By the hearth the chess pieces clicked and the counsellors murmured. Melissa watched them. But neither game had ever made sense to her. And now they never would. None of the things they were thinking about over there were to do with her any more.
‘You going home, my lady?’ she asked suddenly.
Phaedra looked down at her. ‘In a little, Melissa. After this. Yes, I – I think I shall go home.’ Her voice was hoarse and her cheek glistened in the firelight.
‘Can I come with you? I don’t think I want to stay here.’
Phaedra looked at her with hollow eyes.
‘And – and Puck can sail us in a boat if you need him to,’ Melissa said. ‘He’s told me so.’
‘Yes,’ Phaedra said at last. ‘Yes, you will be welcome, Melissa. You and your hill boy, too. You will be a comfort to me. I see such ages of weeping in a dark place …’ She sighed, and her voice strengthened a little. ‘And yes, maybe we should go by boat, as far as we can. It will be easier for us to travel together that way, for you will not want to walk in my places. It will be safer, too, if there are soldiers on the roads.’
She looked out at the night again.
‘I knew something of boat-sailing once,’ she murmured. ‘I wonder how much I will remember.’
XXXIV
Lakeshore
e died the next morning, while the battle raged on the walls.
Afterwards they carried him up to the castle where men were still counting the bodies and stripping the slain. In the chapel of Trant they lit the flame on the altar and laid his body on a trestle. The nobility of the land, limping and pale-faced, came at noon to hear the prayers for his soul. A priest spoke in words that echoed flatly around the stone. The lords bowed their heads and afterwards they departed. Guards stood about the corpse. Phaedra waited, with Melissa at her side, until the chapel was clear. Then she approached him.
He lay like a carved figure, motionless in his armour. His hands were folded across his chest. His face had lost its fever and his eyes were closed as if in sleep. Around him the guards stood silently and the sun from the windows glinted on their stained armour. The two women looked down on the man. Melissa wanted to say something but her throat was burning and she could not.
Phaedra reached forward to open her son’s fist. There, clutched in his stiff fingers, was the white pebble.
‘Give Mama,’ she murmured. She prised it from him.
And she took it, and gripped it hard.
The light tock of a hammer sounded from an aisle as they made their way back to the chapel door. There was a man, crouching by one wall with tools in his hand. He was cutting something into the stone. Melissa could see where he had already traced the lines he was going to carve. But of course she could not read them.
‘What’s it say, my lady?’ Melissa asked.
‘Ambrose Umbriel, King,’ Phaedra said, choking.
There were other names cut there – a whole line of them, done years ago. Melissa did not ask any more.
The sun was low, glinting on the far fringe of mountains and flaring along the lake. The olive groves above the shore were alive with the calls and clanks of soldiers settling to camp. The scent of cooking fires was beginning to creep through the trees. The wavelets lapped at the stony fringe of the lake where Padry paced, waiting.
Drawn up on the shingle was a small lake-boat. He had found it during the day at a little jetty by a hamlet Phaedra had directed him to. He had found and paid a crew to man it. (He was not going to trust the lives of its passengers to one inexperienced hill boy!) There had been no news of the owner. Perhaps the man had been one of the luckless settler-garrison of Trant, who now lay dead within the castle and whose bones had been buried beneath those of his killers, and of his killers’ killers, as the last act of the King’s reign was fought out within those walls.
The little wavelets glittered in the last of the day. The surface of the lake was lit with it. And Padry remembered another shore, with the sun setting on the waves of Velis and an arm pointing eagerly out to sea as a king surveyed his new toys. But Gueronius, too, had died that morning, caught between iron and the castle stones. He had fought to the last like a cornered beast. He would not have remembered or asked himself what it meant. He had never been one to ask for meanings.
All that was over. The house of Tuscolo was broken. The house of Baldwin had been broken long ago. And in Ambrose the last drop of Wulfram’s blood had been spent. That great dynasty was ended. What was left? Not very much. Some good things: a few laws and charters, a new school, a bundle of good intentions for others to copy and improve upon. We must leave them now, Ambrose had said, for those who come after us.
Padry turned.
He had ordered the boat to be brought here from the jetty because this stretch of shore was deserted. Phaedra wanted no fuss about her departure. Now he was annoyed to see that he was no longer alone. A number of figures were picking their way towards him along the water’s edge. He went to meet them, intending to send them quickly about their business.
They did not seem to be soldiers. They wore no armour, nor were they liveried servants of some lord. They wore robes and hoods and some of them moved strangely. And it began to puzzle him, as he approached, that they were so few. When first he had seen them he had been sure there had been half a dozen, certainly. But now he could see he was mistaken. They were only four … no, three …
Surely …
He stopped. The leader was a tall man, very tall and lean. He knew that shape. And now there was only one beside him, a small fellow who stooped. But he did not stoop as much as he had when Padry had first seen him, in the King’s chamber more than two years ago.
He bowed. ‘Your Highnesses,’ he said.
Talifer, son of Wulfram, and Marc his brother bowed briefly in return. The others must have faded as Padry had approached, hiding their half-human forms in the shattered netherland of brown rocks. They would be watching him now. But he could not see them.
‘I await the mother of the King,’ said Padry.
‘She comes,’ said Talifer.
‘Let us pray that she journeys well,’ said Padry.
The princes were silent.
‘I remember praying,’ said Marc at length. ‘I do not remember that I ever meant it for truth.’
People and horses were coming down through the olive groves to the lakeshore. There were armoured knights among them, leading their mounts. There were banners. Padry glimpsed the blue and white of Lackmere and the red-and-white chequers of Develin. He saw Phaedra and the Lady Sophia, too. And behind them were Melissa and a young hillman he did not know. A lucky young hillman, Padry thought. Lucky for all of us. Vast things, things we cannot understand, may turn because a man helps an old widow with her load. Who had said that? Lex? Because a man helps a widow with her load. Or because a king spares a foot soldier with his last command. Yes.
He bowed as the party halted at the lakeside.
‘Now Michael guard you, my lady,’ said Sophia of Develin.
‘And you also,’ Phaedra answered. ‘And Raphael guide our ways.’
Heels splashed in the shallows. Wood scraped on stone as the crew pushed the boat out until it floated. Phaedra waded into the water and climbed, robe dripping, into the boat. Melissa and the hill boy followed her. A sailor held the stern, waiting. Another had his hand on the rope that would lift the sail. The passengers settled in the waist. Now the last crewman was aboard and the boat was free on the water. The sail rose up the mast. The craft heeled under the gentle pressure of the wind. It moved away, trailing ripples from its stern. Already it was beyond the reach of the mailed hands on the shore. In just a few moments more it would be beyond bowshot, beyond hail, gone altogether to a future unknown.
Padry watched it go.
‘Now, Lord Lackmere,’ he heard the Lady of Develin say. ‘Let us call council. And may we make a new beginning.’
He heard the armoured man bow. He heard Lackmere and the knights mounting
their horses, the clash and the clatter as they started up through the olives to forge a new reign. He heard the lady’s escort gather round her, murmuring in low voices, before they, too, mounted and followed.
They were going to council. They were going to discuss what must be done and to choose a new king. A Thomas Padry as young as yesterday’s would have elbowed his way in among them. Whispered conversations by the tent-flaps, hurried deals in the horse-lines, a wink and a nod at the great table – yes, he would have thrown himself into that, shaping the outcome with the quickness of his tongue and mind. He would have urged a union of south and north, a marriage between Sophia of Develin and a northern lord – even Lord Herryce – and crowns for each, to bring the Kingdom together. It would not have been bad counsel. But it would not happen. For one thing, he would not be there to make it happen. For another, he knew already what they would choose to do.
They would set up the young Lackmere to be the new King. Lackmere was the maker of the victory and the man who had turned the council last night. He would show a strong face to Outland. That was what was needed. That was the kind of king men wanted – a king who could wield iron, and from it forge peace.
And as for wisdom, and compassion? Well, maybe the man had them, more than Padry had allowed. Maybe he had learned something from his own young King, who had taken his terrible deeds from him. Maybe he would learn, too, from Sophia. Perhaps she would even give her hand to him? Would she? No, more likely she would not. He was already bound to her by bonds of blood and guilt as strong as any between men. And Lex, Bishop of Tuscolo, would set the crown upon his head in the high chapel where the eyes of the Angels blazed from the walls.
My pupils, thought Padry. Half their fates would still be before them. The dragon holds, the goddess departs, and the world is renewed.
The princes had vanished silently. They would be dispersing through the land, faithful still to the tasks the dead King had appointed for them. To the north the shoreline stretched before Padry like a long and desolate road. He, too, had a task ahead of him. He would return to Pemini, this time for good. He would take his limping band of townsmen home with such pay and promises as the treasury could afford them. And once back in those muddy alleys, he, too, would find a way to serve. Perhaps the almshouse was still looking for a porter to replace the man he had left lying in the pool. If not – well, there would be widows and orphans and cripples in plenty. There would be a thousand calls for help. He would answer those he could. Let only the Angels see.
He began to move, walking slowly northwards by the side of the lake. The shoreline unrolled ahead of him, a narrow, twisting path between the world and the deep water. To his right was the brown hulk of the castle where his King lay within the chapel walls. To his left were the glittering wavelets on which the boat rose and fell as it, too, pushed northwards, seeming with the distance to travel no faster than his own slow trudge along the shore. The little pebbles crunched beneath his toes. His eyes were hot and brimming. He could feel the tears on his cheeks. The boat was a blurry speck in his vision. And still he walked, and still he watched, as it passed from shadow to sun and its sail was filled with light.
A DAVID FICKLING BOOK
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2008 by John Dickinson
Illustrations copyright © 2008 by Assheton Gorton
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by David Fickling Books, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published in Great Britain by David Fickling Books, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of the Random House Group Ltd., London, in 2008.
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