by John Barnes
One might even have imagined that Amatus would throw himself into his studies more deeply than ever before, and thus honor Golias's memory and work out his grief at the same time, perhaps threatening to become King Amatus the Scholar. Either Boniface or Cedric could have borne that.
What they could not bear was that he did all three. He dressed in black and drifted through the castle as if he had a murder to avenge, making Boniface nervous—especially since they had all grown accustomed to the sight of the youth with no left side, but to see him striding along accompanied by an otherwise unattached left boot was eerie.
Yet instead of sitting at windows with bitter ironic jests, or spurning the offered affection of Sir John and his other comrades, he barely seemed to notice anyone most days, walking about the corridors muttering, and then just when everyone was getting used to this, disappearing into the Royal Library. It was reported by Wyrna, who dusted those dark, candle-sooted chambers, that he had been reading heavily in that dreaded work, Highly Unpleasant Things It Is Sometimes Necessary to Know, and that she was sure that under his elbow on the desk, unlocked, as if for reference, had been the blood-red leather-bound volume, Things That Are Not Good to Know at All.
And yet again, just when one might have expected him to have settled into a sensible obsession with the Black Arts, from which Mortis, as Royal Witch, miight have been implored to rescue him, there would be tales of what else he had done—that late at night he would batter on Sir John Slitgizzard's door, or on Duke Wassant's, and that they would be off to drink and roister and roar the rips of the lower city.
Cedric had quietly put both young courtiers on his payroll, to report what the Prince spoke of and what he did, and when possible to get word to the Twisted Man so that he could follow them through the winding slimy-cobbled streets like a hideous shadow, making sure no harm came to the heir. And because Golias had been wise in his choices, and the two men, though bad enough in private matters, were true as steel to the Royal house, they reported all they saw, and it was such that Slitgizzard would shudder at the lewdness of the houses that Amatus now frequented, and Wassant would openly admit to being terrified at both the odds and the opponents Amatus found for duels.
At these accounts, Cedric would turn to the Twisted Man, an eyebrow raised, and with a shrug under the folds of his cloak—a shrug that seemed to come from places you did not expect his shoulders to be—the Captain of the Guard would mutter, "Sir, I was in the shadows at the Prince's elbow, but truly, I had little fear for him, for he was a madman, and I myself would fear to face him now; I had more care to guard the Duke and Sir John."
Cedric would sigh, and Slitgizzard and Wassant would wish they had more words of comfort to speak to him, but they had none, and would return to their homes shaken with things they had seen the Prince do, and helped him to do, and wondering how much longer the rumors that there was a King Amatus the Wicked in the making could be kept down in the city. Often after one of those expeditions into the city night Sir John would give strict orders that his bed was to be ready an hour before sundown and that he was not to be woken until an hour after sunrise, so that he would see none of the night; just as often Duke Wassant would have his chambers dancing with the bright light of candles for the whole night afterwards, and would have his childhood nurse come in to sing and read to him.
If the Twisted Man felt anything from what was happening, he kept it to himself. Mortis, too, seemed to speak little of the matter, though Wyrna swore that the Royal Witch seemed sad, and would no longer go to the window to see the first rays of the morning sun, and often sat still in a way she had never done before.
Psyche sat in the sun, up in the Royal Solar, for many hours at a time, and sewed bright clothing for the Prince. She was the one, more than any seamstress, who had mastered the art of making clothing for his half-body. The cloaks she made were red as carnations, and the triolets as yellow as dandelions, and the breeches and hose alizarin, but as she finished each she sighed and put it into a cedar chest. The Royal Carpenter reported that he was making a new chest every three days, and the Chamberlain of the Royal Storage said that one new storeroom had filled with chests already.
It occurred to Cedric that perhaps Calliope could do some good; he went to her to ask for her help, but found she had already tried.
"He didn't hurt me," she said, as the two of them sat over tea on the High Terrace, overlooking the West Battue. "He had a haunted and ugly look, as if he'd been eating the wrong sort of things, and he glared at me. He—er, well, he stared at parts of me rudely, but it was, I think, the rudeness of someone trying to drive me off, not any part of his nature. There was no hatred in him, and no lust, but he tried to put on both to get me to leave."
Cedric sighed. "The King worries about his son all day. Things run well enough, mind, because the Kingdom was in good order when this current problem started, but give it time, give it time, and surely it will deteriorate. May I ask—what sort of things—"
Calliope blushed, pushing her soft red hair back from her face, and Cedric abruptly remembered how young she was, but before he could stop her, she had looked up at him, blue eyes soft with hurt, and said, "Well, he—er, he stared hard at my . . . bosom, and told me that the worms ate the soft parts first."
A dark shadow fell across the table. They looked up to see the Prince standing over them.
"You are old, Cedric," he said, "and that is why a young girl blushes to mention her 'bosom' in front of you." (The sarcasm he applied to the word was the nastiest sound Cedric had heard, even with all his years receiving ambassadors and talking to government clerks). "But she trusts you with it all the same, because she is so young that she imagines that you, one foot in the grave as you are, have no more lurking lust in your flaccid old flesh. And she still fails to note that all flesh smells of the grave."
"You're ill," Cedric said quietly. "I am only glad that it is an illness that becomes a prince."
"Do you say I am mad?"
"I do," Calliope said, startling them both, and standing up. "I know your friend died. I know you didn't know it would happen and you'd never have gone down into the caverns if you knew it would.
"And I even know that you feel horrible because you got your foot back by his death and now you know that your other Companions will probably have to die—or maybe something even more horrible—before you can get back the rest of yourself, and you can't bear to lose your Companions. I feel terribly sorry for you, Amatus, and I can understand your being mad, but acting like a pig is not going to make it any better, and I don't see any reason to be around you while you act like a pig.
"If you want to come to my chamber and weep for six straight days, I'll listen to you and hold you as long as you allow me occasional food and sleep, or if you want me to go as your comrade on some impossible quest you may consider me packed, or if you want to go up in the mountains and howl at the moon for the next year I'll sit down here and wait for you to be better and never look at any other suitor, but I shall not take your abuse, no matter what is wrong with you."
She was out of the room before Cedric had even an instant to think. Part of the back of his mind elevated Calliope considerably as a possible Royal match; the Kingdom needed a good queen and he had just seen the makings of one.
He turned to Amatus and saw a half-face as hard as stone. "I am not the only mad person let loose in this castle," the Prince said quietly, "but I am the source of all the infections. I am sorry, Cedric. I am deeply sorry."
With that, the Prince turned and left. Cedric looked at the cold winter sunlight streaming in the windows, and quietly poured himself another cup of tea, and sat on the windowsill to drink it and to stare out over the city. He had been taking care of things for a long time, he realized, and as he looked at the bright multicolored roofs peeping through their snow-blankets, and the white buildings, many flying the Hand and Book flag, and the throngs running this errand and that, he felt a deep fear in him, for the health of the city was the
health of the Kingdom, and the health of the Kingdom was the health of the Royal family—and he had just seen a great deal of its infection.
After a long time by himself, he left the room, and the winter sun sank, so that the shapes of the windows crept up the walls and ran across the ceiling and were gone, and the tea turned to a cold nastiness that the maid, the next morning, pitched from the window.
Meanwhile, Amatus made his way down the stairs, still feeling terribly sorry for himself, but also feeling that he had overdone this, and that like it or not it was time to begin to turn toward the air and the light.
First he stopped by the throne room and contritely—and briefly, because he was afraid he might lapse back into rude offensiveness—told his father that he was sorry for his recent behavior, and that he would be coming down to dinner tonight. King Boniface smiled at him, warmly at first, and then a slightly guarded expression passed over his face. By this, Amatus knew that he still did not look at all well.
Psyche was in the nursery, sitting quietly.
"I've come to apologize," Amatus said.
She smiled at him warmly. "You used to do that when you were little."
He had rarely been reminded that Psyche had been his nurse—he was used to thinking of her as a trusted servant of his own age—and now he came to her and sat at her feet, waving off her attempts to kneel. "How is it," he asked, "that you remain the same age? You are no different from what you were when I first saw you in the Throne Room, and now I'm grown—physically, anyway—half of me, anyway—and yet you don't look a day older."
She smiled at him, and there was mischief in it. "By the time you understand that, it will be the least important thing you understand. Promise you will think of me with love when you do understand."
He promised, and Psyche went to his closet and drew out a set of clothes she had hung there. "Royal purple, and deep blues, and some traces of red," she said. "Still sober as is proper, but not that dreadful black. You were not meant to be Prince Hamlet, my dear one."
She had not called him "my dear one" in many years, not since he was small, and at the sound of it he hugged her to him, and felt her arms around the right side of his waist again . . . and noted that his boots met her shoes, toe to toe, as they never had before.
They both looked down. "Do you miss him?" Amatus asked.
"No." She sniffled, and it seemed to belie her words, but he didn't know what she was weeping at. "Highness, you've never asked, so now I shall tell you: we don't all like each other. We share our duty to you, we know all the others do as well, we trust each other to do this, and we are content with this. I knew how much you needed Golias, my Prince, and would that you might have had more of him or more of the pleasure of him—but he and I were never friends. We could not be. It was not in the nature of things."
Amatus nodded, bowed, took up the new clothes she had made for him, and said, "Thank you for these. They are beautiful."
After he had dressed—not in his new clothes, which he saved for dinner, but in a simple blue costume that was somber without being grim, he went down to speak to the Twisted Man.
The Twisted Man, who was patrolling one of the parataxes on the castle's East Battue, nodded gravely, said, "Your apology is accepted," and added, "It would behoove you to go and speak with Mortis; she was wounded more deeply than either of us, because she liked Golias best. When you are done, I expect you to write brief notes of apology to others you have wronged—and then to be back up here promptly."
It was not a way to speak to a prince, but then Amatus had hardly behaved in a princely fashion lately, and he felt deep inside that whatever the Twisted Man had in mind it would be something that Amatus needed, "Thank you, Captain," he said, and trotted down to the lower reaches of the castle.
He found Mortis one level below her usual one, and a quick glance showed him she had gone so far as to move her furniture down into this lower apartment, away from all daylight.
There were lines in the witch's face where he hadn't remembered there being any before, and her eye were red-rimmed, with weeping, he thought. For a long time he sat next to her, not touching her, for he knew that her dignity could not bear that, but waiting for his offered communication to have effect. At last he said, "If need be, I will sit here for as many days as it takes, until you speak."
Her gaze held his, and he was reminded again that though she was able to maintain her beauty and fascination, she was indeed a witch and might have been millennia old, for the black eyes that stared at him had that memory of the beginnings of time that snakes do, and they were as cold.
When Mortis finally spoke, it seemed to come from deep within her. "My Prince, there is a secret which I should not tell you, for you must know it yourself."
"Then speak it, if you have decided to—"
She sighed, and as swiftly as it had come over her face, the reptile coldness and age was gone, and the Prince found himself thinking of the days when he had asked her why there were not magic cookie jars that never ran empty, or when she had quietly helped him through the forms of the Never-Voiced Declension when Golias had assigned him more than he could master. "My Prince, the reason I should not is close to the reason that you now have a foot. We will all pass from you at one time or another, but you will not necessarily gain by it if we do not follow the rules. Would you run the risk that it might be for nothing?"
He nodded. "Of course not. Then do not tell me. Did you want me only to know that there was such a secret?"
Again, her age rolled back from the old times of his boyhood to the old times before the youth of the world, and the cold face of the reptile stared at him . . . but then softened again. "My Prince," she said, finally, "my Prince, the sun will set soon, and you should be to dinner with your father."
"I've notes to write as well," he said, but made no effort to move. The dungeons were much darker and colder than the rest of the castle, but though Mortis's dress was of some thin stuff, she seemed not to be cold at all, while the Prince's winter clothes barely kept the clammy chill out of him. "You ought to come up to the sun and bask," he said, before realizing that the comparison might be unflattering.
She laughed—or did she strangle on a sob? "Time was the advice would have been good."
After they sat a long time longer she said, "You do need to go, my Prince, and I will not grow worse because you do. Truly I am grateful that you came down to see me."
As Amatus stood, he decided to broach the difficult subject. "The Twisted Man said that of the four of you, you liked Golias best."
She nodded, as if in dull shock. "That is true. Psyche could not really know or understand him at all, nor he her. And the Twisted Man was forever closed to the things that stood nearest Golias's heart, and Golias from those things the Twisted Man holds fealty to, because what was strength in one would be weakness in the other. So Psyche could not like what Golias did, and the Twisted Man could not understand what Golias was . . . but I, my Prince, I knew Golias for what he was, always, and though my love would not have been a good thing for him, though there was necessarily separation between us, yet I loved him in my way, and for the things we had in common."
"And . . . er, you survivors—"
Cold black ice stared in her eyes. "Our feelings for each other are none of your business." And then a little warm water seemed to well under it. "Yet I will say this much: that the Twisted Man sometimes suffers, just a little, because Psyche cannot feel what he wishes she could. Are you happier for knowing that there is that much more pain in the world?"
Amatus inclined his head. "I understand now, lady. I was wrong to have asked, and you were right to demonstrate to me the sort of thing I might learn by asking."
"You think, then, that I told you for your benefit?"
"I believe my Companions work to my good, yes."
She rose. "The sun will be down soon. Go."
He went. At his apartment he sat down at his desk and swiftly scrawled out letters of abject apology to
Duke Wassant and Sir John Slitgizzard, begging that they forgive him for the things he had brought them to, asking them to aid in his repentance, and expressing the warm hope that some afternoon soon they might sit in the golden winter sunlight and sing the songs that Golias had taught them, songs of love and wine, in the snug warmth of his chambers in the castle.
With difficulty, he also wrote another letter—and there were many times as he wrote it when he could feel tears starting in his eyes, though the letter was a bare few lines:
My dear Pell,
It has been in my mind sometime past that I have treated you much like a plaything, and moreover like a disliked one that I wished to break. The Kingdom rests upon my behavior, finally, and this has been no behavior for a prince; I find I am forced to beg your silence of you, as you love your country, and yet I admit the wrongs I have done you have been such that you would be fully entitled to trumpet them from the rooftops. I appeal to your patriotism only; for my cruelties without number I offer whatever recompense will not endanger the state, and pledge to remove myself from your sight until such time as we shall both be healed of the things we have done together—if indeed we ever shall.
With warm regard—and nothing more—
Amatus.
That left the hard one; his note to Calliope was briefer, for between salutation and signature, he wrote only:
You are right, and I have been wrong. I shall always trust you to tell me the truth as you know it.
With a sigh, having settled all matters of any importance, he looked and saw that the sun was within a fingerbreadth of the horizon. If he had been there, he might have seen Cedric, at that moment, get up from the last of the cold tea back on the High Terrace. But since he did not, the scene passed unnoticed by him, and it was only years later, while interviewing Amatus for his Chronicle, that Cedric realized that as he had been sitting in despair for the Kingdom, the Prince had begun at last to take steps for it.
Amatus lifted the candle to the bottom of the strip of sealing wax, swiftly sealed the envelopes, and rang for the letter boy. He handed the letters to the boy with a whole golden flavin for a tip.