The Fatal Child

by John Dickinson

  ‘Your Majesty,’ said one, waving a feathered blue-velvet cap before his knees, ‘I beg you – have you yet thought who might be your escort to Luckingham?’

  ‘Why, no,’ said Atti. ‘There is time yet, surely.’

  ‘It is but a fortnight away, Your Majesty.’

  ‘Time enough. Indeed I am not sure I shall go at all. Travel wearies me so.’

  ‘I beg you, Your Majesty! Have pity on those who wait to know if they are to have the joy and honour of guarding you—’

  ‘And reckon on those who have shown themselves most true,’ broke in a gallant in red, bowing and waving even more than the one in blue.

  ‘Why, sir,’ said the Queen, ‘how am I to know who is most true? Since you all say the same, act the same, dress the same, aye, and even sing the same – how am I to tell one of you from another?’

  ‘Your Majesty jests! You know me well enough, I think.’

  ‘What, sir,’ said the Queen lightly, ‘have we spoken before?’

  ‘Most recently – of a matter in Pemini, Your Majesty,’ insisted the young knight.

  The Queen stopped and looked at him. Melissa could not see her face, but from her tone she thought that Atti might be frowning.

  ‘I may recall it,’ she said. ‘I believe I do, indeed. What of it?’

  ‘The matter is dealt with,’ said the young man in red proudly and bowed again.

  ‘Fully dealt with, sir?’

  ‘The main matter, yes. A rat or two has slipped beyond our reach for the moment, but I have friends who shall see to them as swiftly as may be.’

  ‘Let them see to it indeed. There must always be rats in our realm, I suppose. But I would that they troubled us as little as possible.’

  She turned away. As she did so a pale silk handkerchief seemed to slip from her hand and flutter to the paving. Immediately three or four of the young men jumped for it. The red knight was the nearest and was the winner.

  ‘Your Majesty,’ he cried, presenting the handkerchief for her attention.

  The Queen turned back, looked at it and sighed. ‘Truly, I believe the gardeners should be beaten for their laziness. See how filthy it has become! No, I do not want it, Sir Cravaine. Do with it as you will.’

  With a broad grin of triumph, the red knight bowed again. As the Queen moved on, Melissa glimpsed him among the crowd, tying the square of silk to his sleeve.

  By the fountain a chair had been set. A group of musicians waited there to play. They were ‘Lo-di-lay’ singers, a new fashion from Outland. They wore black hose and doublets, and great black cloths bound around their heads, with their faces painted white and their lips painted black. They would play and sing their mournful ballads, interspersed with long choruses in which there were no words but a constant, meaningless lolling of the tongues that was now much admired. The Queen settled herself in the chair. Melissa began to arrange her train over one arm of it so that the end did not trail in the dust.

  ‘It is a beautiful day,’ said Atti, looking up at the sky.

  Suddenly she smiled one of her rare smiles. ‘I believe I am a faintheart and a weakling. We shall go to Luckingham after all.’

  Melissa’s heart sank. For a moment her hand paused as she tucked the silken folds around her mistress. She wanted to hiss at her: Do you think that’s going to make it better? What’s the difference, him rather than the King? Don’t you end up hating anyone close to you?

  She clenched her teeth and bit it all back. But she could not help muttering: ‘You be careful now.’

  Nothing changed on the Queen’s face, although she must have heard. She clapped her hands for the music to begin.

  Padry sat on a ridge of rocks and thorns, resting in the midday heat. There was little shade here, but he had struggled up the hillside in the wake of his two companions to look back the way they had come.

  They were on the very edge of the Kingdom, in the north of the March of Tarceny. They had passed the old keep of Hayley that morning by the side of the stream. They had followed the path up from the streamside to enter a narrow, low-sided valley where the thorns grew down close to the path on both sides. Beyond the head of the valley were the first of the true mountains.

  ‘… Just as the essence of the first arc,’ Padry was saying, ‘is the Descent of the spark of Godhead from Heaven through all the forms of Creation, so the essence of the second arc is the Ascent. The same spark, buried in the human soul, yearns to be free of Creation and to rejoin itself with the Godhead. In the Descent the Path begins with Fire, which is the sign of Godhead (and also of the Angels), and the Sun (which is the sign of Kingship), through various forms down to the Abyss – the lowest that it is possible for the spirit to fall. From there the second arc—’

  ‘Stop a moment, master,’ said Tamian. ‘The Angels are part of this, aren’t they?’

  ‘Yes, of course. I should say that when one meets with light at any point on the Path, one has met an Angel in one form or another—’

  ‘So as long as I believe in the Angels, will I not find the way?’

  ‘That depends on what you mean by belief,’ said Padry, who was enjoying being a teacher again. ‘A man who believes in the Angels may yet be slave to all his own desires. Perhaps he even tells himself, as he pursues his desires, that he is doing the will of the Angels. Yet when, at his life’s end, he looks over the shoulder of Umbriel and sees what the great Angel has written on his page, every deed he has done in his belief will cry against him. Whereas one who has never heard of the Angels may yet be lifted, blindly, by the spark of the Godhead in him—’

  ‘There,’ said Taxis. ‘Didn’t I say so?’

  Padry paused, wondering in what way he could have repeated something that Taxis had said. Then he realized that Taxis had not been listening. He had been looking back the way they had come. Now he was pointing.

  Padry got to his feet for a better view.

  For a moment he saw nothing. The rugged woods of the March lay under the sun and hard blue sky. Barely a branch was stirring. There was a little haze above where the stream must lie …

  No, not haze. Dust.

  Dust, kicked from the track they had travelled that morning. And by more than a donkey or cart, from the look of it…

  Sunlight flashed through the trees. Sunlight on metal.

  ‘Didn’t I say?’ repeated Taxis. ‘Three times we’ve given them the slip. Three times they’ve come up with us again. They know where we are going.’

  ‘Damn it!’ hissed Tamian. ‘I’d like to twist the head off whoever told them. Do you think it was that old fellow at the hamlet?’

  ‘No. No, I don’t.’

  No, thought Padry. They knew we were in Pemini. They knew, when they chased us round the head of the lake, where we were going from there. To have followed us into the empty March like this, towards the hills, they must know exactly where we mean to go, and why.

  ‘The Queen has told them,’ he said.

  She had passed the sentence of death on them. She was not nineteen years old, and yet she had done this.

  ‘Ah. And how did she know?’

  She knew they were coming for the Cup. How?

  Who had betrayed them?

  There had been only three people in the room when that had been discussed. Himself. Lackmere. And the King. The servants had left. The guard had been placed halfway down the corridor.

  Could it have been Lackmere? He was the one who had raised the whole question of the Queen’s faithfulness. Could this be a ploy to get rid of the one man who was the only serious rival for the King’s ear? Michael and Umbriel! He had never liked the baron, but…

  No. This was treason against the King. Whatever Lackmere thought of Padry, he was dog-loyal. And about as talkative as flints. That left only one.

  ‘It’ll have been the King himself, won’t it?’ said Taxis quietly.

  Padry nodded slowly.

  ‘He will have tried to warn her,’ he said. ‘When they went riding, maybe. He will h
ave dropped hints. She will have guessed the rest.’

  He would have tried to warn her, knowing of her treachery and yet not wanting to believe it. And heedless of the lives he was putting into danger: Rolfe, staring up at the sky from beneath the pool, Taxis and Tamian, and poor, fat, faithful Thomas Padry, who after a week of hard travel must himself stare up at the sky on a thorny hillside with his blood spilling over the stones around him.

  ‘Damn it!’ cursed Tamian again. ‘And damn all husbands!’

  The thorns wavered. The hillsides did not answer.

  ‘All right,’ said Taxis. ‘The situation as I see it is this. We’ve one good horse, one that’s going lame, and one that will be spent before sunset. If we stick to the track they will catch us – unless all their mounts are about to fall over, too, which I doubt. If we go to ground, they will get ahead of us. And they know where we are going, so if they don’t jump us on the way they will be waiting for us when we get there. So—’ He stopped, pulling at his chin.

  ‘My bowstring caught the damp this morning,’ said Tamian.

  ‘I’ve two. And if you look at this place …’ He waved his hand at the thickly covered slopes with the narrow path threading its way up between them.

  ‘Where they come up through the bushes above the stream …’

  ‘Let two or three come out into full view …’

  ‘Not more than that, or they’ll be more than we can handle. And shoot for the horses first.’

  ‘You think we can fight them?’ gasped Padry.

  ‘Not you, master. You’ll take Tamian’s horse and head over that hill as fast as you know how.’

  Padry stared at them. They wanted him to take the good horse, and …

  How many enemies were approaching? Twenty? Forty? As soon as the surprise of the ambush was over …

  ‘You know the way, after all,’ said Taxis mildly.

  He knew the way. And what use would he be in a fight? A fight, however gallant, would be a failure if the mission failed. Yes, of course. But – but to leave them here …

  ‘We had better be quick,’ said Tamian. ‘With any luck they will make a midday halt before they leave the stream. But we can’t be sure.’

  Taxis was already wading back down through the thorns to where they had left their horses.

  In a daze Padry followed them. Half his mind was protesting, the other half begging him to listen – to listen to any reason that would preserve his life if only he could swallow his pride. Think what a fool you would feel if you stayed, he told himself – you, clutching some borrowed axe or sword in the thorns and waiting for the enemy to find you and cut you down. Think of the mission, the Cup, the King! Don’t think of these boys, who will stake themselves out for the crows to let you get away.

  ‘You’ll need water,’ said Taxis. ‘Better shift the skins across.’

  They unfastened the waterskins from the two unsound mounts and tied them to the saddle of the third. They kept none for themselves.

  ‘What about—?’ Padry began.

  Taxis grinned at him. ‘Oh, we’ll cut our way down to the stream when we feel thirsty.’

  ‘Strange place, when you look at it,’ said Tamian, staring round at the hillsides. ‘Nothing here. Doesn’t feel right.’

  As Padry, with Taxis’s help, hauled himself up into the horse’s saddle, he realized what Tamian meant. Doesn’t feel right to die here.

  ‘Someone’s here before us, though,’ Tamian added.

  A little further along the valley, halfway up the left-hand slope where the thorns gave way to scree, there was a cairn of stones.

  ‘Anyone under that, do you think?’

  Padry stared at it. It was a low grey hummock, about three feet high at the point and long enough to hide the bones of a fallen man. Moss was growing on the sheltered side of it. Small thorns were sprouting among the apron of stones.

  Distant recollections stirred.

  ‘It may be a former pupil of mine,’ he said. ‘The man that the Lady Develin mourns. He was killed in these hills some years ago.’

  Tamian scratched his head. ‘Not much luck, these pupils of yours, have they?’

  ‘Sometimes I think we’re all cursed,’ said Taxis.

  Padry opened his mouth to protest. Then he shut it again.

  Tamian was patting his horse, a big brown animal, easily the best of the three that they had bought hastily in the market at Pemini. ‘So, my friend,’ he said to it. ‘You carry this man for me. Understand? Go, then.’ He turned its head up the valley. Obediently the animal began to pick its way on along the stony track. The other horses whickered uncertainly.

  ‘Now, master,’ said Taxis, pacing quickly beside him. ‘It’s hot, but you keep going, understand? That horse will be good for a while. If you keep him at it he will save you. Don’t stop until you’ve shade and can see a long way behind. And if you see anything behind, do not stop at all.’

  ‘Michael guard you,’ said Padry. He could not think what else to say.

  ‘And Raphael on your way,’ said Taxis, and turned back.

  As he passed below the cairn, Padry looked behind him. Tamian was coaxing the other horses into hiding by some tall thorns. Taxis, crossbow in hand, was making his way back up through the thorns towards their first vantage point. The enemy still had not appeared at the foot of the valley.

  A few minutes later the track crossed a ridge. Now he could hear nothing and see nothing of what passed in the valley he had left.

  The horse carried him on steadily. The path was before him, plain, and half remembered from his journey this way four years before. He looked back constantly, but nothing appeared on the path behind him. Hours passed. He did not stop until it was too dark to see.

  A week later, he and his horse came to the house among the mountains. There was no one there.

  XXVI

  The Fall of the Leaf

  n the far side of the ridge from the track, in a hollow of the mountainside, was the pool. It was almost perfectly circular, surrounded by cliffs that on the uphill side fell nearly fifty feet to the apron of rock around the water. The cliffs were crowned by a ring of pale standing stones. But the ring was broken. Three or four of the stones lay fallen at the top of the cliff. Another had tumbled all the way down to the water’s edge. All the pool and the cliffs around it were in deep shadow. The sun had long set over the ridge-top, although it still glowed in glory on the great head and shoulders of the mountain opposite. The air was cold.

  Here Padry came some hours after his arrival. He was still searching for signs of Ambrose’s mother. He had known that there was some such place as this, near the house and yet hidden from the eye. This was where she sat, day after day, calling the names of ancient princes over the still surface. Here, as Padry understood it, the last and eldest of them, Dieter, was still imprisoned below the water. Here, surely, she would be. But she was not.

  He called: ‘Phaedra! My Lady Phaedra!’ His voice bounced among the rocks. Only silence answered him.

  In desperation he even called ‘Dieter! Your Highness!’ over the pool, although he had no idea what he would have done if that ancient prince had somehow heard him and responded.

  Nothing moved.

  Bone weary, he settled himself against the great white standing stone that stood at the lowest point of the cliffs on the downhill side of the pool. The stone, he could feel, was covered with lines and whorls that must have been carved by men in some forgotten time. He had no idea if they had meaning, or if so what it might be. He had no idea what to do.

  He was already too late. The Queen would have set out for Luckingham by now. She might even be there. Everything had depended upon finding the King’s mother before that happened. He had not even considered the possibility that he might fail to find her at all.

  If she was wandering the hills, she might return. If she returned to the house, she would find the horse, watered and resting, and she would know someone had come. And if she came here, he would be wai
ting.

  But he could not wait for ever. His supplies, such as they were, were in the saddlebags of the horse still. And sometime, perhaps tomorrow, perhaps another day, the pursuit might finally appear and catch him here.

  And what if she knew he had come, but had decided to hide herself? She was as enchanted as any of the princes. Or what if she had simply gone away? Or been killed, even? If a prince such as Rolfe could die at the hands of men, might not she?

  He did not know what to do. So he wrapped his cloak around himself and rested while the shadows deepened in the valley behind him and the glow on the mountain shrank towards the peak. He let his eyes linger on it – the last source of light that he could see. They followed the curve of its shoulders, up to the round-headed summit.

  From this angle, he thought, they might have been a head and shoulders indeed, a vast being, draped with some cloth or hood. Broad shoulders that slumped and a face bowed in some intolerable pain. How would a mountain weep?

  The light was fading on the last snowfield. Soon it would be gone altogether. But he was tired and cold. Here was as good a place to rest as anywhere in this cheerless land.

  He drifted in and out of a doze.

  As he sat there with his mind asleep, yet with his body aware of the hard rocks pressing his seat and back, it seemed to him that the colours changed. The sky was dull and pale. The mountains were no longer mountains but vague swellings in the ground that might have been any height or distance. The rocks were brown.

  The rocks were brown, and now he could feel – not hear, for it was too low for him to hear, but feel – the sound of the mountain weeping.

  He could see her, the woman the size of a mountain, weeping for a lost child. He could feel that weeping in his heart – all the loss and pain and darkness of the world, on and on, dragging at him like weights that pulled him into deep water. And he struggled and tried to look away, and still the weeping and darkness was with him. It had been a part of him since the beginning of his life and of the world. He could feel all the betrayals, all the murder, all the misery of three hundred years, settling with the weight of a mountain on his soul. He struggled to look away and could not. He was drowning, slowly, crushed in that enormous anger and despair. Let them eat their sons!