The Children of the King

by Sonya Hartnett

  May glanced at Peregrine. He looked more like a warlock than ever. He answered with a word: “Power.”

  Heloise smiled rancorously. “Ah yes, how could I forget. Idiotic power. So precious that a man will extinguish the lives of thousands, hundreds of thousands, just so he can hold it in his hands for a while. So precious that the life of a child is nothing to him — absolutely nothing.”

  Peregrine reached for the carafe, poured the bruise-black wine. Cecily had leaned as far back from the table as her seat would allow. A feeling that everything was crushingly bad had descended upon her. She didn’t want to be in the dining room, or in Heron Hall, or in the countryside. She didn’t want to be anywhere. If she had the chance to be with her brother, she would not even be there.

  Heloise took several sips from her glass. Her blade-edged gaze would not settle, but ran about like a starving rat. She said, “Remember how he spoke that day. I could kill a man. As if that’s what a mother wants her son to do. It isn’t. It never has been. Every man is another mother’s son.”

  “Helly,” said Peregrine, which was a name Cecily had never heard him use, a name which made her mother’s panicked eyes swing to him and stop there. “You should rest. You’re tired.”

  “I’m not tired, I’m not tired at all. I’ll sit up, if you don’t mind. I don’t want to be asleep when he comes home. Except I don’t suppose he’ll come home tonight, not now. It’s too dark, too late. He’ll hole up like a badger somewhere. He’s been so cross with me lately, but I’ve only wanted him to be safe. Now look what he’s done. Disappeared into thin air. Hardly safe, is it.”

  “I’m sure he’s fine —”

  “Are you?”

  “What harm can he come to, out there? There’s nothing but trees and fields. And he’s a clever boy, Heloise. He can look after himself.”

  “No doubt you’re right. He’s extremely capable. And he’s always been quite — rustic, hasn’t he? He’ll probably enjoy sleeping in a ditch.”

  “Indeed. I shouldn’t worry.”

  Heloise smiled quaveringly. She gave her spoon a slight cuff, so it clinked against her bowl. “It’s not the ditches which bother me,” she admitted. “You’ll say I’m being silly, but I can’t help feeling — you don’t think — you don’t think he’d try to — enlist, do you, Peregrine?”

  Cecily felt the word as a thump to the chest. The idea of her pale, breakable brother signing up and marching onto a battlefield, becoming a soldier not in a game but in real and dreadful life, made her cry out, “Mama!”

  “Helly. Be sensible. He’s a boy.”

  “Yes, a boy who wants to fight! Who’s been taught that heroes fight. As if one boy’s death amid tens of thousands isn’t hateful and pointless but heroic, and, God help me, noble . . .”

  “Mama!”

  Peregrine said, “Jeremy’s young. He’s clearly a child. If he tried to enlist, they’d simply turn him away.”

  “Good!” Heloise gave a crumpled laugh. “Let them turn him away! Let them send him packing. He doesn’t belong to the country. I won’t give him to those bloodthirsty generals and their army, their tanks, their shooting, their bombs. He isn’t yours to kill, Peregrine!”

  “Mama!” Cecily bawled. “Is Jem going to France? Is he going to die?”

  “No.” Peregrine said it like a fist coming down. “Nothing will happen to Jeremy. He won’t become a soldier. He is just a child.”

  “Just a child, that’s right! And children must be kept safe. We’ll pack them on trains and send them off to live with strangers who are good enough to take them in, anything to keep the dear things away from the enemy —”

  “Heloise.”

  “— but we’ll also teach them that war is necessary, and that dying for your country, when your whole life is ahead of you, is a good and honourable and glorious thing. And if that’s not delivering a child into the hands of the enemy, then I don’t know what is. Really, I don’t know what is.”

  She pushed back her chair and rose like a spectre, wan and almost transparent. A churning turmoil had overcome her, visible for all to see: Cecily had never seen her mother so unravelled. “I’ll go to my room to wait,” she said. “I’m being silly, I know. Of course a bomb won’t fall on him. That’s a silly thing to think. Of course he can’t enlist. They’re very fussy about who they’ll kill. Of course he won’t get hurt: such things aren’t meant to happen to children, so of course they don’t. Bring him home, Peregrine. Promise me you will. It’s been a whole day now, and that’s long enough.”

  Stunned, they watched her depart as a wave leaves the shore, drawn away by irresistible forces. She went up the long staircase to her room; and although she would rise the next day and every day for many years to come, Heloise Lockwood was never the same person after that night. She never recovered from the realisation that children are wilful people; she never trusted them again. Worse, she discovered that, when it counted, the world was immune to her wishes and commands. She who’d believed herself important found she was just an angry bee in a jar. She continued to buzz and batter at the glass; but from this night forward she always knew, in her heart, that her buzzing and her battering were nothing more than noise.

  When her mother had left the room, Cecily turned a colourless face to her uncle. “No,” he told her again.

  May was gazing at the door that had closed behind Mrs Lockwood. Eventually she looked at Peregrine. In a voice as meek as a mouse she asked, “Where is he?”

  “I don’t know,” said the man. “Not here. But not where your father is, either.”

  “All right,” said the girl.

  That evening, in Heron Hall’s windows, lamps burned like wolves’ eyes, reaching into the dark to light a path for the missing boy. Somewhere across the chopping Channel, sons fought one another into the night, gunfire flaring orange and white, blood flowing more black than scarlet. In the city, fires burned around buildings that minutes earlier had been solid and standing yet now lay tumbled over the road. Somewhere in the dense sky flew aeroplanes, their stomachs stuffed with bombs; somewhere, underground, ears strained for the sound of these planes, the thrum that would stir a grinding fear. Somewhere, in secure strong rooms, stood those for whom this nightly misery was simply the war going as planned.

  But that night, none of this mattered to the occupants of Heron Hall. All was insignificant compared to the loss of one important boy.

  Morning saw Cecily hurrying along the first-floor passageway. She found his bedroom silent, an abandoned sanctuary. His bedclothes were still smooth, as he’d left them, the pillows like bales of snow. She looked at the small things her brother owned, a tortoiseshell hairbrush, a very-read book, a spoon, tortured with corrosion, that he’d dug up from the ground. He never liked her to touch his belongings and she didn’t do so now, as if obeying his rules somehow meant he was near. “Jeremy Joseph Lockwood,” she said, closing her eyes and trying to envisage, by mystic magic, exactly where he might be; but all she saw was a memory of him standing, weeping, on the landing, and all she felt was a swilling resentment for her mother. Infantile, Mama had called him, meaning he was ridiculous, shaming him before Uncle Peregrine, making him determined to prove his courage. If Mama hadn’t done that, Jem would still be here. Heloise was most upset that he was gone, yet with her the blame lay squarely . . . but Cecily was only twelve years old, and still needed to forgive the faults of her mother. She looked for someone else to blame.

  For a second morning Jeremy’s place at the breakfast table was empty, although the maid had laid out a setting of plate, bowl, cutlery, napkin and cup, in case, Cecily supposed, he returned suddenly and starving. May eyed the vacant chair in silence. “He’s not home,” Cecily informed her breakfast companions.

  “Not yet,” said Peregrine.

  “Will we find him today?”

  “I hope so. But perhaps not.”

  “If he’s going to London, will he get there today?”

  Peregrine took toast from the
rack, carved a wafer of butter. “You ask me questions as if I know the answers, Cecily.”

  “Well, usually you do.”

  There was a rough tone in her voice which both May and Peregrine noticed but neither commented on. She snatched some toast and buttered it so severely that the slice cracked like an ice floe. She saw, again, her brother in tears on the first-floor landing. Words came to her that she’d forgotten: I would like to be true. Loyal. Brave. It was sad that he expected such grand things from himself when he was merely a boy. Bluntly she said, “I think Mama is right. Jeremy’s run away to join the army. He’s going to go to France and get shot. An enemy will shoot him and they’ll be happy about doing it, just like you said, Uncle Peregrine.”

  “That won’t happen,” said May.

  “Oh, how do you know?” Cecily wheeled as if this was the opportunity she’d been waiting for. “Just because your dad is a soldier and your mum’s making parachutes, you think you know everything. It’s your fault Jem’s run away!”

  The child, startled, shrank in her chair. Peregrine asked, “Why exactly is it May’s fault?”

  “She’s always showing off, that’s why! Showing off about her dad being a soldier and her mum making parachutes!”

  “I don’t!” protested May.

  “Yes you do! It’s better than doing nothing, you said, as if we’re doing nothing and you’re doing everything. Even though my daddy is important in the war, and your dad is just a teacher! You made Jeremy be ashamed and run away. If he gets killed, it will be your fault. I wish you’d never come here, May! I wish I had left you in the town hall. You’re just like everyone said you’d be, a troublemaker. I’d rather have Jeremy here, not you!”

  May, white as death, said nothing. Peregrine gazed at his niece. “I don’t think your brother would be pleased by your saying that,” he said.

  Cecily barked, “I don’t care!” And, as if shot out by cannons, two tears leapt from her, splattering her plate. “Aarg!” she wailed. “Argh! Ahargh!”

  May looked to Peregrine. “I want to go home.”

  “No, you can’t!” Two more tears banged like bullets onto the table before the flow found its natural path down Cecily’s cheeks. “You’re not allowed! You have to stay here! No one else is allowed to leave!”

  She folded her hands across her face and wept dramatically. Neither Peregrine nor May moved to console her. “I want to go home,” whispered May.

  Peregrine turned to her. “I hope you won’t. Not yet.”

  “I don’t want you to go!” Cecily bawled behind her hands. “I want Jem to come home!”

  “She blames me,” said May.

  “She doesn’t. She’s frightened and confused. May,” said Peregrine, “I know these past weeks have been hard for you. I know what you’ve been through, and what you’ve lost. Nothing can change the past; and if you really want to go home, of course you can. But you are an important guest here, perhaps the most important guest the Hall has ever hosted. I hope you will stay. I would hate to see you leave before I know that where you’re going is somewhere you’ll be safe. I would not like to lose you.”

  May only looked at him, very little and imploring, unable to lift the heavy words she might have said in reply: I miss my mother, I need my father weigh too much for a child. Cecily, realising she had stopped being the centre of attention of her audience, screamed, throwing down her hands to reveal streaked cheeks. “I’m sorry, May! Why do you even listen to me? I’m horrible, you know that!” And dropped her head so low that her nose snuffled on her toast and her curls floated on her tea. Peregrine and May observed her without sympathy. Cecily grovelled in her plate some moments more, coating her nose in butter, getting jam in an ear. Her face, when she raised it, was a veritable buffet. “You’re not allowed to go, May! You have to stay. You can’t run away too! The whole world can’t run away!”

  May’s stare was withering. “I don’t have to do what you say.”

  “Wahk!” shrieked Cecily.

  Peregrine sipped his tea and said, “If you must go, May, I hope you’ll at least stay to hear the end of the Duke’s story.”

  “There’s more?” gagged Cecily.

  “Does it have something to do with Snow Castle?” May asked.

  “It has something to do with Snow Castle,” confirmed Peregrine.

  Cecily moaned, “You mustn’t tell it until Jem comes home . . .”

  Peregrine shrugged. “Jeremy has heard enough. Heloise has heard enough. The end of the story is for you two.”

  “Don’t tell it!” The bigger girl abruptly lurched forward and shouted: as if the evacuee were a fairytale princess who could be freed from captivity by the correct combination of words, she said, “As soon as you tell it, May will go!”

  Proud May ignored her cruelly, said, “Please Mr Lockwood, tell it now.”

  They did not retire to the brown warmth of the den, but stayed in the breakfast room with the fair light of morning shining on the honey and the backs of their hands. The frostiness between the girls was thawed, slightly, by the summoning of Byron, who begged scraps from them. For a final time the storyteller invited the Duke into the house.

  “So our man is finally king,” he began, “but nothing is as it should be. Conspiracy and rumours fly about him like locusts. People think only of the princes in the Tower, those boys with the rightful claim to the throne. The Duke reasons he will never truly hold the crown until this matter is dealt with.

  “He summons the dog-man. Loyal dog, if you love your master, do as I command. And the dog-man takes assistants and goes to the Tower. They climb the stairs to the Keep. They enter the room and see two boys asleep. The dog-man whines his orders. The assistants do as they are told. They press blankets to the faces of the children until there is stillness and silence.”

  “Murdered them,” marvelled May.

  Peregrine selected a hard-boiled egg from the bowl. Watched intently by Byron, he cracked and peeled the shell. Then he sliced the egg into wedges, salted the yolk, and offered the pieces to the girls, who shook their heads. “How fortunate you both are,” he said, “that you can refuse to eat. . . . I don’t know what happened that night in the Tower. I wasn’t there. Nearly five hundred years have passed since then; that’s a long time. And secrets are easily buried, especially by a loyal dog. One thing is certain: after that night, the princes were never seen again. In the Duke’s brief reign as king, there were times when it would have been useful for him to pull a live prince from his sleeve: but he never did, probably because he couldn’t. And it is certainly true that, at the time, the locusts of rumour began to whisper that the princes were dead.”

  “Dead! He killed them. And they were only children!”

  Peregrine looked at Cecily. “Even in such a violent era, the killing of children was considered a despicable crime. But what crime, in which era, has ever gone uncommitted?”

  “But they weren’t only children — they were his nephews!” She glared as if he, an uncle, must answer for the behaviour of all uncles. Peregrine seemed unfazed.

  “His nephews, that’s so. But would that have made a difference to a man such as the Duke? Remember, he’d said nothing in defence of his brother, Clarence; but Clarence was mad, beyond saving. The princes were a different matter — but the Duke remained the same man. The opinion of the locusts was that the boys were dead. And indeed, the Duke didn’t move to quieten the rumours, but rather let them spread — although in his version the princes weren’t murdered, obviously, but died of disease. If the Prince and his brother were believed deceased, there could be no more calls to make Edward a king . . .

  “But a curious aspect of power is that, like a bull being baited, it must forever be in a fever to guard every flank. One biting, snapping threat is stamped out, only for another to fasten teeth to its rump. The princes were removed, but no one believed the Duke’s story that they’d died from disease. Everyone was certain the Duke had had a hand in their demise; and everyone was appall
ed to have such an unscrupulous man on the throne. And some of these appalled people had been friends of the Duke, but would be friends with him no longer.

  “Now we must introduce another character to the stage, the previously unheard-of character who swoops in when all seems lost. We shall call him the Tudor. He is but a twig of the royal family tree, and has a very faint claim to the throne. He has been living abroad, penniless, for years, and no one except his mother much knows or cares about him. But now the Duke’s enemies realise the Tudor might be worth dragging in from obscurity. Here was a man who could legitimately wear the crown, were it to be pushed from the Duke’s head.

  “And that head, according to some observers, was not a happy one after the princes vanished. The Duke, always God-fearing, took to serious prayer. It’s said he paced the corridors at night, afraid to sleep and dream.”

  “Serves him right,” said Cecily. “Don’t you think so, May?”

  May ignored her. “What was the Queen doing all this time?”

  “The Queen . . . well, when she hears the rumours that her sons are dead, she does what all mothers, losing sons, must do. She falls to her knees and asks the wind, the rain, the sky, the sun, the moon, the clouds and the stars to take her life instead of theirs. And when this can’t happen, she swears revenge against the man she has always hated, and now has reason to hate a thousand times more.

  “Thus powerful people align themselves against the Duke. They hasten the spread of the rumour that the princes have died at his command. Anger sizzles over the land. More people join the Tudor conspiracy. They send the Tudor an invitation to invade the country and seize the crown.