The Widow and the King (29 page)

Chawlin stirred. ‘Luke? I don't know. Am I right in mine? Are any of us?’

‘It was a serious question.’

‘I know.’ He rasped his finger across his stubbly chin. ‘He's certainly less closed up than he was. Did you know it was his birthday while we were in Thale? Some of us went and begged honey cakes so we could have a celebration. At the end he stood up and thanked us like a gentle-born. So
he is thirteen now – not far from being a man. And there's always been a lot to him that we don't see. He walked out of the mountains by himself, for one thing. I know that country. That would have tested anyone …’

‘But is he?’

‘As I said, I don't know. Either he does not want to speak or he has been told to keep his mouth shut. He's lost his family. Then something bad happened to him after he came out of the hills. If you get that far, and think you are safe, and then it goes wrong … Yes, it may have unhinged him. He has that way of looking at you as if there might be someone standing beside you. Ugh! I don't like that. But … well. You saw today. Of all of us, who was it that answered? And it was a good thing for Grismonde that he did.’

Sophia frowned. ‘What was the old toad thinking of ?’ she complained. ‘That was sedition – or very nearly! If I had gone to the Widow …’

‘Please do not.’

Chawlin was looking at her earnestly. He seemed to think she meant it.

‘He let his ideas run away with him,’ he said. ‘That was all. There are queer places in any head. And the more you think, the more queer they may be. Grismonde's been worried for some months now. But so have other masters and counsellors. He was ashamed of himself afterwards. I doubt he will trip himself up like that again.’

‘Don't worry yourself. I'd never tell
her
anything.’ She was cross that he even thought she might.

And he must have sensed her anger, because he fell silent. That depressed her more. She would much prefer
to talk: either to convert him to her view, or be converted to his, it didn't matter. What mattered was that there shouldn't be this silence between them, in these very few moments when they could be together. It made her wonder again what kind of man he really was.

‘What's the matter with them – the masters?’ she asked.

Chawlin sighed. ‘They're worried, as I said. There are some ugly thoughts running around. I've heard them ask – among themselves – why we believe the things we do. Like Grismonde today: why should we believe in justice? Most of all they ask: what's the point?’

‘What's the point of what?’

Chawlin shrugged. ‘What we are doing. The school, and if it does any good.’

‘I've wanted to know that for a long time.’

Chawlin sighed again.

Sophia was impatient. Moments alone with him were so precious! She had come wanting to steal a kiss from him, as she had done last month on the stair after Council. She had wanted to laugh secretly with him at Grismonde and Luke, and maybe even hold him and feel the strength of his arm and chest. Yet here he was all sombre and grey, and talking only of depressing things. She couldn't kiss him when he was like this. It would be like kissing a tree stump.

She sat beside him, resenting the moments that passed so silently between them.

‘I did not think to hear it in a class, like that,’ Chawlin said. ‘But maybe it was only a matter of time. And sooner or later it'll get said in front of the whole house. Then it'll be too late, whatever the Widow does. I think …’

He paused. Sophia glanced at him.

‘I think we should have gone to help Septimus,’ he said.

‘It's too late to say that now, isn't it?’

‘Now that it's too late we may see it and say it. I've never been able to find out who swayed the Widow against it. Someone must have done. And maybe it would have been a disaster, but maybe not. At least we would still all know why we do what we do. Now … well, there may be a bad time coming …’

Sophia had had enough.

‘I must find Dapea,’ she said.

‘You're angry with me,’ said Chawlin.

She stopped halfway to her feet. Because he was asking her not to leave.

For three heartbeats she looked at him. Then she sat down again, slowly.

‘I want to know what you want,’ she said.

‘What I want?’ he repeated.

She waited for him, tingling with the suddenness of the moment.

You know what I mean, she thought. Why are we together? What do you think will happen? What are you: spy, fortune-seeker or …

… Or lover?

So many words, and all impossible – for both of them!

‘I could get you Thale,’ she said slowly. ‘Had you thought of that?’

He looked away, abruptly. ‘No!’ he grunted. ‘And no, you couldn't, I think.’

‘I could get you a manor. Maybe more than one.’

She was not sure what she was trying to do. Maybe she just wanted to pull him out of his torpor. Maybe she was trying to find out if he was a fortune-hunter.

Or maybe she meant it.

But if so, how could she persuade the Widow to honour it? Unless she meant he should wait until the day when the manors all finally came to her.

‘I do not want it!’

‘Then what
do
you want?' she hissed.

‘What do I want?’ he repeated. ‘What do I want?’

He was staring in front of himself, unseeing.

‘I want what I am most afraid of,’ he said.

‘Michael's Knees! What does that mean?’

He sighed.

‘If I tell you, you must understand that I'm not asking for your help.’

If he told her, she thought, then yes, he did want her help – even if he did not want to want it.

‘Tell me,’ she said.

‘I said I had seen what came to kill Tarceny. I did not say, I think, that I fought them. There were three of us there – myself, and Brother Martin who has now left us, and Tarceny's woman …’

‘You met her? I had no idea!’

‘She was there. And then they came for him – the monsters he himself had conjured. They were terrible. If I dream … Aagh – the
cockerel
!' He broke off, staring ahead of him.

It was a moment before he began again.

‘I wonder if you can imagine what it was like, years later, when I was given Tarceny's cup. Every hour I
carried it, I thought of those things. I was very, very afraid.

‘And yet all the while I knew there was something more within it – something very deep. Maybe it was deep enough to – to let me understand the whole world, so much that I would no longer be so afraid of what I'd seen. I don't know. I just don't know. Because I Never. Dared. Touch it.’

He sighed.

‘When I met your mother I was almost glad to give it to her. Now – well, dreams do not go away. Or if they do, they come back worse than before. Things remind me. Those riders we saw – and other things. I wish now that I'd taken the chance when I had it, but I hadn't the nerve. And maybe I wish I could have left Develin after I'd given it up, but I hadn't the strength …

‘I don't want manors, Sophia. Manors mean nothing. And peace and warmth and food mean very little now. I want to
know
.’

He broke off. Someone was coming. They both froze. A man, walking by, paused by the wagon tail. Craning from her place Sophia caught a glimpse of a gold-rimmed cloak and knew that it was Denke, the Law Master. She thought there was someone else with him, too.

Denke did not look their side of the wagon. He stood, head bowed and arms hugged round himself, as though he were listening or deep in thought. Sophia held her breath.

And in the long moments that followed, with her eyes on the corner of the master's cloak, she thought about what Chawlin had said to her.

It was as if he had lifted his shirt and shown her a great, shocking disease upon his skin. A stain of Tarceny – so close, on the man beside her! The man she …

He had used her name. Sophia. He hadn't done that before. It sounded so different when he said it.

Chawlin. Witchcraft. Tarceny. She needed to think.

Suddenly Denke groaned aloud – a hopeless, aching sound – and walked slowly on. Sophia watched him diminish in the sinking light. She saw, with some surprise, that he was alone after all.

Somewhere among the huts a voice was calling. It would be Dapea, out looking for her.

She had to think.

She looked at Chawlin, and saw that he had heard Dapea, too.

She cleared her throat. ‘I've got to go. But … but I want to talk to you about this again. I promise I will.’

He nodded slowly and said nothing. She did not know if he believed her. She did not know if she believed herself either. She gathered her skirts and left.

In the dusk of the village buildings there was no sign of Dapea, who must have gone searching in another direction. Sophia slowed her pace, walking with her head high as if she had all the time she needed.

I don't want manors, Sophia.

All right, she thought crossly. He doesn't. And what does he want? Nightmares from Tarceny!
Aagh – the cockerel!
What did that mean? Behind the sureness and the smile there was another Chawlin – someone who huddled and quivered and jumped at shadows. No wonder he was drawn to the boy Luke. And twice now, when he had been
closest to the centre of his thoughts, he had talked about that thing, that cup from Tarceny. He must be fascinated by it. And frightened, too.

Chawlin. Did Tarceny taint
everything
it touched?

If he didn't want manors, then he didn't want her. Without land he could never be accepted as a suitor.

But he
did
want her. Or at least, he hadn't wanted her to leave. He talked to her about things he would never dare mention to anyone else. That mattered.

And, she thought (with her jaw set); and if he was afraid, was it not brave of him to want to confront his fear?

Or was he just wishing that he was brave enough? She did not know. But she had promised she was going to hear him again. Yes, she had. So?

So she was going to. It was risky, but it always had been risky. She could manage it.

She could manage it, because he made her better than she was. She felt herself to be braver, cleverer, and more loving, just because of the moments he spent with her. She could never have turned the Council for the boy Luke if he had not encouraged her. She must remember that. And now that she had given her word she must be true to it, Tarceny or no Tarceny. It was the faithful thing to do.

It lightened her heart a little, to think that. And she wouldn't forget about the manors either. It was too good a plan to be wasted.

She paused in the shadow of a hut, and peered into the big yard before the Widow's lodge. From inside the lodge came the sounds and smells of supper preparing. The yard appeared to be deserted. Dapea was not there.

So much the better, thought Sophia. She could be standing by the door when her maid returned, and scold her for being tardy.

She stepped forward confidently. As she did so, a shadow moved in the yard. But it was only Denke, still pacing aimlessly about with his head bowed. She called a greeting, but he was lost in thought and did not look her way.

And he did seem to be alone.

he house of Ferroux was the oldest in all the south. Rolfe, a son of Wulfram, had raised his roof there in the conquests hundreds of years before. Its name was in a hundred songs.

Little remained of his building. The manor that stood in its place was a small one – barely able to support the Widow's company for two nights. There was no township or settlement, no keep or even a lodge in that place. Not a third of the Widow's following could camp within the stockade. Yet it pleased the Widow and her masters to pass Midwinter there.

At dusk trestle-tables were set in a horseshoe pattern in the meadow outside the stockade. Braziers stood at intervals behind the benches. They gave light and warmth, and their fire marked the feast of Midwinter when, the story went, Gabriel, Messenger of Heaven, had brought the Flame to the wandering peoples in the lost times before ever Wulfram and his sons took ship across the seas. Before the high table the manor knight bowed and welcomed his lady to that ancient house where, he said, the memory of the King-fathers ran deep in the stone – even if the meat and
the wine were no better than their children could make.

‘Both true,’ said the Widow, not unkindly, and her people laughed.

Then the Widow raised her hand, and a tall candle was set in front of her. On it she cut, as she did every month in her home, three lines, one below the other near the tip. A lighted taper was brought, the candle lit, and a screen of thinnest horn placed about it to shield it from the breeze. The light shone dully through and played upon her face. Around her the Household of Develin settled to hear its ritual of Dispute.

Ambrose was late coming to the tables, because he had been practising in secret some strokes with a staff that Chawlin had shown him. He knew that arriving after the Dispute had begun might earn him a beating. But he felt that the Heron Man was very close now. He did not think that his unseen enemy would let him answer back again. Perhaps next time he would attack. Whatever he did, Ambrose wanted to be ready.