to tell you something you can give me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can you give me justice against your house, then? The house of Tarceny?’

  Somebody swore under their breath.

  ‘My grandfather and his eldest son both died at Tarceny’s hands,’ the princess said. ‘I am the last of their line. For their sakes you should grant me justice against yourself!’

  The King looked hard at her. Then he turned to the knight at his side. He was angry now. Both men were angry. Melissa could tell from the way they looked and the hiss of their whispers.

  ‘… wants a good spanking,’ she heard the knight say. ‘That, or duck her in the lake!’

  ‘No,’ said the King.

  ‘You cannot pay blood-money to every old enemy of your house! Damn me, if you did, I could have a claim on you!’

  ‘Again, no,’ said the King.

  He turned back to the girl who stood before him, waiting.

  ‘This is not what I was thinking of either,’ he said shortly. ‘We are getting further from the matter and not nearer to it. But since you say this here, I will tell you that my father, who was guilty of these things, is dead, and that I have long ago disowned what he did.

  ‘Nevertheless,’ he went on, ‘I think you may have a claim on me because of him. I shall have to decide whether you are right, and if so what there is that I may offer you.’

  The girl nodded slightly. Her expression did not change.