by Simon Morden
The guard dispersed, heading towards the main building, leaving her, Thaler and the mayor in the company of a boy who took them slowly across the inner courtyard towards one of the high towers – slowly, because he was shielding a guttering candle with only his hand.
The mayor had to open his own door and let the servant through, who then went ahead, leading them up stairs and along a corridor. Feeling totally lost, Sophia managed to resist the almost overwhelming urge to peer down side routes or behind curtains, in case she was momentarily forgotten and couldn’t find her way back.
Then they finally arrived at what seemed to be their destination. The servant left, still carefully conserving his candle-flame, and it was just the three of them in some sort of anteroom. There were chairs and tapestries, and Sophia decided to sit and compose herself before her inevitable inquisition.
Thaler placed his lantern on a short round table that might have been a stool, and the mayor was content just to hold his.
“I don’t like it, Thaler. The whole place has gone to the dogs.”
“With respect, Master Messinger, it’s a little soon to be recruiting a new castle guard, especially considering what happened to the old one.” Thaler sat down briefly, before deciding that standing would be better. “And Prince Gerhard’s funeral is still to come.”
“I expected more, that’s all.” The mayor made a pretence at examining one of the wall hangings. “We’ve managed, haven’t we?”
“Did you ever get around to answering my request for armed militia outside the library?” asked Thaler, with more than a little coolness in his voice. “Whose lantern are you using to examine that Rheinmaiden? Whose idea was it to question the hexmasters directly?”
“And look where that got us. Gods, what are we going to tell Trommler?”
Sophia sighed. “Gentlemen, please.”
There was a slight movement to her left. She looked up and gasped. Thaler spun around faster than his size might normally allow, and the mayor actually jumped back.
“Apologies for keeping you waiting,” said Trommler. As he turned to acknowledge each of them, he was revealed more clearly. “Master Messinger, a pleasure as always. You must be Under-librarian Thaler. And the lady? I’m afraid I don’t know her, and I make it my business to know all who are in the castle walls.”
“It’s the Morgenstern girl,” said the mayor. “The bookseller’s daughter.”
“Is it indeed?” Trommler stood squarely in front of her and looked down his sharp nose at her. “Rise, child.”
When she stood, trembling, she was taller than him. “More than a girl, I think, Master Mayor,” he said, and nodded slowly, seemingly coming to some sort of decision. “Wait here, Miss Morgenstern. I will call you shortly. Gentlemen, if you will accompany me.”
The chamberlain went to the door at the end of the anteroom, and paused by Thaler’s lantern. He regarded it in the same way he’d inspected Sophia.
“Interesting,” was his only comment before picking it up by the chain. He opened the door, and the mayor strode through after him. There were lights, and voices, on the other side.
Thaler shrugged with an opened-handed gesture at Sophia, before slipping through the opening. The door was closed firmly behind him, muffling everything.
She had no idea how long she was supposed to wait. Trommler had scared her into obedience, at least for a while. She drew her knees up and laid her head on them, wrapping her legs with her arms. The voices next door started off calmly: Thaler’s measured tones, the mayor’s gruff barks, Trommler’s indistinct bass rumble, and a fourth man whom she didn’t know, whose voice was pitched higher than the others.
Even when she moved closer, she couldn’t make out what they were saying: the odd word here and there, but infuriatingly not enough to sustain the flow of the conversation. But then, quite abruptly, Thaler was shouting. He was being answered in calm, flat terms, but he was agitated, and wouldn’t stop.
Sophia moved away from the door: not only was her listening in vain, but she’d be unlikely to hear anyone approach, and she didn’t want to guess at the penalties for overhearing affairs of state.
She sat back down in the same chair as before, and closed her cloak around her. Soon, it wasn’t just the librarian raising his voice, but everyone. Uncomfortable and embarrassed, she bore it for as long as she could: eventually, she got up and stepped around the corner, taking her lantern with her. She could still hear them, though, so she moved even further away down the corridor.
Where she stopped, she found she was opposite a door ajar: not properly open, only a crack, but it was enough for her to hear the sounds of sobbing from inside. She looked up and down the corridor. Like the rest of the castle, it was woefully undermanned.
A choice, then. She could go back to the anteroom and suffer listening to the roar of full-throated argument happening behind the shut door. Or she could knock timidly on this open one and attempt to be of some use.
Sophia raised her knuckles to the frame, hesitated, then decided that nothing worse could happen than being told to go away. She was robust enough to take that, so she tapped at the wood and pushed slightly at the foot of the door with her toe.
The room beyond was almost dark. There were a couple of candles, and a low-burning fire. Her lantern added to the light, so that she could see a small figure slumped on the floor in front of the hearth. It was wracked with grief, shaking and moaning, curled in on itself in a tight little ball.
She lowered the lantern to the floor, knelt down next to it, and risked putting a hand out to rest gently but firmly on its shoulder.
The reaction wasn’t what she expected at all. She was suddenly wrapped by the tight embrace of an arm, a wet face pressed hard into the angle of her neck, a body squashed shuddering against her own.
Her hands flapped for a moment, then came to rest on the thin linen shirt. She could feel the individual bones that made up – his? her? – spine. Her own hair was mixed with theirs, and she freed one hand to push her long strands aside, revealing collar-length, almost-black hair. No German girl would have hers cut so short, so it must be a boy, then.
She had no brothers or sisters. Her mother had been a long time in the grave. No one to learn from, and no one to practise on. She did the best she could with what little she knew. She made shushing sounds, she stroked the boy’s hair, she rocked backwards and forwards, like she’d seen new mothers do to their babies.
It took a long time to quieten him, long enough that she started to get cramp in her folded legs and her back grew stiff. As he stilled and the quaking subsided, she took in the rest of the room over the boy’s head. She couldn’t see much without disturbing him, and most of the walls and furniture was in shadow.
But she could make out lots of decorative features: wood panelling, carved flourishes on the furniture, painted crests and shields on the plasterwork. Her eyes travelled up above the stone fireplace, and the yellow ornamental shield hanging there. The black panther emblazoned on it stared down at her, its red eyes alight and its red claws ready to strike at any unworthy touching the royal person.
Which, she realised with a gasp, meant her.
How had she got in unchallenged? How had she remained there for so long? Her heart raced like a downhill pebble, and she lost the ability to move, let alone talk.
He must have sensed the change in her, because he slowly and reluctantly slid his arms from around her back, though not letting go completely. He peeled his body away, and looked at her, gaunt and hollow-eyed.
“What? What is it?” There was a dirty loop of cloth hanging around his neck: a sling. And now she could see he held his right arm carefully. It wasn’t the only thing about him that was dirty, either. His clothes were stiff with dried mud.
“My lord. I’m sorry.” It was all she could manage. Felix I, Prince of Carinthia, all but sat in her lap.
He frowned, perhaps at her apology, perhaps because he didn’t recognise her. “Who are you?”
“I’m …” She had an opportunity to just flee. He didn’t know who she was. She could hide, and leave the castle, and he’d never find out. Except, except. It would never work. “Sophia Morgenstern, my lord, Aaron Morgenstern’s daughter. I came with Mr Thaler and Master Messinger, but they’re in with the chamberlain and having a huge argument over what the hexmaster wants us to do, I suppose, and they didn’t need to speak to me yet, and I didn’t like the way they were shouting so I walked down here to get away from them and then I heard you and your door was open and I didn’t know who it was and please don’t have me killed, my father has no one else to look after him since my mother died, just me…”
She had to take a breath, but then she’d have to stop talking and give him an opportunity to shout for help. Her voice petered out, and she hauled in so much air, she felt faint.
“Your mother’s dead? My mother’s dead too.” Felix looked at his hands. “And now my father.”
“Yes, my lord. I’m sorry.”
That seemed to rile him, but only for a moment. She didn’t know much about this boy-prince. Was he old enough for a Bar Mitzvah? That would make him a man, but even most of the Jewish boys were bigger than he was.
“Where are your servants?” she asked.
He looked blankly at her and attempted a shrug, which caused him pain enough to screw his face up, but not enough that he was going to let go of her.
“I don’t know,” he said. “They put me in here, and they left me. I think they’re arguing over me, as well. Last night, I…”
“Have you had anything to eat, my lord, or to drink?” She looked around, and she couldn’t see any empty plates, or even any full ones, picked at and ignored.
“No.”
“No one’s washed you, given you something clean to wear? Looked at your arm?”
“Shoulder,” he said, and added with just a hint of steel: “I killed the man who did that to me.”
“I should find someone who can help.” She wondered why he was still clinging to her. He was a German prince, she wasn’t anything but the shamefully unmarried Jewish bookseller’s daughter.
“But you are helping,” he said. “You’re the only one who has.”
“By accident, my lord.” There was a smudge of dirt on his cheek, mud from his sleeve re-wetted by his tears. “I shouldn’t have been able just to walk in here. I could have been anyone. A murderer, even.”
His grip failed, and he slowly lowered his right arm by gripping his forearm with his other hand. “You don’t look like a murderer.”
She didn’t move away, even though she was free. “Isn’t that the point?”
“Probably. Signore Allegretti would have beaten me for this, before.” He looked at her, and she at him. “How did your mother die?”
“She fell. She fell down some stairs because she was carrying too much, and she lost her footing. I wasn’t quite two.” It was something that had happened to someone else. She’d asked her father, and that was what he’d told her. She’d asked the same question every so often, hoping for more detail, but she always got the same bald explanation. She fell. She died. That was that.
She didn’t ask Felix what had happened to his mother; she knew the bones of the story already. She’d died giving birth to him, even though the hexmasters had been called. She’d been ten, or eleven when the mixed news had been called out around the town: joy at a male heir for Carinthia, sadness at the loss of one so young and beautiful.
He didn’t say anything, and she started to lose what frayed courage she had left. “This is wrong, my lord. I shouldn’t be here.”
“I command you to stay.” His head came up, his chin set.
It was her turn to surprise him. She laughed at him, and instantly he was both angry and nonplussed, full of boyish rage and nowhere for it to go.
But she’d surprised herself, mistaking the little princes she knew from Jews’ Alley with this real one. “I’m sorry. You are my earthly lord, and I am yours to command.”
Now he blushed, and it was good to see some colour in the prince’s cheeks. “I didn’t mean it like that. I just want you to stay. You’re …” and he looked away again without finishing.
The poor boy. “I can try and clean you up a little. If you want.” She suspected that this was as awkward for him as it was for her. She was used to waiting on her father, but not like this, and the prince was probably used to being waited on, but not like this either.
She got up from the floor and circumnavigated the room, seeing what was there, peering into chests and opening drawers. There were clean clothes, but made for someone much taller – the late prince, and surely she couldn’t dress the son in the dead father’s shirt and breeks? Did she have a choice? She didn’t know where the prince’s old rooms were, and she wasn’t going to wander around the castle trying to find them. There was a jug half-full of water, and a bowl, which she set close to the grate to warm, and she decided that, as a prince, he could probably afford to sacrifice a shirt or two.
He watched her closely, and it made her more nervous. She barely had the strength to tear the shirts down the seams. She found that she barely had the strength to stand. She wavered between knowing what she was doing, and not having the slightest clue.
She knelt back on the floor next to Felix and decided that if she was going to do this, she was going to do it well. She laid out the pieces of shirt beside her, and splashed some of the water into the bowl.
“You need to look up, my lord.”
“Felix,” he mumbled as she took hold of his chin to turn his head.
“I know. But you’re Prince Felix of Carinthia, and you need to be reminded of that.” She dipped a sleeve in the water and wrung it out so that it was wet but not dripping.
“I could command you to call me Felix.”
The water was cold on her fingers as she rubbed at his cheek. “You could, and I’d still add ‘my lord’ under my breath every single time. It wouldn’t do to be over-familiar.”
“Does that mean I have to call you Miss Morgenstern?” Rivulets of dirty water trickled down his neck. No matter: the shirt he was wearing would have to go. He ought to wash his hair, too, but she didn’t have enough water for that, and anyway, a good brush would see off most of the filth.
“My lord can call me whatever he wishes. Isn’t that the way it’s supposed to be?” She lifted off the sling and, for want of anything better to do with it, tossed it into the heart of the fire. It smoked and charred for a moment, before burning with a dirty flame. “This shoulder: is it broken?”
“There’s a little bone that goes across here.” He traced the line with his left hand. “The signore called it the clavicula.”
“Collar-bone,” she said. “It’ll only set right if the arm is completely immobilised. Let me see.”
He couldn’t lift his arm up to get his shirt off, and she was going to cause him pain peeling it off him. So she sat behind him and ripped it off his back. She did warn him, but it was still shocking when the stitching tore, and they both covered their embarrassment by giggling.
Her laughter died in her throat. The boy’s body was a bruise that varied only in colour. Red weals marked where the armour had turned blows away, and they were everywhere. His sword-arm was purple and black.
“How did you live through this?”
“I don’t remember. It happened so fast.”
Sophia eased the sleeve off the right arm, and moved around to the front to feel the break. It was clean, which was one thing, and there wasn’t much swelling, but she could feel the ends move against each other when she pressed against them.
Felix winced, and said nothing.
“I know how to do this,” she said. “It might take one or two tries before I’m happy with it.” She needed to make bandages, and tie them together to make a long length. Somewhere in her travels, she’d come across a pair of good scissors, so she went to fetch those, and another couple of shirts which she proceeded to turn into strips.<
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“How do you know how to do this?” he asked.
“Because I learnt. We don’t do it any other way.”
“What do you mean?”
“By magic,” she said. “It’s not kosher.”
He looked at her quizzically, and she sighed.
“Jewish law—” she started, but he interrupted.
“Jewish law? I thought—”
“Then you thought wrong. Anyway, these are extra laws, on top of the Carinthian ones, that say how we’re to practise our religion. Food laws, mainly, and how to observe our festivals, but lots of other things too. We call it Halakha: things that are permitted are kosher, things that are not are treif. It can get complicated for the … people who aren’t Jews, but magic isn’t kosher. It doesn’t stop some, but we get by without, mostly.”
She started knotting together the strips she’d made. Felix wasn’t very big, so she wouldn’t need as many as for a full-grown adult.
“You do without magic? How?”
“By doing things differently. We’ve done it for thousands of years. Three thousand at least. We’re still here.” She caught his unasked question, and suddenly she realised what she had to do. It suddenly wasn’t about bandaging the prince’s shoulder. “Carinthia can learn. It’ll be hard at first, but it can be done. You can still rule a prosperous and peaceful country without the Order.”
Felix chewed at his lip. “The Order’s always been there. The stories, the battles: they’ve always been on our side.”
“I know those stories too.” Sophia took a chance, and hoped. “But do you know this one? I found something out today when I walked up Goat Mountain, all the way to the top, with Mr Thaler and the mayor.”
She took the bandage and started to coil it up while he stared at her with wide-eyed amazement.
“You were on Goat Mountain?”
“At the top. At the White Tower.” She nodded. “They’ve been killing people, in secret, for years, if not for centuries. They’ve killed their own, I think that’s obvious, and Mr Thaler says they’ve been taking Carinthian children. To be honest, I don’t think they cared who it was. But there are bodies. Maybe hundreds: skeletons, skulls, thrown out with the waste. There are bits of bone everywhere. Have you ever been told that?”