Heriot

by Margaret Mahy

  And then at last they came to a third wall – the innermost wall, its stone cloaked in ivy – and there, before them, filling the whole view, were the towers of Guard-on-the-Rock, rising above its own gardens, orchards and lawns, looking over them remotely, as if they did not exist.

  ‘Home!’ said Dysart. ‘My home anyway. Yours too, from now on.’

  ‘Not mine,’ said Heriot. ‘Not ever!’ and then he added, ‘But it looks a good enough stopping-off place.’

  Dysart laughed. ‘Yours too,’ he repeated with emphasis. ‘Wait and see!’

  Heriot heard the clang of the great gates closing behind him.

  Part Two

  The Rat of Diamond

  19

  A Man of Diamond

  After a few scrambling days Heriot was transformed. When he was led past mirrors, he looked sideways and didn’t recognise his passing image, though it wore his face and hair. It was made grand by new clothes – by black and gold, velvet and silk. Silver glasses sat on his nose, correcting his uneven sight, threads of gold were plaited into his braid.

  Within a few days he found himself seated on the right hand of the King, with the expectation he would read the minds of those men bowing below him, something that was often easy to do, for even their most secret thoughts seemed to reject their own secrecy, and leap towards Heriot as if he could give them the recognition they most desired. The thinkers of those secret thoughts didn’t always speak the language of Hoad and needed translators, but, for the most part, Heriot had no trouble reading them, for thoughts expressed themselves in a language beyond all others, often at variance with the words coming so swiftly out of the more formal and controlled mouths. Some councillor from the Dannorad would assure the King of friendship and cooperation. But I am a trick, the statement would say, flying into Heriot’s head. I am more than a trick. I am a lie. Then he would look up and meet the eyes of the liar, who would regularly hasten to adjust what he had just said, trying to change it into some half-truth, laughing a little nervously. Of course it’s not as simple as that, Your Majesty. We have nothing but good intentions towards Hoad, but of course we do have aims of our own which must be acknowledged … and so on and so on. Often Heriot, meeting the eyes of some messenger, would see them filled with hatred, would feel mad cats of hostility striking in at him, claws unsheathed, but quickly learned to protect himself.

  But to himself he was no longer a complete self. Part of him was being endlessly devoured by the city. His days belonged to the King, as he sat performing his strange function at the King’s elbow, reading treacheries and envies out of the court around him, just as the King’s vanished Magician, Izachel, had once done.

  He also found himself able to arrange strange illusions and astonishing entertainments for the royal court, and the King was pleased with him. Lord Glass praised him. And then of course there was Prince Dysart. Linked as they were by the memory of those early dream days when he had sat on the wide windowsill of Guard-on-the-Rock, staring into the Prince’s bedroom, saying, ‘Know me – I know you,’ … linked also by the curious moment when, to his own astonishment, he had somehow dissolved the Prince under the hoofs of galloping horses and then reassembled him though he was still unsure how he had done that. They had a strange friendship. Heriot needed Dysart as a sort of brother on Guard-on-the-Rock … as a family. And Dysart needed Heriot if he was ever to grow beyond being the Mad Prince.

  Dysart’s behaviour was now calm and rational, but his madness was still remembered. It had been strange beyond any other sort of strangeness, and had become one of the stories that wound through all the rings of Diamond and out into the world beyond. Dysart now had Heriot as a friend, and underlying that friendship was the memory of their shared childhood dreams … of Dysart looking out of his bedroom window and locking gazes with Heriot, sitting on the window ledge looking in. Heriot knew he was valued – more than valued. Where Dysart was concerned he had become a necessity.

  When he wasn’t sitting beside the King he went with Dysart and other noble boys to a series of studies – accounts of the bewildering history of Hoad, of its victories, its defeats, its adjustments and re-adjustments. Once the ruler had been a single King, but then Cassio, the Hero of the time, had become so revered, so loved by the people, it became necessary to give him equal honour with the King. Since then Heroes had ruled over their small island kingdom, the Hero sat, like a glorious twin, beside the King on all grand occasions, and whenever the policies of Hoad were being formed. But there was one great difference between King and Hero, for Heroes were not allowed to marry or have children, in case the children of the Hero should try wrenching the Kingdom of Hoad from the children of the King.

  ‘It works,’ Dysart told Heriot.

  ‘It mightn’t work for ever,’ Heriot said. ‘What if the Hero wants to marry and have a family? That’s what most men want to do.’

  ‘The Heroes want to be the equals of the Kings,’ Dysart replied. ‘The power to rule Hoad, that’s what they want to share. Betony Hoad will be King one day, so Luce practises to be the Hero. He wants to be equal in power to Betony when the time comes. Mind you, my father wants him to marry, so I suppose he will.’

  ‘And you – what do you want to be?’ Heriot asked innocently enough, but immediately he was flooded with the knowledge that Dysart, too, yearned to be King – that Dysart longed for the throne far more than Betony Hoad, who wanted something for himself far beyond being either King or Hero. On occasions when the court assembled for some festival or other, and Heriot slid briefly into mind after mind, touching them all and persuading them into sharing magical illusions he created for the King’s entertainment, all glorifying Hoad, he could feel Betony Hoad watching him with an envy so intense he shrank from him. For Betony wanted something beyond simple humanity. He wanted to command the sun.

  The work Heriot did had a sort of mysterious triumph about it, and yet, as time went by, he felt increasingly sure that, whatever his powers might be intended for, they were not intended to winkle out the secrets of diplomacy from heads that could not defend themselves, nor to invent entertainments for the glory of the King. Yet that was exactly what he had been brought there to do. Even his good and growing friendship with Prince Dysart was touched by the curious knowledge that someday Dysart would want to make use of him in an undefined way. And, as he obediently followed orders, he felt not only Dysart watching him with secret expectations, but the outside city constantly peering in at him, guessing about him as it tried to shape him to its own needs. At times he felt himself becoming a toy of the city – a powerful toy, but still a toy, his strange powers reduced to mere functions of the court, when, he was certain, they had some other vast purpose he could not define. Day after day … day after day … time went by.

  – ± –

  Heriot woke.

  Five years. That was his first thought. He had been Hoad’s Magician for five years. And this morning, as on so many other mornings, he woke feeling the source of his strange powers – that wild, disconnected part of himself he often thought of as an occupant – was being somehow misused. It was not intended simply to serve Kings. Somehow he was being blocked from being the complete self he was intended to be – was being reduced to a series of freakish functions. ‘Where’s the rest of me?’ he asked the plain walls of his room, a room that had never, in all the five years he had slept in it, seemed to be really his. It contained him obediently, but he didn’t live in it. Though he asked his questions aloud over and over again it never had any answers for him … not even an echo.

  Five years. He had been in Diamond for five years, and during that time had seen very little of his family.

  Hey you! he said to himself, moving to his single window, and staring out into the city. This place is eating you. You’re not a full person any more … you’re nothing but a magical machine, being cranked on and on by the King and Lord Glass. The words ran like a hunting pack through Heriot’s head, carrying a suggestion with them … more
than a suggestion … a commandment. Take charge of the city out there. Be free of the King and Lord Glass. Be independent of Dysart, even if he is your friend. Remake yourself. Remake yourself today. This command welled up in him, and was accompanied by yet another inner order. Celebrate your five years. You’re seventeen. You’re grown-up. Be free.

  His suddenly dominating wish was to be out in Diamond, wandering in the city without a Prince on his right hand or a Lord on his left. He put on the silver-rimmed glasses they’d given him to wear and stared out across the castle bridges and into its retreating gardens and orchards. Five years good! Five years – the same five years – frightened, sometimes for himself … often of himself. It was partly being frightened by what might happen next or by what he might become that kept him good. But this morning his dream had nudged him. Time for a change.

  Five years, the city declared incessantly, as he walked over the bridge linking the inner island dominated by the towers of Guard-on-the-Rock and its dark shadow, Hoad’s Pleasure, towards the First Ring gardens and promenades.

  To get into the gardens he had to walk through an alley of cages – the King’s zoo – past a lion and a lioness, whose cage gave on to a spacious run, past a long pen with a leopard. All this was ordinary enough perhaps, but then the cages changed. The wire nets held small gardens and sheds that looked like cottages.

  Standing in her garden watching him go by was the two-faced woman, a woman watching the world with a face that was ordinary enough, even pleasant. But if she turned around she had another face on the back of her head, a fierce little face, rolling its eyes and continually dribbling and grimacing. Dysart declared she was happy in the zoo, her life in the city had been a wretched one, and Heriot thought this was probably true. She seemed to give off a sort of relief he picked up as he passed by.

  But this wasn’t true of the man in the next cage, a very tall, dark man, tattooed all over … the illustrated man. Every inch of his skin was covered with tiny pictures linked by curious designs. He was both man and map. This man gave off fury and despair, as a fire gives off heat and light. Every so often Heriot would stop beside this cage and stare in at the man, amazed to find how the tattoos created some sort of barrier between the man displaying them and anyone looking in at him. The cage seemed to contain … not a man but a moving design, and no matter what feeling flowed out between the bars to merge with Heriot’s own moods, it seemed to be impossible to see the actual man everyone knew must be lurking behind those patterns and pictures. The lines and images cut into his skin somehow turned sight back on itself. There seemed to be no looking past them.

  ‘Five years!’ Heriot kept muttering to himself, echoing the city’s announcement. ‘Which means it’s just a bit over five years ago since I took off for Cassio’s Island and met their Hero.’ Half-unconsciously he touched his side, tracing the old scar under his silk shirt, and smiling a curious smile alive not only with self-mockery, but with menace.

  He strode along, anticipating with pleasure the solitude of the orchard, planning to locate that richer self that seemed to be waiting to embrace him somewhere out among the apple trees, only to find, a moment later that the orchard wasn’t as deserted as he had supposed it would be.

  Through an arch of green in the dense hedge that divided the garden from the neighbouring orchards, he saw Betony Hoad’s companion, Talgesi, standing quite stiff and still, almost as if he was on guard, though Heriot knew there was nothing there worth guarding. A moment later, and he was looking into a square, sunken garden, clasped around on all sides with low hedges, empty of flower beds but with a graceful fountain rising out of a pool where water lilies sometimes bloomed.

  Knowing at once that Talgesi was very unhappy, Heriot turned away, hesitated, stopped, spun around and then walked back again.

  ‘You’re not feeling so good, perhaps,’ he said tentatively.

  ‘Can I help in any way?’ The other did not reply, but someone spoke from beyond him.

  ‘Magician, is that you?’ said the voice of Prince Betony Hoad. ‘It must be. No one else I know has an accent like that. Come here.’

  Heriot grimaced to himself, but stepped, obediently, all the way down into the sunken garden, becoming yet again a function of Diamond.

  Prince Betony Hoad sat beside the fountain, a little crumbled bread in a silver dish, feeding the fish. He studied Heriot for a moment in his deceptively gentle fashion, and then spoke dreamily. ‘Unbraid your hair!’

  ‘It’s very long these days, Lord Prince,’ Heriot said apologetically. ‘And there’s a bit of a breeze. It’ll blow everywhere.’

  ‘But why make yourself fantastic and then hide your fantasy?’ asked Betony Hoad ‘Just do as I say. Don’t argue.’

  Heriot, watched by both men, reluctantly unplaited his hair from a braid as thick as a rope.

  ‘What a thunderstorm,’ Betony Hoad said appreciatively, ‘Now you look rather more exceptional. I heard you speak a moment ago to Talgesi. How long have you worked for me, Talgesi?’

  ‘Ten years,’ Talgesi replied in a colourless voice. ‘Two months. Four days. Eleven hours … Lord Prince,’ he added, almost whispering.

  ‘Talgesi and I are saying goodbye,’ Betony Hoad explained. ‘I am to be married. My future wife’s father, the King of Camp Hyot has decided his daughter is old enough to bear the rigours of a royal marriage, and my father has decided that a programme of stringent virtue might enable his heir to act as a man and husband and even father in due course – so goodbye, Talgesi.’ The sun shone on the Prince’s smooth face revealing fine lines about his eyes. ‘I don’t care, you know,’ he added, ‘Talgesi was nothing when I first met him, and he is almost nothing now. For myself, I’m prepared to marry.’ Betony Hoad closed his eyes. Then he opened them again, and looked at Talgesi. ‘He’s so unhappy I don’t think he’ll live long.’

  ‘People can find new friends,’ Heriot said, looking at Talgesi. ‘Even people who’re only halfway lucky.’

  ‘There’s a difficulty there.’ Betony Hoad now gave Heriot a glance of satirical reproof. ‘I wouldn’t fancy being part of a succession … even to be the first of a few would be most distasteful to me. I just don’t know how we can resolve it. If he were a man of honour he’d kill himself, but he seems to be dithering.’

  ‘Dear life!’ exclaimed Heriot. ‘Would you do that, if it was you?’

  ‘But I’m not honourable,’ Betony Hoad replied. ‘I don’t have to be. I’m noble. And of course I don’t want him ever being happy without me.’ He looked sternly at Talgesi, then turned back to Heriot again. ‘And so you’ve been in Guard-on-the-Rock five years today, Magician?’

  Heriot’s amazement must have showed.

  ‘Oh, I very well remember riding back from the battlefield and the great welcome as we came in.’ Betony Hoad got to his feet and took Heriot’s arm. ‘Walk with me down the path until it divides.’ It was an order, not a suggestion. ‘It’s only a few steps away. Then I will wind my way back over the Bridge of the Lion, to meet the Lords from Camp Hyot who are here to negotiate my wedding plans. And you will doubtless take a few deep breaths, then go to your studies with Dysart and other noble boys, where I understand you distinguish yourself admirably. Mind you, I must say I think you could try harder to eliminate that unfortunate accent.’

  He stepped forward, pulling Heriot with him.

  ‘Talgesi, do try to make up your mind,’ he added, speaking severely over his shoulder. ‘I don’t wish to have to take matters into my own hands.’

  ‘Lord Prince,’ Heriot declared, ‘what you are suggesting is wicked!’

  ‘Oh, I do hope so,’ said Betony Hoad. ‘That young man is only a dull machine unless he suffers. So it’s five years for you? You’ve been very quiet … a little boring, really. But here we are. I go my way and you go yours – if you have a way. Goodbye Magician – and run hard, won’t you?’

  ‘Likely I’ve got a bit to run from and a bit to run after, Lord Prince,’ Heriot said, emphasi
sing his slow speech very slightly.

  ‘Likely you have,’ said Betony Hoad, and, grimacing and turning away, he walked off along a broad, paved path back towards the King’s zoo and the Bridge of the Lion.

  Heriot watched him go. The King wouldn’t need him today. There were always those studies, of course. Yet suppose it really was time for rebellion? As he thought this, there was a spasm in the air, an agitation that resolved into something like a rapid muttering in his ear. Once again the stones of Guard-on-the-Rock had begun instructing him. Be free! Be free!

  Re-plaiting his hair into a single braid as he walked, he moved on out from under the trees and on to a wide path that followed the green curve of the towering, ivy-covered wall towards the gates between the Second and Third Rings of Diamond. There were guards at the gates but Heriot knew the passwords. No one questioned him as he moved into the Second Ring.

  It was like coming into another world. Early as it was, there were people up and about, setting up their stalls, trading and tallying.

  In one of the Second Ring marketplaces, among relatively elegant stalls, between a man mending broken china pottery with his own mixture of egg and lime, and another concerned with spices, stretched a busy counter piled with vegetables, baskets of gooseberries, raspberries and oranges. Heriot, stopping to buy an orange, suddenly had the strange feeling he had seen a face he somehow recognised. Or perhaps it was a face his occupant wanted him to know. He turned slowly, sure he must not seem too urgent.