The Widow and the King (31 page)

Who then was the ‘father of the house’?

The Heron Man was here, in the court of Develin. He had been here all along. He was speaking to all of them – the Widow, the masters, the counsellors. He had been doing it for weeks.

The Heron Man had spoken to everyone! He had them all!

Everyone except him.

The father of the house was going to speak to him, here in the garden.

Slowly, the awful thought seeped more and more strongly into Ambrose's mind. There was no one else it could be. It had to be the Heron Man. The Angel had sent him here, to meet his enemy face to face. The Heron Man was coming to him.

Keep out of his way, the Wolf had said.

You must never approach him, Mother had said. You must never listen to him, or speak with him, no matter how important it seems.

He will speak with you. Go and hear him
.

‘Why?’ he cried plaintively.

Nothing answered him.

Why?

The light draws the shadow. Develin was the last light in the Kingdom. But the Heron Man had been among them all the time. Now the light was going out. Ambrose remembered the face of the Widow as she had puffed out the candle.

‘Your house is not in order!’ he said aloud.

They were the words she had spoken to Wastelands, even as the Heron Man stood beside her chair.

He will speak with you. Go and hear him
.

He listened, and heard nothing but the voices at the tables. He looked, and saw only the herb-fronds glowing dully in the light of the fires.

He did not have his staff.

Time passed. Ambrose ordered his five stones again, setting them as far out around him as he dared, and waited. It was cold here, away from the brazier on the longest night of winter. The babble from the firelit meadow had reduced. The Widow must have retired. So must many of the house. The talking had gathered into clumps where those who had no early duty still clung to their bowls and places. And the firelight at his back flickered on the shrubs and bay-bushes, and showed him the shadows that lay among them.

At last he heard voices approaching, murmuring to each other: a man and a woman. Ambrose knew the man's voice. It was Chawlin.

‘… seeing each other too often,’ he was saying. ‘It will do no good. We need to think what we are doing.’

‘You're just depressed,’ said the woman. ‘Who wouldn't be, after hearing all that awful stuff at the tables? All the more reason to find company we like.’

Chawlin let out his breath, like a long sigh.

‘You're so much younger than I am, remember. You're the future. You should not think to offer me …’

‘What do you think I am offering you?’

Her voice was low, but pressing. Chawlin hesitated again.

‘Sophia, look at my face. Look at it.’

‘I like it,’ the woman said firmly.

‘No, listen! You don't know me! Can you imagine, talking to me as you are now, and seeing wounds, great red wounds, appear on my face?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘… and you know it's something in your mind, not real, because I am still talking to you and laughing with you and all the time you can see the flesh curling up from the rents, and the blood all down my skin?’

‘Chawlin!’

‘I've seen it. I've dreamed it, and thought it was a nightmare. There was a time when I saw it, waking, day after day, on friend after friend, and knew that I was mad. That thing from Tarceny I carried – just a plain stone thing. Until I gave it away, it was bringing all that back. And now I'm dreaming again …’

Something moved, to Ambrose's right, at the edge of his vision. It was not a man.

‘I think you're being very brave,’ said the woman.

Ambrose breathed in, slowly. There was a smell in the air, thick and characterless, like water at the edge of pools. He huddled backwards under the shelter of the old fountain. His heart was beginning to work, hard.

Fifteen feet from him, a shape stirred in the shadow of a bay tree.

Ambrose swallowed. Carefully, he looked away, watching from the corner of his eye.

It was smaller than a man – perhaps the size of a child all wrapped in a cloak. There was something bird-like about the way it had moved, and very light, as if it were
made only of bone, or had no body at all. Within the shadow of its face or hood something – perhaps it was an eye – glinted red from the distant fires.

How long had it been there? It was watching him. It had seen that he had seen it. An arm – a limb like an arm – began to stretch out towards him.

‘Sophia,’ said Chawlin's voice. ‘You must be more careful.’

‘I'll do what I like …’

‘Chawlin!’ cried Ambrose.

There was a brief, stunned silence.

‘Who's there?’

‘Chawlin, help me!’ Ambrose scrambled to his feet. He had to grip the fountain with one hand to prevent himself from overbalancing in his narrow ring of stones. With his other he reached out to them, begging for help.

‘Luke!’

Chawlin was there, and with him was the Widow's daughter – the Lynx of Develin. They were standing very close to one another. They were holding hands. They must both have jumped when he called.

‘Luke!’ hissed the Lynx. ‘Go away!’

‘I can't!’

‘What do you mean? You're not wanted here. Go away!’

‘I can't,’ Ambrose said again, trying to keep his voice low.

‘Can't you see it?’

‘What?’

They hadn't seen it. They hadn't smelled it.

‘There!’ he said, pointing at the shadow by the bay bush.

There was another beyond it, he now saw, to his left.
And he thought a third had been moving on his right, but it was gone for the moment. He did not know where.

‘This is a bad relapse,’ muttered Chawlin.

‘For Umbriel's sake, Luke!’ said the Lynx. ‘It's just a cat. Please go away.’

Ambrose did not move.

‘I'll have you whipped!’ she said furiously. ‘Go. Away. Leave us alone!’

‘I can't!’

She must have been astonished, because she did not answer. Ambrose heard her draw breath. Then she exclaimed loudly and marched off into the darkness.

Chawlin hesitated. ‘What is it, Luke? What are you seeing?’ There was a note of unease in his voice.

‘There! By the bay bush. You see it if you don't look at it. Can't you see?’

Chawlin stayed where he was.

‘There – there's nothing there, Luke. It was a cat, that's all.’

‘It's still there!’

‘No! No, Luke. You just heard what I was saying and you frightened yourself.’

‘Chawlin, help me!’

‘Help yourself !’ said Chawlin roughly. ‘You've done enough damage already.’

He left, moving quickly with his arms swinging. He passed the bushes and boulders where the reeking, shadowy things crawled, and walked by them as if they were not there. He did not look back until he reached the edge of the garden. Then, when he was no more than a shadow among shadows, Ambrose saw him turn.

‘We will have our bout by the woodstore tomorrow morning, Luke,’ he called, in a different, more cheerful tone. ‘Do not forget. And when we get back to Develin, I will see if I can get my hands on some real iron. You will like that, hey?’

He was gone.

They didn't listen, thought Ambrose, furious. They didn't see!

No one did. No one saw the Heron Man, moving among them. No one saw what he was doing in Develin.

‘Cat?’ muttered Ambrose savagely. ‘What kind of
cat
are you?’

He picked a flaked of cracked paving stone from the ground beside him, and, looking away, flung it as hard as he could at the thing that crouched by the bay bush.

He was sure that he hit it, but there was no sound of a stone striking or falling. It was as if he had thrown the stone into a loose canvas sack.

It wasn't moving. It was watching him, like a big dog that expected something. They were all watching him.

They can't pass the white stones, he told himself.

He might try throwing one of the white stones. That would do something, he was sure. But he might never get it back, and then he would only have four.

Andoh
, said the Thing before him from the darkness.

Ambrose jumped.

Andoh
.

The word was followed by other sounds, deep and lipless. Ambrose felt the stone behind him tremble at the voice. He sat frozen as the Thing stole closer to the white stones. It groped at the edge of the ring. His toes and knees
were drawn up as tight as he could to get away from it. And again it spoke, with a horrible, wheedling, pleading tone, as if it were saying,
Please, please, please
…

Please, let us in
, he thought it was saying.
Please, let us reach you. Please, let us tear you so that the flesh curls up from the rents and the blood runs down your face
.

‘Go away!’ he yelled, despairing. Just as the Lynx had cried at him: ‘Go. Away.’

Then he cursed it.

He could curse, now. Weeks in Develin had taught him the filthy, obscene words that the scholars flung at one another when they were angry. He used them all. He raged at it, the ugly, shapeless stupid thing that mouthed at him out of the darkness. He raised his voice and heard it crack with the effort. And he stopped, gasping for breath.

It could not pass the stones. It could not reach him. The Heron Man could not reach him. He could sit here all night if need be.

Away to his right, something like an insect the size of an ass heaved itself up among the scented leaves.

Andoh
, it cooed.

Then it said a word that sounded like
Anson
; and other words, and
Anson
again.

The bushes parted and another came, lumbering out of blackness. A fourth (or was it a fifth?) flitted after it.

They were crouching in a ring around him, so close he could have reached over the stones to touch them. Huge eyes danced with the dying fires on the field. Their voices made him shrink. Long fingers, thick with hairs, stretched beseechingly towards him. The air was thick with their smell.

And nothing happened.

Nothing happened. They could not reach him. They did not try. They spoke, and waited, and spoke again.

And the Heron Man did not come.

Slowly, even as Ambrose glared at them across the little space, the beating of his heart began to ease. He was very tired.

He rested his head back against the stone fountain, and tried to watch them under lowered eyelids. It was cool, but still warmer in these flat lands than in the mountains.

Perhaps an hour later, he jerked up, realizing that he must have dozed. They were still there, but silent, watching.

There was nothing they could do to reach him.

He waited, and dozed again; woke, and dozed once more. Unhuman voices spoke as he dreamed, but he did not answer.

Some time before moonrise they must have slipped, or been ordered, away, for when he woke in the high moonlight he could not see them any longer. Not even the breeze stirred the leaves of the garden around him.

Now he was utterly alone.

n the early spring, the soldiers of Velis surprised the garrison at Bay. They were within the walls before the alarm was raised. Bay tried first to fight, then to surrender, but the attackers ran through the buildings in frenzy, listening to no cries. They killed the family, the men-at-arms, the servants and the children of servants – even the animals – and heaped the bodies in the great hall, and fired it over them. Then they returned to Tuscolo, the capital, and crowned their king in a ceremony to which no one was invited.

No one knew why Bay had been attacked. The first account to reach Develin was that Bay had sided secretly with Septimus, before his defeat. A later story was that it had been a private quarrel between Bay and some of Velis's counsellors, who had then persuaded the King that Bay would oppose him. The Widow of Develin sent careful messages of duty and submission to Tuscolo, and waited for news.

‘These are the words of Tuchred Martyr,’ said Father Grismonde to the scholars of the middle studies.

‘“Men adore the power of kings, which is manifest.
Yet the power that is hidden is greater still. If the miser gives gold to a poor man, we have seen Raphael move his heart. When the coward knight turns upon his pursuers, there Michael rides upon his helm. And if a lying man speaks prophesy, you may look for Umbriel behind his eyes.”

‘Now,’ said Father Grismonde, wagging his finger at the scholars. ‘Some who seek to be foolish may ask if all good done by men is therefore of the Angels’ doing and not ours. This was not the meaning of Tuchred Martyr. For the Angel to take its place within us, the coward must first find a seed of courage, and the miser must think of the farthing in his purse – be it only for an instant – a scrap of time. Then comes the power of Heaven, blessing, increasing— Yes, what is it?’

The scholar Cullen had stood to ask a question. You could do that, with Father Grismonde.

‘Master – haven't the Angels all fled?’

‘What? Fled?’ Grismonde drew breath. ‘No, of course not! Why should they?’

Cullen frowned. Perhaps he was surprised at himself. Everyone was thinking it, of course. But what had made him say it aloud? To the priest?